My smartphone as a shortcut helper - <AUTHOR> http://www.mathieupassenaud.fr/my-smartphone-as-a-shortcut-helper/ <comment><USER2> For me, the issue with the Touch Bar, and with this software is that it misses the reason I want shortcuts in the first place. I don't want another screen with shifting context, I want to rely on muscle memory to execute a task _without_ UI context. I want to interact with graphical context using my main display (touch or otherwise), and I don't want to use a smaller less flexible display for this task.

That said it is a neat technical achievement, and I applaud any effort to improve the HMI.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. What I'd like to have is a tool that analyzes what I do, and reminds me what shortcuts I can use to be more efficient. It would be awesome to have that on my smartphone screen like the solution on display here.

<comment><USER4> I would be very happy just to have the shortcut written on the right of the menu option like is was when interfaces were still sane.

But yes, I would like that assistant too.

<comment><USER5> This is to some extend implemented in Samsung's screen edge feature found on phones with curved screens (although it is not context aware by default):

[http://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00047881/](http://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00047881/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is something that Alfred has implemented quite well [https://www.alfredapp.com/remote/](https://www.alfredapp.com/remote/)

<comment><USER7> What do you use it for? I use Alfred, but haven't delved deeply enough into workflows. I just find it better than spotlight for the default use case.

But I am very interesting to know what I might be missing.

<comment><USER6> I use Alfred as a Spotlight replacement and as a clipboard history manager mostly. I don't use remote because I haven't delved deeply into it like you said. It's one of those "one of these weekends when I have time" and I've been telling myself this for years at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> would love for mature projects to get more attention on this: [https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect#What_is_KDE_Connect.3F](https://community.kde.org/KDEConnect#What_is_KDE_Connect.3F)

kde connectg has the network and permissions almost figured out (and works with gnome and other wms too)

but it is lacking almost everything yet. there is a clipboard sync module, but not a simple text share, for example.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I read this article and it seems like this should be the future of KDEConnect. It has controls for multimedia but these shortcuts would be fun.

Side note, I listen to music on my laptop a lot. All the sudden the music would stop, I'd say, "Damn wifi." Then half a second later my phone would ring and I'd have a conversation. When I hung up the phone music started again. This happened probably 5 times before I realized KDEConnect was pausing the music (and movies) when my phone rang and resuming them when I was done. Tons of potential with this app. Wish I knew how to program.

[https://cgit.kde.org/kdeconnect-kde.git](https://cgit.kde.org/kdeconnect- kde.git)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there an advantage to this over Unified Remote?

[https://www.unifiedremote.com/](https://www.unifiedremote.com/)

<comment><USER11> unified remote seems to focus on media and media driven commands. This can be configured to work with any program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this concept. Anyone know of software (other than Dragon) that does this with voice recognition? I could see myself using context aware voice commands in my day to day! I remember seeing some talks a few years back about a guy who used the Dragon API and Python to exclusively do programming due to his carpel tunnel's being very bad.

EDIT: programmer's name is Tavis Rudd [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI)

</comment><comment><USER13> It looks like it uses Windows. I made something like this a long time ago in bash, for Linux. It used a vncserver to drive the phone auxiliary display. The wonderful thing about the Linux desktop is how flexible it is.

Especially when you use things like Xinerama and Synergy to connect the different desktops.

</comment><comment><USER14> Check out [https://www.quadro.me](https://www.quadro.me)

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool idea and an implementation too! Might be the direction Apple could be headed, the touch bar could go away and merge with the trackpad. A track screen which can handle both taps, clicks and have a visual display.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone else remember the keyboard overlays that were used in the 80s and 90s to help users remember keyboard shortcuts? That's what this idea reminded me of.

</comment><comment><USER17> XMouse is a free app for Android that can be used for this. You can configure buttons that run arbitrary commands over SSH.

</comment><comment><USER18> or use something like this [http://www.roccat.org/en-RO/Products/Gaming- Software/Power-G...](http://www.roccat.org/en-RO/Products/Gaming- Software/Power-Grid/Home/)

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks like it could be a great add-ion to Synergy

</comment><comment><USER20> i love this idea

</comment><comment><USER21> So they just reinvented the toolbar on a smartphone screen. That's nice and all but the reason for the shortcuts in the first place was to not have to click the toolbar and use the keyboard, developing muscle memory and eventually not needing the cheat sheet. Like the mac touchbar, this is aimed at the casual user, not at power users.</comment>


Smoke: Simple, asynchronous scala HTTP powered by Akka - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mDialog/smoke

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why this exists. Between BlueEyes, Spray, Unfiltered, Finagle, and probably others I have forgotten, I don't see the need for yet another asynch HTTP library.

<comment><USER3> All great libraries, all a little different from each other. Scala provides a lot of flexibility for designing solutions. On top of that it's a relatively new language with new open source projects appearing all the time, changing the landscape at an impressive rate. For instance, Smoke is built entirely on top of Akka 2.0, which was only released a few months ago but is an impressive step forward for parallelism on the JVM.

Combine Scala's flexibility with the importance of HTTP to so many of us, I'm not surprised (nor disappointed) to see a lot of variety in this space. I hope we'll see even more of them as the language matures.

We didn't see any of those libraries as an ideal solution to our problem so we built our own. If this solves a problem for you as well, I'd be happy to hear that. If not, I'd love to hear how you think it could be improved.

<comment><USER2> Well, I prefer a different mechanism for error handling. If you scroll down to "Error Handling" at <http://noelwelsh.com/blueeyes/concurrency.html> you'll see my solution and justification for it. (FWIW, BlueEyes is based on Akka 2.0's Futures as well.)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link, that was a good read.

Sounds like the concern is that when an error is raised inside an actor, the error is swallowed by that actor's thread. If you were waiting for it to respond you're end up with a mysterious timeout error and no idea where it came from. That's a good issue, one I definitely struggled with.

Internally, we're addressing this problem by building our actors in such a way that they return a Status.Failure when an error is raised, using unit tests to ensure a response is always sent even when an error occurs. Typically, our responder functions are built from a number of Futures composed using the tools provided by Akka. This works well in some cases, when an error is raised early in a function composed from many Futures it gets passed right to the OnError handler to return an appropriate response. In the case where you get a mysterious timeout it can definitely make debugging difficult. Akka's excellent logging has saved us there many times.

The goal was to lean on Akka whenever possible, adding elements to the Smoke DSL only when absolutely necessary. We've been able to make this work in some pretty non-trivial applications. Will that work for everyone? Hard to say. Your mileage may vary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks cool. What's the use-case for it versus using something like Play! 2.0 + Akka for async HTTP?

As far as my limited knowledge of Play (learning it right now, so I could be far off), Play can do async HTTP and already makes use of internal Akka actors for handling requests.

<comment><USER3> Internally, we wanted a way to build and deploy HTTP services quickly and easily. We wanted them to be asynchronous and we wanted a DSL that developers familiar with HTTP would pick up on quickly, without a lot of additional research. We've been having a lot of success with the composable Futures in Akka 2.0 and wanted to set developers up to leverage the full power of the Akka toolkit (and boy, is it powerful).

It's much lighter weight than play2 or play2-mini (<https://github.com/typesafehub/play2-mini> built on top of play2). , but does provide some similar functionality. There's definitely a whole lot less code in Smoke. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective.

<comment><USER4> That's awesome, I was planning on using Play 2 to build a purely RESTful service for a weekend project but I wasn't aware of either Smoke or play2-mini. I'll be looking into the three of them now to see which one I would use.

Personally, I'm not too concerned about the amount of code as Scala tends to be terse by nature. A creeping problem from what I've experienced with Scala libraries is trying to be waaay too cute with DSLs and syntax. But as long as the source code and DSL is easily read and traceable, I'm happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How does this differ from Spray?

<https://github.com/spray/spray>

<comment><USER3> Spray is a great library. It's full featured, with it's own Akka-based HTTP server and a full client lib.

Smoke is a smaller, more focused tool. You will find a lot of things Spray does that Smoke does not. Smoke has a significantly different DSL, relying on Akka's composable Futures to take care of things like error handling.

Smoke evolved through an attempt to build the simplest possible asynchronous HTTP services on top of Akka, without sacrificing any of the key features we needed to deploy those services at scale.

The goal of Smoke is not so much to compete with Spray as it is to provide an HTTP-service-focused alternative to Finagle (<https://github.com/twitter/finagle>) that uses Akka Futures instead of Twitter Futures, and includes everything we needed to build, test and deploy those services quickly.

So far, it's been working quite well for us.

<comment><USER5> Awesome - thank you. It is great to have so many choices

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The acronyms in the web-dev scene are going to become self aware soon and start running the world.

<comment><USER7> By this point, isn't HTTP a pretty standard acronym in the web-dev scene? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> so the real question . How does it compare to flask ?</comment>


Arrow: Better dates and times for Python - <AUTHOR> http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/ <comment><USER2> Seems like it's written by someone who prefers Ruby or JavaScript -- where there exists already a culture using names which are cute first, even if they are opaque -- over Python. These method naming choices are baffling

Arrow.to() converts to a new timezone? And .replace() applies a relative offset!? Replace the hour field of this object with -1 should not return an object having hour=11. Arrow.get() is doing some kind of quadruple duty, neither of which would I describe as "getting."

And what about that class name? Arrow as the name of a package is fine, but what do you expect someone to make of <Arrow [...]> \-- what's wrong with arrow.DateTime?

Great work on making and releasing something, but this API is surprising -- as in, one would be unable to predict how it works. I will continue using python- dateutil

<comment><USER3> Thank you for putting into words my same initial concerns about this library.

Naming should be much clearer than this, with the intention to make code sort- of read like English text as much as possible. Arrow is a fine name[0], but the actual class/object names should be descriptive.

Also, not only the fact that .replace() can apply relative time-offsets, the quirky way it signifies it, using singular and plural keyword-parameters, it's a "clever" solution but it's not _at all_ intuitive. When I figured it out, it was more of a relief that at least .replace() does not _always_ apply relative time-offsets (which would have been terrible naming).

I wish it was more pythonic, on the whole, agreeing with the way people expect things to behave in Python modules. It says it's inspired by Requests, which gets that very much right, so I was getting my hopes up a little.

Arrow.get() is totally named the wrong thing. It does more like a .create(), maybe I would've put that functionality into the constructor. A method called .get() should implement something very similar to what most .get* methods do on standard types and in the standard library. Which is, extract part of an object that is a container-type (optionally with defaults, etc). Of course that operation does not make sense on an Arrow object (and please don't try), so it probably just shouldn't have a .get() method.

[0] actually it's not. I've found myself accidentally muscle-memory-typing "Array" a couple of times already. I'd probably have renamed this module early on in the process for that reason alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think Arrow still leaves too much confusion around how to handle timezones. That's why I wrote DMC([https://github.com/rhettg/dmc](https://github.com/rhettg/dmc)).

Not to be confused with Delorean ([https://github.com/myusuf3/delorean](https://github.com/myusuf3/delorean)) which is a lot like Arrow.

<comment><USER5> I did not know about DMC and am very happy to see this as I've often desired a simple but proper API for time. I always wondered why so many date+time libraries complicate matters so much.

I strongly agree with the principles you chose - specificaly - all time storage and math should be done in UTC (the 'unicode' of time). Timezones only come in when you display or parse times (the 'encodings' of time).

I hope more and more libraries apply this idea. It makes the API a lot simpler and error retardant.

Good job!

<comment><USER6>
        I strongly agree with the principles you chose - specificaly - all time storage and math should be done in UTC

I've had this argument many times before. Throwing away TZ is in fact throwing away important contextual information.

Having worked on a few data cleaning projects to re-purpose old scientific datasets, I can tell you that the quality of these data would have suffered markedly, and many corrections would not have been possible if the TZ/offsets had been discarded, Eg: "The geolocation for these records cross a TZ boundary _here_ but the UTC offset doesn't reflect that until _here_ so that explains the 1hr gap in the record where the user realized her mistake half-way into the new TZ so we should add an hour to these 860 records"

Yes, it would be better if raw data was recorded in UTC in the first place but when working with such data the ability to make decisions and inferences from the TZ is very useful.

<comment><USER5> > Yes, it would be better if raw data was recorded in UTC in the first place > but when working with such data the ability to make decisions and inferences > from the TZ is very useful.

I maintain that time and location are orthogonal. If the application needs both, store both - properly in separate fields. That's better than shoving the granular location in the form of a timezone in the time field.

<comment><USER7> No.

It is in fact best to store the _local_ time and the _location_ (i.e., not "+01:00", but for example "Europe/Amsterdam"). Not UTC with or without time zone. For example, if you have an appointment in the future, and the time zone or daylight savings time rules change, this is the only way that the appointment can still be at the correct moment. And time zone rules _do_ change.

And this way you can still represent absolute UTC time if you wish. With another representation, you cannot represent human-society time, which is often what you actually want.

<comment><USER5> Good point. However this is a specific use case requiring future local time, and as you mention, even TZ aware local time fails here. In this case you cannot come up with a guaranteed physical time in the future that the event will take place.

IOW, I think storing local time and location as a rule is not a good idea. The rule should be to use UTC and store location if needed. Only if that doesn't work (e.g. '5 minutes after the game is over') come up with some other representation.

<comment><USER7> One extra thing (one could call it a weakness) with the local+location scheme is that you will need to have a way to distinguish the "repeated" hour after daylight savings time sets the clock backward one hour from the hour before it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Suggestion: rename arrow.now() to arrow.localnow() to make it even clearer that it does not generate utc. I've run into this mistake many times with datetime.now() vs datetime.utcnow()

<comment><USER9> I'm the other way around, consistency with the standard library (even if that decision was a mistake) will increase learn-ability.

<comment><USER10> From the webpage:

> Python's standard library and some other low-level modules have near- > complete date, time and time zone functionality but don't work very well > from a usability perspective:

Why be consistent with something that suffers from usability problems?

<comment><USER11> It's a shame that Python's time/date stuff is so wonky. I see stuff like dateutils and arrow and just wish I didn't have to go elsewhere for such core functionality.

Not that it's a big deal to loop in external dependencies or anything, I just see newer (and experienced) Python devs trip up on stuff like TZ aware/naive times. Also, dateutil's relativedelta is so nice compared to the built-in timedelta!

<comment><USER10> > It's a shame that Python's time/date stuff is so wonky. I see stuff like > dateutils and arrow and just wish I didn't have to go elsewhere for such > core functionality.

That's on point, and you're not alone. It's a little frustrating when you have to take a detour to get something done. There's that extra hurdle. That said, user friendliness, developer friendliness, and maintainability are all about using the best tools for the job. If arrow is that tool, then so be it.

<comment><USER11> > user friendliness, developer friendliness, and maintainability are all about > using the best tools for the job

Definitely. The most unfortunate part of this is that people who are newer to the ecosystem won't really know where to go or what they're even looking for, necessarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Arrow is ambiguous when dealing with timezones, a lot of the high functionality ideas were copied from Delorean. Delorean has many more sensible default and is clear about educating people about naive vs. localized datetimes and a lot more sane.

Documentation is very educational too well worth the read. [http://delorean.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://delorean.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER13> It would be good if the manual had all the examples that moment.js has (which arrow was inspired by).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there any language that got the date & time library right the first time? It seems like people always suggest to use a third party library. JavaScript has Moment.js, Java has Joda-Time, and now Python has Arrow.

<comment><USER15> Go's time package is nice ([http://golang.org/pkg/time/](http://golang.org/pkg/time/)), although some people complain about parsing date/time strings using a reference string ("Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 -0700 MST 2006") vs. PHP or Python style format strings.

<comment><USER16> That's a really cool idea. I'm always commenting my code with reference strings because format strings are so unreadable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Y'all may wanna check out python dateutil. [https://labix.org/python- dateutil](https://labix.org/python-dateutil)

</comment><comment><USER18> Nice. One thought: why do you call it arrow? I know you can call it anything you want, but one reason requests is so popular because the name totally makes sense. My little 0.2 is why not rename it to pydate or something more intuitive.

What's the difference between .utcnow() and .now()? Is one supposed to be an alias or is .now() default to the time the platform is set to?

I've opened an issue regarding calling convention. What do HNer think?

[https://github.com/crsmithdev/arrow/issues/125](https://github.com/crsmithdev/arrow/issues/125)

<comment><USER19> I imagine it's because of "time flies like an arrow".

<comment><USER20> "fruit flies like a bannana"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The library looks really nice usability wise.

The arrow.get function tries a bit too hard to be user-friendly ; it lets me wondering if a value could have an unexpected interpretation.

One use-case that seem to be missing is time deltas. There is a support for time iteration but I don't see a good way to transform two timestamps into a time interval.

<comment><USER22> > One use-case that seem to be missing is time deltas.

I just fired up ipython and tried:

        >>> t1 = arrow.now()
        >>> t2 = arrow.now()
        >>> t2-t1
        datetime.timedelta(0, 4, 864716)

It appears the difference operator returns a datetime.timedelta object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a very interesting problem to tackle for all runtimes.

In my experience, the main issues are: [1] How do we store the date / time fields in the database tier [2] How do we display those fields to users in multiple time zones and cultures and gather validated input from those cultures [3] How do we do date / time math in a simple manner

Issue [1] has implications for manipulating data directly (i.e. querying or reporting). Should the data be stored in UST or in some "local timeframe"?

Issue [2] always seems to trip some developers: how do we render a time or date in a way that makes sense in a global world (i.e. "8/5/2014" vs. "5/8/2014" vs. "5-8-2014" or 3:26 PM vs 3:26 etc).

Issue [3] is always a pain too, based on whatever decisions were made for [1] and [2].

Test of awesomeness: if your code works in Hebrew or Thai cultures!

</comment><comment><USER24> It would be cool if python could support date/timestamp literals.

I've implemented something similar in a query language I wrote, where dates are represented similar to ISO 8601 format:

         d'2014-12-01'
         t'2014-12-01 12:52'
         t'2014-12-01 12:52 PST'
         t'2014-12-01T12:52:20.0820Z'
         t'2014-12-01T12:52:20.0820+08.00'

<comment><USER25> Of you just go with pure ISO8601 then you won't need to differentiate between dates, times, durations and intervals; they can each be specified unambiguously. Up to you, of course; it might not make sense in your use-case.

<comment><USER24> That would be part of the plan.

My use case is the iPython astrophysicist use case, where users tend to be very interactive with their dates and times. In fact, that's why I made the query language, because it was necessary for dataset discovery (i.e. return datasets between this time and that time). Of course, we often use a variety of types of times, from Julian day to Mission Event Time (where an arbitrary epoch is chosen that's usually close to some significant event, usually full funding, mission launch, first light, etc..)

Of course we could always just use function calls, but the ability to have literals is really nice.

Maybe I'm just a dreamer, but a similar extension to javascript and JSON would be really nice as well, given that you need a schema to understand the proper parsing of dates, otherwise you end up with a string, number, additional type field, or a fallback to Hungarian notation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Looks promising! Although author said that moment.js was an inspiration, I'm glad that he didn't implement .replace functionality as mutation like moment does. It was a constant source of errors.

<comment><USER27> Fun fact, in the oldest, original version, arrow objects _were_ mutable, and this was ripped out in 0.2 for exactly that reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ah, this is lovely. If there's one routine thing I trip up over again and again, it's times, every time. Big fan, nice work. Will definitely look at using this next project.

<comment><USER29> It's so easy to overlook something and not realize it is causing issues for users for a very long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Looks nice. I noticed the ceil function has an offset of one microsecond, this way it is not consistent with e.g. ceil in numpy. What was the reason for this?

</comment><comment><USER31> Very nice! This replaces a lot of code I'm manually implementing now, to do things like humanize() and floor()/ceil()

<comment><USER32> > This replaces a lot of code I'm manually implementing now, to do things like > humanize()

Why would you do it by hand anyway when Babel already does it? [http://babel.pocoo.org/docs/api/dates/#babel.dates.format_ti...](http://babel.pocoo.org/docs/api/dates/#babel.dates.format_timedelta)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've used this in the past. Good, well-written library. The stdlib datetime/time modules are such a PITA sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER34> There are too many ways to do something, best implement the One True Way.

There's an obligatory xkcd somewhere on this...

<comment><USER35> [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/) :)

<comment><USER36> Funny and true, but this is a separate case. We're not talking about implementing a new standard, we're talking about easing development on your next project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This might be what I am looking for since I looked at the datetime docs the first time years ago.

</comment><comment><USER32> re. parsing and formatting tokens: because what we needed was yet another date/time pattern format which looks like LDML's but behaves completely differently.

</comment><comment><USER38> Very nice, thank you, definitely using this in new code.

</comment><comment><USER39> It would be better to stop reinventing this wheel.

<comment><USER40> We can, but only after someone actually produces a round wheel, with no gaps, sufficient spokes and a hole for an axle. I've yet to see such a beast.</comment></comment>


Which cryptocurrencies are you buying and why? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> None, because while I like the technology, I don't trust the politics, propaganda, and decision makers.</comment>


Windows 8 now up to 3.31% market share as Vista finally falls below the 5% mark - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/01/windows-8-now-up-to-3-31-market-share-as-vista-finally-falls-below-the-5-mark/

<comment><USER2> In a few hours, I'm going to a client's site to downgrade his newly purchased notebook to Windows 7. He's an average user, director of a small nonprofit who uses his computer mainly for email, Web browsing, and word processing. He used Windows 8 for a week and this is what he wrote :

 _I need your assistance. I did go ahead an buy a new laptop. I like the machine but am suffering on account of Windows 8!_

Still, he'll still show up as Windows 8 in the market share statistics.

<comment><USER3> I always imagine this as the average case for everyone buying a new laptop now. I don't know, I really don't want to hate, but I have yet to hear of someone happy with W8 as their main OS.

<comment><USER4> Many of us are hesitant to join in discussions like this, because the narrative is dominated by people who have clearly either never used Win8 or had decided that they would hate it based on ideological grounds (ZOMG MS TURNING MAH PC INTO A TABLET) before they ever tried it. On other forums, even suggesting that you like Win8 is a sure-fire way to get accused of being an "M$ shill".

Anyways, I like it, so I'll try to explain why. First off, most of my interaction with it is identical to Windows 7. I live in my desktop, just like always. All of my most frequently-used apps are pinned to my taskbar, just like always. The window borders and decorations look a bit different, but the reaction to them is so completely over-the-top that it's hard to believe. The rumors that it's a little snappier than Win7 seem to be true, at least on my machines.

Yes, all the built-in apps have ribbon toolbars. No, this really isn't some kind of existential threat to your ability to use your computer. I hated the shit out of ribbons when they were introduced in Office. They work really well in Explorer, though. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but they manage to keep common actions more accessible than the old menu/toolbar combination did. There are also some small things that I really appreciate, like having a toggle for hidden items on the View ribbon and having both Command Prompt Here and Powershell Here accessible easily via menu and shortcut.

Next, the dreaded Start screen, target of much derision and hatred. My experience with Start menus over the years was that they turned into garbage dumps. Multiple columns of crap in a hierarchical menu where most of the entries were completely useless. MS introduced pinning in XP, and "type to search" in Vista (I think?) to solve that. If you use those, Win8's Start screen is a huge upgrade. If you prefer to hunt through your menus to find apps, you'll be disappointed. I personally don't miss the start menu at all - I have programs pinned on the start screen, sorted left to right by how often I think I'll need them. I can run anything else by typing a few letters of its name, and I honestly don't end up doing that very often.

Metro apps are a mixed bag in terms of usefulness. Part of that is that I have a tablet for the kinds of things that Metro apps are good at, and part is that they just aren't there yet in terms of polish. There are several that I really do like, though. The Netflix app, for some reason, works MUCH better on my laptop than the website. Games are generally a good experience as well - I've played a shameful amount of Jetpack Joyride. The stock Calendar app isn't bad, and it syncs with Google Calendar and pops up notifications for that, which is really cool. I use the stock News, Sports and Weather apps occasionally as well. Metro as a whole needs some more work, but I think it'll get it over the next few years.

Lastly, I'd like to mention that Win8 is probably the most keyboard-friendly OS I've used. My most frequently-used PC is a laptop, and I've always been a heavy keyboard shortcut user to avoid having to use the touchpad. There's keyboard shortcuts for almost everything in Win8. That includes things like managing/resizing Metro apps, moving around the UI on the Start screen, activating buttons on ribbons. If you press Alt in Explorer, the ribbon lights up with hotkeys. They've also added the somewhat famous Win-X shortcut, which pops up a menu with direct access to a lot of tweaking/admin tools. I miss it whenever I'm on an XP/Vista/7 box.

In short, the people who say that it's "unusable" or "crippled" are full of shit. It's a solid evolutionary step up from Win7, with a bunch of superficial changes that are being blown way out of proportion.

<comment><USER5> Excellent post!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's really worth celebrating is that IE10 is around 4%.

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww- daily-20130302...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww- daily-20130302-20130331)

Now get everyone on Windows 7 to upgrade to IE10 then we've practically got an "HTML5" ready web.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm missing the point of these articles. Are we supposed to "celebrate" _every single_ percentage increase in Windows 8 market share?

The number still seems incredibly small to me. I doubt Windows 8 will even reach 20% by the time Windows 9 comes out in 2 and a half years.

<comment><USER5> There are some Windows 8 haters out there who are desperately trying to make it fail. And it's not just pointlessly stupid Linux fanboys. It includes real Windows users are are digging in their heels and vowing never to upgrade from Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7 or whatever. (You can easily recognise them by their intemperate language.)

Having a group that abandons logic to promote something's failure naturally creates a counter-movement and therefore a market for blog posts that confirm or deny its success or failure. This has publishers laughing all the way to the bank.

It looks unlikely to develop into the sort of mass conflict that helped publishers make pots of money from Windows vs OS/2, PS3 vs Xbox 360 and similar battles, but it will do.

Obviously whether someone uses Windows 7 or Windows 8 is much more important than rape in India, mass starvation in Africa, war in the Middle East or the fact that the whole planet is melting down. One has to maintain a sense of priorities.

<comment><USER8> WTF does anything going on outside of the computer industry have to with Windows? Lets setup some straw men and light them on fire.

The biggest issue with 8 is that there is enough interface change that people feel they have to relearn it. In business this takes time and money to teach the employees, or for them to learn themselves. Most people don't want to spend time learning something new when there is little to no benefit from doing so. Real computer users want to get a task done, not to spend half their life learning interface changes.

From the tone of your reply, I'm going to assume you are one of those designers that says "My interface is right, and you are too dumb to understand it's awesomeness", and then are shocked and amazed when no one uses it.

<comment><USER5> > WTF does anything going on outside of the > computer industry have to with > Windows?

If you restrict your attention only to what's going on in the computer industry you are likely to lose your sense of proportion, as well as leading an impoverished life.

Otherwise, my view is that if you don't like Windows 8, carry on using Windows 7, or else install a Stardock or other program that makes it work the way you like. Windows 7 will be around for the rest of the decade at least.

However, people _are_ capable of learning new interfaces, the real issue is the size of the benefits.

With Windows 8, the long term benefits are that the new UI works well with touch screens, it provides access to a new category of WinRT apps, and it gives you much the same UI across mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops (as well as common files and common services). In the long run, this means having to cope with fewer new interfaces, and it reduces your total learning time.

This is obviously a work in progress, and it's a long-term play. None of us knows how it's going to turn out. It's far too soon to say whether it's right or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Net Applications clearly marks this as desktop data, but TNW obscures this. With desktops, laptops, netbooks and tablets being so fluid nowadays, TNW should at least mention somewhere that this is desktop only market share.

Wikipedia, the 6th most popular web site in the world (according to Alexa), has Windows as less than 58% of the clients hitting it for February 2013 ( [http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...](http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm) ). Mac/iPhone/iPad is over 30%, Linux (Android, Ubuntu etc.) is over 7%.

The rise of iOS and Android is the real breaking news story in my book. Windows controls its form factor niche, but that becomes more irrelevant every day. Boasting of Windows 90+% share of the desktop would be like DEC boasting of its market share of minicomputers in the 1970s/1980s.

</comment><comment><USER10> yawn

</comment><comment><USER11> Stats from Steam show Windows 8 to be close to 11%:

Windows 7 64 bit 55.11% -0.37%

Windows 7 13.40% -0.43%

Windows 8 64 bit 9.92% +1.03%

Windows XP 32 bit 8.35% -0.62%

Windows Vista 64 bit 3.87% +0.57%

Windows Vista 32 bit 2.72% +0.18%

MacOS 10.8.2 64 bit 1.68% -0.03%

MacOS 10.7.5 64 bit 0.82% +0.08%

Windows 8 0.75% +0.01%

MacOS 10.6.8 64 bit 0.64% +0.02%

<http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey>

<comment><USER12> I can't believe XP is still being used as primary gaming OS by 8.35% of Steam users.

Are so many gamers still using ancient hardware incapable of running Windows 7 or 8? Or are they unwilling or afraid to upgrade?

At least, XP usage has dropped by 0.62 percentage points since the month before. Since this rate will likely decrease, XP will not be gone in less than 14 months.

<comment><USER13> XP is perfectly fine for most games. The advantages of Windows 7 are pretty minor and you can still get current drivers for XP.

I'm sure there's a lot of people that run Boot Camp and boot into XP just for games and see no reason to pay for an upgrade to Windows 7.</comment></comment></comment>


Playing with Lasp and CRDTs - <AUTHOR> http://marianoguerra.org/posts/playing-with-lasp-and-crdts/ <comment> benwilson-512 These notes definitely seem like a useful reference, although I wish the author spoke more about what it was they were trying to accomplish. As someone with only a cursory familiarity with Lasp I've been hoping to see some applications that put its characteristics to use.

<comment><USER2> The post was intended as a reference and not an introduction, the docs on Lasp provide a good introduction: [https://lasp-lang.readme.io/docs/what-is- lasp](https://lasp-lang.readme.io/docs/what-is-lasp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. Thanks for sharing!

I like all the steps shown and the extra comments with output values and explanation of what's going on.

One question -- saw that all update operations take self() as an argument. In the code saw it was the "Actor". Is that always a pid of the calling processes or can it be anything like an integer or a reference. If this whole thing was running in a server would that be the ID of the client or still be generated locally on the server from the process running the request.

</comment><comment><USER4> It kind of seems like there could be another layer or something on top of that to simplify it even further?

That's a lot of boilerplate to get and set a variable.

<comment><USER2> hi, I don't want to reply for cmeik (creator of Lasp), but I think eventually Lasp will be its own language.

from the github repo: "Prototype implementation of Lasp in Erlang"

<comment><USER4> Elixir's reasonably popular these days and it'd be easy to call this from that. The magic is all in the algorithms and communication protocols, I don't see how a different language really helps things too much.

Actually... thinking about it, I would hope that it'd be fairly language neutral if you really wanted it to grow.

Your device, running some Go code that talks to SQLite as well as a server running in Java could still use the same data structures and communication protcols... right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let me be that dumb guy at the party that will ask: what exactly is "planetary scale application" supposed to mean? Search engines seem to fail finding a definition.

<comment><USER3> It's a bit of a silly tagline.

The idea with CRDT is to define some data structures and operations on them so that it's possible to update the data structure in a concurrent environment with potentially conflicting updates which then end up being merged automatically.

For example, take a set and the operation of updating it. Say I am in Australia and you are in US and we are trying to operate on a shared set S. We both have local versions of it on our servers and our servers replicate with each other.

Maybe I add an item x to it and you pretty much at the same time add an item y. For a short while my version of the set will be S={x}, yours will be S={y}. Then after say 250 msec I'll see your changes and you'll see my changes we'd both have S={x,y}.

Notice how time didn't really figure out in the operation, and the order didn't matter -- you could have updated your version first or I could have updated mine first, but we'd both end up with the same result. And even better, we didn't have to manually resolve a conflict. Also you could have been on Neptune and I could have been on Mercury, it would have still worked but taken longer to replicate, maybe 6 hours or something like that.

PS: Mathematically this is related to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semilattice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semilattice)</comment></comment>


Amazon rainforest was transformed over 2,000 years ago by mysterious earthworks - <AUTHOR> http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_568689_en.html <comment><USER2> Amazonian earthworks such as these are discussed quite a bit in Charles Mann's _1491_ , mostly in the context of dual hypotheses that the Amazon (and much of N. and S. America) was both far more heavily populated, and far more ecologically managed, than previously thought. It's a great and fascinating book, although not as data rich and scholarly as it could be.

I don't recall Mann having much description of what the earthworks were used for, although there were suggestions of some of them being fish corrals during high water events, I believe.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Yes, "both far more heavily populated, and far more ecologically managed", and for a far longer time. Perhaps for as long as 40 kiloyears. But relatively isolated, with just "low-bandwidth" communication with northeast Asia.

I wonder why things went so differently in Eurasia. Maybe bronze and iron technology? Jared Diamond stuff?

<comment><USER4> He does go into this a bit. Due to the ecology in the Amazon (a giant mud- filled floodplain), tools and buildings tended to be made of organic materials like wood & fiber rather than rock & metal as was more common in other areas of the world. As such, much of the evidence of these people would have rotted away by the time we started looking. Organic materials rot away real quick in a warm, wet climate.

<comment><USER3> OK, right. So ecology and terrain are the only records. Do we have any idea when populations crashed? Could it have been smallpox etc epidemics from European explorers?

Edit: Yes, Mann does indeed argue that. And also that isolation prevented tech spreading. I must read that book!

<comment><USER5> Mann mentions several instances of the following scenario, happening at various times across the Americas:

Year X: European explorer #1 sails up a river/crosses mountains/etc and discovers a vast empire, huge cities, and marvelous civilizations that his European nation might trade with. He brings pigs with him and trades them to the natives for their cool stuff.

Year X+20: European explorer #2 follows the path of explorer #1. Then he's all "WTF, there's nobody here." But explorer #2 does discover, e.g., the giant earthworks that explorer #1 said were there - it's just the city on top of the earthworks doesn't exist.

He postulates that in years X+1 to X+19, the smallpoxalypse occurred and civilization collapsed. The remaining survivors are just roving tribal bands trying to survive in the remains of their old civilization.

(To make a fictional analogy, consider the current civilization in Georgia and then consider the civilization depicted on the Walking Dead. Mann's hypothesis is that most of what we know about American Indians consists of observing the Walking Dead and then drawing conclusions about their pre-apocalyptic civilization.)

<comment><USER6> > _(To make a fictional analogy, consider the current civilization in Georgia > and then consider the civilization depicted on the Walking Dead. Mann 's > hypothesis is that most of what we know about American Indians consists of > observing the Walking Dead and then drawing conclusions about their pre- > apocalyptic civilization.)_

Which is oddly fitting given the history of siphylis, which was likely carried over from the Americas and sometimes hypothesised to be the inspiration for zombies

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice meme: _#prehistoricsupermarket_

Reminds me of the Terence McKenna quote: _The scene opens on a world that appears totally primitive. People are naked, people are orgiastic, people are nomadic. But when they close their eyes there are menus hanging in space. Culture has been internalized. Culture is supposed to be internalized. All this talk about virtual reality - people don 't seem to notice - this is a virtual reality. These are all ideas - ideas that have been forced into matter so that we could live in a reconstruction of our imagination. And de- constructing these virtual realities in which we live is the only way to get back to some sort of baseline of what it is to be human._

</comment><comment><USER8> These remind me of the circular homesteads I saw when flying over Africa. These homesteads were made of huts with a yard circled by a fence for protection and penning the domestic animals. In a rain forest, it would make sense to dig a small drainage pit around the whole yard, and for added protection like a moat.

<comment><USER9> I guess that's just the natural shape for a small fort - circular to enclose as much area with the least wall and ditch/wall because you need to dig the earth to build/reinforce your wall from somewhere and a ditch adds to the effectiveness of your wall?

They look very like the ancient settlements/enclosures that you get all over the UK - there are loads of them here in Scotland.

<comment><USER10> Except they mention that there are few to no artifacts found in them, thus indicating that they weren't used as settlements/enclosures.

<comment><USER11> IANAA. I remember that it's very difficult to find ancient tools near China, because they probably used bamboo to build them.

In other places, the people used stones that are more archeological friendly. So it's possible to find the tools and even the shard of stones discarded while building the tools.

Is it possible that they can't find the tools here because they were made with some king of wood?

<comment><USER12> Tools might rot, but in general you'd expect to at least find middens, skeletal remains, teeth, scorched layers indicating a hearth of some sort, etc. There's non-tool markers for communities that will survive even in the rain forest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> See also:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_of_Z_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_City_of_Z_\(book\))

<comment><USER14> That is an excellent book. I read almost exclusively Sci Fi, but I found this book enthralling. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Need to get the team that analyzed Cambodia using LIDAR to analyze Brazil.

<comment><USER16> Is it too much to ask NASA/ESA to launch a constellation of CubeSATs with LIDAR? Alternately let Google do it and add it as an overlay to Google Maps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had expected the article would mention terra preta:

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

</comment><comment><USER18> Strongly reminds me of primitive animal pens/trapping yards. Used in the ancient middle east to trap wandering animals.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would guess that these were used to contain game.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would guess it is to hold/route rain water, like a swale.

</comment><comment><USER21> > The structures are ditched enclosures that occupy roughly 13,000 km2

So, they have a radius of 65km ?! How did they make the picture then? Can't be right

EDIT: why should a reader care what is the total space occupied by 450 ditched enclosures?

<comment><USER22> > why should a reader care what is the total space occupied by 450 ditched > enclosures?

Sense of scale.

<comment><USER23> I'd say it gives a sense of the type of occupation of the land it is, city vs. village vs. local farmsteads, and thus an idea of the type of land use and cooperation that might have taken place?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sports fields?

</comment><comment><USER25> i thought Amazon Rainforest (R) was some kind of a new platform..

<comment><USER26> I had the exact same thought when I read the first two words

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Aliens</comment>


Friendly PSA – Your Job Doesn't Need to Be Your Passion - <AUTHOR> https://www.bennettnotes.com/post/your-job-does-not-need-to-be-your-passion/ <comment><USER2> I've really enjoyed your writing! Including your past pieces on success and achievement and how obsessed we've become with both.</comment>


Windows 8 stores logon passwords in plain-text - <AUTHOR> http://www.passcape.com/index.php?section=blog&cmd=details&id=27&setLang=2

<comment><USER2> The phrase "stored in plain text" does not mean anything near the same thing as "encrypted with AES in the Windows Vault using the Data Protection API". This story is complete hogwash.

<comment><USER3> I'm thinking the same thing. These aren't website passwords, they need to be recoverable by an administrator. I'm sure this is by design.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think they should be recoverable by anyone? You can verify your details against a hash, or reset them anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


This Is Why Your Passive-Aggressive Office Note Didn't Work - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40484293/this-is-why-your-passive-aggressive-office-note-didnt-work <comment><USER2> Apparently I'm an "Upholder" and I fail to see why I would want a "Rebel" in my organization. "I'm not going to do this because I can tell that you expect me to do it" How does that personality benefit any endeavor that requires cooperation between people? Maybe they can work for themselves more effectively, but it just seems destructive.

<comment><USER3> That's not surprising given the Venn diagram illustrates your type has no intersection with the Rebel, amongst the given set of values.

A seasoned manager will get the Rebel to believe something is their own idea, leveraging their rebellious nature to get that job done.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like magic, I'd love to have that skill

<comment><USER3> You start by ending your practice of telling the Rebel what to do. Then you ask them "What do you think, Rebel?". And if it's reasonable, just say "Ok, then, when can I have that on my desk", and of course accommodate the Rebel's reality-to-actual-time factor. If it's not reasonable, then ask "What if we xxx'd instead?". You'll be surprised by the insights you receive that way. And of course you have to push back once in a while and call them out when their "insight" is actually "bullshit".

edit: If one happens to be a micromanager, one will have an extraordinarially difficult time with the Rebel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In this framework the rebels sound quite useless. They resist others and themselves. As a certified rebel (I did their online test), this makes me wonder what they think our place and value would be. What kind of jobs and relationships we should pursue.

I imagine rebels would be over represented among hackers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well now I understand why people will pay $40/lb for coffee. And come to think of it, sustain the productivity sink associated with people standing around idly while the machine brews their cup.</comment>


Ask HN: Spotify for paywall news? - <AUTHOR> Is there any spotify-like service for paywall "restricted" news sites? I'd like, from time to time, to read WSJ, FT, The Newyorker or other news sites that implement a Paywall. But, tbh, I don't read them THAT MUCH, to pay for an entire subscription. <comment><USER2> blendle.com. (It's pay-per-article though, not flat-rate subscription)</comment>


I quit my job - <AUTHOR> http://madebyloren.com/i-quit-my-job <comment><USER2> It sounds like you got burnt out. When you "code until the sun comes up" you neglect basic human necessities like sleep and human contact. When you think only about the company and the product vision, you lose your sense of self. Your sense of self becomes your work.

I used to work at a startup where this was the case, but I've since changed. I love my work and my co-workers and I think they all work extremely hard, but I go home every night at 6:30. I cook for myself. I take salsa lessons. I read. And I work on my own projects.

Interesting work at companies comes with ebb and flows. Sometimes you work on things you don't like, sometimes you get bored, but if you keep your mind fresh and sane you'll come up with things to work on that are meaningful and interesting.

<comment><USER3> Can't emphasize this enough.

I used to eat at Subway, every single day and one day I stopped going there. I have never been able to go there again.

Passion does not turn you into a machine, you are still a human and your brain and body has limits.

<comment><USER4> I did the same thing. Six months straight. I now haven't been in years.

<comment><USER5> to Subway?

<comment><USER4> Yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the first comment on the guys page:

>> You haven't yet discovered that any business -- any real business that is-- is going to get to the point where you actually have to do work. Automate away everything you can, but there is still going to be work.

>> If you're bored doing work, and only interested in the exciting stuff, you're never going to be happy in any job beyond 6 months or so

There's a lot of truth in this. When I did network administration I would job- hop. The first 6-12 months at a place were always full of stuff to do, and the things you did made each department fall in love with you. Rebuild a server that's been flaking out for 2 years? Fix some application the other guy could never get to work? Roll-out a new system for X? Upgrade to the latest firewalls/switches/whiskerdoo?

But then after that, it's like time stands still. There's nothing left to innovate, nothing exciting to do. Sure, there's stuff _to do_ but who wants to actually do it? Maintenance is no fun.

Later, doing QA at a my first software job, we had a developer with that mindset. He'd flesh out an app and use whatever the latest libraries and tools were. The first demo would amaze everyone. He'd come in late and leave early. By the time we started beta testing the product it turned into a huge mess. I took on the not-so-glamorous job of fixing the whole thing. And instead of quitting (like I wished he would), he'd stick around and the the boss would give him a new project to work on. Starting the cycle all over again...

<comment><USER7> From the boss's point of view, you must seem like a great team!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >>Eventually, those discussions stopped. Shots were called in private meetings and passed down.

This is terrible, and would also make me want to quit. Because if you start as part of the decision making process, and over time stop being invited to those meetings, that means you are no longer trusted or important enough to have any say in those decisions. That would be insulting, to say the least.

<comment><USER9> Something very similar happened to me at a startup a few years ago and it took me a long time to realize what had happened and why I felt so terrible about it.

Even though my title, salary, and perks were still the same, it was a _de- facto demotion_. Important parts of my compensation (involvement, agency, sense of ownership, diversity in work effort) were just inadvertently phased out as the company I helped grow was big enough to support product managers who could do _just the most rewarding parts of my job_ but not actually code or anything.

I think (hope) there are things that one can do to guard against this from happening, and just being aware of this phenomenon is valuable.

<comment><USER10> It would be criminal negligence if I didn't mention Michael O'Church's seminal work on this issue [1]. There is surprising depth and complexity to the power dynamics in companies, both large and small. What you've discovered first hand is that, unfortunately, politics determine the fate of nations and companies alike.

1\. [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais- princ...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-principle- questioned-macleods-hierarchy-the-technocrat-and-vc-startups/)

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry, but it's really difficult to take that "seminal work" seriously when that work is an in-depth analysis of the "MacLeod Model of organizational sociology".

Do you know what the "MacLeod Model" is? A cartoon on the back of a business card, posted to the web without comment nine years ago: [http://gapingvoid.com/2004/06/27/company- hierarchy/](http://gapingvoid.com/2004/06/27/company-hierarchy/)

Michael O'Church might have some interesting things to say, but when he extrapolates pages of meaning from a cartoon that's just trying to be humorous, it says more about Michael O'Church than anything else.

<comment><USER12> Whoa! Given all the reference Michael makes to MacLeod's hierarchy, I'd just tacitly assumed it was a well-known model in organisational studies. I guess the "I should really read the original work" pangs I occasionally have when reading Michael's stuff can go away now...

<comment><USER9> You really _should_ read the original work. I mean, it's just a cartoon drawn on the back of a business card, how much time could that possibly take?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're in a similar position and this resonates with you, do yourself a favor and just quit. Seriously. Stop waiting for things to get interesting. They won't. It's so easy to get stuck.

If you're good at what you do, you'll find a job you love immediately (if that's what you're looking for). As developers, we're fortunate to be in extremely high demand. Life is too short to be bored. Work on interesting things.

<comment><USER13> Sorry dude, I disagree. As an employee, an employer, and an investor, I see your action as a giant red flag.

<comment><USER14> The only red flag is that he has waited around when he lost creativity, and even that is not red - at least he had the courage to quit.

It is a job of the employee to be creative (talking about design, of course). But it is the job of employer and investors to make an environment that challenges the employer. If they are unable to do that then any really creative employer will (or at least should) leave.

@OP: good luck!!! I wish you well on your path, wherever it takes you.

<comment><USER15> > It is a job of the employee to be creative (talking about design, of > course). But it is the job of employer and investors to make an environment > that challenges the employer. If they are unable to do that then any really > creative employer will (or at least should) leave.

Well, that sort of goes back to a common theme in software companies: Are the people being hired as creatives or are they being hired to implement someone else's vision?

My experience is that in most roles you're likely to be being hired for the latter - and having intelligence outside of the ability to do your assigned task efficiently is strongly discouraged in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Serious question -- have you taken vacations? Real vacations -- not the kind that turn into "work from home" days? And multiple days/weeks in a row? And for those stuck in a similar situation, does a 2-3 week vacation help at all?

I'm finding myself in a similar situation, about not working on my own side projects enough. The only time I've got anything done personally is when I took off 2 weeks around the holidays (and since it was holiday time, I didn't feel the need to keep "checking in" to the office, as there wasn't much going on). But normally I'll only take a day or two off at a time, which doesn't seem long enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Serious question -- have you taken vacations? Real vacations -- not the > kind that turn into "work from home" days?_

No. Almost never. But I've thought about this extensively (before I quit as well as after), and I do regret not taking more _real_ vacations.

But something made it just feel _not okay_. I probably have myself to blame more than anybody, but whenever I took vacations - even weeklong vacations (which was rare), I found myself checking in often. I was always near a computer. I felt obligated, and had strong loyalty to the company and my coworkers. Everybody worked extremely hard. Days off to take care of important things, or when I just needed a break - always became 'work from home days'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds in many ways like your management, instead of empowering you with autonomy, purpose, and control over your projects took it away. Developers should call the shots on a number of things. This doesn't always mean running to use that cool new language you've been itching to use or to pick up that piece of technology you've been dying to try, it means being able to feel like you're the one in charge of the things that you're doing. If your team's voice is no longer heard and no longer takes part in the discussion of a project until after it is decided, you're only along for the ride. It's a tricky balancing plan, to both include new ideas and have the organization solidify around common methodologies, but one that needs to be taken. Otherwise, your "boredom" becomes a moral issue and you lose the people who crave stimulation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even for employees, startups are hard and take commitment. It's not for everyone, in fact it's probably not for most. People seem to have this idea of lavish Zynga style life styles. It's not. It's really really hard work. You still have to do as you're told. Everything is always going wrong. You still have to be responsible for your productivity. In fact you have to do a lot more. You cannot just hide.

As startups are not anywhere near a guaranteed job, downturns are really hard on morale, but you have to stick through it. Why do you have to? Because commitment. If you aren't ready for that kind of commitment, then early stage start ups are not for you probably.

As an employee you will more than likely not end up making as much as you would elsewhere in the long run. What do you get out of it then? Depends. I think it's worth it because I learn a lot and because my contributions really make a difference. Even if I don't have input in the broader direction (actually a good thing), I know my value.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _People seem to have this idea of lavish Zynga style life styles. It 's not. > It's really really hard work._

Yes, I absolutely agree with you. But in this particular case, I didn't leave because it was hard. I left because it was easy. Too easy. I wasn't challenged. The work I was doing was mundane and repetitive, and I didn't feel like what I was working on was important (or fulfilling). My productivity was great. I excelled. I made an effort to contribute in every way I could. But at the end of the day, I was just another dev.

<comment><USER19> _But at the end of the day, I was just another dev._

This. A thousand times.

At every company I've EVER worked for, I eventually had this exact same feeling. Even as the lead engineer, team lead, tech lead, or whatever other "top developer" role I've held, I always feel like this. And I always eventually quit too.

It's gotten worse in the past few years. I can barely make it one year before I feel like "just another dev", become completely de-motivated and start heading for the exits.

I've realized, at age 31, that I am a shitty employee and I always will be. I'm not supposed to work for other people. It doesn't really make me happy. It doesn't matter if its at a startup or a Big Co, I always feel like "just another dev", bored and ultimately like my potential is being cut short.

In the past year, this was sort of an epiphany for me. I have to follow the beat of my own drummer, be my own boss, make my own destiny. Will this bring me to self actualization? Will this be what I'm looking for? Or, will I feel empty once I get there? I have no clue, but I've got to find out.

Thanks for sharing your story, Loren. You're in good company. Good luck with figuring out what's important to you.

<comment><USER20> You're not a "shitty employee". Maybe you are just not in the right role. Most companies I've worked for consider developers to be just cogs that type code into computers all day. Many developers are just fine with this, but some of us want to do more. Like I said in another reply, the way I fixed this was to change careers and move over to the product management side. Unfortunately, I kind of had to leave development behind to do that, but in the balance, I've found the product side more rewarding.

It would be great to find a place where you could do both, but my understanding is these roles/companies are very rare. I suppose you could start your own company and then you'll definitely be doing it all, but that's kind of a risky way to get job satisfaction.

<comment><USER21> Slightly offtopic. I would love to hear more on how you made the switch happen. I sort of understand OP's perspective on the whole deal of people who work with code being considered to mere cogs and am also thinking about a switch.

<comment><USER20> This thread is pretty old, but I'll reply in case you're still reading. Here's the path I took, might not work for everyone:

1\. Went back to school for an MBA (which I wouldn't recommend doing) 2\. Found a typical "code monkey" job at a company where I was super-interested in the product and felt I had lots of good ideas. Work way up to some kind of tech lead position. 3\. Network/established great relationships with the product team at said company. Provided constant input/ideas on the product, knowing most of it would be ignored (that's OK). 4\. When I learned an opening on the product team appeared, jumped on in with full force. By then, the right people on the product team all knew/trusted me, and it was a pretty straightforward move. I was basically moving back down to a non-leadership level but I was willing to accept that.

Process took about 4-5 years, including the MBA. In retrospect, I wouldn't recommend the MBA unless you are trying to transition ENTIRELY out of tech/software.

Hope this helps

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To many of you: are you really letting the fear of a gap in your CV stop you from chasing your happiness? Grow up and take what you want or someone is going to take it from you.

<comment><USER23> The potential gap in my mortgage payments is what keep me working in a job I hate.

<comment><USER24> Don't you have any savings?

If you can't afford mortgage repayments _and_ savings, you are living above your means

I plan to always have enough savings for 1 year+ of unemployment

<comment><USER23> I have approx 6 months salary saved. I used to have more, but some home emergencies meant I had to eat into some of my savings recently. The government here decided that pursuing austerity for years without end was the way forward, and began implementing all sorts of new taxes, so I get paid the same as I did 4 years ago, but bring home approx 20% less. Same government policy has forced countless local businesses to shut down, meaning that there are very few job openings (programming or otherwise) available for the last couple of years. So I could quit now, manage approx 6 months payments and then stand a very good chance of still having no job. That or stay where I am and post about how my life sucks on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can relate all too well.

I once got hired in a startup my brother was in. I relocated to a new town (the capital), and got the chance to work in the development team with my brother and another guy I also knew very well. Things were awesome, and I couldn't be happier.

After awhile though, my motivation started declining quickly, and I found it hard to get up in the morning. By that time, I had almost stopped entirely doing projects when I got home. I just didn't feel like coding in my spare time anymore.

So, what went wrong? I loved my coworkers, it was exciting being in a startup, and I was somehow involved in the decision making, but, I just felt bored. Just, a complete lack of motivation. After awhile with this, I decided to quit, since I was going to start at university anyways. As the author of the post said, I also immediately felt relieved. I got my programming joy back.

What I've learned from this is, that I either

a) want a job were I do trivial stuff (like, working in a super market), and don't code since I prefer having a joy for coding as it is a thing I love dearly, rather than just getting payed to do it. or

b) be my own boss, be it freelance web developing, or, running my own startup. When it's my goals on the line, I get much more motivated.

I've had plenty of shitty jobs, and also had good jobs. This is what I've gathered from my (short) experience (I'm only 20 atm, but been working since I was young). This may also just be me, seeing as I get bored very quickly, and loose my motivation if I'm not feeling like it.

<comment><USER26> Regarding your job dichotomy: yes! My two favorite jobs ever: working at Starbucks, and freelancing. I _would_ rent my brain out, but it's not quite under my control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I know this is _wrong_, but that's the point where I start writing side projects at work.

If I'm finishing all my rote work within regular day, at previous jobs I've started working on stupid side projects.

A physics engine in Lua, a maze generator in PyGame, and so on.

<comment><USER28> Careful, if things get ugly the company might end up owning anything you put work into while they were paying you.

<comment><USER29> In California there's recent law that makes it clear how you can avoid this (from memory, the obvious of using your own time and resources).

<comment><USER30> It's more complicated than that, it also has to be "not along the lines of business of your employer".

That phrase can mean different things for different employers. If you work at Morgan Stanley then doing a social bookmarking tool in your spare time is probably fine, if you work at Intuit then doing an iPhone game is probably fine. If you work at Google then _everything_ is potentially problematic, as Google has a knack for poking its head into any line of business imaginable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I read the post, I thought the same thing... It's almost as if I felt like I was reading my own blog (if I kept one). I have always strived to find meaningful work where I feel like I can have a positive impact on the world. About 3 years ago, I took a job at a startup where I was sold on the story that it would have a meaningful impact on the health/wellness of others. I took on new roles and responsibilities easily as I really wanted the idea of the company to succeed. However, as I learn more and more about the true intentions of the founders, I realize that it has nothing to do with impacting the health and well-being of millions, but all to do with making money.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _However, as I learn more and more about the true intentions of the > founders, I realize that it has nothing to do with impacting the health and > well-being of millions, but all to do with making money._

That's not a great situation to be in. Are you still working there?

<comment><USER32> Isn't that the norm? I'd be interested in examples of profitable companies which put well-being of people over making money.

<comment><USER31> You're right... It's like asking, "what's the difference between Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and a for-profit company that improves the well-being of people?" ...nothing, they are all figments of our collective imaginations. (no offense to those HN readers who still believe ;-) )

I think many of the companies get started with good intentions, but we all know what the road to hell is paved with, right? What can be done to fix this?

<comment><USER32> I think that anything in particular can be done about companies caring about profit and little else. What can be done is changing the world for the better via (smart) state policies, some of them incentivising companies to do good (or at least less harm), others changing the world explicitly (like various social programs, the labor laws etc.). That's obviously hard and messy since it involves politics, but hey - people on this forum are supposedly all about hard problems and changing the world :) (usually, they're also about making millions of dollars in the process, but that, since it doesn't make you look as attractive, is usually left unspoken).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm in the same boat right now. I quit my job and am on a "learning" sabbatical right now myself. Some of the reasons you stated where mine too..

maybe some of the lessons I've learned so far may help: [http://amirrajan.net/meta/2013/07/14/rebooting- life/](http://amirrajan.net/meta/2013/07/14/rebooting-life/)

<comment><USER34> Heh. Me too. I suppose at any given time there are a certain number of people in the same boat so this shouldn't feel like so much of a coincidence.

Interesting post (and fellow Crossfitter, too!). Kudos on building up that much of a savings runway, though I'm finding that some level of time pressure is helpful in driving me forward faster to find my passions.

Personally, I found it hard to focus on other things outside of a demanding job. And I loved my job, so it wasn't hard to get sucked in. I had a forced leave due to an accident, and that really helped with evaluating priorities. [http://jennielees.net/departing-the-mother- ship/](http://jennielees.net/departing-the-mother-ship/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> With your downtime, I'd highly advise reading michaelochurch's Gervais/McLeod series. His articles are too long and he uses weird analogies, but he's onto something in terms of modern startup culture.

<comment><USER35> A link to the start of the series: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais- princ...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-principle- questioned-macleods-hierarchy-the-technocrat-and-vc-startups/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's amazing how much I find myself in your story. I am too in same shoes, working at a startup and I'm so burned out that i have neglected all of my side projects due to lack of energy or modivation. I havent quit yet, but every 6 months i go through re-evaluation of where I am and where I want to go. For now until the end of year, I keep pushing hard at work hoping for the best.

</comment><comment><USER37> Good stuff. Been in this position a few times and I feel for you. Glad you're in a better place. One piece of advice, if you can take a little time off between gigs, I would do it. Keep spending time doing things you want to do before jumping in with another company. Also, be picky about your next job. Now that you have some experience under your belt, you will have some options.

</comment><comment><USER38> I can relate to this post, but I pause at the contrast between this:

 _" I was given work to do and I did it well. The work wasn't interesting anymore, but it was easy." \- "It was just so comfortable."_

And this:

 _" I had plenty of ideas for apps and projects, but couldn't bring myself to build them. I was drained."_

I understand feeling of being drained in a job with uninteresting, but stressful or time-consuming work, but not so much in a job that sounds extremely comfortable and flexible.

This combined with the "secretly hoped something horrible would happen" bit reads to me as a sort of mid-career crisis - tunnel vision seeking for some big catalyst that will make everything better, for a while at least.

I expect the author is going to be just fine in any case, but I don't see this as a problem that really necessitates an all or nothing approach. I feel like the tales of quitting, working out of a car, betting the house and whatnot is overly romanticized in general and among startup culture in particular.

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand the mindset of "oh, I'm just going to cook and do things and write some code sometimes". I mean that in an envious way -- it sounds nice. But I just can't think that way for some reason. I didn't grow up with a lot of security so not having money come in is really stressful for me, even if I have savings.

</comment><comment><USER40> A refreshing write up.

I have seen that happen to myself. The motivation, the desire to pick yourself up and get to work drops.

The largest factor IMO is the people you work with ie Your boss, your teammates etc. This can make it or break it. Everything else comes and goes in time slices. I do not expect work to be interesting all the time but with great co-workers I at least expect an interesting hallway conversation or the spark to a new idea.

For me it was the Sr/Jr Engineer thing that killed my desire. I found that somehow my age/years of work experience came in the way by a highly regimented old world overlord. I figured it was an unhealthy environment that cared 2 hoots about what was happening in the world outside. Most of them had come from a school that thought sticking faster CPU more memory and larger disks was innovation while it was just evolution. Packed my bags and hopefully will never miss a thing :)

Good luck !

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow - unlike other commenters, I think you deserve plaudits for not letting your work define you and going after what you are passionate about and believe. Will it make you financially wealthy? Maybe not (altho many articles seem to show chasing passion does have financial reward), but it will provide satisfaction. And that's hard to buy.

In fact, if you're up for some fun and continuous self-motivated challenge, I might have something for you that might be right up your alley. Not a coding thing or startup thing at all. Drop me a note if it interests you.

</comment><comment><USER42> Something similar happened to me. I'm graduating in Law, but coding was always my passion - I did not want to go to university and study IT, because I always loose interest in something if I'm forced to study/do it. So I started coding five years ago as a for of relaxation. I loved it and learned all day and night. But had somehow to pay for my university, so first started freelancing. Two years ago I started part-time work for small webdesign agency. At first it was challenging, then more and more trivial tasks, almost none work... I become unproductive. Literally they were WEEKS I had nothing to do. So about two weeks ago, I quit. The first night I was thinking about how I'm going to pay for my textbooks, my rent, how I'm gonna live. Then I felt something I've almost forgotten - passion. I think passion and inspiration come in most critical moments, and especially when you got aim and you can decide yourself how to reach your goal. So an hour later, I started diving deep into NodeJS, Backbone, go over some tutorials I've been holding for months. Started writing new tutorial for my blog. Answered questions in GSAP forums. Helped people. Now I feel alive. As Max Payne said "I don't know about angels, but it's fear that gives man wings"

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems like a legit reason to leave. Personally I would've used the position I was currently in as leverage in finding new employment, though. It seems to me that you're in a better negotiating position if you don't need the job because you already have one. I'm sure you have your reasons, though. Did you think that staying on the job while looking elsewhere would've impacted your performance? Was it personal stuff maybe?

</comment><comment><USER44> This is why you don't work for a startup _because_ it's a startup. Find something that you are passionate about. Work in that area. Be it freelance, at a startup or at a larger company.

Too often people stay at startups because it's the new cool, and anyone not "doing a startup" is apparently an idiot. It's very far from the truth, and my life was a lot happier once I realised that.

<comment><USER9> For a long time I thought I wanted to work at a startup, but it turns out that what I want just sort of correlates with being a startup. As long as I can be creative and build things of value for real people while improving my skills without being micro-managed, I'm happy.

Everything else is just aesthetic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Too bad the company got bureaucratic. But it seems to be the nature of things. Startups are born, they grow, they get big, and inevitably they get boring because 1) maintaining legacy code & doing incremental changes is never as fun as green-field development 2)having customers mean proving you can be reliable, and that comes with doing hard work - providing customer support, fixing bugs. Snazzy new features give way to doing what the market wants. I'm glad you made the leap to quit though, because it does sound like you were genuinely bored. While I agree a life guided by curiosity and experiments is the right pursuit, I personally don't think that luxury will always be available to us ALL the time. Sometimes, we just have to put up with doing boring tasks...

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't think you are doing yourself a great service by playing the "it's not you, it's me" game with your ex company. This is nothing wrong with leaving after a short time and even writing about it. But significant accomplishments often take more than a year and have a lot of tedious and stressful intervals. Or to put it another way: opportunities that are certain to take less than a year and certain to not involve tedium and stress are rare.

</comment><comment><USER47> Only in this community would a bunch of strangers give a shit that another stranger got bored at his job and is trying something new...

<comment><USER25> Maybe because people in this community can highly relate to the subject? I know I can, for one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Wow, taking hipster to a whole new level. Working at a startup, having catered lunches & the latest mac is too much so he quit.

</comment><comment><USER49> If having a great job that you love and pays well were easy, everyone would be doing it. Jobs suck, unless you're lucky and a big risk pays off. And it's not burnout. Most tech jobs are just fucking boring, and nobody can get excited about technology after being mind-fucked all day by it. My suggestion is to get a non-tech job.

</comment><comment><USER50> Btw, what about health insurance? I find that to be the biggest deterrent. You're one random event away from bankruptcy.

<comment><USER29> If he can pay for it he has up to 18 months of COBRA coverage (you stay in the plan, but have to pay the full cost to the company).

<comment><USER51> Be careful about this assumption if you are working at a small startup. I recently changed jobs and was not eligible for health insurance for the first month in my new job. I thought "Oh, that's fine. I'll just pay for a month of COBRA coverage." When I went to apply I was told that COBRA only applied to companies with at least 20 employees and that I should use my state's equivalent of COBRA instead. When I went to apply for that I was told that it applies to all companies, but it is not available to people who leave their job voluntarily.

I ended up having to get a short term individual insurance plan instead. It's a bit of a risk because if a major issue related to a pre-existing condition flared up, I would probably not be covered. It's my understanding that when the new health care laws take effect next year, it will help absolve much of the risk that comes from using an individual insurance plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Burn rate?

One other possible new exciting venue?

Sell the truck, get on down to the marinas, walk the docks, ask around, moorage in arrears gets good glass sailboats for the cost of getting them out of there. The Sacramento Delta, `Delta Time' might get you some free anchor out.

Invent new rPi, Ardino sol-powered black boxes for mariners?

You're a good writer too, L.

</comment><comment><USER53> I just quit mine too. I have 5 days left. No clue as to what's next. I'm not ready to talk about it.

</comment><comment><USER54> If you find yourself repeatedly bored, take the test at JOCRF.org. Best ~$700 I ever spent on my career.

<comment><USER55> That's interesting. What did you learn about yourself from the test and what changes did you make after that?

<comment><USER54> I learned that my strengths were different - almost the mirror image - of what I had imagined them to be, and the direction I needed to take was very different than my education and career to date. Briefly: more creativity, more words, not so much numbers/analytics. It was a big surprise.

I have followed their advice, and while it's difficult to turn one's career on a dime, I'm happy with the results so far. What I'm doing "feels right," and I'm much better at it. I think about this every day.

Your aptitude profile will be different than mine. At this point, I've referred about a dozen friends to the center. Some have got value from it, others haven't. The ones who benefited the most were those who were open to making changes. (Some people will spend $700 and then throw away results that don't fit their self-image. That's a waste.)

I specifically recommend JOCRF to apparently intelligent people who have a hard time settling down in a career, or say they are bored. Perhaps they don't "know themselves" well enough - that's where the test helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> It feels great to feel what you are feeling. I recently graduated out of a college that I didn't like too much and now I've moved cities and working on stuff that I really want to. I guess breaks like this are necessary to keep the mind fresh.

</comment><comment><USER57> Sounds like the correct move in your case. Keep maximizing the value out of this decision.

</comment><comment><USER58> One of the most liberating things I ever did was quit my job and go travel for a couple years. I'd do it again, but I'd like to keep my home on the Peninsula.

Thiel should pay people to quit their jobs. The creative energy would be incredible.

</comment><comment><USER59> I want an update after 14 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay. Hold me to it. Seriously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I really like this article, as I feel being somehow in the same position. Words chosen express totally my feelings. I'm happy to see that I am not the only one having this issue.

</comment><comment><USER61> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

</comment><comment><USER62> Take a sabbatical and come to Nairobi for a few months. Spend some time coding, some time meeting new people, and some time doing a walkabout: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER63> It is not uncommon that programmers get bored. The best way to overcome it to work on side/opensource projects and fill your GitHub account

</comment><comment><USER64> Man, kids in the valley gettin' paid too much.

<comment><USER65> He's from LA actually.

<comment><USER64> Surely Valley is a metonym that includes LA (at least in the context of ridiculous developer salaries).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> "For the next three or six months, I'm just going to work on interesting things."

Right on! Have fun :)

</comment><comment><USER67> Fair play, well done! Follow your dreams and the rest will look after itself.

</comment><comment><USER68> Just curious, what would you do if Airbnb offered you a job at this point?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say no.

I don't dislike the company nor am I bitter... I am simply no longer interested.

Fwiw, when they did not hire me originally, they said they wanted to keep in touch - and they kept their word. They reached out about 6 months later, but I was already living the startup dream at that point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, I guess you can wait for the next Snowpocalypse...

</comment><comment><USER69> Best of luck to you mate :)

</comment><comment><USER70> Must be nice not to need to work for a living. Remind me never to hire this quitter.

</comment><comment><USER71> yup. congrats</comment>


Russia's parliament votes to unplug internet from world - <AUTHOR> https://www.dw.com/en/russias-parliament-votes-to-unplug-internet-from-world/a-48334411 <comment><USER2> The title does not match the article:

> The law will create an independent infrastructure for the Russian internet, > or "Runet," which will essentially _allow_ Russia to pull up its virtual > drawbridges in case of attack.

<comment><USER3> If there's technical capability, there's no doubt they will do it, with or without an "attack" (a fake orchestrated attack can always be used as pretext). It's obvious to everyone this will be another Great Firewall.

<comment><USER4> Yeah any talk of a "drawbridge" or "emergency shutdown button" has always been either sheer ignorance or a pretext for censorship. Since if you want security you don't shut it down for everyone but either disconnect everything of infastructural importance.

If your power plants are at risk of hacking you don't prepare by planning to shutdown the internet - you prepare by making sure it can work when unplugged them from insecure networks. Because if loss of said connectivity would cause problems shutting it down is no help and if it doesn't there is no need to boost collateral damage - unleas that is the /real/ goal.

<comment><USER5> Be charitable here,

Its much easier to disconnect the international connections than to simultaneously disconnect _every_ piece of critical infrastructure at once during an attack. While I believe this is probably a pretext for further censorship, the underlying rationale does have merit.

International disconnects also have the benefit of your internal communications mostly keep working.

<comment><USER6> The rationale has more merit for a regime that considers facts illegitimate tools of western degeneracy and aggression while waging its own cyber war than for one that wants to work for cyber peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this will be the future of the internet. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if the EU tried doing the same.

<comment><USER8> Not the same at all.

EU is just settings rules for the internal EU market.

<comment><USER9> Couldn't one argue that Russia is just setting rules for its internal market?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suppose this will make a world much easier place for everyone. Both the US and Russia will get a clear enemy, they will keep trying to fight for years, dozen of years, without any achievable success, because any fail you can easily transform in temporary lost in a long run game. If I were the US president or EU, I'd definitely helped them for build this a new internet iron curtains, because it will definitely limit their progress and stuck a new mallow of "replace everything from the west". It's a just basic economy theory of Adam Smith: bigger taxes, bigger obstacles for intonational trade, hurt in the first time your own economy. So I'm definitely support this, lets make russia weak!

<comment><USER11> The thing is that after USSR has disappeared Russia is not on par with US anymore, neither economically nor technically. So "will keep trying to fight" will end much earlier than anticipated by many.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not quite an iron curtain, maybe silicon curtain?

</comment><comment><USER13> So the Russian Firewall?

</comment><comment><USER14> As someone who knows very little about the Internet backbone and networking in general, would this even be technically feasible to do?

We know that in certain countries there exist "single points" where a majority of internet traffic flows [0], but if those points get cut off, couldn't you reroute the traffic? Isn't that the point of decentralization in the first place?

And if it's technically feasible, would encryption tools like VPNs, DNS encryption or even Tor help in a situation like this?

[0] - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital- business/wp/2014...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital- business/wp/2014/03/05/why-ashburn-va-is-the-center-of-the- internet/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8593ae25a99c)

<comment><USER15> From what I can read in that article, the law will simply mandate that Roskomnadzor gets to control the internet access points, and it's also hinted that services will be required to host their data in Russia, to some extent. That would give them the ability to shut down most of the Internet traffic to and from the rest of the world, while still allowing important services to run without disruptions.

That's the theory anyway. In practice, I assume Russian web services are just as dependant on third-party providers as the rest of us are.

</comment></comment><comment> a0-prw This is perfectly understandable, given US hostility to Russia.</comment>


Twitter Switches From TinyURL To Bit.ly - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-switches-from-tinyurl-to-bitly-2009-5

<comment><USER2> Interesting choice of TLD. I can only assume this means they'll be sure to conform to all relevant Libyan law, since it only takes one court order to pull their domain registration. (Cf. <http://nic.ly/regulations.php>)

</comment><comment><USER3> Every time I hear something about URL shortners, a part of me dies inside.

My Thoughts: Twitter is the main reason for the increase in URL Shortners. Instead of depending on outside services, Twitter should (must) implement their own shortning service. Something like !02u389 or ^02u389 that maps to a real URL. (like their #hastags and @replies)

<comment><USER4> Agreed. And if they did roll their own, they could do nice things like hover over a short url and it'll show you the destination url. That sort of thing is easier when you're running both parts of the system.

<comment><USER5> The thing is, none of this is necessary. HTML has a built in URL shortener:

      Short

There you go.

Twitter is _already_ parsing URLs out of tweets in order to feed them through bit.ly. At that point, the length of the URL isn't relevant -- it's been turned into a single token and pulled from the tweet.

Why don't we just stop there instead of first stopping off at the shortener before writing our HTML?

<comment><USER6> That doesn't work as a text message.

<comment><USER7> If you are in a situation where you can only receive messages via text, then you aren't able to visit web pages.

So they could replace the urls with "[url]" or somesuch when sending them via SMS.

<comment><USER8> Mobile phones can do both. Not all phones are connected to the internet all the time, so it would make sense to receive twitter messages using SMS, and _then_ connect to the net.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's particularly silly about all this is that when using the website to tweet you by definition do _not_ need a URL shortener. You are not allowed to type more than 140 characters in the input field, so your message is necessarily already under 140 chars, so the shortening does _nothing_. I find this particularly frustrating since I have a message with a perfectly legible URL, hit send, and all of a sudden its a short URL that now one know where it goes anymore. If it auto shortened your URL as you pasted it in (as opposed to after hitting reply/send), then it would at least allow to type more, but as it is, the auto shortening serves no user-purpose.

</comment><comment><USER10> bit.ly has one drawback: a proliferation of bit.ly URLs pointing to the same URL, because every user can get an individual abbreviation.

That makes reverse lookups infeasible (get tinyurl for url, search twitter for tinyurl - see who links to you). At least with tinyurl most abbreviations were the same.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why don't they just make their own? Seems like keeping that data 'in house' would be wise.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Bit.LY is a portfolio company of Betaworks, which is also an investor in Twitter"

From the perspective of the investors, they are keeping it "in house" By pairing work of two investments, they make both a little stronger (well, bitly a lot stronger).

<comment><USER4> Hoping some of the hype of twitter might rub off on bit.ly I'd say if I was skeptical. Still amazing bit.ly got funded.

<comment><USER11> Isn't this a libian domain name? Can that country/somebody there take it back if they want to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Breaking news from the red-hot world of URL shorteners.

I don't know if the goal of the author was that but after the first sentence of the article I was laughing like a mad :)

</comment><comment><USER13> I just use <http://is.gd/> when twittering. Shorter by one character. ;-)</comment>


TeamViewer users are being cracked in bulk, and we still don't know how - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/teamviewer-users-are-being-hacked-in-bulk-and-we-still-dont-know-how/ <comment><AUTHOR> Update: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/teamviewer-says- ther...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/06/teamviewer-says-theres-no- evidence-of-2fa-bypass-in-mass-account-hack/)

IMHO this underscores the necessity of never using a memorable password on a remote service.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840020)</comment>