Startup altruism - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/11/startup-altruism.html

<comment><USER2> Of course, as one of the Hacker Angels, Gabriel himself contributes quite a bit to the pool of startup altruism.

</comment><comment><USER3> My problem with altruism is one of audience. Many times I've offered to give aways books for free or to match donations to Wikipedia... but very little seem to take my offers. Granted this is all done through my blog. I even send out my links to to Twitter and Facebook. I often get very little interest. Maybe I come off as being disingenuous? Maybe my writings aren't motivating enough?

I truly feel a yearning to help others. Any advice?

<comment><USER4> Try helping on a more personal level, and meet people face to face.</comment></comment>


Why Science Requires Theories - <AUTHOR> http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2011/11/theory-and-why-its-time-psychology-got.html

<comment><USER2> Economics has the exact opposite issue. We have this very strong theory about optimizing homogenous agents that create a pareto efficient outcome. Any empirical fact that doesn't fit (which happen to be almost all of them) is simply thrown out. Considering this it is quite logical why the main policy recommendation for the last 30 years was deregulate everything, remove all government intervention. The hope was to be finally able to observe some facts that could actually be reasoned about with the existing theories.

</comment><comment><USER3> Education and its trying-to-be-legitimate partner Educational Psychology is even worse. It is essentially a smal set of theories based on very small sample quantitative and sketchy qualitative research. There's an added bonus of philosophical and political policy initiatives that go against accepted theory "just cause."

<comment><USER4> Yeah there's a 'hard science' crowd among educational (psychology) researchers, that only accepts quantitative, experimental, randomized studies, but even that form of research has serious flaws when applied to education. They ignore biases that can affect results (most often experimenter expectancy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect> ), and they ignore ecological validity (many findings 'from the lab' end up not working at all, being weakened or even reversed when tested in a classroom). On top of all this, they never open source their software (if any), and they don't share the data.

As one person put it, these studies, usually done with college student volunteers as participants, "include participants who have no specific interest in learning the domain involved and who are also given a very short study time" ([http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/cognitive-load- the...](http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/cognitive-load-theory- failure/))

Most research is driven by the constraints of tenure-track jobs. Theory doesn't get you tenure. Journal articles with empirical p values < .05 do, regardless of whether they are never replicated, never applied to the field, and never influence changes in practice.

Doing theory takes more time and more space (word wise) than a typical journal affords - it's more compatible with books than journal articles, and most journals don't publish theoretical articles. Books are often not counted for tenure, actually: [http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/would-dewey- piaget...](http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/would-dewey-piaget- montessori-friere-get-published-today/)

On top of all this, educational research is barely funded at all. Engineering and medical organizations usually spend 5-15 percent on research & development. In education it is more like 0.01 percent - the majority of which is spent on research, not development. [http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/the-state-of- educa...](http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/05/18/the-state-of-educational- research-development/) [http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/need-more-d- in-edu...](http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/need-more-d-in-education- r-and-d/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an interesting argument, but (coming from a physics perspective) I don't know if psychology should let Physics Envy drive it away from being about exploring phenomenology.

It seems to me like any "theory" that psychologists come up with is going to be necessarily less ironclad than what physicists come up with - more likely to be a guideline (a mnemonic, almost) for understanding how phenomena relate to one another. I sort of think their time is more profitably spent in just obtaining encyclopedic knowledge of phenomena.

This could all just be my obsession with first principles talking, though.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've observed this same issue among medical doctors. They see little coherent theory of the world, just a slew of results validated by clinical trials. Until you have a clinical trial to prove it, a fact falls squarely in the "unknown" category.

I once argued with a doctor about the possibility of cell phone and wifi radiation causing cancer. She couldn't even conceive of the argument I was making: infants are made of organic molecules at room temperature and we know from a large number of experiments how such molecules react to radiation. "But how do you know infants aren't more susceptible?"

<comment><USER7> For a long time, I thought of medical doctors as scientists. Then one day I realized they were technicians. I still have an enormous respect for them, but it did change my expectations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very good points. This is also why traditional economists (while having their own reasons to struggle with being called scientists, at least have theories) complain about behavioral economists. They say, "You point out exceptions to our theories, but what's your counter-theory?" In general the behavioralists are content to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not anybody's fault that there's no theory. It's just too hard to "uncover what's actually going on". Maybe wait 200 years when we have the tools (sensors, processing power, etc) to make sense of things.</comment>


YouTube shuts down four pro-Syrian government channels - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/youtube-deletes-syrian-state-run-channels/?europe=true#YwjRLM3_dPqQ <comment><USER2> I guess they are now exempted to ads. *badum tss..</comment>


The future is specific - <AUTHOR> http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/05/21/the-future-is-specific/ <comment><USER2> I don't mind if the future is specific. But its really wrong to say IDE's like Eclipse don't do one specific task well.

Eclipse really makes Java programming very easy. And I can tell you minus Eclipse programming in Java would be a very frustrating experience, given the verbosity, configuration mess and XML's all over the place. Eclipse these days is advanced enough to really blur the difference between and novice and a expert Java programmers. So by any measure I would say eclipse already does what light table aims to do. The only problem with eclipse is its too heavy, chews a lot of memory and becomes very heavy as things go on.

What we expect from light table is really what things like Emacs and Vim already are, plus what they miss. Which is modern GUI candy, easy configuration, availability of packages, stuff like refactoring, bench marking, auto complete and Intellisense easily available out of the box. Along with evolution with modern needs and demands.

So that is why what we really needed was an Emacs + all that I mentioned.

I think it will be nice if at some point requirements are frozen for Light table. Because things like this really slip into Second systems effect easily.

According to me Light Table must be Emacs for the Modern Generation. Anything else, and it won't be impressive. A thin editor, extensible by lisp. All lisp and other Emacs editor goodies but with all the modern demands.

We already have enough of other kind of IDE's.

<comment><USER3> _I would say eclipse already does what light table aims to do._

Can you come to a realization in the middle of an Eclipse debugging session, get a great idea for making yourself more productive, take time to script yourself a working and fully debugged extension of Eclipse and continue what you were doing 20 minutes later?

I've done precisely this in Smalltalk on many occasions. You can script something like a custom browser that shows you everything that uses function A and also function B and has a reference to class C (and with complete syntactic accuracy) in around that time.

I suspect that this kind of very small grained toolsmithing is common for really good programmers in dynamic environments. The only problem is that it's been harder than necessary to integrate that with the most commonly used coding tool. (TextMate's ability to export selections to scripts is very nice, but it can go farther than that. Emacs is very powerful for this, but not everyone wants to script in elisp.)

It's not that Light Table is going to do something unprecedented. It's more like what git did with quick access to diffs: a quantitative change can become a qualitative change. Change the cost-benefit of toolsmithing, and you can use it in new ways.

<comment><USER4> Acme supports constantly improving how you work in little ways, better than tools with plugins or extension languages, by not having many features, and providing a good interface to route text through shell pipelines.

For a simple example, Acme has no paragraph justifier, but it doesn't need one, since fmt exists. To use it, highlight a paragraph of text with the left mouse button, highlight a typed-in |fmt command with the middle mouse button, and release the middle mouse button to run the paragraph through |fmt and replace it in place.

With this I can leverage anything I can call from the command line, in any language, to be part of my editor. No need to rewrite tools in the program's specific extension language, whether Elisp or Smalltalk or Clojure.

As another example, since it's so easy to just run a shell command from Acme (highlight the command text and middle-click it), I'm constantly customizing pre-written shell commands to e.g. grep for lines in code (to the point of creating indexes on the fly for files), and then right-clicking on grep -n output to jump to a specific line in a file.

<comment><USER5> You still need to use the mouse. One of the biggest benefits of Vi(m)/Emacs over everything else out there is that you don't need to use mouse for anything. For example, to justify a paragraph in Emacs I highlight it (several quick ways to do it with keyboard) and press C-u M-q. And you can do the general "replace text by running a shell command over it" by highlighting the text, and doing C-u M-| [shell-command-here].

The feature you're describing is awesome and useful, but I wouldn't be happy to have to use mouse for it. Is there a way to invoke it from keyboard in Acme?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't quite understand what the difference is between Light Table's modes and IDEs' plugins. Domain-specific components are exactly what make IDEs 'integrated'; without them they are generalised editors. But there is absolutely no difference, as far as I can tell, between Light Table's new SQL mode and an SQL IDE plugin.

I'm personally much more fond of the Unix 'tool approach', in which there are no task-specific modes or plugins, but tools can still be composed ad hoc, as in Plan 9's Acme.

<comment><USER7> Sure, anything can be built given enough time :) The difference is that those modes can be built in a couple of hours with arbitrary UI and virtually any interactions you can think of. It's hard for me to imagine being able to build any of the things I showed in say Eclipse in any reasonable amount of time.

The idea is that Light Table will be built from the ground up to support very dynamic environmental contexts in which you can place anything.

<comment><USER8> But, instead compare that to Emacs, these are exactly the sorts of things people can and do do in emacs in reasonable amounts of time. And exactly why emacs has many great tools, from paredit-mode to SLIME.

The comparison to emacs isn't meant as a slight to LightTable either, but please, let's not forgot the past when creating the future.

<comment><USER9> I've seen a lot of cool stuff in Emacs, but I haven't seen anything nearly this nice done in any reasonable amount of time. Emacs is a predominately text-based thing. Light table is not.

With that said, wouldn't his "It's hard for me to imagine being able to build anything I showed in say Eclipse in any reasonable amount of time" comment also apply to Emacs?

<comment><USER8> Generally speaking, it ends up much less graphical, which is the major failing of Emacs in comparison to Lights Table, but if the functionality is what you are looking for, instead of the pretties then Emacs has similar development time. I'm not saying there is no value in Lights Table, but we should just be clear on exactly what the advantages are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> With all of the demos and information posted I still have trouble visualizing this working for real-world applications. A specific example: in the Python/Flask demo, functions were added to the current view as it was called. How would this work in a more complex case with calls to many functions, each which call many more functions (and so on), each belonging to different objects, etc.? The view would quickly become a huge list of functions and code blocks, most of which you probably don't need to see at any given time, and at this point it's no more useful than plain old user-curated tabs.

That's just one example. The same conceptual problems pop up for stuff like on-the-fly code execution (what if your code depends on user input or many SQL queries or files that may or may not exist at that point), benchmark mode (benchmarking a complex app is obviously a lot more complicated than just running two code blocks side by side), etc.

I know this is just a demo and it's all very early in the process, and I'm not saying that this should be a solved problem yet, but I just can't picture in my head a way that this could ever be a solved problem as long as LightTable remains somewhat similar to its current state.

<comment><USER7> Right now it goes at most one level deep into the call tree to prevent what you're talking about. The thinking I've had so far is that you then have a few options. You could go to one of the specific functions and say I want to see everything, you could go to a specific token and bring up its definition, or you could "focus" it to switch the starting point to that function. I think any of those could work, but I haven't tested them yet :)

To your second point the normal caveats of a replish environment will apply to any code execution stuff :) And the benchmarking mode was a simple example for working against functions once you already know they're the bottleneck. In a real application you probably need help getting there.

I agree and I think a big part of the job ahead is to understand how we can ensure these sorts of experiences mesh and flow together when working on something larger. Fortunately, Light Table itself provides a great project to prove that on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As promised, this is the second demo complete with python!

For those who can't use vimeo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osLReQSB9F0>

<comment><USER11> It is so sad that Vimeo is blocked by many Indian ISPs for silly reasons. The whole Internet feels crippled. There must have been at least a dozen videos I wanted to watch today that were recklessly censored. Thanks for the youtube link. I think we need a Redundant Array of Cloud Videos.

<comment><USER12> off topic, but dont feel bad, vimeo and youtube are both blocked at DHS.

<comment><USER13> Do you mean the Department of Homeland Security?

<comment><USER12> Yes. HQ specifically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A 'macro system for tools'. Isn't this what the academic bozos call Language Workbenches?

Extensible tool-building platforms for DSLs are hardly anything new. Reading things like this, i sometimes worry that the HN-circling web crowd is reinventing things that others invented just a few years ago. Like some sort of collective not-invented-here syndrome.

E.g. Check out MetaEdit+ - their website isn't Silicon Valley Sexy, but the tool is amazing. And has been, for the past 10+ years. <http://www.metacase.com/mep/>

Now, there's plenty new and well-rehashed ideas in Light Table. I'll be buying a license, probably. But the insight in this article isn't very new at all.

<comment><USER15> > Reading things like this, i sometimes worry that > the HN-circling web crowd > is reinventing things > that others invented just a few years ago.

The difference in this case is that the HN web crowd are targeting their fellow programmers, and not the "Enterprise" crowd.

I've been following the DSL tooling scene, and it's horrible. Think closed source, expensive and targeted at the Enterprise (or specific engineering disciplines).

The community is full of MDA (model-driven-architecture) types: too often is the focus on increasing complexity (for ego boosting / job security) instead of simplicity and accessibility.

The HN crowd are pretty much the polar opposite: the focus is on simplicity and scale. Sharing knowledge, instead of locking it up for fun and "profit".

That's why I like it here :)

<comment><USER16> > The community is full of MDA (model-driven-architecture) types: too often is > the focus on increasing complexity (for ego boosting / job security) instead > of simplicity and accessibility. > .. instead of locking it up for fun and > "profit".

still, if you ignore the MDA and executable uml silliness, there's quite a few ideas that can be picked from that closed space, imo.

<comment><USER17> > still, if you ignore the MDA and executable uml silliness, there's quite a > few ideas that can be picked from that closed space, imo.

Thats what Light Table does, isn't it? If not it will at least allow you to implement these ideas in a simple way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The flask example is the really pertinent one to me. Those were all the views that you need when working on a web app and it would be awesome to have them all come up automatically like that. It's possible to make emacs show you all those views by manually opening up frames and finding the right code, and emacs can even render html (but really, use your browser of choice for that). I'm sure it would be possible to write the elisp to have it do it all almost as automagically and smoothly as light-table (but not with rounded corners). The problem is, if I'm a python expert writing python web-apps, breaking out elisp to script up an environment like this is just too daunting. Instead I usually just keep checking back at the emacs wiki to see if anyone else has done it for me... (should I admit that?)

Is Light Table going to solve that problem? Unfortunately this blog post and the videos don't demonstrate _how_ you create these modes. Do you have to become a clojure, clojurescript, html5, css expert?

<comment><USER19> I spent this morning fiddling with elisp to get emacs to do something I wanted. On the one hand, it's incredibly annoying, considering that I don't know anything about elisp. On the other hand, I figured out what I needed, and now it's a little easier.

On the gripping hand, there's zero chance that I'll be trying to replicate that functionality in emacs. Even with the wiki, and it's random ~/Desktop/elisp_notes.ver2.txt feel, isn't that helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> >> The future of tools isn't in a better Eclipse or Visual Studio, it's in easily created domain specific experiences.

How is that goal different from that of the Eclipse platform (<http://www.eclipse.org/platform/overview.php>) - a common base where people can develop individual add-ons to suit the domain they're working on? Eclipse platform and LT clearly have different interaction models and technologies, but from the leading quote of the article, the same goal.

Writing Java in Eclipse is, as many have said, a great experience (in the continuum of Java-development experience). But you know what else is pretty good? PyDev (<http://pydev.org/>) - a Python IDE that's written on the Eclipse platform. It uses the same interaction models and designs as Eclipse for Java, but it's also got a whole bunch of bits that are just targeted at Python development. There's also a tool (the name of which I don't recall) that our DBA uses for all his database management that's written on the Eclipse platform.

I'm all for specific - I use PyCharm every day, which does one thing (Python development) really well. But I think calling out Eclipse like the parent article does is wrong. It too can be a platform for "easily created domain specific experiences"; it's just a different one with a different paradigm.

<comment><USER21> > But you know what else is pretty good? PyDev

It's not. It's really not. I've heard good things about PyCharm, but the best environment for Python that I have seen so far is Emacs. And Light Table definitely looks like an improvement on that. My only concern with this is the speed. I want this to have the same response time as Emacs or Vim. Then there would be no reason not to use it.

<comment><USER20> I specifically chose the description "pretty good" (as opposed to "great" or something more flowery) for PyDev, because I think that best summarizes it. It's got a number of issues with it (and it's sometimes as slow as a dog), but for the hobby developer it's more than enough.

Once I started working in Python and spending 30-something hours/week in the environment, its flaws started to overcome its benefits (namely: it was free, and I knew how to use it), and it was time to move to PyCharm...which is also slow, unless you throw a few gigs of RAM at it and at which point it becomes amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What I would like is a way to do more graphical programming, like this: [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reaktor&ion=1&...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reaktor&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=909&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=djS8T6e3HYfZiQKF0cTqDQ) or this: [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reaktor&ion=1&...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=reaktor&ion=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1280&bih=909&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=djS8T6e3HYfZiQKF0cTqDQ#um=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=synthmaker&oq=synthmaker&aq=f&aqi=g1g-S9&aql=&gs_l=img.3..0j0i24l9.110954.112114.0.112243.10.8.0.220.127.116.11.671.7j1.8.0...0.0.xXcDTgxvp38&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=a40ca22810824758&biw=1280&bih=909) (which latter includes both C-like and assembly code modules, as well as extensive GUI manipulation capabilities).

When I was learning to code, and still sometimes, what annoys me about typing is that I don't know what I don't know. With graphical programming, having predefined modules with discoverable inputs and outputs encourages me to try connecting things together on a what-if basis to a much greater degree than a textual environment. This is what I find very attractive about the way Light Table is going; a lot of the time I want to build things but not necessarily to write code.

</comment><comment><USER23> The first time I heard about Light Table I was rather critical but this begins to look like something that could really replace vim for me. This is rather surprising given my general distaste of IDEs.

<comment><USER24> Same here.

As much as I like vim - it remains software from the stone age and it seems absurd that our main work interface (editor and shell) still consists of an emulated 1980s text-mode terminal.

LightTable looks like a major step in the right direction. I think the best indicator for success will be when the vim/emacs-diehards start porting their respective shortcuts and functionality over.

I could very well see this fundamental approach (modular/dynamically expanding interface) become the new paradigm for editors and (hopefully) terminals if the author manages to make the prototype versatile and hacker-friendly enough.

We've really been entrapped inside ancient TTY-emulations and inadequate GUI- widget sets for way too long.

<comment> DanI-S The thing that draws me to Vim, really, is the extensibility. There's a steep learning curve to creating a powerful Vim extension, but there are still a huge number of them. Imagine if Light Table can make editor extension something you can do _per project_!

I probably have a unique preferred layout of Vim splits and tabs that I use for each codebase I work with. Being able to take this further, telling the editor which parts of code are significant and in which ways they go together, I'd have so much less mental overhead.

I love the idea that I could navigate our current codebase by endpoint, jumping to the account management portion of our API, automatically having the relevant back-end code and unit tests on-screen, along with benchmark info and test results. Since we adhere to general conventions at least within a project, there's no reason this can't be done.

<comment><USER25> vims extensibility is a commonly cited positive, but I totally do not understand it, since pretty much every editor imaginable is extensible in similar fashion, and pretty much all of the use better languages then vim.

By contrast, emacs is basically an application platform that ships with an editor implementation, and eclipse is a platform for building editors.

It's not that vim isn't extensible, it is, just not as much as other alternatives, and nowhere near as easily as most of its competition.

IMO the real advantage of vim is that it is a highly efficient and productive tool that works great without any customization, and is available everywhere without installation. Which is pretty much the opposite of the above opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Boy am I happy I pledged for Light Table. And the benchmark mode looks so freaking great. I'm getting excited just thinking about it. I don't think I'll be able to wait until the early beta. ARGHH!

</comment><comment><USER27> It's a pretty impressive demo. It looks like it could be the mother of all scratchpads. It looks like it might have a bit of a scary learning curve though.

I can certainly think of a lot of ideas of what I might try to implement with such an approach. Really any existing code inspection/analysis approach.

I'm thinking some sort of view onto Powershell providers could be interesting.

Maybe exception lookups in the code as your browse through an error log.

Definitely a regex tester utility: does your string match the regex? Do parts of it match part of the regex? What's an example string that would match? Can we display all of this dynamically in real time?

</comment><comment><USER28> Eclipse with <http://xtext.org> is an outstanding platform for domain-specific languages and domain-specific tools. I don't know any tool which comes even close.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd rather see Light Table features integrated into Eclipse, as creating something as fully featured as Eclipse is...

 _...going to end up being Eclipse._

So either a massive wheel is being reinvented, or Light Table will be absent of all standard IDE features and consist of the flashy neato Code Bubbles stuff and not much more.

That said, I say develop the hell out of the Light Table concept for all the "new age" (circa 196X) dynamic coder people since their IDEs tend to suck, and _let's hope it becomes a standard_ and we can implement it all in everything else. :)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm specifically excited about Light Table (and the second half of this video where he dives into Python/Flask), because as a front-end guy, I generally spend most of my time in views/templates. I occasionally have to dive into models however, and it seems to me Light Table would help me navigate something I consider a bit of a wild west much more efficiently, resulting in learning much faster.

Basically, I'm excited about Light Table because I think it will help me become a better programmer.

</comment><comment><USER31> The key line for me here is that the future is in 'easily created domain specific experiences'. I think this is very eloquently stated and can't agree more.

I like what Light table is trying to do, hoewver it is still working in pretty much the same 'domain' space as existing IDE's ('code'), and trying to improve on the 'easily created... experiences' part.

As the post is waxing lyrical, my piece to add to the broad-concept discussion is that I'd really like to see more programs which try to be applicable to a broad variety of non-coding domains, which actually occupy the majority of the work that people do on computers (working with images, working with spreadsheets, working with documents and pages, working with 3d spaces, animation, realtime information, etc.), allowing the easy creation of 'domain specific experiences' in these, which is generally impossible or very difficult in most of todays pre-compiled software for these tasks.

[I hope that all makes sense to someone :) Would also appreciate any discussion as something along these lines is a side-project of mine atm]

<comment><USER7> We showed examples that relate very cleanly to "normal coding", but what we ultimately want to see is exactly what you're describing. There are so many places where a thin veil over the implementation would be immensely useful, presenting new interfaces for things like working with physics simulations, financial models, etc etc.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the response. I realise you probably have huge priorities finding your way to MVP right now, however I hope to see more of this side in the future. I just saw your 'live game editor' video, which is probably closer to what I am thinking of - using the visual element (in that case the game window) to feed back into the live code [this hasn't really been in the lighttable videos - which led me to my assumption lighttable was 'code' based in my prev post]. I really think that the future is in there somewhere.

Best of luck to you by the way :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you come up with some new code in a "scratchpad" area and want to save it, where will it go? In a new file? Appended to the end of an existing file?

Similarly, if you edit one of the "supporting" functions that appear and want to save those changes, will they be saved in-place (e.g. line 217-241) in whichever file that function is from?

</comment><comment><USER33> Being specific is not a feature, this is what you do when you have no other way to solve a problem. The ambitious challenge raised by Light Table was to generalize Bret Victor's ideas to general programming, if they are unable to do this, I'll stick to my IDE.

<comment><USER34> In case anyone is wondering:

"Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle" (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII>)

<comment><USER35> Thank you for the link.

Make tools to be extensions of our bodies via immediate feedback is a useful idea (it is not the main point of talk, but it stands out to me).

As a side note: It might be even be literally true for physical tools i.e., a brain can physically change to see the tool as an extension of the hand (from a study about ape, its brain, and a stick).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Looks more promising every time! While I like the idea to not work on your stuff as files, I have a question in that regard:

Do you have specific plans on how to incorporate version control when not primarily relying on files?

<comment><USER7> It's still serializing to files - it has to, our workflows are entirely dependent on them :)

<comment><USER37> Are you developing Light Table using Light Table? If not, is that a future aim?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Recently I was thinking maybe software industry is too much obsessive about tool making. I wouldn't mind spending much more time and effort using a bad IDE re-factoring bad code that works good and cures cancer. I don't really care how awesome the static analysis tool I am using, or how awesome the meta- meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta programming language I am using if I work on pointless product. Maybe I am wrong and those tools are the only way for real breakthroughs in bioinformatics.

what do you think?

<comment><USER17> This 'problem' is old. Even the Hackers in the 60s didn't often do anything 'real'. The made tools to make it easier to make other tools, and so on. The think is that WHEN you want to develop something real you want to have these tools ready to go.

With your aditued there will not be that much progress, since everybody would have just said 'mmhh lets not develop a good compiler for C lets write assembler'. In my opinion as long as people develop better tools (languages, IDEs, compilers, debuggers) there is need for them. If one guy spends a couple of month on a Tool, how long will it take until the time saved is 'recoverd' by the users of that tool? Making tools yileds economic benefit, just like in the real word a maschine that does something better or faster will result in economic benefit.

That is not do say there is never mal-investment. Somebody might spend a long time developing something and nobody will use it, programming related or not. This however is not an argument for no innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I love it, especially the grouping of files: route + models + templates, in 1 view is something I see a use for. Does anyone know of an editor which can do something similar?

<comment><USER40> Plenty of editors offer split view editing. You'll need to actually open the route, model and template files, but it's easy enough to have them all open at the same time. The real challenge here is how they'll handle larger files (real-world production code rarely is that small and clean, you almost always have complex logic and a number of database calls).

<comment><USER39> isn't it the idea to forget about files, so I can see the models & and views I'm interested in in for a particular workflow. Regardles of where & which file they're located in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> More of a meta comment on the future being specific and how it is all about creating more domain-specific tools vs generalized tools... I think that's really a common property in any complex, highly powerful system. Think about the brain, the economy, DNA, a corporation even... etc. Domain specificity is the past and the present, too!

</comment><comment><USER42> As a non-developer. I would love this for php & wordpress.

Here me out: the people who aren't in IDE's all day could benefit the most from this. They don't know where the functions are or even how to find them sometimes. I resort to google 9/10 when looking for how some functions.

This has huge applications for helping non-programmers become programmers.

</comment><comment><USER21> As an Indian who cannot access Vimeo, this is what I see. <http://i.imgur.com/ojTVQ.png> May I ask for a link to the video on another service?

<comment><USER7> look at my comment below.

<comment><USER21> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I like this concept. Once Light Table is becoming available I will definitely try to make a Flow-Based Programming mode for <http://noflojs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER44> This somehow reminds me of Microsoft's "strategy", or whatever you want to call it (VisualStudio LightSwitch, SharePoint Designer)?

</comment><comment><USER45> I was just on Subtle Patterns this morning, and I now recognize where Chris grabbed the two background aluminum images!

</comment><comment><USER46> LOVE the web example! Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER47> Light Table looks amazing. Simply amazing.

</comment><comment><USER48> So the future is the Unix philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is amazing! I can't wait to use it.

</comment><comment><USER50> March of the specific.

Google didn't win by being the best general-purpose search, where people go to look for anything on the Internet. It won by being the best for searching _only_ um, okay not the best example.

Facebook didn't just raise 14billion at a valuation of 100billion by being the best general-purpose social network, where just anyone would have a profile. It won by being the best network for, uh.. Okay, not the best example.

Well, take a revolutionary new product like the iPad. It doesn't have hundreds or thousands of apps to do uh, hold on. I'm sure that somewhere there's the ONE thing that it does. Uh, it's a screen?

Look, step back. There's only one thing you can do in Photoshop. I mean there's just one thing to use Ubuntu for. Sorry, I meant that when you say the word 'Harvard' everyone knows what the ONE thing that they teach is!

Okay, look, these might not be the BEST examples in the world. Take a pair of jeans. There is ONE time and ONE place to, uh.

Fuck. I'm done. If the future is anything like the present, nobody even knows what the fuck business Amazon is in anymore.

[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AMZN+Interactive#symbol=a...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AMZN+Interactive#symbol=amzn;range=5y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined);

The future is the very opposite of the word "specific".

<comment><USER51> All of your examples are _gestalts_. They're not single seamless abstractions, they're patchworks that are more than the sum of their parts.

That's precisely what is being proposed here: a platform for creating a development environment that is more than the sum of its parts. Something that gives you composable pieces that can be fit together into something that maps directly onto your problem space.

Is this really so unclear? I can't picture the hypothetical product that you're arguing against.

<comment><USER50> Well, I looked at the "gestalt" Wikipedia article. As near as I can make out, you're saying that Google in fact highly tailors its search-for-geneticists, which has nothing to do with its search-for-bakers: it seems like a single whole, but isn't. But that patently isn't so. Patently, every niche runs off the same algorithms. Equally, bankers' circle of friends use the same facebook that teenagers' circle of friends use: it isn't multitudinous facebooks that seem to be one but are really quite different. Likewise jeans in jeans-and-a- blazer are obviously the same jeans as jeans in jeans-and-a-tshirt. iPad apps are built with the very same SDK and frequently have very similar UI/UX. There is literally nothing domain-specific about objective c. I will grant you that Amazon's cloud stuff is very different from its merchandizing operations, but beyond that I don't see where the big difference between shipping books and shipping dry cereal is, which is two businesses that Amazon is now in. In fact, if anything, Amazon's cloud services are the OPPOSITE of domain- specific: Reddit, which includes ZERO filesharing, is on it, and so is Dropbox, which is basically ONLY filesharing. If you look at what Amazon is actually exposing with AWS, you will see it is as generic and non-domain- specific as theoretically possible. Heck, they've even abstracted away the individual server! (So the last bastion of something that might separate a database-heavy user site from a disk-heavy backup site disappears). I would say that their whole movement is towards being non-specific.

You probably understand what you're saying better than I do, so please do explain. Because from where I'm standing, it seems the whole march of the Internet is in busting domain-specific-languages and approaches. Every time a cute hack with CSS hits the front page, it's proof that CSS derives its power precisely from _not_ being a domain specific language. Off-hand, can you name a single domain-specific language or approach that has really 'won'?

You may know more about this than I do, so it is certainly a genuine question.

<comment><USER52> You're saying that CSS _isn't_ domain-specific?

<comment><USER50> The more and more you can do with it, _clearly_ it's becoming less and less domain-specific.

<http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/amazing.html>

or just google for hackernews posts like entirely in css, pure css, all in css, etc. Hell from a quick glance it seems that if you google for 'in css' half the posts on hackernews are like that...

<http://y.ww.com/item?id=2636440>

It's not hard to see where this is going...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> RUUUUUUBBBBYYYYY SUUUUPPPOOOORRRTTTTT!

<comment><USER54> Hopefully with the speed he added Python, ruby / rails support is only weeks away too. :)</comment></comment>


Chess Panopticon - <AUTHOR> https://lichess.org/games <comment><USER2> I searched in vain for a similar libre platform for Go. It's too bad. The 19 by 19 board is not suited for mobile screens.</comment>


Closed My Startup 2 Weeks Ago ($$ probs) but Everybody Is Still Working. Harder. - <AUTHOR> http://sgtsaysdrink.tumblr.com/post/26855121904/i-closed-my-startup-2-weeks-ago-because-we-ran-out-of

<comment><USER2> What startup was it? I couldn't find the URL in the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my profile actually, wanna keep that a bit low key</comment></comment>


Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/3314456/Surfer-dude-stuns-physicists-with-theory-of-everything.html <comment><USER2> I don't want to flag this, per se, but readers should be aware that this particular article is rather old. The theory has been picked up, criticized, defended, and a subsequent paper published.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory_of_Everything)

[http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/garrett_li...](http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/garrett_lisis_new_e8_paper)</comment>


A Book on a Hook - Usable Conference Badge  - <AUTHOR> http://www.graphpaper.com/2010/06-11_a-book-on-a-hook

<comment><USER2> One neat idea they had at Google I/O that I had never seen before was that they offered you the option to embed a vCard with your contact info as a QR code on your badge.

I've had people give me their business cards at conferences, and the cards just sit in the bottom of my bag. If I scanned someone's badge and immediately added them to my contact list that'd certainly lower the barrier to getting in touch with them later.

That having been said, I opted out of this as Google did not let you choose _what_ contact info to have encoded on the badge. You had the choice of encoding all of the info you gave in your registration (which in my case, included my home address!) or nothing but your name. So if you're going to go this route, make sure you give people control over what they're willing to share.

<comment><USER3> They do that with business cards in Japan (and cellphones that can scan them). Not sure why it hasn't caught on yet here in the US. My roommate has the same problem - stacks of business cards, but no easy way to digitize the info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The HOPE AMD badge (<http://amd.hope.net/>) is nice as well. It'll track your position through the conference.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why are last names and company names always printed so microscopic? Most of the time I actually care more what company someone is with than what their first name is.

<comment><USER6> I don't want sleazy salespeople to act all friendly just because you are hoping to sell something to my company.

I DO want industry acquaintances to be able to pretend they remember my first name when we bump into each other.</comment></comment>


JavaScript Projects for Complete Beginners with Coupon - <AUTHOR> https://www.udemy.com/javascript-projects-for-complete-beginners/?couponCode=ELOHIM-PROJECT <comment><AUTHOR> In this Javascript project's course specifically, design for those of you that have completed a javascript book or course yet you can't build a project from scratch and STRICTLY for Absolutely beginners / Intermediate. No, what is javascript or variables, we start coding straight up.

#### WHAT'S INCLUDED? ####

CRUD: Deploying a Mini Blog that enables you to understand what it takes to Create, Read, Update and Delete.

DOM Manipulation: Selectors, traversing the DOM, removing elements, event listeners

OOP: ES5 prototypes, inheritance, ES2015 classes & sub-classes, constructors

Async JS: Fetch API, callbacks, promises, async / await

ES2015+: Arrow functions, template strings.

4 Projects

#### PROJECTS ####

Airport Finder

WeatherJs App

Movify Web Application

Mini Blog

COUPONS == ELOHIM-PROJECT</comment>


Is Your Financial Adviser Making Money Off Your Bad Investments? - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/opinion/is-your-financial-adviser-making-money-off-your-bad-investments.html?referer= <comment><USER3> Never, ever, ever go to a financial adviser paid on commissions. I mean never.

I work at an insurance company. There are products that we sell all the time to commission-based advisers that we almost never sell to fee-based advisers. Why? Because those products aren't right for the customer, but with 5%+ commissions they sell like hotcakes.

<comment><USER4> Never go to an insurance salesman for financial advice. Go to an insurance company (salesman) to buy insurance.

<comment><USER5> In general, never go to any salesman for advice related in any way to the thing they're selling. They're being paid for securing the best deal for their employers, which usually is _not_ the best deal for you.

Yes, there is such thing as reputation, but it doesn't come into play unless you play on the same power level as them. That is, if you are a wealthy person with connections then by all means, find a reputable financial adviser, they'll happily work in your interest. Such clients are scarce, after all, so they need to care. But if you're a Joe or Jane Random, salesmen have little incentive to offer you a good deal - they have hundreds or thousands people just like you every month, and none of you can do any damage to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fees should be calculated relative to returns, not assets. From the great Charles D. Ellis, CFA:

"When stated as a percentage of assets, average fees do look low — a little over 1% of assets for individuals and a little less than one-half of 1% for institutional investors. But the investors already own those assets, so investment management fees should really be based on what investors are getting in the returns that managers produce. Calculated correctly, as a percentage of returns, fees no longer look low. Do the math. If returns average, say, 8% a year, then those same fees are not 1% or one-half of 1%. They are much higher — typically over 12% for individuals and 6% for institutions...

Thus (correctly) stated, management fees for active management are remarkably high. Incremental fees are somewhere between 50% of incremental returns and, because a majority of active managers fall short of their chosen benchmarks, infinity."

[https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2012/06/28/investmen...](https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2012/06/28/investment- management-fees-are-much-higher-than-you-think/)

<comment><USER7> Fees on returns instead of assets is also a bad idea. The investment manager doesn't have a downside when he loses the customer's money, but makes money when the returns are good. We've seen time and time again (on wall street especially) that incentives like these result in utterly reckless behavior.

<comment><USER8> Not necessarily a common thing in practice but:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdle_rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdle_rate)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All of the studies show that you are statistically better off going in an indexed fund, v. a managed account with a financial advisor. The answer to the titular question is "duh." Even without the conflict of interest.

<comment><USER10> The irony is if everyone went to an index fund and no one went it alone or with the help of a financial advisor, the markets will be compromised - <USER2> would be no rational actor giving their input into pricing of securities and all investment would be based on sentiment alone.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand, index follows basically the whole market by a representation of it like SP500 or Dow 100, how investing in whole market compromises it or it's based on sentiment versus investing in stock of particular companies?

<comment><USER12> Index investing is passive investing.

We need investors who actively invest, by evaluating the companies, so that more money goes to good companies and less money goes to bad companies. The index represents the current batch of the top 500 good companies in recent times as decided by the active investors. The index is re-balanced as the preferences of the active investors change.

So, if there were no active investing, then investing would be completely pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone explain the advantage of having a financial advisor? I was under the impression that mutual funds offer the best returns for low risk investments

<comment><USER14> I'm probably not the best person to get into the details, but I'm a developer at a financial company so I can probably explain a little bit.

Comparing financial advisors to mutual funds is comparing apples to oranges. Many times, advisors will advise you to invest in mutual funds as a part of your overall portfolio strategy.

So you have to think about having a financial advisor versus not having a financial advisor. In my company, the advantage I have mostly seen has been high net worth clients looking for tax advantage investing strategy and protecting their wealth. There are probably other advantages that I don't see on a daily basis.

The cost is typically a large disadvantage. Advisors typically take a small percent on your investments even if you lost money. 1% of a hundred million dollars is a million dollars. Is the utility provided by a financial advisor worth a million dollars?

In a similar vein, you can also think of the advantages/disadvantages of mutual funds versus single stocks. The same goes for the advantages/disadvantages of actively managed mutual funds versus passively managed mutual funds.

<comment><USER15> This.

I had an exit a few years back for a sizable, but not retirement-worthy, amount of money. My friend who was one the founders did make retirement level money and went the full financial planner route with a large investment firm.

I had begun to do a lot of research for where and how to invest, but before meeting with "his guy" I doubled down and consumed everything I could find. I ended up deciding that if I went my own route I would just go with Wealthfront for the simplicity of their strategy and the extras like tax-loss harvesting and immediate and near-real time account re-balancing.

I eventually did meet with the financial planner and his staff did their best to make me feel "special". The waiting room was modern and wood paneled, I was offered drinks and snacks, and when he brought me back to the war room he had another member of his team there and reassured me that I'd have their full resources at my command. This triggered immense skepticism off the bat, since a few simple calculations with their fee structure revealed that I was essentially a chump to them compared to my friend. We talked for a while and he led me through various investment options and I later left with a few personalized investment strategies in a nice leather-bound folio.

It took all of about five minutes of study to determine the proposals were a waste of time and an even larger waste of money. For a 1.5% management fee they would invest in high cost mutual funds -- the kind that even do kickbacks to the advisers, and provide me with a once a year re-balance of my accounts with no opportunity for tax-loss harvesting. I told him all this and that I was just going with Wealthfront instead and in a subtle but patronizing manner he told me I did not understand his value proposition.

Unless you are high net-worth I have a hard time understanding why you would ever go the planner route as opposed to just keeping a safety net and dumping the rest into a service like Wealthfront.

<comment><USER16> FYI, if you don't mind spending an hour every quarter rebalacing you can save the Wealthfront fee by using TDAs commission free ETFs. Last time I checked they had almost all of the same ones Wealthfront uses.

Maybe the fee is worth it to you to never have to think about it, but since you mentioned the 1.5% management fee, I thought maybe you might not want a fee at all :)

<comment><USER15> More effort than I a willing to spend ;)

Tax loss harvesting has been significant for me over the last few years as well and that is not something I would want to deal with myself even if I just simulated Wealthfront's trades. It's also made harder once you start using their index tracking individual stock trade functionality -- they do the harvesting on a per stock level for that one.

<comment><USER16> Fair enough. I do this sort of thing as a side hobby so managing it myself is 'fun'. Wealthfront/Betterment seem like fine zero effort choices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _I think the model is: You can (A) get financial advice that is paid for through nontransparent kickbacks that are paid out of overpriced mutual fund fees, or (B) get financial advice that is transparently paid for by you. When I put it like that, you, the sophisticated reader, would probably choose option B. (Or you 'd self-advise and buy index funds, like I do, though I certainly do not recommend that you take financial advice from me.) But it does seem possible that transparent fees would turn some people off to retirement advice -- and, perhaps, to retirement saving -- entirely, since people are more likely to consume free ("free") products than expensive ones. It's also possible that saving an adequate amount in an overpriced underperforming mutual fund is a better outcome than saving an inadequate amount, or nothing, in a low-priced index fund. Both of these are distinctly sub-optimal, of course, and I tend to sympathize with the idea that retirement brokers should be fiduciaries, but I don't think it's quite as easy as Batchelder and Bernstein make it out to be._

(From [http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-30/spinoffs- ki...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-30/spinoffs-kickbacks- and-arbitrage))

</comment><comment><USER18> Coming from an investment background and comparing to what I see offered to retail, it seems you could just be your own investment manager by picking up any college finance text. This would tell you the orthodoxy on just about everything you need to know, and doesn't cost much.

This is especially true if you don't have much money or can't write your own automated trading strategies.

The real reason to get an investment manager is access to interesting investments, for instance private debt which is the sort of thing you need some connections for. You'd only be thinking about this at rather large amounts of assets.

</comment><comment><USER19> Full article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/opinion/is-your- financial-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/opinion/is-your-financial- adviser-making-money-off-your-bad-investments.html)

99.9% have no basic knowledge of Technical Analysis (TA) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis) thereby not applying it in basic investment decisions they advise on. TA is valuable even though it tends to break down in very bad markets.

<comment><USER20> Technical analysis is the financial markets' equivalent of astrology. It is especially bad, if you are considering investment horizon of over a day.

<comment><USER19> Let me correct you.

Indicators based on statistical analysis can't be argued with in terms of their value in providing additional insight into the present condition of a stock or index. Think in terms of moving averages, a common application in TA. [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MovingAverage.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MovingAverage.html)

(BTW: Wolfram and mathematica do not deal in astrology)

For example, indicators involved with technical analysis include, lagging indicators or those that show overbought or oversold conditions for stocks or entire indicies such as the Moving Average Convergence/Divergence ratios or MACDs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACD)

If you are a financial advisor, you should be using these to make sure that when you advise on taking a postion in a stock for example, the stock has not spiked up 10% on the previous day. If the stock did spike the previous day or week and as a financial advisor, if you advised your client to take a position in that stock, you'd effectively be placing them in a position of risk as the stock is likely to retrace. TA indicators are very practical in this case. This is just one of many examples.

You're getting your robust methods of statistical analysis confused with astrology.

<comment><USER21> Statistician here with experience in the financial world: you're wrong. Don't confuse the existence of Wikipedia pages and books written by people wanting to make money with actual science.

Moving averages have a function in statistics. But there is no evidence that they can be used to time the markets. If they could, it would be done algorithmically by hedge funds, closing the possibility.

Please show actual analysis of market data (i.e. recent published scientific papers) supporting your positions. Without those, it's quackery.

<comment><USER18> I've been working in hedge funds for over a decade, and it's interesting what the variety of opinions is. There's a great deal of secrecy, and good reasons for it, so getting to know how other quants do things has been quite informative.

On the one hand, your arbitrage argument makes sense. If there existed a simple strategy that made money, it would be traded out of existence.

On the other hand, I happen to know how the major quantitative funds allocate their money. It is a simple formula, with a number of small twists. (Yes, people will not believe you if you claim this. Rightly so.)

Now, how can these facts coexist? The answer is that the formula "sort of works". There are long periods where it doesn't work, and periods where the returns are phenomenal. If someone were to start a new fund, they would have a number of issues:

\- It is just not quite believable that such a simple formula is profitable. What are those hordes of phds actually doing? (Squeezing a lemon actually). Surely someone else would have found it?

\- Institutional investors have all sorts of issues with investing. It's done by committee. They need you to have a long track record. They want all the right boxes checked.

\- What happens if you launch and you start with a fallow period?

\- Even if a simple formula works, why does it work? Are you happy to trade something that you don't really understand?

<comment><USER19> I've been on the hedge fund algo side for years. You're spot on and it's what a lot of these guys on this thread are clueless about.

Basic or simple approaches can be combined with others and be statistically/mathematically sound and robust.

Some work for periods of time, some don't, some stop working. Algorithms degrade over time and that's continued optimization is a must.

Case and point: LTCM and the story behind black scholes algo running up against a black swan.

I'd highly recommend watching this for the others reading this thread that really just are familiar with the whole space:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvxZgnwwD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvxZgnwwD4)

<comment><USER20> > black scholes algo

Black Scholes isn't an "algo". Sweet mother of god...

<comment><USER19> No need in explaining the difference between an algorithm that wraps around an equation or to call an equation a "model" or to call a model a "formula". Take your pick but focus on the meat of the discussion if possible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever visited example.com? - <AUTHOR> Sorry if this seems a bit pointless, but for the first time just now I visited https://example.com/
Expected to find the typical "spammy" parked domain page, but instead learned this: http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved
Had no clue about reserved domain names before today! You? <comment><USER2> Also note that example.com has no MX records [1]:

        When an address such as firstname.lastname@example.com is used to demonstrate
        the sign-up process on a website, it directs the user to enter an
        actual email address at which they receive mail. Example.com is used
        in a generic and vendor-neutral manner.

The list of reserved TLDs is quite short actually [2] but thanks to this page I understood that ".dev" is a bad TLD that people enjoy(ed?) using for their test/local websites [3]. I have been using ".test" for all my offline projects for a couple of years now, and ".local" was specifically very helpful when I had to build a fake DNS server for a DNS manager that I was maintaining.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top- level_domain#Reserved_doma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top- level_domain#Reserved_domains)

[3] [https://iyware.com/dont-use-dev-for- development/](https://iyware.com/dont-use-dev-for-development/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I always use the example.net/example.com domains for my documentation. It drives me crazy when I see a tutorial using something they just made up like "myfakewebsite.com". Almost always, these lead to an actually registered domain like what OP was expecting to encounter.

</comment><comment><USER4> I use it as a non-HTTPS site that I can use to log in to Starbucks Wifi.

<comment><USER5> I use warriorforum.com for that

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some domains are not to be sold, to avoid domain squatting and the kind of spammy websites you were expecting.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, I use it as an example URL for tutorials or for testing out any HTTP- request-making code.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sure. Example.com is an Internet standard. See [http://www.rfc- editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt](http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, it is used a fair amount by web developers. Often I notice more junior developers making up their own things, but that leads to situations where your debug/private messages can be sent to a real person. I'll see things like firstname.lastname@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com, which is bad.

I believe the owner of null.com gets tons of emails from buggy OnStar notices to mom+pop websites.

</comment><comment><USER10> Special Use for now, but this could change at the whim of standards bodies, and could become an ordinary domain. It certainly would be interesting to own such a domain and see what kind of emails you'd be getting.</comment>


Show HN: Stream your pen/paper, explain remote students super effectively - <AUTHOR> https://show.veda.ai/?hn=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, Lot of educators are now teaching remotely but the most favourite tool of a teacher, whiteboard/blackboard is missing from their teaching arsenal

To project their physics experiments, chemistry labs, even good old pen & paper live

We built a p2p way to stream any smartphone camera to a browser while they are streaming their screeen live to students on zoom, google meet etc

Please do checkout and leave your valuble feedback. [https://show.veda.ai/](https://show.veda.ai/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, just to clarify: your servers are only used for the handshake here and the video is kept completely local right?

PS: [https://show.veda.ai/demo.jpg](https://show.veda.ai/demo.jpg) I hate how accurate this picture reflects parts of my improvised setup. :)

<comment><USER3> Yes, our servers are only for signalling.

> PS: [https://show.veda.ai/demo.jpg](https://show.veda.ai/demo.jpg) I hate > how accurate this picture reflects parts of my improvised setup. :)

Nice, we wanted to show the bare minimum required to use the tool.

<comment><USER4> This worked fine when I first used it, but now it asks for audio/microphone permissions even though in my father's use case he is just using the video aspect and then using Zoom for the audio/video with his students.

Can you push a fix to not require all three permissions to work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This worked fine when I first used it, but now it asks for audio/microphone permissions even though in my father's use case he is just using the video aspect and then using Zoom for the audio/video with his students.

Can you push a fix to not require all three permissions to work?

</comment><comment><USER5> Hi, this sounds really usefl and wanted to give it a try, but the connection hanged while trying to connect. I was able to scan the URL in my phone and open the browser (Firefox Nightly), but couldn't see it in action. My phone was stuck in "Peer Created", while desktop (Firefox Developer Edition) was at "Reconnecting!". Is it a network problem on my side?

<comment><USER3> Hello, I'm a developer behind it. Can you tell us which OS you are on in both phone and desktop? And does both the devices are on same network?

<comment><USER5> Sorry for the delay. I'm on Android (phone) and Windows (desktop). At the moment of the test I was in the same network I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello fellow hacker, we tried a lot of hit this issue before sending this message but couldn't.

Can you pls try again making sure both are same network. We have made a conscious decision not to use a TURN server as we don't want any traffic to go via us.

<comment><USER6> I have the same issue with Firefox on Windows :). How can I help you in reproducing it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome idea, but I can't seem to make it work. See both mobile and desktop screenshots here: [https://imgur.com/a/LnM2Uej](https://imgur.com/a/LnM2Uej) (Safari on both iOS 13 and macOS 10.15)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the detailed logs,Can you please confirm if both the devices are on same local network?

<comment><USER7> They are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What benefit does this have over a cheaply USB webcam and OBS with the obs- virtualcam plugin?

<comment><USER9> Realistically do most people even have separate webcams at home?

I know I don't, but there's at least 5 smartphones somewhere in the house. Harnessing those cameras via wifi is pretty useful.

<comment><USER10> I don't have a separate webcam, but I use my Pixel 2 as an OBS webcam with DroidCamX with much better quality that a fancy $200 Logitech webcam. There is a similar app for iOS. Even better, you can use multiple phones for different angles or to point to a notepad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we save the recording?

<comment><AUTHOR> We sure can do it technologically and i imagine you want something like project Haven.

But considering the usecase of streaming for teaching, like other comment mentioned there are other ways to do it and if there are more requests for this, we would be happy to add</comment></comment>


Scientists Develop Liquid Fuel That Can Store Solar Power for Up to 18 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.cleantechexpress.com/2019/09/scientists-develop-liquid-fuel-that-can.html <comment> alan-crowe I've clicked and clicked to reach technical details [https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2018/ee/c8ee0101...](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2018/ee/c8ee01011k)

Cited at the bottom of Chalmers University press release [http://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/chem/news/Pages/Emissi...](http://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/chem/news/Pages/Emissions- free-energy-system-saves-heat-from-the-summer-sun-for-winter-.aspx)</comment>


How to think about stock options when you've got a job offer from a startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/craft-blog/how-to-think-about-stock-options-when-youve-got-a-job-offer-from-a-startup-2a0eb0006bfb <comment><USER2> Great article! One last caveat is that the landscape around stock options has changed quite significantly especially in the US. These days many firms are offering Non-qualified stock options which don't expire for 7 years or more.

Additionally there are many new funding options for stock option exercise. A few firms have appeared to help employees buy their stock options and split the future upside.

Disclosure: I work at one of those firms!</comment>


Yahoo's New President Oversees a Shake-Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/technology/30yahoo.html?ex=1346126400&en=ea1d199b7ef5197f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss <comment><USER2> The funniest thing in the memo ([http://www.paidcontent.org/page/yahoo-reorg- sue-deckers-memo...](http://www.paidcontent.org/page/yahoo-reorg-sue-deckers- memo-to-sales)) is that Sue Decker has a chief of staff (2nd to last para) -- does that make Yahoo a country? :-)</comment>


Cellphones as Credit Cards? Americans Must Wait - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/business/25proto.html <comment><USER2> I'm totally talking out of my ass, here, but I wonder if the issue of using cell phones as payment in the Japan, is partly due to the decreased usage of credit cards.

I know that in Latin America, where I grew up, there are very few people who use credit cards. The infrastructure for electronic payments and debits just isn't there and fraud is rampant. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of countries with state controlled telecommunication companies or cellular near- monopolies can leapfrog the credit card adoption hurdle by offering epayments via cellphone.

What do people in non-US countries think?

</comment><comment><USER3> When i was 15, this was going to be my billion dollar idea. In fact, monopolizing the cellphone processing market was integral to my plan of world domination.

<comment><USER4> I think _everyone_ had this idea. It is kind of saddening that it is taking so long for this dream to be realized.

<comment><USER5> It's real in Japan.

<comment><USER6> Yep, but we're still fundamentally a cash-based society. Granted, the cell phone is easier to pay with than a credit card: most times when I swipe a CC at a restaurant with an average per-person price of less than $15 I have to wait 5 minutes while the cashier finds someone who knows how to do it.

The e-wallet cell phones are mostly used for convenience stores, which are sort of like what an American convenience store would look like if Bezos was running them. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you. Let's start with "If you work all day getting packages delivered is sort of annoying because the local equivalent of FedEx might show up before you're home, so instead just ship them to your local convenience store which is open 24 hours, which will happily hold them in your name until it is convenient for you to pick it up. Oh, did you need to pay for it, too? No problem, the convenience store can process payments for any Internet company worth their salt, generally pre- shipping but at-delivery for some products. Oh, haven't paid your taxes yet? Maybe you need to stop by the convenience store! We can also handle water, power, Internet, cell phone, etc etc. And if financial services make you thirsty, perhaps our selection of 760 different brands of liquid refreshment has something you'll enjoy."

<comment><USER7> Yeah, isn't 7-11 in Asia _amazing_? Not only can you run your life through convenience stores, but they are ubiquitous. It's hard to walk two or three blocks without bumping into one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem here seems to be that the carriers control the platform. Most cell phones can't run software without carrier approval, so the carriers want their cut even in cases where the application has nothing to do with their network.

Android and the iPhone seem to be steps away from this.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand how the cellphone is involved in this. My working credit card right now is a piece of plastic with a number on it. Why couldn't I pull the RFID device out of the cellphone and put it on my keychain or in a block of cheese?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's still my idea! But I think I'll prefer credit cards as cell phones.

(i.e. cards with e-ink and touch sensors and micro-antennae that can still function as phones) :)

</comment><comment><USER11> How long after phones replace credit cards will they replace driver's licenses?

As both manufacturing and network costs fall, it's conceivable that anyone without an identity-document-compliant cellphone would be issued one, for free or no cost, by the same government entities that issue driver's licenses or other official IDs.</comment>


Why Italy was right to find Google guilty - <AUTHOR> http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/italy-was-right-to-find-google-guilty/

<comment><USER2> It comes across to me as quite a vitriolic rant.

> _The post office is a private, push system - if I want you to receive > something by post, I have to send it to you personally. No one knows what's > in the letter until you open it._

Not true. Ever heard of junk mail? I get post from animal cruelty charities that I don't want and it has pictures of abused animals on the outside.

> _Well, if someone made a dangerous product, they can be prosecuted. But we > don't normally hold companies responsible for misuse of their products.

On the other hand, we do hold companies responsible for what they publish or facilitate the publishing of if they are negligent.

Google runs a publishing platform. It doesn't send out individual videos in boxes that were used to hit someone. It has ongoing control over that platform in the way that the tissue-box and camera manufacturer do not._

So the writer is against common carrier protections for internet firms? The camera makers, electricity suppliers, computer manufacturer were all also part of the chain enabling the publication. YouTube is a tool.

Google made a mistake, if his claim to the 2 month delay is true, but the real crime was that of the perpetrators of the bullying and of the creators of the video.</comment>


Amazon acquires online pharmacy PillPack - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-28/amazon-makes-big-foray-into-health-care-with-pillpack-purchase <comment><USER2> I said they would.</comment>


A Possible Signal from Dark Matter? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/su201432

<comment><AUTHOR> Research paper: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.2301](http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.2301)</comment>


Managing SELinux with Puppet - <AUTHOR> https://tag1consulting.com/blog/stop-disabling-selinux-manage-it-with-puppet <comment><USER2> I am (was - new job now) guilty of disabling selinux on the fleet of servers managed by puppet. I was hoping that the modules listed in the article would show that configuring selinux is actually easy, but I came away with my opinions unchanged. selinux requires a fair amount of investment to deeply learn how it works and what the requirements are for a bunch of apps. As a developer casually working with the ops team to automate their configuration, I didn't have the time or inclination to undertake that learning for what I perceived to be only marginal improvements to our systems.

For what it's worth, that system had about 60 different applications we were running that were provided by a vendor, and their official recommendation was to disable selinux. They never provided (afaik) configurations or guidance to run their apps under selinux.

<comment><USER3> I'm guilty of the same, and in fact our corporate AMI has selinux disabled. Not my choice, though I'm at least complicit in that I've not protested. Vendor supported apps are the biggest issue. If we have any issues, selinux is the culprit until it's disabled. Even, after ruling it out, you can forget about vendor supported RCA if you turn selinux back on.

<comment><USER4> After reading the article, I looked up what level of support Amazon offers in their distribution. Near as I can tell? None.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't turn on SELinux, as it invariably gets in the way.

It adds a whole extra step between coding a feature and deploying it. e.g. if I want to add a feature to an existing daemon to cache things in /var/cache/foo, then before deploying, I'll need to make sure the relevant SELinux policies are updated.

Also, I find SELinux gets in the way when debugging a live server. Often to solve a complex issue I'll need to ssh into a production server and inspect some sort of state or produce dumps; but if that machine has selinux installed, I end up running into it at some point or another.

<comment><USER6> I feel like there is a huge upcoming market for well designed developer- centric tools that allow developers to use stuff like SELinux without also becoming a sysadmin. SELinux feels like a tool only a system admin could love. Puppet (or Chef, Ansible etc) feel like only a tool a release automation engineer could love.

Startups and small companies rarely spend enough on operations and I feel as if there is bit of a death by a thousand paper cuts across the board for productivity and security due to tools written for sysadmins, and "devops" engineers.

<comment><USER7> > _Puppet (or Chef, Ansible etc) feel like only a tool a release automation > engineer could love._

The devil is in the details. Things like logs, packaging, and email sound dead easy, but they get complex _fast_. Trivial implementations ('just on my own workstation') are always dead easy, but making actual environments that scale sensibly is difficult and rapidly run into all sorts of edge cases.

Configuration management tools are complex because configuration management is complex. You can always move with the herd and go Docker instead... but now instead of managing the configuration management tool... you're managing Docker, which is just as much overhead and has more edge cases you need to cater to.

If you want simple tools, then constrain yourself and run in a managed environment (eg AWS's Beanstalk). As soon as you want environmental flexibility, you open a can of worms that can only be dealt with using a complex tool.</comment></comment></comment>


VLC media player for Android hits private beta - <AUTHOR> http://mobiputing.com/2011/09/vlc-media-player-for-android-hits-private-beta/

<comment><USER2> I find it strange that they didn't decide to do it first for Android, and it's coming so late. They did it first for iOS and then got rejected.</comment>


Association of Flight Attendants: The solution is direct payroll subsidies - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/FlyingWithSara/status/1239643212689653761 <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was relevant for discussion as a way to skip-aside corporate greed and help those directly affected. The union told Congress the same. Has this been tried before?

"We have told Congress that any stimulus funds for the aviation industry must come with strict rules: continued paychecks for every worker and NO stock buy backs, dividends, executive bonuses, broken contracts, or interference with organizing."

</comment><comment><USER2> This is from Sara Nelson, whose role as a union leader for the AFA played a key role in ending the government shutdown last year.</comment>


Wid: companion for tracking your time - <AUTHOR> https://wid.chorem.com/site/home <comment><USER2> Is this similar to [https://wakatime.com](https://wakatime.com)?</comment>


Little libraries - <AUTHOR> http://huonw.github.io/blog/2015/04/little-libraries/

<comment><USER2> Sorry if this is off topic but ...

Given the sad state of libraries on npmjs.org I wish someone could figure out way to fix that issue for create.io before it gets too far.

Many of the libraries on npmjs which appear to be popular by number of users/downloads/stars are in fact seriously poorly written and bug ridden or at least that's been my experience. Maybe I just keep getting unlucky. Yes there are some nice libraries too :)

Is there anything that can be done? Would it require curators? Would rating help or would they be just as poor a metric as downloads because they'd basically be a popularity contest. It just seems like often I look for library and end up spending a 2-4 hours only to find nothing works so I end up writing it myself and feel less and less like checking to see if a library exists.

<comment><USER3> I think that's very much on-topic; I was about to post pretty much the same thing. When you make it easier to publish something, you make it correspondingly harder for potential users to find the signal in the noise. We've seen this with Web writing, we've seen it with music, video, jQuery plugins, you name it.

It's not a reason to go back to the old days, but there is a pressing need for good filtering and reputation-tracking tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who don't know, Huon is one of Rusts core developers.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I copy and paste into HTML fields? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed a trend to prevent copying and pasting into HTML fields which I find quite irrational.  Doesn't accuracy increase if I'm allowed to copy and paste something?  Presently, I'm prevented from copying a checking account number into a field, so I have to type it out by hand, which is much more error-prone.  Does anyone know why sites do this? <comment><USER2> 1 reason I can think of is when copying and pasting - the text formatting used from where you copied the string from can come over with the text. So your not pasting in just a number but potentially html / css with it.

For obvious reasons, this could be a problem and instead of stripping the html / css / garbage - it's easier to just prevent the action entirely.</comment>


Reddit decommissions its last Y Combinator funded server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2009/11/moving-to-cloud.html

<comment><AUTHOR> You can ask me questions here or on reddit:

<http://www.reddit.com/a2zte>

<comment><USER2> Are they being sold on Ebay?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure yet.

<comment><USER3> I'll take aaron.reddit.com. :-)

(Ran across a backup of paul in my apartment the other day... Memories.)

<comment><USER4> You keep entire backups of Reddit servers in your apartment? Is anything sensitive on the backups?

<comment><USER3> 1\. My apartment was Reddit HQ before we got bought. Where else would we have put the backups?

2\. As best I can recall, the only thing on the web nodes was a source code checkout. I don't think that's particularly sensitive.

3\. As ig1 notes, back then we had unencrypted passwords in the database and database copies on our machines, which were our personal laptops, so a spare drive in the apartment was the least of our problems.

<comment><USER4> That sounds like "no" and "no". Thanks for answering!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
       6.5 TB of Data Out / mo
       2TB of Data In / mo

that seems incredibly low

<comment><AUTHOR> Our site is mostly text.

<comment><USER5> still, your bandwidth usage is pretty much the equivalent of what comes with a single dedicated server.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but it is all dynamic content, which it why it needs so many resources, if that is what you are getting it.

Also, Akamai offloads a lot of the traffic from us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's even less iron than I thought. No point upgrading the existing ones with SSDs?</comment>


Tour the cherry blossom festivals in Japan through VR - <AUTHOR> https://sfree.life/tour-the-cherry-blossom-festivals-in-japan-through-vr-free/ <comment><USER2> This is a nice distraction. Thanks for posting!</comment>