Retain Scroll Position in Infinite Scroll - <AUTHOR> http://artsy.github.io/blog/2014/07/09/retain-scroll-position-in-infinite-scroll/

<comment><USER2> If the page isn't infinitely tall, but instead has a known (but very tall height), having an invisible page element hundreds of thousands of pixels tall makes the scrollbar work perfectly. What content to load is determined based on the scroll position.

It also works well to let users jump halfway through a large page, or scroll through a large list faster than the content can be generated. In my implementation, I have some text that pops up (like the alphabet letter that pops up on android when scrolling quickly) with the date so that the user can scroll fast.

Note that you also need to remove elements from the DOM that are offscreen (typically above the current position) so that you don't cause the page to be too heavy.

I have a photo gallery where the search results can be viewed this way. Even with hundreds of thousands of search results, this approach works very smoothly.

I know exactly how many search results the page will have. The images are square and 200px by 200px. I display them tiled. Based on the window size I can calculate how many pixels tall to make the invisible element.

The relevant code is [https://github.com/jewel/hypercheese/blob/master/app/assets/...](https://github.com/jewel/hypercheese/blob/master/app/assets/javascripts/search/results.coffee). I've been meaning to extract this out and make it a separate library, and also create a demo page.

<comment><USER3> I have tried a similar technique and discovered browser limitations in the millions or tens-of-millions pixel height range (depending on the browser), for a scrollable div. Chrome, Safari, and Firefox all refuse to add scrollable height beyond a certain limit, even when the content is taller. Have you run into the same limitations?

<comment><USER2> The site where I had all the photos needs them to be reimported at the moment, so I can't check, but I estimate it was at least 8 million pixels tall. Instead of putting the photos IN the div, I just used the div to make the page tall. It was 1px wide and 8,000,000 pixels tall. If there is some limitation, you could have multiple divs of a million pixels each, or you could set the height of the body tag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So not only are we ignoring how scrolling is supposed to work and implementing our own version, we're now 'fixing' the browser by layering full 'screen' iframes on top of the content?

Lovely. All this to solve what issue, exactly? I've yet to see a site where infinite scrolling was an improvement. Hard to navigate, stutter, and losing my place (I know) are not improvements.

This isn't getting cleaner, this is getting more complicated by piling on 'fixes' to the 'bugs'. That should be a sign.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. I think there are arguments for both pagination and infinite scroll and one is not necessarily better than the other. Jeff Atwood has an interesting post on this [http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-end-of- pagination/](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-end-of-pagination/) where I think he makes a good point about "[...] once you have thousands of items to paginate, who the heck is visiting page 964 of 3810?". On the other hand infinite scroll has a slew of quirks with it too, so there are arguments both ways.

<comment><USER5> The argument that nobody is visiting page 964 of 3810 on a paginated UI seems somewhat compelling at first until you realize that nobody is scrolling down to the 964th screenful out of 3810 either, and even if they do, your infinite scrolling implementation made it more painful than necessary and is probably making them scared of clicking anything lest the whole thing get reset to 0 all over again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back, Forward is still broken.

That is generally the problem of re-implementing functionality that browsers already have. Edge cases are missed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell me about it. If you've ever used iScroll (amazing library btw [https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll](https://github.com/cubiq/iscroll)) to get iPad scrolling support you'll see how deep the rabbit hole goes. I initially used it for 2013.artsy.net (source code: [https://github.com/artsy/artsy-2013](https://github.com/artsy/artsy-2013)) and had to eventually decide to toggle it on only for iPad b/c there were too many edge cases in the browser.

But I digress. Thanks for pointing this out, hopefully we'll eventually smooth over the quirks to a reasonable degree. Logged the bug for now: [https://github.com/artsy/scroll- frame/issues/12](https://github.com/artsy/scroll-frame/issues/12)

<comment><USER5> Additional quirk: Middle-button click to open in a new tab is also broken. Right-click -> open-in-new-tab works though.

This kind of stuff, in addition to being a pain in the ass for you, the developer, is why users hate this kind of trickery. I see that I'm on an infinite-scrolling page and I say to myself "ugh, I wonder which standard browser behavior is broken due to the weird hacks they had to employ to make this crap work." Which, ironically, is one reason I habitually open things in a new tab on pages like this -- I don't want whatever hacks are being employed to cause me to lose my page state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Clever. I wanted to point out there's additional issues introduced by infinite scroll; bookmarking, link sharing, etc.

It's a problem we recently tackled on our infinite scrolling page. Combining modals, pushState (on scroll) and waypoints I think we've solved the the most important problems we introduced with infinite scroll on our gallery page. Here's an example [1] and a blog post about the attention we paid to detail [2].

[1] [https://current.trovebox.com/photos/page-1/list](https://current.trovebox.com/photos/page-1/list)

[2] [https://medium.com/p/636c0ae6e3b1](https://medium.com/p/636c0ae6e3b1)

<comment><USER8> I'm not a web developer, but why can't you link to an anchor that is slightly below the header, so the view that the user sees is the same view (minus scrollbar position) they would have seen when they were originally on the page, and "infinite scroll" upwards when they scroll up, and down when they scroll down.

_______________ | header | | | | buffered | | images up | |</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-| | | | Viewport | | | | | |</comment><comment></comment><comment>-| | buffered | | images down | | | | | \</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Is this somehow technically very difficult or would this screw with usability in some way that would be unintuitive?

<comment><USER7> Good questions. You can link to something below the header but I think the more interesting idea is to do the infinite scroll upwards. I agree that this approach is better than the pagination we've implemented when you link to pages 2+. It doesn't seem technically impossible but the amount of work to implement that might be significant. Here's an example...

We do the masonry layout from left to right. This means we start filling out each row from the left and can leave space on the right of the last row of a page so the next page can begin filling in the remainder of that row before starting a new one. To do this the opposite way if we're "backfilling" photos seems like it could be significantly more complex.

In essence when scrolling "up" we'd have to reverse the alignment and fill photos in from right to left. This alone makes my head hurt to think about.

But aside from our implementation I think a bidirectional infinite scroll really is the solution to work towards. It would feel much more natural that way.

<comment><USER8> I guess you aren't just filling in pictures from a list, are you? you have to find a picture that fits the space you have? If this is the case, it might be best to change the "row height" to justify the images, and ignore the "best fit" image.

Then it is just taking a list of images, and moving the "view" forward or backward on that list, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google's official Webmaster Central blog actually lists out a very good & SEO- friendly method of setting up infinite scrolling that solves the core goal (retaining a scrolling position) of "scrollFrame" and doesn't require iFrames.

[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2014/02/infinite-s...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2014/02/infinite- scroll-search-friendly.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Love how the demos for "scroll-frame" by @artsy completely blows up

[http://artsy.github.io/scroll-frame](http://artsy.github.io/scroll-frame) [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BsNWUa5CIAECV5s.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BsNWUa5CIAECV5s.png:large)

<comment><AUTHOR> Odd, what link did you click to get to that url? If you follow this link [http://artsy.github.io/scroll-frame/](http://artsy.github.io/scroll-frame/) it should show a bunch of cute little kittens infinitely adding themselves to your page: [http://cl.ly/image/1d2z2h0G3Z1U](http://cl.ly/image/1d2z2h0G3Z1U)

<comment><USER11> Same here, if I follow your link I get redirected to [http://artsy.github.io/scroll-frame/undefined](http://artsy.github.io/scroll- frame/undefined) which 404s, obviously...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahh, thanks for report. Looks like I have a little way to go to ensure cross- modern-browser support. I noticed some odd things going on in Firefox. What browser/version are you using?

<comment><USER12> Same here, Firefox 30.0 on Linux Mint 16.

Clicking on one of the kittens gives me a blank page, and then clicking back brings up the list again but it has the "Loading..." overlay indefinitely.

This experience definitely didn't sway my opinion that infinite scrolling is really annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> This specific issue with FF should be fixed now. Check [http://artsy.github.io/scroll-frame/demo.html](http://artsy.github.io/scroll- frame/demo.html) to see if it works on your end. Thanks for checking it out :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is great. A lot of non-savvy people probably don't know how to open links in a tab to prevent this on current 'infinite' scrolling sites

</comment><comment><USER14> FYI - clicking through to the demo pages appear be NSFW.

</comment><comment><USER15> A recommendation: test well on iphones/ipads.

We use a similar approach in our website, and we struggled a lot with iphones/ipads for the way Safari manages the iframe height. A common solution is to use -webkit-overflow-scrolling:touch; but this made the iframe almost unusable in our settings.

</comment><comment><USER16> Doesn't appear to work at all in Firefox 30 on Linux. Clicking one of the images after scrolling a bit (triggering the loading of additional content) leads to an infinitely spinning bar - no content ever loads. The same STR works without issue in Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I noticed that too :( Logged here: [https://github.com/artsy/scroll- frame/issues/10](https://github.com/artsy/scroll-frame/issues/10). Hopefully there's a way around this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like a very clever workaround!

I wonder how well it works on mobile, and/or with things like jquery-mobile. Does it dramatically increase memory consumption with more content loaded simultaneously?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use a separate mobile website for almost all of our web views so I have yet to integrate it on mobile. I assume one would have to be more careful about the performance of embedding an iframe in that context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love to complain about infinite scrolling, but this... is actually pretty clever. I'm not a huge fan of the everything-in-a-modal approach or URL manipulation (i.e. Discourse, which involves a lot of scroll listening and only gives you an approximation of your scroll position), so I think this is a good alternative.

Now for something a bit more ranty, in keeping with tradition: why the heck does the infinite scrolling interface at [https://artsy.net/browse/artworks](https://artsy.net/browse/artworks) have a footer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out! To the footer question—I think you just caught a bug :) Logging it!

We usually try to remove the footer e.g. on our posts page [https://artsy.net/posts/featured](https://artsy.net/posts/featured)

<comment><USER18> Ah, good to hear it wasn't intentional. =) I realized shortly after posting that comment that I'm a terrible hypocrite, cause we're actually guilty of the same thing in a couple places on our platform. Granted, we repeat the footer links in the sidebar, but still, it's something I'd like to fix.

Anyway, good work on the library, and thanks for open sourcing it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just open in new tab. Even on mobile it works well because the back button just closes the tab and puts you back into the other window (on android at least, not sure about iOS)

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh boy, another discussion about infinite scroll and the way things were before JavaScript coming up...

But anyway, I spent a few minutes trying to break it on the live site, and was surprised at how graceful things worked, even with knowing what's behind it. I see that it "breaks" when you click from search, to an art piece, then to a related link...and _then_ attempt to go back to search...but after some thought, I think that's totally reasonable. When a user goes down the rabbit hole of 2+ links, how likely is it they're going to care where they were on an infinite scroll, or any other pagination system? And of course, it's probably a minefield of browser errors if the behavior was to keep persisting the iframes and original search window.

On a related note, has Artsy done a lot of data collection in terms of how their signed-in users navigate the scroll? I figure after awhile, if I were a frequent visitor, I would quickly scroll the search and then "favorite" the things I wanted to check out, rather than visiting pieces one by one, and hoping that the "back" button would maintain my place.

(Of course, power users may opt to pop open new windows for each art piece...but that's untenable on a mobile device. Also, Etsy tried that and it in A/B testing, it apparently failed spectacularly)

<comment><USER21> I care about coming back precisely where I was. That's how it works on a normal website, that's how it should work here.

And it's very wonky, on Safari OSX. Broke it immediately. Command clicked an image to open in new tab and it did not open a new tab, but loaded it in the same tab. Then going back, it hung or something and I had to refresh the page. When I refresh, it goes back to the beginning. It should go to where I was, at the very least. And yes, opening in tabs should work too.

And it doesn't update the URL to say where I am, can't bookmark my position in the browse view. I want to. If it works on a normal page, it must work in this infinite scroll. Breaks basic user expectations.

Is this new? I remember liking the Artsy site quite a bit. It's still nice and pretty but I cannot depend on that infinite scroll. It is exactly like that xkcd. I remember seeing infinite scrolling done right somewhere, goes back to place, updates URL.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Looks to Take the Blockchain to the Next Level with Project Bletchey - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-looks-take-blockchain-next-level-project-jesus-rodriguez?trk=mp-reader-card <comment><USER2> I've got to be missing something. The whole purpose of block chain is not to use a big vendor.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's "Bletchley".</comment>


Lightbank Start Offers $100,000 for 50% equity stake - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/09/12/lightbank-start-offers-tech-talent-100000-to-co-found-a-company/ <comment><USER2> I wonder also if this is the start of some YC-backlash

      Lightbank Start shouldn't be compared, Lee suggests, to
      accelerator and incubator programs along the lines of Y
      Combinator, TechStars or 500 Startups, which generally
      seek companies and founders with more experience, and
      better developed products or start-ups to pitch.

Second set of people positioning YC as a well, luxury brand.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's quite clever.

YC offers something like 10k for 6% stake (iirr) so pro rata it's cheaper, to the single entrepreneur it's one to two years runway, they can relax bit and make longer term plays, and for the fund it's great - fifty percent of facebook would keep the partners happy

<comment><USER3> $300K = 4 founders x 75k jobs

Giving away 6pc to get launched and then fund $200k+ a couple months later with much higher cap note seems a LOT smarter than taking the money upfront.

This is a suckers bet.</comment></comment>


Fractal flaming hydrogen wiggles through tiny gaps - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/fractal-flaming-hydrogen-wiggles-through-tiny-gaps/ <comment><AUTHOR> Article based on:

Unexpected Propagation of Ultra-Lean Hydrogen Flames in Narrow Gaps \- Physical Review Letters

[https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...](https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.174501)</comment>


Ask HN: Trying to find a job in other state, question - <AUTHOR>

I work as a contractor to an organization through company A. Due to personal reasons, I have to move to New York City / NJ suburbs.
Should I ask my employer (company A) if they can find me a project in New York, around that area or should I refrain from asking them and just try to find a new job?
The reason I am asking this is because I do not want them to replace me in my current position with someone else until I am ready to move. I am afraid that they might think that I will leave eventually and might find a person to replace me.
I am a web developer by profession. In any case, is someone here looking for a Web Developer, with a Comp Sci background? I'll be glad if you can help me.
Thanks a lot. <comment><USER2> Why not start talking to a few companies in the destination area before deciding anything re: company A? e.g. line up a few phone interviews.</comment>


Intype (long, long awaited Windows text editor) hits 1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://inotai.com/intype/blog/36/intype-1-0

<comment><USER2> As I remember: a few years back this was supposed to be the missing Textmate on Windows. ST2 ate its lunch though.

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this better than Notepad++?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure that it is (haven't done feature-by-feature comparison) but I thought it was newsworthy since it's been "coming soon" for so long.</comment></comment>


Here come the encryption apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/03/here-come-encryption-apps.html <comment><USER2> I work on two of the apps Matthew reviews here (RedPhone and TextSecure).

What I didn't expect when I started working on these types of projects is that the cryptography is the easy part. I'm really honored to hear that my code has the ability to make Matthew Green drool, but that ZRTP stack was a two or three day project three years ago, and hasn't changed much since. The bulk of the work over the intervening period has been almost exclusively about improving call quality and user experience.

I think this increased emphasis on the user might be what distinguishes the "new wave" of crypto apps from the last. There seems to be a real consensus between those working in the space that this is what's important now.

The things that I'm most proud of about RedPhone are typically unrelated to the crypto, and are instead things like using push notifications for signaling instead of persistent connections, using a lightweight mobile-oriented signaling protocol instead of SIP, and building a low-latency calling network: <http://www.whispersystems.org/blog/low-latency-switching/>

I think we're all starting to realize that our "competition" is the "insecure" versions of what we're building, and security isn't an effective point of comparison. We have to build better products, which just happen to incidentally be really secure.

<comment><USER3> moxie, I'm curious how the "short authentication string" prevents MITM attacks — can you shed some light on this or point me to existing documentation? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> It's some sort of key fingerprint. You know the key you sent to the other party, and the other party can compute the fingerprint of the key they received from "you." If they don't match, someone changed keys in transit.

<comment><USER3> Does this assume that the voice channel can't be doctored? But couldn't a MITM attacker do just that — compute the "correct" fingerprint and speak it to the recipient?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it assumes an attacker cannot imitate the other person's voice without detection. If you introduce enough latency or have a system fast enough to do on-the-fly voice changing you'd be set. It's such a great, simple idea, I felt stupid for not having thought of it.

To be sure, the voice channel establishes before the verbal authentication. I see your fingerprint is "banana", you see "kitchen". We can chat and I can say "alright so banana, right?" and you say "yep, in the kitchen". An attacker would need to remove banana and kitchen from that voice conversation and put their own fingerprint words in.

I think that level of realtime audio modification is pretty out of reach for now, although I suppose if you introduced a lot of latency, you might be able to pull it off. It'd probably be noticeable, and you can keep chatting and confirming the phrase, so an attacker would have to be really on-the-ball.

Plus, this only happens the first time. After that, the client saves the keys, so you know you're good.

<comment><USER3> Okay, cool. It sounds like this sort of attack is very difficult for now — but I would rather be aware of it than not.

It sounds like RedPhone doesn't actually save the keys yet — it's a work-in- progress. But that makes lots of sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how Matthew can write a comparative review of encrypted chat clients and include one for which he has no technical information, not even a binary; particularly when it mixes number theoretic and conventional block crypto, thus exposing itself to a maximal subset of possible implementation errors.

I'd also be interested in the kinds of flaws his class _was_ able to generate for in-class discussion, in other projects. Assigning your class a code review of Moxie's code is somewhat sadistic, and, more importantly, doesn't really give us much of a benchmark.

<comment><USER7> > _I don't understand how Matthew can write a comparative review of encrypted > chat clients and include one for which he has no technical information, not > even a binary_

Well that's the point. If there's no source, don't trust that crypto app.

<comment><USER6> But that's not what he wrote. Read that part of the review again.

<comment><USER3> """ Overall code quality: Who knows

Should I use this to fight my oppressive regime? Yes -- if your fight consists of sending dirty self-portraits to your fellow comrades-at-arms. Otherwise, probably not. """

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> His answer to "should I use this to fight my impressive regime" was the same for all the tools, just with different wording.

<comment><USER8> My answer to that question was the same everywhere, because I think you'd be crazy to use these tools to fight an oppressive regime. Just different levels of crazy.

<comment><USER6> Right! We agree strongly on that point. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like they skipped over two open source XMPP+OTR clients for iPhone/Android: ChatSecure (<https://chatsecure.org>) and Gibberbot <https://guardianproject.info/apps/gibber/>

Disclosure: I am the original author of ChatSecure.

<comment><USER10> I've tried using Gibberbot with some friends. It is pretty unreliable sometimes. I think it may be an issue with OTR in general.

I feel like IM encryption still isn't a problem that has been fully solved yet on android.

(Haven't checked out ChatSecure, looks good.)

<comment><USER11> What problems have you had with Gibberbot? It's been rock solid for me with a decent XMPP server, and even works reasonably well when proxied through Tor (Orbot). I've had no issues with OTR either.

<comment><USER10> Both sides occasionally got scrambled messages. Sometimes messages wouldn't show up at all and had to be resent.

I googled the issues a few times and there seems to be a lot of similar complaints from other users of all OTR apps (like PigdinOTR).

I may have been some mistakenly from another gtalk app running or older android phones.

One big UX issue is making sure both people are using it always.

<comment><USER11> Ah, there's big issues with OTR with users who are logged in more than one location. OTRv2 didn't work well with that, but I think OTRv3 may have fixes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Self-promotion admitted, but the Bump app is interesting for IM/picture/file etc capabilities (though not voice) in this arena. A few points:

      * Everything is tunneled over OpenSSL and (increasingly) NaCL.
      * We do not use the CA infrastructure... we ship our server's public key
        in the app
      * Communication channels are established by a face-to-face "bump", and
        the parties must mutually consent that the suggested "match" was their
        intended counter party (they must validate name and mug).
      * Subsequent communications can happen asynchronously at a distance
        on this channel

Basically, one of the things we've explored in house and with partners is that we've "accidentally" created something with properties (though not yet rigorously vetted to endorse for specific use cases) that lead to everyday users having exercised some practices normally reserved for the technical and paranoid--such as identity based on an initial in-person exchange.

</comment><comment><USER13> What is the realistic risk of a hardware backdoor in mainstream smartphones? I assume that there's nothing apps like these could do against those. Is that a risk even worth worrying about at this point? If it is, is there anything that can be done about it? It is safe to trust, say, Google or HTC and their manufacturing chain?

Further, if the handset is attacked and silently owned, all bets are off, too, right?

</comment><comment><USER14> A minor point of curiosity: one of the captions says "Using SilentCircle on a Huawei complete negates the point of using SilentCircle."

I appreciate that it may be somewhat tongue in cheek, but is that a riff on the US accusing Huawei of being a national security threat[0], or do Huawei phones have a track record of known security vulnerabilities?

[0][http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/us-panel-calls- huawei-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/us-panel-calls-huawei-and- zte-national-security-threat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

<comment><USER15> At some point it is hard to say a system is secure if you cannot control the hardware. That is when secure systems are certified it is not just a software library, it has to be full hardware + software solution. If anything can insert itself in between boot and loading the OS then it could read the memory and just scan the memory for a key (by say emulating the memory inside a VM). A phone manufacturer could very simply add a hardware memory read access via a separate chip to their phone memory. The phone then could boot to an arbitrarily 'secure' OS and application but it would still be a all for naught as key could still be read from the memory.

Now there are these things : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module> that should help with the issue but I am not sure if there are any phones that ship with them.

<comment><USER16> How would a TPM do anything against malicious hardware? The hardware manufacturer could just as easily include a malicious TPM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think you can have security on a device you don't have root access. And since most of the phones are locked and untrusted does it matter how much exactly?

And almost all really nasty regimes have already somewhat liberal view of using thermorectal cryptoanalysis anyway. Tor style obfuscation and retransmission with very low SNR masked as a torrent client could be a better way to go. If your government know that you said something to someone they can just "ask" you to find exactly what. The trick is not to be found.

<comment><USER18> Root is not enough either. Most drivers are closed source (on phones) so you have no idea what the device is actually doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For those interested in building Encrypted/Private cloud apps Crypton.io (<https://crypton.io>), developed by the team behind SpiderOak inc launched proof of concept for a zero-knowledge private and secure cloud api a few weeks ago. Also 100% open source for those who are interested.

</comment><comment><USER20> A `crypto app' I would like to have and see everyone use is to do the `...... _beep_ .....' every 10 seconds.

Until a transparently layered Redphone, etc., secure and universally used protocol, this app assumes this and every connection is being recorded.

 _beep_ ...... _beep_ ...... _beep_ ......

</comment><comment><USER21> I just Googled for a Chrome extension to add message body encryption to gmail. I found SafeGmail [1].

Does anyone have experience using it/encouraging others to try it? Is it worth using? Is there a better alternative?

<http://safegmail.com/>

<comment><USER22> [0] has some more information – it appears to be standard OpenPGP with a random encryption key stored on the server of safegmail and then retrieved by the receiver, using a common secret as identification. Given that you have to install a (closed-source?) extension and that the key management happens on the servers of safegmail, you naturally have to trust them not to do funny things with your data.

Years ago, there was a Firefox extension to do standard GnuPG in the browser, but I think it died down. If you want really secure email at the moment, I assume there to be no other way than to use a client with PGP support, such as, uh, basically every email client.

[0] <http://safegmail.com/information.html>

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con As Mr. Green points out, the key issue today is more about key disruption. And, in my opinion, that's an area closed source solutions are even more scary. (Without any form of transparency, why would we believe our keys aren't being archived to China?)

</comment><comment><USER23> > While Cryptocat is written in Javascript (aaggh!)

Is there something inherently insecure about using JavaScript or is this not meant to actually be relevant?

<comment><USER24> If it's served from a webpage, then it's insecure.

Either the publishing server can replace it with a malicious version, or another server might inject javascript that modifies or replaces it with a malicious version.

This particular point hilariously broke a crypto protocol project of mine, so I guess I'm touchy about it.

Shipping as a browser module is more secure.

<comment><USER23> That's not really a problem with the language.

<comment><USER24> Given that javascript is the language that can be embedded in any webpage ... yes it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> These apps remind of the guy who bought the first fax machine, nice but you need a friend with one too for it to be of any use.

<comment><USER26> Installing an app is a lot less of an adoption hurdle than purchasing a new piece of expensive equipment and provisioning a new dedicated landline was back in the 1960's. Back then there were even some legal hurdles to connecting non telco owned equipment to the phone system.

C.f., today's social networks.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax#Telephone_transmission></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does this logo/UI suck? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.StartOpedia.org
One member here thought so:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3548292
Looking for more feedback. :)
[Edit:added] As mentioned at the original thread above, built this site primarily for HNers, inspired by HN, so please give your feedback on all other aspects of the site (over and above design/UI) too. Thanks. <comment><USER2> You have three menu bars near the top of the screen. On the left there's the social media stuff. On the right there's the [register | forgot password] stuff. In the middle there's the long menubar. These three are not neat and tidy.

In the logo there are button-like things that are not buttons, they're just part of the graphic.

In the middle of the top there's the phrases "Web Mobile Tablets Standalone Software" which again looks like a menubar, but isn't.

That top third of the screen could look a lot nicer and neater.

</comment><comment><USER3> The UI is unnecessarily cluttered and the logo overly complex.

For the logo, I'd try removing the smaller top icons, removing the .org at the end and replacing the center O with the lightbulb (or a similar but rounder lightbulb).

For the UI, you need more space between some elements and the spacing to be consistent. I don't really like the position of the Facebook Like button or sharing widget either. You could add a little color to call attention to more important sections of your UI but that's not as important at this point.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree - the text size is too small and you should experiment with a transparent background to the logo.

I'd also remove the word Beta - it doesn't hold any meaning these days with Google over using the word.

for the UI menu, I'd space these out a little more and increase the size of the tabs - maybe splashing a bit of color on these wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Also, increase the size of the page name as you can easily miss it...I'd say this feels more like a word document that a web page at the moment?

</comment><comment><USER5> In my opinion, yes.

The logo background doesn't fit the page background, while this may be intentional, it looks like sloppy design.

The light bulb looks like a 1995 clipart, the glowing icons on top are meaningless and look cheap.

I'm not a designer but I suggest: make it simpler, use a slightly unusual font and a color.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow! Thanks a lot DanBC, VMG, proexploit and andrewthornton. Really wonderful feedback from all of you; will work on implementing most (if not all) of the suggestions so far.

Please keep more of it coming folks, on all aspects of the site.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think that all of your font sizes are too similar. Think about what is the most important to least important on the page and use the font size that is appropriate.

</comment><comment><USER7> do you want a designer who's really good for like 5 bucks? He can do a logo for that much. message me if you want to get in touch via fivver.

<comment><USER7> email swthang on fivver.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your contact form does not work.</comment>


The Methane Detectives: On the Trail of a Global Warming Mystery - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/methane-global-warming-climate-change-mystery/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting, goes to show just how little we understand about our ecosystem. Leads me to conclude that we should scramble to curtail emissions even more, rather than messing with the ecosystem some more and missing goals.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's fossil fuels and farming.

This was solved two years ago: [https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2668/nasa-led- study-solves-a-m...](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2668/nasa-led-study-solves- a-methane-puzzle/)

Actual study: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02246-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02246-0)</comment>


Do posts appear on HN or Reddit first? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed a lot of articles appearing on both sites, often within minutes of each other.  I want to subscribe to either a Reddit feed or a HN feed to minimize redundancies.  I'd rather go with the site that breaks news first, so which would it be?  Which site breaks news? <comment><USER2> If it's within minutes, does it truly matter? Also, neither site really "breaks" news.

Anyway, to answer your question...

You will probably have to measure it, if you want. Should be too hard. Another, better, solution might be to generate and publish a feed that combines the two, without the redundancies. You could even include links to the separate discussions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit "breaks news first" for the vast majority of stories, simply by having a much larger userbase. I see HN as being far better filtered though, with higher quality comments and signal/noise ratio.

</comment><comment><USER4> depends on what type of post. there's plenty of stuff that doesn't show up here or doesn't do well here that shows up on reddit and does well, and vice versa. the crowd is similar, but different.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's definitely Reddit most of the time. It's a larger site.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you mention wikileaks or aethism then of course reddit.</comment>


Facebook + Spotify do not own social music - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rexly.com/2011/09/facebook-and-spotify-do-not-own-social-music/

<comment><USER2> "Pull down the barriers! Share music with all your friends!"

As long as they have an iPhone. Just about everyone I know has an Android- based phone, when they have a smartphone at all. Oops.

<comment><USER3> Hi Tim. Everyone I know has an iPhone...but, yeah, it's on our roadmap. We are a bootstrapped startup so had to pick a platform to enter with, and like scores of others, for obvious reasons, chose iOS. Please don't kill us! FWIW, all services and platforms are on our roadmap, and you can still use Rexly on your laptop/desktop with similar functionality.

<comment><USER2> No one will kill you over this. If your friends all have iPhones, I can see how that could skew your perception of the world.

I would say that ends the "obvious" reasons, in my opinion, though. At last count, Google was signing up 550,000 new phones per DAY, and I'm pretty sure the installed base for Android devices is now larger than that of iOS devices.

And frankly, Android is a better platform hands down for releasing a new product that's at all experimental. Have a bug? Release a new version. NOW. A new feature to try out? Release it. And then release another build to fix that new feature.

It takes at most an hour for a new build to go live on the Market, and all of that is propagation delay. Updates on iOS take a week to go live, and that's if Apple likes you. And you haven't accidentally used pinch zoom in a way that they consider to be proprietary.

People I know who have released on iOS and Android tell me they often are 4-5 builds ahead on Android, and that they hate their iOS version because it has so many bugs that Apple hasn't approved the fixes for yet. I'm frankly surprised that a start-up would release first on iOS, given the standard "release early and often" philosophy around here.

Whatever. Good luck. If I see an announcement for the Android version, I may give it a try. I'm a bootstrapped indie developer myself, so I can sympathize with your position. But my game has been polished under the Android fan base as a first release, and only in the next month will get a full release on iOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra I would argue that last.fm wasa first massively social music service, and it also shown that social side is not all bright. I made a few good friends there but the amount of hate and loathing in shoutboxes astonishes.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. On Rexly, it's sort of less about "making friends," although that could happen, and more about getting social cues from friends about new music to discover. Those cues are likely to be strongest from those whom you trust, and those whom you trust are likely to be those whom you know well, unless they are liars.

<comment> guard-of-terra When you have a friendship graph and listen info, you can both match users by their taste and recommend music based on their graph. last.fm did both and more. You can also do non-social personal and non-personal recommendations based on artist "similarities" derived from correlating user tastes. Last.fm does that too.

Another thing is that social network tracks social graph, not "friends" in the narrow sense; some of people in my social graph are likely to listen to the same kind of music than I (active friends); some are likely to listen to white noise (extended family, former close friends, collegues and people I studied with). You basically need circles!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Haha, how ironic that their iPhone app requires Facebook login.

<comment><USER3> Hi Jarin. The next version (in development) will certainly allow users to log in via Twitter, and today, you can test drive Rexly without logging into Facebook, if you don't want to. The reason we did it this way (to start) is to provide a social music discovery experience with your closest friends, which we believe are on Facebook, for the most part. I hope this helps explain, for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The encouraging speech for the troops before the battle.

<comment><USER3> Exactly! Thanks for reading, Martin.</comment></comment>


Final Cut Pro update will be the "biggest overhaul" since the original - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/final-cut-pro-update-will-be-the-biggest-overhaul-since-the-original-tapped-for-spring-2011-release/

<comment><USER2> Premiere boasts 64bit and GPU acceleration. Legacy GUI issues aside on Final Cuts behalf, the fact is premiere is fast. And now with Smoke on Mac for the more serious editors (looking to invest in extra hardware required for realtime 1080p/2k/4k/... editing), Apple have a lot to catch up on. Digital Domain and The Foundry saw Apple Shake into a shallow grave and nailed every nail into the coffin with Nuke.

Shake and Final Cut were purchased by Apple to bolster macs in the media market. It's disgraceful shame they let Shake die.

</comment><comment><USER3> Current versions of FCP are still stuck using OS X 10.4 ways of doing things.

There have been huge changes in OS X since then, with a remake of Quicktime in Cocoa and all the new HPC tools like GCD and OpenCL...

Apple has plenty of opportunities to make progress.

</comment><comment><USER4> FinalCut Pro is probably one of the very last big Carbon app, and as such is still stuck in 32 bits land. Particularly unfortunate for a video app.

<comment><USER5> I really hope they make it cocoa/64 bits. Also it would be nice if it were available on the app store, next to FC Express.

<comment><USER6> Considering it had been in development for at least, what, two years, there is very little chance, and absolutely no excuse, for this next version of FCP to not be Cocoa. And if it is Cocoa it certainly is going to be 64 bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully this means they'll finally release a 64-bit version of QuickTime too!

<comment><USER3> As of 10.6, QuicktimeX is Cocoa/64-bit

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I meant the Quicktime library. QuicktimeX uses QtKit which is 64-bit, but QtKit still calls out to Quicktime 7 for a lot of tasks; and Quicktime 7, as far as I know, still has no 64-bit version. There's an Ars Technica page with some good information about this: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac- os-x-10-6.a...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac- os-x-10-6.ars/6)

There's also no 64-bit Quicktime for Windows (again, AFAIK - I'd love to be wrong about this!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's been a hell of a lot of updates of FCP the last few years. I'm not sure how much is relevant innovation and how much is simply a strategy for dealing with piracy.</comment>


Googling Harder (TCP should be more Aggressive by Default) - <AUTHOR> http://bitsup.blogspot.com/2010/02/while-back-i-mentioned-that-google.html <comment><USER2> We've been increasing slow start on the server for a while now. (recomiple the linux kernel needed) We increase the initial 2 packet limit to 16. We do this ONLY for our html page in order to get it to the client faster.

Imagine a 22K page.... (1.5K frames, double every rtt)

after 1 RTT : 3K (2 frames * 1.5k per frame)

after 2 RTT : 3K+6K = 9K

after 3 RTT : 3K+6K+12K = 21K

after 4 RTT : 3K+6K+12K+24K = 45K

So for a client to get a 22K html page it requires 4RTT...if you think of 200ms for a RTT thats 800ms to get the page. Lame... increase your slow start from 2 frames to 16 so in the first RTT we send up to a 24K page in one shot.

This is useful for non-keepalive connections. For keep alive you may think that it remains open for the whole keep alive time but that's not normally true. The parameter that controls how long your window stays open is a configurable parameter called.... net.ipv4.tcp_slow_start_after_idle which is on by default. This causes your keepalive connection to return to slow start after TCP_TIMEOUT_INIT which is 3 seconds. Not probably want you want or expect. So if you are using keepalives for you image server and you want that first image to load faster...set net.ipv4.tcp_slow_start_after_idle = 0 to disable this

<comment><USER3> _We increase the initial 2 packet limit to 16. We do this ONLY for our html page in order to get it to the client faster._

I'd be curious to know if you've measured the real-world performance difference from making this change.

<comment><USER2> The motivation for it was to increase real world performance so the research, conclusion and implementation were guided by this fact. This was done on a real site with considerable traffic 50 to 100 php pages/second. This has been in production on the site for at least a year.

So in the real world, if a user click on a link to your site, the time to complete the load of the full html page (lets say a 22k page) is reduced to a single RTT instead or 4 RTT. To test that it's doing the correct thing you can verify with a packet analyzer or you can even see the results on something like firebug. Even if you consider RTT times of 50ms to 100ms it is still considerable difference to have the page complete the load in 100ms vs 400ms. Especially if you have script at the bottom of your page (say google analytics and such) this means that these requests start that much sooner, the page completed rendering sooner, etc.

In addition to the faster loading time there is another benefit to this.

In a busy server your best friend is the ability to process connection quickly. If you have to have a connection open for 4RTT vs 1RTT that starts to make a difference. Implementing this you release the process and connection to TIMEWAIT right away instead of tying up a valuable php process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We (Google) will be publishing a paper with the results of our investigations, which includes the suggestion from the article of varying the initcwnd and measuring loss. Hopefully it will come out this side of the next IETF meeting in March.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think increasing cwnd is always the best idea. Have you considered caching the value per IP address and reusing the last probed value when initiating a new connection to the same host?

I think this would get similar results but be safer. I did some limited testing of this approach back in 2000 when I founded a MP3 server startup. I think the only reason cwnd has not been cached historically is that it's done in kernel mode, but on modern machines, it could make sense with the proper cache expiration interval.

</comment><comment><USER6> Agreed. I've done a fair bit of tcp tuning (I work on low-latency stuff for investment banks), and congestion window tuning can make a huge impact especially when you're looking at high-latency networks (transatlantic, mobile, etc.).</comment>


No I won't tell you what DevOps is. Tell me what you want to achieve instead - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chef.io/2016/09/16/no-i-wont-tell-you-what-devops-is/ <comment><USER2> Seems to be mostly hust a link to [https://data-economy.com/no-i-wont-tell- devops-tell-want-ach...](https://data-economy.com/no-i-wont-tell-devops-tell- want-achieve-instead-2/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Multiple people in this thread have asked "what is devops pragmatically." I will both try and answer why there is no clear answer to that, and what my clear answer would be.

1\. Everyone has their own definition largely because everyone takes the bits of what they've heard of devops that they think are beneficial to them. I don't even think this is necessarily a bad thing (chose right tools for the job/culture, etc) but it certainly makes it difficult to centralize on a definition, compounded by...

2\. That many of the people who want it only know, as sister posts have suggested and what the OP describes, what they want it to achieve, but don't necessarily have a clear roadmap to getting there beyond "devops".

3\. So from that, what is my "pragmatic" definition (e.g. my "what happens in the real world" definition); pessimistically, "devs are now responsible for ops/sysadmin work as well, including on call, infrastructure and telemetry, but without any additional training, purview, or increase in pay."

Now, to make that criticism, I should propose a better definition; and this was hinted at by sister posts as well: "Give devs the tools, expertise, and purview to accomplish ops tasks that previously were thrown over the wall. This does not mean GETTING RID OF ops domain experts, but unifying them with your devs to remove unnecessary separation, facilitate communication and needs fitting, and share expertise and skillsets where appropriate, since there are many ops tasks that benefit from a more engineering bent, and MANY eng tasks that benefit from an ops "I need to be able to run this understand it and fix it" mindset going in, as a first class citizen, rather than as an afterthought."

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of DevOps; for one reason or another, I've been in this 'space,' if you will long before it was DevOps...since about 2004/2005\. If you ask me what DevOps is, this is the answer that I will always give:

It empowers the developers and developer teams to get up to speed quickly when writing new software, or when they add new team members to their teams, It streamlines and optimizes the delivery of software within the service lifecycle, and It changes and improves the relationships between development teams and IT operations by advocating better communication and collaboration between the two business units.

When done correctly, DevOps can help developers write better code, push to production faster, and be agile in their iterations and respond to the needs of both external as well as internal customers quicker.

<comment><USER5> > If you ask me what DevOps is, this is the answer that I will always give.

Nothing in your answer says what it is. It just tells things that doing/using it will allegedly accomplish/enable. Is anything that accomplishes all of those things considered to be "DevOps"?

<comment><USER6> It's the processes, and tools that enable those things to be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately, while the assertion is probably true to not talk about jargon, there needs to be a starting point of conversation somewhere. Here, it's probably easier to define what devops definitely isn't and cut away irrelevant things than by talking about what anyone's jargon defines it as. This is similar to the whole "cloud" definition but only even more vague than that.

Be very wary of anyone that has trouble distinguishing "devops" from system administration with modernized toolsets, especially if they aren't talking about deploying in-house software. Those are the kinds of organizations that are so far behind technology curves they'll drag you down as a vendor, contractor, or employee trying to support them if you don't hold them at arm's length. Because if you're not competent at basic system administration, I doubt spending money on any form of "devops" by any definition will be useful - think of the "you must be this tall to use microservices" concept.

The worst is if there's something about culture that's the fundamental goal, the larger the company the more clients seem interested in essentially under- market-rate management consulting by using engineers than MBAs. These also tend to be the same companies that seem to incessantly talk about "it's hard to turn around an aircraft carrier" and have probably discouraged and disengaged employees enough that any form of bottom-up culture change is hampered before it can take off.

</comment><comment><USER8> DevOps to engineers is the pit crew to the Formula 1 driver.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone answer what DevOps actually is? Like in practice? Every single definition I saw is just buzzwords, and inconsistent at that.

</comment><comment><USER5> > By Justin Arbuckle

...

> Data Economy published an editorial by our own Justin Arbuckle

...

> Justin urges us all to move past buzzwords

...

> As Justin

...

> Author Justin Arbuckle

Is tzs the only one who finds writing about oneself in third person a bit odd?</comment>


From JavaScript to Go - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/kaleman15/from-javascript-to-go-50ef <comment><USER2> i feel like when covering from languages such as javascript to go, there should be quite a bit covered on preventing data races</comment>


The Stock Market Is A Zero-Sum Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.ittybittycomputers.com/Essays/0SumGame.htm

<comment><USER2> This is a poorly conceived article.

Yes, the market has some of the properties of a zero-sum game. But it deviates from this in so many different ways that are obvious (and not addressed in the paper) that you can only conclude the writer is trying to push a biased viewpoint.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course.

The point isn't that the market somehow "creates" wealth. The point is that it efficiently allocates it to business. The latter is what creates wealth.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article ignores the role of stocks issuing dividends and how that contributes to the game.</comment>


YouTube stops monitization on controversial subjects and political conflicts - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278 <comment><USER2> Google's the puritans of the web. If you have an association with them then you must live under their strict rules.

That said, I think something has changed. I'm not sure why it is, but they have become more prudish in recent years. Is it a generation thing? A change sent down from their corporate clients? Pressure groups? Perhaps more government influence? All of the above?

<comment><USER3> A programmer we hired had a banned personal android dev account. He used multi-login to login to corporate account and personal account.

Google tied both together and brought our startup down wiping out adsense, youtube, docs and play account. They kept adwords alive billing for $200 a month for almost an year.

I emailed them and the silence was deafening.

Too cold Google. Too cold.

<comment><USER4> I've been thinking lately that SAAS may have been a spectacularly bad idea. If google banned my account they could do a tremendous amount of damage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a really, really bad idea. Heck, the 'inappropriate language' one alone is ridiculous, since that basically means (if enforced) that the likes of the Angry Video Game Nerd, Channel Awesome, the Yogscast, Angry Joe and even Pewdiepie couldn't monetise their videos...

In other words, it'd basically drive every 'caustic critic' off of YouTube for good, and with it, probably a very large chunk of the site's traffic.

The political conflicts one basically means amateur journalism and investigative reporting is unsustainable on the platform, since by definition most journalism deals with political subjects that often involve things like war, crimes, terrorism, etc.

The stuff about violence and sexual content could easily be applied to media like video games, and end up driving off whatever gaming channels aren't already annoyed by the swearing prohibitions.

And then there's talk of 'harassment', which can be applied so vaguely it's almost meaningless. Especially in today's age where 'harassment' has basically come to mean 'anything that makes anyone feel uncomfortable or criticises them or their ideas'.

So yeah, they'd better get rid of these guidelines soon, otherwise they could well kill a large percentage of the site's traffic in one foul swoop. They're trying to turn a video platform in network television (well, very watered down network television) and it won't work.

<comment><AUTHOR> > (if enforced)

The enforcement already started with Philip DeFranco's videos[1], and quickly spread to various other youtubers. The targets seem to be the usual "controversial" topics and political content in general. Videos about depression seem to be one of the targets[2]? Maybe?

There also seems to be inconsistency between hitting certain popular youtubers that produce some form of "news"[3], while allowing blatant clickbait, bullying, and propaganda[4] about the same topics.

> so vaguely it's almost meaningless

That's vague enough, but their cornerstone of selective enforcement will be the "...but is not limited to..." clause.

> otherwise they could well kill a large percentage of the site's traffic

I fear that may be the goal. If YouTube isn't profitable for Google, they may want to cut their expenses by encouraging some of their heavier users off the site.

[1] [https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/771026030442090496](https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/771026030442090496) [https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/771054150733803521](https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/771054150733803521)

[2] [https://twitter.com/LukeIsNotSexy/status/771124768280043521](https://twitter.com/LukeIsNotSexy/status/771124768280043521)

[3] I'm being _very_ generous in what might be called "news". I may not like a lot of it, but even shallow clickbait can contain at least _some_ journalism.

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKEUR7xsAtA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKEUR7xsAtA)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the fact they've already started enforcing it for people like Philip DeFranco (whose videos are news content) is worrying.

As for trying to lower expenses by doing this... well, perhaps, but if your popular users leave, then your ad revenue will drop far more than the money you'll save. It's like a news station firing all their journalists and presenters to save costs and then thinking 'oh crap, we have no way to get people to use our site/newspaper now'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So if I don't want ads to appear on my videos, should I put a bunch of inappropriate content at the end of them?

<comment><USER3> Start every video with

"I pledge my allegiance to one and only true Lord, our Savior , Maker of walls, The first of his name, Sire Donald Trump"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice. My Firefox with a very old custom set of AdB rules actually breaks youtube videos with ads. The video just restarts a couple times until it starts showing cute static noise.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this somehow discouraging youtubers from covering important news and developments from around the world?

</comment><comment><USER9> "Inappropriate", "controversial" or "sensitive" in who's opinion?

<comment><USER10> Like any other content policy from the Valley, the opinions that matter will be:

        Embarrassing news stories
        Busybody Googlers
        Internet tabloids that Googlers read over lunch
        Complaining advertisers
        Complaining friends of Googlers

Everyone else will be politly told to fuck off using a vague statement about letting uploaders express themselves.</comment></comment>


I'm Starting to Hate Email - <AUTHOR> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2010/06/im-starting-to-hate-email/

<comment><USER2> I was hoping for some serious complaints that a startup might be able to offer technical solutions for, but most of the author's issues are pretty trivial.

One point he makes does bring up an interesting question though. The author complains about people using one-letter signatures instead of their name. What's the point of signing an email with your name when you're using your own email account? The from header is generally set to include your name already.

<comment><USER3> It's just standard etiquette. I was taught to write emails like letters, starting with "Dear Someone" and ending by signing my name. Both parts are redundant, but I guess it's supposed to make the email seem more personal. I agree that it's generally a waste of time, but I can't predict if the recipient would be offended if I left those parts out, so I usually put them in.

<comment><USER4> Email is an interesting beast. Most threads I'm involved in start out very formal with the requisite 'Dear So-and-so' at the beginning and some sort of formal-ish signature. But by the third back and forth, most people abandon the formalities and start signing with just their name, or not at all. I prefer not to have to bother, as it has been noted, my full name and email appear in the mail headers, and I use proper top quoting format whenever possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A huge one I learned: You can't convince someone to change their mind over email. It has to be in person.

(I'm talking about strongly-held decisions or beliefs here. Not the sort of thing where a simple presentation of the facts will do.)

</comment><comment><USER6> More precisely, he's starting to hate the sort of careless people he emails with on a regular basis. It reminds me of when people complain about crap on Twitter, but fail to realize it's down to following the wrong people.

</comment><comment><USER5> The other thing that drives me nuts are emails that aren't actionable. I have enough trouble keeping up with email where it's obvious what's next...

</comment><comment><USER7> I love email and I let everyone know.

I don't chat, text, or tweet. I don't have a land line any more. Only a few people have my cell phone #. My office phone goes directly to voice mail.

But email is a different story. I don't have instant notification, so it doesn't interrupt me. I check it when I'm ready and I respond quickly, sometimes immediately, almost always within 24 hours. Modern spam filters have made this a breeze.

I bet about half the people I know I have never met, I don't know what they look like, and I've never heard their voice. But we have conducted so much business by email that I feel that I still know them well.

I remember that before email, getting something done was as much a matter of managing interruptions as focusing on the task at hand.

But email has helped me to once again become the master of my own time. I can't imagine getting much done any other way.

[I love hearing from all hn'ers by email. You will get a reply. And you can sign your email any way you want.]

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree with the signature part in emails where people talk about "Please think about the environment before printing this email." And some people have some grand quotes of this and that. My college's admin staff were notorious for doing this.

I find that utterly annoying.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why the author is starting to hate email: problems exist between keyboard and chair.

</comment><comment><USER10> \- I print emails, when they contain some information I will need while say driving somewhere.

\- I use colors which help with Question / Answer situations.

\- I use single letter sign offs when on a cellphone responding.

\- I use some txt speach when on a cellphone, not too crazy because sometimes thinking of a clever abbreviation is more painful than just writing the damn word out, also autocomplete helps. I also explicitly tell people that "u" is ok or "ur" or "k" or something in that nature, but things I can't figure out within 20 seconds are not.

So yea, reply to shitty txt speach "I dont get it, please say again without abbreviations" it annoys because they have to send it twice.

Reply to a shitty colored email with a massively colored one.

Single letter signoffs... wait what bothers you about this?

</comment><comment><USER11> >I used to be a big offender in this area, but am a true convert that if you can say something on the phone or face to face, then you should do it. Only use email to communicate when you need some kind of record, or cannot deal with it verbally otherwise.

You _always_ want "some kind of record". A record isn't a "ha ha, told you so" thing, but it keeps communications accurate and accountable. We've all dealt with situations where FUBARs happened because verbal communications were misinterpreted, or people simply lied because they knew there was little accountability.

</comment><comment><USER12> Starting to?</comment>


People 'hear' flashes due to disinhibited flow of signals around the brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190327112710.htm <comment><USER2> I thought it was your middle-ear muscles flexing in preparation for an expected loud sound. Lots of people can purposely make their ears rumble through the same mechanism.</comment>


The first commercially available book (that I know of) on The D Programming Language will be released on January 28 - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Tango-D-Kris-Bell/dp/1590599608/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200678036&sr=8-2

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, it turns out that the eBook is available now.

<http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781590599600></comment>


Watch 'misunderstood' and 'disappointing' films on MUBI for free - <AUTHOR> https://sfree.life/mubi-perfect-failures-prada-free/ <comment><USER2> Thanks! This is actually an interesting distraction.</comment>


Should I switch from Sendgrid to Amazon SES? - <AUTHOR> https://willj.net/2011/01/25/should-i-switch-from-sendgrid-to-amazon-ses/ <comment><USER2> I'm leading Postmark's API development. Amazon SES is clearly going to be the low cost provider; nobody's going to compete on price. Time will tell what their actual deliverability rates are, what their spam handling really looks like, etc. I agree that price is a weak argument in any market. Now that we're at bottom, we'll see lots of innovation in this space, and everybody will win as a result. We have a great roadmap ahead with Postmark.

<comment><USER3> Postmark is amazing, particularly the service from Natalie and Chris. Whenever I have an issue they respond within 20 minutes.

It's unclear to me reading the SES docs how their spam handling will be; what they will be doing to police those with whom I share an IP address; and many other things. However, what is clear is that at no point will anybody respond to my support request at 11pm as your staff did the other night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This analysis completely ignores the _cost of time_ in switching.

For me personally:

SendGrid is completely transparent to my application since it's just an SMTP server.

SES is a web services API, so I need to either (a) rewrite my app to take advantage of it, or (b) write my own SMTP wrapper. Either way, it's code, and I can't imagine _ever_ writing code to save a few dozen dollars per month.

If Amazon offered an SMTP server like SendGrid does, then I could imagine switching, but until then, the monthly savings are negligible.

<comment><USER5> The kicker with SES is that you don't have to use it as an API, and you can easily integrate it with Postfix or Sendmail.

[http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/...](http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/index.html?IntegratingWithServer.html)

<comment><USER6> So run a postfix/sendmail gateway to fork a perl script to send email through the SES API? Doesn't this seem like kind of a kludge? Why not just send mail through the original SMTP server if you're going to take the time to set it up and maintain it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think I have more than 20 components using Sendgrid. I forget what and where because it's been working like magic for so long.

Also the free Sendgrid addon for Heroku is a dream for throwaway apps.

My time is quite valuable, and the costs of Sendgrid aren't even a drop in the bucket compared to other costs. So I don't plan on switching any time soon.

<comment><USER8> > Also the free Sendgrid addon for Heroku is a dream for throwaway apps.

Don't they charge separately for every application? I found myself not using the Heroku add-on so I could combine all my sending into one account.

<comment><USER9> They would, yes. But if you send out < 200 emails per day, then you're not paying anything at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The real test of this sort of service is how well they manage the reputation of any IPs that are shared between customers.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a steep hill for SendGrid and any other email service provider to compete against Amazon SES. If the price if your only factor you are a loser in this fight; if you cannot justify the price difference with tangible features you are also a loser.

We were looking around for an email service early this month; Amazon SES seems like the reasonable choice for us; hard to beat.

<comment><USER12> I assume processing incoming emails is a tangible feature SendGrid wins on

<comment><USER13> You could receive at SendGrid and send at SES to save money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want to do incoming handling as well as outbound, you won't be able to use SES for now. SendGrid has a great incoming parse API: t<http://wiki.sendgrid.com/doku.php?id=parse_api>

</comment><comment><USER15> When it comes to analysis, you really need to think about your ultimate goals first. If you are looking for a minimalist service for the best price, then Amazon SES may make sense for you.

I work for JangoSMTP and we get a lot of clients coming to us from other transactional email providers because they need more. Deliverability is a major issue that comes up. You may be able to send out mass quantites of email, but without an experienced email marketing provider you may struggle to reach people's inboxes. Delivery is as much an art as it is a science, and it takes constant focus to stay on top.

Also, Amazon only offers an API. JangoSMTP gives you the option to send through an SMTP server as well as API. We also offer open and click tracking, as well as advanced reporting (Google Analytics, logging, etc.). If reporting is important to you, you will want to consider a service like JangoSMTP that is more advanced than Amazon SES.

</comment><comment><USER16> Due to Amazon's lax policies, the EC2 IP blocks have been blacklisted due to spam and the like. If they maintain this lax policy, it will only be a matter of time before SES gets blacklisted and becomes largely unreliable if you actually want the e-mail you send to get to the recipient.

-useful comment on the blog page, and missing from HN comments

<comment><USER17> There may be many problems with SES, but I do not think that blacklisted IP's will be one of them. Nobody sends more emails than Amazon - they know how to do delivery.

<comment><USER13> Do they know how to keep spammers off their servers? Because if not, it doesn't matter what they know about delivery, they're going to be blacklisted.

On the other hand, if their "in-house content filtering technologies" prove effective at stopping spammers, how many legitimate users will get banned as false-positives?

<http://aws.amazon.com/ses/faqs/#5>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not yet, would be my advice. Let other pioneers get the arrows in their backs...

How much would you really save, assuming for your use case that Amazon is a lot cheaper, by waiting for 90 days? After all, you have to re-write and test your code to use the SES API anyways (maybe; or you can use their special script).

</comment><comment><USER19> I've tried SES. The implementation is the difference between making a call to SMTP and making an API call, which is quite trivial.

The other thing to consider is deliverability from Amazon. I would hope that they run on a different IP range than EC2, but besides that they have a different risk profile than other SMTP hosts. Amazon is able to make it as cheap as they do because their risk is based on implementing quotas based on reputation in addition to making you verify the sender address (both making it quite difficult to use the service to send spam).

So far that makes it pretty solid. The only thing I haven't been able to figure out so far is how to set DKIM keys.

</comment><comment><USER20> setformarriage.com is currently running through Sendgrid. While they have had great support and do have some very cool features (all of the ones we actually use have an SES equivalent), I think we're gonna have to switch once our AppSumo deal runs out. I imagine someone will have created a Rubygem for it by then, but if not it looks like it will be pretty easy to whip one up.

</comment><comment><USER21> Added memory to the server and added apache workers. Site should be a bit snappier now. Sorry for the slow response times earlier!

</comment><comment><USER22> You should factor in data transfer cost as well. But for ordinary text-only emails the cost will still be way lower.

</comment><comment><USER23> This may be my new favorite chart on the entire internet. None of the curves are relevant, and the scale required to demonstrate the point is almost preposterous.

<comment><USER21> The curves seem relevant to me, they show the price you pay for amount of email you send for different email sending plans.

Regarding the scale, the company I work for sends more mail per month than the x-axis shows, so not so preposterous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> not if your wikileaks</comment>


An Evolutionary Theory for the Variability Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184 <comment><USER2> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _how one gender of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with > greater variability than the other gender._

I have heard this theory before, in arguments where it was being supported by the higher male fraction in both C-level positions and prison. However, there are plenty of confounding factors in those cases. Has this dimorphism ever been found in something relatively simple and easily testable? Ideally, you'd be able to show that it happened in height, or for more social relevance some metric like IQ. In any case you would want something that society can do almost nothing to influence beyond extreme nutritional deficiencies.

<comment><USER4> From what I've read, SAT scores show larger deviations for males than females, which is probably as close to IQ as you're looking for. The effect is consistently there, although it's not huge.

Of course you could argue there could be confounding factors here too, like how boys and girls might be treated differently by teachers.

You can browse some of the raw data here:

[http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2...](http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2013/TotalGroup-2013.pdf)

[https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat- percentile...](https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile- ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Society plays a role in that metric just like it does the CxO/prison metric. Fewer girls were encouraged to take the SAT compared to boys (only the top girls would really push for it), just like women were held back in the working world, and controlled more domestically (as well as treated with more lenience in the courts). It's really hard to factor out societal bias in gender studies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For context (I assume) - this article is making the rounds:

[https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send- a-p...](https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published- paper-down-the-memory-hole/)</comment>


California Freelancers Sue to Stop AB5 - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/12/23/california-freelancers-sue-to-stop-ab5-law-thats-destroying-their-jobs-pol-says-those-were-never-good-jobs-anyway/ <comment><USER2> As the article mentions, this punishes many stay at home moms and that's really quite tragic.

</comment><comment><USER3> They probably should have just created a minimum wage+ that is minimum wage plus like 40-60% to cover insurance taxes etc. And if it's a per task job the burden would be on the company to prove the tasks aren't is less than minimum wage+.

<comment><USER4> Yeah that probably would've been better this seems like a nightmare to navigate as well. I mean as a developer is a git commit an item, a jira ticket, a full app/mvp, or something else? Or does this not apply to development?

Not living in California though this might be a boon for devs in nearby States.</comment></comment>


NSA Propaganda Video Among Highest Downvote Percentages in Youtube History - <AUTHOR> http://www.storyleak.com/nsa-propaganda-video-youtube-downvotes/

<comment><USER2> Seems like it was lazy of them to not hack the upvotes, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> The sad part is, they probably did hack the upvotes. That was their best effort.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are people spending Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> Where do people spend Bitcoin? What do they buy? How do vendors manage pricing given the volatility of the currency's value relative to the USD? Roughly how many transactions account for Bitcoin-based purchases, versus transfers?<p>Would be very interested to learn the answers to any of these questions. <comment><USER2> # of daily transactions: [https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/daily- transactions](https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/daily-transactions)

Hard to know if it's a purchase or a transfer. I think it's impossible to answer that question right now. In Japan merchants accept bitcoin pretty much everywhere, people buy cars with bitcoins, coffee, etc. unlike in the US where most of the transactions are for transfers.

</comment><comment><USER3> People spend Bitcoin on the exchanges. They buy Bitcoin or buy Bitcoin to buy altcoins. Some may use with a debit card, but many feel the price is too volatile. Obviously, those that bought Bitcoin at $0.06 don't care, but I think most are hodling as a speculation tool.

I've used Bitcoin to buy ASIC miners because it is a niche product with where the sellers dictates the payment method. There is always less supply than demand, so forcing specific payment methods is easy to do.

</comment><comment><USER4> So far I have only spent Bitcoin via the Lightning network. I bought vouchers at [https://bitrefill.com](https://bitrefill.com). I also know of a web store that integrated the [https://bitpay.com/](https://bitpay.com/) API. [https://www.cryptowisser.com/merchants/](https://www.cryptowisser.com/merchants/) also has some links.</comment>


A journey in golang package manager - <AUTHOR> http://dev.af83.com/2013/09/14/a-journey-in-golang-package-manager.html

<comment><USER2> Nice post!</comment>


Rewards and Monetization - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/02/rewards-and-monetization.html <comment><USER2> I have one data point for you: for the last two weeks I've been collecting user surveys. I want people to participate, but was unsure whether altruism or incentivization would work better. Enter the A/B test: group A got told "Do this and I'll give you an increase in your print quota", group B got told "This will help us improve the product for our users." (Everyone who took the survey got the goodie.)

This has been the most decisive A/B test I've ever run. 2.62% of incentivized users in A convert, versus a mere .73% of non-incentivized users. That's waaaaaay pay 99% confidence that incentivization works.

It is pretty trivial incentivization, too: I'm giving them more of something which is too cheap for me to even describe a way to measure how much it costs and, even more weirdly, _essentially nobody is helped by the freebie_. (Normal print quota is 15, incentive is +5, number of users printing between 15 and 20 is below miniscule.

<comment><USER3> I'm interested in finding out more about what kind of incentives drive people and what kinds of returns businesses can get from them. Does anyone else have any good examples of this kind of behavior in action?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article: "you've checked in for the tenth time and earned a free espresso drink."

Foursquare, and the users of foursquare, would love to see this but the businesses themselves would not. I worked for a targeted coupon agency and the kind of people who routinely visit and buy your product are exactly the kind of people you DO NOT want to give coupons to. These people are already loyal customers. Coupons are more effective if they target either new users (target starbucks customers to get a free coffee to visit our cafe instead) or increased consumption (if you buy a large coffee get a discount on buying our ice cream).

<comment><USER3> Sure, it makes sense that you don't want to incentivize those who need no incentive, particularly when the incentive is a discount on something they would have done anyways. It might be more attractive to businesses if they could increase business beyond what would naturally happen but I think the rewards could definitely be tailored to that.

Having said that, many businesses have punch card or points type systems that this could replace or augment. Subway is a good example. These are tied to actual purchases rather than just check-ins and the possibility of abuse is very real in that case, so another point to consider.

I think having visible goals and rewards that people can work towards over the lifetime of their relationship with a business, rather than simply on a transactional basis (spend $50 get free shipping vs get free shipping for life when you spend a total of $1000 over any number of transactions with us) can work towards increasing consumer loyalty which could be very valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What about rewards for other types of applications? Do people see an advantage to FourSquare and StackOverflow's badge system even if there is no "real world" reward? It seems like there is a good confluence here of "behavior generated content" and micro rewards systems - one that can have real impacts on a business' bottom line.</comment>


Show HN: Reddit top domains – favorite news sources of Redditors - <AUTHOR> https://balaca.github.io/2017/10/reddit/ <comment><USER2> Breitbart and Daily Caller are wayyy up in that list. Sad times.</comment>


Goodbye Google plus photos - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/d1XubVAZ5hV <comment><USER2> > In May, we launched Google Photos as the home for all your photos and > videos. ... In an effort to ensure everyone has the best photos experience > we can deliver, on August 1st we'll start to shut down Google+ Photos

I just don't trust Google and their 5-second attention span any more. Seems like every day brings another change in direction, or outright abandonment of a service I had relied upon. I'm self-hosting email and just won't touch the rest of their offerings, because there's no guarantee of continuity or even continuation.

<comment><USER3> Well, in this instance at least there's the continuation. The seem pretty set on Photos, and it's a strategic product for them (combined with Android). Google Photos is the successor to Google+ Photos and it surprised me they had both in the market at the same time for as long as they did.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I uploaded some photos to Picasa like 10 years ago and those are still available in this "new" service. But even if this is just a re-branding to get away from the G+ fiasco, it's still very confusing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > With Google Photos you can store unlimited high quality photos

High quality does not mean the full original quality, right? This is then as before.

At the moment, there are three web interfaces to access your photos:

[https://picasaweb.google.com/](https://picasaweb.google.com/)

[https://plus.google.com/photos/yourphotos](https://plus.google.com/photos/yourphotos)

[https://photos.google.com/](https://photos.google.com/)

I would switch to the latest version but the other interfaces still have their advantages too.

E.g. the old Picasa interface provides the best overview of all my albums (I have a lot: 1619), esp when I want to search an older one (they go back to 2004). Also, it has somehow the most compact view with the most details at the same time, like all meta information (sharing, tagged people, GPS, exif, ...). For videos though, the Picasa webinterface is somewhat broken. Also tagging people didn't quite work correctly.

The Google+ interface has the nicest way to tag people. And I think the photo editor is only available here?

The new Photos interface looks like the most modern one, but otherwise seems to have the least amount of features. Tagging people doesn't really work here. The photo editor is much stripped down compared to Google+. Also, it doesn't really show much meta information (no GPS? almost no exif, etc...).

<comment><USER6> This has become a serious bit of confusion, also now google seems to index any photos and videos inside of google drive into photos. Which is not the behavior you would want. I wish they just went back to only picasa, its really been the only good photo management situation

<comment><USER7> > also now google seems to index any photos and videos inside of google drive > into photos

It's optional, I personally love and benefit from it. You can turn it off in the settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Goodbye Google+ Photos, hello +Google Photos!

This line represents everything wrong with Google right now.

<comment><USER9> How so? It's an acknowledgement that forcing Google+ on people was a bad idea and that you can still continue to build awesome products (Google Photos) without a social network. If anything, isn't it a step in the right direction?

<comment><USER10> The problem is we went from Picasa -> Google+ Photos -> +Google Photos?

Why does google keep on throwing out branding, spinning down a project, only to spin up another one that does the same thing? Why didn't they go back to the Picasa namesake, with all the branding it has?

<comment><USER11> Apparently "+Google Photos" is just the nickname of the "Google Photos" account on "Google+". The name of the service is "Google Photos", not "+Google Photos".

<comment><USER12> Next year it is Alphabet photos.

<comment><USER13> 2016 - Alphabet Photos

2018(jan-aug) - ABC Photos

2018 - ABC DOREMI

2019(jan-feb) - ADORE ME Photos

2019 - Adore.me

2021 - Adore.me & Analphebet.photos

<comment><USER14> 2022 - Analphablet.photos ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am more than a bit confused - hope someone here can clarify.

I have 11000 pictures under [https://plus.google.com/photos/yourphotos](https://plus.google.com/photos/yourphotos). Not that I care much about the storage/editing part: I do all my editing on my desktop, and I store original and edited pictures locally, with tagging, date- sorted directories etc.

What I do use Google+ for is to create posts with galleries. Typically if I go somewhere interesting I put online a series of pics for my trip, to share with family and friends, I post them as "Public" and then link to each individual gallery from my personal webpage (so I don't have to store these on my site).

So the question for me is: what changes in terms of "creating posts on Google+ with a bunch of pictures associated to them"?

Will this still be possible? Can I just upload pics like now, or do I need to use the new Google Photo app?

<comment><USER16> I'm also completely confused. It states:

      Download the new Google Photos today for uninterrupted
      access to all your photos, videos and albums.  If you don't
      update to the new Google Photos, Google+ Photos on Android
      will soon stop working, but your photos and videos will
      still remain safely stored...

I'm actually so glad I didn't decide to use Google Picasa as a safe backup option for my photos. I'm not sure I can trust Google to take care of my data.

I have now been moved from Picasa, to Google+ Photos to +Google Photos, which I assume at some point will be renamed again to *Google-+Photos=WTF

I don't want an app on my phone, because I don't want a Google app to be randomly uploading photos from my phone to it's servers.

So, if I don't have an mobile app, has anything actually changed?

I just want a Google website app that allows me to:

\- Present photos in albums (that I name and sort) nicely

\- Share those photos with selective friends and family using a URL that I can revoke (like Flickr does)

\- Explore where my photos were taken on a map

\- Allow comments on photos without friends and family having to have some kind of Google account

I use my phone like a camera. I connect it to my computer with a USB cable, download the photos and then organise and sort them, then selectively upload them. I want to have that control. I don't want to upload everything. Why does everything have to be an app these days?

My perfect photo app would be open source. There is no good open source alternative. All open source photos web apps are poor. I've tried them all. I love the Google+ Photos interface. Bright, white and big photos in a mosaic. Flickr used to be good, then it decided to go all black and depressing.

TroveBox and Lychee are the closest, but Trovebox (Open Photo) has a very problematic install and Lychee is missing the Amazon S3 storage option). No app offers encrypted at rest storage, which these days should be a must.

I've read several times that "there is no money in consumer photo apps", but personally I'm paying Flickr a subscription and Google and Dropbox, when none of them really provide me with what I want. I'd happily pay a license fee for some open source software that actually did the job, and which I knew wasn't going to "sunset" after two years.

</end rant>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish they would give the Picasa OSX app more love. It doesn't even support retina displays!

It's one of the best ways to manage photos for us who like to keep photos as .jpegs inside actual folders, instead of inside some opaque package of sqlite and hidden hashed filenames (like Photos.app and the older iPhoto.app).

But I guess supporting vendor-neutral, lock-in-less file repositories like that is out of fashion these days :-/

<comment><USER18> I also hate the sqlite "feature". Lightroom does the right thing, has the best features and it's not even that expensive, however, I will _never_ submit to that creative cloud crap. Just let me _buy_ the damn thing, and no .pkg installers either!

<comment><USER19> Doesn't Lightroom use a MySQL database to store the users metadata/tags?

Windows Vista/7 Photo Gallery did the right thing, it stored the users metadata in the pictures (EXIF, XMP, etc metadata formats) inside the JPEG/etc formarts. Windows Media Player stored the song user rating in the MP3 files in their ID3 tags too. iTunes does the contrary, stores everything in a SQLite db.

<comment><USER18> I don't know what Lightroom uses to store metadata, but it stores _data_ in files, which is what I'm most interested in.

I have no particular opinion on Lightroom metadata, but I sure would hate if simply assigning ratings to songs would alter the file. I sure hope metadata like that is stored outside the file.

<comment><USER19> What "data" are you talking about that Lightroom stores in files? How is your "data" different than what is known as "metadata"?

If I tag a photo or picture, I want the metadata to go with me. I can create a dynamic playlist of photos on all my devices based on the metadata on multiple different platforms (even in my car). If I choose to strip my personal metadata later, it's just a single click. What is idiotic is to store metadata only in silos (iTunes, Lightroom, iPhoto databases), it's a vendor lock-in that will hurt the customer in the long term.

<comment><USER18> > If I tag a photo or picture, I want the metadata to go with me.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what the tag means.

> I can create a dynamic playlist of photos on all my devices based on the > metadata on multiple different platforms (even in my car).

Here we just have to disagree. When it comes to music, I don't want to alter metadata as part of regular operation.

> What is idiotic is to store metadata only in silos (iTunes, Lightroom, > iPhoto databases), it's a vendor lock-in that will hurt the customer in the > long term.

Sure, that is my pet peeve as well. But the problem is that these program suck, not that they don't store metadata in the original files. They should use some documented, stable format, and it would be great if many programs used the same format!

But even when they use sqlite this is not the case, the schema is not fixed, not documented, the data inside the database opaque, and interoperability with anything else piss poor.

At least Lightroom manages all your photographic _files_ as files, rather than importing blobs in a database, like Photos does. It would be great if the metadata would be open, it's annoying, but that's a much minor problem for me.

<comment><USER19> Many common file formats have one, two or more metadata storage formats.

JPEG/JPG stores Exif (camera data), IPTC & XMP (authors data).

MP3 stores ID3 (authors data)

Editing the metadata doesn't reduce the quality of the file content itself. So you won't get a degenerated music file or a lower quality picture. So I really don't understand your sentense: "I don't want to alter metadata as part of regular operation."

<comment><USER18> Some people scribble books with yellow highlighters, other people are driven insane by highlighted books. If you are not a person in the latter category, I am afraid I can't explain to you why I don't want to change my music files when I do a trivial operation in my music player.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Google Plus was a bit of a shame, having used it a little bit when it first came out, it was actually quote a good social network in terms of functionality. It just never achieved that critical mass of users to make it worthy of dedicating alot of time to.

<comment><USER21> Personally, I avoided it specifically _because_ of all the "you must use this" shenanigans around YouTube and other services, as well as the Real Names policy brokenness. They could have had much more loyal users if they didn't pull stunts like that.

<comment><USER20> This is just an opinion, but I wonder how many 'non-techies' that would have bothered?

As someone switched on to those kind of arguments I can definitely understand - but to the every day lay man, I wonder how much a real name policy really would have mattered...

(seeing the other side, I can imagine how people uneducated in these things are also naturally suspicious - my grandma is probably more cautious with her data than any other person I know - perhaps knowing the specifics of threats rather than just fearing privacy leakage as a generic fear inducing concept is worse?!)

<comment><USER21> > but to the every day lay man, I wonder how much a real name policy really > would have mattered...

Many of the people most affected by the Real Names policy were not "techies".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really need to choose a service to host all my photos on. I was a singular archive of every photo I've ever taken.

I'm seriously considering setting up a camlistore[1] server but it would probably mean writing my own Android/iOS apps to do auto-upload.

Also, I do rather like all of the features that Google Photos comes with...

[1] [https://camlistore.org/](https://camlistore.org/)

<comment><USER23> I use the Amazon Cloud drive for backups of originals - it's $59.99 a year for "unlimited" storage. Here I backup my RAW images and camera phone images.

Once I've edited photos and want to publish (using Lightroom) I publish to flickr.

This works nicely and I'm glad I have steered clear of any of Google's or Apple's offerings - frankly I don't trust them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Bear in mind this is from July 2015.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why do users have to make a switch? Why isn't this just considered a rebranding from a user perspective?

<comment><USER9> I think they're separate apps. People who are used to using the Google+ app to access their photos are now required to download the separate, optional Google Photos app.

<comment><USER26> It's not just apps. The server side seems to have been rebuilt independent of Google+. Like OP, I'm wondering why Google didn't just find a way to give people outside of G+ direct access to the features inside it, which were already pretty good.

Google spends a lot of energy on supposedly optimizing UI when the biggest improvement to usability would be to avoid inconsistent and frequently changing interfaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In 232 words, "Google" is mentioned 14 times (6%), and "Photos" gets 21 mentions (9%). One in 7 words is either "Google" or "Photos". They should have got bingo cards made up before this announcement so we could have all played along at home!

</comment><comment><USER28> Kolmogorov complexity of HN comments on X is approaching boilerplate level. Where X is Google's product changes, front-end apps/frameworks, advertising, etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is from July 21, just wondering the significance now.

</comment><comment><USER30> Given that the google photos app isn't supported on iOS<8 (whereas the google plus app was), does anyone know what the best way of getting camera photos to upload to Google photos from an older iPhone?

I'm really hoping I don't have to do some sort of Dropbox/iPhotos dance :(

<comment><USER31> can you import them in google drive ? There is a very handy option to automatically import your drive photos in google photos. I think it should work on ios as well.</comment></comment>