Leon Sans, a geometric typeface made with code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cmiscm/leonsans <comment><USER2> It should be noted that Metafont is also a popular system for creating fonts with code. It is even more meta than this because it's a language for creating fonts with code.

When looking at exactly how glyphs are defined (see [https://github.com/cmiscm/leonsans/blob/master/src/font/lowe...](https://github.com/cmiscm/leonsans/blob/master/src/font/lower.js)) it struck me as quite similar to reading raw SVG paths with plenty of magic numbers. It doesn't strike me as particularly "code"-like per se (more like an extremely limited DSL to describe data).

<comment><USER3> I upvoted this comment, but sadly I wouldn't call METAFONT a "popular" system. The number of people who have successfully created "true" meta-fonts as Knuth intended is tiny.

Nevertheless, when used with skill it can be very satisfying, as in Knuth's paper that I can only describe as a _performance_ ( _The Concept of a Meta- Font_ , [https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/visiblelanguage/pdf/16.1/...](https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/visiblelanguage/pdf/16.1/the-concept-of-a-meta-font.pdf) ) See also _A Punk Meta-Font_ ([https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb09-2/tb21knut.pdf](https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb09-2/tb21knut.pdf)) where he describes waking up one morning with an idea to create a certain kind of font, going to the computer at 1pm, and basically being done by 4pm.

It is interesting to see the ideas from METAFONT basically ignored and misinterpreted by most of the mainstream of type designers (despite people like Zapf, Bigelow, Holmes, Carter and Southall being involved with the Stanford typography project and helping Knuth refine Computer Modern), only to be slowly reintroduced decades later in new forms (variable fonts etc).

<comment><USER3> Forgot to mention: this site [https://www.metaflop.com/modulator](https://www.metaflop.com/modulator) ought to be better known, and I ought to remember to mention it every time I mention METAFONT.

One great drawback of METAFONT, which held back (still does, but used to too) its adoption in the decades when we could have wonderful things built on it, is the lack of quick visual feedback. (The bigger one of course, is that most font designers don't _want_ to describe their shapes with equations: they think in curves, not _about_ curves.) As I understand it, the site is developed by a couple of enthusiasts and goes a long way to address that problem.

At [https://www.metaflop.com/modulator](https://www.metaflop.com/modulator) just adjust sliders to create a unique font (or get something random by clicking "flop it!", and then tweak it). You can even download the resulting font if you like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Albrecht Durer gave detailed instructions on how to construct the upper case letters (or at least those needed to write Latin) using compass and ruler.

A while back I made a coffeescript version of that [http://pollrobots.github.io/BlogCode/durer.html](http://pollrobots.github.io/BlogCode/durer.html)

<comment><USER5> Beautifully done. Thank you. Also, Durer was a genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Combine this with eye tracking for a page of text that grows just the words or figures you're looking at. You could display a larger page on a smaller one. E.g. show a multi page newspaper section on a single page, illegibly small until you focus on a particular headline. As you focus on that its teaser becomes visible, then the leading paragraph, etc.

You could display a link that when you look at it, it grows and resolves into its own content, recursively. Surf links by zooming in. The back button zooms out. It could be a natural way to navigate a graph of text.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't you achieve this with any font by rendering in higher resolution, downscaling to the size of the screen, and then having a "magnification" box follow your eyes around?

<comment><USER8> This would be a great feature for GoodReader or another iPad PDF reader. You wouldn't even need eye tracking: just magnify two inches above and to the left of my finger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The OpenType spec includes support for variable weights, added in 2016.

This is yet another feature it borrowed from TrueType GX, which in turn was a part of Mac's QuickDraw GX dating back to mid 90s.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickDraw_GX#TrueType_GX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickDraw_GX#TrueType_GX)

[3] [https://webkit.org/blog/7051/variable-fonts-on-the- web/](https://webkit.org/blog/7051/variable-fonts-on-the-web/)

<comment><USER10> Variable fonts are amazing. The font distributor Im working with is making a huge push to provide a large library of variable web fonts by the end of this year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From what I know, fonts are created by optical judgment, fiddling with kerning until it looks right and a tremendous amount of trial and error - this is because our vision system's complexity is compounded by "short-cuts" (optical illusions) that brain takes when processing dorsal and ventral pathways of the brain. In my view, this font is jarring to the eyes and ugly - I am not sure if this has to do with the programmatic nature (variable fonts are sort of programmatic, but with aforementioned manual adjustments) or if the font design itself. If you're a typographer, please share your thoughts and critique.

A font such as this can be categorized under "Display font" but it would not pass the mustard for any serious candidate for text.

<comment><USER12> Not a typographer, but this is by no means an inferior typeface. You are correct that it is not suited for large bodies text, but this is shared by almost all geometric typefaces.

Geometric typefaces are typically used to communicate minimalism and modernism.

> it would not pass the mustard for any serious candidate for text.

Many typefaces aren't designed for text but for identity. This one is very suitable for, say, asides and highlights in magazines, branding, poster copy, etc.. That it's amenable to modification because of the way it's coded points to its utility for these purposes.

A google search gives me these: [https://creativemarket.com/blog/geometric- sans-serif-fonts](https://creativemarket.com/blog/geometric-sans-serif-fonts)

<comment><USER13> It's very similar to Futura, another geometric typeface that was in fact used for a lot of body text.

<comment><USER11> That's what it reminded me of too. Futura is also used for serious display text such as cockpit controls by Airbus (?) if I am not mistaken.

<comment><USER14> Futura was implemented in the NASA standards manuals[0], and was then used by many others (including Boeing[1] and IBM) for cockpit lettering, plaques, and technical manuals/drawings.

[0]: [https://msis.jsc.nasa.gov/sections/section09.htm#_9.5_LABELI...](https://msis.jsc.nasa.gov/sections/section09.htm#_9.5_LABELING_AND) also linked here [2] [1] [https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/133206-boeing- panel-fonts...](https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/133206-boeing-panel-fonts/) [2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19625838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19625838)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's nice but it's no longer HTML text. So you can't use it as a web font or for any HTML text elements. Also no cut and paste, no accessibility etc.

<comment><USER16> I'm not so sure about that. AFAICT it's possible to add accessibility to canvas elements. See e.g. [http://pauljadam.com/demos/canvas.html](http://pauljadam.com/demos/canvas.html)

<comment><USER15> Well, ok, you can provide accessibility alternatives to a Canvas. But does it make much sense to do that for something that would otherwise be text? Ok, granted that Leon Sans will probably be used for nice headers and such it would probably be feasible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is fascinating, there is quite a bit of overlap with a font that I started designing recently: [http://alanbernstein.net/images/line-font- lowercase](http://alanbernstein.net/images/line-font-lowercase)

I do small projects on CNC machines, and I got annoyed at having to trace both sides of a character, when using the outline of a standard font. In response, I created the single-stroke characters shown above, but only enough of them to draw basic labels.

Part of my original inspiration was this blog post: [https://mzucker.github.io/2016/08/03/miniray.html](https://mzucker.github.io/2016/08/03/miniray.html)

It would be interesting to do a closer comparison of these two fonts, it looks like some of our letters are identical. I definitely prefer some of Leon's characters, especially the 's'. It should be easy enough for me to implement mine in javascript, because I focused on simplicity of the glyph definitions. For example, lowercase 'e' is defined like this:

        'e': [Line([-0.5, 0.5], [0.5, 0.5]), Arc([0, 0.5], 0.5, 0, 7/4)],

I hope I can find the time to experiment with this.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh this is cool! I do plotter art sometimes and I've been looking for a good font to use for awhile. Most modern fonts don't work well when drawn with a plotter because they depend heavily on fills rather than pure strokes. Thanks for this - I'll give this a try!

<comment><USER19> do you know about hershey fonts?

<comment><USER18> I do; but I don't think they look as good as this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It looks terrific and really remarkable. There must be something like it for an animation software. Could somebody point me to the right direction, outside of web?

However please refrain from usage on the web. Artistic and presentation use is ok, but CRUD, most blogs and other utilities is not ok.

</comment><comment><USER21> Iosevka[0] is another great font that is code-generated.

0: [https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka](https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka)

<comment><USER22> Such a _fantastic_ font for coding, with a variant for _any_ stylistic alternatives you prefer/desire!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Super cool work! Congrats for the birth of baby Leon :-)

\--

I got interested in typographic animation a while back, there are two related Wikipedia pages: "Motion Graphics" [1] and "Kinetic Typography" [2].

There is not a lot of info describing algorithms to perform Kinetic Typography that I could find. There are a few tools for doing Kinetic Typography for After Effects [3] and a couple other random software products of varying quality.

Btw, After Effects seems to be the closed-source reference implementation for all sorts of complex and cool looking effects. If for some reason all releases and source code of After Effects where to disappear from existence, it would set back the whole field of Motion Graphics by 25 years...

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER24> This looks so awesome! Unlimited use-cases. Just however I can hear my Macbook Pro taking off (air fan spinning like crazy) when browsing the demo page lol

</comment><comment><USER25> So, a stroke-based font like anything made with METAFONT?

<comment><USER26> Metafont supports both stroke-based and outlined fonts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I must say that it's one of the coolest sites I've seen lately

Beautiful fonts and I love how they show it in many different variations using creative animations

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm going to join the chorus saying that it's cool what you can do with an algorithmic and programmable font.

However, my next thought is that will create noisy and busy displays or web pages and so it is of limited practical/every-day use. I showed it to an Aspie friend who recoiled at all the moving letters.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

<comment><USER29> I'm an aspie and I enjoyed it. My first thought was lack of accessibility. But it could be neat for logos or artsy stuff.

The spamming of the browser history, however, did annoy me. I am on mobile and had to just close the tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What a perfectly normal way to celebrate the birth of a baby

</comment><comment><USER31> It's cool- I like the dynamic weighting and the minimal control points. As other people point out, there's very little "code." It would be cool if features would slowly nudge as you increase weight to ensure that they are preserved and balance is maintained as the weight increases.

</comment><comment><USER32> That's impressive AF. The website demo is cool, although it ran a bit slow on my PC/GPU.

I love the fact that most stuff (including paintings) are better created as a command stream vs when rasterized.

Minimum( number(Commands), number(RasterizedOutput) ) is always a deciding factor, but this is indeed well done.

</comment><comment><USER33> Very cool - now if only I could get the "colorful" version of that font for Vim...

</comment><comment><USER34> that would be interesting if "made with code" was true. In reality this is not anywhere near close to what I would dare to describe as "made with code": [https://github.com/cmiscm/leonsans/blob/master/src/font/uppe...](https://github.com/cmiscm/leonsans/blob/master/src/font/upper.js)

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there a non-dynamic version of this font or is it specific to this project? I see other geometrics in Wikipedia but not this one.

</comment><comment><USER36> Coolness of the idea aside, I'm sitting here trying to decide if it looks better than Roboto, my current go-to font.

<comment><USER37> different use cases. Roboto is the the more neutral font, excelling in interface and copy type. This strikes me as a display font. Use it for headlines and expressive use as seen in the demos.

<comment><USER12> I would like to add on that Roboto is a bit special in that moreso than most other typefaces used for body text, it is excellent when used for for text at very small sizes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This looks absolutely stellar. Also the animations strike a perfect balance between style and gimmick. Awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER39> This would make a really cool combo with something like reveal.js, for the world's coolest presentation transitions.

</comment><comment><USER40> Fonts are like art: I don't know exactly why I like something, but I know when I do.

This font is gorgeous.

</comment><comment><USER41> Pretty cool, but the WebGL examples on your page brought my computer to a crawl.

<comment><USER42> Humming along on my iPad. It looks amazing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> a) awesome font

b) great, now my browser can also be dynamically generating typefaces in order to programmatically render the html

</comment><comment><USER44> This is absolutely beautiful.

Wow! Thank you for the post.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is this <blink 2.0>?

</comment><comment><USER46> This is smashing! Something for a cool cat like myself.</comment>


How to Code and Understand DeepMind's Neural Stack Machine in Python - <AUTHOR> https://iamtrask.github.io/2016/02/25/deepminds-neural-stack-machine/?i=4 <comment><USER2> One thing you don't mention in your paper reading method is a stopping criterion. I'm opening and doing some level of "looking at" \--- not necessarily reading! --- probably 10-20 papers a week. More if you count revisits to papers that I've "looked at" before.

The question is, how do you decide which papers to promote to further attention? It's always a ranking problem, because there's always other work you could be looking at. You start your reading method at the point at which you've already decided to read the paper. But how do you get to that point?

(I can describe how I decide, but it's not exactly easy to replicate. It's a pretty insidery perspective. Here's how it played out for this paper.

I looked at this paper soon after it was published because I follow the first author on Twitter. When I opened the paper I looked at who was on it. I know Phil, and I know the sort of work Ed has been doing. I glanced over the paper and looked at the experiments, and saw that it was similar to the neural turing machine and algorithm learning line of work, that's still being evaluated on toy problems. This work is interesting but I'm not doing research on these things, so I won't commit to learning it while it's moved <1 mountain empirically. I did read the idea enough to contrast it with Chris Dyer's stack LSTM parser, which is a model that performs very well empirically. I checked the related work for criticism/comment on that work, and the paper said it's inspired by it. Cool. I'll watch for future empirical evaluations.

In total I probably spent about 10-15 minutes looking at this paper. This is enough for me to remember I'd seen the work, and help me understand future related ideas a little bit better.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree with you on all of this. I think an update is in order to include.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great post! Thank you for taking time out of your busy life to write this. I think it's small gestures of kindness like this that advance the field of artificial intelligence, just as much as the large discoveries. Bookmarked!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! Very kind of you to say that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome, it also touches the problem - scientific paper about algorithms without the accompanying code that implements it is hard to use/reproduce.

</comment><comment><USER5> This website crashed my browser and I lost a few tabs I have been saving, and am unable to recover them. It does this even with JavaScript off.

Stack machines are really cool. Are they computationally efficient though? As the stacks grow bigger the number of possible stacks to keep track of grows exponentially doesn't it? Or do they only keep track of some of them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Houshalter! Thank you so much for respnoding... i think it's the trinket demos... and i think some of them autorun. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I heard of Neural Turing Machines and now this is Neural Stack Machine. How are they same/different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Neural Stack Machines have a slightly more limited memory. Whereas in theory Neural Turing Machines can learn anything, Neural Stack Machines focus on algorithms that are conducive to stacks. Phil Blunsom addresses this some in his recent Russia talk. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WPP9f1P-Xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WPP9f1P-Xc)

<comment><AUTHOR> actually it might have been his DLSS talk... not 100% sure the talks are very similar... [http://videolectures.net/deeplearning2015_montreal/](http://videolectures.net/deeplearning2015_montreal/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting idea.

We could do superoptimization with that. For example, a superoptimized sort.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what is the diference between a neural stack and An LSTM? Aren't both keeping a state?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are similar in that way. Typically an LSTM is used to control the neural stack... so the stack sortof "sits on top of" the LSTM's memory... allowing it to be (in theory) infinite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice post. need to read it again tough

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!</comment></comment>


Let's Start Tracking Misleading Press Releases About Scientific Findings - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/01/lets-track-overhyped-research-press-releases.html <comment> chestnut-tree In the UK, the NHS (National Health Service) website has an excellent section called _Behind the headlines_ that " _provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news_ ".

Their articles are well-written and thorough, but unfortunately much less widely-read than the misleading newspaper reports they often debunk.

[http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)

<comment><USER2> Not exactly on the subject of science, but the European Commission runs a similar blog debunking news stories about the EU:

[http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/](http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Why isn't anyone holding universities accountable for their press releases?

It's about time. Maybe in the future, universities will adopt ethics guidelines that will oblige them to say, "Here's another social science study of dubious provenance, one that, based on a now-famous survey of similar past studies [1], is more likely to be false than true."

[1] [http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology- studies-f...](http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail- reproducibility-test-1.18248)

</comment><comment><USER4> Problem is: the people who care already know, and the majority of people don't care. They care enough to "share" a headline on Facebook, not to actually read the conclusions. "Scientists link coffee drinking to smart gene!"\--how many people would read further than just sharing with their friends, regardless of, say, the New York Times' rebuttal of such an argument. It's not about accuracy, it's about virality.

<comment><USER5> "Research shows sharing links on social networks prevents cancer"

<comment><USER6> A common part of many cons is to not just get the mark to accept the offer that looks to benefit them, but to make them feel they are doing something good at the same time. There are people who will resist doing the moral thing when it doesn't benefit them, there are people who will resist doing the thing that benefits them if it's not moral, but there's very few that will resist something that offers both. It's a double whammy, right to our reward centers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is particularly bad in certain fields. "Nanotechnology" (which, for PR purposes, means surface chemistry, not molecular assemblers.) seems to be the worst.

<comment><USER8> Fortunately, that specific hype train appears to have left the station. The worst for me at the peak were nanotechnology articles where the structure in question was somewhere in the submicron (or rarely, micron!) range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And then Nymag has a Taboola ad section which has titles like "This drug could cure cancer, find out how"... this doesn't help the problem.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, a thousand times. I've long since learned to treat Stanford University's press office, to name a specific example, as nothing but noise.

More generally, this is a problem of press and media generally, which as much of this moves to an online / technical component, intersects with what many HN readers are actively involved with at their day jobs. Advertising-supported media are only one part of the overall failure, though a large part, and much of the low-value and/or low truth valence of online information can be traced to this.

More generally, as with so many other areas of abuse, corruption, and malfunction, the problem is one of _impunity_. Those who misbehave aren't called to account and made to pay.

That said, the support for a truth-telling system seems to be very, very difficult to come by. I've got thoughts but no clear answers.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think there is in one site a problem with the press business model. People do not pay most of the time for the information they read, so journals are not considered anymore exactly a public service but an investment for funds or controlled by debt and governments. In the other side there is the politics of gross investment in R&D for economic growth and a new diplomacy of rankings about everything education, transparency, business friendly policies to attract investors. The problem as I see it is not in the excesses of the system but in the system of knowledge economy, as we know it. As long as you convert intangible assets in into a patent of so you can speculate with it in the financial economy. Anyway, an interesting approach I've seen lately is sites like theconversation where real experts write about their field, besides every post includes a release statement about their personal involvement, and conflicting interests on the subject. Also this link about the technology of measurement is interesting [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-10-20/rank- has-...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-10-20/rank-has-its- privileges)

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone think we can all agree on which social science headlines are misleading, and which ones are unbiased summaries of the facts?

</comment><comment><USER13> I hope by tracking you mean tying it back to who initiated the misleading article. Not just who wrote it but who paid for it and to what gain. Then once a year publish a chart showing the top ten sources ,and their most published topics/titles of misleading articles, from source to publication.

</comment><comment><USER14> Though universities carry a lot of blame science journalists who dont read or comprehend the actual science content before writing an article should find a different career!

</comment><comment><USER15> Studies show that such press releases are then further twisted by the media, experts say.

<comment><USER11> "The basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning." source: [http://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/framing- theory/](http://masscommtheory.com/theory-overviews/framing-theory/) Media twists these findings to frame them either in their own interest or to have more visits with polemic titles. But rankings based in scientific measurements might also make use of that to get their results published in the media. I don't mean to undervalue scientific work at all. But the instrumentation of it not for purposes other than scientific.</comment></comment>


How WooThemes Quietly Built A $2  Million Per Year Business Selling Themes - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/woothemes-adriaan-pienaar/ <comment><USER2> Mixergy is always a gold mine for me. I get the same feeling listening to Andrew's interviews that I used to get browsing Napster for all my favorite music. I would _easily_ pay $20 per month for this stuff.

<comment><USER3> This means a lot to me.

I got a couple of crappy emails on vacation this weekend from 2 viewers who thought I wasn't doing enough. For some reason I let it get to me. So I'm esp grateful to hear that you appreciate my work.

<comment><USER4> Hey Andrew, I really like the way you conduct the interview and the research you and your team does in the background.

For a change, I would like to listen to your interview regarding how you started your career and what were your experiences. If you have given interview previously please provide the link on your website or on HN.

<comment><USER5> Hi, there are two interviews that talk about Andrew's career: [http://mixergy.com/how-must-marketing-helped-me- bootstrap-a-...](http://mixergy.com/how-must-marketing-helped-me-bootstrap-a- profitable-startup-andrew-warner-interview-by-lisa-bruckner/) A fan interviews Andrew.

<http://mixergy.com/christel-hyden-bradford-reed/> Andrew talks to the first person he hired.

<comment><USER4> Hey Chris, Thanks for providing the links....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm still under the impression that WordPress themes have to be GPL'd (because WordPress is).

Is this not the case?

Regardless, it's impressive.

<comment><USER7> There's no legal precedent that a theme is somehow a derivative work of the software it's designed for. There haven't even been any good cases to give precedent for dynamic linking creating a derivative work. That's the only way the GPL could possibly apply, since nobody's distributing WordPress with their themes.

How is taking the HTML for a webpage you've created, replacing the title with <?php the_title(); ?> and putting <?php the_content(); ?> in the content area, a derivative work of the WordPress code base? Yet that's the argument they're making when someone say you're bound by WordPress's license by creating a theme that will work with it.

You can't just throw a license at someone that hasn't agreed to it. It's a completely untested legal theory Matt relies on when he says WP themes have to be GPL. There are lots of people that don't buy it at all, like the creator of Thesis, which is one of the best selling commercial WP themes.

<comment><USER8> There's no legal precedent, but if you want to read a ton of legal speculation on a related topic (some by informed people, some by those less informed), there's a pretty large body of writing on the hypothetical issues of whether proprietary Linux kernel modules violate the GPL.

edit: here's a pretty thorough law-review article: [http://web.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr...](http://web.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr/volume85n5/Stoltz.pdf)

<comment><USER7> That was a good read, thanks. It supports that WordPress themes are likely not derivative works, though -- dynamic linking, use only minimal non-complex interface code, are primarily unique code that could run on any platform (HTML/CSS/etc) with only a small amount of WordPress "compatibility code" as the paper calls it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> my response to this: <http://i47.tinypic.com/2eg5j4o.jpg>

<comment><USER3> I'm betting that if I'm not an a-hole entrepreneurs will be more open with me than they would otherwise.

The live audience heard me tell Adii don't give me a number that will hurt your business and don't lie about the number you give or the audience will catch it.

<comment><USER9> I certainly think that's spot on. I knew adii's revs had to be great, but this is really awesome. Showing the revs are important because it gives a good actualization of the rest of the process they describe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Andrew Warner is the Charlie Rose of startup founder interviews.

<comment><USER11> I have been trying to think of a slightly different analogy, but it hasn't come to mind yet. Andrew is certainly a prolific interviewer, but I see him as more of an explorer looking for the essence of entrepreneurship through people's stories of success and failure.

Once Andrew finishes his run of interviews (hopefully he has a long way to go), he will have developed one of the most comprehensive catalogs of tech entrepreneurship of the web 2.0 era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Jesus I knew these guys were doing good, but not THIS good. 2 mil a year on WordPress themes is absolutely insane!

<comment><USER7> There are over 18 million _active_ WordPress blogs at the moment. It's a huge market. I spent a couple hours building a WordPress plugin and sold $200,000 in licenses for it in a year and a half.

<comment><USER13> Can I ask what it did, and the price?

<comment><USER14> I'm assuming this isn't sensitive since it is listed in his portfolio: it helps affiliate marketers build review sites on top of Wordpress, and costs about $100 a license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This was the first interview I've ever seen on mixergy, and I can proudly say I'll be coming back. I thought the questions were great and I absolutely didn't mind that the video went for over an hour. Truly an indept look at WooThemes and how Adriaan was able to start up his business. Thanks for the fantastic tips and keep up the great work Andrew. And just in case you're wondering, I found this intervie from @Woothemes on Twitter (with whom I am a Standard member and own a theme from).

</comment><comment><USER16> I really liked this interview. I esp. liked the little preview of the revenue question. That could be used to increase the number of people who stick with the interview if you gave a preview like: I'm going to ask him X, Y, and Z.

I really am interested in how these companies really get off the ground - going from doing consulting for example to selling a product and making enough from that they can live off of it - I think an earlier interviewee called it getting "wife profitable".

</comment><comment><USER17> Another great interview Andrew.

It would be good to illuminate your face better. The lighting in that room cast long shadows over your eyes. Perhaps a light facing you to the left of the computer would help.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh and that other themestore is no longer a sponsor of Mixergy, maybe that sponsorship was holding this interview? I love Mixergy and I can't wait for the audio to land on my iPod.

<comment><USER3> Nah. I just didn't realize WooThemes was as big as it was until a few readers filled me in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Excellent interview and inspiring story. Always great hearing about companies like Woo Themes who have grown organically from self-funding.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is WooThemes in anyway related WooFu?

<comment><USER21> No, Wufoo and WooThemes are not related. Other than phonetically, that is.</comment></comment>


The Anti-hero of CSS Layout – "display:table" - <AUTHOR> http://colintoh.com/blog/display-table-anti-hero

<comment><USER3> I remember the anti-html table movement fondly. While everyone knew tables were bad for certain purposes, the hate movement brainwashed people into thinking that using tables for anything (including tabular data) was bad. And so, people started marking up tabular data using DIV's and CSS properties that suffered from a myriad of compatibility issues, convincing themselves that using floats was the right thing to do.

And we all bought into it, well most of us. Every time an overzealous developer would spot the use of a table tag, hell would reign down upon Earth lambasting the developer for using a table, even if it was being used for the right purpose. "how dare you use a table you noob, use floats and DIV's, they are so much better" \- for a good while people were hating on using the table tag to the point where many were hating it, but could not really tell you why other than, "because tables are bad"

In many ways the web has gone full circle, Flexbox is merely a more powerful CSS version of tables, in-fact there are many similarities like the ability to have columns of content of varied size sitting alongside one another. We added in a new set of properties, changed the name and made them a little bit more powerful.

I am one of those developers who have been quietly using display table for non-tabular data for a while now to solve issues I have seen other developers resort to additional markup and CSS hacks for, that either makes me a lazy developer, an efficient developer or perhaps both.

Just recently I proved a remote developer wrong in regards to responsive tables. He tried telling me and the business responsive tables cannot be done without hacks. I implemented a solution using display table and DIV's. This is for part of an app that only logged in users see, not search engines, so while it was not a true proper use of the properties, it allowed me to implement a true responsive solution for tables that will not degrade SEO or performance, as it is not public.

Simply using media queries I was able to make my table DIV's collapse by setting them to display block, adding in some type and colour adjustments, and it just worked. No need to use before and after pseudo selectors to hack in support for titles and stacked tables. No hair pulling when the business asked me to support IE9 either.

As developers we all mostly want to do everything correctly and use the proper tags and CSS properties in the appropriate way, but sometimes when you have a deadline to meet and time is running out, you have to do what you have to do to get things done.

<comment><USER4> To be honest the css property display:table isn't bad itself.

What we were reproaching to the <table> tag was to be wrong on the semantic side.

If you use divs and style them with display:table I see absolutely nothing wrong here, semantic is right, you infer the display behaviour through css.

<comment><USER5> I think you're still falling into the religious trap here. Quite often I will put inline css into the html page, or use a table tag. Normally I would never admit this, as I would be hounded by css zealots. Often I do this when I'm building a user interface in html/javascript, or for a single one-off layout in a single page. Using external css in these cases would make it much more difficult to understand/maintain.

I can understand the argument that "you should put styling into an external css so you can just change it in one place rather than throughout the code". However that argument doesn't apply to many use-cases.

<comment><USER6> It comes to knowing your tools and craft.

Part of the madness was due to tools that auto generated attributes and browser implementations when repainting/reflow occurred.

If the time, and potential knowledge was there, to better organize the structure vs. the layout thing may have been different. We would probably still be wrestling with browser issues.

I have worked in places where corporate sites had tables were littered with font tags for each cell, littered with a half dozen iframes(!?!)

The use for tables in layout was easy, but the long term debt was never paid.

Granted this is less of a case now; wading through this was not fun.

<comment><USER5> I definitely agree that in cases like that CSS is the much cleaner solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who just implemented automatic table layout and is now intimately familiar with the details of how it works, I'd like to suggest that the problem with table-based layout is that _it 's excessively complex_ and _largely undocumented and unspecified_. The results will differ between browsers. Even the parts that have draft specs (which don't include, for example, percentage heights) are much more complex than CSS blocks and inlines: look at sections 4.1 through 4.4 of [1] for example.

[1]: [http://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/](http://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/)

<comment><USER8> Yes! I remember running into a really obscure bug that was caused by having an element nested into a parent with display: table. I don't remember the details, but I remember we were using the sticky footer technique described in the article.

<comment><USER9> I ran into a similar situation a while back while building an internal dashboard that had a fairly complex nested-table layout. It wouldn't render properly because of a bug in Firefox that had been open since 2000. I think this was the one (it seems they've fixed it): [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63895](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63895)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> > E8 and IE9 still make up 32% of the browser market share and that is a lot to give up if I was to revert to the flex solution_

Yes, if you have an even worldwide visitor share. Can I Use[0] puts USA IE9 usage at 3.86% and IE8 at 7.28% (11.14% in total). If your user base is different it would be wise to examine the data before discounting flex-box based on worldwide stats.

If anyone has access to netmarketshare's USA[1] (used in the article) data, it would be nice to see what it is.

EDIT: Also the article's stats[2] are for desktop only. It seems[2] that mobile support is relatively high with Can I Use[0] stating that total USA support = 86.46%.

[0] [http://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox](http://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox) [1] [http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market- share.aspx?qpri...](http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market- share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0&qpaf=-000%09101%09US%0D) [2] [http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market- share.aspx?qpri...](http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market- share.aspx?qprid=2&qpcustomd=0)

<comment><USER11> Agreed. A friend of mine suggested Flexbox for a web-app I was going to build him. I glanced over the requirements and then asked him his traffic for <IE10, and it was nearly 10%. (Website has 1m+ pageviews per month).

Not nearly as bad as 32%. And the number continues to drop.

<comment><USER12> That said, if I told people on this site that I was offering a PaaS with only _1 nine_ of reliability, I'd be laughed out of the park. And yet that's exactly what I'd be saying if I were to advocate for ignoring <IE10.

<comment><USER11> Sure, wasn't making any comment as to whether it's okay to ignore 10%, just that 30% <IE10 is probably an overstatement.

As for whether it's okay to ignore... I guess it really depends. I actually ended up writing a mobile web-app with Cordova, so obviously my target market had no old IE in there. It might also be true that people on old IE are people on old hardware, the type like my dad who never does any ecommerce at all, and who may not be very lucrative visitors anyway.

Anyway I wonder if someone has some actual data on this, I can make up some assumptions but I really don't have a clue. I do often read that China and Russia are big IE markets (lots of windows XP and lots of websites that still use activex stuff). It'd be interesting to see which markets are high on <IE10 and what the average value (e.g. ad or ecommerce) per user from different browsers is.

Just checked on my own website, target audience are mostly 30-40 year old moms in OECD countries. <5% IE, and virtually all IE10/11\. Just 5% IE9 and barely anything below. (mostly West-European audience.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest downside of display: table and friends is performance. Changing any CSS or DOM properties will basically cause a full page (!) relayout and repaint on a lot of browsers (especially mobile safari).

<comment><USER14> Doesn't

      table-layout: fixed;

help in Safari?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It still takes me a few beats from thinking "I need a flexible grid layout here" to remembering I can just use display:table, having spent so many years discounting it off-hand because of Internet Explorer.

<comment><USER16> What does IE have to do with this? Wasn't the whole anti-table movement a response to the abuse of <table>, <tr>, <td> HTML tags for layout? I can't think of any particular issue with Internet Explorer and display:table...

<comment><USER17> I think IE7 doesn't support display: table;

<comment><USER16> Sure, but IE 7 predated Chrome by 2 years. I'm not sure how IE 7 which has a global browser share roughly equivalent to Chrome 11, Firefox 3.6, Android 2.3 and Blackberry 7 has any relevance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you use table for layout, remember to also use

      table-layout: fixed;

It will improve table behavior (content will no longer affect horizontal layout of the table) and performance, saving repaints, reflows and whatnots.

<comment><USER5> It really depends why you are using the table layout. Quite often the reason for using tables is to lay out multiple items based on their content size, so you want the default automatica layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We have come full circle. Tables to CSS grid based frameworks back to Tables?

Tables are generally for structured content. They work and are perfect - <USER2> for example. Hundreds of cells on a page? Rendering / performance would be a nightmare.

CSS grids for layout - perfect and may cause some pain. Once you get it right the performance is there.

With css/tags there can be abuse and we must think of how we plan to present our content to the user who ultimately judges our work.

They do not care about the how it was implemented, they just want it now and that it works consistently.

We need to ensure _we keep our sanity_ the balance is in between the two.

On another note, the use of colgroups should be mentioned with the above. It does help with rendering performance. [http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/single- page.html#the-colgroup-ele...](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/single- page.html#the-colgroup-element)

\- Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER18> 'I absolutely dissent HTML table-layout'. Don't you have to dissent from?

<comment><USER19> yeah, that makes no sense grammatically, I think maybe OP meant "detest".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is the most appropriately-named article, ever.

</comment><comment><USER21> My IE8+ grid is based on display: table and just works. [http://natuive.net](http://natuive.net)

</comment><comment><USER22> >> the holy grail layout

gave me an instant smile, I remember 7 years back, wracking my brains out to get it done for a project!

</comment><comment><USER23> What I didn't understand from this blog post is WHY display:table is really bad.

<comment><USER24> It's not. That's the point.

"Tables for layout are bad" applies _only_ to use of <table> HTML markup for layout. `display:table` achieves the same layout, but without presentational markup and accessibility problems that html-tables-for-layout caused.

If it was called "display:stretchy-box", nobody would mind.

<comment><USER25> Are html-tables bad even for their intended purpose of laying out tabular data?

<comment><USER26> No.

And again, that's part of the point; "HTML table tags aren't good for layout" semantically collapsed[1] to "tables aren't good for layout" collapsed to "tables are bad" collapsed to "tables are EVIL". No, they aren't. The first collapse is easily explained by the fact that for a long time HTML table tags bidirectionally implied table layout (no way to have one without the other), but now that CSS has broken that in both directions it's not a valid simplification.

(Less well known aspect of CSS table support, I'm pretty sure it's possible to take a series of HTML table elements and "undo" their tableness if you're feeling feisty. But it's a weird way to do things.)

[1]: I seem to recall there's a term for what I'm reaching for. Much obliged if someone can remind me.

<comment><USER27> >"for a long time HTML table tags bidirectionally implied table layout" //

You're right, tables are fine for tabular data. But it was always thus.

Perhaps if you were a html noob and hung out listening to people pissed off with table layouts you'd get confused and think all tables were bad (you definitely want a graphical layout helper app though as keeping track of them in code is a PITA).

It was

        table tage |- table layout V tabulated data

rather than just

        table tage |- table layout

<comment><USER28> I've worked on HTML that was written by someone who cargo culted all of the tables into rows of Bootstrap columns, for tabular data. It happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been using this in some of my latest projects. Works like a charm!

</comment><comment><USER30> interesting! will look this up again when I have one of the described problems. In the meanwhile, I'll push an update to my brain: not everything related to tables is old / bad!

</comment><comment><USER31> Most of the examples can be achieved with flex layouts, Stylus+nib even manages the browser prefixes for you. Just mentioning this, because last week I considered a {HTML|CSS} table layout. As it turned out, solving the problem with tables was more difficult than using other methods...

</comment><comment><USER32> You can achieve the same results with absolute positioning, which I prefer.

<comment><USER33> I'm pretty sure you can't, except in the trivial case of a table with absolute-sized everything, or alternatively by reimplementing the table algorithms in JS.</comment></comment>


Fighting cavities could one day be as easy as taking a pill, research shows - <AUTHOR> http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2016/03/fighting-cavities-could-one-day-be-as-easy-as-taking-a-pill-research-shows.phphttp://news.ufl.edu/articles/2016/03/fighting-cavities-could-one-day-be-as-easy-as-taking-a-pill-research-shows.php <comment><USER2> Link was pasted twice

<comment><USER3> In case the submitter doesn't fix it: [http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2016/03/fighting-cavities- could...](http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2016/03/fighting-cavities-could-one- day-be-as-easy-as-taking-a-pill-research-shows.php)</comment></comment>


Twitter Just Shut Down Ribbon's Newly Launched In-Stream Payments Feature - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/10/well-that-was-fast-twitter-shut-down-ribbons-newly-launched-in-stream-payments-feature-built-using-twitter-card-technology/

<comment><USER2> Are you surprised?

Why don't we all go back to AOL and Geocities. The problem with Twitter is that it is not clear exactly what their approach to their revenue problem might be. I understand they want to monetize their API but does that go hand- in-hand with quashing every potential competitor who happens to use the API with a modicum of success?

I'm bearish about any company that builds a data warehouse on the basis of access and open-ness and then decides to restrict that access at a later date for the sake of profitability. It's just distasteful and speaks volumes.

This is a great example of why you should never build a business on Twitter: [http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2013/03/04/how-twitter-came- to...](http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2013/03/04/how-twitter-came-to-boston- the-story-behind-two-very-different-acquisitions)

Partnering with Twitter is still quite reasonable, but creating an Enterprise based upon their APIs is foolish at best.

<comment><USER3> But that's just hearsay and conjecture -- we don't know it was turned off for "profitability" reasons or whatever. In fact Ribbon's blog indicates that Twitter was very receptive to the idea: [http://blog.ribbon.co/an-update-on- in-stream-payments-on-twi...](http://blog.ribbon.co/an-update-on-in-stream- payments-on-twitter/)

Further, we haven't heard Twitter's side to this -- was there a violation of the TOS that the Tech bloggers didn't catch (or bother finding the other side of the story?)

Essentially you're jumping the gun in saying that Twitter is two-faced ("They say they're open but they're really not") all based upon no data or concrete evidence.

<comment><USER4> > Essentially you're jumping the gun in saying that Twitter is two-faced > ("They say they're open but they're really not") all based upon no data or > concrete evidence.

Yes because I can't think of any other examples where Twitter has screwed developers.... Oh wait....

Yes, there might be a TOS issue here (and maybe even a valid one) but their track record makes it pretty clear that they just don't give a shit about developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Throwing in my 2 cents:

It looks like what Ribbon submitted to the Twitter validator was a video using the "player" card: <http://cl.ly/image/2R2i1J302Z2g>

The player card is designed to handle embedding videos, which is what Ribbon initially showed, however when they launched their new feature they morphed the embedding options to display a custom in-stream purchase button / unit.

In reality, they should have just used a 'product' card (granted, they would not have the added ability to purchase in stream - it would need to link back to their website).

Using the player card was a pretty clever way to get the payments to happen directly on twitter, but it seems that it bent too many of their rules. They'll probably just have to use the product card like everyone else.

<comment><USER6> Spot on. It was a bait and switch and violation of TOS.

Chirpify has been enabling in-stream commerce and payments on Twitter for over a year now. Also in-stream on Instagram and Facebook. No TOS violations <http://chirpify.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Twitter wants to validate each domain that has a card so they can approve & exert control. They cannot control what products a ribbon customer promotes via ribbon. If I wanted to sell illegal drugs or child pornography photographs, those would show up on twitter.com & twitter apps in a nice card- like experience complete with a 'Buy Now' button.

That's why they shut it down.

<comment><USER8> It's likely because it's all wrapped up in Twitter's web interface. To the average user, it looks like you just paid Twitter for something. If you have any sort of problem with shipping or the product itself, you're likely going to go back to where you bought it from: Twitter.

They're simply protecting themselves from a series of problems that would be completely out of Twitter's control to help in any way. Twitter would always come up the loser for any of Ribbon's mistakes. They don't even have a way to punt any support issues over to Ribbon.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, it does say "Not affiliated with Twitter" in a blue background.

<comment><USER10> Many people wouldn't read or remember that detail.

<comment><USER9> Really? Because it's pretty prominent. It's the first attention-seeking detail after the Buy Now button.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Curious what happened here: the Twitter Cards Player options clearly require pre-approval by Twitter for custom cards. Did Ribbon present one thing when going through the approval process and then change the player after the release?

</comment><comment><USER12> I've often said that my platform is called the Internet.

Or as I said here: <https://twitter.com/davidu/status/313826471019954176>

The risk to sharecropping on another platform just seems too great to outweigh the audience / signup / integration / etc. benefits.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's the post about this on Ribbon's blog:

[http://blog.ribbon.co/an-update-on-in-stream-payments-on- twi...](http://blog.ribbon.co/an-update-on-in-stream-payments-on-twitter/)

<comment><USER14> The preview doesn't look anything like their final implementation. That preview looks like an actual movie player, while the final card screenshots I've seen look like regular content cards with a lot of custom branding.

This looks like a clever hack of the Twitter implementation of the Player card and not the intended use. The stream and content type attributes both are empty, for example. Does anyone know if this sort of implementation is what that card is supposed to allow?

<comment><USER15> Sadly, I think you might be right - perhaps Ribbon showed one system, and deployed another.

I say "sadly," as if this is the case, Ribbon have just made every other developer's life that bit more difficult.

I really hope they haven't been that underhand, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's called PCI. Unless there was a contract between Ribbon & Twitter this is not at all okay since they were taking payments within the same origin of twitter.com, thus bringing twitter.com into scope of PCI compliance for Ribbon. This was a really basic mistake if there was no contract. Everyone who knows anything about PCI understands this very well.

</comment><comment><USER17> "What's interesting is how quickly Twitter reacted to the situation, which makes one wonder who might have brought the violation, or issue, to Twitter's attention."

Err....TechCrunch, two hours earlier? Or is that the joke?

</comment><comment><USER18> Hope the Ribbon guys manage to get it resolved. I think it's a great use of the Twitter cards feature and am slightly baffled as to why Twitter would even give developers access to the feature, if only to shut them down immediately afterwards.

I also agree with the sentiment that building anything on Twitter is a risky proposition these days. That said, there's still an appeal in doing so given the volume of users.

</comment><comment><USER19> So how did this happen? Did someone at Ribbon not bother to check the TOS? Did they check and just think they wouldn't get caught? The article says Ribbon is trying to contact Twitter to find out what happened, I'd think it would make sense to have somewhat closer relations with anyone who has that much power over your company, so you could find out _before_ they shut you down.

<comment><USER20> From our statement on our blog:

"We've had discussions with Twitter in the past, and are eager to find a way to work together."

<comment><USER21> In these discussions, did they say, "Sure, go ahead.", and then shut you down?

Or did they say "There is no way you can do this, and we will shut you down."?

'Discussions' gives us no information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "This is clearly something that's good for Twitter users all over the world."

I can see how it's good for sellers, but am missing how it is so clearly good for me as a buyer (which is what I assume is meant by "Twitter users all over the world"). Is it that I can spend money without learning about what I'm buying beyond what fits into 140 chars that makes it good? Do people do that?

</comment><comment><USER23> Does Twitter want to scare off every developer? I mean its kind of absurd to just shut down a newly launched service on the same day that it launches. It may violate their policy, fine, change your policy or be friendly with developers to really help them become compliant. This is the Apple/Appgratias thing all over again (in the same week); We don't like what you are doing so we will just shut you down, and boo if you don't like. Imagine how much trust Twitter would get if they would simply work with these app developers instead of drastically changing policy/just making things stop working. Right now, as it stands, I will never even touch their ecosystem in fear that I get more restricted, or even worse, have an entire element of my business shutdown without being able to do anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Twitter really haven't been doing themselves any favours within the developer community. If not for the constant news we hear of APIs being restricted or cut off completely, it's now the in-stream features as well. Why would any developer now want to work with them?

I just don't....get Twitter at the moment. It'd be nice to have some clarification of why they wish to pursue this draconian mindset, but that's asking too much. I'm surprised that services such as Buffer have came so far.

</comment><comment><USER25> I remember laughing hysterically when I read the phrase "command line for the web" a long time ago. The money has to come from somewhere eventually.

</comment><comment><USER26> My guess would be that Twitter has had plans to offer the same functionality.

<comment><USER27> That's a good point. At this moment, I'd say they are open to anything that makes them money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "News story at 11, major roadway cuts off local roadside merchants"

</comment><comment><USER29> All hail our glorious leader Twitter, they know what's right. This isn't all too surprising, Twitter have definitely had their fair share of third party shutdowns and controversies, the problem here is that Twitter could care less about anyone else's business that uses their API, even if it means more Twitter users or even a potential offer for partnership and profit. This is an idea that Twitter themselves should have officially got behind, no doubt we'll see something like this from Twitter eventually.

It's a genius idea, but sadly Ribbon just wasted a lot of time and money building a product they can't use. A painful lesson, never build a business on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is Twitter trying to scare developers off of it's platform!?

<comment><USER25> No, it just tracks which developer has good ideas, makes their applications against TOS and then implements the same thing badly.

<comment><USER31> ... or forces successful devs to sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's a really good idea that was never going to work with modern Twitter. Old style Twitter? Maybe.

There's probably many reasons why Twitter shut it down, but there's also many reasons why developing a product around Twitter these days is, frankly, kind of batshit crazy.

</comment><comment><USER33> As usual TheOnion got the story first: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/new- social-media-startup-la...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-social-media- startup-launches-shuts-down-withi,31557/)

</comment><comment><USER34> How long until the "Twitter Launches In-Stream Payments" post? I feel like when Twitter was young, it would reward developers for building new ideas on the platform; now it punishes them.

</comment><comment><USER35> A valuable lesson. I think I will consult a lawyer for my startup idea. Have been thinking about it but this gave me the push I needed. Really too bad this company didn't do its homework.

</comment><comment><USER36> HAHA! Called this as soon as I saw Perez's article...humble brag? No surprised at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Chirpify has been enabling in-stream commerce and payments on Twitter for over a year now. Also in-stream on Instagram and Facebook. <http://chirpify.com></comment>


Robot Chef That Can Cook 2,000 Meals Set to Go on Sale in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.iflscience.com/technology/robot-chef-home-could-arrive-2017/ <comment><USER2> This article is from April 2015, and latest on the website says it's expected in 2018.

Looking forward to seeing more developments.

<comment><USER3> April 2015? What day?

Seriously - this seems like a April Fools joke, a bad one at that.

I would not make a cooking robot like this. It's like building a plane that flaps its wings to fly.

Instead, you'd have a pantry of ingredients, some method of transporting those ingredients (and putting back), liquids would be pumped of course, etc.

In other words, design the machine for the task. There's no reason a cooking robot would need to have arms and hands.

That said, a purpose built machine would be an absolute bear to clean. So difficult, in fact, that nobody would buy it.

While a machine like this, if it were practical - could probably be kept relatively clean. Heck, if it were mounted on ceiling tracks, it could serve, get ingredients (from fridge or pantry), put out the dishes, wash them, do the laundry, etc...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do think of this idea? - <AUTHOR>

A website that sells a few nice domain names for a reasonable price (I'm thinking of 99 dollars). To clarify it: It would be no market place where anyone could offer their domain names. All the domains that would be sold, would be registered and sold by myself. The "value" to the customer would be, that I would do the "creative thinking" and come up with nice, short (domain)names that they could use for their projects.<p>So what, dear HN crowd, is your opinion on this: Would I be just another dirty domain sqatter or would you consider to use such a service if you'd be in need of a name for your next project? <comment><USER2> #1: Your pricing is at the worst possible point on the curve. You charge ten times more than what the inveterate cheapskates want to pay. You charge ten times less what a _middling_ domain name is worth. You are opting to do business with a lot of "pathological clients" this way -- they will want the moon and stars because you cost TEN TIMES MORE than GoDaddy. (There will be, inevitably, comments in this thread to that effect. Do you want to wake up to a mailbox of them every day?)

#2: Let's talk inventory. It will cost you, for the sake of argument, $10 to hold a domain for a year. That means, to break even, you need to sell one out of every ten you register. Since you're going to be dealing in 3 word domains primarily, that is going to be a bit of a stretch. Let's say you branch into bingo for a day and start thinking up domains -- you can count to 500 just by starting with Xbingocards.com and filling in topics for X. Are you going to be able to unload 50+ of those?

#3: You need to do a heck of a lot of manual gruntwork here. Presumably you'll automate the actual purchasing, but you'll have to think up hundreds or thousands of domains and then sift down to the ones which are actually salable.

(If you doubt this, I will give you a list of 500 Xbingocards.com domains and you can time how long it takes you to winnow it down to as narrow a field as you think is winnowable. My guess is just the filtering would take most SEOs I know upwards of two to four hours to do if they did it systematically. And then, of the 46 or so you end up with, will you actually be able to sell them?)

Do this poorly and you'll be out money. You'll find that you're eventually spending a lot of money and effort to buy yourself a retail job, if that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Firstly you would need some cracking names to be able to achieve a $99 asking price.

Secondly your purchase vs sale ratio would probably be bad. As your not pitching super popular domain names you have to buy a LARGE pool of "good" domain names to stand a chance of selling some.

And finally your target market is one which might well browse your catalogue for inspiration then make their own (far cheaper) choice [this is what I would do]. So unless you nail all of the cool short domains then your unlikely to sell to anyone but those who "must have" a specific domain.

I get your idea - I dont think the economics works unless you have a fairly large initial investment to make (and have sucess predicting the domains people want).

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like plain old domain squatting. Think of it from the "customers" point of view. I think that prettypinksnowflake.com is just the domain that I could use for my project only to find you have already registered it with no intention of going anything with it but squatting on it until a buyer comes along.

So you are planning to be a domain squatter and all this talk of "value" is just so much BS. However domain squatting isn't illegal (as such) and some people seem to be making a living at it so a viable business model.

So forget the "value" you think that you are adding and start to work on the economics of domain squatting. How much will you be buying the domains for? How many of those will you sell, what is break even?

And remember that this is already a crowded market, there aren't many good, correctly spelt, English domain names just lying around and guessing which style of misspelling will become popular could be expensive. Perhaps you should look into non English language squatting?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I'm aware that it is a thin line between sqatting and my idea (maybe it is sqatting after all, thats why I asked). The difference would be, that the majority of buyers would not think of a domain name and then discover that I registered just that name. Instead they would enter the "shop" and look around for some name they like (and hadn't thought of themselves). Of course there is no way to prevent that the first thing happens (and so it would make me a de facto sqatter everytime that happens).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are you really selling -- your originality, or your monopoly on the domain name?

If you were really selling your originality, why not let people fill in a form, you do the brainstorming, and then find a domain name that suits the buyer's needs. Then you'd contribute real value.

But in the scenario you're describing you don't give people a choice to take advantage of your creativity, you force them to pay you a premium, even if they thought of the domain name themselves. That makes you a squatter.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I just tell them a free name after they filled the form, how would I get paid? If I register the domain I have an assurance that someone actually pays for the "idea".

<comment><USER3> that's the risk factor: if you then offer them to purchase the domain from you at a reasonable price then you will likely get a sale :) this is a standard marketing technique.

Buying the domains in advance (as pointed out many times over here) is an increased risk factor. I dont think you've considered this idea fully if you think that this approach is _more_ financially risk (for you) than the one you originally pitched :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> better idea: create a marketplace where people can resell their domains for $99. sort of like a fixed-price version of sedo.

<comment><USER7> I'll be one of your resellers. I have many stories to tell but often I'm creating just the domain name, no time to finish.

And it is fun to think an idea, brand it then sell it to someone _who_ is the guy to develop it.

The package would be: the story, the domain name + additionally a visual id.

<comment><USER3> THat has the added bonus of pulling the theme of the marketplace into an "ideas" market rather than a domain market (which might have slight negative connotations).

The domain name gives the idea intrinsic value and the idea adds value to the domain purchasing experience. Win win.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like your suggestion a lot. I came up with this idea because I have some domains from unstarted projects (already with corresponding ideas). So I might as well try to sell the idea along. It would be an experiment, rather then a business I guess, but lets see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Think of this - a great domain name comes into my mind, I go to checkout if its available, and I see that your service is selling it for $99, how pissed off would I be, thinking "one moron spends his 24 hrs buying all the goody domains and selling back for $99, I have to pay $89 extra for all the creative thinking I did."

I might give $500 then to mediadefender or russian botnet lenders to bring down your service as my revenge for a short while.

So, Yes you would be a dirty domain squatter. And if competitor services grow around your model, it would be worse for all of us.

Well, I am aware that this kind of work is _cheap_ so why don't you sell a good domain for $12 or $15 instead of $99, it doesn't take $89 to think of a good name does it ?

Creating a demand for something by taking it away from the reach of people is generally bad in my PoV.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think it's domain squatting, because I can see the service you're selling is coming up with a good name, something I've struggled to do myself. Not everyone will see it that way, but that's ok because some will, as long as the website emphasises the creative aspect, searching by topic, etc. It's like paying a graphics artist to make graphics for your game instead of doing them yourself as they would have done in the old days.

But your payment structure makes it difficult. As much as I can agree it's something worth paying for, I would still want to get it for free if I could. Like ErrantX I would probably be tempted to just find a name on your site that I liked and use it as inspiration for another name that is still available.

</comment><comment><USER10> How about calling yourself domainsquattr.com (still available!)?

</comment><comment><USER11> I wish good domains did coast $99--then there wouldn't be so many squatters. I don't think you're providing much value, and I do think you'd make much money at it, but I wouldn't be terribly offended if I found you had registered a domain I wanted. Having recently spent hours and hours trying to find a domain in a very competitive space, $100 sounds just fine compared to $1000's or not available at all. OTOH, I was pretty exhaustive. If you did go for domains in my field, you might not find any worth $100.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's already a service called Picky Domains at <http://www.pickydomains.com/> where you pay a deposit in exchange for suggestions for names from their contributors.

If you see a name you like, you register it yourself and the site pockets half the fee, with the other half going to the contributor.

</comment><comment><USER13> You would be just another dirty domain squatter, yes. (And as such, I would wish the universe to burn fire upon you and your distasteful little enterprise. I am not alone in this.)

I will never give a squatter a dime. If you squatted a name I thought to buy, I would just choose another name. In reality, you'd just go bankrupt before I ever heard of you, because there is no way you're gonna flip 1/10 of what you squat. That's why real squatters charge the big bucks.

</comment><comment><USER14> Suck it and see. The cost to you is pretty low financially. Buy up 10 domains, perhaps in a related field, do your magic on them and see if you can sell any ... when you sell one buy 10 more. Rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER15> ... and with that business model, you'll lose $1 on every sale. :)

<comment><USER14> godaddy says $1.99 for new .com domains, .us are 4.99, etc.. It was a rough example:

"Buy as many domains as your profit will allow until you have amassed a reasonable quantity and are selling domains quickly enough to make a business out of it" was the intention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> what makes domain picking and selling so interesting and popular? quite a few startup ideas/implementations pass through the hacker news front page, which is why i'm wondering.

<comment><USER17> Maybe because it sounds like a business that is easy to get into. I first heard this sort of idea in the late 80's.

<comment><USER14> In the 80s? Really? You heard about domain squatting back then? Why didn't you do it? You could have had sex.com, microsoft.com, sony.com, ...

<comment><USER17> We were in a different business and I thought that would be a distraction. And it just didn't seem right to me, but I am just a simple country boy.

<comment><USER14> When I first came in contact with the 'net ('94) I didn't imagine that you could just choose a domain name and register it. I imagined that you needed lots of infrastructure to host a site. I reckon anyone who knew that you could just register sex.com and had used the internet would realise that this would probably be near the top of the most visited domain names of all time.

Were domains expensive back then?

Oh, when you say "not right" do you mean not ethical?

<comment><USER17> Right, not ethical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Make up 10 domain names, buy them and sell them on ebay or various sites. If you sell more then 3, it's worth a shot.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think its Domain Squatting 2.0</comment>