Telegram team left Russia and looking for a country to work from - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/durov/posts/10152105672952029 <comment><AUTHOR> Citation from a Facebook post by Pavel Durov (founder of vk.com and Telegram), for those who don't want to open Facebook:

\---

As you probably know, I am out of Russia. Me and my team of 12 engineers have a temporary HQ in Central Europe, and we are now looking for a permanent base to work from. We are choosing a new home, a country that will allow us to develop our projects with privacy and freedom of speech in mind.

Our team includes 6 ACM champions and 6 winners of other programming contests. These guys made it possible for Telegram Messenger to gather 40 million registered users worldwide just within 8 months after its launch. Several members of this team, including my brother, were crucial in making VKontakte what it is today — the only social network that defeated Facebook in an open local market. We are now going to build our next project, a mobile social network.

What country or city do you think would suit us best? Please feel free to comment below. To give you an idea of our preferences, we dislike bureaucracy, police states, big governments, wars, socialism and excessive regulation. We like freedoms, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, neutrality and civil rights.

P.S. If you happen to represent a government that meets our criteria, you are welcome to share ideas with me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER3> Switzerland, what else?

Words unfortunately spoken by someone from the Netherlands.

<comment><USER4> I read a year ago that the Netherlands were about to pass big reforms to shrink the welfare state. Did that ever happen?

<comment><USER5> Also; not really. Small changes on the fringes and generally lowering welfare payouts but nothing too massive, luckily.

Firing was made a lot easier in the private sector though; reducing it to _essentially_ at will employment with a forced separation allowance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd recommend Berlin or Israel. The latter I'm very surprised would make my list but only under these special circumstances.

ISRAEL: It is by far the most disgustingly capitalistic country I've ever lived in but the VK crew may find this to their benefit. They will also find a nice and strong Russian community in Israel and a large pool of talent to pull from. What they will not find there is any sort of non-commercial activity (non-edu research, hacker spaces, fringe technical movement of any type) nor will they find a government interested in free speech. And they will have to turn a blind eye to all the shit their tax dollars will be put toward.

BERLIN: If you want free speech then definitely go to Berlin. Germanys conservative government comes off more liberal than the US's most liberal government. You'll find strong party factions with ties to post-NSA thinkers and movers. The place is beaming with intellectual discourse. It is also a hacker mecca so there are plenty of fringe technological movements. What you will not find is a large tech community (though it is growing fast) nor a very money driven culture.

Go to Berlin if you want to make impact on the world. Go to Israel if you want to make money.

<comment><USER7> > ISRAEL

I don't think it would meet the no wars criteria (probably the police state one too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Come down to Santa Cruz, Bolivia!

Minimal bureaucracy, you can register your company in an afternoon. [http://www.fundempresa.org.bo/](http://www.fundempresa.org.bo/)

You can buy a huge location for peanuts. Or even rent a huge mansion for $2000/month. I'm talking about a place that could house a team of 50 easily.

Weather is really beautiful, 90% of the time it's warm and sunny. The winter months are May/June/July. With only 1 week or two of real 'winter' weather.

Lots of untapped talent. The best developers here work for outsourcing companies making about $1000-$1200/month. If you were to offer $2000 you can easily poach the best.

Cost of living is minimal. $600/month and you're set.

<comment><USER9> Language barrier may be a problem, but offering premium wages might find a surprising number of russian and english speakers.

<comment><USER10> Spanish is pretty easy to learn, though, no?

<comment><USER11> The syntax is straightforward, but the standard library is large, and some of the forks are mutually incompatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For small innovating business-friendly countries I would suggest Estonia or Slovakia. If you like sea and nice weather Slovenia, Croatia or Monte Negro.

<comment><USER13> Slovakia is nice nature-wise, but I would probably chose Czech Republic over it. Slovakia is pretty religious, meaning they don't like homosexuals and drugs (harsh possible sentences for users). Corruption is pretty high as well, though I doubt it's much worse from any of the mentioned countries.

<comment><USER12> I am actually Czech and my business is based in Prague :-)

Slovakia made lot of progress in past 10 years. In business friendlies it is ahead, it also has more stable and simpler laws. In Czech rep every new government totally changes taxes, accounting, working law...

Religion wise I do not know. Czech republic is probably the most agnostic country in Europe (if now in the world), and I have not noticed much difference in tolerance compared to Slovakia. Being from Russia will be probably bigger issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "We are now going to build our next project, a mobile social network."

The chances of becoming a serious Whatsapp competitor have just vanished. Focus is everything, spread too thin and you're done for good.

<comment><USER15> From what I heard, Telegram was intended as a testbed and the team didn't quite expect the exposure it received.

This is going to be a separate product from Telegram. Durov knows what focus is, he kept VK very focused while he was around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Narnia looks like a safe choice.

<comment><USER16> It suffered from recent political instability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Singapore. In response to the preferences they expressed on Facebook, it's got little bureaucracy, a small government, no wars, minimal regulation, a strong judicial system, a relatively free market (ranked no. 2 in the world for economic freedom).

Not such a free place if you want to displace the government or use recreational drugs, however, but business-wise it's pretty open.

<comment><USER18> For the average business, sure( _), but Telegram isn 't your average business. Singapore is a police state, and it isn't particularly big on freedoms, strong judicial systems (for anything remotely political) or civil rights.

(_) [http://gyrovague.com/2013/10/30/half-the-donut-why-an- entrep...](http://gyrovague.com/2013/10/30/half-the-donut-why-an-entrepreneur- earning-100k-gets-to-keep-over-99k-in-singapore-but-under-57k-in-san- francisco/)

<comment><USER17> As far as I'm aware though they haven't persecuted anyone for encryption- related business. What rights/freedoms are there that are important to Telegram but endangered in Singapore (not rhetorical; serious question)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Canada, Toronto specifically, but other cities are great too.

Canadian government is decidedly anti-Putin. Canada has both start-up visa program[0] and business immigration program[1]. Lots of talent. As for bureaucracy, police state, regulation, and big governments - really depends on whom you ask and everything is relative so I'll leave it at that.

[0] [http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start- up/ind...](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start-up/index.asp)

[1] [http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Longyearbyen, Norway.

They even have high-speed optic fiber on the island. And here is a nice property for sale, should be great for a small team of 2-4: [http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/object?finnkode=448...](http://www.finn.no/finn/realestate/homes/object?finnkode=44864871) Plane tickets to the mainland are dirt cheap.

Anyway, that is my dream – to get a comfortable, cozy place far away from the continent. Whatever happens out in the world, will likely not distract me from work.

Edit: >They have a team of 12

Well then, one could always buy land and build on it. Also on Svalbard, taxes are pretty low.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you are in central europe you can pick Poland (northern Gdansk or western Poznan - Gdansk is web hub of country, Poznan is business and web hub).

Poland is not really friends with Russian government lately so they will protect you. Also - not like small countries - they are large enough to stand strong on any requests from big countries about data sharing etc. Some Polish people speaks russian and most young speak english so you would be covered. Cultural differences are not huge so it would be easy to blend in for you.

Another guess - Ireland. Country in Nato but in reality its neutral. There is only 12.5% corporate tax, social is pretty good and everybody speaks english. Just pick Dublin or Cork - those are more "ahead" cities. They have good web connection and there are some activities in them. They are also safe. Country is extremely friendly to web startups (good network - lots of free help). Prices are really high though.

Canada - it might be hard for visa (unless you state your reason of data protection - Canada is another country having issues with Putins politics). Canada protects freedom to speech and they can protect your data from russia easily. Energy independent (nobody can bully them) is pretty expensive though. Pick Vancouver or Toronto. If you are hardcore - choose Calgary - <USER2> weather but 0% state tax and business oriented community.

There are also places like New Zealand (might be to remote), Vietnam or Phillipines (to small to really give good protection), Japan (expensive and cultural differences might be a problem). Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER22> If you are interested in Ireland there are some pretty useful government agencies that encourage business locating here.

[http://www.idaireland.com/help/](http://www.idaireland.com/help/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Berlin would be a smart bet. Lots of engineers and other tech companies.

A history of privacy violations has resulted in a favourable right to privacy enshrined in law. It isn't watertight, but it is better than many others.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ahh, the search for a country that doesn't exist. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER25> How poetic of him to post this on Facebook of all places!

</comment><comment><USER26> I just love the answer of a russian which posted an image of the international space station. Might be worth a try.

Switzerland is a good location, regarding laws and no corruption. I wonder however how they are going to get work permits anywhere in westeurope tough, when they are all russians. I guess investing a lot of money might fix that problem.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd also suggest Berlin, but aren't they in berlin already? If so, I'd be interested to know why are they looking for yet another country? Sure, you need to know some German to get around, but otherwise berlin has a pretty good climate for startups (and the cost of living is not as high as in Switzerland or Iceland).

</comment><comment><USER28> I realize we need a new country, a new "Wild West". How is that seasteading country doing?

<comment><USER29> A bunch of countries in Africa probably fit much of your wanted model. Not everything there is hunger, murder and poverty.

<comment><USER30> Can you name some?

<comment><USER29> I have friends in Tanzania, and you could also consider South-Africa, and probably a lot more that I don't know anything about. But it depends on exactly what kind of "Wild West" you're looking for, and I'm no expert on Africa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would suggest some South American country. Military coups seems like a thing of past and they're pissed at US for various reasons (like spying on them and supporting all those military coups in first place). Something like Uruguay?

<comment><USER32> Costa Rica? My brothers company has had a software development subsidiary there for more than a decade. Upside: Educated, motivated workforce, reasonable business climate, short plane ride to US and rest of S. America. Great weather and outdoors. Downside: it's not yet quite up to EU or US infrastructure standards, which could cause issues (all of which can be mitigated). Cost of living is not a cheap as it once was. Traffic in San Juan sucks. There will definitely be some cultural issues to be aware of between Slavs and S. Americans. If he's really rabidly anti-socialist, they have universal health care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How about leaving Europe for ... Bali?

Its all over the BBC News today: [http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27043778](http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27043778)

</comment><comment><USER7> Australia is pretty good. The government could be a little smaller, but it's not too bad. Melbourne and Sydney have a pretty good tech scene.

The weather is different from Russia.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why not Bulgaria.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ecuador, Bolivia or Uruguay?

</comment><comment><USER36> > freedoms, strong judicial systems, small governments, free markets, > neutrality and civil rights

i wonder what ppl from the east think europe is. europe is one big of a mess of enforced conformity. souvereignty was not in that list but i think it's implied. there's no such thing in any eu country (except uk, maybe). even switzerland has laid down to their masters overseas.

civil rights, small government, neutrality? get out of here as long as you can, buddy.

<comment><USER37> except uk? even in China there is no [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law)

<comment><USER36> there. thanks for proving my point and exposing all those downvoting bastards. not that i care but i guess jtrig just pays too much.

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipula...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig- manipulation/)</comment></comment></comment>


YC summer startup, Splashup launches (formerly Fauxto) - <AUTHOR> http://www.splashup.com

<comment><USER2> Beautiful web design, excellent execution of the app!

Small bugs:

File -> Exit still says Fauxto

I couldn't capture an image from my webcam. I'm using latest Firefox, Flash & Macbook Pro... tried all sources listed and all I got was a black image.

Feature request:

Ellipse tool... make it like PS so that I can constrain it to a circle.

All in all, the best image editor I've seen so far. Congrats.

<comment><USER3> " _I couldn't capture an image from my webcam. I'm using latest Firefox, Flash & Macbook Pro... tried all sources listed and all I got was a black image._"

Go to fauxto, right click the window and click settings, then the webcam tab, then select your webcam in the drop-down list. On a MacBook Pro you need to select "USB Video" to use the built in iSight.

<comment><USER2> Works! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> impressive....useful when I'm at school and don't have photoshop but need to crop/edit an image.

I doubt it can be used seriously for design though...still lacking too many features. I'm using Photoshop 7 and it still doesn't quite compare...

</comment><comment><USER5> Way to go guys, look and feel is fantastic. This is a great step for the world's most jaw-dropping web app.

</comment><comment><USER6> Really nice. It does suffer from a lack of keyboard shortcuts. Just for simple things like holding down shift while drawing an oval to get an exact circle.

I can't see it replacing any of my current tools yet, but it's well on the way.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just curious: how does Adobe's plan to release the web-based Photoshop play into your strategy?

<comment><USER8> Adobe isn't going to eat their own cash cow. You can see their response to online image editors here: <http://www.download.com/8301-2007_4-9790734-12.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> impressive, although i dont think i'd ever really use it. its surprisingly advanced, which is good - but being an advanced user, theres NO reason to NOT just get photoshop.

<comment><USER5> Being a webapp Splashup can do some things Photoshop can't, like saving directly to your Flickr or Facebook account (among others).

<comment><USER10> Not too hard to google for such functionality, and find a free plugin that does the job: <http://pixelnovel.com/flickrshop.html>

But an image editor is really not the place for such tools, which belong in an organizer tool like Lightroom, iPhoto, or Bridge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would like if my mouse turned into a different icon when I am using a tool.

Example: I was cropping an image, but my mouse still looked like the standard mouse pointer. Later I clicked on the image and forgot I had the crop tool still in use. Not sure how photoshop does this, but I don't remember having this problem with PS.

<comment><USER8> You're right. Cursors, and keyboard shortcuts, should go a long way toward increasing the usability of Splashup, that's our hope anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> First off, super impressive app.

When I went to submit feedback while demoing, it asked me to authenticate after I submitted it - not sure if it went through.

I found a bug as well: Open an image, select an area, go to edit -> copy, and then the image disappears.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I'll get right on that. There will be another release in the next day or so and that'll be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> i found a form to submit this but when I went again to "contact us" i didn't find the feedback form

bug: when creating text if the text box is empty and click somewhere in the image new text layers are created with the previous textbox remaining active.

also simple users wont be familiar with the layers concept so if they try to create some text and right afterwards try to paint with the brush because the background layer is not selected it will seem to them it doesn't work because they wont be able to paint.

other than that its obvious it's great work

* oh and i was impressed when I even found layer effects

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the fact that I have to pay 650 bucks for a new version of photoshop makes this an attractive option for potentially lots of people. Great job guys !

</comment><comment><USER15> feature request: tour to include some case-scenarios? my home pc has literally GBs of photos - can you provide some scenarios that would tempt my wife to invest some time in using your web app? examples include: backup your photos with our secure server, using filters to make your beach photos awesome, batch renaming functions (prefix suffix etc) etc. not hassling you at all, i just can't see the hook to a non-PS user

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice job guys ... but why is Posterize in there? Having been a hardcore photoshop user since v2.0 I can't ever find a reason for that filter!

<comment><USER8> You know, even while putting it in I couldn't figure out why people would use it. Nonetheless, it was nice to have figured out how it worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Man, I had no idea server-side GUIs had gotten this good... if it ran a little bit faster, it would feel close to a desktop app.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't call this a "server side GUI"... It's a client side application that happens to be loaded from a server and run within a browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would it be possible to add an option where you can design your own (3x3, 5x5, etc.) filter?

<comment><USER8> Certainly. Do you think a lot of people would use it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats Dave and Hugo! Fauxto was awesome but this rocks so much harder.

</comment><comment><USER21> very impressive - i've been awaiting the release of this app and it surpasses my expectations so far - this is huge - congrats and thanks for building this!

</comment><comment><USER22> Are keyboard shortcuts going to be added?

<comment><USER8> Yep, it's just difficult because there are so many scenarios to account for with any given shortcut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Didn't yc also fund Pixoh/snipshot?

<comment><USER24> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78815>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations Dave and Hugo!

</comment><comment><USER26> Congrats fellas!

</comment><comment><USER27> congrats dave! congrats hugo!

</comment><comment><USER28> Impressive

</comment><comment><USER29> congrats guys!</comment>


Ask HN: Wanting to become a programmerkeep running into problems - <AUTHOR> Hi all...Little bit of background.  I am 43 years old and have been working as a sysadmin type person for the last few years.  I have some scripting skills (bash, perl, python) that I acquired as part of my job. I do not have formal comp sci education.
I have been wanting to learn how to become a "decent" programmer with the following goals in mind to move towards on a _professional_ basis (aka make some money doing) - AI, machine learning, potentially game development.
Anyway, towards that end, I have been doing a bunch of research and tried a couple of things but keep running into issues.  I have started MOOCs and never finished due to getting frustrated on the problem sets.  Looked into Python (CS61A, MIT 6.001.x), Scheme (SPD1x)..tried going through SICP (got destroyed at the first chapter), HTDP2e (stopped again)...
Partially it is due to the lack of time to actually devote to psets, partially due to getting frustrated and giving up too early....probably I am not doing things too efficiently and all over the place...  I find the problem sets too difficult at times and just get frustrated and start looking at other options which is I am guessing the crux of the issue.
Does anyone have any advice? <comment><USER2> I think you know exactly the reason. You've even written them down.

There is no easy way around, it's not supposed to be easy. If it was easy anyone would be doing it.

One piece of advice is you should have some sort of concrete goal in mind. It's so easy to give up if you're learning it without a clear goal. When I taught myself to code I didn't learn it because I want to be a "good programmer". I learned because I had an idea and really wanted to build it. Unlike most people I had 0 mentors and my learning was 100% dependent on the Internet. So sometimes I would go on for days trying to figure out something which turned out to be as easy as one line of code. That's why Stackoverflow is your best friend when starting out.

Conclusion: Put yourself in a situation where you can't give up, and remember that "I can't find time to..." is just an excuse you tell yourself to rationalize in 99% of the cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. I understand what you are saying. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe try delphi - it's a nice visual drag and drop environment using a variant of pascal. If you're quick they have a free offer on the starter version today (nope it's expired). It's a good easy way to learn the programming part. You can move on to the more complex things then</comment>


Material Design for Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://fezvrasta.github.io/bootstrap-material-design/ <comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=material+design+bootstrap#!/story/...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=material+design+bootstrap#!/story/forever/0/material%20design%20bootstrap)

</comment><comment><USER3> God forbid I ever spend time making something and put it on hacker news. Dismissing an idea doesn't take any work. Good job, fezvrasta.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I know that's exactly how my comment reads. However, given how many CSS frameworks are posted to HN everyday I think it's reasonable to expect at very least the demo to be mobile friendly, especially if it's touting material design.

<comment><USER3> I was not referring to yours as you gave constructive feedback (and indeed, mobile version needs work). I'm talking about the blanket dismissals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FezVrasta - Nice work!

I'm curious about your choice of license[0]. I've been considering the use of a non-commercial license for a project I'm working on. Would you mind discussing:

1\. Your motivation for the choice. Is it to prevent people from reselling the theme?

2\. The impact, if any, that the choice has had on adoption. With the popularity of the project, it doesn't seem to be an issue. In your experience are users not using your project to built commercial application? Or are they violation the terms (un)intentionally?

3\. Your longterm objectives for the project. Do you plan on making this into a business by selling commercial licenses? Do you plan on having a standard commercial license fee, or do you believe it works better to negotiate each license independently?

Thanks!

0: [https://github.com/FezVrasta/bootstrap-material- design/blob/...](https://github.com/FezVrasta/bootstrap-material- design/blob/master/LICENSE.md)

Edit: grammar, added license

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I really love this project, but I have to say I generally avoid using non-free libraries when developing[0]. (To give one specific use case: if I would like to create a FOSS website, this means that I cannot use this library and provide the whole result under a single free license.)

That aside, this looks really well-done! I already have a lot of sites built around Bootstrap, so I may give this a test drive later today.

[0] Free-as-in-freedom, which includes the freedom to use software for any purpose (so a non-commercial use requirement makes the software non-free).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> OP don't listen to all the haters in this thread.

This is absolutely gorgeous and fluid smooth , atleast on Desktop. I can see this becoming very popular in the months ahead.

And why all the hate for the animations ? They are well thought out and provide context .

Design is continuously evolving and Material Design will also evolve to overcome some of its shortcomings such as a lack of information density and a rather flat look.

<comment><USER8> Why the hate? Some of us have been around for a long time and seen the same UI mistakes repeated over and over. This approach to animation seems to take something that wasn't broken in the first place, and replace it with something worse. On most sites today, I put my cursor over a button and it lights up or fades on hover. If I click it or touch it, it depresses. That's plenty of affordance. I don't see how replacing a simple effect with a dramatic, second long button flash improves matters. And if the material evangelists had their way, this is how every website would work.

Of course you can see this becoming popular in the months ahead. There's always some stupid trend that makes headlines for a few years, then fades away. Remember when gradients and reflections were in? Remember when everyone had to have a splash page? The best design ignores trends and builds upon all we've learned about user behavior since the first command line. There's always room for improvement and experimentation. But as long as we're locked in the fad-of-the-year hype cycle, we turn the whole web into a poorly designed experiment, with users as our unwilling test subjects.

<comment><USER9> The kind of effect you're talking about goes against material design... actually a lot of what is in the theme breaks the guidelines and their intent.

I'm disappointed that this project didn't start as a fork of bootstrap, then the changes applied. It really seems like a designer trying to make a money play off of other's efforts. I can't be certain that is the case, but that is definitely the feel I get, and even then it seems to be only halfway there with the shadows applied to elements they don't belong in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried to follow the style of the Bootswatch, in this way it's very easy for users to inject this theme in any Bootstrap website. I'm thinking about writing a separated project sharing the CSS and basing it on some grid system without Bootstrap dependencies, keeping the compatibility with Bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is basically unusable on an iPhone 5S - text/elements bleeding off the panel, unclear scroll areas (easy to swipe the background scroll area). I thought the big use case of MD was to deliver a more intuitive interface especially on mobile. This misses the mark by a wide margin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently this framework supports only desktop devices, the demo is not yet compatible with mobile but will be soon (let me find some time to work on it :P)

<comment><USER10> You are doing great work Fez, you are very active/responsive to the issues on github. Anyone involved in the project knows the effort that has gone into it.

I will be using your repo later this month, and will be more than happy to help contribute to your library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The ripple effect when clicking buttons is a 20x20px div with 100% border- radius and a CSS scale transform animation, created when clicked, where clicked.

<comment><AUTHOR> So?

<comment><USER12> What's with the attitude? It was a good observation. I think a lot of people wondered how it was done.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was just wondering why he posted it :)

<comment><USER11> I crave neat implementations of fancy animations and this is one. Congrats!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This project raised a question for me: what is the copyright or licensing situation with Google's Material Design? The specification itself appears to be copyright Google, but several implementations of the specification on the Web are under permissive licenses:

Google's Web Starter Kit ([https://developers.google.com/web/starter- kit/](https://developers.google.com/web/starter-kit/)) uses the Apache License 2.0

Polymer is implementing Material Design for its Paper Elements collection ([https://www.polymer-project.org/docs/elements/paper- elements...](https://www.polymer-project.org/docs/elements/paper- elements.html#paper-button)) under a BSD license.

Angular is implementing it ([https://material.angularjs.org/](https://material.angularjs.org/)) under the MIT license.

Is Material Design for Google and Android apps only? Can anyone implement it on the Web?

<comment><USER14> I think they'd let you if quality is on-par; not confusing their (prospect) clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's with the non-commercial licence?

<comment><USER16> Kudos is referring to this:

 _This program is free software: you can redistribute it and /or modify it under the terms you can find below.

You can use this software for free only for no-profit projects. If you'd like to use this software in a commercial project you may contact the author (Federico Zivolo) of the software and ask for his permission and fulfill his conditions._

<comment><USER17> The no commercial license definitely makes it not free (as in speech) software. This definitely killed my interest.

Edit- I also think the license should be noted much more prominently otherwise its going to bite people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The floating labels in input text fields are a nice finding.

The click animation for most elements is too strong, though, at least on the desktop. I haven't tried on touchscreens, they may be good enough feedback for direct finger touch, but they are distracting when using the mouse for clicks.

Is the exact highlight animation mandated by Material guidelines, or can it be tweaked? I believe a fast, simultaneous "fade" effect that made the animated circle/rectangle lighter while its moving would be enough to make it subtler and less aggressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> The "ripple effect" could be surely be improved, I'll try to improve it studying the Lollipop implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it strange there's so many different material design implementations (for the web, no idea how it's going on in android), shoudn't at least the CSS be centralized to avoid uneccesary efforts and then provide specialized packages for things like bootstrap, jQuery UI themes, angular, react etc that all use the same base CSS?

I know it's probably utopic but it looks like there's a lot of "wasted" energy in these kind of projetcs.

<comment><USER20> If Google released their own, then presumably these would mostly disappear. I guess Google's focus right now is on Android, although elements of Material design are appearing on things like Google Docs, so they'd think they'd release that publicly, just as Twitter did with Bootstrap.

<comment><USER20> In fact, Google offers a downloadable zip file of color swatches, which is a bunch of adobe files. Great for designers who use those tools, less than ideal for designers who don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How about don't slow down navigation to play an animation. Function over form. Every time. Never artificially slow your user down for the sake of "pretty". Pretty is subjective, snappy is objective and appreciated by everyone.

The navigation feels like when I was 12 and wrote my first c++ program adding "cool loading animations" for no reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> This demo is intended as a clone of the Polymer demo page, and it must tell the user say "wow", not say "productive!". It's the developer that includes this framework that will have to make its app productive.

<comment><USER21> Having looked at the polymer page I see what you were going for and I can even agree with the above poster who commended your clever implementation of the animations. You even have a point saying it's on the developer.

I just can't help but feel that many of these new design ideas and frameworks that are constantly posted are completely missing the mark by valuing "this looks pretty" over "this actually works".

They break the back button. They break scrolling. They slow down the loading of new content by animating it. All these things _while pretty_ create a worse user experience, and by including it in examples they make it inevitable it will find its way into the wild. I'm not asking for everything to work in lynx, I just want to not feel like my browsing has been handicapped.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the bug on my demo is on the back button. The scrolling works just fine. And I'm gonna fix the back button soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Other than menus (which don't follow material design guidelines), and modals... I don't think the designer really understands how material design is supposed to work.

I'd been thinking that it would be nice to see a material design theme go into bootstrap.. I like that VezVrasta has integrated the color pallet but not sure how well integrated it is.

I would say that the Jumbotron, wells, etc shouldn't be raised materially, and that the shadow effect should probably simple be a sub-class used by the JS based overlays, which should then follow the material design guidelines.

Nice effort, but I think it's not quite right.

</comment><comment><USER22> Really lovely for the most part.

The input boxes rather lack affordance/discoverability or whatever you want to call it. Basically - they don't look inputty enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> They just follow the Material Design specs, and this is the purpose of this theme. One can then take this theme and customize it for its purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I personally enjoy the animations, I just hate how damn slow they are! This needs to be much faster in response to user input.

</comment><comment><USER8> I get that animations can help users sometimes. But these animations are waaaaayyyyy too long.

Everyone stop with this material design bullshit. Just because Google released a new design language with a fancy name doesn't mean you have to mindlessly copy the most shallow parts of it. The fundamentals of UI design didn't change. Carry on.

<comment><USER14> This bootstrap material design also does not resonate here .. its hard to get right. I do not like the animations or pointless overlapping panels either.

But stop? I disagree because Google's material design is not about the animations. Its about using minimal appearance chrome to strengthen UI context. Is it part of something, or is it "laying" on top of it? Is it approaching me, or laying back? Its 2,5D.

For example note how the button shadow intuively distinguishes it from a card or other UI-panel.

I see good things for Material Design whenever we have 2,5D or 3D displays in our devices. And so wil iOS with its icon/background parallax effect, which for now is only a gimmick. These where basically made with that in mind.

<comment><USER8> "Its about using minimal appearance chrome to strengthen UI context."

Keeping chrome to a minimum and adding context are great design principles. But I wouldn't call it material design. It's called _good design_. I don't think we need a new name for fundamental design principles that have been known for years. Just calling it "material design" attracts the copycats, who would rather copy the look than understand the fundamentals. We should simply talk about good design, and encourage people to study timeless design principles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really like the look of Material but not all the animations.

</comment><comment><USER25> I hope this doesn't take off. If bootstrap wasn't annoying enough, we'll soon have this abomination on every MVP site.

Animation for animation's sake. Design for design's sake. This is just tacky.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's the problem with animations? We have 8 cores with 3ghz+ and 16gb of ram to just render plain text?

<comment><USER26> Because it takes time and is distracting.

An interface should be snappy and get out of your way, not try to impress with pointless animations. That screams graphic designer trying and failing to do UX. Which is material in a nutshell really.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that a compromise can be found, just check out Lollipop to see a successful example.

<comment><USER18> There are some glitches when animating layouts. The "primary action button" (is that what the floating circle was called?) sometimes covers the scrollbar after resizing the window, and jumps around on mouse-over; and when the browser window is not maximized, after selecting an option in the left vertical menu, the floating panels jump around a lot vertically before stopping. I'm using latest Chrome on Windows 7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks really nice, one nitpick: You use the placeholder-as-label anti-pattern (src: [http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#the-placeholder- attrib...](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/forms.html#the-placeholder-attribute)) in the search field of the navbar. That almost put me off before I'd even seen the nice floating label pattern under the fold.

<comment><USER18> There are some "floating label" versions of the components that alleviate that problem, and may come handy at places where the available space is really limited, such as mobile applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love material design, and this is more related to material design than this theme, because this is a beautiful and faithful implementation for web, but that button ripple is obnoxious.

It also makes the ui seem very sluggish, because the traditional pressed state of a button is instant feedback, and this is an animation that takes a couple hundred ms or so to complete.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like there is a bug in the number validation example. When non-numeric data is entered, the floating label moves back into the input field making it very difficult to read. This is on Chrome.

Other than that, this looks pretty cool; I particularly like the floating label animations. I may have to give it a try in my next project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the report!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Fantastic for the most part. Minified JS is less than 6k.

The CSS is huge though - over 250k. This is expensive for mobile devices :(

<comment><USER15> No it isn't, it's 20KB minified and gzipped. The source map file is around 250KB, so I guess you confused it for that?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, 36KB minified and zipped. That includes material.min.css, material- wfont.min.css and ripples.min.css. Un-zipped it's 253KB.

But given that it fails dramatically on small-screen touch devices, the point is moot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to release an huge update that will dramatically reduce the size (I hope) and will ad the entire color palette available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It looks pretty cool. There's one thing about the demo site that I found really confusing though - those white rectangles look like they should be modal dialogs but they aren't. I kept trying to dismiss the donation popup before I realized navigation wasn't disabled.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am writing this comment only because of the so many negative comments on the thread.

Kudos to FezVrasta for building thing. Clearly it is not perfect but I am sure he will work on ironing out the issues. Also if the license is MIT I would use it in my projects too.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is really nice. Great work! Ignore the haters - you're on the right track with this. Most of the people giving you guff are not the type that create things - they're the ones who pretend to create things.

</comment><comment><USER34> Definitely one to watch. There is a lot to like here. I'm not saying it's for everyone but I see this as something you would use with Ionic to deliver a very good Android 5 look and feel solution.

</comment><comment><USER35> You know, I really want to like it, but I just don't.

I think Material works very well on touch surfaces. There are a ton of good design principles that it champions, but the interactions are strange on desktop.

</comment><comment><USER36> Performance on the animations is very poor on my nexus 7.

<comment><AUTHOR> unfortunately mobile support is not yet guaranteed, you may try to open an Issue on GitHub and see if someone finds a solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I noticed the simple modal, unlike Bootstrap's, doesn't seem to close when you click anywhere on the page.

Is this by design, or is it on my end?

<comment><AUTHOR> Where? Please open an Issue on [http://GitHub.com/fezvrasta/bootstrap- material-design/issues](http://GitHub.com/fezvrasta/bootstrap-material- design/issues)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The transition between pages is now 100% faster. Hope it looks better. The ripple effect is now subtler.

</comment><comment><USER38> This looks great! I'll definitely keep this in mind for future development.

</comment><comment><USER39> This won't do until you can use keyboard navigation. Think accessibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the components have accessibility by keyboard, but I've to admit that it must be improved a lot. It is one of the things I want do asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Nicely done.

Shouldn't the wells – being "wells" – be inset instead of outset?

<comment><AUTHOR> actually you are right lol.. I've used this class because was something that in "material design" is not documented... probably would be better use panels and add to well some different effect. I'll open an issue.. (#279)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Back-button is broken, nothing changes upon going back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good catch :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> transitions , what I like most about material design is transitioning between elements ,Morphing and filling .

But this remains best implementation

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I don't think this should be handled by the theme itself, if you want transitions you should handcraft them using CSS and JS probably.

Maybe a solution would be a library to make these animations easier to create.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you like to be abel to use material in bootstrap (or more) make sure you check out semantic UI. Open source as well, let's you toggle between...everything really :)

This looks pretty awesome as well, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER44> Ugh, have any of you actually used android l? Google runs video ads for the nexus 5 and 9 with the devicea turned off because they look atrocious when turned on.</comment>


Ask HN: Does any one click decline for the EU cookie usage policy? - <AUTHOR> Aren't privacy conscious people blocking cookies in their browser anyway? <comment><USER2> Not an answer, but: I'm fine with the cookies, but the banners piss me off no end. I won't ask the question on any site I run, lawyers be damned.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, but for the unique reason that I have worked on web tracking analytics packages and they are terrifying.

From what I have seen working on those packages, the vast majority of users do not care, or do not understand what they are in for and will say "Sure, track me, what's the worst that could happen?"

We used the dreaded zombie-cookies to track when users would hit our pages and to track their passage across content because it gave us a lot more information on how our products were used, and as such gave us a lot of information to hand over to marketing to up our lead gen strategies. From there, we could wow investors.

From a company perspective, we loved that most users would blindly click yes. Enough did so that we never even bothered looking into the minority that opted for do not track.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, there are several browser plugin to do that. But blocking cookies doesnt mean that websites wont serve you ad. Its just that ads may be less personalized. Some companies have been using device fingerprinting rather cookie, so u may still see personalized ads from them. Better do an ad opt out from links like adobe, google or ad choice. But all of them are very ticky and uses cookies.

</comment><comment><USER5> I ignore it until I need to read what is behind them. Then I block the elements with ublock. I don't think I ever agreed.</comment>


Ask HN: Don't you feel sad about PirateBay? - <AUTHOR>

I'm really saddened by the news about PirateBay. It's kinda hurt me deep down. And then, the comments people had that demeaned PirateBay, something(come on, admit it) we all had found a very powerful tool some time ago.
Over and above that, Peter Sundes post on Mashable was very (oddly) defensive. And then the project Oldpiratebay...
I have been hit deep down, and this wound won't fill soon enough. <comment><USER2> If you were rooting for the criminals there's no reason to feel sad for them. The founders got away with a nearly perfect crime - they declared an unknown group of people owned the site, kept all the money they made, and did very short prison sentences.

This is about the best possible outcome they could have had - they're free now and will probably never be held accountable again. Sunde even got to be "outraged" at how much money TPB made lol!

<comment><USER3> I think people were rooting for the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if I ever used PirateBay at all. I have downloaded a few torrents, but I don't know where I found them, beyond just "Google".

When I think about the websites that have had a direct personal impact on my life, I come up with things like E2, Wikipedia, Slashdot.

Maybe there's a PirateBay community. Maybe it was far better than all similar services. I don't know. The PirateBay shutdown is a political thing for me. Nothing more.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's sort of sad to see such an old site go down, but it doesn't really change anything. It is a never ending battle for the people who took it down.

TPB goes down, many come up in its place. Majority of the known posters on tpb post on other sites already, so it isn't hard to find a replacement.

</comment><comment><USER5> Im truly sad. Its not over though. Innovation shall spark from this travesty.</comment>


iPhones and Apple Watches could soon replace your car keys - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/83895-iphones-apple-watches-could-soon-replace-car-keys.html <comment><USER2> Oh dear.

Criminals are aware of a technique of amplifying the radios of certain keyless key-fobs that unlock the car from a distance from your house. If plain old NFC based unlocking was used with iPhones and Apple Watches to unlock the car, would be another disaster waiting to happen.

On the other hand, Apple isn't that stupid and probably is aware of this and would involve authenticating using TouchID / Face ID to prevent this type of car theft anyway. But I'm still skeptical on the security of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes obviously. With proper authentication it could be a good idea for dealing with car theft. They should introduce two factor authentication if they go for this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my side-project DomainPolish - <AUTHOR> http://domainpolish.com <comment><USER2> This looks cool, but I wouldn't use it yet because I have no idea what I'd be getting (this coming from someone who has used the far more expensive usertesting.com)

My first reaction seeing this is that you've basically hooked up mechanical turk and surveymonkey, and are charging a premium for it. My worry is that the people who review my site are unqualified and will give poor quality feedback.

I'd just like more clarity on the output.

edit: For example, some good information would be "Users will visit your site and write down all of their actions and the reasons they took those actions". The detailed survey concept is vague.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally understand what you're saying. I'll definitely try to give a better example of the feedback that you're actually getting. Thank you for the feedback :)

<comment><USER2> No problem. I think you're working on something worthwhile. Everyone gets told to take a laptop to a coffeeshop and show their site to people for usability. If this is useful and cost-effective, people will switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Will you be offering a service in English too, or only Polish?

<comment><AUTHOR> Typical Anglocentric American. Why don't you get some culture and learn Polish, huh? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks cool, Dan!

Reminds me of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=376956> from a while back. I also think utest.com does usability testing.

If you haven't yet, check out don't make me think - the way Krug explains usability tests is pretty useful (also, screen-capturing user sessions would be nice).

Finally, one thing I would want is a case study, website before/after and a list of feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Alexey thanks! The guy from Overlap.Me actually referred me to that site after I had built this. It's funny because we're both using MTurk to get review data. It doesn't seem like the project is actively being developed on, so hopefully I'll be able to attract some of it's customer base (if it has any).

Don't Make Me Think is a great book.

I'll definitely do some before/after stuff as soon as I get some actual people using, still waiting for that first conversion :)

<comment><USER4> Sure - want to do pennstudyspaces.com?

Based o krug, I think fewer, longer revews will be more useful. Happy to guinea-pig, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea that would be great! I'll do it at cost if you promise to tell your friends :) Ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll work it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting idea - I wonder why I should use something like this over another free service/community, such as Forrst. Okay, so you claim to have "average users" give feedback, but I wonder if that's of significant benefit, because it can take experienced designers to spot potential UX problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. I guess a service like this is less targeted at hardcore devs who know where to get feedback and more targeted at people who are in charge of building a website but don't already participate in communities like Forrst. So if you're an average manager and your boss tells you to build a website it's really difficult to make decisions. But with this, you can cheaply and easily figure out whether the designs you're seeing are good or not.

<comment><USER5> Sure, maybe it will appeal to folks who aren't plugged in to those sorts of communities. I wonder if you would get a better conversion rate with an example of feedback data?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: I know that there isn't SSL encryption on the checkout page. I use Stripe as my payment processor, and their JavaScript payment API means that the transaction is secure even without SSL server-side because your card information never touches my server. Would love your thoughts!

<comment><USER6> Because the containing page isn't SSL, there's no telling where the form really loaded from, or where it is configured to send its data.

An example of this attack was the keylogging code used by Tunisia about 8 months ago:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/25/tunisia_facebook_pas...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/25/tunisia_facebook_password_slurping/)

A wary expert user won't enter a single keystroke of sensitive information into a page that wasn't completely loaded by SSL with a trustworthy server certificate; no amount of in-page reassurance text/lock-icon helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I'm definitely going to get the SSL ASAP, and just wanted to let everyone know my thought process. The way Stripe does it is actually pretty cool. When you hit submit Javascript POSTS the card data to their servers, their servers return a token and then the form is submitted. Then in Rails I take that token and post it to Stripe and the payment is completed. It's a really interesting way to be PCI compliant without SSL.

<comment><USER7> Fantastic about adding the SSL. Just a note though: Without having SSL on the checkout page, i could MITM one of your users and replace that javascript on your page with my own potentially malicious javascript.

Looks like a great product and the pricing is very fair. I'll remember this if i ever have a site or project i need reviewed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Loving these dshipper side projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you sir

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Who is reviewing?

<comment><AUTHOR> The reviews are conducted by MTurk users. I think a common next question is, "why are they qualified to provide feedback?" And I think the answer to that is that qualified feedback is pretty easy to come by. Ask any startup guy and they'll give you a bunch of different reasons to do this and that. What's more difficult is to find the absolute average user, the lowest common denominator, and see if they understand how to use your site, and if your branding and messaging is clear enough for them.</comment></comment>


Richard Branson Reveals Virgin Galactic's Latest Launch Plans - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/richard-branson-reveals-virgin-galactic-s-latest-launch-plans-ncna812746 <comment><AUTHOR> "The company's first astronauts...." Do you still count as an astronaut if you're in a sub-orbital flight?

<comment><USER2> They do for press releases.</comment></comment>


German man programs "Hello World" into wheat field - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/06/german-programmer-programs-hello-world-into-wheat-field.ars <comment><USER2> This is really neat looking, but ... how exactly do you execute the code? It appears that the release from semacode.com targets cellphones exclusively, so I can't get it to run on the command line.

      wget http://semacode.com/download/semacode_reader_me-1.6.zip
      unzip semacode_reader_me-1.6.zip
      cd semacode_reader_me-1.6
      java -jar semacode_reader_me-1.6.jar

      Failed to load Main-Class manifest attribute from
      semacode_reader_me.jar

A tip here didn't solve the problem either: [http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=951...](http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?t=95131)

      java -Djava.awt.headless=true -jar semacode_reader_me.jar -f cropfield.jpg

Anyone out there having more luck with this one?

EDIT: Okay... I tried compiling from source, and the problem is that you need the J2ME SDK for the MIDlet libraries.

<comment><USER3> First, it's not code. It's just a datamatrix that reads "Hello, world!"

Second, you would need to do some heavy filtering and distortion to process the image into a square, readable form. Here's a 1-bit PNG processed from an image taken from the programmer's flickr site. It scanned on my G1 just fine: <http://bit.ly/4lxG4U>

<comment><USER2> Cool PNG!

As an update, I'm still trying to get the semacode software to work in OS X, and it's just not cooperating. Sun recently pre-released a J2ME environment for OSX, which is frustratingly buggy...

Here's a link to the SDK:

<http://java.sun.com/javame/downloads/sdk30_mac.jsp>

...and here's a link to a thread about the (apparently common) issue I'm having:

<http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5412666>

Glad to hear semacode JAR works on cellphones. If you get it working in an emulator, please let us know about it!

EDIT: meh, forget it... the Sun SDK just isn't ready for primetime. Instead, I recommend libdmtx:

<http://www.libdmtx.org>

It's available from macports, there's wrappers for tons of languages (e.g. python), and although it doesn't magically work with your PNG, I think it only requires a little tweaking...

EDIT 2:

Forget the version from macports... just compile from source, and your PNG works fine using version 0.7.2

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's be honest: He is communicating with aliens.

Those little light beams that supposedly come out from the bottom of the saucer are really infrared-like beams to read semacode.

+1 to you Mr. German man.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reading stuff like this makes me wish I had a wheat field too.

</comment><comment><USER6> That's not really programming, now is it? I was hoping for some genetic or soil modification that outputs "Hello world" in size or color variation of the grown wheat.

<comment><USER7> How about farmer's Game of Life on those blocks, with new iterations growing up each year. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> If you want to actually decode the crop formation, here's how to do it. First, grab tello's PNG, which is a transformed and color-adjusted version of the crop formation:

<https://files-diers.us.s3.amazonaws.com/cornfield.png>

Next, download and compile the latest release of libdmtx, which is a datamatrix I/O library:

<http://www.libdmtx.org/>

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/libdmtx/files/libdmtx/0.7.2...](https://sourceforge.net/projects/libdmtx/files/libdmtx/0.7.2/libdmtx-0.7.2.tar.bz2/download)

Finally, use dmtxread from libdmtx:

      dmtxread -n cornfield.png

The extended explanation is in these comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924377>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=924495>

</comment><comment><USER7> Now this is where I can now point to the next time someone asks he'd like to know more about the programming field.

</comment><comment><USER8> The title is incorrect. It should read: "German man mow-grams 'Hello World' into wheat field"

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a niche marketing idea for you: executable hedge mazes that print out paeans of praise to the owner of the maze.

</comment><comment><USER10> "If you write it they will run it?"</comment>


Please Stop White Knighting - <AUTHOR> http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/10/please-stop-white-knighting.html <comment><USER2> Traditionally, Sufis have referred to this as: "White Veil Evil." As opposed to, say, malicious narcissism which doesn't care to appear good. A more modern term that subsumes "White Knighting" would be "moral narcissism," that is, trying to appear useful, noble and good; as opposed to considering carefully whether your words or actions will actually benefit others.

In my experience, men who interject themselves unnecessarily to demonstrate how politically correct they are, also have no problem interrupting women at other times. Constantly, in fact. Interjecting yourself is just another form of interrupting women. Which is probably the most destructive common habit of most workplaces, sadly.

The rule that keeps one from being a narcissist (of whatever variety), or behaving like one, is to ask: "Am I trying to please others, here or have I carefully considered all the consequences of my action, and know that my actions will genuinely benefit them?" It can be hard (embarrassing) to answer that question honestly, so that's why there are a lot of shameless narcissists walking around. Not all, but a great many of them, men.

Note that "narcissism" is not a synonym for "selfishness" (although it often ends up being selfish, perverse or destructive.) In fact narcissists can be said to have surrendered much of their moral and decision-making authority to others, by endlessly yearning to please and impress them.</comment>


A VC: The Independent Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/the-independent-web.html <comment><USER2> I've always seen the job of "startup founder" sold as: get investment, get big, get bought, then retire in luxury.

This idea that startup founders want to work very hard for a short period of time then retire (or do something else) is an alternate explanation of why startups tend to die after they get bought. The people who made the companies worth buying moved on.

(of course, this doesn't explain why some companies that get bought and do poorly end up doing better after they are spun off again.)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _"the big Internet companies and the innovative emerging web services work > together to "succeed by making others succeed."_

Given that the primary source of revenue for companies like Google and Facebook is the sale of advertising, its hard to see such cooperation fostering a shift towards a web which doesn't atempt to segment the market down to unique individuals. Online, it is far more common for B2C practices to be carried over into B2B, than for the B2B model to bubble down into B2C.</comment>


Scientists find link between infection with Toxoplasma gondii and schizophrenia - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/mind-altering-cat-parasite-linked-to-schizophrenia-in-largest-study-yet <comment><USER2> Url changed from [https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/01/30/1559228/mind- alt...](https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/01/30/1559228/mind-altering-cat- parasite-linked-to-schizophrenia-in-largest-study-yet), which points to this.</comment>


Sims Creator Will Wright Demos "Spore" (TED Video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/146

<comment><USER2> I hope it's released before Duke Nukem Forever!</comment>


Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-46107843 <comment><USER2> If only we could get such swift global action on greenhouse emissions. Both problems are essentially the same yet the difference in action couldn't be wider.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the significant differences is that in the 1980s when the issue of ozone depletion was being confronted, politics was not as polarized. One of the great successes of those arguing for action was recruiting Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a trained chemist, as an advocate

[https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/energy/2016/10/will- ma...](https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/energy/2016/10/will-margaret- thatcher-and-ronald-reagan-be-unlikely-saviours-world-climate)

<comment><USER3> _Dr._ Margaret Thatcher

EDIT I must apologise to my parent, and to HN in general. Her thesis was undergraduate:

> ... four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray > crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation > was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. > [https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher)

<comment><USER4> Surely the Prime Minister title wins out?

Actually, that's an interesting question: since "Dr" usually replaces "Mr" for a man, would a male president with a doctorate be "Dr President"?

<comment><USER5> Probably not. President would take precedent. See Chancellor Merkel for a good example (she has a PhD).

<comment><USER6> I was under the impression that German titles stacked up rather than overriding one another, like "Herr Professor Doktor". Is that wrong?

<comment><USER7> Generally that's correct, albeit pretty much only used in writing. There are, however, political titles for which, to my knowledge, that does not apply. Minister, Chancellor and President (of the BRD) should all supersede a PhD title.

<comment><USER8> Bundeskanzlerin Dr. Angela Merkel is the official formal title.

See the header here: [https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg- de/service/bulletin/rede...](https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg- de/service/bulletin/rede-von-bundeskanzlerin-dr-angela-merkel-1122448)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> During the eighties, when I was young, the river Rhine in the Netherlands was a very polluted river where fish had all but disappeared. Trees in forests were dying because of acid rain. The ozone layer was shrinking and exposing people to lethal levels of UV. Those were scary problems. Now the Rhine has salmon swimming in it. Trees seem to have mostly recovered and the ozone layer is also recovering.

People argued that these problems couldn't be fixed, that they would be too expensive to fix, etc. But now there is good progress. That gives me hope about other problems on this planet.

My view of addressing climate change because of global warming is that it is going to require a bit more effort but that it is fundamentally just as doable. Better still, we are actually doing it. The question is are we doing it fast enough and are going about it as efficient as we could. People sure seem to waste a lot of time defending the status quo, arguing for inaction, or questioning whether there even is a problem to solve.

The core problem as I see it is addressing our energy needs and kicking off a second industrial revolution in the process. That's exactly what is happening right now. For me that prospect is the main goal. Saving our planet is a nice side effect though.

If we solve the technical problem of producing as much clean energy as we could possibly need, we could all have air-conditioning in our houses, terrace heaters in our gardens in the winter, irrigate our deserts with desalinated water from the sea, supply our industries with clean carbo hydrates produced straight from the air, etc. These things are all very energy intensive.

Demand for energy is outstripping our ability to conserve it. Therefore solving clean plentiful energy is key. It's the only thing that will get us results.

</comment><comment><USER10> But the BBC reported earlier this year that somebody is cheating and making CFC-11 - banned by the Montreal Protocol.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-44138984](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44138984)

<comment><USER11> It's home insulation production in China. The culprits are fully aware it's illegal, but China has some problems in getting compliance to its own laws.

[https://content.eia- global.org/posts/documents/000/000/761/o...](https://content.eia- global.org/posts/documents/000/000/761/original/Blowing- It_CFC11_Report_EIA.pdf?1531089183)

<comment><USER12> You would think China with all that control over businesses and their population could prevent people from polluting their rivers with plastic and spewing it into the Pacific Ocean!

<comment><USER13> Systemic corruption makes the rule of law "difficult" to enforce. And by difficult I mean this is a feature not a bug for the huge interconnected web of power that actually runs the country.

PS: The fact China is not a democracy which has some unpleasant results: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

<comment><USER14> All it takes is one party member (out of 80M) lodging a complaint with the central committee.

<comment><USER15> Just like USA would be a very different place if 300M people had a vote that mattered, China would be a very different place if 80M people had a complaint mechanism that mattered. We'll never hear of the city clerk who complains about the excesses of the latest giant project imposed upon local citizens. There are probably hundreds of those people, and they have all been taken care of. (Most of them in standard bureaucratic politicking fashion: "she said this terrible thing about Xi" "there is corruption in his office" etc. Kicking down is a great way to move up, when an official a couple rungs up approved the project and wants the complaints to go away.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not an expert, but repairing/healing seems like a misleading analogy for what's happening

<comment><USER17> Ozone is produced naturally, the ozone layer will return itself to pre- industrial ozone concentrations simply by leaving it alone. You can call it regeneration or repair or healing or whatever you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ok, now that refrigerates are ozone safe can we get all the regulations removed from them? At least for the safe ones?

Right now if you don't reclaim the R-134A from your car AC or fridge it is a $27k fine while you can buy cans of it to blow out your keyboard. Same goes for propane. This makes the new fridges that use propane almost impossible to work on since nobody has the reclamation equipment for R290.

<comment><USER19> R-134A has a global warming potential of 1550 over 100 years [1], i.e. about 45 times more effective than methane, so while it's not eating the ozone layer you probably shouldn't be spraying it around by the tonne either.

Edit: and CO2 has a GWP of 1 (as the reference point for GWP), so R-134A is _way_ more effective than that.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Value...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential#Values)

<comment><USER18> In a perfect world, requiring reclamation would help. In the real world it just pushes this off to gray market recycler. They will come by and pick up your broken fridge for free for the recycle value but most will just vent the refrigerant no mater what. They just claim it was zero pressure when they found it. Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal would take all the profit out of this service.

So the fine mostly just stops the fridge from being worked on by qualified professionals. Perfectly fixable items are going in the trash because nobody wants to buy dedicated equipment for every refrigerant used. R134A is common enough to make the equipment worthwhile to own but not so much for propane and other less common refrigerants.

<comment><USER19> Agreed down thread that after the fact enforcement action doesn't seem like a sensible way to do this but political reality is what it is and I expect most of these regulations were intended to encourage people to use non-ozone depleting refrigerants with their global warming potential a problem for another day.

> Hooking up a reclamation machine and paying for the refrigerant disposal > would take all the profit out of this service.

Fixing this (Make it cheaper to reclaim? Make the refrigerant more valuable? Some combination of the two?) seems like the way to go rather than just removing all the regulations and hoping for the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Any truth to the theory that the banned refrigerants were about to lose patent protection while the "better" ones still had plenty of years left on their patent?

</comment><comment><USER21> But let's not mess it up again, please?

</comment><comment><USER22> My father-in-law firmly believes that the hole in the ozone was caused by space shuttle reentry, and that's why it's patching now, and also that CFCs couldn't possibly make the hole because they are heavier than air. Does anyone have the data to refute these claims?

<comment><USER23> Ideally the person who claims something needs to provide the data to back it up.

My father-in-law doesn't believe that the moon landings took place. All the data in the world cannot convince him otherwise. The only good strategy in the face of these types of claims is to go up the crazy scale. For example when he tells me that the moon landings didn't happen, I tell him he's naive it he thinks the moon exists. The moon was blown up in the 50's due to a nuclear test gone wrong and what we're seeing now is an artificial projection.

<comment><USER24> Does that strategy work?

<comment><USER25> Considering the amount of "moon hoaxer" videos on youtube (no I'm not joking, go look) I think it might be counter-productive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How TV Sex Got Real: The Internet - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/how-tv-sex-got-real/?src=longreads <comment><USER2> music just got a whole lot less interesting to me.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use Nim language in production? (2019) - <AUTHOR> Curious to see if anyone uses this language in production and what the job market is like for Nim developers in 2019. <comment><USER2> I use it too.

Yet, I think the HN crowd does not represent the whole world and is biased towards "hip" languages.

</comment><comment><USER3> From my comment 5 months ago:

 _Recently I 've been using Nim at my work as a Python+Numpy replacement for a numerical simulation of multi-body contacts._

<comment><USER4> Are you using arraymancer? How does it compare to numpy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use it, but I'm part of Status, the biggest Nim sponsor ;).

<comment><USER6> I use it too, but most of the projects are Nim-related ([https://forum.nim- lang.org](https://forum.nim-lang.org), nimble package manager, etc), we do like to eat our own dogfood.</comment></comment>