MicIO – HTML5 to MicroController Communication through a headphone jack - <AUTHOR> http://colinbookman.com/2014/03/23/micio/ <comment><USER2> The author should look into DTMF, they were quite popular in packet radio and you got a 1200 baud datarate. Haar Wavelet transform would probably be a lot less CPU-hungry than FFT.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi- frequency_signa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi- frequency_signaling)

<comment><USER3> The history of the modem [1] is also probably a relevant read. That's basically what the author has recreated.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice!

BTW, with the new Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, you don't need a $100K license to interface with iOS devices anymore: [http://www.mkroll.mobi/?page_id=386](http://www.mkroll.mobi/?page_id=386)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've used BLE in the past.

While its fairly nice, android support is all over the place. Each manufacturer has their own library. Then you need to factor in all that time spent hooking into the various native code libraries.

With something like micIO all you'd need is a 4 pole minijack and an HTML5 browser. Aka all smartphones minus windows phone ([http://caniuse.com/audio- api](http://caniuse.com/audio-api)).

For low bandwidth applications this can be pretty useful. Think about all those wearable electronics.

Obviously work still needs to be done to get micIO to a stable state.

<comment><USER5> Android has a standardised API for BLE as of 4.3, so you can target that instead of HTC and Samsung's proprietary APIs. But that only covers 12% of Android devices, which is really pretty awful given iOS basically has support across the board since 2011.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Technologies go around and around. This is just like storing my Sinclair Spectrum programs on a cassette recorder.

Good stuff!

<comment><USER7> Stereotypically those were FDM so you'd send precisely two cycles of 1200 Hz or one cycle of 600 Hz and then a simple zero crossing detector would sync up and read the bits out.

I figured thats where he was going and was kind of surprised to see the multi- tone setup.

The more advanced ham radio guys are experts at using vaguely communications width bandwidths at often very lot signal to noise ratios to send as much error corrected data as possible.

20 years ago you'd demo something like PSK-31 using two COTS laptops just singing out the speakers and it would work pretty well. Newer modulation schemes are obviously faster / lower SNR / better error recovery / better PAR (peak average ratio) etc. A smart telecom engineer can run right up against the Shannon limit and flexibly trade off against limitations, either SNR or audio bandwidth or transfer speed or synch / preramble time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting. Another clever way of doing this that I just saw this morning is being done by the BlinkyGrid. It uses two flashing areas on the PC/smartphone screen to send optical Clock & Data signals to two photosensors on the microcontroller board to configure it.

I really like this since it's trivial to implement and adds less than $1 to the BOM cost of the hardware even in single units. There are quite a few devices I've wanted to build that only need a very simple UI to configure them and this would be perfect.

And for a plus, it's Open Source Hardware so you can use it without guilt.

I do worry that the frequency of their flashing may be in the zone to trigger seizures in those that are susceptible, though, but this is an easy problem to work around. Maybe using a single NRZ signal like 110 bps serial transmission.

<comment><USER9> That's also how the Bloomberg Terminal connects with the B-Unit authentication device ("Bloomberg Screen Sync")

[http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/files/2012/10/b-unit_2...](http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/files/2012/10/b-unit_2_user_guide.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool project; I'm working on something similar. But I'm using BFSK, which means two frequencies instead of 16.

You don't really need an FFT (expensive) to decode these 16 frequencies. Instead, you can shape them into square waves with a software Schmitt trigger, then measure time between transitions. When n successive transitions indicate the same frequency, you emit the corresponding nibble.

The more frequencies you use in your encoding, the longer it takes to discriminate in the receiver. I think this is why real-world FSK systems are usually BFSK.

</comment><comment><USER11> For I client I designed a UART<->Microphone adapter. It supports bidirectional communication at ~1kbps, almost 0% error rate at full volume (~15% error rate at half) and has a terribly unoptimized analog interface. I didn't really think there was much interest in creating these kinds of interfaces, but if anyone has any good ideas I am all ears.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this could have gotten the Peachy Printer out the door sooner? If memory serves they had to spend several cycles working out noise and levels issues with the soundcard-to-microcontroller interface. Although, it isn't clear that MicIO _has_ worked through those issues already, and Peachy is perhaps a naturally analog project.

<comment><USER13> My understanding from a few conversations with the peachy guys is that they started out with a really simple idea of what it was going to do, but in the process of getting it production ready they kept discovering problems that needed yet-another-hack to work around. It sounds like a lot of clever engineering has gone into it, but I personally probably would do USB and digital processing instead of analog (you can get crazy powerful USB-capable micros for pretty cheap, e.g. mchck.org)

<comment><USER12> I get what you're saying. However, one advantage of leaving the digital-audio conversion in the sound card is that modifications to this process are just a new software install on the host, rather than a new firmware install on the device. That presumes they eventually get the device in a "good enough" state, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very nice idea. Of course one can think of more sophisticated modem signal protocols, but keeping it simple is potentially beneficial for those folks (including me) who might want to implement the slave using a low-end microcontroller. Something that could use the UART built into most MCU chips would be a nice thing.

</comment><comment><USER15> I also created project like this in my school days [http://blog.sodhanalibrary.com/2013/09/clocker.html#.UzEjx9L...](http://blog.sodhanalibrary.com/2013/09/clocker.html#.UzEjx9LiSRc)

</comment><comment><USER16> This can be an interesting side channel for browser-device communication before we have proper USB access in browsers.

I'm sure it can be fully duplexed using the "mic jack"

Also epic use of WebAudio. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't often say this, but.. this is genius. Congrats!

That said, is there no such thing as a Lightning-to-USB converter cable? You'd expect such devices to exist.

<comment><USER18> From the article, it seems that the problem is on the iOS side, not the PC side. Having a converter doesn't change the protocol you have to speak on the device itself.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps I didn't make my point clear, but what I meant by a converter cable involved converting Lightning signals to USB signals within the cable itself (i.e. there's a microprocessor within the cable that converts the signals from one form to another).

The closest we have to this right now is the Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, which has a fair number of limitations, but I see no reason that a more general device couldn't be made: [http://www.imore.com/playing-around-apple- lightning-usb-came...](http://www.imore.com/playing-around-apple-lightning- usb-camera-connector)

<comment><USER19> Your point is fine. But the limitations on the iOS side are more significant than you seem to realise. things that I'm aware of that apps can take advantage of:

* midi signals * plain audio signals * looking like a usb flash drive to the built in photos app

That's the whole list. The only one that seems vaguely useable for something like raw IO is midi signals!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the 4-pole plug diagram is wrong? It seems to label the insulating rings, rather than the plug terminals.

</comment><comment><USER20> So does this mean we're going to have QAM-X or QPSK codecs written in JavaScript soon?

</comment><comment><USER21> One day i will retake all this and start all my childhood dream projectd

</comment><comment><USER22> I find the author's claim that most smartphones lack USB interfaces quite surprising. You'd think, since USB devices are incredibly common, smartphone manufacturers would include at least one USB port.

<comment><USER23> Very few smartphones offer USB Host support other than mass storage. And when they do, device support is fraught. It is a truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> +1 for using the mbed, my new favorite micro controller!

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice

Btw this is generally how cheaper rc controllers talks to simulators.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice project, but the wire routing in the schematic makes my eyes bleed.

</comment><comment><USER27> "IE will not work under any circumstances as it currently does not support...(fill in the blank)"

This is a given when it comes to any current technology and need not be mentioned as it is well known.</comment>


The Scary Truth About Chicken: Monster chickens are taking over the supermarket. - <AUTHOR> http://www.menshealth.com/health/scary-truth-about-chicken?fullpage=true

<comment><USER2> Poor chickens are fed in an uncontrolled fashion. The ones marketed as organic are better but still I am still skeptic that its completely natural. But how can it stop? It's much cheaper and affordable for bigger families

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be interested in reading about pork production. I'd guess that large scale industrial hog farms probably have similar problems.

I think beef is going the same way. When I was a kid, about 50 years ago, someone I knew raised beef cattle. These cows wandered around in fields all day for over a year. They slept in the barn at night. I think the word "pastoral" fit perfectly. Then the cattle were shipped off to be fattened up in feedlots shortly before they were killed. But now the same industrial farming practices are also coming to beef. Or have they already come?</comment>


3 Things We Can All Do To Make Our Emails Better - <AUTHOR> http://gregmeyer.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/3-things-we-can-all-do-to-make-our-emails-better/

<comment><USER2> AS nobody (as far as I can tell) ever reads more than one (short) paragraph of any email - the key thing is to keep it short.

If you have two points to make then send two emails.

If you have three points to make - then call a meeting because if you send a third email then they will forget what you said in the first two.

Meetings are the way I punish the world for not reading my emails.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas - thanks!</comment></comment>


Rsync and Rsyncd GUI Wrappers for Mac = Backaroo - <AUTHOR> http://bonhardcomputing.com/backaroo/ <comment><AUTHOR> 1000s of times faster than Time Machine & more features, more configurable, more secure; and networked.</comment>


Show HN: Patent My Idea - <AUTHOR>

Share an idea that you'll never execute on, so that someone else might get the chance. <comment><AUTHOR> And to start...

A keyboard which is powered by typing.</comment>


Ask HN: How important is code commenting in your org? What is your org? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Cannot say about my current company, but the last one (a real estate listing agency in South America). It was very important, but there was always a huge debate of what was important to comment. One developer thought that adding docblocks was just enough. The other thought about commenting the why of code blocks etc.

So your question may sound like "How important it is to live within your own means". Everyone will agree, at some level, the living within means is important - but people will diverge on whether you just give up your goals or aiming for them anyway.

Comments as much as code are meant for human eyes. The main difference are that comments are not executed, therefore they are less likely to be updated when the reason for a piece of code changes as well. Programmers update code until it compiles and passes tests, but it doesn't follow they update comments accordingly. Nothing is more misleading than an outdated comment.

Also, you might find those who will say that if the code is self-evident, then it does not need commenting. Which is theoretically true, but usually people miscalculate the ability of later read to extract context of uncommented code.

</comment><comment><USER3> Counter question: Is there any professional organization where code commenting is not important? Even if I work alone I write comments because I can't recognize my own code a year later.

<comment><USER4> I won't name the now defunct startup (well funded and founded by a proven founder) but they hired an engineer who was basically the CTO (although one of the other co-founder officially held the title). I was told that this guy (the CTO-engineer was one of the best engineers and in a convo with him, he basically told me he doesn't believe in commenting and that you should write code that is self explanatory. I basically lost respect for him on the spot no matter how talented he was by everyone else's view.

For what it's worth this was a team of over 15 people and about half the team were engineers and everyone thought this guy was insanely good (although I have no clue if any of that is true or not)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really helpful to understand. Thanks so much for sharing!</comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's Billionaire Bullies - <AUTHOR> http://www.breakingviews.com/silicon-valleys-undeserved-moral-exceptionalism/21005519.article

<comment><USER2> While the premiss of this column is nearly right, the arguments are wrong.

Rather than being guilty of "Exploitative manufacturing" (cheap labor that out pays the median income many times over), "Indifference to Copyright" (making things easy to find), "Disregard for privacy" (making money from advertising from people who don't take easy steps to block tracking and ads), "Crony Capitalism" (fighting off harmful legislation written by other industries' lobbyists), and "The Murdoch Model" (selling shares in a company no one is being forced to purchase), I propose that they are guilty of other real crimes:

-Collusion on hiring & wages (already proven)

-The formation of a patent cartel which virtually eliminates tiny companies from becoming meaningful competitors or serving comparative services.</comment>


What the F-86 can teach us about software development - <AUTHOR> http://managingmetrics.com/what-the-f-86-can-teach-us-about-software-dev

<comment><USER2> What a disappointing conclusion to an interesting historial blurb. American shot down lots of Russians because we had fly by wire planes. So Pair programming and stand up meetings are the obvious conclusion.

What a joke.

<comment><USER3> Nitpick, the controls were "mechanically assisted" (i.e. "power steering"), not fly by wire. The first FBW fighter was the F-16. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon)

<comment><USER4> sorry to burst your bubble (again), but it wasn't.

[http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/220176-first-aircraft-use- fly...](http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/220176-first-aircraft-use-fly- wire.html)

[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-9....](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-9.htm)

<http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/cf-105_avro_arrow.pl>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In addition to the tenuous link between the two activities, the 10 to 1 ratio is almost certainly untrue.

Details here (in the main text and in cited materials):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-86_Sabre#Korean_War> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiG-15#Operational_history>

Isolating success in dogfights to flight controls seems like a gross oversimplification. I would like to see the original source for this (attributed to Boyd in the article).

<comment><USER4> I love how you're being downvoted for pointing to more realistic numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slight nit. >but because their arms didn't tire as quickly from operating the flight controls

While tiring would be a factor, even if completely fresh, you can simply move a lesser weight (force) faster than a larger one.

Second problem is that there were multiple differences between MiGs and Sabres - the one I always heard was most significant, back when I was a teen, is that Sabres were better constructed, MiGs were more likely to fall apart from relatively light damage. So don't take _any_ single article or viewpoint as _the truth_ \- reality is always more complex than will fit into a article or book.

<comment><USER7> Another important difference that went along with Boyd's thesis is that the Sabres had less obstructed canopies, letting the pilot see around themselves more easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> See "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" for a more complete description of his life. The article doesn't do it justice.

[http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who- Changed/dp/0316...](http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who- Changed/dp/0316796883/)

<comment><USER9> Or the book "Certain to Win" which was written by one of his "disciples" with Boyd's input on how to apply all of Boyd's thoughts (which are _far_ more complex than what the blog post shows) to business situations.

[http://www.amazon.com/Certain-Win-Strategy-Applied- Business/...](http://www.amazon.com/Certain-Win-Strategy-Applied- Business/dp/1413453767/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of a programming assignment from college to write a chess bot.

My partner and I tweaked it's understanding of how to evaluate board positions to eek out better playing ability, but the _major_ improvements came from implementing a more efficient specialized game tree that let us calculate another move ahead every decision.

Having one more "loop" made a huge difference against our opponents; being simply smarter or better at any of the "steps in the loop" didn't help nearly as much.

</comment><comment><USER11> >>Boyd realized the key advantage of the F-86 was that it's flight controls were mechanically assisted.

I am guesssing what that means is it's the tools and not the process. The process is subconscious. The tools that we use, determine how fast we can iterate. Take RoR for example, or Visual Basic(F5 anyone?), developers could iterate rapidly and after a while the process faded away, but the tools remained. Maybe, developers need to play with new toys instead of following new processes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pity. I thought the article would be something like this [http://etutorials.org/Programming/Software+architecture+in+p...](http://etutorials.org/Programming/Software+architecture+in+practice,+second+edition/Part+One+Envisioning+Architecture/Chapter+3.+A-7E+Avionics+System+A+Case+Study+in+Utilizing+Architectural+Structures/3.3+Architecture+for+the+A-7E+Avionics+System/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Totally tangential but when I was a kid (in the 80s) there was a school/park somewhere in So Cal (I think) that had an actual F-86 on its playground (gutted of course). Whenever we road tripped on the weekend my parents would climb stop there and I'd climb up on it.</comment>


Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search? [a paper] - <AUTHOR> http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8090/pub/2007-33

<comment><USER3> I have wondered for years why Yahoo haven't attempted to use del.icio.us as a back-end for some sort of search engine. I don't think it requires any great leap of faith that searching for a combination of keywords that numerous people have already tagged the page with indicates it's relevant.

Hell, even improving the searching in del.icio.us would be helpful - <USER2> ability to sort by number of people who have saved a page would be incredibly useful, for example.

<comment><USER4> Don't even get me started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This research seems to overlap with their near neighbors at PARC, esp this paper (which isn't cited by the Stanford group:

[http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~echi/papers/2008-hypertext/2008...](http://www- users.cs.umn.edu/~echi/papers/2008-hypertext/2008-04-29-hypertext08-tagging- info-theory-fp-046-chi.pdf)

THe PARC group's blog:

<http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/></comment>


Ask YC: Bug tracking software? - <AUTHOR>

What is everyone using for bug/issue tracking software these days?  I'm looking for something  to run on my own dev server, not a hosted solution.  Bonus points for being lightning fast, IRC & SVN integration, and easy to install.<p>Any links to previous discussions about this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks, <comment><USER2> I use trac, a management tool that's usually used for open source projects <http://trac.edgewall.org/>. Admittedly its issue tracking features aren't very advanced, but it does an excellent job of integrating your subversion repository, tickets and a wiki. It's one of the better tools for finding out what happened and why.

<comment><USER3> I've also had good experience with Trac. If you need sophisticated traditional bug tracking features, it isn't quite all there: you can't assign a bug to more than one version, or more than one component, for example. But its subversion and wiki integration are features I can no longer live without.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It has been about 1.5 years since I investigated bug trackers, and the software packages may have grown features/fixes since.

In my mind the choice of bug trackers comes down to who is the intended audience for it. Is it used for tracking issues by just the developers, or do end users also have access to it (You need a straightforward reporting method - users get very confised)?

You didn't say if you want to use a web-based tracker, or a desktop based version.

Briefly some of _my_ thoughts on some web based trackers:

\- Flyspray - I discounted this because it didn't support custom fields at the time. A quick googling shows this feature is in development.

\- Trac - Horribly confusing for my bug reporters. Has so many features that's easy to get sidetracked into other parts (such as wiki) and content sprawl. Difficult to theme if you have a standard layout for a public site. It has a very cumbersome flow from visiting the tracker to getting an issue filed properly.

\- Mantis - At first it looks really ugly but I've been overjoyed with it. It supported custom fields like I wanted. It was _SO_ customisable. A limited amount can be done through a GUI but there are an insane number of items that can be configured through the config file. A downside to mantis was the awful documentation.

Mantis _does_ have some SVN integration if you're willing to dig through the source code and set it up manually. It's possible setup a SVN commit hook to automatically resolve bugs in the tracker that contain strings like "fixed bug 25" (again, customisable through regular expressions) or a bug is referenced in commit messages, that commit can be added automatically as a note to the bug. (This is in the manual)

I also really liked mantis security groups. It's _very_ flexible when you look at the config files (useful if you have end users submitting say sensitive attachments and only want devs/admins to access it), etc...

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't have enough kind words for Redmine <http://redmine.org>. I have been using it for some time and it is _perfect_ as a simple bugtracker/SVN browser/wiki.

It's open source and built in Rails, and it's easy to tweak to suit your needs (via a plugin system) and perfect if you want to get your feet wet with Rails.

As for speed, I'm using it on a shared host with Passenger and it fast enough. Speed on a VPS is quite nice, and it flies on a local network.

</comment><comment><USER6> We use BugZilla here at work but I'm not a huge fan. There must be a better way to do this.

<comment><USER7> We (or should I say 'I', as I'am the only developer) also use Bugzilla. I agree that it may be complicated at first, but it does pay of to learn it. (note: I have only used Trac and Bugzilla during my career, but as I am satisfied with BZ I don't have a need to try out anything else.)

I recommend to turn off features you do not need and ignore those, you cannot turn of. It will be easier to work with.

<comment><USER6> The software is certainly capable but the incredibly baroque interface is a huge turn-off to me. It also doesn't integrate with a lot of the tools I use in my workflow. There's probably a good opportunity here to create something which blows the competition out of the water.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had positive experiences with:

Roundup, FlySpray, Trac, and RT

We currently use FlySpray, because it integrates with our Joomla website reasonably nicely. Roundup is probably the most comprehensive issue tracker of the lot, in the sense that extending it is trivial (just add whatever you want to the db, and the UI adapts). RT is probably the most mature and FlySpray the least so, but all are stable and work reliably.

Trac, of course, is the only one of those that integrates with SVN.

All are plenty fast and easy to install (all have a dependency or two or three, but nothing onerous).

</comment><comment><USER9> If you are a rails shop, redmine is good too. I have used jira, mantis, trac, but do not like any of them.

</comment><comment><USER10> Roundup - <http://roundup.sourceforge.net/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I really like Trac. The wiki/versioncontrol/bugtracking features are well- integrated. I think it's quite suitable for small to medium organizations.

</comment><comment><USER12> Jira here too

<http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/>

</comment><comment><USER13> mantis - <http://mantisbt.com>

Does not do all you want... No IRC and no SVN integration. That's pretty limiting if you actually do need that stuff. Go the TRAC route someone else mentioned if you really do require SVN integration.

</comment><comment><USER14> +1 for JIRA

</comment><comment><USER15> We use JIRA</comment>


No XBL Components Left in Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/justinfagnani/status/1187860260477734912 <comment><USER2> That's a non-trivial amount of hard work going down the drain right there.

I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, but XUL and the component architecture were major reasons Mozilla took forever to be released, and then forever again to become usable.

And then a major reason why Firefox extensions became a thing long before using web tech was an option.

I tried to find uses for it back in the days, read a book and played around with it. What killed it for me was hooking into C meant dealing with Mozilla's internals a lot more than I would have preferred. These days serverless is common, but back then it was practically unheard of.

I did use Songbird [0] for a while, but it was always slow and buggy for me. And it never really went anywhere, not for a lack of trying from the looks of it.

ActiveX, Corba, Bonobo; they always seem to get so complex and bloated that no one wants anything to do with them when there are other options.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_\(software\))

<comment><USER3> They only get so complex when people insist into plugging a square into a round pet, like using said technologies from C, writing everything by hand.

Using ActiveX, nowadays COM/UWP, is never an issue from Delphi, C++ Builder, .NET, Visual C++ via MFC, C++/CX, C++/WinRT, Eiffel.

<comment><USER2> It's mostly a thick layer of lip stick though, as soon as something doesn't work you start paying for building on top an epic tower of crufty abstractions.

I once did some Java EE in Eclipse. They both look mostly the same to me. A mountain of crufty crap covered with as much lip stick as it took to make it sort of flop along.

I'm sorry if I'm stepping on toes here, this is just my experience. May I ask what you're using component frameworks for these days? I spent 13 years professionally writing reservation and accounting client/server apps in Delphi but never even came close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> XUL was amazing, and they abandoned it.

This obsession with making everything "web" friendly is backsliding desktop into horrible, non-native UI.

<comment> ainar-g What is the closest thing we have left that is close to "mostly declarative GUI"? QML? Tk? Please don't say Electron.

<comment><USER5> XAML, but it Microsoft-specific. While not completely uniform its use does extend across desktop and mobile. I wouldn't make the argument that it's intuitive or simple, but it is powerful.

<comment><USER3> JavaFX and QML are pretty much based on XAML.

<comment><USER6> Xaml and Javafx where released within 6 months of each other I kinda expect parallel implementation rather than copying. Just form the dates in Wikipedia

<comment><USER3> JavaFX was initially J3, and then it was rebooted into XAML like.

Also you're forgetting Longhorn SDK was available as preview before the project was canned.

But yeah just conspiracy theories from my side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will [https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.x...](https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul) be updated :-) ?

</comment><comment><USER8> Back in the early 00s I was actually shocked that no one attempted to make a desktop environment, or at least applications, using XUL and Gecko. Sure there was Chatzilla but I never saw like a file browser, or an mp3 player.

Now we have Electron and all my wildest dreams came true.

<comment><USER9> There was Songbird: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbird_\(software\)) But that's the only other thing outside of Mozilla's umbrella that I can think of.

<comment><USER8> Wow I actually used songbird too. Totally forgot that existed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just gonna share a link here, and I imagine that you'll be able to figure out all of my comments on the whole situation by the fact that it's on top of my bookmarks - and that I use three of the Allied programs listed.

[http://thereisonlyxul.org/](http://thereisonlyxul.org/)

</comment><comment><USER11> If I understand this correctly, do they mean Firefox desktop GUI is rendered using HTML elements? I understand chrome UI controls are based on skia.

If yes, is this available as some kind of framework that can be used to develop custom desktop applications (like Qt)?

<comment><USER12> Getting rid of XBL is a big and good step, but XUL is still being used. They're working on getting rid of that too. It's not all HTML yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Everything old is new again. Anybody remember HotJava (from over 20 years ago)?

<comment><USER14> And windows 10 which has the same look and feel like windows 1.0 ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >And now a major browser's UI is built with web components!

Proud that you need to use your HTML/JS engine to render your UI instead of using faster native code? I mean you have the opportunity of getting rid of XUL and instead you change it... for something similar?

<comment><USER16> The browser UI was already rendered by Gecko, that's how XUL and XBL work. It's just that it's rendered by parts of Gecko that aren't used by anything else on the web, and so in honesty those paths probably had less optimization, not more.

<comment><USER17> That sounds like a great thing, because the Web is where we applaud people if their site renders in a second, enough time for a modern processor to render a full fricking playthrough of the original Doom.</comment></comment></comment>


US Soldier's reply to HP Support (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dceKZFZV3XE

<comment><AUTHOR> A US soldier stationed in Iraq called HP Support when his copier stopped working and HP Support told him that he had to PAY for their advice to fix the unit. This is his response. Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is from 2006

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euh1g21x_rs&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euh1g21x_rs&feature=related)</comment>


After 11 years, I'm finally ready to pay for the app we've built - <AUTHOR> https://theioradlife.com/after-11-years-im-finally-ready-to-pay-for-the-app-we-ve-built-ef1d7f9a4873 <comment><USER2> No link to the website. No explanation of what it is. Close tab.</comment>


WTF is... up with e-book pricing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/26/wtf_e_book_pricing/ <comment><USER2> I think the market is learning the hard way that the physical aspects of paper/hardback books are marginal, and that a century of booking publishing had already set a correct price for books, and that subtracting the couple of cents it costs to actually print the book are being absorbed in the margin... It's a tough transition for customers to recognize value in intangibles when there is absolutely no physical aspect to hang on to any more (I mean I know it was for me, and I have a vested interest in it! Imagine how hard it is for others who just want cheap because they'll never gain directly from higher prices for digital goods. At least I get to take comfort in knowing that as prices (or rather, willingness to pay) for digital goods will go up, so will (partly) my income...)

<comment><USER3> Only that paper books are cheaper than ebooks. It seems unlikely that distribution of ebooks costs more, therefore your logic falls apart. If the correct price is the one that has evolved over a century, then the paper price is correct, not the ebook price.

<comment><USER4> Publishers are actually starting to format their ebooks, which yes will make it cost more than a paperback while ebooks remain a secondary release. Not only are formatters having to learn how to correctly format for multiple devices, but they're also having to deal with changeable formats and font sizes.

So yes, its going to cost more when formatted properly over a read-as-is format where it only needs to be formatted properly to fit the page.

ebooks if they were to be released like a book would only lose 20% of the face price of the book if companies like Amazon are willing to pass up the distributor costs and the publishers are truly not needing the publishing costs.

However 40% of book prices belong to the retailer. Between 10-15% belong to the Author for writing the book. The remaining 25-30% belong to the publisher to pay all those pesky inconveniences like editors and proof readers, etc. that actually make books readable to millions and not wholly illiterate dribble.

Assuming ebooks remain nothing but a parasite on the industry, you might assume a 10-20% discount off of face price unless the retailer offers discounts, which is what a lot of big booksellers do like Chapters/Indigo/Cole here in Canada.

<comment><USER3> "which yes will make it cost more than a paperback while ebooks remain a secondary release"

You mean because paperbacks use the formatting from the hardcover edition, so their formatting comes for free?

I am still not convinced that your maths is really set in stone. For example, does the retailer still need to get 40%? Editors and proof readers are the same for ebooks as for paperbacks, hopefully.

How hard is the formatting of an ebook, what does it entail? I don't think they can just add new paragraphs? Couldn't the process be automated (LateX seems to be doing quite well with automated layout?

<comment><USER4> Actually Latex does a pretty crappy job routinely producing widows and orphans. The only way to change this seems to screw up the pagebreaking.

When was the last time you saw a widow or orphan in a book? I'll bet never for one from a major printer.

There are many things done in books to hugely improve readability that all have to be re-learnt and redone.

Also, yes paperbacks can use the same formatting as the hardcover if the page proportions are the same. Just an FYI hardcovers usually have larger fonts and the page can sometimes simply be scaled down without screwing anything up. So yes, sometimes it is free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's wrong with the pricing? I _wish_ ebooks were cheaper, but honestly? I'd be willing to pay at least physical-book price because ebooks are more convenient in every way. They stream to all my devices so no matter where I am I can read if I want to. I have all my (e)books on my devices so they aren't taking up a wall or two in my house. I'm not a free market "true believer" [1], but pricing is based on what something's worth, not what it costs to produce.

I agree with epynonymous though; it would be nice if I could get a discount for books I already own. On the other hand, I might just apply this discount myself by selling my physical ones and buying the ebook versions.

[1] That is, I don't think it's the solution to every problem.

<comment><USER6> _pricing is based on what something's worth_

Right, and you can resell a physical book. It has additional value as an asset in itself rather than as a non-transferrable license.

<comment><USER7> Almost nobody really does this, so the economic value of resaleability can't be huge.

<comment><USER8> I like to think I get a decent amount of goodwill from friends by giving/lending books to them.

This generates additional sales of the books as I often end up buying additional copies once I forget who I lent a book to - I'm on my fourth copy of A Fire Upon The Deep.

<comment><USER9> There's a saying that goes something like: never _lend_ a book, always _give_ it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> agreed, ebooks are absurdly priced.

on a related topic, i recently purchased an amazon kindle and was looking through the list of books that i had bought hardcovers for, shouldn't there be a discount from amazon or the book publisher? that would be instant revenue to allow purchasers of hardcopy books at a certain store to download the digital version at a heavily discounted (or free) rate.

<comment><USER11> Why, exactly, are they absurdly priced?

One would think that they, like all things, are in the process of being priced "correctly"-- that is to say, what the market will bear.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that the production costs have should bear any relationship to the price. You don't price a Picasso based on the cost of the paint and canvas, do you?

<comment><USER12> The absurd is that you're paying for electronic delivery more than for physical goods. It's like getting JPEG of Picasso's painting for _more_ than the canvas.

I see price like this (naively perhaps):

Paper book:

        author's revenue + publisher's revenue + printing + shipping

e-book:

        author's revenue + publisher's revenue + 0 + ~0

From that POV e-book should always be cheaper than a paper book, and it has nothing to do with ripping off authors or publishers.

<comment><USER13> The JPEG analogy doesn't hold water. The JPEG is a lossy reproduction of the original painting. But following that path, the lossier reproduction of the author's ideas is _not_ the e-book: it's still the paper one.

(I still do agree with your naïve price model)

<comment><USER14> Th JPG analogy does hold water - for a perfect ebook reproduction of the text, use a TIFF or bitmap or similar.

However, often an ebook is a lossy reproduction - look at the reviews for Surface Detail on Amazon. The quality _of the text_ is below that of the published books (there are sections missing, large gaps in the text, inappropriate hyphenation and missing chapter breaks), and the ebook is more expensive than the hardcover!

It seems like the publishers are acting against their own best interests in the matter of ebooks, just like the music publishers acted against their own interests with music downloads. I agree with posters who claim that the books will be published eventually at market price; our problem is that the market is very slow to stabilise and we must suffer from inefficiencies in the market while it stabilises. The publishers seem to be the major reason for the slowness of the market and that's why people have a gripe with them.

<comment><USER15> _Th JPG analogy does hold water_

People buying a Picasso painting are paying for the scarcity of the physical artifact, not for the pretty picture.

A more reasonable comparison would be to compare the price of a poster of a Picasso painting with a Tiff of a high enough resolution to reproduce that poster. And I'll bet you in that scenario the poster is cheaper.

<comment><USER14> And, just like the case of ebooks, few people think that it's worth buying the images. Instead they torrent them. The market is broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Charles Stross has a written an interesting piece about this in his blog:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2010/05/cmap-9-e...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2010/05/cmap-9-ebooks.html)

<comment><USER8> It's interesting that Charlie gets feedback saying "I don't care about formatting and design in ebooks!" - I've only started reading ebooks since I got an iPad and I can say that I _do_ care about what they look like, particularly in factual books (I have some geology books) the handling of diagrams, footnotes and images is often terrible. Novels, at best, look shoddy.

<comment><USER2> "It's interesting that Charlie gets feedback saying "I don't care about formatting and design in ebooks!" "

I guess this is from the same people who watch a cam of a newly released movie with people walking by on the screen, from a 700mb divx, on a 15 inch screen, and who wonder why everybody doesn't do it this way, because I only waited for it to download for 4 hours, and yeah then I had to manually fix the synchronization of the subtitles (which I had to ask around on IRC for for half an hour before I found someone who had it), and oh I did have to install and download a couple of tools to decompress and fix and subtitle and play the movie, but dammit it was all worth it because I saved 5 bucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> People would be very annoyed if suddenly paperbacks cost more than hardcovers.

The situation with ebooks is worse. The ebook costs even less than a paperback to produce and distribute, and let sometimes cost more than the hardcover.

I refuse on principle to pay more for a Kindle ebook than amazon is selling the hardcover.

Edit: Just to clarify, I am happy to pay the same price as the paperback. Paying more than the paperback is what I refuse to do.

<comment><USER7> That's because the legacy book industry spent decades setting up a market segmentation regime that used hardcover books and the paperback release schedule as price discrimination tools.

How is it any more rational to accept the paperback price for an e-book than it is to accept the hardcover price?</comment></comment>


Putting the digital keys to unlock data out of reach of authorities - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/putting-the-digital-keys-to-unlock-data-out-of-reach-of-authorities/2015/07/18/d6aa7970-2beb-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html

<comment><USER2> > A collision is unfolding between law enforcement devoted to fighting crime > and terrorism

However, the methods that they've decided to use, which can be summarized as "knowing everything," means that in raw numbers they're fighting law abiding citizens.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Gist of the editorial: "All freedoms come with limits; it seems only proper that the vast freedoms of the Internet be subject to the same rule of law and protections that we accept for the rest of society."</comment>


2010 Living Planet Report - We're quickly outgrowing our planet - <AUTHOR> http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/me_and_my_planet/footprint_scenarios/

<comment><AUTHOR> Actual report is here: [http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living...](http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/2010_lpr/)</comment>


Show HN: TimeCoach.me – your personal time coach - <AUTHOR> Just an idea I had for a long time. Thought it would be interesting with some pilot persons <comment><USER2> I'm gonna try this out!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks :)</comment></comment>


How I Built an RPG In A Week From Scratch With No Budget - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2259.asp

<comment><USER2> If anyone wants to know what we look for in YC applications, this is it.

<comment><USER3> This is really good to know - one tends to brush over the little accomplishments in life.

With regard to the 7 day RPG article, I want to add that participating in the 48h game programming competition was an extreme amount of fun. I thought that it didn't exist anymore, but just found that there was another one in December: <http://www.ludumdare.com/>

<comment><USER4> Game hackathons are great. My absolute favorite thing about game design is that it brings together such an incredible variety of people: graphics designers, composers, writers, programmers, interface builders. The best game designers are ones that have some understanding of every aspect of their game, even as they specialize. I'd imagine the same is invaluable to startups.

<comment><USER3> I only participated in 1,5 48h game programming competitions, but it was really great. Especially with the irc chat going along with it, following real time what the others were doing and getting quick answers to common game programming problems.

<comment><USER4> Was your competition on-site? As in, did people all meet somewhere? Or was it all hosted online?

<comment><USER3> All online. The 48h competiton was really informal, no prices to be won either. Except for fun an fame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really enjoyed this. Hopefully it can be a bit of an antidote to the self flagellating I sometimes see on Hacker News about not working on something important. The beauty of just making something is a joy in itself that shouldn't be made so difficult and angst ridden.

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone is interested in trying something like this themselves, I recommend checking out:

<http://pyweek.org>

<http://ludumdare.com/>

PyWeek is a week long game programming competition for Python developers, and Ludum Dare is all about 48 hour mostly from scratch video game development. Both are just for fun, but the competitive setup makes for good motivation to accomplish something in a short amount of time. It's lots of fun.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Role Playing Game" or "Rocket Propelled Grenade"?

Ah, Role Playing Game. I guess either would have been interesting.

<comment><USER8> As I'm not much of a gamer, at first I thought he built a rocket propelled grenade. I was surprised he hadn't been visited/silenced by the FBI, etc.

<comment><USER9> BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) is the US agency with jurisdiction.

BATFE used to be part of the Treasury Department (because those items were regulated by tax law) but there have been attempts to move them to the Justice Dept; I don't know if any succeeded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really liked the "Intermission" where he discussed features that he would cut to meet the deadline. I think that's a very important skill and one I would like to improve on for my personal projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Cuts like that are hard, but doing them honestly and really reevaluating what's necessary at least one per dev cycle is really critical. It reminded me of Spolsky talking about how one of the best things they did on Excel 5 was being forced to cut tons of features: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000245.html> point 13

<comment><USER11> Not sure if you sure his aftermath at the bottom (although I do agree that cutting things can be the best approach):

Lesson 9: Cutting features isn't always free

Some of the last-minute changes to Hackenslash really blew the game balance out of whack. The inability of monsters to cast spells, and the lack of need to for the player to 'conserve resources' as he pushes deeper into the dungeon trivialized some of the challenge to the game. If those features were going to stay 'gone,' the game needed another design pass to re-balance it and improve the modified gameplay. In other words, cutting features introduced an additional cost to the development of the game. This made me wonder how many retail games were released in a terrible state because the development team didn't have time to re-visit the game design after features were cut to meet schedule.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I saw that, but the key point for me is that making the changes to meet the deadline rather than giving up is a form of practicing persistence that ought to prove useful in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love doing projects like this, but I tend to get ugly code, since I'm aiming at getting something working quickly (and experimenting with different approaches).

One barrier for me is that the cleanness of the code arguably doesn't matter in a project like this, so the time feels wasted. But, in reality, I'm creating sample code, that I do come back to later, to see how I did things. Like a personal text book. When the code is ugly and hard to follow, it is less useful as sample code. Thinking of it as sample code removes that barrier (that cleanness doesn't matter).

I've started to spend time cleaning up code, and uncluttering it, as I go - but I find it takes an extraordinary amount of time...

</comment><comment><USER13> Damn. This is impressive, yes, but when I read "RPG" I was expecting something with a Final Fantasy-sized plot; as a developer who is also a writer, I was intrigued about the idea of developing an interactive story within such a short timespan--something similar to NaNoWriMo, but producing a game design document rather than a book as output.

<comment><USER4> Think, though: NaNoWriMo gives you a month to develop the story. With game design, that means you'll need at _least_ twice that to produce something of equal length, and that's working with a team.

This was more RPG mechanic rather than RPG. I still find that interesting, though, as the system I used to make RPGs in high school - RM2K, which is still out there - had the mechanics prebuilt and let you focus on detail. This game seemed to be quite the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting way of defining a week. In terms of real "work" weeks, I get the feeling this would have taken longer than only one.

Anyone willing to venture a guess how long given the author only documented productive hours?

<comment><USER15> I'm more interested in the exclusion of thinking time.

He didn't log the time she spent in the shower, but that's when he says some of his best ideas hit him. Personally, I could spend 2 or more hours thinking for every hour of work I do.

<comment><USER16> That's normal over a work week. I don't like to take my work home with me, but yesterdays hard problem tends to be quickly solved when I show up the next day. Which is one of the reasons I stopped working late unless I really need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I did something very similar to this:

<http://danhulton.com/round2/>

Penny Arcade has a subforum wherein from time to time, a battle of sorts takes place. Players are matched up one-on-one and given a week or so to produce SOMETHING that depicts them beating their opponent. Most folk draw something, some wrote and recorded songs, some wrote stories. I wrote a game.

For the first round, I was able to adapt a work in progress (a shooter where you control the location of the ship with WASD and the direction of your shots with your mouse). For the second round, I started from scratch and wrote the above beat 'em up.

(The graphics largely come from River City Ransom, as do all kinds of touches like the sounds people make as you beat 'em up. The characters are altered to represent various forumers avatars, and the heroes was mine - I use the rat- flail from VG Cats as my avatar.)

All in all, I was able to get it done in a single week after a regular 8-hour job coding. And I had a BLAST.

</comment><comment><USER18> Before we started doing more complicated games, the early games on Rock Solid Arcade (Stunt Pilot, Dogfight, Planet Cruncher) were all developed in his definition of a week. It's really fun seeing something come alive so quickly.

</comment><comment><USER19> "Lesson 3: Don't underestimate the art requirements"

I'd add music and script/writing to that as well. Sure, anyone can throw together some beats and chords, and anyone can put words on a page. But doing it well is a lot harder than it looks.

</comment><comment><USER20> Simply brilliant. Really shows how tight focus on goals, some planning, and positive attitude can be very productive.

</comment><comment><USER21> i sort of miss ultima.. and king's quest

<comment><USER22> <http://www.infamous-adventures.com/></comment></comment>


What is the best John le Carré novel? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/best-le-carre-novel <comment><USER2> I nominate _The Secret Pilgrim_.

It's a sequence of vignettes about the Service as related by Smiley during a training session for new recruits. I remember finishing the book, and feeling a profound sense of pity for the broken, fractured people working for MI6.

A lot of Le Carre's stuff deals with the same themes -- but that was the first time I ever _felt_ what the author was trying to put across. I've not read anything with similar impact since.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" For some of us, this bleak and witty thriller was an introduction to grownup reality."_

I think this sentence sums up how I feel about le Carre entirely. _An introduction to grownup reality._

</comment><comment><USER4> The Honourable Schoolboy?

It absolutely has that vast grey nothingness of expectation, hope, attempt, and when something eventually does happen, it turns out to have happened already and there's nothing to do about it any more. Betrayal, perhaps, but in the past tense.

<comment><USER5> This was my favorite of the Smiley series and my favorite of his novels that I have read so far (almost half of them). Really like the change of scenery from the cold and dreary settings of the U.K., Germany, and Russia.

Surprisingly though it is A Murder of Quality (the only Smiley novel not set in the spy world) that has stuck with me the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've never read any of Le Carre's books, but saw a couple of films based on his books. The Little Drummer Girl was a pretty good film, so I'd like to read that book.

<comment><USER7> If you've not seen "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" the film is well worth it, although if you can get hold of the BBC TV series of that and "Smiley's People" . To me Alec Guinness just is George Smiley, far more then he is Ben Kenobi.

Plus as a bonus the books were still excellent reading even after knowing what happens.

<comment><USER8> > To me Alec Guinness just is George Smiley, far more then he is Ben Kenobi.

Now THAT is a superb recommendation. Downloading it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At risk of outing myself as an Anglophile--and of then being shunned by true Brits for saying this--but I rate LeCarre with Anthony Burgess, high on my list of favorite authors. Coincidentally, Burgess took a swing at a spy novel (and at LeCarre and Ian Fleming). Worth a read for fans of the genre.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremor_of_Intent:_An_Eschato...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tremor_of_Intent:_An_Eschatological_Spy_Novel)

</comment><comment><USER10> _A Perfect Spy_ has my vote, it's an incredible book.

<comment><USER11> I had no idea that parts of it were so autobiographical - his father was a convicted con man and associated of the Krays. I'll have to read it again!

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still absolutely love Tinker Tailor as a book. The characterisation is first rate.

Call for the Dead is a really interesting Novel too - Le Carré's first novel and shows both his evolution as a novelist and the evolution of The Circus and Smiley's colleagues. Mendel gets a bit more of a starring role.

</comment><comment><USER13> Once you have read his early classics, "A Most Wanted Man" is well worth a read. It was the book where le Carré rebooted himself for the 21st Century; when I think of it I always think of William Gibson's "Spook Country" alongside it (both thematically and in terms of a reboot).

</comment><comment><USER14> People who like Le Carre will also enjoy this British TV show from the '70s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandbaggers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandbaggers)

</comment><comment><USER15> Actually, I don't like le Carré's books. I think his writing style is tedious and overly obsessed with painfully drawn out descriptive language. There are good stories hiding in there somewhere. But the packaging isn't for me.</comment>


I was wrong about Medium  - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/b8dd55fe23b3

<comment><USER2> I didn't want to sign in to continue. They don't say why this is needed. Confused.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly, I was able to view the post the first time, but loading it up again I got the "Sign in to continue" message. Which is a shame because I was about to make a comment.

Looks like someone's growth hacking.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I give my idea for free and sell myself as its developer? - <AUTHOR>

I had an idea for a tool but I'm not interested in investing money on it, not because I think it's not worth it, but because I have no knowledge about how I would run my own business, find investors, advertise the product, sell the product to customers and so on.
Do you think is it worth yielding an idea to someone who can succeed in making money out of it, provided that you will be working on the code and to be sure to have 6-8 months of guaranteed work?
Thanks
Edit: poor grammar <comment><USER2> You have two options. Find someone to hire you as a programmer and pay you. Second is to find a partner that will do all of these things called non- technical co-founder and share potential profits. That means that you will need to work in parallel with some kind of other job that gives you money to survive and build this as a side project. If you think it is a good idea and can work and generate money I would go for the second option.

</comment><comment><USER3> You might find the James Dyson story instructive. Beyond simply inventing and building his products, he also had to teach himself the vital business functions (sales, marketing, business development, legal, raising capital, etc...) necessary to grow his company.

Before you 'give away' your idea, it may be worth reading> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/955045.Against_the_Odds)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd be happy to talk firstname.lastname@example.com I'm a developer who likes the business side of things haha

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a developer, leave an email and we'll talk email@example.com</comment>


Ask HN: Searching for leads for Web-Dev Company - <AUTHOR>

Can someone tell me how I can find leads for the Web-Development Company I recently started working for. I'm an account manager but this is new to me and I don't have enough experience in this sphere. I will be very thankful if I receive some good advice. Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> leads for what? I assume you mean developers?

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming they mean clients. While the term "lead developer" isn't uncommon, leads is a marketing term for prospective clients.

<comment><USER4> If they mean clients, they already posted the same thing two days ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I did, and I'm sorry for the second post I really lost the first one and I tough that it was deleted. I mean clients we have very good developers :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A business sold my email. What can I do about it? - <AUTHOR>

I have used the + feature in gmail for a while now. I finally received spam from one of these emails. I bought something on mace.com 4 years ago and today I received an email from NewYorkLife.com firstname.lastname@example.com via mailchimp to the same address.
I reported as spam to mailchimp. I told gmail it was spam. I also emailed mace's support address asking them to remove me from the list emails they are selling. Searching google I see lots of suggestions to use the + feature but never what to do after catching someone using it.
Is there anything else I can do about it? <comment><USER2> I do the same thing, but instead of plus addressing I give each vendor a unique email at my domain. I now receive spam on my mint, geico, tumblr, lendingclub, disney, adobe, and dropbox addresses. In my case it's always outright spam instead of something remotely legitimate.

Your situation seems different than mine. I think my addresses were taken during a security breach instead of being sold by the company.

In my case I just change my address with the company to dropbox2@, and block the original address.

I also have a friends-and-family email address that isn't published anywhere online that finally started receiving spams. I think it was taken from a neighbor's address book in hotmail when he got phished.

I think a possible long-term solution would be for everyone to have a unique address for everyone else. The email software would auto-negotiate a unique address after your first communication with the person, creating a pairing similar to a friendship on a social network. I'm getting off-topic, but here's a link explaining what I mean a bit more: [http://stevenjewel.com/2014/02/clearskies- chat/](http://stevenjewel.com/2014/02/clearskies-chat/) (It's about decentralized IM instead of email, but the same antispam technique would work for either.)

<comment><USER3> _In my case I just change my address with the company to dropbox2@, and block the original address._

I suspect some spambots just try common dictionary and business words at domains with valid MX records.

<comment><USER2> I don't think so. Here is my experience so far. For background, I don't run a spam filter at all and host my own mail on a enterprise fiber line that's unlikely to have ISP-level filtering. (If they do have it, it's terrible, since it doesn't even block email that has a certain product targeted at males mentioned in the subject line and spelled correctly.)

I've only seen what would be considered dictionary attempts for four addresses, info@, admin@, sales@, and support@ but only on a few of the domains.

A few years ago I started getting spam at random hexadecimal addresses at two of my domains, such as 72da48ba6@, about two spams per address per day. There turned out to only be ~ 800 unique addresses that were targeted, and so it was easy to block. What I think happened is this case is a address-to-spam-list creator padded his lists manually before selling them to make the list size bigger. I still get email at those 800 addresses, but no new hexadecimal addresses since I blocked the original set.

<comment><USER4> I have a different explanation for the hexadecimal addresses.

I get maybe 30 a day, from numerous sources, and they actually turn out to be legitimate message-IDs which were generated by my host when replying to public mailing-lists.

I think some kind of automated spider decided they were mail addresses.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I hadn't thought of that. That makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use a random email alias on a domain I own for each company I deal with. Generate one, throw in a database. For example: HN could be firstname.lastname@example.com.

When I get incoming spam I can look up who the address is assigned to, cut off the alias and then take further action such as notifying the company, giving them a new email, or cutting ties with them.

I don't bother with retribution (would take too much time) -- if the company is unwilling to acknowledge the incident or it happens multiple times I cut the cord and move on.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could basically file suit, not sure it would be worth the time and effort though.

Hell, even a $500 small claims court suit might make for a good option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does some offer this as a service yet?

<comment><USER6> Your local courthouse?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow up: After some back and forth with support they are forwarding it to the "webmaster". They do not sell emails so no small claims. I will be following up with them.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER7> I doubt it'll be worth your time trying to get something out of it. My experience is that they'll say sorry, and keep on doing it anyway.

Depending on how often they sell the info, you can just change your address with them, and permanently scuttle the original address (saves you from having to look at spam, etc).

<comment><USER7> Forgot to mention - if they'd sold it once, they probably sold it more than once - you just haven't received mail from anyone else yet. Even more reason to just scuttle the address now.

If more people do this, then hopefully selling information like this will become less lucrative over time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume they sold my email. I have no supporting evidence that they did. I did receive an email back from support saying they don't sell email addresses. I replied with more information.

I did just noticed 5 days before I received spam to the same email address from

Copyright © 2014 Amazon.com Best Sellers, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is: firstname.lastname@example.com</comment></comment></comment>


Bye bye Symfony.. Hello Zend - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kwiqq.com/2008/08/12/announcement-bye-bye-symfony-hello-zend/ I've not used PHP for a while but was quite intrigued by this switch.  What's the opinion of the PHP developers amongst you? <comment><USER2> i submitted this on his blog too, but i wanted to point out the fact that codeigniter has the same trend line as symfony/zend but is behind. its ahead of cake, though, which is stagnant.

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=symfony%2C+zend+framework%2C+...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=symfony%2C+zend+framework%2C+cake+php%2C+codeigniter&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=1)</comment>


Press Fails To Ask Any NSA Questions At President Obama's NSA Press Conference - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/09/press-corps-fails-to-ask-any-nsa-questions-at-obamas-nsa-press-conference/

<comment><USER2> Let's not whine about this. We all know the press, politicians, military and corporations are all in cahoots with each other. Let's figure out a way to solve the problem, the same way SOPA was defeated, by swaying public opinion with creative campaigns.

We need to be forcing the issues, equipping people to ask the right questions at every opportunity.

Techs need to get into the political arena and fight the same way the NRA does, with votes in the booth and dollars in the coffers. Otherwise we're going to have our careers sidelined by suits who still think the Internet can be controlled and censored.

I for one am ready to get behind someone we as techs all trust, who can lead the debate and rally the troops. Who are some names? Shirkey? Lessig? Notch? :)

<comment><USER3> MSM is a branch of government. Understanding this simplifies quite a bit.

<comment><USER4> Well, Fox News isn't entirely, e.g. I saw them reporting on I think Silent Circle and Lavabit while my father was cooking today. See e.g. [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+lavabit+s...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+lavabit+silent+circle)

I don't know who works for who, were any of their reporters called on in the press conference?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I want to know when politicians are finally going to start holding crowdsourced press conferences where the questions asked are determined by the audience tuning in to listen to the politician talk. I want a reddit/HN/digg style platform where all the questions are submitted, voted on and then only revealed to the politician at the last minute so they don't have time to carefully prepare an answer.

Richard Nixon was caught off guard by the impact of television when he debated live on TV against John F Kennedy. We need that same moment but for Internet journalism and social audience interaction like the audience voting for what it collectively cares about.

This old media bullshit is quite frankly getting old. Maybe Bezos can shake up things by using the WaPo as the old guard avenue for letting democratic internet processes in to the party.

<comment><USER6> Someone is terribly mad at sane suggestions and commentary today. Yet another seemingly reasonable comment down-voted.

<comment><USER4> " _seemingly_ reasonable" is the key, I down voted it because it wasted my time.

What could possibly motivate politicians in the current system to engage in such a forum??? Look at what happened after the cited example of Nixon in the 1960 debate, such as what didn't happen in this press conference.

Echoing my other comment, I'll bet there was a Fox reporter in the group (I think I would have heard if the Obama had totally shut them out). Was he called?

<comment><USER4> To both current replies: because a detailed answer would have wasted even more of my time. But not so much after others wondered.

There are far too many items where the author simply isn't thinking through to give detailed answers to ([http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/)), and downvotes are explicitly OK for this, last time I checked the rules.

<comment><USER6> Right, it is called disengaging, but that is not what you did. You yourself choose to waste your time and energy on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Loud silence of largest(?) factor why Obama/Putin summit canceled, is a critical topic inversely proportional at 189 decibels, sycophants awkwardly ignoring the big elephant crowding everyone into the corner, cordially with deference exchanging pleasantries.

</comment><comment><USER6> A better suited title would be: 'Press Paid To Fail To Ask Any NSA Questions At President Obama's NSA Press Conference'

This fits entirely into the US government putting a noose on what journalists are and how they must act:

"The person also must intend to report on the news at the start of obtaining any protected information and must plan to publish that news."

"Feinstein suggested that the definition comprise only journalists who make salaries, saying it should be applied just to "real reporters."[1]"

[1] [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/13153224102/sen- fe...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130807/13153224102/sen-feinstein- during-shield-law-debate-real-journalists-draw-salaries.shtml)

edit: Amused myself by imaging a panicked Glenn Greenwald clutching a bunch of print-outs, shouting to a camera that he doesn't know what these are but by god they are SOMETHING.

<comment><USER5> Well he does plan on publishing that protected information as soon as it becomes newsworthy by virtue of demonstrating that some politician or bureaucrat is lying to the American people. The politicians are just holding things up by not lying sooner.

<comment><USER6> Naturally my mind went to how investigations need to brew after data acquisition, but withholding bits of an investigation for those reasons is entirely proper as well.

In an era of journalism changing to be more distributed and less structured there is a multitude of ways the US government's revising seems foul. This is of course completely aside from what you said above, letting officials and others lie themselves into a box.

It seems rather dire that dissemination of information is being attacked on several fronts by what seems to be a wounded beast of a government lashing out at those around it, persons/careers/activists/even methods themselves.</comment></comment></comment>


Google's Stadia Game Service Is Officially Coming November: All You Need to Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/6/18654632/google-stadia-price-release-date-games-bethesda-ea-doom-ubisoft-e3-2019 <comment><USER2> I used to work on cloud gaming and the business is tough. We were the second generation, Onlive and gaikai were the first. We had some edges, but not enough to make it work.

The most difficult part is not technology: delivering low latency video streams. The most difficult part is cost control. At the time we did it, the cost to support one user to play for two months will be more that buying a decent pc or console, assuming 8 hour game play per day.

Google did something smart, using Linux and working with developers. This could make user isolation easier and save money. We engineers thought about it too, but our PMs wanted shortcuts, they wanted to make existing games work.

Cloud gaming is hard. You have to own every piece of the technology to make it work. GPU, video encoder hardware, OS, cloud infrastructure, game content, game distribution platform. Out of all companies, Microsoft seems to have most of the pieces.</comment>


What Startups can learn from Lady Gaga - <AUTHOR> http://www.leveragingideas.com/2009/12/27/startups-lady-gaga/

<comment><USER2> Original at <http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=4249>

</comment><comment><USER3> That being fugly and having absolutely no talent whatsoever does not mean one can't be a commercial success?

<comment><USER4> Are you really sure that's what you mean?

If this is what you call talentless <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3pUItwVxyc>

And let me tell you, musical talent alone will not get you very far in showbusiness.

<comment><USER3> Either you're deaf, or your standards are very low. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I personally know tens of musicians, and most aren't even _that_ talented, who make Lady GaGa look like the proto-amateur she is. Her talent is to sell, not to make music. Last but not least: she's ugly as hell. But then, so was Britney Spears 10 years ago, and that didn't stop her from becoming "successful".

<comment><USER4> We'll have to agreee to disagree then. I'm not so shallow on the appearance part, that's just your sexism.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Internet companies forced to block Pirate Bay, BitTorrent websites in Australia - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-15/federal-court-orders-pirate-bay-blocked-in-australia <comment><USER2> It's not that big of a surprise that they're trying to fight against these torrent sites, but we all know there is no need to worry.

This is one good example how easy it is to unblock them [https://fried.com/guides/unblock-pirate-bay-australia-how- to...](https://fried.com/guides/unblock-pirate-bay-australia-how-to-2016/)

</comment><comment><USER3> So this was spearheaded by Telstra, and Foxtel (joint established by News Corp and Telstra) who have enjoyed dominance, even near monopolies in some areas, of communications in this country for years.

Rupert Murdoch's empire is also directly responsible for getting our National Broadband Network cancelled.

We were building a fibre network, where 93% of homes and businesses would get fibre to the premises, (the last 7% were rural premises that would get fixed wireless or satellite connections). It was a gigabit-capable passive optical network, where any ISP could pay their wholesale fees and offer their services, with nobody locked out. Reliable, fast, and fair. It wasn't some distant, theoretical pipe dream. It was really happening. About a million homes already got it installed, beginning in 2009. It was working fantastically. They can all get 100Mbit up and 40 down right now, and business users can even order gigabit if they're willing to pay for it.

Then, Murdoch's media empire installed a new conservative government. They handed them the election in their media, in exchange for destroying the NBN. They didn't want competition with their cable TV, and Telstra did't want competition for fixed line internet.

And the party immediately called a halt to the fibre installation, replacing the fibre plan with basically the worst internet technology known to man - fibre to the node (i.e. glorified DSL). Now the rest of us are promised only 12Mbit (supposedly 25mbit in the future, and supposedly 50Mbit after that, but they have absolutely no plan for how they're going to achieve these higher speeds over the degraded copper). They also kicked a bunch of people off fixed line connections entirely.

The argument at the time was 'it's cheaper, quicker to install, and nobody will ever need more than 25Mbit' (they actually said that). And since the maintenance, power, and upgrade costs are so much higher, it's actually far more expensive.

And many people are going to be DOWNGRADED, their 24Mbit DSL replaced with slower FttN if the node isn't near them, or having the fibre on their HFC cable connected to phone lines in a horrible hybrid monstrosity, or their unlimited DSL ripped out entirely in favour of wireless with 30GB download limits. Enjoying 100Mbit cable now? Maybe they'll upgrade it. Or maybe you'll get to wave goodbye as the Liberal party dumps anything on you going all the way down to 25 or even 12mbit instead.

The speeds are disastrous. I've talked to people getting 14, 10, and even less than 1 Mbit from this "Superfast broadband". And people are getting dropouts multiple times a day, which they deem "acceptable".

It has severely screwed up the future of this country. It's severely limited the areas I can rent or buy a home in in the future if I'm going to stay long term. And our economy and businesses are absolutely screwed. Medicine, research, education, jobs... down the drain. And simply your ability to have a fast, reliable internet connection at home or at work.

It makes me angry to think about it. It's so unjust to sell out our country so a few billionaires can increase their stock price some more that it makes me sick.

They have nothing but their own corporate interests in mind. They will stomp on and destroy and hold back the internet and our ability to use it in any way they can. The sooner we all stop listening to these Fox ratbags the better.</comment>


OLPC CTO quits to start her own company that will use her inventions done at OLPC - <AUTHOR> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/more-great-news-for-olpc-team-their-cto.html

<comment><USER2> I got one during the G1G1 deal, and it's really nice...but everytime I fire it up, I have a few wishes:

1\. More RAM 2\. Faster (I don't think the hardware is to blame...I think the Python-focused UI is just not efficient enough for a 400MHz 256MB system) 3\. More storage

I've fixed the 3rd, and the 1st partially, by adding a class 6 SD card, and assigning 1GB to swap and 7GB to storage. So, I can do real work on it now...including running Firefox 3.0b2. I'm a few minutes away from having it converted to running xmonad for the window manager, and expect it to be much more usable (for my needs) at that point.

The limitations of the default "Sugar" software are striking, for someone that has a pretty ingrained sense of how to use a UNIX system (I've been nearly exclusively a Linux/UNIX user for over 10 years...when I use a Mac or Windows box, I'm constantly hitting middle mouse button expecting something good to happen...like pasting the last thing I highlighted). In Sugar, Copy/Paste works in a very clunky and slow manner, even worse than Mac OS X or Windows, and doesn't work at all in the terminal application.

So, what the heck am I rambling for? I guess to say that I would be among the first to buy an upgraded OLPC that is slightly faster, runs a more standard Linux installation, and has more storage and memory. Even if it cost a little more than the G1G1 $400 price point. A bigger screen would be sweet, too.

<comment><USER3> Here's the thing: It's not _for_ you.

(<http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would have been better as a link to [http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1290/olpc-cto-jepsen- quits-07123...](http://www.itworld.com/Comp/1290/olpc-cto-jepsen- quits-071231/) as the FSJ commentary adds nothing to the original article.

</comment><comment><USER5> My mother in law did the "give one get one" thing. Now she has cheap and durable wireless connectivty she can take when she travels abroad and (hopefully) a child somewhere will get a better education.

I wonder if an XO business where travellers could rent them cheaply and return them when they are done (like DVDs from Netflix) could work.

<comment><USER6> Huh, interesting idea. Customer provide their own USB thumbdrive for storage, and otherwise use Google apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if there's any way that project would have realistically worked as a for-profit venture that would have created similar benefits for the kids it targeted, as well as perhaps making some money for those involved. Obviously, money isn't their primary motivation, but as this shows, perhaps it wouldn't have hurt to have a bit more to spread around.

</comment><comment><USER8> The screen technology developed for the OLPC has the potential to benefit mobile devices tremendously. A multi-touch pad the size of the OLPC would kick-ass. Interactivity is what makes electronic devices compelling. It would make the Kindle look like a clunky thing from the Victorian age by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hate sites that don't allow my browser to go back.</comment>


How Japan Lost Its Electronics Crown - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120815/how-japan-lost-its-electronics-crown/

<comment><USER2> Japan's electronics industry has many issues holding it back, but the biggest one in my mind is how they perceive and implement user interfaces.

I recall buying a Sony MZ-N10 minidisc player [1] around 2002 and it was a technological breakthrough for its time - impossibly thin, light, robust and could record audio to disc with incredible clarity. The electronic disk ejection mechanism was very cool. The battery life was unheard of. The was a button for every function, and every function could be messed with. I remember keeping the language in Japanese and the eerie blue backlight on the remote permanently turned on so that it looked cool.

But at the time it was released Apple had released the iPod. Basically a tiny HDD and audio decoder hidden under a simple user interface and simple human- machine-interface. All it did was play music, and it could store a lot of it for a little over half the price of the MZ-N10. Instead of being encrusted with a myriad of buttons, it relegated the functionality to the user interface. Simplicity through clever software.

Since then every Japanese gadget I've purchased has suffered from the same problem - excellent engineering but poor user-interface. The one exception being my Canon image stabilised binoculars which have exactly one button and a focus ring. Japan still reigns supreme for optics.

[1] <http://www.minidisc.org/brian_youn/mzn10/></comment>