.XXX Goes Live in the Root Servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.domainnamenews.com/registries/xxx-live-root-servers/9191

<comment><USER2> This will be much ado about nothing.

Despite being an industry-sponsored TLD, the industry does not want it. It doesn't help in blocking content for young children. It doesn't help adults find content they want. It accomplishes nothing but take money.

I expect it will have far less than 1/10 the registrations .co had in the first year.

<comment><USER3> 100% disagree.

I expect .xxx will be 10x as popular as .co. .co is just a cheap mispelling of .com that doesn't mean anything to average Americans. .xxx has meaning and value (parents can block the whole TLD for their kids).

Obviously, its going to be a long time (ever?) before anything touches .com. But amongst the also-rans, I think .xxx will be a hit.

<comment><USER4> Forgive me if I'm being dense, but what motive would I have to pay X dollars a year for the privilege of being easy to block?

Edit: I mean, I've heard people argue that it would help the porn sites curry favor with parents, but I really have a tough time imagining that actually turning into more money for the porn sites (though I admit that I really know nothing about the industry).

<comment><USER3> _Forgive me if I'm being dense, but what motive would I have to pay X dollars a year for the privilege of being easy to block?_

I'm sure they wouldn't.

My assumption, which could be wrong, is that many adults want to access porn websites, but don't want their kids to. For them, requiring a password to visit any .xxx site would be very user friendly.

So whether the porn industry wanted it, if the market wanted it, it would happen.

<comment><USER4> _So whether the porn industry wanted it, if the market wanted it, it would happen._

What do you mean by "if the market wanted it"? Unless people actually stopped paying for porn on non-.xxx domains, or they payed more for porn on .xxx domains, then there is no market force encouraging porn companies to change what they're already doing.

(Rant: The personification of "the market" to the point where it is capable of "wanting" things on its own initiative is a pet peeve of mine. It's not a person. It doesn't have desires. Market economics is a descriptive theory, not a theological statement.)

<comment><USER3> _Unless people actually stopped paying for porn on non-.xxx domains, or they payed more for porn on .xxx domains, then there is no market force encouraging porn companies to change what they're already doing._

Exactly. If .xxx became the de facto "porn tld", to the point that porn buyers look for .xxx sites first, then yes - the porn operators would move to .xxx.

Not saying its likely, going to happen, any of that. Just responding to your point that .xxx wouldn't work because porn companies don't want it.

Re: your rant - was this necessary? Obviously you knew what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Already blocked in India:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/xxx-domain- blocked-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/xxx-domain-blocked- india_n_841839.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Surprisingly, <http://porn.xxx> _is_ safe for work -- it's an informational page tied to <http://icmregistry.com>.

It seems like competition for porn-related domain names will be condensed into a very small space within the .xxx TLD. I'm curious to see whether the general public accepts TLDs as semantically relevant, or whether it remains about as important to the average Internet user as the protocol component of a URL.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. While you may or may not agree with the .XXX domain, it seems that we are going to be getting a lot of new domain extensions. The new gTLD process is going to allow a lot more applicants in the next year or so.

<comment><USER8> I find it amusing that sexual content is so horrific that it must be categorized and filtered. I don't see a TLD intended to 'classify-out' all of the violent racist hate websites.

It's a matter of time before corrupt MPAA style bureaucracies start to force the labeling and filtering of every piece of content out there. And god help you if your website has more than one type of content on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If .XXX does end up as the preferred domain for all adult content then that should make content filtering easy.

<comment><USER2> No it won't because there is already so much adult content on other TLDs that won't go away.

<comment><USER8> It will when you criminalize it and equate it in the public's mind with "putting Hustler magazine on the shelves of your local library's children's section".</comment></comment></comment>


Tim Cook interview with NBC's Brian Williams - <AUTHOR> http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rock-center/50112247

<comment><USER2> I read the transcript and can't believe it wasn't scripted.</comment>


Nest thermostat teardown - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/334

<comment><USER2> I currently work at an commercial HVAC optimization company and we've been eyeing the Nest pretty hard. We've built both our hardware and software so its a bit worrisome to see this, luckily they attacked residential. Our niche is controlling fast food and sit down restaurants over a ZigBee mesh network, which are a whole 'nother level of a beast. Remote temperature sensors, 25+ year old units, and don't get me started on duct work (had to deal with one of those today).

My shot in the dark guess on the optimization comes in determining what would be called 'ramp-up' time and operating a proportional–integral–derivative controller (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller>). The system uses the different sensors to determine occupancy times and then in turn determines the necessary amount of time needed to run the AC so when you'd transition from an unoccupied to an occupied state, you do so efficiently while maintaining thermal comfort(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_comfort>), which is measured with light, temperature, humidity and potentially CO2 levels (I'd have to reread the article to see what the Nest actually has).

georgieporgie asked about access to thermostat information being accessible over wifi. My second stab is that the thermostat actually reports back to the Nest servers with their unique ID, you register the stat to your account and pushing the button sends a signal to the server confirming you are in fact in possession of device. From there, the thermostat sends periodic updates and receives messages about how it should be running.

The ZigBee support will most definitely be for future/additional appliance communication and total site monitoring (energy consumption, fault detection, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> There is more going on here than just a thermostat.

-The SoC contains an (up to) 1Ghz ARM Cortex-A8

-64MB of SDRAM

-Micro NAND flash IC (can't tell the size)

-Separate Texas Instruments ZigBee SoC with a 8051 micro-controller and hardware ZigBee acceleration

-Texas Instruments 2.4ghz front end for the zigbee SoC, looks to be used as a power amp. Given that the SoC has a decent transceiver built in, they are after serious range.

This is massive overkill for what the device does today, seems more likely this devices is intended to be the "head unit" for a network of many other ZigBee devices.

</comment><comment><USER4> I really want to get one, but apparently there are issues when you don't have a C-wire. Basically a power wire from the furnace. I just finished my basement, and the house only came with 4 wire, and I didn't run 5+ wire before I finished the basement.

Marco Arment documented it here: [http://www.marco.org/2011/12/17/nest- incompatibility-without...](http://www.marco.org/2011/12/17/nest- incompatibility-without-c-wire)

Although it may just be for boilers.

<comment><USER5> It seems like it would be easy for them (or someone else) to make a module for the furnace end that buffers these pulses while supplying the 24V power through the existing wiring. Some relays and some timing logic to only close the circuit going to the furnace after a few seconds.

It isn't ideal, but it seems better than cycling a unit which might not be prepared for it unnecessarily.

<comment><USER4> That is a really good idea, plug in something down by the furnace (or use the C-wire hookup there), make it handle communication over a couple of wires, power over another, and then the box converts it back to 'legacy' wiring on the other end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I run a coworking space in Reno and as soon as I saw these, I knew that I wanted to have them installed in the space so that we can make better use of heating/cooling with people coming/going, etc.

As luck may have it, one of our members works on wireless thermostats (<http://www.radiothermostat.com/>). While they aren't as sexy looking as the Nest, they have a full REST API so you can build an app around it or just use curl. It gives us much more control but does require we roll our own app.

<comment><USER7> Sounds fun. I built a little Arduino box that sits on our steam boiler and uses a bunch of Dallas 1-wire probes to monitor when it's running (as well as inside and outside temps). I thought about connecting the thermostat input to it, too, but the problem is that while it's transmitting data, it's not that easy to get user input uplinked to it.

<comment><USER8> did you document any of this?

<comment><USER7> Not really (but the code is on bitbucket: <https://bitbucket.org/lutorm/arduino>). I've been meaning to post some pictures and stuff, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like how they continued the Apple tradition of 'Designed in <some place you will like>. Built in China'.

And I'm not even being snarky. It at least, shows that they care enough about design to mention where it's done.

</comment><comment><USER10> How do we know there isn't a tiny mic in the device and NEST isn't the Newly Elected Security Taskforce. In all seriousness, as wifi enabled devices become common, getting an unauthorized peek into someones home is going to be trivial, if it isn't already.

<comment><USER11> We have had IR cameras and laser mics for a long time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone> (if you don't know what they are)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love to have one of these as "self adjusting/learning" gadgets are well in my "gotta have" bucket. However, my family is in the house almost all the time so we don't have the typical out-of-the-house-back-at-the-same-time behavior this thing seems geared towards. I'm not sure what it could really "learn".

Too, at $250, it's almost a 2 year payback period in close to the best of circumstances; that seems a bit on the high side for me.

But it's just nifty as all hell, and I think I'd really like the ability to adjust it from anywhere; in case we forget when we leave for vacation or something, but the payback there would be long after I'm dead.

<comment><USER2> I mentioned in a little more detail in my other comment, but by learning/detecting your occupancy schedule, it can know when to turn the system on/off itself. Its as if someone was standing at your thermostat 24/7 micromanaging your temperature.

<comment><USER12> > Its as if someone was standing at your thermostat 24/7 micromanaging your > temperature.

That'd be my wife and 11 year old, and almost never towards the "save money" end of the continuum. ;-)

<comment><USER2> You'd be surprised, constantly manually changing the thermostat can have adverse effects, but with PID-based management system, you attempt to heat/cool a little past the target temperature before occupancy. From there you occasionally cool/heat when it hits a deadband of, say, 2 degrees back to the target temperature. After analyzing bills and normalizing area weather, we've been able to show 8-15% savings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would be great if hotels used these and let you decide the temperature of your room before you arrive.

<comment><USER14> Or remembered your preference between stays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Impressive teardown. They really went all out -- I was expecting more off the shelf, pre-tested modules (especially the wi-fi) but it looks like they developed a wholly new design with lots of room for growth. Including ZigBee in the thermostat means it will potentially talk directly to newer utility meters and ZigBee-enabled devices in your home. So the v1 feature set just scratches the surface of what they hope to do. Exciting!

<comment><USER3> The wifi is an off the shelf module. Its the metallic looking block to the right of the primary SoC. The metal is just an RF shield for the components underneath. If you look closely, you'll see its a separate PCB soldered to the main PCB indicating its a separately produced SiP module.

It does certainly look to be a well done design though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> and... now I want one. Nest made an excellent PR move by letting Sparkfun do a post of the teardown.

There should be more manufacturers who encourage costumers to take apart and examine their products.

<comment><USER9> Well to be fair, the Nest is really well designed, both internally and externally. I'm not sure how many companies would be comfortable with someone exposing the innards of their products and showing everyone how hacked together it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know, how well the Nest is selling so far?

<comment><USER18> Their site says they sold out of their initial production run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dead link?

<comment><USER20> All of their tutorial pages seem to be borked right now.

<comment><USER21> We've got an issue in our application routing that redirects to non-ssl for tutorials, which sometimes breaks HTTPSEverywhere. If you're using it, whitelist sparkfun.com and give it another go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _Next, the web page told me it detected a new thermostat near by. Cool! To verify it had the right one, I needed to go over to my newly installed thermostat and hit the button to confirm that my thermostat was indeed the one attempting a connection._

Er... How does that work?

The thermostat connects over wifi to their servers, the server sees that a thermostat connected from the same IP as the browser, so it offers that as a potentially owned thermostat? Is there some in-browser magic where it's probing the local network for thermostats?

If it's the former, and you're in a condo behind a shared building IP, are you offered all the Nest thermostats of your neighbors?

<comment><USER9> I'm surprised they didn't bundle a webserver into the thermostat and let you connect directly to that (or maybe they did that as well?).

<comment><USER23> I would think for security reasons, they would not do that. It would be really bad if someone hacked your thermostat to run up your power bill or try to make your home temporarily uninhabitable.

<comment><USER24> But they can hack the Nest website/your account for the same result.

<comment><USER25> It's one place Nest has to keep updated, not $BIGNUM.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Sad State of Personal Knowledgebases - <AUTHOR> http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/2015/12/14/personal-knowledgebases/ <comment><USER3> I think vendor lock-in is at least as big a problem as searching and scaling. Arguably bigger for this audience: if I have easy unfettered access to the data itself I can always try something else for search/scale.

I've tried a few and at least twice tried to write my own (and gave up due to scope creep). Right now I just have a bunch of Markdown files and a giant messy DropBox folder and an almost-as-messy set of private GitHub repos. And photos. And videos. And e-mail. And backups. (What does one do with a Zip disk these days?)

I bet a lot of people my age (mid-40's) or older have the same problem: choosing or building a system we think would work long-term, and then gathering and organizing all the "legacy" stuff (which you definitely want!) is already an enormous undertaking, and so instead we live with a bunch of ad- hoc systems that aren't in any way cross-referenced.

Nobody wants to be the sysadmin of their own junk drawer, but I for one don't want years' worth of my stuff locked into somebody's Cloud du Jour.

(Then again, I have this same problem with actual paper documents, so maybe it's just me.)

<comment><USER4> I have had very similar thoughts, but I have to wonder if it turned out to be wrong. Jerry's Brain:

[http://jerrysbrain.com/](http://jerrysbrain.com/)

Apparently started in TheBrain in 1997 and now has more than 250K "thoughts". That's breathtaking for both the longevity and the scale. I'm guessing that most mind mapping programs wouldn't handle that well.

Gathering the legacy stuff is not as important as getting started with something, I think. The legacy will make it into a new system as it's needed.

I've been using Evernote for a number of years. I don't particularly _like_ it (cumbersome UI without great navigation), but the search has worked well enough for me to find things and its ubiquity has been great.

<comment><USER4> Following up to my own point: products come and go all the time and it seems like luck that Jerry happened to pick a product that stuck around. It does seem unfortunate to have to risk your outboard brain on luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been working with own "PK" for about a year now. It's been an interesting experiment so far. My concept is based around random re-exposure to information. For whatever reason, the thought of "Let me look through my old bookmarks" never occurred to me and wasn't part of my daily workflow. So one aspect of my system is that it randomly selects bookmarks from different categories every day and shows them to me. It also has spaced repetition for facts and miscellany, or things I'm trying to learn about (like the US Presidents or Shakespeares plays), vocabulary, etc.

There were a few interesting things I've noticed by randomly viewing old bookmarks. The first is that linkrot is a very real thing and the web is decaying at a measurable rate. Second, it's amazing how limited my memory is. Half the time I don't remember something I bookmarked from years or even months ago _at all_. It's new to me, all over again. I'm going to bookmark this discussion and then completely forget it existed within a few months at most. Regularly reviewing old web pages and notes makes me feel like my mind is a sieve, as well as highlighting how my interest and thought processes have changed over the years.

I'm really interested in this topic, feel free to contact me to discuss.

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend showed me [http://gethibou.com/](http://gethibou.com/) yesterday. Basically the idea seems to be that you bookmark a page, highlight what you want to remember and they use spaced-repetition to help you remember it. It might go along well with the PK that you created yourself.

<comment><USER6> As a Workflowy user, I needed a way to do this and found it in the Colt[1] add-on for firefox. I use the following custom formats to insert tabs and newlines and it produces pretty slick bookmarks in Workflowy's bullet style for me.

Standard bookmark with optional quote via highlighting:

        %T %N %B %U %N %L %N %?[S{"%S"}]

Long form quote:

        via %U%N%L%N%N%?[S{"%S"}]

Long form quote with annotations:

        #note via %U%N%L%N%N%?[S{"%S"}]%N----%N

If I highlight your post and use the first template, it displays as:

        The Sad State of Personal Knowledgebases | Hacker News
            https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739227
            12/18/2015, 10:04:11 AM
            "A friend showed me http://gethibou.com/ yesterday. Basically the idea seems to be that you bookmark a page, highlight what you want to remember and they use spaced-repetition to help you remember it. It might go along well with the PK that you created yourself."

[1][http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt](http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/colt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Org-mode. A benevolent beast. Once one gets to learn it, it can be made to do anything. Also having a programming language shared with the runtime and other programmes for that runtime (Elisp and Emacs) is just priceless, it just lends itself to be customized in whichever way one would like. A major con for me, though, is the lack of decent iOS-Android integration.

<comment><USER8> My main problem with org-mode is the lack of good display for math notations as well as multimedia (picture/video etc). Did I miss something that I can use with it?

<comment><USER7> AFAIK it's possible to use $$ -- $$ for math notation, it exports to LaTeX/MathJax etc, and there's a setting for making it to preview within the buffer (the function is "org-latex-preview-fragment"). And there is very good latex integration, support for latex blocks etc. I do not know the details tho, I'm not a maths guy.

If you set

      #+OPTIONS: inlineimages

you'll see links to local images inline in the buffer. IDK, if video is possible, but I think no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my opinion, this is not a "problem" that can be solved. What makes something good varies a lot from one person to the next. In my case, I'd need a way to hold equations, computer code, PDF versions of papers, handwritten notes that someone else has given me, and a lot of other things. I want it stored in a Git repo. I want to view it in a browser. I want it to be convenient and I want it automated. The "answer" is a feature-filled scripting language that allows you to build a customized solution.

<comment><USER10> What about it would you want automated?

What kind of scripts would you add to your personal knowledgebase?

<comment><USER9> It's not so much what I would want automated as what I have already automated. As an example, consider how I handle notes that I leave for myself as I'm working. These are things like paragraphs to be added to a paper, ideas for a research topic, a list of things I have to do around the yard, or anything not directly related to the task at hand.

I have written a script in D (my programming language of choice). I have a web interface to all of the notes I've jotted down in the past. I can click a topic and see all notes related to that topic. I click the new note button, and it opens Emacs with the file that will hold the note. I type in a note in markdown, and as soon as I close Emacs, the note is converted to html. If I want to change it, I hit the edit button, Emacs opens up, and I make my edits. Upon closing Emacs, the html is rebuilt. Anytime I create a new note or edit an existing note, there is a commit to the Git repo.

That's what I mean by automated. I write scripts that handle everything except the content of the notes. I have written or am writing scripts for just about everything I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about Camlistore by Brad Fitzpatrick [1]:

"Camlistore is a set of open source formats, protocols, and software for modeling, storing, searching, sharing and synchronizing data in the post-PC era. Data may be files or objects, tweets or 5TB videos, and you can access it via a phone, browser or FUSE filesystem."

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

<comment><USER12> Camlistore is where I'm expecting to go. They've got some basic things modeled in their world, and the rest I'll fill in using inspiration from schema.org.

My plan is to land PDFs of research papers, web bookmarks (and archives of those pages), ebooks, book scans, textfiles/markdown documents, imports of social networks (favorites from Twitter, mostly) and scans of written notes I make to myself in Camlistore. From there, sync to devices and publish to the web as appropriate.

I don't expect that I'll ever find the time to build this all myself, so I'm hopeful that either my data will be in a format that other Camlistore apps can read, or if I get the format wrong I'll be able to write a translator to whatever the Camlistore community decides to model for that specific data type.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My saving grace at work has been the tidily wiki ([http://www.tiddlywiki.com](http://www.tiddlywiki.com)). It's the easiest place to put one-off shell command line snippets, or instructions or whatever. It's search is fast, and the formatting is nice. The only downside is I have to remember to save and copy the downloaded file to google drive every time I edit anything.

<comment><USER14> Yeah tiddlywiki is by far my preferred way of storing this type of information. Coupled with a FreeNAS box I can't really think of a better way to store this type information.

<comment><USER15> I never managed to get tiddlywiki working right - pity, because I really wanted it to work for me, but couldn't seem to get to a stage where I'd trust it to have saved something when it said it had.

This was five years ago at least, mind - I've no idea what the problem might've been, and even if it wasn't user error, I suppose it might've evaporated by now.

(note to self: try tiddlywiki again soon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a git repo with notes on all the things I'm interested in, a few larger files (some books I always reference, some images etc.).

Over time I've built up some scripts to help with general tasks, eg list TODOs etc.. It's perfectly moulded to my needs. For example, when I find a new utility I run mk_notes.sh [thing], which sets up three files:

      - links (for relevant web links)
      - thing.txt (which has basic info about it)
      - cheat_sheet.txt (which has quick useful things I want to keep)

These files suffice for the majority of cases. I used to have more, but found that was over-engineered.

I'm not sure I could buy such a thing, and if I did, I'd get irritated with some aspect of it sooner or later.

Search is easy (grep et al), git means it's available everywhere (for me).

It's literally changed my life, since I now don't 'lose' any research, and can pick up threads later and build.

<comment><USER17> That sounds a lot like the org-mode concept.

<comment><USER16> Interesting; a quick glance at the home page, and it looks like it's for planning. I'm happy using JIRA for that, where I have customized workflows. But again, this is just because I'm familiar with JIRA, not because it's necessarily the best tool.

Also, I'm a vi user :)

<comment><USER17> That's not mutually exclusive - <USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739693)

Most people use it for planning, but it's also a very nice personal wiki. The great thing is that you can define your tasks inline, if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't think he's talking about a personal knowledgebase, I think he's talking about something else we are very familiar with. Think about it, he says a PK is "any system that you use to store and retrieve general information Unlimited size... just about everything you want to save for your whole life."

That's a computer, full stop. Or, in software terms, an operating system. In storage terms, a filesystem. These high level tools are designed precisely for the tasks he outlined: Handle data of ever increasing size reliably; make it easy to navigate and search; be simple to use, convenient and fast, and structured.

Where operating systems and filesystems fall down is in searching heterogenous data in a powerful way, and that's where people turn to PKs. Evernote is/was good at searching text and even pictures of text and for tagging; "the Brain" is apparently good at cataloging structured to-do and project type data; Kumu seems to do social graphs; inforapid seems to specialize in process descriptions.

There is no reason operating systems can't get better at processing this data natively. Apple has slouched in that direction in fits and starts with projects like Spotlight and Quick Look. Microsoft once fantasized about building a filesystem from a relational database and has developed an interesting system of "search contracts" for Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I mostly agree with you. If the filesystem was better at a few things then it'd be the ideal PK. Right now though it isn't enough.

It's too slow or too inconvenient for most things you'd want in a PK. Creating files isn't fast or easy. Usually you need to open some other app to do it, even if it's just a terminal. Linking one file to another and showing the connection with metadata like the direction of the link is possible, but not easy, especially if you want multiple links to and from a file. You can sync with things like Dropbox, but search is painfully slow and viewing/editing files means opening a different app. It's just cumbersome.

The reason I like TheBrain is actually because it's good for much more than todos and project data. I have one "file" that has over 10 thousand notes in it. It's organized arbitrarily by my preference, but definitely structured, searchable and "infinitely" expandable. The best part though is that it's really easy to visualize related data in TheBrain. In fact, as I've read comments today, I've come to realize that that is the one crucial thing most PK's are missing. There aren't good visualizations for Evernote, OneNote, most filesystems, org mode, etc.

I"m with you, there's no reason the filesystem can't become the best PK, but it's far from that now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like Evernote for a lot of personal stuff, though that's one of the "worser" systems OP lists. Atlassian's Confluence does very well at being a wiki and though you're hostage perhaps to your original layout / organization, at $10/year for self-hosted it's a very good deal. It can store and index PDF, Word, Excel, etc., documents very well. I don't think it does handwriting recognition.

If I were to evolve the product category I'd use Confluence as a basis.

In fact I'd want to toy with using Confluence (+ Postgres backend) as the basis for any I.T.-related product -- write plugins for user input, generate all reports to Confluence. I'm not sure what licensing restrictions might be but Confluence provides a lot of useful UI for $10/year (structured + unstructured) for any customer, and building on top of that seems like a no- brainer. Perhaps this is what others do with Drupal and other CMS products, though ... I'm not familiar with that model.

<comment><USER20> I'm surprised to read this. Confluence is the most unpleasant "wiki" product (its lack of support for redlinks prevents me from really considering it a wiki) I have ever used. Its built-in hierarchical structure for pages is excessively intrusive and undercooked at the same time, and the search is so bad that I have had it fail to pull up pages when I typed in the literal, complete title.

Like most Atlassian products, its only apparent notable quality to me is that it integrates with other Atlassian products, as well as being a semi- functional platform on which to pile plugins and customization. It's possible that there's a good Confluence install out there, probably administered by the same people who run that really nice JIRA instance that people claim to have used once.

<comment><USER15> Confluence is... okay. I think Atlassian have successfully managed to sand down a lot of the sharp corners on older wiki-type packages that tend to act as a barrier to the non-technical types - from my perspective, that seems to mean that my non-technical colleagues can be persuaded to contribute to documents held in Confluence _markedly_ more easily than to contribute to a MediaWiki instance that we previously had.

So, while Confluence itself as a piece of software makes me grumble more often than not, I'm more than happy to trade that off against the easier sell to others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've found that using google docs works well if you frame the document title in the form of a question or statement: \- What is a JavaScript constructor? \- making rvm permanent in rvspec \- postgresql listing, creating and dropping a db

Some of the "answers" are just a single line. Then all I have to remember is either something in the title or the gist of the thing I need to know and google docs search provides me with a list of related stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> In my opinion, FreeMind is the best solution currently out there because of forces mindmapping conventions and places a strong emphasis on folding. A lot of other solutions I've seen are more like concept maps, which are great for project management, but not great for knowledge bases.

[http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page](http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

(The one thing of note is that there is a bug in the default version of OS X Java, so it frequently crashes unless you update to Java 8 and edit the config to use that version of Java.)

<comment><USER23> >A lot of other solutions I've seen are more like concept maps, which are great for project management, but not great for knowledge bases.

I've never understood this preference; would you be willing to explain it? It seems almost exactly backward to me: I model tasks as trees of sub-tasks, and knowledge as a general graph of connected concepts.

<comment><USER22> So all knowledge can be seen as connected, but all knowledge can also be put into hierarchies. Concepts and how those concepts are related is something that people come up with, rather than being an inherent property of the universe.

The idea of forcing yourself to put knowledge into hierarchies is that it makes your thinking more clear, makes it easier to remember where things are, and perhaps paradoxically makes it easier to see how things are related. (Or at least highlights certain types of relationships that are only visible in the context of hierarchies.)

I'll admit it's pretty weird at first to only get one root node, I think it took me a couple years to get used to that. But once I embraced it the benefits quickly became clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm surprised he does not mention email. This is my personal knowledgebase. It keeps boatloads of receipts and travel reservations from years ago. It is available on all my computing devices. It's Gmail so it's easy to search and I don't have to spend time sorting it. I write notes and send them to myself just so I will have them in the email. Other people are also obsessive about keeping their old email so I can't possibly be alone in this regard.

Gmail nails most of the features on his list.

<comment><USER25> I set up a filter on my Gmail that automatically tags emails from myself with "Notes". Extremely easy to add a note anywhere -- just email myself from my phone. Easy to search -- just add "in:Notes" to the criteria.

Only thing it doesn't really cover is linking between notes. Though I wonder exactly how valuable that is anyway, when you have a powerful search available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I was once a warrior on the PK front. I built a PK Chrome extension called Deeper History [http://lifehacker.com/deeper-history-searches-the- contents-o...](http://lifehacker.com/deeper-history-searches-the-contents-of- visited-pages-1502340820). It compressed and stored pages you visted in IndexDB. You could then search your history by keyword form your url bar. An example use case was trying to recall a comment of an article you liked. If you could remember a few of the words DH would pull it back up.

I stopped developing it once I realized it was a security nightmare. I built a version that encrypted the data before storing it but that ballooned the DB size and I also didn't have a user-friendly way for users to obtain a key set.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is the problem that Dropbox Paper is solving—both for teams and for personal use. I use it now to write all of my blog posts, store research about everyday life things, and keep track of things like doctors, lawyers, etc. I think it solves the problem very well.

Early on they hadn't quite nailed "findability", but with the new (more generic) folders ported from the desktop metaphor and "starred" items this is largely solved. And the search is very fast.

Not only that, but it makes it incredibly easy to share with friends and even have them comment or contribute to individual files, without having to expose everything you write. Learning curve is near-zero.

All in all, super impressed.

</comment><comment><USER28> Evernote. Free and accessible across many devices. For me it has been best of the worst. It has been my one place to store all information. Evernote serves well as a general knowledge base, but fails for storing programming snippets and ideas.

</comment><comment><USER29> Co-founder of Faqt, mentioned in the blog post. The lack of good options is what drove us to create our own solution, with our primary/religious focus being on simplicity. At the risk of self-promotion, we have been quietly beta testing with several organizations a collaborative/team version. If you'd like to try it, there's a free signup at [https://app.faqt.co/team/signup](https://app.faqt.co/team/signup)

Let me know if anyone has any question: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER30> I commented on Discus the site, as well. I've been a long time user of DEVONthink. It can be used for many purposes, including document organizer, email, GTD, tagging, etc. My favorite feature has always been the Magic Hat, which will suggest under what folders a document should be filed. I clip most interesting web pages, and it is surprisingly accurate once you have established a few documents.

[http://www.devontechnologies.com](http://www.devontechnologies.com)

<comment><USER31> I agree, it's great. I just wish DEVONthink had a better iOS client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been using nvAlt for a while. Very fast search and ease of use. Not sure how well it scales in the long run but thus far I've had no problems.

Edit to add: Some other interesting features. You can sync to Simplenote automatically, and notes can be saved as text files for easy import/export. There is some markdown support (though I see a number of bugs in the preview). The main downsides appear to be: limited color schemes, no syntax highlighting for markdown, development appears to have stalled.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use Markdown notepads like Quiver [1] and Ulysses [2] to get a "pretty view" on my existing plaintext hoard and directory structure.

This lets my data remain portable and still gives me (almost) all the niceties of proprietary formats/editors.

[1]: [http://happenapps.com/#quiver](http://happenapps.com/#quiver)

[2]: [http://ulyssesapp.com/mac/](http://ulyssesapp.com/mac/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I just came across this a few days ago on HN:

[https://youtu.be/VZQoAKJPbh8?t=2818](https://youtu.be/VZQoAKJPbh8?t=2818)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10726536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10726536)

Eve, the new "programming" tool developed by Chris Granger of Light Table fame, looks absolutely amazing for this use case. I personally can't wait to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm inclined not to see this as surprising. There are as many ways in which people conceptualise their 'offline' knowledge as there are people, and there is never going to be one size to fit all.

Org-mode is probably the closest contender, if only for its sheer flexibility - but the fact that it's wed to something (i.e. emacs) that the gen-pop would immediately recoil from is only ever going to limit its adoption to a tiny subset.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm using:

\- markdown

\- + folders (synced to my mobile)

\- + a flat-file cms to wrap it up in the browser (in my case: yellow cms, but there are a few based on markdown and I could switch any time)

Still problematic:

\- fast and easy linking

\- suggested tags (no body likes tagging manually)

\- rich media (especially as you'd ideally want a local mirror, like some research tools do it)

and the general problem:

\- text is linear

\- folders mostly hierarchic

\- information is ribosomal

\- ribosomal connections are rather associative and therefore manifold

\- manifold structures are a pain in the ass to do manually by linking and tagging

An even better google would be the solution:

\- you just dump information (+ meta data to give some more context and spare you explaining the current event surrounding the note)

\- and it will be found on demand by AI

maybe in a few years I can feed something my wiki and it will make sense of it

</comment><comment><USER36> A couple years ago, I decided to setup a MediaWiki installation, and found it works well enough for storing thoughts/ideas/things. I added another sort of 'navigation' layer that makes sense in my head, and wrote a desktop app in python to use my navigation layer instead of the links. Eventually I would like to set it up to scan for links in the various pages, download the content then add it to a job queue to be parsed into a more concise format for the wiki itself.

I don't use it nearly as much as I should... it's one of those things that's 90% what I want, and just missing the last 10%.

</comment><comment><USER37> Any reason a bunch of text files in directories wont work?

Any "advanced" text editor that can search directories should work: Notepad++,Vim,grep,... anything really.

I've been using a bunch of synced markdown files. Works for me, I just have a Markdown editor and a "grep-like" app for android. I'm not sure what you can do for iPhone though. When I've talked to people they couldn't seem to "browse for files/folders" which I thought was strange.

The one thing I'm missing is I'd like to "tag" my notes. I haven't decided how/if I'm going to do that yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the main reasons for using a personal knowledgebase is surfacing patterns in what you've saved. If there is no way of visualizing the relationship between notes/nodes outside of a flat list, pattern finding is limited to what you can remember to search for.

Basically the core problem isn't saving and searching for data, it's having great ways to structure and visualize it.

<comment><USER37> Good point, unless I know a search term it doesn't work out great.

I've been thinking of switching to some kind of wiki format, like maybe creole. Then finding an app that can understand links between files or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Amen. I currently use txt files & Tree 2 (mac app).

I've tried Quiver, Quip, & Workflowy and cannot find the perfect app to suit this space for my usage patterns. I'm almost 100% back to text files & sublime text.

<comment><USER39> The problem is really that every time something new and better comes around, it becomes a mess to port everything over, especially if it is conceptually different (e.g. tag-based or something else). Dying products also seldom give you a convenient means to export your content. So ultimately the only thing that can last for decades, be cross-platform, and not be tied to one company's product, is text files and directories. For now, throw it all on Dropbox, Github, or whatever you like. When Dropbox and Github die, the file-directory structure will be easy to port to whatever is next.

<comment><USER40> This has been my current approach for a while, after exporting everything out of Tiddlywiki when it looked like that was dying for a while (Browser support drying up, etc).

Now that it's been revived with Tiddlywiki5 and development's picked back up, I'm somewhat tempted to get back into it. Main advantage: Better crosslinking, rich content, etc. Main disadvantage: Less simple to edit, some tedium to export.

I'd love to have a Tiddlywiki-like frontend to a set of Markdown text documents backing it. (This is something that's been gnawing at the back of my mind long enough that I might have to buckle down and make it myself) Maybe Markdown + JSON for rich content data...

<comment><USER39> Where I need markup, I've been sticking to HTML or LaTeX syntax for the most part.

Partly because I hate Markdown due to its inconsistent syntax (that's my personal opinion), but also because it feels like a fad of recent years, much like a successor of the MediaWiki fad and the BBcode fad. I feel like in another 2 or 3 years someone will invent Markleft or Markright or Visual Markdown#.NET 2.0 or Dustindown that's 10 times better than Markdown, and then I'll have to switch everything over yet again.

HTML and LaTeX on the other hand, aren't dying any time soon due to their extensive deployment, and I'm confident that my syntax will be renderable for at least another 10 years or more.

<comment><USER41> i'm not sure you'd consider it better markdown (i do), but do you know about reStructuredText? it seems to even predate markdown. [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.htm...](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Anyone Remember Neonem on Windows? Well, that was really good for organising personal info in a structured way. Discussion here seems too broad: comparing Evernote (which is basically losely structured), wiki's etc to real classic outliners that once were thriving on Windows in he old days but kind of have of have been forgotten the past years. If you search for "outliner" you'll find some good all abandoned Windows projects.

</comment><comment><USER17> I, too, am an org-mode fan, but there are a few good ones missing:

\- Zim ([http://zim-wiki.org/](http://zim-wiki.org/), Open Source)

\- WikidPad ([http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/](http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/), Open Source)

\- ConnectedText ([http://www.connectedtext.com/](http://www.connectedtext.com/), Windows-only, $$$)

</comment><comment><USER43> Quiver in my iCloud is the best thing that I've found so far. One of the biggest things for me is support for code snippets /highlighting, without having to use something to convert to RTF in-between copy and paste. Sadly, I stopped using it since I now have to log in to my company iCloud and Apple accounts at work, and it's just too much of a hassle to switch back and forth. I mainly use OSX notes and Textmate now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Chris Granger's latest experiments with Eve (github.com/witheve) look surprisingly like a semi-structured personal knowledge system.

Take a look at the last 15 minutes or so of this video for a demo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZQoAKJPbh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZQoAKJPbh8)

(the whole video is interesting for the evolution of it)

</comment><comment><USER44> An automated tool for capturing and sharing knowledge will truly make the world a better place. Learning can be faster , reducing the cost of education. People across the globe can connect based on topics of interest and knowledge, yielding more economic and job opportunities.

A personal knowledge base is far more valuable than what it might seem at first glance. Very happy to see you have articulated clearly and made people realize it. A PKB has great potential for knowledge transfer within organization or even at research labs for new people to familiarize with literature. Many people want to capture their thoughts for writing a book someday, but current tools aren't good enough for this. Sadly, a person's social graph is well captured today rather than their knowledge graph.

With these thoughts, I started implementing Hyperbook - www.getbook.co few months back. Currently it is in beta and really working hard to improve it every day. We got good feedback and reviews from thought leaders in content curation and knowledge management industry. Thanks for bringing the problem for discussion. It gives me motivation that is very much a worthy problem to solve.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've gotta say that org-mode and a git repo do pretty well by me for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER46> I use Microsoft's OneNote for this. The search works amazingly well and is fast.

<comment><USER37> I've been tempted by this, but I have some reservations:

1\. Does it work under less-used OSs? Linux/BSD..?

2\. Is it a proprietary format? Will you be able to open the file in a decade? My text files will be able to be opened, I'm not sure anyone can still open their MSWorks files.

Maybe I'm crazy to worry about opening these files after a decade since using them probably isn't worth while unless you keep up with it. However, I've got files from the 90's that I've been transitioning from machine-to-machine since storage costs keeps getting cheaper.

<comment><USER17> No, and yes. It's proprietary and Windows/Android/iOS-only.

<comment><USER46> That's false, you can download documentation for the OneNote file format here

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd924743(v=office.1...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd924743\(v=office.12\).aspx)

it is only about 5% of the size of the Adobe PDF specification and I am sure there are corner cases, but it is not too bad.

<comment><USER17> I admittedly did not know that they published a specification . It's still a proprietary file format though. Proprietary does not mean "binary and undocumented", it means that it's not an open standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've been using Zim ([http://zim-wiki.org](http://zim-wiki.org)) for several years, backed up to Dropbox. It's a significant improvement over plain text files.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone have a system for managing their relationships? Kind of like CRM but on a personal level. Keeping track of people's details - like their family, their passions, their history etc.

</comment><comment><USER49> Knowledge can be captured in wikis, notes, documents, videos, audio, and even photos. Our smartphone/smartwatch/web apps allow you to access any of the knowledge using a single, easy to use interface - voice. Basically, you tag content with a voice command (e.g. "to do list" or "show me the video on how to do xyz") then, whenever you need to retrieve the knowledge, just speak the command. Voice commands can be shared and the apps are all free.

[https://youtube.com/treycent/search?query=notes](https://youtube.com/treycent/search?query=notes)

</comment><comment><USER50> I used to use Delicious but that didn't solve the "search the content of my bookmarks" problem for me.

I've been using Pocket for now and it seems to work fine.

</comment><comment><USER51> imho the best one ever made is called getguru.com. It's brilliant actually but the team there has priced themselves out of the market charging $7/head as a b2b app because they're from and enterprise sales background and therefor don't realize guru's monster potential in consumer-web. They're happy taking the low hanging fruit $$ from call-centers.

 _sigh_

</comment><comment><USER52> I like trunknotes ([http://www.trunknotes.com/](http://www.trunknotes.com/))

</comment><comment><USER53> Confluence for the simple win

</comment><comment><USER54> OneNote?

<comment><USER55> I've become a big fan. With the OneNote clipper extension for Chrome, it's how I bookmark everything I might want to read later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> several instances of PmWiki + Vimperator, being using that for nearly 10 years and thousands of edits so far</comment>


A Dandy Goes to War - <AUTHOR> https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/a-dandy-goes-to-war/ <comment><USER2> I find Jünger a fascinating person. A WW1 stormtrooper and militarist who later wrote prescient sci-fi and took LSD with Albert Hoffman.

In the documentary "102 years in the heart of Europe"[0] Jünger was asked what he thought of computers. He said they were uninteresting, and compared them unfavourably to "intoxicants" by which he meant psychedelic drugs.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ju5HFoD20U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ju5HFoD20U)</comment>


Easter Island's society might not have collapsed - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-08-easter-island-society-collapsed.html <comment><USER2> > "For everyone to be using one type of stone, I believe they had to > collaborate. That's why they were so successful—they were working together."

> To Simpson, this level of large-scale cooperation contradicts the popular > narrative that Easter Island's inhabitants ran out of resources and warred > themselves into extinction.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't really indicate that the society did _not_ eventually war themselves away. They could have gotten along for a while, until forests/resources ran out, then fought.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought it was European explorers who caused the most damage to the population of Easter island? At least that was the opinion of the David Attenborough documentary I watched on it.

<comment><USER4> I have heard two versions of Easter Island history.

Version 1, in books like _Collapse_ by Jared Diamond, is one of a highly functioning cooperative society that suffered an ecological collapse, that destroyed the society. In this version, at the time that the stones were created, there was cooperation. At the time that they were toppled and population collapsed, cooperation had disappeared due to starvation. The cause of the collapse was a combination of deforestation (some caused by people, some by rats) taking away fishing, wiping out the nesting sea bird population, and then soil erosion ruining agriculture.

Version 2, which can be found in places like [http://theconversation.com/the- truth-about-easter-island-a-s...](http://theconversation.com/the-truth-about- easter-island-a-sustainable-society-has-been-falsely-blamed-for-its-own- demise-85563) instead says that a sustainable society got exposed to disease, attacked by slavers, and collapsed under external pressure.

It sounds like the Attenborough documentary took the second view.

I have no evidence which version is more likely to be correct. I will submit that which version seems more plausible to you will generally be some combination of which you heard first, which aligns with your political beliefs, and which experts you trust most. The actual truth is a question for anthropologists and I'm not qualified to comment on it.

<comment><USER5> This article seems to be consistent with either theory, correct?

<comment><USER4> Yes, the actual evidence presented in the article is consistent with both theories. However the lead author gives quotes supporting version 2 over version 1. The title we have is drawn from the direction of the lead author's comments.

Another author of the paper is quoted saying that the results should be interpreted with care, evidence of cooperation is not necessarily evidence of _voluntary_ cooperation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


E-commerce trends of Summer 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://angage.net/blog/trends <comment><USER2> This is a very poor article that contains next to nothing of any substance.

It starts off by announcing the top 6 summer ecommerce events, then goes on to refer to just 3 (all of which are no brainers - is there anybody unaware of the back to school season?!).

It then makes a load of claims about trending products with no evidence to back this up other than paywalled links to their service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Luke,

I'm sorry you didn't like the article.

Our software has a technology that analyses trends and in fact, you can see on [https://angage.net/trends](https://angage.net/trends) how the items we suggested are still trendy (this is backed up by Google Trends and sales we track with the software).

I know for someone living in the US some events we mentioned can be no brainers. A lot of our readers are based in the EU or even Asia but are selling to the US, so we thought it was worth mentioning them.

Thanks for your feedback! Mike</comment></comment>


Google proposes Android revenue for Oracle - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-idUSBRE82R0XY20120328

<comment><USER2> Unless this is 1 cent per phone they are talking about, it's a stupid idea. Last I gathered, the damages went down to under $100 million. If I were them I'd rather just pay that much if I lost the trial, than to pay them for the entire life of Android.

<comment><USER3> "Google proposed paying Oracle 0.5 percent of Android revenue on one patent until it expires this December and 0.015 percent on a second patent until it expires in April 2018."

It's only for six more years and 0.015% could very well be much less than $100M. In fact, it might be less than Oracle's legal fees.</comment></comment>


You can re-register deleted Outlook accounts without security checks - <AUTHOR> ...and then use them to recover bank details/accounts.
In 2014 I migrated away from Microsoft products. I moved all but a few disused accounts over from my Outlook address to a new Tutanota email address and then deleted the account through Outlook's settings.
Because last week I fancied playing games on my old Steam library, I tried to recover my old Outlook email so Steam could send a password reset link (as I never migrated Steam to Tutanota). I tried to recover the email but could not as in Outlook's database it didn't exist.
Out of curiosity for what would happen, I tried to register my old email address from scratch. It worked without having to verify any old passwords or security questions. All my old emails were gone but this did enable me to receive Steam's password reset email.
This seemed like very poor security practices on the part of Outlook and I wanted to see how far I could push it, so next I tried to recover my Paypal account.
As soon after migrating my Paypal account to my Tutanota address I had to create an entirely new account for business purposes, my old account fell into disuse. I sent an email to Paypal customer support stating that my login no longer worked and that I feared my account had been compromised. As no transactions had been made since I changed the email account on file with Paypal, customer support were able to bypass all fraud proceedings and simply revert my account email to my old Outlook address and send me a reset link (as obviously I was the account owner as I had access to the original email address). My Paypal account still had my active card linked.
Put simply, I recovered access to the entirety of my bank account by registering an email address anyone could've registered.
This could be exploited en mass quite easily by brute-forcing a list of Outlook accounts until you get lucky.
Microsoft won't respond so making this public. <comment><USER2> As often happens, I don't see the "scandal".

How does it work in the "real world"?

You get a P.O. Box.

You leave that address, the Post Office re-rents it to someone else.

I would guess that should be your care to make all people that know that address to not send anything to it and/or change all references to it.

By the same token it is your responsibility to change all your current subscriptions/whatever updating the e-mail address to a new, valid one, the sheer moment you delete the "old" account.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this. What exactly do people think should happen to an abandoned email address? That it gets put on some permanent blacklist because of 'future security issues'?

At the end of the day, it's like everything from addresses to phone numbers and domain names. Once you stop using them, they return back to the pool of available options for someone else to use instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052586/microsoft-is- quietly-...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052586/microsoft-is-quietly- recycling-outlook-email-accounts.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> You knew a lot of insider info about yourself. Brute forcing registration of outlook accounts in no way guarantees they will be connected to a pay pal account etc.

I imagine there are easier ways to extract money from people. There are too many unknown unknowns here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Same goes for a lot of services I've found .. but it doesn't seem to be talked about much.

The fact it happens for a service as massive as Outlook is unforgiveable though.</comment>


What the Hacking at Yahoo Means for Verizon - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/24/technology/yahoo-hack-verizon.html <comment><USER2> It's a contentious question</comment>


Don't let the italian gov trash this world heritage site - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/protect-hadrians-villa/

<comment><AUTHOR> More links about the site <http://romanculture.org/> <http://www.villa- adriana.net/> <http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/907>

</comment><comment><USER2> One only has to walk down Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome (a 6 lane boulevard right through Ancient Rome) to understand to what extent Italian Governments (in that case, Mussolini) are willing to pave over their rich heritage in the name of progress.

It's a little understandable even, given that any big construction project in Rome is held up by years every time a ruin is uncovered, so that archeologists can study it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. This is important. How can anyone in his right mind think about putting a 400-acre garbage dump right next to a World Heritage Site. Hadrian's Villa is one of the greatest archaeological treasures in the world!

</comment><comment><USER3> I read the petition. There are many important scholars from all over the world who've signed it. Italy would have to be crazy to ignore such influential folks....</comment>


Exposing Docker containers via NGINX - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fabiofumarola/docker-nginxify <comment><AUTHOR> Any feedbacks?

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting, but takes some time to grasp. Some personal experience: posting on weekends and when it's late in US almost guarantees that your post won't get noticed.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the suggestion, really appreciate</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Toffeeshare, peer to peer file sharing using the browser - <AUTHOR> https://toffeeshare.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> We have recently launched our new version of Toffeeshare. Peer to Peer file sharing in your browser with QR codes to send something to or receive something from your smart-phone.

We also launched this on Product Hunt: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/toffeeshare-2](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/toffeeshare-2)

Any feedback is welcome!</comment>


Ask HN: What's a programming technique you felt you should've learned sooner? - <AUTHOR>

I've JUST learned about SOLID OOP a couple of months ago. I always had "feelings" about code that broke these principles, but never had a way to explain it. Now, I have something concrete to use when I discuss somewhat unclean code with others. <comment><USER2> I should have learned to write tests a long time ago.

I'm not necessarily a fan of full-on TDD, but I would have been better off on some previous projects if I had written tests that provided at least partial coverage.

</comment><comment><USER3> Talking a short walk when stuck on a problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> The power of debuggers.</comment>


Ask HN: How much corruption do you let slide at a startup? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in a bind here and looking for advice.  I lead engineering at a startup that had one of its employees impersonate a high level exec at a Fortune 50 company in order to give a good recommendation when we had no legit ones to give.<p>What is the recommended way to deal with such a situation? <comment><AUTHOR> Obviously I should leave a morally bankrupt company, but I'm pissed off that one bad decision by management ruins 3.5 years of blood, sweat, and tears that I've poured into the company. Is there any legal avenues I should pursue or just wash my hands of it and part ways?

<comment><USER2> I've posted about my situation before, but the same general topic keeps coming up.... I was hired to build a website and somehow it turned into a B2B startup after 4 years - and I alone was 95% of the staff. "Cash flow problems" I was told, "can't hire anyone else right now"...

When the CEO was caught blatantly lying to a customer to make a sale, it became clear about the totality of the situation - he's a full blown sociopath, I just hadn't put it all together, but kept picking up clues. Then the guy who introduced me to him finally told me about how this CEO deliberately got fired from Goodyear in France back in the 80s, when such a thing was impossible (France's unemployment laws and all), he then moved to England and defrauded the French government of unemployment insurance for over a year. The amount of risk taking there...! Like I said, Patrick Bateman from American Psycho isn't much of an exaggeration of this guy's behavioral patterns and character. I'm serious... Then I realized how I'd been manipulated for 4 years.

I was so fried after all the stress I didn't think through things enough and I quit, after some months of hassle dealing with his wife over getting paid for the outstanding invoices. She was Marie Antoinette Macbeth... 4 years of my life down the drain.

I'm in a bit of a pickle now as I'm still burnt out, and am finding it hard to get interviews or survive them. I'm too old to get some worker bee job in a tech company now, I fear, and I can't stand IT at some level. This is one hell of a mid life crisis...

But my conscience is clear. The rational thing to do would have been to keep working there and overcharge them on the hourly rate, which I could have without any trouble (given I was 90% of the It staff with no supervision). But then I'd be playing their game... But I could have spent my time mostly looking for another job. But the stress and everything else... I'd be waking up every morning pissed as hell. Not a good thing. I sort of wish I had now, but it's because things are getting dicey for me on a personal level. I have the resources to stay afloat for another year, so I'm shouldn't complain but I hate burning savings.

So my advice is think this through first and decide how to find another job or what you will do before quitting. I was too impulsive. I can relate to the 'blood, sweat and tears" too since I realized the founders were lazy people who let me do all the work and didn't give a damn about anything but money (this was a 4 person company, and I the only one w/o equity). but you have to let it go - if you don't have any equity, and the people you deal with have no ethics, you will get screwed every which way, even for the sheer fun of it possibly. What's to stop them from manipulating you? People like this do not have any internal brakes on what they will do or rationalize away. How do you know this is the only morally bankrupt decision they have made?

To actually answer your question, how have you been legally impacted by their actions? I'm not sure you could make a case. If you have equity, then figure out how to extract yourself without triggering their alarm bells that you're leaving because you know they are bastards. If you don't have any sort of financial stake in the company (like I did) and can't claim damages (e.g. I was paid for my time, just constantly late), then walk away. I couldn't make a case that I had any claim to equity or etc. The law does not care about philosophical stuff like ethical treatment of employees or contractors unless the situation is very clear cut, like sexual harassment. Manipulation of people is entirely legal. So if there is no money involved, or broken contracts, you don't have any legal avenues.

I do wish I had thought things through and been better able to reveal to the customer who got screwed about the situation - I ended up saving the contract by writing the system to generate the data they thought they'd paid for, but I was in a bind - either not do that and have the customer sue the company (and never get my invoices paid) or do this and get my invoices paid and then quit. Do you feel any sense of responsibility or guilt about what was done? You shouldn't. I did, now that I realize this, and that drove my actions (unconsciously). I would do so many things differently now...

so perhaps you can inform the person who was impersonated somehow? Then your sense of duty to do something has been dealt with and the people directly affected can decide what to do.

<comment><USER2> Edit: reading this a few hours later, obviously I need to spend some of the money I did make going to therapy. My anal retentive analytical powers, honed over years of programming, are getting in the way. Figure out how to let go and walk away without going down a rabbit hole...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Assuming this is "an employee" and not CEO or someone you report to, use your corporate structure in its intended fashion- draft a memorandum to the CEO, who is typically the sort of person who has to make these decisions, don't spend all day drafting it, and get back to work.

According to what you've written, you lead engineering. Unless you're somehow complicit in the deception, you're blameless as long as you pass that information on, because engineering doesn't involve recommendations.

I would imagine most CEO's would quietly correct/retract the recommendation, and take up (or not) the issue with the employee. There's your fix right there. If they fail to, that says more about their leadership than a rogue employee does, and either way, probably time to start looking for a move up to somewhere else. 3-4 years is the longest you should be working somewhere without substantial financial reason to stay. The cachet of a long time in a position saturates out at about 3-4 and unless you plan to retire in this position, you'll be in a weaker negotiating position with 5, 10, or 20 years in the same job.

</comment><comment><USER4> A resignation is one option. If the act was carried out with approval of the share holders and/or investors (though I doubt any decent investor would condone such behavior) then you have two options:

\- depending on the severity of the action, this is identity theft and punishable by law. If you have indicting proof, report it

\- if it poses harm to your career in anyway, think of your family and usually the safest route is to resign

If it was carried out without approval, report the employee.

But by all means, _don 't turn a blind eye at it_ unless you really have to.

There is a funny thing about corruption, it's the same every where. Nothing would be special or particularly harmless about it be it in a startup or a larger organization.

Best of luck

</comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes smart people do dumb things.

Tell management how you feel about the dishonesty.

Perhaps they could come clean to the potential client, and/or figure out how to make sure something like this never happens again.

Depending on the structure of the company (it sounds like you might be in a small company) it probably is time for some people to go, or at least take some time off and figure out their moral compasses.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get rid of him right away is how I'd handle it. You're on a very slippery slope that doesn't just lead to failure it leads to jail time.

</comment><comment><USER7> How much of this is "building an audience" For example Paypal pretending to be legitimate buyers and purchasing eBay goods but only via paypal? Or reddit posting stories and comments under sock puppet accounts?

If this was a clear impersonation of a specific individual then it is a serious fraud (presumably the company expects financial gain). If it is "These guys are amazing - A Fortune 50 CTO" then half of Hollywood does it every day.

I think that morally overdrawn is the natural state of much of the business world - morally bankrupt is rarer.

So for some actual advice - if it was a crime, report it and leave. If you cannot stomach the ethics even if it is not criminal, then prepare a good resignation letter and leave - but I would counsel that in doing so you are setting a tremendously high bar for your future behaviour - which is a good thing but it has implications. I would suggest making a public note on your leaving and reasons maybe on your blog. no point in being ethical if no one notices.

but lastly I would look inside yourself - are there any other reasons why the last three and a half years have upset you? What decisions did you not agree with - what relationships have gone sour? Is this all plain sailing then one horrible fraud? if so it seems out of character for the company? if not then what things have lead to this - for example this sort of behaviour is usually seen under real stress, so why did the company end up not getting the sales last year, what shortcuts in engineering have lead to a lower product, what lack of marketing ab tests lead to lack of a sales pipeline?

This maybe the right wake up call the company needs to turn around - do you want that? Or do you think this is not a wake up call but the last straw?

I am rambling on but I have found many ethical decisions rarely come out of simplicity and rarely have simple resolutions.

good luck

<comment><USER8> > no point in being ethical if no one notices.

No meaning to ethics if this is your philosophy.

<comment><USER9> > No meaning to ethics if this is your philosophy.

What's the basis for the belief (you seem to hold) that it's more ethical to silently tolerate unethical practices instead of outing them publicly?

<comment><USER10> I don't think the GP is saying that; I think the GP is saying that to be ethical you do something that is right regardless of if you get credit for it.

And in practice, publicly stating that you turned in your company for something (even if morally right) can hurt you when you apply to other companies since if they learn of it they are likely wondering if you would accuse them of something if you worked there.

<comment><USER11> This is ethical and that is not ethical doesn't exist as discussion: "ethics does not provide rules like morals but it can be used as a means to determine moral values"

The way it should be stated it's against my moral values. Not everyone's moral values are aligned. Thus rendering this discussion unusable for me as I don't know against what moral value we are judging these actions.

<comment><USER9> Ethical has exactly the same meaning as moral outside of specific contexts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Leave.</comment>


Show HN: Sqlkit – Golang SQL package with nested transactions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colinjfw/sqlkit <comment><USER2> Another nice Go(lang) package for database access that doesn't get in your way when you want to drop down to pure SQL is db [0] by upper.io.

      [0] https://upper.io/db.v3

<comment><USER3> For me it doesn't get more seamless than github.com/jmoiron/sqlx

No frills, just a little reflection to tie struct fields <=> SQL params.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >nullable types are converted into their default value in golang

This just seems...wrong. Why would the column be nullable if you don't actually care if it's NULL?

<comment><USER5> In my experience most of the time a field is nullable it's by accident. Some RDBMS and/or SQL "IDEs" default to allowing null too, which doesn't help matters. Personally I think NULL shouldn't be supported unless the developer categorically sets a "yes, I actually do want this archaic option enabled" flag in their DB backend.

Edit: getting a lot of heat for this comment from people misunderstanding it. I'm not saying "null" shouldn't exist, just that it shouldn't be the default. Side point: most of the time people think they need null they don't.

<comment><USER6> I agree that NOT NULL should be the default for columns, unfortunately that ship has sailed.

Assuming that the nullable foreign key problem could be solved, I think that NULL is valuable enough (and not that rare) that it ought to be the database owner's choice whether to allow them or not, as opposed to the superuser (not sure which way you're suggesting).

<comment><USER5> > _I agree that NOT NULL should be the default for columns, unfortunately that > ship has sailed._

Not really. Defaults change all the time. I'm not asking for a feature to be removed after all.

I don't deny the change in any specific RDBMS would have to be carefully considered but I've worked on a lot harder projects to make transitions in default behaviours than this would be so it's certainly doable if the momentum was there. However I doubt enough people care enough (if this thread is anything to go by).

> _Assuming that the nullable foreign key problem could be solved_

Offhand I can think of a few ways to solve that but I also think it's one of the instances where NULL makes the most sense

> _I think that NULL is valuable enough (and not that rare) that it ought to > be the database owner 's choice whether to allow them or not, as opposed to > the superuser (not sure which way you're suggesting)._

I completely agree the DBA should still have the power to enable it. My point was just that columns shouldn't default to being nullable during a CREATE.

To be honest, this could just as easily be "fixed" in graphical database management tools. That would at least enable seasoned DBAs to utilise NULL while preventing others from some of the pitfalls that nullable fields can introduce in some languages. However I still stand by my point that it's not really a sane default for the way most people architect databases these days (or even "should" be architecting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two small issues and one question:

\- the link to GoDoc is not working yet: [https://godoc.org/github.com/colinjfw/sqlkit](https://godoc.org/github.com/colinjfw/sqlkit)

\- Typo in the README: Unmarsal instead of Unmarshal

Without going through everything in detail, why would I pick this over the very popular sqlx? [https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx](https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for finding the typos!

Short answer: It's sqlx + a query builder + some extras around transaction management.</comment></comment>


Why you should Not use MongoDB for your app? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudboost.io/why-you-should-not-use-only-mongodb/

<comment><USER2> other that joins what can be the place where mongodb does not work properly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Transactions :)</comment></comment>


Why is 80 characters the 'standard' limit for code width? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/148677/why-is-80-characters-the-standard-limit-for-code-width <comment><USER2> It's funny to start seeing more and more questions from people who started using computers with Windows 95.

Actually, not it's not, little punks making me feel old, get off my lawn.

<comment><USER3> Asker of the question here, you are indeed spot on, Windows 95 was the first OS I used!

The train of reasoning here reminds me of another story (which I think has been on HN before): Why is a space shuttle engine 4' 8.5" wide?

[http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html](http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html)

<comment><USER4> Snopes suggests that story is a little inaccurate: [http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp](http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related is the question of why newspapers arrange their text in columns. According to another stackexchange thread†, studies as far back as the 1880s indicated that the optimal width for reading prose is 3.5 to 4 inches.

Of course, code isn't prose, but I'm still a fanatic about the 80-character limit. To assist with keeping lines of code short and sweet, I will often introduce aptly-named temporary variables and let the compiler sort out what's actually to happen.

I can easily fit four 80x84 windows on my external monitor (DejaVuSansMono 13 pt).

†[http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/3553/why- do...](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/3553/why-do- newspapers-use-multiple-columns)

</comment><comment><USER6> While the initial reason may be historical, I've found that on smaller monitors 80 character width makes it just about wide enough to have two code windows side-by-side. That's why I usually tend to stick to that limit. Though on bigger monitors I often stick to 100.

<comment><USER7> 80 or 100 is both fine, but I prefer 80. Shorter lines are simply easier to read.

It just like reading a text online. Most people would prefer shorter lines, compared to one extremely long one. It's simply easier to keep track of where you are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Java programmers have variables longer than 80 characters now a days.

<comment><USER9> As a primarily Java programmer, those folks need to be drawn and quartered.

<comment><USER10> Don't go near Cocoa (/Touch) developers. You will be overtaken by rage.

<comment><USER8> I dabbled in this when I wrote an iOS game for fun. It was pretty surprising how quickly variable names got out of hand. Random iOS class name: AVPlayerItemLegibleOutputPushDelegate[0]. Then you try and make instances of it and you obviously don't want to prefix the class name with something or risk growing the name even more. And god forbid you try and extend the class and then make an instance of that using prefixes to indicate more specific objects.

0 - [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/AVFoun...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/AVFoundation/Reference/AVPlayerItemLegibleOutputPushDelegate_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013512)

<comment><USER10> I've heard stories about one year at WWDC's Stump the Experts, they discussed the longest method name in ObjC land. I wish I had been there. I also wish I was going to be there tomorrow, but alas, the marketers and bosses have taken over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 80 characters is also comfortably within the limits for presenting code in most books, except for pocket reference sized books. The actual limits for most books are about 85 characters, so that leaves some leeway.

Even if I have the screen real estate, I don't think I'd want to intentionally write wide code, and I like self-explanatory names. On a 4k screen I might like Eclipse layouts that put the logging next to the code, rather than have very wide code.

Has anyone created examples of code that gains readability from being wider?

<comment><USER12> 60 to 90 characters per column is widely used in typesetting for good readability. It's probably not a good idea to go very far beyond 80 characters or so purely for readability, no matter the context.

<comment><USER13> Well context matters, especially if your language has you starting with at least two or three tabs for most of your code:

      package Foo {
          class Bar {
              void baz() {
                  // Most code is nested *at least* this deep.
              }
          }
      }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IME, there is a very strong correlation between good developers and short lines. Bad devs doesn't mind if some lines are 150+ chars long and require horizontal scrolling. They also don't care that much about consistent naming of symbols or having correctly indented code. There are very strong reasons for keeping your lines short, naming consistent and indentation in check. But at the end of the day, you either "get" it or you don't.

<comment><USER15> For me those things are almost like a book cover. If I open a file and I see freakishly long lines I just _assume_ that the content will be not well crafted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Back in the day, I used punch cards in college computer courses. Languages like FORTRAN, COBOL, and assembler were column dependent, e.g.

Col. 1 : Blank, or a "C" or "*" for comments Col. 1-5 : Statement label (optional) Col. 6 : Continuation of previous line (optional) Col. 7-72 : Statements Col. 73-80: Sequence number (optional, rarely used today)

With the sequence numbers if you dropped the deck and scrambled the cards, feed the pile through a card sorter machine to put them back in order. If you didn't bother with sequence numbers, another technique was to use a magic marker to draw patterns on the side of the deck to help with resorting it if you dropped it.

<comment><USER17> I never bothered with sequence numbers. Boy was it a joy to put your card deck in the reader and wait at the self serve printer, and have your program compile, run, and produce the correct output the very first time !

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I personally don't like such limit. It's a relic of the old hardware. There is no need to follow it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Old computers (Spectrum, MSX) had 40x25 = 1000 character screens, because memory was scarce, and 1000 is a nice, round number.

From there, they upgraded to 80x25 (doubling the resolution!). Two things happened to make it possible: 1) memory got a bit bigger 2) computers started shipping with dedicated higher-quality monitors (e.g. MSX-2) instead of being hooked up to TVs, so it was actually possible to read 80 characters on a line, even though you had to squint a little.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just confirming that 80 characters is an idiotic and arbitrary "standard", propagated by nothing much more than cargo-culting

"Oh but it fits my screen, fits two-by-two on my screen" change font size, unless you're using the native 80x25 PC display (some kernel developers use that)

I can't imagine a worse use of developer time than making everything fit exactly inside 80 columns

Of course, not having a limit is bad as well, but the main issue is having a hard limit

<comment><USER21> I think the rationalizations devs use to defend their arbitrary choices are fascinating. Readability? My dead-tree Wall Street Journal uses 30 character width columns. NYTimes online is about 70 chars. New Yorker about 80. Textbooks, paperbacks, magazines, newsletters... all have different char widths. Yet I've never suffered an aneurism reading any of these things. The fact that it doesn't matter much would be sacrilege to most devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Terminals were commonly 80 characters wide, which doesn't explain _anything_. Why were terminals commonly 80 characters wide? Perhaps terminals were commonly 80 characters wide because punch cards were commonly 80 characters wide, which doesn't explain _anything_.

Eighty characters is the "standard" limit for code width because eighty characters is the "standard" limit for code width.

<comment><USER23> It doesn't explain _everything_ , but it does explain quite a bit -- notably it traces the history of the standard back to punchcards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sure, the number 80 may be rooted in a very old design decision, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily bad or suboptimal because of that.

More isn't better in this case. When text gets too wide, it becomes harder to move your gaze from end of one line to beginning of another.

Also, the best number is probably not a hard limit, but a guideline/average to aim for.

</comment><comment><USER25> Amusingly, I dismissed the original Apple Mac when it came out, because it couldn't display 80 columns of readable text.

</comment><comment><USER26> 120 col 4 space tw real tabs ftw! unfortunately thats sort of flamebait.

</comment><comment><USER13> The most popular text mode on older computers was 80 chars wide. That's really it. No other reason.

I use 120, plenty of space to fit two code windows side by side and one file browser.

With HD screens and the verbose languages we use these days (and verbosity is not always bad), it's a bit silly to try to stick to 80 char cols.

<comment><USER27> So how much of your code goes past 80 chars? What part of it is taking up the most space?

Feel free to add any other details, like the kind of programming you do, what language, etc.

<comment><USER28> Obj-C / Cocoa uses very long variable names. Someone mentioned this in a post above with a link for example. It's very hard to stick to < 80.

                leftWall.physicsBody = [SKPhysicsBody bodyWithRectangleOfSize:CGSizeMake(100, wallHeight)];

close to 100 characters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The reasons why terminals are 80-character wide are well known and well documented all over the web. What's sad, is that newbies still have to ask on stackexchange or Hacker News about it, not knowing how to use a search engine. What are pupils taught in schools nowadays????</comment>


Daniel J. Bernstein dissects and disputes epidemiology paper modeling - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hashbreaker/status/1244374099423453184 <comment><USER2> I have talked with scientists about the risks of bugs in dodgy software written by inexperienced grad students, or themselves. They have uniformly considered it entirely a non-problem. Their reasoning was that either the results would be replicated (good!) or wouldn't be (fine!). Either way, nothing to waste time worrying or doing anything about.

It did not lead me toward confidence in the reported analytical results of experiments.</comment>


Please review my DropZap game for the iPhone.  Sort of like Drop7/Tetris. - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dropzap/id338490375?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> It's free for a limited time.

Instructions: <http://www.dropzap.com>

Demo Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ub6gCU03iE>

</comment><comment><USER2> I wouldn't want to cramp your style, but when I first saw Tetris at an arcade in the 1980's, I understood the goal and how he game was played in 20 seconds. Watching a video of your game... not really.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instructions: <http://www.dropzap.com>

The concept is very simple.</comment></comment>


Fuzzy Logic in Agent-Based Game Design [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://web.northeastern.edu/magy/courses/AI/FuzzyLogicGames.pdf <comment><USER2> I wish agent-based programming was more popular today. It's an extremely powerful way of thinking about complex problems and distributed solutions. And it has much more actual theory behind it than things like SOA (which is mostly a re-branding of good OOP practices with a lot of buzzwords added in).

<comment><USER3> What specific domains or applications do you think ABP superior in?

<comment><USER2> Complex system simulations (look up Net Logo). Distributed, fault-tolerant data processing systems. The latter is harder to back up, because all real- life "agent" systems I've worked with are rough approximations of "agents" made with commonplace technologies and don't use the concept to its fullest extent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This paper is from 2004. What is the current state of BDI modeling libraries?

<comment><USER5> Jason seems like the most stable of available implementations, still actively maintained and well documented: [https://github.com/jason- lang/jason](https://github.com/jason-lang/jason)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do any Lisp beginners want to collaborate on a simple project to learn? - <AUTHOR> I recently decided that I wanted to take my CS skills to the next level, and learning LISP(Scheme/Clojure/etc.) was going to be a part of that process.
I am fairly capable with code in general(did a lot in undergrad, and now work with C# professionally), but really just beginning with Scheme(bought SICP), and Clojure and I want to continue by making something cool, simple and open-source.
I really just want to gauge interest among people in a similar stage of learning, so we can possibly come together to write something simple, yet meaningful enough to motivate us. I'm open to really any major LISP, although it seems that Scheme and Clojure offer a nice community to work with.
If you are interested message me on Keybase at j3elam, or twitter at elamje. Or comment of course:) <comment><AUTHOR> This comment is just a note: A cool application that could be a good learning project and meaningful for HN could be something like a dead link notifier. The application could give you updates about if one of your HN posts links is now broken. About 5-10% of the older links I find on HN are no longer working, so it seems useful and could be useful outside of HN.

<comment><USER2> That's a neat idea. I'm not interested in this, but I found Racket to work quite nicely for making an HTML scraping library/framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

I am interested. I am an ok programmer - most of the work that I do is in Python and PowerShell. My exposure to Lisp is strictly limited to elisp and I am not very good at it (not the Dunning-Kruger not good, actually not good). However, I am willing to learn and can pick things up quickly.

What do you have in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, 2 other guys and I just started with the dead link notifier recently. Send me a message on twitter or Keybase and I'll send you more info

<comment><USER3> Hi. Do you have a github/gitlab repo set up for the notifier project?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:can you name me successful solo (one man) startup? - <AUTHOR>

can you please give me example of one man start up that has succeed ? <comment><USER2> Richard Branson seems to be doing OK.

</comment><comment><USER3> plenty of fish, I think he makes $10 million a year or so.

<comment><USER3> For your reading pleasure: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the- money-comes-rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes- rolling-in.html)

"Today, according to the research firm Hitwise, his creation is the largest dating website in the U.S. and quite possibly the world. Its traffic is four times that of the dating pioneer Match, which has annual revenue of $350 million and a staff that numbers in the hundreds. Until 2007, Frind had a staff of exactly zero."

I think you can call that successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Balsamiq

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=262258>

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah i was reading his blog ,great example

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> By one man, do you mean started by one man or started and still run by one man?

<comment><AUTHOR> also yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ebay - Pierre Omidyar, Amazon - Jeff Bezos

</comment><comment><USER7> Mint</comment>