Ask HN: How do you stay informed without social media? - <AUTHOR> Like most HN users here I'm a software engineer (full-stack JS if that matters) so by "staying informed" I'm not referring to general news (what you'd find typically in say The Economist, WSJ, etc...), rather I'm referring to tech-related news. <comment><USER2> Coming from the perspective of someone with no social media presence: What does social media provide in terms of tech-related news that HN, lobsters, and slashdot do not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Personalization/Focus.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I don't understand what you mean?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for being unclear.

Social media acts like a news aggregator.

You get to choose what to focus on, say news related to ReactJS (so you'd follow the official account + the people working on it to get a better of perspective).

<comment><USER2> Oh OK! Hmm, I think I remember some sort of online services that allow you to monitor news sources for keywords you're interested in. Almost like RSS with regex...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kind of a cop-out, but I use [https://fraidyc.at/](https://fraidyc.at/) to follow some of the interesting people I missed when I ditched Twitter - I've added a bunch of twitter accounts and feeds to this, but have it set to update a lot more slowly.

It's a lot more calming than the normal social media torrent, but still can find out the latest-and-greatest JS web framework I can ignore ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> What makes you think social media keeps you informed? (Honest question)

<comment><AUTHOR> To stay in the context of React (although this applies to pretty much most JS- related info) : Back when components were class-based I first heard of hook- based components on Twitter (and later watched the talk, again, through twitter) which allowed me to 1) be informed of where things were going, 2) be better prepared to migrate when hooks-based components shipped and not be taken by "surprise"</comment></comment>


HackTBILISI – Uniting College Hackers from Europe and Asia - <AUTHOR> http://hacktbilisi.com/

<comment><USER2> Keep Going guys !!! this really rocks !!!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> talk to us on twitter at @hackTBILISI

<comment><USER3> do you guys need any help?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're looking for possible sponsors to help us bring students from different countries together. And we're also looking for some local hackathon/developer community leaders so that we can coordinate everything together.</comment></comment></comment>


Extend AWS promotional credit - <AUTHOR> As a startup, we got a one-year, $15,000 AWS promotional credit, and we used it to build our product on it. As we are reaching the one-year deadline, and we still have no funding/customers, I contacted the AWS team and asked for an extension. They responded with: "it's not possible to extend credit at this time."
I was wondering if anyone knows of any way we can extend the deadline, or get a new one. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Short of migrating to another platform, no.</comment>


Why are software development task estimations regularly off by a factor of 2-3? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Engineering-Management/Why-are-software-development-task-estimations-regularly-off-by-a-factor-of-2-3

<comment><USER2> This question has been asked before - previous replies here on HN include:

        brg: Because software development is an act of invention. While
             experience and education often tell us that something is
             possible to accomplish, the route to the end is unknown.

             The metaphor Michael Wolfe provides is good. But software
             scheduling isn't so much about diversions and stumbles as
             it is about the trials of invention and artisanship.[0]

        zoowar: It doesn't matter what estimate software developers
                make, program management sets arbitrary release dates.[1]

(Typos fixed)

More than one person here referred to Michael Wolfe's answer.

And for reference, here are some of the submissions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6033335)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6028623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6028623)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6024765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6024765)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808866)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3743048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3743048)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598325)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3588950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3588950)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535100)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3530928](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3530928)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3528809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3528809)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3527970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3527970)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521393)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3520585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3520585)

\----

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3535010)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3743088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3743088)</comment>


How to Create a Tab UI with Riot 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.robertwpearce.com/blog/riotjs-example/

<comment><USER2> Aside from the usual unpleasantness of muddling together views and logic (and welcome back `onclick`, how I've missed you...), I find the idea of the "parent" scope rather troubling. If you have something nested inside a tab, let's say a link, what is its parent - an individual tab, or the whole "tabs" component?

<comment><USER3> Since Riot is a "React- like 2.5KB UI library" the main purpose is to "muddle together" related layout and logic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Instead of

       class={ tabItem: true, is_active: something() }

you can just write

       class="tabItem { is_active: something() }"

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, that's awesome. will update

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Custom elements must contain a hyphen: [http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/#dfn- custom-e...](http://w3c.github.io/webcomponents/spec/custom/#dfn-custom- element). Just `<tabs>` is not allowed.

<comment><USER5> According to [1], Riot developers are aware of that and chose to support custom tags without a dash:

> W3C specification demands you use a dash in the tag name. Instead of > <person> you must write <my-person>. Obey this rule if you care about W3C. > Both work fine.

However using hyphens to be standards-compliant and future compatible would be better.

[1]: [https://muut.com/riotjs/faq.html](https://muut.com/riotjs/faq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course we'd still have posts in 2015 about how to make tabs.</comment>


The Problem with Programming - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/406923/the-problem-with-programming/ <comment><USER2> Hey, MIT Technology Review, you should know better than this: "C++ remains the archetypal 'high level' computer language (that is, one that preserves the features of natural, human language)"</comment>


Maybe it's time to talk about a new Linux Display Driver Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosoygames.com.ar/wp/2015/09/maybe-its-time-to-talk-about-a-new-linux-display-driver-model/ <comment><USER2> Yea, that's cute, except that DRM can handle pretty much all of it. You can split hairs and complain about GPU scheduling which is inherently rather difficult because scheduling at the command queue level is problem very much alike the halting problem. The real issue isn't that we don't have the pieces we need but rather that we can't get all the players to agree on using the same ones. On Windows you have one entity (Microsoft) that can post WLK and unless you pass it you won't be certified and on GNU/Linux "a working driver" can be anything from "not catching on fire on boot" through "actually brings up display" to "oh, hey a textured triangle!". And I get it, everyone is frustrated because ultimately displaying a bunch of pixels, seems trivial, that is, until you mix in politics. You have NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and the community at large pulling all in different directions. With GNU/Linux graphics support having marginal effect on the bottom line there's little incentive to deal with it. And you'd still miss a controlling entity that could validate that "works on Linux" means anything but "compiles with some random kernel release".

Everyone who thinks that writing great graphics drivers can be a spare time activity is delusional. The fact that we have Android with Gralloc (which in comparison to DRM is, well, a joke), Ubuntu with Mir, others trying out Wayland and folks still stuck on X11 makes this all so much more complicated than it needs to be (and SteamOS is rather terrible in this regard too, which is a shame because Valve is trying to do the right thing with Vulkan but SteamOS is just not a well put together distro, at least right now). It's just not a driver model problem, it's the politics of it all. Outside of Google adopting DRM instead of Gralloc (or Gralloc getting all of the features on DRM and effectively becoming DRM and replacing it on the desktop) there's probably little chance of unifying all the drivers under one coherent umbrella.

<comment><USER3> I am sorry, sir. What is DRM? I only have Digital Rights Management flashing in into my memory, but I have no idea what you could mean with DRM. Apparently I've been able to ignore and live behind the moon, not knowing what DRM is, while using Linux mainly since 2003-2004.

I'm sad that there is no alternative to X that works with `legacy` graphic cards like mine (Radeon HD 4500). But to be honest I'm personally just concerned due to already mentioned security problems with Xorg.

<comment><USER4> A quick Google search found "Direct Rendering Manager": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager)

Doesn't look like something you'd necessarily need to know about unless you were developing for the GPU on Linux.

<comment><USER2> Right, exactly. DRM is responsible for memory management, mode-setting, command submission and is capable of basically everything the original article asks for.

Unfortunately only the Free Software drivers fully support it, AMD is planning to switch its proprietary drivers to it (using their new amdgpu drm driver), and Nvidia doesn't use it on desktop at all but will likely at least implement the prime buffer sharing for optimus at some point.

There are various reasons for the current situation, e.g. Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are simply the best (on both Windows and GNU/Linux) so they had little reason to play nice with others, especially given that their mode-setting code was a bit better than what DRM used to do which is not the case anymore and hasn't been for a while, but companies need financial incentives to rewrite parts of their working codebases.

And even if you get all of the desktop GPUs on top of DRM then you'll still have Android and mobile GPUs. Certain mobile GPUs do work with DRM but that level of support is usually embarrassing and mostly done to be able to say "we did" rather than actually support any useful features in it which, is not completely unreasonable, because DRM doesn't buy you almost anything on Android right now so why bother.

Now, having said that, WDDM, particularly 2.0, does do some things that DRM can not. But DRM is not far behind (and capable of certain things wddm can not) and the real travesty is that not all GPU drivers on Linux (both GNU/Linux and Android) use it.

The perfect Linux (again, both GNU/Linux and Android) graphics stack will be: DRM kernel driver (not only command submission but memory management and mode- setting), Vulkan user-space driver (Vulkan will become basically what Gallium is right now which is a common layer on top of which we'll implement other, more friendly graphics apis) and Wayland.

DRM solves the multi-gpu sharing, synching, recovery, memory management, gives us a central place to manage security (although with GPUs that's a sort of an "interesting" topic which is a long discussion in itself) and do some rudimentary scheduling (which is, as mentioned previously, also "interesting"), Vulkan, as a side-effect of the fact that it's so tight and will come with a conformance framework, will make drivers a lot more predictable and stable and the Wayland faq explains why it's a neater choice than X11.

Unfortunately, while Google will adopt Vulkan, I doubt they'll have enough good will and reason to drop SurfaceFlinger and Gralloc in favor of DRM and Wayland. So we won't likely get to that stack anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing about being able to read other process memory under Linux has always driven me nuts. Linux is fairly secure _except_ for this one giant gaping hole that nobody mentions.

<comment><USER6> Should be pretty straightforward to fix. I wonder why it isn't. Is someone discussing the issue?

<comment><USER7> The Yama patchset has been in mainline for the last few years, and disallows non-root processes from reading each others' memory (except for direct children).

The trouble is that it's a sort of retrofitted check. It works surprisingly well, but being added to a 20+-year-old OS and a 40+-year-old design, it can't guarantee being correct. The traditional, historic process boundary on UNIX has been user accounts / UIDs. Desktop Linux needs to figure out a way to do what Android does, and run every application with a separate UID, including the ability to have private files that are unreadable to other applications.

The challenge is defining "application". Android, being a greenfield platform, could define the interaction between applications. On desktop Linux, it's obvious that, say, a web browser and a PDF viewer should be different applications. The two processes in a "find | grep" shell pipeline probably should count as the same application. In between, it's pretty blurry, because we've had 40 years to develop patterns that don't account for this isolation ever happening.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps you would be interested in my project, subuser.org

Unfortunately, it does absolutely NOTHING with regard to OpenGL isolation :( (That is if you give programs permission to talk to the graphics card, which is denied by default...)

<comment><USER7> Neato! Many years back I was playing with Xpra for this, but it was in the days before either Docker or useful seccomp. Glad to see something making progress here.

Have you looked at OpenGL virtualization e.g. Virgil ([https://virgil3d.github.io/](https://virgil3d.github.io/) , [https://www.kraxel.org/blog/tag/virgl/](https://www.kraxel.org/blog/tag/virgl/)) for that problem? The idea is to use Gallium to give them just enough access to get host 3D acceleration, but not direct access to the graphics card.

<comment><USER8> Looks interesting. But no, I have not tried it. It isn't really a priority for me. I'm not a gamer, nor am I a climatologist, and while I do use CAD, I've had other, simpler, problems to solve :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Still remember the days where one had to compile the kernel to enable sound in doom. The fact that most hardware is supported today is a blessing.

And agree with the author. X11 has aging issues.

<comment><USER10> Or for that matter XFree86 / Xorg and Xlib have aging issues. IMHO the protocol is okay (it's not perfect). Maybe cut away some of the legacy cruft, implement antialiased rendering for core primitives (yes, even if they are just lines, arcs and ellipses, those are still needed even on modern screens; heck with all the flat style UIs currently being all the rage on a HighDPI screen you could probably disable XRender and nobody would notice).

The whole framebuffer handle management of Wayland is a huge step in the right direction, but I despise Wayland's input and inter client communications model; not to say that X11 was anyway better, but whenever I code against Wayland, that part feels just wrong. Also the obsession of the Wayland devs of getting VSync right has its own share of issues (especially for low latency graphics, like you need it for VR).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How much of the compositor problems will be fixed by Wayland? I know a big goal of Wayland is to address tearing and corruption.

<comment><USER12> Anecdotal, but these "compositor problems" are not inherent to Linux or X11. I am extremely sensitive to things like tearing, and I can tell you it simply doesn't occur on my linux machines (though it does require enabling a TearFree X11 option on my intel GPU).

Wayland, unfortunately, seems to be the type of project that has been a year or two away from usability since its first release in 2012. I suspect we'll be stuck with X11 for a while yet.

<comment><USER13> The open source Radeon driver also does a good job of avoiding tearing. I think there are some pathological cases where it can still occur, but it is pretty rare. Catalyst was terrible at avoiding tearing the last time I used it (getting on to be 3 years ago now). I haven't looked into it, but it is possible that the tearing issue may not be solvable without a KMS driver (i.e. no binary blob drivers can do it).

I used Wayland/Weston for a full work day about a year ago to try it out. It _really_ was very nearly ready. I can't quite remember what problems I ran into, but I could do my work (as a web developer) with very few real problems. Probably it's time to look at it again.

<comment><USER11> Interesting to hear, I might give it a shot too now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In case anyone else has been getting the "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded" error when attempting to access the page, here's a link to Google's cached copy:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.yosoygames.com.ar%2Fwp%2F2015%2F09%2Fmaybe- its-time-to-talk-about-a-new-linux-display-driver- model%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.yosoygames.com.ar%2Fwp%2F2015%2F09%2Fmaybe- its-time-to-talk-about-a-new-linux-display-driver-model%2F)

</comment><comment><USER15> It was time to talk about a new Linux display driver model 15 years ago. 10 years ago I gave up on Linux for this reason and switched to OSX

</comment><comment><USER16> I ran into issue 3) and a variation of 4) recently trying to accomplish what should be a pedestrian task: running Xvfb on Heroku. X11 is a pain in the ass to package, I spent a day on it and gave up.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am getting this error

"Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later."

</comment><comment><USER18> I am currently using 2 displays connected to my graphics card and one connected to my igpu on my Linux desktop at home, and it's really not that hard to set up. Unfortunately the GPU does all the rendering and passes images to the iGPU, but I believe this is the case too with Windows. Also there are a few bugs when using this setup to do with monitor positioning.

<comment><USER19> You misread OPs point. He is saying Windows can do both. And vsync across cards. That is quite a feat. If using separate outputs, this is probably achievable on Linux with a bit of work. Also vsync with a compositor shouldn't be impossible. However, if the processing is done on on two graphics cards and we output only on one of them then we need cooperation from the device manufacturers to provide us drivers or implementation details on how to drive their hardware muxers. Without that info, we're dead in the water.

<comment><USER10> > And vsync across cards. That is quite a feat.

Well, what it does is, that the compositor (DWM) keeps a (small) backlog of presented window framebuffers (think GL SwapBuffers, that add to the queue) and whenever a screen's VSync comes along it blits the most recent picture presented to it. Which has the effect that if you have a window spanning multiple GPUs' outputs they may not all show the same frame, because the display refresh frequencies _will_ beat (even if you set the same refresh frequency on all outputs, since between different GPUs they're not driven by the same clock, you'll get a little bit of clock skew; and video clocks are usually not of the low drift type, because for video it doesn't matter if you're off a few ppm). If you need synchronized video sync vendors are happy to sell you genlock-able cards for $$$.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe it's time to upgrade the hosting plan.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe it's timw to pay for some more bandwidtth

</comment><comment><USER22> Let's incorporate it into systemd. That will solve everything.

</comment><comment><USER23> New year, new Linux graphics driver model. CADT is alive and well.

</comment><comment><USER24> Be grateful that graphics cards work on Linux at all. For over a decade, they barely did.

<comment><USER25> Depends on what you mean. I've been running Linux for 20+ years and have never had a graphics card that I couldn't get to work. If you're talking about acceleration, there have obviously been issues getting manufacturer support, but as a non-gamer, that mattered little to me.

<comment><USER26> So no endless hours trying to get a config file that wouldn't set the monitor in flames?

Because I did spent such hours back with Slackware 2.0.

<comment><USER13> Slackware 2.0 was released in August 1994. Even 1.0 (which is probably the first distro to have XFree86) was released in July 1993. I used MCC before that and I don't think X was available (though, to be fair, I can't really remember when I first got X working on my machine). I distinctly remember having to wait until mmap() was implemented before anyone could even think about getting X to work. :-)

It is quite possible that one had to still edit modelines by hand at that time, but it really wasn't long before the modeline db came out and you could just plonk in canned values with a good expectation it would work untouched. Certainly after that time I never had any difficulty. About the only thing I ever did was to follow instructions to modify a couple of numbers for monitors that had bizarre refresh rates.

I think that this would probably fall pretty close to the "20 years ago" time frame (August 1995). Slackware 3.0 came out in November of that year. 2.0 of the kernel came out in 1996 and I'm quite sure that I wasn't spending any time editing modelines then.

If you wanted to get total plug an play without any configuration at all, I think you would have to wait until 2004, when Ubuntu was first released. So while the original statement that it took 10 years to get video drivers working is completely wrong, I think it would be fair to say that it took 10 years to have an equivalent install experience to Windows on that front.

<comment><USER26> If you wanted basic 2D stuff yeah, then there were the adventures with hardware accelerated 2D and the first batch of 3D accelerator cards, followed by first generations of integrated 2D/3D cards.

It wasn't just getting the monitor refresh rate working.

<comment><USER13> Personally, I never had any problems with that. I was admittedly careful to buy supported hardware. 2D acceleration just worked as far as I could tell. Nobody I knew ever had a problem with it at all.

I started using 3D acceleration when Compiz/Beryl was released (2006) with an NVidia card. I was playing World of Warcraft under wine at that time too. The only problem I had was when I updated the kernel I had to remember to recompile the drivers under Debian. I switched to Ubuntu for that reason (because then I didn't have to do anything).

Eventually I retired that and went with an Intel board. It worked 100% but was dog slow at the time (pre-2010 Intel drivers were quite good at 2D acceleration but abysmal for speed at 3D). Compiz worked perfectly, the only problem was a pretty big hit in frame rate for WoW.

I replaced that with a Radeon Card which worked perfectly under Catalyst. I started hearing rumours that the free software drivers were getting good performance numbers and switched to that. 2D was amazing (dramatically better than Catalyst) and 3D was slightly slower, but comparable.

Finally replaced that with a few laptops running Intel hardware again. By this time (2012) the 3D performance had dramatically improved and I'm quite happy with it. Obviously not a gamer set up, but more than adequate for casual gaming.

Before 2006, I think you were pretty much stuck with Nvidia and proprietary drivers if you wanted 3D. Again, I never heard anyone who had real problems other than recompiling the drivers if you were on a distro that didn't do it for you.

I actually worked with Gavriel State at Corel before he started up TransGaming. I thought he was completely nuts to do it because at the time there was almost nothing that ran under Wine properly. That was 2001. Honestly, if you were trying to get 3D working on Linux, you were mostly doing it just to say you did it.

I'm not going to deny that some people had problems with video cards. I often had to jump through hoops to get random hardware at work to give me nice displays. But if you were careful to buy supported hardware, there were very few problems.

To be fair, I did a lot of Windows development in the late 90s and early 2000s and I had at least as many problems with video drivers under Windows. The difference was that on Linux I would have trouble with new hardware, while with Windows I would have trouble with old hardware. The other big difference is that with Linux, you could almost always get _something_ to work so that you could hack on it. With Windows, getting to a point where you could download updated drivers could be unbelievably painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a good example of one of the dangers and failure points of open source. When hardware integration matters, you're going to have sub-par results if you don't have a strong relationship with the hardware manufacturers. The best firmware is from companies that control both the software and the hardware. Linux fundamentally cannot have this relationship. Some things need to be very specifically controlled and designed, with business interests driving progress. Open source doesn't help much with this. Trying to build a system that works fluidly with the larger audience, when the audience is independent corporations, is for better or worse a nightmare.

<comment><USER28> I think you're trying to say that:

a. Graphics requires software and hardware to be integrated

b. Open Source communities don't work where you are driving designs in software and hardware - they are uncoordinated

I can't comment on (a). In terms of (b) you might be right for the idea of "hackers at night" open source. But, a lot of open source is 'professional', so a graphics company could solve this by:

1\. Graphics companies provide hardware and information under NDA to specific Open Source developers. That gets you enablement but not necessarily a "design" as you can't direct their work.

2\. The hardware companies hire Open Source developers. That way you have either all, or a big chunk of a specific area of the developers. As employees they will work together on the companies priorities.

3\. The hardware companies set-up a foundation. Then the foundation co- ordinates and works on the priorities of the members. There are sub-groups of the Linux Foundation that work like this - for ARM Linaro is an example.

There's a meta-comment that talks about the economics of this area - that's a more significant challenge than the organisational ones.</comment></comment>


Winning any quiz – Quizup mobile application security issue - <AUTHOR> http://blog.attify.com/2014/12/26/quizup-ios-app-security-vulnerability-win-quiz/

<comment><USER2> Looks significantly more difficult than breaking competitor "Trivia Crack", which evidently doesn't even try to secure answers: [http://www.dailydot.com/technology/how-to-win-at-trivia- crac...](http://www.dailydot.com/technology/how-to-win-at-trivia-crack/?tw=dd)</comment>


Is design of this website good - <AUTHOR> looking for some genuine feedback https://www.pricereview.in <comment><USER2> it's pretty good.</comment>


Google Body Browser - <AUTHOR> http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/index.html <comment><USER2> This looks awesome and runs fast on my quad core system using chrome 9.

I got carried away dragging and zooming around but missed one thing. The search box is really powerful. You can locate each and every organ using it. I can imagine this being incredibly useful for medical students etc.

Good job Google.

<comment><USER3> Runs fast on my Core 2 Duo too. You can enable "GPU Accelerated Compositing" in about:flags.

<comment><USER4> Wow. Gpu acceleration works wonderfully on the Nvidia Linux Binary driver. 9800GT stock

The typical high-Cpu usage dropped like a rock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it a bit prudish not to fully expose the skin? It's not much better than a Barbie doll. And where's Ken?

<comment><USER6> Is it bad to be prudish?

What's the upside of fully exposing the skin? I don't think skin exploration is the goal of this project, and this way they aren't alienating part of their audience.

<comment> a-priori I'm pretty sure Grey's Anatomy (the book, not the show!) doesn't draw clothing over the figures...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For stuff like this, why not serve up the JavaScript unminified? It seems like the perfect kind of project to learn from.

<comment><USER8> From brief code inspection, it looks like this project uses ThreeD library:

<http://code.google.com/p/threedlibrary/>

Here are other examples from Google using ThreeD which are not minified:

<http://code.google.com/p/webglsamples/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what I would like? Google for my house. As in, I get a set of rfid tags that I can put on my keys, my remote, checkbook, or whatever. In the event I can't find something, I have a little device I can use to track down the missing item.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is so cool. Very well done. A feature request would be to add layering for muscles: I can't pick out the hip rotators and Piriformis. Ditto for Transversus abdominis.

<comment><USER11> The model doesn't seem to be totally complete. Some organs are not there yet. Inner ear, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is interesting in terms of its potential. However, right now this is really the bare minimum implementable unit of functionality and is a little too limited to be of practical use in teaching anatomy.

Features I'd like to see: 1\. Arrows from the labels to the anatomical structure so you can tell which label refers to which structure without having to interactively click each label to highlight the structure. 2\. I assume they've built their 3D model from the publicly available Visible Human Project data. It would be nice to be able to flip through axial, coronal, and sagittal stacks of the Visible Human images and see the image plane superimposed on the 3D view for localization and have anatomical structures labeled on the cross sectional images as well. It would also be nice to be able to select which cross sectional imaging modality is displayed (Visible Human has MRI, CT, and photographed cryosections).

</comment><comment><USER13> Works great on latest chrome beta 64bit linux, GPU Accelerated Compositing, nvidia card, core 2 duo.

Uses negligible amount of CPU and seems as fluid as a local OpenGL application. The other webgl examples from [http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/12/webgl-now-in-beta- her...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/12/webgl-now-in-beta-here- comes-3d-web.html) work pretty well too, although the "previous page" button doesn't seem to work properly, so I have to close the tab.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have nothing insightful to say but I am in awe.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's nice to see webgl being added to the Chrome beta, no more downloading Chromium and having to open it with cli options.

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't work on the newest Chrome?

<comment><USER17> you need to enable WebGL in about:flags in Chrome 8.0.552.224

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Works great for me on Chromium 9.0.572, Ubuntu 10.10, Macbook Pro 3,1. 3d accel helps.

</comment><comment><USER19> Really, really slow on chromium 9.0.6 (fedora14 dual core system). Unusably slow.

<comment><USER20> What OpenGL hardware and drivers are you using?

<comment><USER19> As a friend pointed out, that's my problem :) I'm using the nouveau driver on a dual head GeForce 9500 GT. So I don't have any acceleration at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Even though Google has a consistent color theme in all of its interfaces, I strongly believe that black background here would make it much more usable. Pretty awesome though!

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a little risque in the latest webkit nightly build, osx.

</comment><comment><USER23> Windows 7 Google Chrome beta.. check AMD 6 core.. check GeForce 210.. check

Im getting: To use Body Browser, you'll need a Web browser with WebGL support.

what am I missing?

<comment><USER23> nm, restart had not completed to update from version 7 to version 9.

<comment><USER24> ah, glad to hear it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When will Google learn that 2-finger scrolling on OS X is not meant for zooming?

</comment><comment><USER26> this runs a little slow on my mac, anyone else having issues?

Also, what are those things on her nipples? You can see it clearly when the opacity of everything is set to 0 except for a slight opaqueness of the body.

<comment><USER27> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammary_gland>

<comment><USER26> Yes I know what mammary glands are. Now why would they be shown under the body (skin, clothing) tag?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Netter, we hardly knew ye.

<comment><USER29> they definitely need to work on more sophisticated dissections, and Netter would be a GREAT start!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> so i guess it's just iso-surface extraction under the hood

</comment><comment><USER31> does this use websocket?

</comment><comment><USER32> Works wonderfully in FF 4b7. It's a pretty simple model and I'm on a high end machine, so that isn't all that incredible (like a side-scrolling canvas demo), but it's neat.

<comment><USER33> I have the exact opposite experience actually in FF 4b7, and though I'm not running some crazy awesome machine, its still a decent box. The page basically crashes the browser.

<comment><USER34> Can you paste the Graphics section on the about:support page?

<comment><USER33> Adapter Description: NVIDIA Quadro NVS 295

Vendor ID: 10de

Device ID: 06fd

Adapter RAM: 256

Adapter Drivers: nvd3dumx,nvwgf2umx,nvwgf2umx nvd3dum,nvwgf2um,nvwgf2um

Driver Version: 126.96.36.19938

Driver Date: 7-14-2009

Direct2D Enabled: true

DirectWrite Enabled: true

GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 Direct3D 10

Running on windows 7, Xeon quad core 3.20 GHZ, 6 Gig ram

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Duplicate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009346> \- 4 comments

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2010046> \- no comments

Also, from Google's blog:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2009300> \- no comments

<comment><USER36> Can we leave the novelty accounts to Reddit, please?

<comment><USER35> Huh. I thought this was something completely different. I thought this was a robot to help cross-references submissions about the same topic, and find duplicates that the built-in dup detector doesn't find. As such, I thought it would be valuable.

<comment><USER36> If it's a bot, I can see the value in it. It would be better as a built-in feature, but nevertheless it makes sense. I just hope that it doesn't inspire less useful accounts which would be more akin to Reddit's novelty accounts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ocean – Make music together online - <AUTHOR> https://www.oceanwaves.io <comment><AUTHOR> added logged out demo page so you can have a shot before registering (beat will save if you sign up) [https://www.oceanwaves.io/demo](https://www.oceanwaves.io/demo)

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks really neat! Gonna try and get some friends to play with it later.

I've a (significantly more modest, far closer to a toy) project I'm working on atm that does similar stuff, was kind of stunned at how few options there were for musicians to collaborate. VST Connect Pro seemed to be the only thing I could find and that's a bit excessive for most

RE mobile site, are you planning on including full functionality or stripping it down to be a simpler set of controls.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exciting! let me know how you get on.

Yes there are limited options and can get a lost in endless setup.

Re mobile site, exploring performance and some other features, will post an update in time.

ps thanks everyone who has clicked and signed up!

<comment><USER2> Hey man, just had a play with it there, love these kinds of things!

Here's some notes I took:

\- Is there a reason the verification email isn't sent out automatically on registering?

\- New project should maybe directly open the project? Basically get people into playing with the thing asap. Maybe some demo tracks already there to tinker with too?

\- I think most of this is pretty intuitive to anyone who's used any music software before but the collection of loops listed at the bottom confused me initially, I was like "what's this L0 button? why doesn't it do anything?" I dunno if Svelte (which is what my devtools are suggesting is used, might be wrong) has anything like it but something like `react-joyride` as an opt-out initial screen to help onboard people could save you some time dealing design side stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> first two added now!

we're exploring different options for demo page but signups coming in okay so far. Agree some more optional onboarding is a good idea, we've tested this before to some success..

glad you enjoyed, any more feedback super welcome

thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty cool. I like the examples on the home page, on mobile now, so can't test the composer functionality, but some nice tunes!

<comment><AUTHOR> mobile site still under development, thanks for checking out the tracks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The last screen shot replace the icon with a person's actual pic.

<comment><AUTHOR> thought we'd show off our airpod referencing zero state.

will update

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> !!

pushed a hotfix for a bug which sometimes caused users first project to not work!</comment>


Show HN: My seven minute workout timer evening project - <AUTHOR> http://7-min.com/ <comment><USER3> OK, fine for _this_ time, but tomorrow, you do it instead of procrastinating and creating a web page about it : )

</comment><comment><USER4> You made hundreds of hackers move their ass for 7 minutes today. That is a huge accomplishment.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the best compliment I've ever gotten.

<comment><USER5> Just went through it on my iPhone.

First, nicely done. The interface is clean, the progression bar is helpful.

A few suggestions: It would be nice to have a bell go off both at the beginning and end of the rest period, so you don't miss the beginning of the next 30second sprint. On my phone I only hear a bell at the start of the rest period. I would also suggest displaying the graphic for the next exercise during the rest period. I work out regularly but I still didnt know what a "push up and twist" was so by the time I figured it out I had already missed 5-8 seconds of the sprint.

Nice to see products like this generating conversation. Keep up the good work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome. Just yesterday I was doing a 7-minute workout in my room, just because I was waiting for dinner to finish heating up.

The main problem is that the standard timer app on iOS only acts as a stopwatch...so the final ten seconds of each interval, I'm watching the clock so that I can hit "Lap" and move on...this is awkward when I'm also wearing headphones to listen to music.

What would be ideal for me is to have a simple timer that would alert me when the interval was done and automatically move on to the next one....like a repeating event on a calendar. I'm sure there's an app for that but I just didn't feel like downloading a bunch and doing trial and error.

One more twist: I can't do all the exercises in the 7-min workout (as made famous in the NYT)...jumping jacks would annoy the shit out of the people below me. So I make up my own. A timer that would allow me to set up my own sequence would be fabulous.

Anyway, this is just a longwinded way of saying that there's a need for a niche app here, and it would definitely be a fun coding project...I'm glad someone else thought of it first :)

<comment><USER7> I've read a bit about high intensity training (tabata, hiit, crossfit, etc.) and there seems to be quite a good bit of evidence supporting their utility. The 7-minute workout may well fit in that same category.

However, as an old fogie, I recall a craze back in the 70s and 80s called 5BX, which stood for 5 basic exercises, created by Swedish aircrew iirc. The reason I recalled it is the mention of rapid-style jumping jacks and push ups in the 7-minute workout. 5BX had increasingly quickened routines for jumping jacks (from a crouching position), sit-ups and push-ups (with claps thrown in as you completed each push-up).

All of this worked very well in terms of actually toning your body, getting a good daily cardio workout, and a sense of fitness... until it did irreparable back and other damage to quite a few people. So just be careful, especially if the high intensity and the 7 minute time limit drives you to a regimen that gets anywhere close to a 5BX style work out in terms of quick, jerky movements.

Personally, I've reverted to playing basketball like I did in my college days, with high intensity worked into it with repeated lay up, jump shot routines, etc. It's working great for cardio and overall body toning. I would like to do weights as well, as there is a body of evidence pointing to its value, but basketball is plenty far for me at this stage.

<comment><USER8> According to the Wikipedia entry, the harm from 5BX was caused by the situp. Replace with crunches and you're good.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's a good catch. I think it was only late into the '80s that full sit-ups began to be deprecated. I did notice the 7-minute work out emphasizes abdominal crouches which is good. However, 5BX did also cause knee and elbow problems (thanks to the crouching jumping jacks and clap happy push-ups). I'd say watch out for routines involving jerky movements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again to everyone. I'm going to keep the webapp completely open and free as long as anyone is using it, and I'll definitely open up the code once I clean it a bit. If anyone would like to port it to IOS, I'd be happy to chat. lgsilver (at) gmail.com -- Lindsay

<comment><USER9> Great work. Just needs a beautiful favicon so it can look great sitting in my bookmarks bar ;-)

<comment><USER10> And then he could use Tinycon to show the timer in the favicon (totally useless but a nice detail): <http://tommoor.github.io/tinycon/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is wonderful.

Can you make a way to skip sections?

Living in a house built in 1840, jumping jacks are out of the question...

(Also if you click rapidly on the 3/2/1 countdown you can _kind of_ skip things, because the app goes to all madness.)

<comment><USER12> Same here. Just one or 2 clicks on countdown skipped loads of things and counter was all 18...20....15....14....17....

Using Firefox 21 on Win 7

<comment><USER13> I'm sorry but this is just a really poor execution of a simple idea. It was great to rush to market, but the timing is so totally out I find it completely unusable. This is on a Nexus 4 in Chrome.

<comment><USER14> there is no "rush to market" on this - she just built a project for her own interest and shared it! Constructive criticism is good - but if you dont like it - dont use it ;)

<comment><USER15> Lindsay is a male.

<comment><USER14> gotcha - hard to tell from the name - plus HN doesnt show you the gender of the poster :) (and it doesnt need to FWIW)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great idea, you could make a pretty cool app out of this: let people create routines by letting them associate pictures with exercise names and amount of seconds.

They could then create workouts by creating a list of exercises and rest periods and play their routing with the timer you created.

Does this exist? I want one.

<comment><USER17> I agree that for the best results, changing it up (also called Muscle Confusion - <http://athletics.wikia.com/wiki/Muscle_Confusion_Principle>) is also necessary. Instead of making your own workout (which most people are not qualified to do), we've built an app that asks for your goal, level, time, equipment, etc. to build you a personalized routine that changes as you go: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pumpup-workout- coach/id57307...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pumpup-workout- coach/id573070442?mt=8). The hardest part of working out shouldn't be coming up with the plan.

<comment><USER18> "Muscle Confusion" is not a legitimate physiological property.

It seems to be a mutated misunderstanding of "accommodation", which is almost entirely a _nervous system_ phenomenon having almost little to do with adaptations in muscle tissue.

The best form of "changing it up" for hypertrophy is to modulate standard acute training variables. Merely randomly changing exercises is ... not efficient.

<comment><USER19> I wish I could upvote this several times. Muscle confusion is a b.s. term, you need periodization in your training. Merely doing random shit everyday is going to work while your are a total newb, but you'll never get really strong that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ha ha, I decided to try the 7-min workout last night for the heck of it and I basically wanted something exactly like this. Nice job, it does its purpose perfectly.

One small suggestion: Perhaps a louder audio cue for transitions between exercises in case you aren't looking at the screen.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute workout timer. Then you're in trouble, huh?

<comment><USER22> No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.

<comment><USER23> 7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.

<comment><USER24> I only work out for prime numbered minutes, so 7 works very well. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Works on mobile devices which is perfect when on the go. Give me a pause button so the timer doesn't go before I'm ready or make the clicking sound. Then I'll be at the site every day.

</comment><comment><USER26> Shameless plug: We built a workout app for iOS (PumpUp) that makes it easy to build a personalized workout routine for home, the gym, or on-the-go. You can customize things like equipment, goals, muscles, etc. Check it out if you're interested! ([https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pumpup-workout- coach/id57307...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/pumpup-workout- coach/id573070442))

</comment><comment><USER27> Very cool! You got me off my butt and moving for 7 minutes and it was a great work break.

A few notes for you and others:

1) There are a few that switch sides/legs and I would handle them differently. For the lunges and step-ups, I think alternating sides is good. For the side planks, I think it would be useful to give the other side a whole segment. Splitting it in half wouldn't be much of a workout.

2) This is awesome because for the most part, you can modulate the workout however you want. In fact, keeping a log of the number of pushups/situps/high knees/etc would be cool because people could see progress. This might be a nice extension for the site!

3) It may be good to balance things out as far as muscle groups go. Pushups are repeated multiple times, as are squat related exercises. It is important to balance these out with the muscles that oppose these exercises.

4) Even better (at least for me) would be to have a series for desk workers that open up your body. We spend so much time crouched forward that a series of exercises to counteract this would be awesome.

Thanks and I hope you keep building on this!

<comment><USER28> I think it's implied that lunges and side planks are alternating; at least _I_ have a hard time doing much more than 15 secs per side plank.

<comment><USER29> I am confused about it myself. I can do a 30 second side plank (35 seconds? Not so much.) so I've been doing two sets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I emailed a link to your 7 min workout timer to my girlfriend. This was her response. Nice job.

"THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!!

That's. The. Most. Ingenious. Thing. Ever.

Now, I just have to bring my phone with me. Woohoo!

When I play it on the computer it ticks down, my phones doesn't so I'll have to pay attention to it, which could be tricky, but that's sweet. Thanks!"

</comment><comment><USER31> It seemed like most of the comments when the article was on HN were saying that this is not a very good workout... Having said that, cool site, looks great!

<comment><USER32> This analysis of the workout was linked in the comments.

[http://elsbethvaino.com/2013/05/should-you-do-a-newspaper- wo...](http://elsbethvaino.com/2013/05/should-you-do-a-newspaper-workout/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> this is great, just what I was looking for after I read the article - <USER2> those confused by what this is [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-mi...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-minute-workout/)

<comment><USER34> And the requisite contrarian HN comments, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5704485>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd like to see the rest screen contain information about the next exercise. This would give time to prepare.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should see this at the bottom under the dots. I haven't optimized for small (under 13") screens, so it may be hidden.

<comment><USER35> Ahh yes... I did miss that because of screen size. You should optimize for smaller screens. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Okay, this is good. The only problem is that I'm out of excuses to actually not use it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> You guys rock. Thanks for the comments. Setting workout lengths is actually already built-in, just have to add it to the UI (after work).

</comment><comment><USER37> Love it! The suspense is fantastic - it forces me to concentrate on the current exercise and not worry about whats coming up next. Really great! I hope you will add more exercises, more compound exercises, lots of body weight exercises, from beginner to advanced, logins, tracking.. etc.. etc.. all while keeping the core simplicity of it all intact! =)

</comment><comment><USER38> This looks awesome. I'm going to start using it from tomorrow. I'd love to see more intervals like 10 min, 15 min, 20 min.

<comment><USER39> We are living in tomorrow. Do it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> So funny, I just started designing something similar a few days ago, here is a shot of the dashboard [http://dribbble.com/shots/1067433-Flat- Workout/attachments/1...](http://dribbble.com/shots/1067433-Flat- Workout/attachments/131665)

<comment><USER41> That looks great! When did Dribbble get so huge? That is less of a dribbble and more of a splllash.

<comment><USER40> Thanks man, yeah you can now attach full files on dribbble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Bug Report: Clicking the initial countdown clock 2-3 times messes up the entire timer.

<comment><USER43> Confirmed this on Chrome, the behavior is strange.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Nice job.

I don't want to presume anything. Did you purposefully shorten the workout from that described in the ACSM article? It indicated 30 seconds on and 10 seconds off. (Your total duration variable should be 480--don't ask me how they added that up to "7 minutes"!) This has lead to some confusion in the comments here. And, although their intervals are somewhat arbitrary, and asserting this routine is "scientific" is debatable to begin with, it would be more accurate.

Again, great job.

</comment><comment><USER45> Nice job! Little bit of feedback:

1\. The images don't update until after the first tick of the new exercise. It would be nice if the updated when the rest screen changes to the new exercise screen with the timer and the text.

2\. It would be cool if for exercises like the side plank (I think that's the only one in this set), where you hold something on each side, it gave you a halfway warning to tell you that it's time to turn over.

3\. The rest period at the end isn't really necessary.

<comment><USER46> It would be nice to have a sound option, too - to just say the exercise name when it starts - so you don't need to look at your computer all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love it, thank you! I just tried it now. I have one suggestion, at the end when it's time for side plank, it is not clear when you should switch sides. I thought I would rest, and then the timer would tell me to do the other side, but at this time the timer was done. It would be better if the timer indicated when to switch sides, or had two segments, one for each side. Other than that, it was perfect!

</comment><comment><USER48> This is really great! I was telling my fiancé about this workout just today. I read the NYT article but it was very sparse on details. Where can I find more info? About the research, more details about the workout itself (for example, during intervals is it full-on 100% all the effort I can muster, how many reps am I aiming for, is it done every day), etc?

Thanks for this. I'll give it a try in about an hour!

<comment><USER49> I believe this was the paper on which the NYT article was based:

[http://journals.lww.com/acsm- healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...](http://journals.lww.com/acsm- healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/05000/HIGH_INTENSITY_CIRCUIT_TRAINING_USING_BODY_WEIGHT_.5.aspx)

<comment><USER48> Excellent. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I do wonder, what number of 7 minute workouts per week is appropriate? I'm clueless, really - I've heard that you should not work out more than once in two days, and to me it does make sense to apply this rule here, since it advertizes itself as full workout. But yeah, I'm not really sure - it would be great if someone could elaborate. PS The site is great - simple but very useful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone. I made some updates today based on your awesome feedback:

1.) You can now change the length of the workout 2.) Sounds now work (as well as they can) in IOS 3.) Changed duration of the breaks to 10 seconds no matter how long the workout 4.) Added a sound-effect to tell you to switch on exercises that need it 5.) Made some UI tweaks to improve the look

Thanks for making my week.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm using a slow Internet connection, so I notice when transitioning to a new workout, it shows the old workout picture for a second or two before the new workout picture loads. Perhaps you can load it during the rest period and just have it hidden?

P.S.: Great job! And great website idea!

</comment><comment><USER52> Your facebook link is broken, it is (<https://www.facebook.com/lindo>) and should be (<https://www.facebook.com/Lindo>). Notice the capitalized 'L'

</comment><comment><USER53> Awesome! What would be nice is a choice to confirm between exercises so you can hit spacebar to continue and a multiplier for the speed of the tick. I'm not sure I can do 1 push up/sec for half a minute as a first training session. :P

</comment><comment><USER54> Here is a link to do all these exercises properly: [http://lifehacker.com/these-12-videos-show-the-proper- form-f...](http://lifehacker.com/these-12-videos-show-the-proper-form- for-a-7-minute-ful-499199366)

</comment><comment><USER55> I forwarded this program to my coworker when I saw it on HN yesterday. Now, I'm going to forward him this link... he refuses to go to the gym because he's too busy so hopefully this will help him kickstart some fitness in his life.

</comment><comment><USER56> On Chrome on Win8, the background is white, but Firefox and on Dolphin browser on my Nexus 10, the background is black. You probably meant to keep a black background (eg. Workout timer on the start page is invisible on my chrome)

</comment><comment><USER57> If it had the amusingly dramatic music and crazy horn between sets like this video the I would definitely use it. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRni0ctIeFE>

</comment><comment><USER58> Great work! I tried the workout for the first time after a run this afternoon... it kicked my butt! As I was following along on the ipad I was thinking a simple app would be perfect for this. Love the implementation and visuals!

</comment><comment><USER59> You should specify a different tone for the last 3 "bips". We can't be looking the screen 100 percent of the time, so a different "bip" to indicate that the end of the current countdown would be a good addition imo.

</comment><comment><USER60> why routine start at 26 sec mark and rest at 8 sec? Some don't want it but I really like to anticipate what's next, like in this app <http://7minworkoutapp.com/>

</comment><comment><USER61> This has pretty pictures. I built a command line version: for i in `seq 16`; do echo -ne '\007' && sleep 30 && echo -ne '\007' && sleep 1 && echo -ne '\007' && sleep 10; done

</comment><comment><USER62> After the 1st excercise it starts at 7 seconds rest and then 26 seconds for the next excercises (Chrome/Win).

I also wonder why the images or better the whole site isn't responsive? I would also add a link to one of the sources.

</comment><comment><USER63> "seven minutes of steady discomfort" \- [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-mi...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-minute-workout/)

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm wrecked! Should be called the 1 minute work out :-) Nice idea and love the way you implemented it with the simple graphics on top of the countdown. The dots idea is also cool. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER65> It is splendid, something I was looking for. You could now concentrate for a better UI/phone app. A suggestion, You can also look for customizing/substituting workouts for the exact duration.

</comment><comment><USER66> I think it would be clearer if the counter was not behind the person.

</comment><comment><USER67> Great! Bookmarked!

Feature request: a nice sound when each section is finished. Sometimes I'm not looking at the screen while doing the exercise, so a sound marking the section changes would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER68> Short exercise routines are a hit in today's world of busy people. I love this thanks. Still feel sad that we have to opt for these things in order to get our asses up.

</comment><comment><USER69> This is great! Although I'm not quite sure the pace of the tasks. For example, for push ups, is it down on one beat and up on the next or one complete pushup per beat?

<comment><USER70> With interval training you try and do as many as possible within the time period, not a specific amount or to the beat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Many people involve themselves in weight training and cardio exercises because of which they miss out on ground exercises. I am sure this app will help them a lot.

</comment><comment><USER72> To all programmers, please: get out of your room and run outside for a while. Taking a breath of fresh air feels much better than sweating in a closed space.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is GREAT. Any way that it could be purchased for download? I am headed to the Congo and won't have internet. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm looking forward to trying this out, most of the exercises mentioned in the Times article are of great benefit.

</comment><comment><USER75> I was going to make an app for this. You beat me to it, and it's pretty good, no reason for me to bother now.

</comment><comment><USER76> This is great, thanks! I'd like to hear a ding or some audio notification at the end of each section.

</comment><comment><USER77> I was actually thinking about doing a project like this earlier today. Thanks for saving me the effort

</comment><comment><USER78> Would love to make the URL bar disappear in mobile Safari. Love the idea, I will do this workout now.

</comment><comment><USER79> Nice work, just tried it out.

One suggestion would be to add a Switch pop-up if you run into exercises like Side Plank.

</comment><comment><USER80> I really do hate you right now. But I do actually see great value in this. Thanks for making this!

</comment><comment><USER81> From last 3 days I was thinking about this only. Instead I thought of doing it as Android App. Cool.

</comment><comment><USER82> nice work on the site......cheeky bit of self promotion for my iphone tabata timer app [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tabata-hiit- timer/id44160046...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tabata-hiit- timer/id441600468?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER83> Awesome project.

I will be using it. Although I have to second others.. It'd be nice to choose my exercises.

</comment><comment><USER84> Once you are comfortable doing this routine I would highly recommend the Insanity Workout.

</comment><comment><USER85> One nitpick, I think the social aspects should disappear after 15 seconds of no events.

</comment><comment><USER86> Oh man if I could customize this, it would be perfect. Very well done though.

</comment><comment><USER87> Just curious, why 7 minutes?

<comment><USER16> This post is based on this article: [http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-mi...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the- scientific-7-minute-workout/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I didn't know what a wall sit was, so I looked it up ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_sit> ).

According to wkiipedia, it's safety is disputed: might be injure someone with bad knees... something to keep in mind.

<comment><USER89> As a tall person (200cm) . I wasn't able to do wallsits (or walk stairs) when I was in puberty. It hurts the knees.

Speaking of knee injury. Practice squat techniques very well. IT might look easy, but doing them well takes a lot of practice. Your knees shouldn't go further than your toes, otherwise it's really bad for your knees!

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> i don't get the excitement for this 7 minutes workout, can't you just go in the gym for 1 hour 3 times a week and do some squats ?

aside from this the site looks good, simple and to the point, props for it.

<comment><USER91> I do tabata most weekday mornings before work to get my body moving. This looks much more fun, and it doesn't replace my gym time, which is after work and an hour in duration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Awesome! Thank you!!

The last two should be repeated twice though (one for each arm)

</comment><comment><USER93> I was wondering who is going to make this first. Salute to you :D

</comment><comment><USER94> Pretty similar to the Android app 'Relaxed Abs'. Awesome job!

</comment><comment><USER95> My only complaint is that it doesn't tick on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER96> That is beautiful! Love the art design.

</comment><comment><USER97> Awesome! Does the job, keep it simple!

</comment><comment><USER98> Thank you for doing this. I will use!

</comment><comment><USER99> I love this, thank you so much!

</comment><comment><USER100> setting custom times would be nice I like to do 30 seconds with 10 seconds rest

</comment><comment><USER101> This is awesome. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER102> How is this useful? Do you stand and exercise in front of your computer or tablet computer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Simple and elegant.

</comment><comment><USER104> Thank you so much!

</comment><comment><USER105> Pretty Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER106> Thanks, good work.

</comment><comment><USER107> Love it! Yay!

</comment><comment><USER108> Really good!

</comment><comment><USER109> Great work!

</comment><comment><USER110> Love it!

</comment><comment><USER111> excellent.

</comment><comment><USER112> god bless you

</comment><comment><USER113> thank you

</comment><comment><USER114> It would also be pretty sweet to have the ability to move exercises around. I tend to throw in pull-ups and other stuff at the end (with things around the house). Possibly even creating custom 7-min workouts that fit the guidelines of upper/lower/upper/lower, etc.

EDIT: but this is an awesome thing, regardless</comment>


Coronavirus: Italy to close all schools as deaths rise - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51743697 <comment><USER2> Mandatory attendance / truancy laws for 10+ year olds are terrible and hopefully will one day be removed if in the name of preventing mass infections. Make middle school and high school mostly on the web with optional social interaction... productivity will go up, diseases and bullying will go down.</comment>


Why Wouldn't You Want to Become a Developer? - <AUTHOR> https://code.likeagirl.io/why-wouldnt-you-want-to-become-a-developer-6a8117442cda <comment><USER2> It's kind of dreadful work. Believe it or not, endless attention to arcane detail is not enjoyable for everyone! Recently helping some designer colleagues learn how to code has been interesting and eye opening.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true. Some parts of it can be tedious. But the satisfaction you get from building something that works is pretty awesome.</comment></comment>


LastFM removing some ability to personalize listening experience. - <AUTHOR> http://www.last.fm/stationchanges2010

<comment><USER2> Groooveshark employee here, so excuse me for the shameless plug. ;) We love last.fm but I've always thought it was more for learning about artists and discovering new ones...and of course tracking everything you listen to and seeing what your friends are listening to. They aren't primarily a streaming music service and cutting those features probably makes it easier for them to cut streaming and licensing costs by being counted purely as a online radio service.

Grooveshark, on the other hand, has the primary focus of letting you search for and listen to whatever you want, but frankly our radio feature isn't as good. So if you want radio with limited control, use last.fm, if you want to listen to what you want to listen to and notghing else, use Grooveshark. :)

<comment><USER3> I have found this out with my experiments with Grooveshark. The radio feature is TERRIBLE! It takes about 15 minutes before it starts repeating songs; there have been multiple instances where there's no suggestions; it plays bands that you already disliked (or frowned, I guess).

</rant>

Make your radio feature better and you would have a KILLER app!

sincerely,

a paying grooveshark user

<comment><USER2> I agree, radio is probably our weakest area. We try very hard not to play duplicates, but our underlying data is very messy since most of our content comes from users. Better recs and better deduping are high on my wishlist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> DMCA compliance, or at least DMCA-as-interpreted-by-various-labels compliance.

Shame about loved tracks, but the "my library" station is the best, and that will still work.

<comment><USER5> I think it's more likely just an attempt to reduce their license fees.

The music licensing societies (at least in the UK) have different classes of license, at different price points, and licenses which allow "interactive use" are much more expensive. The distinction is (IANAL) about whether or not the user has detailed control over what tracks they listen to, and in what order.

The features they're removing sound a lot like "interactive use":

      * Loved Tracks Radio: streaming your list of loved tracks

      * Playlists: streaming a list of tracks you've chosen for a playlist

      * Personal Tag Radio: streaming a list of artists, albums or tracks that you have tagged

<comment><USER6> Yes, it's an interactive/non-interactive distinction in play. (DMCA has become a synonym for "non-interactive" in the industry.)

Last.fm has always argued that these radio modes were non-interactive, but the labels have clearly got the better of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My understanding is that anything that allows the user to choose what specific tracks they want to hear is deemed "interactive" by the industry, and costs an awful lot more than "non-interactive". "Non-interactive" appears to mean streams which the user can only broadly determine the content of (i.e. genre or like-artist 'stations'), can't allow skipping over tracks too aggressively, and who knows what other restrictions.

I don't have any idea as to how big of a difference in licensing fees we're talking about here, and I know it's very hard to make a buck in this sphere with so many vampires in the picture. But not paying up for interactive seems like a really bad call on last.fm's part (and/or suggests that they are in pretty rough shape as profits go). The list of things they're removing is essentially a list of "all the reasons why I might be interested in using last.fm".

</comment><comment><USER8> Unless there's something I'm missing, the headline here seems a little exaggerated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess it is. They appear to be removing all the reasons I signed up for lastfm and the main way I use it.

* Library and recommended stations remain

<comment><USER8> Yeah from the article it really looks like one of those "screw you our long- time customer" actions disguised as a bland update. Are other people irritated too?

"last.fm removing all the reasons I signed up" would have been a great headline.

<comment><USER9> you are right. i loved last.fm and was gladlly paying my month subscription. Now that they are removing useful functionality im not standing behind that company.

i guess grooveshark deserves a chance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not all ability, you still have tags and artists. But not personal tracks you have tagged and your loved tracks radio, i will miss my loved tracks.

</comment><comment><USER11> This doesn't seem to affect the (free) "My Library" station.

</comment><comment><USER12> Paying lastfm user here. Won't be come November 17th. The only reason I pay is for my loved tracks, to stream anywhere on anyone's laptop.

</comment><comment><USER13> See also: Caldwell's talk from Startup School on the challenges facing music startups

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/20/imeem-founder-dalton- caldwe...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/20/imeem-founder-dalton-caldwells- must-see-talk-on-the-challenges-facing-music-startups/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a heavy lastFM user and yet used none of these functions that they are removing. For me my iPod/netbook fills the role of loved tracks and playlists. I'd rather not waste bandwidth streaming tracks which I already have on various devices.

<comment><USER12> Scrobbling isn't very heavy. Unless you're paying, I wouldn't call you a heavy user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's odd that they would do this. They should have ramped up the price of the subscription for some of those features instead.</comment>


Cyber-Terror: How real is the threat? Squirrels are more of a danger - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/24/cyber_terror/ <comment><USER2> I'd have to smile and nod politely if he told me that in person.

When a country must entirely cut itself from the internet to deal with incoming cyber attacks, I think the issue is much more serious that that politician understands.

For reference, take a look at Turkey. Anonymous hammered their systems until the government's only option was to completely shut down incoming internet access. That's always good for business, right?</comment>


Unreal Engine is struggling to remain relevant - <AUTHOR> http://movingfulcrum.com/unreal-engine-is-struggling-to-remain-relevant/ <comment><USER2> Maybe so but they are still making a killing. They probably made 2.5 mil of Rocket league sales alone.</comment>


The Cinema of Inadvertence, or Why I Like Bad Movies - <AUTHOR> https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/eating-and-being/articles/the-cinema-of-inadvertence-or-why-i-like-bad-movies <comment><USER2> I feel like I've seen this particular movie a million times. Here is the plot:

Evidently-educated fellow enjoys trashy movies, seeks to justify tastes at some length (>5K words) with reference to usual movies (Plan 9), usual critical touchstones (Hume, Foucault, Sontag). In the final scene, no firm conclusions are drawn, and the author wanders off. We are secretly afraid he will return some day, perhaps to ponder further.

You'd think the immodestly-named "Institute for Advanced Critical Studies" would prefer a new take on a stale discussion, or indeed have an editor on hand. Evidently not.

<comment><USER3> I feel like I've seen this particular comment a million times. Here's the recap:

Facile dismissal, no content.

<comment><USER4> Right, like this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418864)

<comment><USER3> Yes, like this...

Did you think that me having made the same thing magically absolves others?

<comment><USER4> No, I think your posts are often unnecessarily unpleasant and I thought the obvious hypocrisy here might cause a brief moment of self-awareness.

<comment><USER3> > _I think your posts are often unnecessarily unpleasant_

Some might be. By generally I go at length to explain my points, even devolving into long threads and summing up things to make my point better understood.

And while I might characterise some person in the news or some industry figure, I never name call others in a discussion. I try to rephrase what I wrote to make my point clearer, in sub-thread upon sub-thread, even when I am called names. Thought a certain "fuck the poor" mentality in some comments does grind my gears.

It doesn't help that in usually to the left, continental European, and conservative side of things, which it's triply unpopular with a large part of HN demographic. Though in regular programming/tech things I'm fairly vanilla (though people have thought of me as an Apple shill).

That said, I had a look at your comments to see if I rubbed you off the wrong way in some thread. Are these representative of the non "unnecessarily unpleasant" way we should be writing?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21225106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21225106)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21026695)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > We bad-movie watchers have our own anticriteria, the sorts of badness we > prefer.

As a fellow bad-movie aficionado, I've narrowed my taste to prefer bad movies that the makers are very proud of and defend until their dying days. Passionate low quality movies, especially ripoffs, are uniquely appealing to me which is why I love Italian cinema from the 70s and 80s (not to mention the other, often more exploitative Italian genres of the same era). The other niche I've found enjoyable are those makers who know they are low budget and do the best with what they have (Golan/Globus, Charles Band, Roger Corman, etc). Both of these types of bad movies are so prolific that you'll never watch them all, and they are what keep me using Prime and Tubi much more frequently than Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER6> This was well-written, and I enjoyed a huge hunk of it, especially since I also love bad movies. I felt as if the author was getting somewhere.

And then. And then we got to meandering about mid-text. Like watching a blind pig in the backyard looking for an acorn, I was rooting for the author and felt we would get somewhere useful at some time.

I did not feel that we arrived there. Or rather, perhaps, we were so befuddled by the time we revisited the author and his dad that all was left was some general feeling of pathos that loving bad movies invokes. This is a clear thesis that did not require us visiting the myriad places we visited along the way.

Bad movies show us we all suck. Everybody makes mistakes. When a life, or a movie, is done with passion, sometimes that suckage transcends mere badness and leaves us all a bit wiser and happier.

I'm glad I read it, but holy hell it needed a better editor.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it was the literary form, like "Editorial of Inadvertence"? Emulation of the subject would be a silly "meta".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Before science fiction became respectable—indeed, inescapable—any fan could > still tell you that Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon, and before them > Stanley Weinbaum, wrote circles around Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov.

Asimov has obvious technical shortcomings as a writer but his strengths more than compensate. Meanwhile much of Heinlein is so bad it's unbearable. Argue if you like, but don't claim that this opinion is unanimous.

<comment><USER9> I was curious about this, too. Was there a time when that was a more or less unanimous opinion? Maybe "wrote circles around" is meant to be a very specific judgement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _It takes some amount of privilege to take part in the conversation that he > describes. A person needs literacy and free time, for starters_

Well, duh. We don't consider someone competent in something if they don't have basic skills and put the hours in to study/try it. So why would art criticism (whether professionally or to have a "good taste" as a consumer of art) be different?

If it's a privilege, it's the same kind of privilege required to be anything: a cook, a runner, a historian, a programmer, etc. Yes, you need to have time to do those things, and for most you also need literacy. Heck, you also need the same time and literacy to be an musician, a novelist, etc -- so it only makes sense it would need time to understand the craft and recognize good ones.

Someone working their ass off because they're poor, might never be able to e.g. read enough books, study how the genres work, read about their history, and ultimate develop a good taste in literature.

But that's a problem we should fix at the equality/free time front. Not a problem with having a taste in art requirements being "snobbish".

<comment><USER9> It is privilege not because it requires time, but because it generally requires _free_ time, outside of how you make your living. You can't apprentice as someone who consumes art.

As for snobbishness, you have it backwards: no one is saying that snobbishness is required to have good taste, but that the privilege required to develop good taste results in good taste being, or being labeled as, snobbish.

<comment><USER3> > _It is privilege not because it requires time, but because it generally > requires free time, outside of how you make your living._

That's the case for all kinds of things that are not jobs but people still want to have an opinion on.

Besides, your very distinction is based on the idea that a job someone happens to work is the same as the field they want to work or have an opinion on. Which is not always (even rarely) the case.

If I work at McDonalds but aspire to be a programmer, surfer, rapper, journalist, writer, director, whatever getting competence to criticize/have an opinion about that other field (or, even more so, land a programming gig) also requires that I have a free time from "how I make my living".

> _As for snobbishness, you have it backwards: no one is saying that > snobbishness is required to have good taste, but that the privilege required > to develop good taste results in good taste being, or being labeled as, > snobbish._

And my point is, there's no "privilege" or no more "privilege" than any other endeavour one needs to spend time to learn and understand. Everything takes time and effort to achieve, why would "good taste" be any different?

Is being a surgeon "snobbish" because you need to study to become one? Plus unlike learning about art, it takes not just free time, but decade of attending classes, plus lots of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In Belgium and The Netherlands we have The Night of Repulsion. Very funny, and successful.. look at the Wikipedia article for some more candidate repulsive flicks:

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Mandatory mention: Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000. They opened my eyes to truly bad movies, and have provided hours of entertainment since discovering them via a friend 15 years ago.

<comment><USER12> There's also The Film Crew which is Mike, Kevin (Servo/Bobo) and Bill (Brain Guy/Crow) doing their thing. Hi-Keeba!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Er, Phil Christman really doesn't get "A Wrinkle in Time".

Somehow the page opened for me at the point, halfway through, where he starts crapping on the movie adaptation of "A Wrinkle in Time" for what seem, to me, to be really weird and deeply personal reasons.

Aaaaanyhow, as a fan of bad sci-fi movies (I just watched "Galaxina" last night, gosh what a turd of a film!) I gotta insist that you can't read too much into them.

Maybe future psycho-historians will glean important insights into the human condition from "Escape from Galaxy 3" (Oraclon! King of the Night!) but I don't think the Institute for Advanced Critical Studies will.

</comment><comment><USER14> The list of worst films ever made. [0]

In here at 8.17, is an India film that I watched given that it was a remake of an earlier cult classic in Hindi cinema.

The remake is so bad that I actually liked it!!! I then realized that some of these worst movies need to be watched with a different lens, the movie I referred to I watched with a humor lens comparing it with the classic, that made it a laughter riot, which is why I liked it.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> Bad movies without mentioning Troma entertainment movies (like the iconic toxic avenger) or "Il bosco 1" (evil clutch in English) or Peter Jackson's bad taste?

</comment><comment><USER16> That was more than I bargained for; I usually don't have the attention span for an hour-long read on the internet, but it kept me engaged.

</comment><comment><USER17> What if the movie is intentionally bad? How enjoyable is satire like Army of Darkness?

<comment><USER18> > What if the movie is intentionally bad? How enjoyable is satire like Army of > Darkness?

Army of Darkness intentionally bad? What what what?!? That movie is _fucking fantastic_.

The only bad thing here is that the director got way bigger budget than he was used to, and really didn't know how to spend it properly.

The end result is still great though.

<comment><USER3> > _Army of Darkness intentionally bad? What what what?!? That movie is fucking > fantastic._

And it's still intentionally campy and crudely made.

Btw, the magic words are "Klaatu barada nikto" \-- which is a funny reference to a sci-fi movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> But would you sit through Transformers?

<comment><USER20> Yes. All of them, and will watch subsequent ones. Oh, they are bad, sure. But it doesn't matter as they are entertaining and they aren't _that_ bad. The actors aren't horrible, the sound is good, and the story is good enough to get you to the next scene - and when it isn't, there is cool stuff to look at. The bad stuff doesn't really distract in the moment, while one is suspending disbelief, so it works out.

It is entertaining. I don't always need a "good" movie, just entertainment. A lot of movies are like this, and that's OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a list somewhere, so I can see where I could start to induldge into this fascinating hobby. Thx

<comment><USER22> RedLetterMedia.com

<comment><USER23> This series in particular: [http://redlettermedia.com/best-of-the-worst- archive/](http://redlettermedia.com/best-of-the-worst-archive/)</comment></comment></comment>


Hearing the Uncertainty Principle - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/hearing_the_uncertainty_princi.php

<comment><USER2> This is really great. And it's more than just a neat analogy... in a very real sense, the momentum of a particle can be thought of as the fourier transform of the position (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_space>).

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, nothing much new here (except fro the cool graphs and sounds). Didn't Gabor derive the uncertainty inequality between time and frequency a long time ago? Wavelets are the transforms that maximize that inequality, if I remember correctly.</comment>


First American all-electric supercar - <AUTHOR> http://renovomotors.com/

<comment><USER2> 0 to 60 in 3.4 secs? That's like riding a freak'n rocket!</comment>


PureScript - <AUTHOR> http://www.purescript.org <comment><USER2> I think PureScript would have been much more popular from the get go if it used a syntax closer to existing JS syntax. This is why TypeScript is so popular, and also why CoffeeScript is now very unpopular among Javascripters.

<comment><USER3> I think the point of PureScript was to have a Haskell that would compile to JS, but which (unlike GHCJS) would have breaking changes to integrate better with JS features. Trying to look like JavaScript might be a bit hard then...

That said, I'm curious about what sorts of things you think they could have done to have a more JS-like syntax. Any ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting! For those who are more involved in this field, how does PureScript compare to other functional programming languages that also compiles to javascript?

<comment><USER5> IMO, PureScript has some very interesting advantages in comparison to other functional languages targeting JavaScript.

It has a very strong type system, a compiler that can produce optimized and human readable JavaScript, and dead simple FFI. It _also_ doesn't rely on a runtime like Elm or GHCJS do, so the resulting code size is typically much smaller.

It's also been used to build some really interesting and unique takes on the frontend design problem (cf. Pux [0] and Halogen [1]).

[0] [https://github.com/alexmingoia/purescript- pux](https://github.com/alexmingoia/purescript-pux)

[1] [https://github.com/slamdata/purescript- halogen](https://github.com/slamdata/purescript-halogen)

<comment><USER6> > and dead simple FFI

That's very accurate. So _dead_ simple that as soon as you want to manipulate something else than primitive values and functions from JS, you hit a _dead_ end. How do you read a field from a JS object? How do you call a JS method? For all these things, you have to write "bridge" JS code that exposes JS libraries in a way that PureScript is happy with.

It's also striking to me that the documentation of PureScript FFI [1] has to teach you _what the output of the compiler will be_ so that you can use the FFI. Am I really supposed to know about those `$`s? What if the compiler improves and changes its internals?

I'm sorry if my comment is perceived as a rant, but I can never understand how people can call PureScript's FFI good. Compare it to interoperability in TypeScript, ClojureScript, or Scala.js, and it is way behind!

[1] [http://www.purescript.org/learn/ffi/](http://www.purescript.org/learn/ffi/)

<comment><USER7> It sounds like bashing.

Here's my unfinished, but working code, interfacing Google Apps Script to Purescript [https://github.com/kika/purescript-google- appsscript/tree/ma...](https://github.com/kika/purescript-google- appsscript/tree/master/src/Google/AppsScript)

Please tell me what is so _dead_ in it.

Though I'm pretty new to Purescript and to the Haskell world in general, it took me almost no effort to write this code once I figured out how Data.Function (renamed Data.Function.Uncurried in the latest Purescripts) works. Probably your issue with Purescript FFI was about not being aware of these helpers (which don't do much _help_ per se, but remove ugly clutter of nested functions in JS code).

<comment><USER6> I guess my comment qualifies as bashing. It still is what I think, though.

Look at your own code from [https://github.com/kika/purescript-google- appsscript/tree/ma...](https://github.com/kika/purescript-google- appsscript/tree/master/src/Google/AppsScript) There is more JS code than PureScript! Why? Because you need bridge JS code for pretty much every JS library you want to call. Which is _precisely_ the point I make in the grand- parent:

"For all these things, you have to write "bridge" JS code that exposes JS libraries in a way that PureScript is happy with."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The discussion from a few years ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8351981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8351981)

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have experience with the C++ backend ?

[https://github.com/pure11/pure11](https://github.com/pure11/pure11)

</comment><comment><USER10> OH shit! It's actually not written in JS. Good going!

</comment><comment><USER11> does purescript support d.ts definition files for FFI?</comment>


Snapchat Now Charges If You Want to Replay Snaps - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/snapchat-replay-paid/ <comment><USER2> @99cent for 3 replays that equals $120 an hour assuming the max 10 seconds per pic/vid

is pricey as even SC says: They're a little pricey — but time is money! ;) [http://blog.snapchat.com/post/129151515055/a-whole-new- way-t...](http://blog.snapchat.com/post/129151515055/a-whole-new-way-to-see- yourselfie)</comment>


Show HN: Open-Source Alternative to Hubspot and Intercom - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/erxes/erxes <comment><USER2> Cool project, can you provide some more info on the AI assistant that's marked as 'coming soon' on the website?</comment>


VLC has showstopping bugs unfixed for 10 years - <AUTHOR> https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=66877 <comment><USER2> "These are newbie bugs, but VLC is a free software and was likely designed by students or non-audio engineers hobby people, like system administrators."

A very off-putting argument. Give the authors the benefit of doubt they know what they're doing. Firefox has 15 year old issues open. So what. It's build by volunteers in their free time. They owe you nothing. Find a software that better fits your needs if VLC doesn't work for your use case.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this the new thing we're doing on HN now? Outing old crusty bugs of popular projects (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21910391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21910391))?</comment>