Show HN: A Soft Murmur (my first Android app) - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gabemart.asoftmurmur

<comment><USER2> I've been using something similar on iOS called Noisli and I'm addicted. If I had Android I'd totally download it.

Out of curiosity, how is working with the audio APIs on Android?

<comment><AUTHOR> The audio APIs themselves are mostly OK. As always, the big problem on Android is fragmentation. I tested on as many devices I could get access to, but have discovered since launch that there are crippling performance problems on the Nexus 5 and a few other modern, popular devices. I've had to block downloads to those device and am scrambling to work out what the problem is. I've never developed for iOS, but I am extremely envious of the homogeneous hardware platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> For the record, the issue was this:

[https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63099](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63099)

and I was able to find a workaround and re-enable support for the affected devices</comment></comment></comment>


Privacy is at a crossroads. Choose wisely - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yegg/privacy-is-at-a-crossroads-choose-wisely-96bac0644ec1 <comment><USER2> I've also noticed the quality of DuckDuckGo search results has been steadily improving, especially over the past year. I would encourage anyone who tried it and went back to another search engine to consider giving DuckDuckGo another shot--you may be pleasantly surprised!

<comment><USER3> I just read Gabriel's post, and I pretty much agree (and do) with what he says. Due to these shared believes I've been using DDG quite a bit, I even deleted the Google search app from my phone, and instead been using DDG's iOS app as my default mobile search engine.

However, every time I use DDG it hurts a bit. The quality of the results are very far behind from that of Google's. I many times end up doing a Google search in incognito mode because DDG just doesn't cut it. I hope DDG improves, because I haven't seen that improvement during the past year.

<comment><USER4> Specific examples you're willing to share really help us improve. Feel free to send them to us at inbound at duckduckgo.

<comment><USER5> I find the auto-correct to be over-zealous. If DDG decides that what I've entered is a typo, It will only show me results for the "corrected" word, so I'll have to quote uncommonly searched words. This usually happens when the search is similar to another one that is much more common.

<comment><USER6> That isn't really different from Google, though, is it?

<comment><USER7> It is, because sometimes DDG is so sure you made a typo, they don't bother to mention it and just search the correction. Try searching "president ovama". The first one or two pages of results are almost exactly the same as the results for "president obama", with no mention of the correction. I know this is sort of a contrived example, but you get the point.

As far as I can tell, Google will always tell you when it thinks you made a mistake, and provide a link to search for your exact query.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _And there are indeed a few solutions that actually grant you partial relief from the pains of online tracking. First, switch your search engine, email and other major services where your personal information is heavily tracked to good private alternatives. Second, add EFF's HTTPS Everywhere plugin to your browser, which will encrypt web site connections where possible. Third, add EFF's Privacy Badger plugin to your browser, which blocks third-party trackers. These three simple changes will pretty seamlessly and significantly reduce your digital footprint._

Since this is a quote from the article, I feel this is an appropriate space to ask: does anyone have a page explaining how these various privacy extensions interact/overlap with each other? I tend to install (or at least try out) pretty much every popular one at some point or another, and I'm hoping to reduce redundancies. Alot of these tools show up on recommended "Get These If You're Serious About Privacy" lists without indicating what exactly each extension does or how it might interact with another extension. These include:

\- Adblock Plus \- Ghostery \- Disconnect \- HTTPS Everywhere \- EFF Privacy Badger \- uBlock \- NoScript

At this point, I've "slimmed" down to just HTTPS Everywhere and uBlock, although I'm debating adding Privacy Badger. However, their own page mentions that it's "based on ABP code" [0], so my thought is that uBlock is probably also taking care of it.

Is that sufficient? Is there any _danger_ in installing Privacy Badger and uBlock, for instance, if they serve the same function? Will they step on each other's toes?

Some kind of comparison chart would be useful.

[0] - [https://www.eff.org/privacybadger#how_is_it_different](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger#how_is_it_different)

<comment><USER9> I have personally found that a hosts file can reduce the need for a bunch of those addons - it can block not only ads, but also many forms of tracking. I've found it very refreshing when surfing the web.

For reference, I use: [http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

<comment><USER10> I've thought of using hosts file vs. plugins but have never really made the switch. I'm a bit concerned that I'll run into cases like a website is broken due to a hosts file setting, and I can't easily bypass it like I can with a plugin. Do you ever run into situations like this?

<comment><USER11> Are there any utilities for management of the hosts file?

<comment><USER9> I've never used one aside from a text editor. Plain text file with whitespace delimited items; about as simple as it gets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious if data privacy & protection will ever emerge from its little corner where a few passionate folks worry about it while the masses blithely ignore how their personal data is used and abused.

Couple of other related items just from today indicate this _may_ be taking on steam but we've seen this kind of blip before just to see it fade.

1\. Helping Prove Mr. Weinberg's going (CEO of DuckDuckGo) is an article on how heath web sites share your search queries with 3rd parties found at [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms- online-...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-these- companies-are-collecting-your-data) Nice to know that WebMD et al are sharing your _assumed_ private searched for whatever itch you might have with others.

2\. Symantec published results of their European survey on the topic of Data Privacy found at [http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/presskits/b-stat...](http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/presskits/b-state- of-privacy-report-2015.pdf) Not sure I believe a survey where the respondents claim to read the terms of service 25% of the time.... My guess would have been .25% of the time.

<comment> chestnut-tree _"...health web sites share your search queries with 3rd parties..."_

For anyone looking for health information (in English), I recommend the NHS website. (Start your search from there rather than Google if you're worried about being tracked). It may not be the best-looking website, but the info is written by medical professionals and there are no commercial interests since the NHS is funded by the UK taxpayer.

They have an A-Z of conditions, a symptom checker, videos and much more. (I presume this is all available to anyone outside the UK)

[http://www.nhs.uk](http://www.nhs.uk)

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately This falls into the same trap as the US CDC site in the parents linked article.

The NHS site you linked makes requests to google analytics, webtrends and cloudfront. The point in the parents article applies here equally, since what i'm searching will still be analyzed by Google at the very least.

I'm not sure how identifiable this information is though, but definitely important to be aware of

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People are willing to trade personally-identifiable information for a Snickers bar.* Until and unless that changes, privacy doesn't have sufficient value to change the status quo very much.

*Really, they'll even trade it for intangible gold. [http://candycrushgametactics.com/get-free-gold-bars-in-candy...](http://candycrushgametactics.com/get-free-gold-bars-in-candy-crush-saga-surveys/)

<comment><USER15> Why is someone else's poor choice regarding privacy a justification for abandoning the fight for privacy?

There's always a subset of people who don't care. There was a time when women didn't have the right to vote, and although I wasn't around during that time, I'm sure there was a subset of women who didn't care. Their apathy is not a justification for withholding that right from the rest.

<comment><USER11> _There 's always a subset of people who don't care._

The problem is when it's the seeming majority who don't care.

<comment><USER16> But this is the case in many social issues that are eventually "won". Only a couple of years ago the vast majority of people in the US firmly believed marijuana should remain illegal and that number has dropped enough to change many state laws. How about gay, women or minority rights. All of them were strongly opposed by the masses.

<comment><USER11> _Only a couple of years ago the vast majority of people in the US firmly believed marijuana should remain illegal_

Really? In my circles, even when I lived in "red" states, the attitude was more like it's a damn shame it's illegal, and too bad there isn't a prayer of it changing.

 _How about gay, women or minority rights. All of them were strongly opposed by the masses._

In the 1st and 3rd case, of course, because the subject group was a minority. In the case of women, things only changed when enough of the subject group started to demand change. In the case of privacy, the subject group isn't distinct from the masses, it is everyone. So yes, it's a problem for progress until everyone gets more clued in. (It will happen, when enough bad stuff has happened.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I believe that prudent compartmentalization is the best way to control tracking and reclaim privacy. Each compartment comprises interests, relationships and activities that you want observers to track and interrelate. For compartments where privacy is essential, it's best to use pseudonyms, and to avoid cross-linking with public compartments.

Compartments are isolated in VMs, with separate network connectivity using nested chains of VPNs, JonDonym and Tor. Particularly sensitive compartments are isolated in separate computers. It's prudent to avoid cross-compartment sharing of USB drives.

<comment><USER18> This is incredibly hard to do well and takes a great deal of discipline. Unless you're a Belgacom or Gemalto sysadmin, the consequences of cross- contamination aren't grave. It's easy enough to burn an identity and create a new one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a possibility to share statistical analysis of data privately. This is the subfield of computer science known as differential privacy, and I bet companies just looking for trend data (not specific targeting) would be able to benefit from user data without compromising user privacy.

In other words, there are good and bad ways to use user data, some of the good ones are provably private, and we shouldn't rule out all data sharing as inherently evil.

<comment><USER20> That's all fine, but there is zero evidence that any company is doing that.

Furthermore, even if a company was using differential privacy to anonymize data between the collection and the processing step, there is no way to prove that the data is being handled appropriately before and during the collection step. Also, there is no way for a company to prove that they continue to handle data appropriately over time.

These tools are super useful for releasing data sets to the public from a trusted source (such as a healthcare provider assisting researchers by releasing cancer data), but that's not what we're talking about here.

<comment><USER19> It is a new field, I admit, but it shows there's a false dichotomy between privacy and stopping all data collection and analysis.

LeapYear Innovations [1] looks like they have some clients who care about differential privacy. [2]

[1]: [http://www.leapyearinnovations.com/](http://www.leapyearinnovations.com/)

[2]: [http://www.leapyearinnovations.com/shroudbase](http://www.leapyearinnovations.com/shroudbase)

<comment><USER20> It's not a false dichotomy: most of the time data collection and analysis does not preserve privacy. In all cases, you can't guarantee that.

You also didn't respond to this:

> Furthermore, even if a company was using differential privacy to anonymize > data between the collection and the processing step, there is no way to > prove that the data is being handled appropriately before and during the > collection step. Also, there is no way for a company to prove that they > continue to handle data appropriately over time.

Any company using shroudbase can choose to stop using shroudbase at any time, or accidentally introduce a bug into their collection method, or start also saving the data in MySQL at collection time.

Tools like that are useful to distribute data from trusted to non-trusted parties. You still have to trust the analytics and advertising companies doing the collection.

<comment><USER19> You also can't prove that someone won't poison your soup before, during, or after it was prepared from raw ingredients. But you don't claim either to avoid all soup or die. This is because you can give very good guarantees that if the correct process is followed then that won't happen. This is pretty much how we get by in all areas of life. Trust is a default and it has to be for society to function. If we can back up that trust by provably good protocols, then one _must_ be malicious in order to break the system.

<comment><USER20> Your chef doesn't have a large monetary incentive to poison your soup. Would you eat the food if he did?

<comment><USER19> They have large monetary incentives to cut corners when it comes to QA and picking a distributor. One big thing stopping them is oversight, which is perfectly reasonable to impose on data collection policies. But what do you need to do so? Proof that the imposed policies give a good guarantee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't want to sound too pessimistic and I agree with the sentiment of the article, but I think people need to come to terms with that there isn't really a choice to be made here. Just like you suddenly isn't going to change the at least decade old path of the NSA, you aren't suddenly going to change the fundamentals of the Internet. The choices that affects us now has to a large extent already been made and we are living with the consequences.

<comment><USER22> I'm also surprised that people are not more skeptical of anything coming out of the white house with Obama's name on it.

Obama has proven himself to be a warmonger with loose ethics unwilling to prosecute torture and also fully interested in continuing the surveillance state, killing Americans without due process, prosecuting whistle-blowers, and protecting the status quo above the constitution and civil rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Privacy is not achievable. It's much better to build a world where we can all live happy /without/ privacy.

This requires an attitude adjustment and significant tolerance because everything is public.

Want to know if your bank treats customers good or bad? Look it up. Want to know if the issuer bets against a mortgage backed security? Audit the numbers. Want to cheat on your taxes? Tough luck!

The thing is, we only have two options:

1\. Only spooks and marketers and those who pay, know.

2\. We all know.

<comment> 0x5f3759df-i You are presenting a false dichotomy and your conclusion that "privacy is not achievable" is a claim without any justification.

[http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/98-99/logic/falsedichotomy.html](http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/98-99/logic/falsedichotomy.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Clever Marketing gig from DDG's CEO Weinberg (as recommended in his book 'Traction').

The post makes sense, DDG makes sense, good timing, ok no news to most of us but a good way to get people again talking about DDG.

Considering that DDG is 'just' a Yandex whitelabel (before Bing) with some extra features, especially the no tracking, it's surprising how big it got with Weinberg's Marketing hacks. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER25> Just look at Europe's cookie law and law about removal of "personal information" from Google search, how well regulations work.

</comment><comment><USER26> The myth of "partially anonymize" data is infuriating. As an academic exercise I've begun to pore over Privacy Policies for web new services I find, specifically how my account info will be used with third parties.

No new consumer oriented web product in their right mind would advertise "we monetize your data with third parties", but they all include language in their Privacy Policies about sharing "partially anonymize" data. It might make you feel safe and sound when it comes to Company X protecting your identity, but marketers and other organizations don't look at data points in a vacuum, everything is in aggregate, and your aggregate profile represents you to the highest degree of certainty.

<comment><USER27> /* spelling/autocorrect: it's 'pore over', not 'pour over' */

<comment><USER28> I upvoted you, but I also enjoy seeing these kinds of mistakes which either get me to imagine new metaphors, and/or (like in this case) get me to learn about real-world things. Turns out that pour-over is a coffee brewing method: [http://coffee.wikia.com/wiki/Pour- Over_Filtration_Brewing](http://coffee.wikia.com/wiki/Pour- Over_Filtration_Brewing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The annoying thing is that, even if we prevent them from harvesting data on us, there's nothing to prevent them from convincing our friends/parents/coworkers from sharing that information on our behalves.

<comment><USER30> Except for the lack of data. Don't share things you consider private (and that are _indeed_ private and not just things you don't want to expose but can't really do so, like your own face) with those who you don't trust. This is the most secure approach among all possibilities.

<comment><USER29> So, consider "Hey, tomorrow is angersock's 34th birthday! We're organizing a surprise party in his hometown of jonestown!".

Now, they've given away my age, birthdate, and where I was born. That's the sort of information that, while private and something I don't give away, they know and give away without thinking.

<comment><USER31> Who is it you don't want to have that information?

The government already knows (it's part of your SSN information), and any private company that cares will just make you give that info to them as part of the cost of service. You'll do it too, because you don't want to be unable to drive or have a mortgage.

<comment><USER29> I know about those entities, though--and I know that, in the case of private companies, they're probably going to share it (and we can make laws to that effect).

My original point is that those protections won't apply when just crawling through friends and acquaintances mentioning things.

EDIT:

For another example, consider "Thank God, my friend angersock had a car accident today but only scratched the bumper". That's something I don't want as public knowledge, and that my insurance provider could (theoretically) use to raise my rates.

<comment><USER32> Also, revealing your birthdate to the general public could help people convince your bank they're you, or bust a pseudonym that you had been trying to keep separate from your legal name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The fight for privacy has to start at universities. At Georgia Tech, the faculty are routinely involved in unwarranted surveillance and testing out their fundamentally flawed ideas to sell off to the national security apparatus. Such tests I would classify as being human experimentation with a critical need for more transparency with the public. Without a broad education that contains humanities, arts, and ethics we won't get the technical solutions we need that address core societal issues. Instead we have an cancerous culture in engineering that threatens our position among other first world countries. Not all engineers have the same commitment to ethics and unfortunately the most unethical don't have the proper economic incentives for respecting human rights, liberty, and dignity. It's time to take a stand for privacy, against the exploitation of technology, and against unethical human experimentation. Georgia Tech's campus is a good place to start...

<comment><USER34> What kind of surveillance is going on there? What kind of experiments are happening there?

<comment><USER33> They psychologically torture and harass people to produce false confessions or force people to do things against their will. Think what happened to Aaron Swartz, but on crack... Chicago, I'm sure is no different... [http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago- polic...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police- detain-americans-black-site)

<comment><USER35> So you couldn't provide any real source, instead linking to something about the Chicago police. What's the Georgia Tech connection?

<comment><USER33> [http://wiki.project-pm.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems](http://wiki.project- pm.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems)

<comment><USER35> Still not seeing any G.T. connection. Mind taking off the foil hat and beaming the info to my mind or something?

<comment><USER33> Look at the physical addresses...Shrill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm curious how DuckDuckGo makes money. They don't charge us for search results, and they don't use our information to target ads. How do they make money to run their operations?

<comment><USER37> I've seen ads on their site related to keywords in my search query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Pretty much all technologies have facets where markets break down and require some form of corrective regulation to make things work the way we want them to._

No! Nooooooo! Say it isn't so! The market is a magical infallible oracle of laissez-faire goodness! (That snidely said, the market is absolutely a marvellous thing in precisely the contexts where situations are so complex that centralized control is hopeless and only massively distributed decision making can hope to keep up. Again, context is everything.)

<comment><USER38> In which category do you think the question of how privacy should be managed between websites and their customers, across all kind of business models, all types of customers, and all sorts of data fit? A complex situation that needs context aware distributed decision, or a problem simple enough that regulation can unambiguously help?

<comment><USER11> Of course, there are actually a great number of questions, not just one. One of the biggest problems is that there is not enough knowledge in general society yet for markets to work well enough wrt privacy. One thing that lawmakers should be keenly aware of, is that broadly written regulations can be helpful at first, but then become burdensome in a mature market or in the face of technological change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Fascinating, wake me up when this ethereal bill appears _and_ offers protections for the privacy of all humans regardless of nationality, and not just _some_ humans.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't think we are at a privacy crossroad. I think the fork was taken some time ago and now it's just a matter of how fast and reckless we go, and just who is going to be doing the driving.

</comment><comment><USER41> Obama's natural inclination is to never to "regulate" the power of government, but to regulate industry. Government's intrusion of our privacy is the much bigger problem, but Obama just says "look over there at those big internet companies, forget about the NSA, CIA, IRS and other numerous government agencies and unaccountable bureaucrats that want to snoop into and control your private lives. Forget that the government has the guns that can force you. I'll throw the boogey-strawman of "big internet" to appease you"

<comment><USER42> Obama is not a member of congress. He doesn't write laws or regulations.

<comment><USER41> The first sentence of the post.

Any day now President Obama is going to propose a new privacy bill of rights that will give you much more control over your personal information.

[http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/online-privacy-bill- wh...](http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/online-privacy-bill-white- house-114696.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I really want to recommend (upvote) his post, but Medium requires me to sign in with Twitter or Facebook to do so. Great.

<comment><USER44> Funny how that works. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thank you. DDG should be the default in Firefox and iOS.

</comment><comment><USER45> Choose what? To live like Stallman? Even his data leaks all over the place. Absolute privacy, like all absolutes, is a sandcastle in the path of an incoming tide. I am all for encrypted comm but metadata is almost as bad and virtually unavoidable. Why was no one creeped out that Starfleet always knows where every crew member is at all times?

<comment><USER46> I thought they don't if people do not carry their communicator. So basically the same as today?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Honestly, I kind of prefer the new AT&T solution where they charge you ~$30 more to do nothing with your data. If paranoid people want this, then by all means, let them pay for it.

<comment><USER33> You trust them? How do you know this just makes you more suspicious and gives them more of an illogical basis for placing you under increased surveillance.

<comment><USER14> Sure I trust them. The moment it's discovered that they've failed to hold up their end of the bargain, they're out $30 x some significant percentage of the users of that service per month. That's not chump change (to say nothing of the potential class action lawsuit for utterly failing to hold up a contract while continuing to charge customers for the services stipulated in said contract).

<comment><USER33> We assume that we are entitled to some sort of protection because we've paid for a service, but that didn't stop these companies from unlawfully participating or turning a blind eye to unwarranted and unrestrained violations of privacy. If you believe some court centered process will protect you from abuse you are sadly mistaken. Of course it is no issue until the fascists come after you....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Sometimes I think privacy is bound to die because of nuclear bombs. What stops a country sneaking bombs into another? We need total knowledge of what's in the city. But maybe I'm wrong, I haven't thought it through.</comment>


Are we going back to Client Server technology - <AUTHOR>

I was just reading about Parse, a new startup on Techcrunch. There's kinvey that is doing similar stuff. While the idea is cool and definitely brings speed to creating mobile apps. But I feel we are going back to client server, except this time the client is Mobile. For now they are offering APIs or SDKs which let you store data in the backend without ever building a backend yourself. My guess is they are using key-value data stores that enables dynamic creation of data and attributes. They also offer APIs that let you build a query to fetch the data.
The problem with this approach is i.e not owning backend piece, soon your app will need some kind of backend business logic and not just data storage/access APIs. And when this logic is needed you will be left with no choice but to build this on the client, you mobile phone. So if you building for multiple mobile platforms you will have to replicate this business logic across all clients. Not very efficient in terms of cost, developer resources and time. This is exactly the reason why client server technology failed and could never scale.
While this may still work for apps (games may be) that are light on backend-logic, I feel there will be some duplicate work that will still be done if you develop across multiple mobile platforms.
Not sure how other folks feel about this. <comment><USER2> _This is exactly the reason why client server technology failed and could never scale._

He said, on the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea try scaling a legacy client server application. And you will know why its dead.

<comment><USER2> Depending on your definition of legacy, your argument is either incorrect or invalid.

Case 0: Legacy means "unscalable". Argument cannot be used to evaluate the scalability of client-server models.

Case 1: Legacy means "old or crufty". Successfully scaled legacy client-server software includes SMTP, IRC, NTP, NNTP, HTTP, MySQL, Oracle, etc, and to some extent, IP itself. Not to mention in-house systems like credit-card processing.

Client-server architectures are immensely popular, perfectly capable of scaling to high volumes, and used widely because they are easy to reason about and secure.

Indeed, if you've spent any time working on distributed systems, you might realize that scaling fully connected or peer-to-peer systems tends be _harder_ than client-server. Take a look, for example, at the horrifying complexity of distributed agreement protocols like Paxos.

I'm guessing your statement is due not to horrifying stupidity, but some sort of confusion over what constitutes "client server software". Perhaps <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client%E2%80%93server_model> would be helpful.</comment></comment></comment>


Money for Nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/money_for_nothi.php <comment><USER2> Really weird article. Did anyone that voted this up actually read it? All it says is that the Fed is to blame for the current bubble, but it doesn't explain anything.

FTA:

"Unfortunately, the Fed and its printing press have a policy of cheating the people that do honest work by flooding the economy with money that can be had by people who do nothing to earn it."

and later:

"It is difficult to explain the harmful effects of deliberate inflation to the average person..."

<comment><USER3> I agree, and posted a reply to it here:

<http://xichekolas.blogspot.com/2007/05/too-much-free-money.html>

Just my take on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry for the lack of explanation, but I didn't intend to give an economics class, merely get something quickly off my chest and get back to work :)

<comment><USER2> That's fine. I was just disappointed because it caught my attention as a new and interesting viewpoint, but didn't go in to much detail. I hope that you'll get a chance to elaborate later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about you guys, but I'm already tired of all the "this is just too good, this must be a bubble and it just has to burst because we deserve it to burst" articles. Basta cosi'.

</comment><comment><USER6> I only have 2 words to say "mein kampf"</comment>


Show HN: We've built a Slack emulator to demo our Slack bot - <AUTHOR> https://karmabot.chat#demo <comment><USER2> Where can I learn more about the emulator? The link sends me to a different product (one that I really really really never want to see anywhere I work).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a custom-built mini app.

\- Platform: Nuxt ([https://nuxtjs.org/](https://nuxtjs.org/)) \- Language: JavaScript \- Templates: Vue

Finishing up with MS Teams demo atm, will probably share more on this later on.

Curious about your general reaction 'I really really really never want to see anywhere I work'. Would you mind elaborating on that please? Why such a strong opposition?

Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Sorry I should have qualified my reaction.

I don't want any form of quantification of gamification of slack participation. It creates wrong incentives.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, give me a bonus at the end of the year and a raise the next year if you think i have done a good job. Have a chat with me in a one to one meeting if you believe i have something i can improve on.

I never want something that feels like the smiley face sticker and sad face stickers that school teachers use to "motivate" kids. We are grownups and we can have a talk if there is something the can improve. If not, let me get on with my day and my work.

<comment><USER4> I'm my last work we had a few smiley face stickers, we loved it. It didn't motivate us, but it was fun. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this click bait? The link is to a sales page, where is the emulator/info about the emulator? I feel tricked into clicking

<comment><USER6> Same thing here. Clicked thinking I was going to see how the emulator works. I need an emulator to try for my slackbot, and instead I'm on the landing page for the bot. And now I read in the comments that the slackbot simulator isn't even ready and we can't view it. I feel tricked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Try this link please: [http://interactive.karmabot.chat/slack](http://interactive.karmabot.chat/slack)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work.

Though I didn't know the right sidebar was interactive until I read the comments here that said they hated it, then I went back to figure out why. Maybe a "Click me!" above the demo on the right, pointing down at the sidebar. Dunno.

Once I clicked around in it, I thought it was a great demo of your product no matter how one might feel about the product itself. Anyone that's used Slack before can immediately visualize if this would fit in with their Slack team or not instead of having to derive your product from marketese about increasing team synergy over real-time communications or something.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Maybe a "Click me!" above the demo on the right, pointing down at the > sidebar. Dunno.

That's a really nice suggestion, thanks. I thought the pulsating orange dot would do the trick.

Really glad you liked the overall experience. Ta!</comment></comment>


Winston Churchill and Islam - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11314580/Sir-Winston-Churchill-s-family-feared-he-might-convert-to-Islam.html <comment><USER2> The Ottoman Islam was perhaps the most progressive sort of the time.

But then the post-ww1 dividing of the empire between the British and the French turned the place into the mess the world is still dealing with today.

Adam Curtis talk about this in part of this blog: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-385e-808f-c9c7c38d1cb7)

<comment> a-guest Progressive? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide)

<comment> vezzy-fnord The Armenian Genocide was carried out by the Young Turk movement towards the end of the empire. The YTs were distinguished by a stark materialism and secularism, and actually sought to revert the theocratic nature of the empire prior. So, not really Ottoman _Islam_ , per se.

<comment> a-guest And this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamidian_massacres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamidian_massacres)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Churchill is the equivalent of Saddam Hussein, Hafez Asad or any other ruthless blood thirsty Arab despot and I find it bewildering why he's still admired by certain segments of the population in the west unless they share the same value system and morals (or the lack thereof) and then I find it more bewildering why they dislike militant or radical Islam vehemently since they have a lot in common with the adherents of those ideologies.

<comment><USER4> > Churchill is the equivalent of Saddam Hussein... I find it bewildering why > he's still admired... unless they share the same value system and morals (or > the lack thereof)

Just as a friendly pointer, I don't think you're going to change the mind of anyone who respects Churchill by saying that they're amoral & comparing him to Saddam Hussein. Regardless of where the truth may lie it doesn't seem like a winning approach.

<comment><USER3> I am not after changing anybody's political opinion much less Churchill's followers' because they seem like a lost cause to me but if my comment could be construed as a political speech, it would be more valuable if it was targeted at enlightened people sitting on the fence and not the hardcore ardent crowd.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I'm being too indirect. You come across like a zealot. If you want to be heard by anyone who's not already on your side then you need to tone it down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hitler and Napoleon were both into Islam too.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _By October 1898, he had returned to Britain and begun his two-volume work, > The River War, an account of the reconquest of the Sudan which was published > the following year. In this work, Churchill warned against what he > considered to be the dangers of the influence of Islam: "Individual Moslems > may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the > social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force > exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant > and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, > raising fearless warriors at every step, and were it not that Christianity > is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it > (Islam) has vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, > as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."_

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

<comment><USER3> \- "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."

Funny that this is coming from a reactionary and status quo aficionado.

\- "Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."

Funny again that this is coming from a colonialist and imperialistic person. Apparently, it's bad for Islam to have expansionist and supremacist ambitions but it's OK for Britain. Hypocrisy much?

\- "Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it (Islam) has vainly struggled"

Funny that it was the other way around for Christianity and Islam in Europe's Dark Age and Islam's Golden Age [0]

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

<comment><USER7> > "Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science > against which it (Islam) has vainly struggled"

I think this means that Christianity is "tamed" by the doubts science has laid on it. And that science does not seem to reign Islam much.

<comment><USER3> Muslims embraced science before Christians ever thought about it and Al- Andalus rule in Iberia and the scientific development overseen by Muslims there is a great testament to my viewpoint. Furthermore, Islam had a reformation movement albeit unsuccessful hundreds of years [0] before Christendom is engulfed in reformation debates (wars).

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%CA%BFtazila](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%CA%BFtazila)

<comment><USER8> Yes but as the Christian world was coming out of the dark ages the Islamic world went into one and has yet to emerge from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Churchill did not like a lot of non-Western nations. He had his mind made up at a young age. He was also against Indians and Hindu thought.

Europe does not fall because there has not been an Islam v. Europe war for centuries. It's been a slow integration of North African & Arab cultures with a continued focus on European social values, science and leadership.</comment>


Data Entry Interface Using Continuous Gestures and Language Models - TBF-RnD http://www.inference.org.uk/djw30/papers/uist2000.html <comment> TBF-RnD From the vault of lesser known input methods.

if anybody would have information on if reference [10] has been implemented I would be extremely grateful.

The same goes for a running implementation of VirHkey, whatever I found on that one all seems to be in French.

The paper is quite interesting in that it estimates the current "keyboard franca" i.e. QWERTY under touch between 32.5 - 21.1 words per minute? I'd say I do 20 wpm on a good day. Does this measure up with your experience?</comment>


Now, You CAN be in Two Places at the Same Time! - <AUTHOR> http://www.collaborati.org/kevins/weblog/15.html <comment><USER2> That is terrible, it seems like someone took the source code for "ELIZA" and turned it into a Web app.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It lacks a certain, uh, human-ness, in my opinion.</comment>


The Beauty of (polynomial) Roots - <AUTHOR> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/roots/

<comment><USER2> Posted a month ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=980043>

Some comments there.</comment>


SSDs are on track to get bigger and cheaper thanks to PLC technology - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/new-intel-toshiba-ssd-technologies-squeeze-more-bits-into-each-cell/ <comment><USER2> About time. I just bought a Macbook Air for my daughter and was astonished to find that the only available models in the shops (in Portugal) had a measly 128 GB. Also that 1TB ssd is still a luxury in laptops ie zero progress in 6 years! My 2013 Macbook Pro has 1 TB and still works fine, so I'm reluctant to replace it, considering how little they have advanced and how expensive they still are.

<comment><USER3> That's just Apple being Apple though. You can buy a fast SSD on the open market for $1/10GB now. 500GB for $50 is the sweet spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Glad to see things are progressing rapidly

Disagree an the conclusion that it'll be niche. A big chunk of consumers will be fine with big cheap space with writes that fall off a cliff if you write too fast.

Eg I could use that for a steam library. My Internet can't keep up with 80 MBs anyway

And all those Facebook machines out there won't care either

</comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain what it means to store more than one bit per NAND cell. for PLC does this mean reading/writing a voltage to the cell with a 5 bit DAC/ADC?

<comment><USER6> Pretty much. It means that each cell has 2^5 (32) distinct voltage ranges for each potential 5 bit combination.</comment></comment>


The 10k Bootstrap Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://bootstrapchallenge.com/ <comment><USER3> I'm a big fan of bootstrapping, allow me to add my own data point. I was the typical bored-at-BigCo guy but was afraid to completely jump into startups full time (I have a family). I decided to bootstrap my startup (mobile app) at the beginning of 2010, while working full time for 6 months. 6 months after that I quit my job full time as the income from the startup surpassed my SV engineering salary (made 75K in 6 months). In 2011, I traveled the world for 7 months with my wife while making my 2nd app, and my income went up to 340K. This year, I'm pretty much working ~20 hrs a week and I'm on track to hit at least 600K (already did 300K YTD). No full time employees, no VCs, no board, minimal expenses (macbook + iphone), no hassle.

I have friends and relatives who have done YC, gone the whole fundraising route, etc. Some who are fairly successful, but I wouldn't trade places with them in a second. I'm not saying bootstrapping is better, but if you are like me (risk averse and lazy) then it is definitely a legitimate option.

<comment><USER4> Oh the paradox...The thought of bootstrapping being for the lazy and risk averse.

<comment><USER3> it's for the risk averse because you can bootstrap and keep your job. it's for the lazy because your limited time forces you to attack much smaller problems and make compromises, which im my opinion is a GOOD thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did this about a year ago. It took me about 2 months to get self sustaining and 6 months to reach my previous salary. Been thinking about writing it up, maybe I should go ahead and do it.

Good luck, living off income from things you make is a great thing.

<comment><USER5> Since so many asked for it I decided to knock it out. Here's my story - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3982830>

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing. Awesome. Any advice for us dreamers? Can it be repeated?

<comment><USER5> Give it a shot. Look at bignoggins advice above. Go for smaller niches instead of trying to be angry birds. There are lots of very useful things that can be done on a phone or tablet. Make something useful that somebody is likely to type into the search on the app store. It can definitely be repeated.

Also, don't worry about there already being an app that does that. There are 600k+ apps. It's been done. But you can find a niche where the best app isn't that great, or at least where you can do it a little better. Make a great app, and make it look great. Don't try submitting things that look terrible. They will get lost in the noise at this point.

<comment><USER6> What tools do you recommend to start?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey guys! Thanks for the support. You caught me pretty early in the process, so not terribly much to show just yet, but I hope you'll stick around for the ride.

If you're curious, the first product I'm trying to make profitable (and the one whose numbers I reference in the video) is at <http://whattowrite.org>

But, as I say, the stats on it are pretty bleak at the moment (I need to improve the funnel performance by ~1000%). I may end up spending 2 weeks invalidating it and then move on to greener pastures.

Regarding the amount of money and number of months it gives me, I chose the amount (10k) in order to give myself 4 months, rather than the other way around. 4 months feels about right. If I could live happily on £1k per month, I would have made it the £4k bootstrap challenge ;)

Thanks again!

<comment><USER6> Good concept.

What is the writers site built with andhow will it generate revenue?

Are you adopting a lean startup approach?

Good luck.

<comment><USER7> Django/jquery/sendgrid, I have no idea (yet!), and yes. On the first idea the main stuff I'm pulling from lean is analytics, but if this one doesn't work out I'll do more custdev and in-person stuff as appropriate.

<comment><USER6> Cool. Really like how the form filling flows.

Will wait to see how you monetise this. I suspect there are some serious writers/bloggers out there looking for inspiration and willing to pay?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting idea.

Tiny typo. It should be 'live' not 'life'.

"So I'm betting £10k that I can build a portfolio of products which is profitable enough to life off before running out of money."

should be

"So I'm betting £10k that I can build a portfolio of products which is profitable enough to live off before running out of money."

</comment><comment><USER9> People love start-up stories and case studies, this will be a real-time version, I'm off to make some popcorn, best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> From the title, I thought this was a challenge to write a bootstrap loader in 10 kilobytes.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm two thirds through a very similar process. I quit my job in late Dec 2011 and temporarily moved myself and my girlfriend in with my folks.

5 months, 1 pivot and ~£8K later I'm almost ready to release a public beta. With a bit of luck, this will happen before the end of June. I've then got a further 6 months left in the budget to feed us until the site (hopefully!) starts bringing in enough money to live off. Failing that, it's back to salaried employment (if any one will have me...)!

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm very curious about this guy's background. He seems to have experience in product development, marketing and customer acquisition.

Having said that... I'm not sure how long ~16k USD (10k GBP) lasts in London but here (Boston) that would not give too many months of runway. Not using consulting for at least a short time he is giving himself a small window for success.

I wish him the best of luck but his approach does seem a bit aggressive.

<comment><USER13> Living in London was quite expensive for me. He estimates four months:

"All my expenses come from the £10k but I can only make money from products (e.g. no consulting). London is expensive, so this gives me about 4 months."

<comment><USER12> Spending £2.5k/month to live in London? In your experience, how accurate does that sound?

<comment><USER14> That is living an fairly decent life. You could scrape on £1k a month if you really wanted to.

<comment><USER15> This is what I do, rent and bills is around £800 a month, and can live quite well on another £300 to £400, and that includes going out.

<comment><USER7> I spent 5 years living like that at my first couple companies. These days, however, my life is no longer organised in a way where that's viable. So 2-2.5k it is. If I was in a real pinch, I could temporarily get to 1.5k, but I feel like 4 months is about the right period of time for this anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I may well be trying to do something similar in a year, so I look forward to seeing how you do! Good luck.

<comment><USER17> Same for me, good luck!

<comment><USER7> Let me know when you guys get started. If I'm in a position to help, I will!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In case anyone not aware, check out the Facebook group _HN - <USER2> Launchpad_ :

<https://www.facebook.com/groups/launchinnov/>

It's a network of HN'ers launching side projects and bootstrapped companies.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is really interesting. I'm giving myself 6 months to get _something_ out there (I'm not sure what exactly, yet) or a job in a tech related field.

If it doesn't work, I'll have to start applying for jobs related to my degree (teaching).

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of Joe Stump's entrepreneur goal- to figure out how to make $30 a month from 1000 people.

The key is having focus and a goal in mind. If one can stick to the plan then they are already ahead of the game.

</comment><comment><USER20> Z-index your footer to 9999. YouTube video covers it up on iPad. Also the white form field on the left sidebar overruns into the text. I'm on an iPad so not sure how desktop version differs.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am doing similar thing, I quit my job in Oct 2011 and making iPhone apps. Made 4 apps so far but just earning $10/day from it. But its a lot of fun and exciting than a job.

<comment><USER22> In the same boat as you, quit my job around the same time you did (august of 2011), built an iPhone app and have some affiliate marketing. Turned over a bit more then 10 bucks a day (average about $70) but still in the ball park of can do much better :)

And yes it is fun ! i guess we just gotta keep going

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The domain name is registered by Rob Fitzpatrick of thestartuptoolkit.com. I wonder what the relationship is?

Edit: Looks like this site is also by him, just not submitted by him.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice idea.

What is the product you are working on?

You talked about about the numbers, but some general idea of the app would be interesting if we are going to follow along with your progress.

<comment><USER25> This could work really well to harness the power of learning from the community if you reveal your product.

I'm sure lots of folks, especially here, would jump in and help you improve your registration rate if we had visibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm sort of doing this.

I'm 4 months in, I've had one scrapped project, one failed project and one project which isn't really taking off.

I'll be watching this with interest.

<comment><USER26> What I should have done is posted the fact that I'm doing the same to Hacker News. I'm guessing that if his blog gets enough traction, he'll succeed. Not because the product is great, but because this "10k GBP - can I make money" sideproject brings in the eyeballs.

<comment><USER27> While HN brings eyeballs it does not really bring profits unless you are innovating in the "productivity / programming / business" product space.

What it CAN do is give you decent SEO via reposts that helps diversify your inbound links resulting in better pageranking. My month of blogging has brought me from ~90th for "android dj app" to ~9th in google search.

<comment><USER7> If only I hadn't made the idiotic decision to compete with twitter for the term "bootstrap" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Step 1 should maybe be purchase train tickets to bulgaria where you can stretch your 10k GBP out for a year.

</comment><comment><USER29> It takes guts to take a leap like this. Good luck, I hope you succeed.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish you good luck, and I am excited to see your portfolio develop.

/sips coffee

</comment><comment><USER31> if the business doesn't require a lot of physical interaction , try moving to a lower cost country. Your runway will increase two/four fold.

</comment><comment><USER32> Keep us posted. Specially the marketing side of things.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER33> What's your first product?

</comment><comment><USER34> curious already.</comment>


Our Quest for Faster Boot Times and Offline Support - <AUTHOR> https://slack.engineering/service-workers-at-slack-our-quest-for-faster-boot-times-and-offline-support-3492cf79c88 <comment><USER2> So, on the one hand we've had this discussion here a ton of times: People are using Electron because it means faster shipping, easier cross-platform development, and so on. But on the other hand, the amount of hackery in Slack[1] that needs to happen just to get a level of performance and memory usage that comes within the ballpark of a native application is so high that it begs the question: At what point does the amount of work needed to get basic levels of performance negate the initial gains of building the application using a tool like Electron?

I'm not trying to troll and say "Electron bad" btw, I'm genuinely curious.

[1] See also: Optimizing VSCode, for instance: [https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text- buffer-r...](https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer- reimplementation)

<comment><USER3> Albeit there are most likely a lot of "hackery" needed due to using Electron/web tech to get the optimal performance, this article is about architecture and how they originally did not build an architecture to support this and how they now needed to re-think that in order to get the startup performance they now desire - a situation you probably (likely?) could end up in using other technologies than Electron/web.

The high velocity web tech landscape and a startup (velocity) mentality are more likely the reasons why this was not made originally (most likely a good trade off, in particular the startup velocity argument). I'm a little surprised a community like HN don't see this, and rather bash Electron being the devil of all things (as some comments seem to imply). We should rather commend Slack for (obviously) making a decent tech choice (using a perspective where what really matters to them; rapid growth, is/was the first priority above all else, including "technical excellence").

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that the reason this architecture is needed is because the original choice of technology necessitates it.

I mean, it's not that a C++ application wouldn't need a rearchitecting for startup performance, but it would likely not be needed for an application as simple as Slack.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious: why would you consider Slack to be "simple"?

I see Slack as an incredibly full-featured app. As always, many people might not use _all_ the features, but that doesn't mean that nobody does…

<comment><USER2> I'm comparing it to applications that may have somewhat more reasons for slow startup times, like mentioned below in the thread (think: Photoshop, Maya, Unreal Engine, etc). Not a chat application.

I'm not saying Slack is not full-featured, but it's definitely not on the same scale as some of these other applications.

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but I would actually argue with the assumption that an image editor is somehow inherently (allowed to be) "more complicated and/or slow" than a productivity app.

Or, more simply: Slack (and other similar products) are not just "chat applications".

<comment><USER2> No, they're certainly not just chat applications, but if you think that Photoshop is an image editor that is somehow at the same level of complexity as Slack I'm not sure what to tell you. We'll have to agree to disagree!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Using a CDN-cached HTML file, a persisted Redux store, and a Service Worker, > we were able to boot a stripped-down version of the client in less than a > second (at the time, normal boot times for users with 1–2 workspaces was > around 5 seconds).

Money quote right here. That is the price we all pay for the bloat in modern software development. Just because slack is either unwilling to, incapable of, or forced not to develop a true native version for let's say 8 different platforms, they are using an architecture that wastes insane amounts of resources and time.

<comment><USER6> Not trying to defend Slack or Electron here, but it's definitely not the case that native applications automatically start faster.

Otherwise splash screens wouldn't be a thing, and those existed long before Electron (for examples of very long startup times, see Visual Studio, Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, Outlook, etc... the list goes on and on). And all those applications have slow UIs and eat tons of RAM too.

The actual question is of course, why does something as simple as a chat client has to be so complex. Is a complete browser engine really necessary to embed images and videos?

<comment><USER7> _> The actual question is of course, why does something as simple as a chat client has to be so complex. Is a complete browser engine really necessary to embed images and videos?_

If you keep adding features, at some point you're going to re-implement a browser engine from scratch. So why not start with one in the first place?

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slack truly amazes me.

Here is a company that's entire reason for existence is to provide a great chat experience. And yet they can't be bothered to build native apps.

At least a dozen times a day Slack will freeze for at least 15s on my 2018 MacBook Pro. And this is with the current and beta versions. Unacceptable.

<comment><USER10> Supporting 3 platforms (Linux, Mac and Windows) basically means triple the development effort. Off course slack would love to have native apps for all platforms, but apparently it's just not cost effective. 90% of the users probably don't even know what electron is, and even for those that do, it's probably safe to say that the performance benefits of a native application don't outweigh the the negatives of using something else then 90% of the company/community

<comment><USER11> Telegram is able to do this just fine.

<comment><USER12> with much less $$$

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can write a long list of reasons why Electron is bad for performance.

Having read this blog post though, I can see none of those reasons apply to Slack.

The kind of performance optimizations that they're calling "a radically reimagined desktop client architecture," are actually basic engineering practices that apply equally to all development platforms.

> Using a CDN-cached HTML file, a persisted Redux store, and a Service Worker, > we were able to boot a stripped-down version of the client in less than a > second

None of these are specific to the browser or Electron. For example:

> a CDN-cached HTML file

Assuming the HTML file simply points to the styles and the scripts (i.e. no content-related markup), I am surprised that they weren't already caching it on the client and the server. Without caching the HTML file, upon boot, everything has to wait until a meaningful chunk of that file is loaded.

What happens in a regular native setup is that what functions as that minimal HTML file is already bundled into the app's package and is always read from disk.

> a persisted Redux store

There is nothing radical about this. Storing part of the application state on disk and re-hydrating upon reload is standard practice. And again, not specific to the browser or Electron. On iOS (and I'm sure on Android), models can be decorated with a persist/re-hydration mechanism. In fact, having this redux-style single-source-of-truth state object makes it even easier to serialize the state to disk and read it back.

In fact, not a single optimization mentioned in the article is specific to the browser or Electron. Slack is not slow because of Electron. Slack is slow because of Slack. They could've written it in assembly, and without these basic optimizations, it wouldn't have run much faster.

ps. I'm not trying to bash on the engineering team though. I'm certain they had other priorities, being a hyper growth startup and all. I cannot say that I would've done differently under those same constraints.

</comment><comment><USER14> > However, a typical Slack customer may boot just once each morning and could > find themselves perpetually a full day's worth of releases behind (we > release new code multiple times a day).

> […]

> We still want users on the latest possible version so they receive the most > up-to-date bug fixes, performance improvements, and feature roll outs. Soon > after we released the new client, we added registration on a jittered > interval to bring the gap down. If there's been a deploy since the last > update, we'll fetch fresh assets ready for the next boot

Great. So additionally to wasting CPU and memory Slack is now also wasting more network bandwidth than before.

<comment><USER15> Multiple releases a day? How is that reasonable?

<comment><USER16> Some companies have multiple releases per /minute/. They have likely invested heavily in a very comprehensive CICD system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The amount of time and money pushed into basically creating a JS version of QT, we could have had a native client, that isn't workaround bloat?

<comment><USER18> How far will people go to avoid learning C++? Trust me, C++ isn't that scary.

<comment><USER19> I really hope our choices don't consist of merely "choose between Electron or C++". There's surely reasonably performant languages and frameworks with a more pleasant developer experience than either.

(considering where the bottlenecks probably are I doubt that the language itself is the problem - it's wrapping a browser that is. Even Python/Qt would probably be performant enough in this context)

<comment><USER18> Language isn't the direct performance problem indeed. It's the choice of the whole stack that depended on the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've noticed that their web client is getting worse and worse, sometimes it loads messages just to reload (with a force_cold_boot param or something like that) them again, other times it shows the "new messages" bar even though I've already read them or doesn't scroll to the last message, not to mention that it usually takes several seconds to load a channel on a new computer... It's just not pleasent to use, I can't believe that 20+ years ago we had IRC clients that worked so much faster that this "modern" chat.. Sure there are many features on the Slack that IRC is missing but still the major one is simply messaging

</comment><comment><USER21> How about a quest for dark mode? Slack recently went out of their way to provide custom notifications on Windows which explicitly ignore my preferences where a dark, Windows-style notification once appeared.

</comment><comment><USER22> It would be great if slack would also work at bad connections. I always feel like I just want to see the text someone just sent me and text should be available reasonably fast even when the network reception is bad. Particularly if the text has already been pushed via a push notification. I would just like to view it without loading a lot of things around when I click on it.

</comment><comment><USER23> it seems with each new release they add-on more and more useless UI elements and embellishments, I guess the UX equivalent of "chart junk".

<comment><USER24> I hate the new "Drafts" feature with the passion of a thousand suns.

I select my recipient in the sidebar towards the bottom, start typing, then quickly switch to another channel to check something out, then want to switch to the recipient again to finish typing my message... it's no longer there. I waste 10 seconds before I realise the recipient is now in the "drafts" category all the way _at the top_.

Which moron thought this was a good idea? I can't think of any use case where this "feature" is actually beneficial.

<comment><USER25> I don't have the same vehement hate you do, haha, but I can agree that the UX here is bad. On desktop, I usually switch between users and channels using the Quick Switcher (⌘+K) so don't really have to dig through the sidebar, but I have noticed it on my tablet and it annoys the hell out of me.

One simple tweak to that would be to have that specific user at the top in the _Drafts_ section, but also leave the user in the _Direct Messages_ area as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> F117-DK Great read. Though a bit unclear if using stale assets while updating? Guess that could speed it even further.

</comment><comment><USER26> Meanwhile, this is actually fast:

[https://cancel.fm/ripcord/](https://cancel.fm/ripcord/)

Found here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19617699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19617699)

</comment><comment><USER27> I would like to debunk some myths around electron (chromium performance) vs "native" performance.

If we talk about desktop, native means everything and nothing. Originally native means the GUI(s) that are shipped by default on an OS. There are also cross platforms GUI(s) like QT or GTK, they're not native and native is not an intrinsic quality _per se_ it's a limitation (not being cross platform) and one could say it is better "integrated on the OS" but in practice that doesn't mean a lot (actually people are _far more_ used to web UX than the native default UX (which is inconsistent between their own devices (Android vs windows mainly)))

The default GUI themes from e.g GTK are not flexible enough and modern enough for a startup.

So let's compare GUI(s) that allow customizing UX Let's debunk the performance myth: Native or cross platforms GUI(s) are less performant than chromium/electron on a number of metrics The most user facing performance metric is rendering performance. GTK use Cairo, QT has it's own renderer, many smaller native GUI(s) use worse or equal renderer. Chromium develop and use Skia (tuned for the needs of chromium) Skia is by far the fastest, mature 2D renderer (but I have hope in a fastuidraw backend from Intel), GTK and QT renderers are often ridiculously slower. Rendering performance is not only tied by that. Vsynctester.com show that chromium has great support for low, consistent latencies. QT and GTK have not the human resources nor the expertise to have such a quality assurance and performance. Hardware makers contribute to chromium, e.g the state of the art NV_path support if you have an Nvidia card. GUI(s) cannot afford this. Every potential bottleneck in chromium is decoupled, they parallelize (+ AVX) and make asynchronous almost everything. They have state of the art scrolling performance. State of the art networking performance (and will be the firsts to support HTTP3 (for September) Chromium will in a few releases render every websites using Vulkan API, no GUI toolkit can catch up. They are also totally rewriting their layout engine to learn from past mistakes. Microsoft is moving chromium input handling off the main thread to reduce input latency. Web apis allow performance control (e.g css containment) and profiling far beyond native apis (but most don't know about them)

So if chromium has the fastest rendering, scrolling, input handling and networking performance, why do people think that electron apps are "slow" or "bloated"

It depends what we talk about: If we talk about Langage performance, yes c++ destroy JS. WebAssembly help but does not catch-up. But electron or CEF allow to use c++ just fine so this point is moot.

Indeed people won't observe lag on native guis when such guis have e.g gnome theme where everything is monochrome, there's no complex rendering, no animation, no responsive layout, etc. If you watched the slack GUI on Gtk I believe it would lag, but actually GTK has not enough features to recreate slack.

Let's talk about RAM usage: Not using available RAM is a failure not a reason to be proud... RAM allow preemption / caching instead of recomputing the same thing over and over. So if you want to compare chromium vs a GUI toolkit efficiency: compare the same UX, and look at cpu usage too.

Let's talk about disk usage: Yes it's dumb to download a browser for each app... It's not a big problem seeing current disk space, and is solved by Google Carlo. Electron has a prototype for solving this issue too. Using Carlo, web apps will use less disk space that most other GUI toolkits!

Another potential reason for the misunderstanding come from the usual gap of skill between say a QT dev and an electron dev. Generally the QT dev (c++) has a mindset more oriented for performance, optimizations. This is cultural, the same person could optimize for electron.

The last reason could have been a valid one: Chromium transcend any other GUI toolkit feature wise which allow startups to express most design, in a precise, productive way. This has the theoretical downside of having more complex designs, and more constraints on possible optimizations. E.g a layout engine cannot make the same Invariant assumptions if it has to handle Right to left text (RTL). If there was as much dev improving QT there is on chromium, I have no doubt QT would have better performance because of more possible optimizations because of less features.

But the reality is, this is far outweighted. I would like to introduce the important notion of software poverty. What I mean by software poverty is a software that has a slow development. It's relative, and comparing QT or GTK to chromium is like comparing USA to Zimbabwe. Gui(s)often have a few 10K commits while chromium has 850000 commits. This is order of magnitudes differences! Numbers have not a strong effect on the brain but they should. The gap will increase even more now that Microsoft joined chromium.

To partially survive, GUI(s) toolkits like GTK or QT, webify! GTK styling is now made with css via an old webkit... QT QML and styling (modern QT) is made through the QT web engine (an old chromium).

Finally it is true that electron is not latest chromium, but it's "quickly" catching up, and many issues attributed to an electron app are due to it being an old electron, so using an old browser (and yes browsers are awesome since not that many years)

BTW skia is becoming the default renderer in android 10.

I guess I debunked many myths, any feedback?

<comment><USER28> _> Let's talk about RAM usage: Not using available RAM is a failure not a reason to be proud..._

That is rather disingenuous. People aren't complaining about using RAM at all, they are complaining about using it inefficiently compared to other options. Your statement makes it sound like using more RAM is in itself a source of pride. Many of your other points are perfectly valid, but they are overshadowed a bit by that rather silly one.

<comment><USER27> > _Many of your other points are perfectly valid, but they are overshadowed a > bit by that rather silly one_

Thank you.

> _they are complaining about using it inefficiently compared to other > options_

I cannot deny nor confirm that, where is the evidence? For an equivalent UX?

<comment><USER28> _> where is the evidence_

Evidence of people stating that Electron apps use RAM inefficiently compared to how they believe "more native" implementations would? All over the place.

Of people giving specific examples? No time to search one out right now but I've seen many discussions where similar tools written in different frameworks show Node+Chrome+YourCode to use much more memory than the others, sometimes with a less responsive feeling UX, while providing a very similar feature set, so that evidence should be easy to find.

Do you have any evidence of your opposing theory? Applications with the same feature set where an Electron based version has similar (or, indeed, lower) memory requirements for similarly performant operation / UX, or a situation where an Electron based tool manages to provide more functionality with the same memory requirements?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a Startup made a $7M Series A (Scan Inc) - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/09/the-best-series-a-story-ever-how-one-company-landed-a-great-valuation-and-excellent-terms-on-a-24-hour-deadline/

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome story about Scan Inc. ([http://Scan.me](http://Scan.me)) and how the company closed a $7M Series A investment.

(Disclosure, I'm an employee of Scan Inc.)

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: "they", now "the company", includes you, garretgee and cahlansharp.

<comment><USER3> did my comment require disclosure? Were we not supposed to be excited for this?

<comment><USER2> We would currently have at least 3 undisclosed shills and 100% of comments shilling this submission if I said nothing.

Shilling isn't the best way to express your excitement. Disclosure isn't mandatory but generally people with ethics opt-in to it.

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad. Thanks for the comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> great read. Bugs me that investors expect entrepreneurs to be so forthcoming and commital, when they are anything but.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome adventure for sure</comment>


Transform any picture into a polaroid photo. Client side. - <AUTHOR> http://www.openxrest.com/polaroidjs/polaroid.html

<comment> n-gauge Chrome Version 31.0.1650.63 m (Windows 7)

Aw Snap screen when I clicked download polaroid image.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am looking for any feedback regarding browser compatibility. Thanks.</comment>


Pay for US truck drivers is 'unbelievably low': Jetco CEO - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pay-us-truck-drivers-unbelievably-low-jetco-ceo-131613314.html <comment><USER2> There's never an actual shortage of anything in this economy. If there's a supply problem then they're not getting paid enough. Unless of course this is some sort of propaganda piece.

</comment><comment><USER3> Truck driving is one of those jobs that can't be scaled. Unless you set yourself up to manage other drivers (which of course not everyone can do), there really isn't anywhere for your career to go.

Even in my current line of work–cnc fabrication–the knuckleheads can find ways to make their job easier and efficient. What can a driver do?

</comment><comment><USER4> I know of a guy who had previously run a successful VPS service. He dropped the VPS gig, sold the company, and is now driving trucks. Things aren't always as they seem.</comment>


Show HN: A Maven extension for faster incremental builds utilizing Git diff - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vackosar/gitflow-incremental-builder <comment><AUTHOR> The project is these days mainly developed and maintained by Famod. A very good developer [https://github.com/famod](https://github.com/famod)</comment>


Buy and sell startups valuable IP on MayDay4Startups - <AUTHOR> Name: MayDay4Startups
Elevator Pitch: 9 out of ten startups fail and their intellectual property assets mostly get buried and forgotten.
Our mission is to connect such startups to people who would find value in these assets; competitors in the same market, VCs etc.
On our platform, you will be able to buy and sell:
1. Portfolio of products including patents, schematics, specifications, prototypes etc
2. User base/lists 3. Domain name
4. Trademarks
5. Inventory
More details: Check out our landing page and subscribe if you're interested in getting information on folded startups' IP here http://mayday4startups.github.io
Looking for: Subscribers and Feedback <comment><USER2> I found your pitch interesting up until point #2 (user base).</comment>


Professor Donovan's Magnificent Entanglements (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/07/01/professor-donovans-magnificent-entanglements/ <comment><AUTHOR> Regardless of the veracity for some (or all) of the details described in this article, this is really a great story on human nature -- the complexity, the subtlety, and the depth, about our humanity, all are marvelously reflected here -- in my opinion, it has more in those aspects than Chris Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_ or even Shakespeare's _King Lear_....

Maybe someone could adapt the story into a theater piece?</comment>


Show HN: New storage technology - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I have developed a new technology to storage data in computer hard drive. It does have a native compression method that is transparent to OS and makes disk access faster than traditional SSD.
It is enabled by some math formulas combined with existing programming principles. A practical implementation has been done in a windows virtual driver.
As an example: You can create a virtual machine disk and install a 10GB Windows while in physical storage it only costs a few hundred megabytes, 100MB, 300MB depending on optimization. This short storage allow for memory caching making access way much faster while it remains non-volatile.
Imagine companies with 10,000 VMs with much faster desktops and storage cost reduction on orders of magnitude. That is what can be done here.
Few video illustrations below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-ZR3bSntHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDfMVzwLWvI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjcwjZfFHBw
Problem I'm having is I emailed several research groups and email is ignored, people don't even click the video link. Any suggestions to take this further?
Thanks Lucas <comment><USER2> Hi Lucas, I'm a bit sceptical, as most people will probably be. As mentioned by other here - more concrete benchmarking data will greatly help. Preferably include a comparison with other technology bench results using the same data.

On the topic of data - I wonder what was actually on those compressed disks you've shown in the videos, because as you probably know compression algorithms performance depends on the complexity and entropy of the data.

Also, NTFS and FAT filesystems are mostly zeroes, so they do shrink down a lot when compressed, and virtual disks can even be "sparse" to begin with..

In short - more information is required.

As for reaching out to research groups / investors - It can be difficult, and I know this from experience running my own startup.

Between you and me - most investors won't even understand what you've created. Assume they are non technical people. If it were the 90's again - most of them would be working in the stock market, not technology.

So dumb it down, publish more papers/data, and get people excited - In this business it's more about appearances than substance I'm afraid.. If there's hype - they will be interested.

Hope this helps

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Nihil,

This definitely helps, in fact this was the nicest post I've seen and I will try to reply equal care.

Sceptical - Yes I expected this, I didn't expect as much skepticism though.

benchmark - It is difficult to compare to something else as there's no one doing something similar (afaik) and would be comparing apples and oranges, nonetheless I will provide a comparison details at the bottom which is easy to understand to general public.

DATA - The disks have a clean installation of Windows XP, chosen due to relatively small size of 1.5GB compared to Windows 10 with 10GB and makes processing of the model much easier. If you compress the Windows XP image with Winrar it shrinks to ~500MB so around 30%, my method requires only 200MB physical space so down to 13%.

It also differs from traditional compression in that with more powerful hardware I can shrink the storage further preserving fast I/O, but it gets exponentially more expensive for each %. Still large companies can afford the benefit which is multiplied for thousands VMs.

Sparse file system - no, it's much better :-)

Additionally I'm having trouble to name my technology, it has much similarity with compression but it is not traditional compression, it uses some math functions such as number pairing function and others (I can't disclose the sweet secret) and achieves an I/O much better than a traditionally compressed file system.

Performance is in fact better than plain NTFS as can be seen in the third video, a Windows 10 boot in 5-8 seconds is better than an SSD can do (around 25 seconds). Ultimately apps and systems can be written to take most advantages of the technology characteristics.

Your last paragraphs were the most helpful I agree I need to get people excited, I was hoping I could do this mostly anonymously but perhaps not (don't need people to know my name). I will need to think what is best strategy.

Some benchmark. HOST \</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----- OS: Windows 10 Enterprise Processor: Intel Core i5 8 Gen Memory: 16GB DDR Base Storage: SSD \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----- GUEST 1 (Normal) \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----- OS: Windows 10 Education Processor: 8 Virtual Processors Memory: 2GB dedicated VM Storage: SSD Boot time: 18 seconds \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----- GUEST 2 (New technology) \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----- OS: Windows 10 Education Processor: 8 Virtual Processors Memory: 2GB dedicated VM Storage: Enhanced File System Boot time: 8 seconds \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Lastly, this is not only application for VMs, same technology can be used for e-mail servers, databases, etc. Any more comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the detailed reply. Was a very interesting read, and definitely helped soothe my scepticism.

Regarding benchmarking - I think boot-time is not a very good test, as it varies greatly depending on the guest VM. A fresh install will be pretty consistent, but it's not a very reliable and _repeatable_ test.

You need some hard data - graphs, charts and counts. Maybe check out DiskMark or some other tool like it, Then run test inside normal VM and your encrypted- disk VM.

Second - I wonder if there's a way you could let people experiment with your solution without "giving it away". for example-

1\. Compression-As-A-Service - a simple website, people can upload a file, get the compressed file back. This way they can compare the size to Zip/7Zip/whatever, And you don't actually give them the algo (You'll probably say - "without my algo they can't open the file or use it, so they won't see the crazy fast IOPS." , But it might be enough, at least as a first step).

2\. Compiled algo, limited distribution - I have a feeling you wrote this in some low-level programming language, not Python and such. Could it be compiled to a binary? If so it might be safe to distribute, as it will require serious reverse-engineering to decipher. You could also "watermark" each executable you send someone, so it has to "dial-home" via internet before it works, and will help you identify who released it to the public in case someone does.

Hope this helps, and please feel free to connect with me on other channels as I'd love to help some more :) my mail is nihil75 at gmail.com And I'm "nihil" on mastodon.sdf.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can you win the Hutter Prize? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutter_Prize](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutter_Prize)

It's a well known challenge and it's a simple way to have an independent validation of your method. The problem is that most people think it's too good to be true, so they'd like to see an independent validation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually no, there's no one size fits all with compression, in order to win that prize you need an algorithm specialized in compressing natural language text. Mine is specialized in binary data and fast I/O so it's a different nature.

Maybe I will try to email the organizer though to see if there's interest in what I'm doing. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any reason the technology isn't explained in text? A video how fast a program starts under Windows isn't exactly a scientific measurement.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your comment, added second and third paragraph to the question. I choose video to demonstrate materially that this is real without disclosing too much implementation details too soon.

Again, trying to figure out the best approach.

<comment><USER4> The paragraphs help a lot, thanks for adding.

What is the goal? I mean you don't want to disclose the implementation so it's a teaser of sorts. Of a coming product? Patent? Selling the idea to companies? Getting a job or funding at a research firm? Does it have a name?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes correct. I can understand when you hear "technology breakthrough" the first thought that comes to mind is BS, but it is what it is.

I intend to sell it as a trade secret to an investor or company and they do the patent. Why don't I patent myself? Because I don't have a board of lawyers to do the fighting When it is copied.

As for name, I don't have a final name yet but NextGen Hard Drive sounds fit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi Lucas, please keep us updated about progress in the future. I, and others, will be very happy to hear your story, as well as this breath taking invention.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will, I got bogged down a little trying to win the Hutter Prize but it might take a while, at the minute my adapted model can only match winzip for that task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this not DriveSpace all over again? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DriveSpace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DriveSpace)

<comment><AUTHOR> How interesting the new stuff I can learn in an open forum like this!

Well no it's not the same it has several differences but the two major are:

One, it can shrink storage up to 100 times, unlike traditional compression which saves 50-70% with prohibiting performance loss. Two, data access can actually be up to 100 times faster, while in traditional compression data access for many small files can be too slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be helpful if you could provide some benchmarks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here can I find more info about this project?

PS: Windows XP?!

<comment><AUTHOR> Third video is windows 10 :) People claim on a fast SSD Windows 10 boot in 25 seconds. That is 5 seconds on the video.

I'm looking for guidance to take this to right attention and get a deal.</comment></comment>


Trump Staffers Are Reportedly Using Private Email Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/trump-staffers-are-reportedly-using-private-email-accou-1791625552 <comment><USER2> While she's trying to claim that it's hypocritical of them to do so, she's really reaching... the two aren't the same at all.

IIRC, those using the @rnchq email addresses are supposed to do so, because it's illegal to be doing RNC party business with a .gov address. This isn't the same as what Hillary did, which was using her own personal mail server for Sec of State business. Huge difference.</comment>


LibreOffice 5.2.1 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-still/?version=5.2.1 <comment><AUTHOR> FYI: Currently the LibreOffice Conference 2016 is held in Brno / Czech Republic [1], the schedule is here [2]. Follow #libocon [3] or @libreoffice on Twitter for live coverage.

[1] [https://conference.libreoffice.org/](https://conference.libreoffice.org/)

[2] [https://conference.libreoffice.org/assets/Conference/Brno/br...](https://conference.libreoffice.org/assets/Conference/Brno/brno- schedule.pdf)

[3] [https://twitter.com/hashtag/libocon](https://twitter.com/hashtag/libocon)

If anyone can find the release notes for the 5.2.1 version, I'd be grateful. Looks like this detail got lost in the conference chaos...

<comment><USER2> Actually I came here to ask about that.

Clicking a bit around did appear to give me the release notes [1]

[1] [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.2](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/5.2)

<comment><AUTHOR> That are the release notes for 5.2, but for 5.2.1?

<comment><USER3> [https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/09/07/4420/](https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/09/07/4420/)

This has the list of fixes in each RC:

* [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.1/RC1](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.1/RC1)

* [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.1/RC2](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.2.1/RC2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not sure how the oddball link above came to be, but the proper link should be this: [https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice- fresh/](https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/)

5.2.1 is LibreOffice Fresh. 5.1.5 is LibreOffice Still (older branch so more stable but without the newer features).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the link confusion. I clicked on the page for a long time searching for a blog post or release notes that links to release specific information and not generic download page.

There is now a press release: [https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/09/07/4420/](https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2016/09/07/4420/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Facebook doing "Theater View" as beta for random users? - <AUTHOR>

I am getting a weird new look on Facebook every time I click on a photo on my news feed. A light-box pops up instead of th normal redirect to the album page. The only difference in URLS I see is the appended "&theater" to the URL. Is this a bug or are they just doing it for random users? <comment><USER2> Facebook tests features among small pools of users to see how they interact with new interfaces. If they receive positive feedback and meet usability benchmarks, they push the change to the entire userbase.

Short answer: yes, pretty much.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do they see if there is positive feedback? Do they just troll through my personal wall feed? I've heard some of my friends have been periodically seeing this feature as well.

<comment><USER2> With a feature like that, they aren't analyzing what people _say_ about it. They are testing the way people interact with it. Perhaps they will test how many images users with the lightbox will look through on average compared to those without it.</comment></comment></comment>


Google LGBTQ Employees Upset about YouTube Policy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18656540/googles-youtube-lgbtq-employees-harassment-policies-pride-month <comment><USER2> This is what happens when senior management gets overpopulated with corporate robots rather than characters with imagination. Fear and avoidance of anything unknown drives decision making.

I just can't understand how they plan to inspire Hope and Faith in the future with one retarded timid decision after another. It's like they are scared to lead and want to turn into another irrelevant IBM or HP.

It's not complicated to deal with these kind of robotic decision makers especially in a company that claims to be creative. I hope something shakes and wakes them up soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Still, they're afraid of speaking out — not just because of the repercussions from the company, but also from their colleagues who may be right-leaning._

That's a lie, and everybody knows that it's a lie. Nobody believes that they're afraid of "colleagues who may be right-leaning". Everybody knows it's right-leaning employees are afraid to speak out.

So the tactic they use very child-like, but effective. It's the same one that Carlos Maza and Vox used. Play the victim card, while really being the attacker, hater, aggressor.

But of course, the simpletons at Google are either too stupid or all too willing to always bite.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Google and YouTube don't want to take any action against any far-right channel for fear of stoking the far right to say they're being persecuted,"

What bizarro world is this pretending to be? A few lines before that in the same "article" they provide contradiction:

"After further outcry and investigation, YouTube later opted to demonetize Crowder's channel, citing "widespread harm to the YouTube community resulting from the ongoing pattern of egregious behavior."

Amazing to believe in the face all that is apparent that there are people that think there is anything in the Bay area with a "right-wing bias" that hasn't been stamped out yet.</comment>


The World's Largest Tuned Mass Damper in Taipei 101 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqELmBNyWfU <comment><USER2> Dumb question: What exactly is this for?

Edit: "Taipei 101 skyscraper is protected by a large pendulum or big tuned mass damper weighing nearly 800 tons, that moves to compensate for the movement of the building so as not to collapse."

</comment><comment><USER3> This appears to be due to winds from typhoon Soudelor.

</comment><comment><USER4> just imagine watching that shit moving the first time, hoping the engineers didnt made a miscalculation</comment>


Evolution of the Transistor: Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/04/03/transistor-shockley-bardeen-brattain-modern-electronics/id=79427/#.WPFXhgK9L0c.linkedin <comment><USER2> The article somewhat misrepresents the Lilienfeld transistor, IMHO. He was awarded a patent for a device that would operate essentially like a MOSFET. But he did not have a handle on the theory behind how such a device would work (no one did yet), and critically he never actually managed to build one (as far as anyone can tell).

FETs are very simple devices to explain, they're very complicated devices to model from first principles, and even harder to manufacture. Simply drawing some pictures of one and filing a patent doesn't really count for much in my book. Though maybe that's not surprising given that the source is a rag called "ipwatchdog"...

<comment><USER3> If the idea is novel and not something an ordinary mechanic can come up with, that's eminently patentable; Watt didn't have to build a working two-chamber steam engine to get his patent, I don't believe. All the rest of what it takes to actually build it is patentable too, if it isn't obvious. That opportunity isn't lost.

<comment><USER2> I was quibbling more with the idea that the patent represents an "invention" of the transistor than whether it was valid.

I mean, da Vinci drew something like a glider once. Did he invent air travel?

<comment><USER3> He invented the glider, IF he was first (but this is unlikey, the paper airplane may extend nearly as far back as paper, as toy hot air ballons do - in China.) Nobody invented all transistors, nor all aircraft, but it's reasonable to give the Wrights special attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do we have contenders to challenge integrated circuits? 3D transistor[0] or graphine transistors[1]?

I just hope the next revolutionary step happens in my lifetime. Not complaining about all the stuff already happening, just want more!

Edit: [3]

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

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

[1] [https://phys.org/news/2016-05-graphene-based-transistor- cloc...](https://phys.org/news/2016-05-graphene-based-transistor-clock- processors.html)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_field- effect_transistor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_field- effect_transistor)

<comment><USER5> The problem is that everything useful has either showed or stopped scaling. For example, at 10nm (7nm for TSMC) we're getting an ungodly number of logic gates, but sram cell size scaling and Dennard scaling, two things we actually care about have slowed. Similarly, the cost of data movement hasn't come down much.

So 3d transistors and graphene transistors won't help all too much. And besides, FinFET s are basically a form of 3d transistors.

<comment><USER6> Logic cell density is still increasing approximately exponentially [1].

[1] [https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp- content/uploads/sites...](https://newsroom.intel.com/newsroom/wp- content/uploads/sites/11/2017/03/Kaizad-Mistry-2017-Manufacturing.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Exactly! And that's what we _don 't_ care about.

<comment><USER6> Okay, fine, logic and SRAM cell density are still shrinking (at Intel). Now are you happy? Just read the report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The book [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_\(book\)) is worth reading for all the drama and boudoir and history of the invention

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this bit nonsense or am I just sorely misinformed?

> [...] theory of superconductivity, an important technological aspect > underpinning supercomputers.

What does superconductivity have to do with supercomputers?</comment>