Apps for Bicycle Directions - <AUTHOR> https://jakecoppinger.blog/articles/the-best-apps-for-bicycle-directions-2020/ <comment><USER2> For the most part, city riding is pretty well served by Google maps IMO.

A few years ago, following Google maps cycling directions me and a couple of friends on road bikes were led through muddy forest trails, old rail road tracks and green lanes on a London -> Paris <24hr attempt (we took 26hrs).

The difficulty with cycling directions is that there's not a 1 size fits all solution, a roadie needs smooth road but would prefer it quiet and scenic, a mountain biker would rather those trails we found and a commuter/hybrid would be fine on those in short bursts but probably prefer the speeds of the roads.

If I'm doing something of an "epic" route these days I'll spend a bit of time trying to find a suitable GPX that I can sync to my watch for directions - usually that'll come from Movescount, OS maps, Garmin or just someone's blog of a route. For most other things, Google maps works fine.

<comment><USER3> > A few years ago, following Google maps cycling directions me and a couple of > friends on road bikes were led through muddy forest trails, old rail road > tracks and green lanes on a London -> Paris <24hr attempt (we took 26hrs).

Yep. It's clear that Google Maps optimises for city riding and that's cool, but it does fall down badly on longer tours. To a large degree this is inevitable - only OSM actually has the level of surface quality information required for this sort of planning.

With my site, cycle.travel, I've taken the opposite tack: generating quiet, safe routes for leisure and touring rides, while still being as fast to generate routes as Google Maps. Sure, I want it to be usable in cities but it's not the main focus.

People have used it successfully to plan month-long tours across Europe and the US. One of my favourite bits of feedback was [https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/swindon-to-orkney-a-wet- we...](https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/swindon-to-orkney-a-wet-week-in- october-2019.254492/) , where someone just punched in a start and end point at opposite ends of the UK, and rode the route it suggested without any tweaking.

[https://cycle.travel/map](https://cycle.travel/map) if you want to play - always happy to hear suggestions/feedback (and thanks to Jake for including it in the post!). Currently Europe/North America/Australia/NZ only.

<comment><USER4> This looks really great! I'm going on a cycling tour next week so I can directly compare this to my google maps route.

At first glance your site shows the local "cycle highways" which is really cool. However I accidentally clicked on the map twice while scrolling around, and then couldn't figure out how to clear the route so I had to reload the page.

On closer inspection I noticed a button called "close route" which seemed to do what I wanted, but I'm not sure if it has other side effects

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I cycle daily in NYC and have used both Citymapper and Google Maps

Google Maps' cycling instructions route me onto streets with bicycle lanes. I haven't had any problems with it and I think it's a fine option. Maybe because NYC is the type of location google has excellent data on.

Citymapper is also good. The fastest vs quietest distinction doesn't often yield much of a change in route. What I like about citymapper is you can distinguish between riding a personal bike, or riding a bike rental. Sometimes when bringing a friend along, they rent a citibike, and it's nice to have the option for directions to take you to a docking station close to the destination.

<comment><USER6> I've used Google Maps in London, Berlin, Washington DC, Chicago, New York, SF, Austin, and a few other places. Berlin and DC were probably the worst, but it still worked. New York (where I live now) it sometimes chooses the "wrong" bike path. For instance, it'll choose a non-protected lane and insist on it even though there's a protected, 2-way bike lane a block over that's much much faster and safer.

Then again, this is a really really hard problem to solve for, and Google probably has it the best no matter where I am, so that's what my default is. I'm excited to see how Apple's will work in iOS 14 though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A Garmin Edge model with built in OSM (8xx/1xxx models) are absolutely phenomenal at this with no mucking around with apps or any cell service required.

I think it's what almost all very serious cyclists use.

I've done 150 mile turn by turn routes on my Garmin. I've had various models for near 20 years of cycling. The only time ironically they ever have trouble is if you download a route generated by one of the various apps on the internet.. you need to be quite careful with those. The on the fly routes they generate don't ever have those issues.

When they started using the Garmin curated version of OSM it was a massive upgrade. Near me it's very near 100% coverage even of mountain bike singletrack trails through the woods. OSM has gotten incredibly good for cyclists. If you are not a road cyclist OSM has amazing coverage of bike lanes & paved paths too.

And you can actually see it in the sun and don't need to carry a pocketful of USB powerbanks to make it to your destination. The only people who need to recharge with a powerbank are the .01% who ride more than 150-200 miles without stopping at a place to charge.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't cycle, but my preferred mapping app is Locus Map.

[https://www.locusmap.eu/](https://www.locusmap.eu/)

It's packed with features, the track recording is solid, you can use a couple different online track providers or install brouter for offline routing, and the list of map tile providers is impressive. It seems to be targeted at Europe, but the US maps are excellent too. You can use OSM as a base layer (online, or pay ~$1 per state for their pre-rendered OSM tiles for use offline), or you can use the USGS national topo map tiles. You can also import your own.

We went on a trip to Micronesia a few years back and I used it to mark POIs and record our boat trips around the islands to show our friends when we got home. There were no available maps of the area in the app, but I was able to find some high-resolution scanned images of USGS topo maps for the islands we visited and was able to import them into the app as an offline base layer. Worked great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendation, I'll look into it and add it to the table!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [Disclosure: Citymapper employee]

We've been working on improving walking, cycling and scooting recently, so it's good to hear people are finding it useful! We recently added turn-by-turn and voice instructions (in early access as part of Citymapper Club) and we're going to be continuing to make improvements over the coming months. Want to help out? Get in touch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent you an email.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this blog post as I'm often asked for a safe cycle route somewhere - hopefully you find this useful :D

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the post. I'm a big osmand user, but have never tried BRouter. Is it significantly better than the built in routing?

<comment><USER11> Brouter is great, despite some minor annoyances that are ultimately rooted in the design decision that the OSM graph representation does not contain street names (a lot of bike routing happens in nameless trails). Locusmaps on android has the best routing front-end (it can use brouter or some others) I have seen so far, including a variety of desktop front-ends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since moving to SF, I've _really_ wanted to take the plunge and start biking to work (COVID notwithstanding). I haven't done it yet, though, because I'm not super confident on routes that prefer protected lanes and minimize hills.

This post was super helpful. Citymapper wasn't even on my radar, but now I want to go grab a bike rental and give it a shot.

<comment><USER13> You'll find out after biking around for a week or two where the main corridors with minimal elevation are, especially along the main route you take. At this point after ~3 years I know 95% of the best routes to get to/from any within the city proper, and I check directions just for the ending last few blocks since that can make the difference between a steeeeeeep climb or a simple circle around 2 more blocks that's flat.

I also don't have any problem with respect to no bike lanes and crowded streets though, so that might be a bit more difficult to discover. I use Google Maps and it's pretty solid at taking you an extra .25 miles or so just to get you on a dedicated bike lane within the city, and you can always streetview points on your route if you want to double check what it looks like.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I need to just give it a try I think. Problem is, I drive in this city (or did), and with the crap I see people do behind the wheel I wonder how cyclists survive.

What app do you generally use for directions that might tell you about elevation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recently used openrouteservice [1] for a trip from Bremen to Berlin (~400km) and it worked pretty well. It even lets you choose between different types of bikes (road, MTB). I downloaded the GPX into OsmAnd on my phone for turn-by- turn directions. OsmAnd also does a decent job of guiding you back onto your predefined route.

One thing that was a bit irritating was the directions at intersections, where you clearly had to go straight, but it told me to turn right and then immediately turn left. This happened when the bike path took a slight turn before the intersection, e.g. to guide you towards pedestrian traffic lights. Not sure which one of the two apps is to blame here.

Oh and when I tried Google Maps for a bit, to find my accommodation, it immediately tried to guide me through the middle of a field, with no discernible path whatsoever. So much for that..

[1] [https://maps.openrouteservice.org](https://maps.openrouteservice.org)

<comment><USER15> > One thing that was a bit irritating was the directions at intersections, > where you clearly had to go straight, but it told me to turn right and then > immediately turn left. This happened when the bike path took a slight turn > before the intersection, e.g. to guide you towards pedestrian traffic > lights. Not sure which one of the two apps is to blame here.

It's your workflow that's to blame: using a GPX erases that information. If you'd planned the route in OSMAnd it would have been able to give you more road-layout-aware navigation.

<comment><USER14> I see, I'll play around with it a little more then. The thing is that the OSMAnd route looked way worse, and from using it on shorter routes occasionally I didn't really trust it.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, OSMAnd's built-in routing isn't great. But anything based around exporting a GPX from one app and using it in another is going to have the problem you describe; the only way to avoid it is to find an all-in-one app that's good enough on all fronts (or possibly use a fancier format like TCX).

<comment><USER14> TCX sounds cool, and apparently it's going to be supported in the next release of openrouteservice [1]. Looking forward to that, since the route itself was pretty solid.

[1] [https://github.com/GIScience/openrouteservice- app/pull/323](https://github.com/GIScience/openrouteservice-app/pull/323)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In france, and in particular in Paris, [https://www.geovelo.fr/](https://www.geovelo.fr/) is very very good. It knows about various Parisian specialties (going the wrong way on residential street is allowed, temporary bike paths, mixed pedestrian/bike paths, etc) that other apps don't really understand. It also gives multiple paths depending on various criterion.

OsmAnd is also decent. Google map is terribly bad.

<comment><USER17> Geovelo is indeed very practical in Paris! Well made and provides choice between "secure" and "fast" journeys, it also show how many % of the proposed paths are protected bike lanes and has shared information on hazards on the road!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Soon to be also-available is bicycling directions in Apple Maps: [https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/cycling-directions-apple- ma...](https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/cycling-directions-apple-maps/)

(But not everywhere yet. I'm in the midwest, and the beta just says cycling directions aren't available in my area.)

<comment><USER19> Same here in Los Angeles. I think only the Bay Area is available during the beta, and then the other cities will rollout in the fall when iOS 14 GMs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be nice if in addition to free, it mentioned whether or not the app was FOSS.

When I was searching a couple of years ago, there were no open source bike tracking android apps, and most of the "free" ones were trialware that popped up a subscription screen as soon as you tried to do anything complicated.

Also, I love the use of the <table> tag in this article.

<comment><USER21> Even two years ago, OSMAnd and Brouter were open source and available from the F-Droid repository.

<comment><USER20> Cool! I'll take a look at those. Back when I was looking, I was searching for something more bike specific.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use the bike route given by Google Maps as a starting point. Then I get into Street View so I can really see where I'll be riding. Is there a bike lane? How wide is the shoulder? What's the condition of the road? I like riding on roads with bike lanes or wide shoulders (where I don't care if cars are flying by me), if possible. Some of the popular routes in my area are on roads with tiny to no shoulders and 55mph speed limits. Sorry, not interested. I have yet to find any mapping site/app that finds a route that I am always happy with. They all need tweaking. I just find that Google Maps gives a good starting point and has the tools to let me come up with a route that I'm happy with.

<comment><AUTHOR> OSM already has all this data tagged! Have a look at the granularity of the data:

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle)

Cycle apps using OpenStreetMap will try to find the safest routes. If using Citymapper you can explicitly choose between faster or safer (slower) routes. OSMAnd let's you choose particular types of lane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any suggestions for ebike-friendly bike directions? Less need to route around hills and more accurate journey time estimates would be useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> In OsmAnd you can adjust how much you want to take hills into account I believe :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know the company has had some difficulties as of late, but I've found Strava to be quite effective for route planning. Mostly because it can route you according to "popularity", so it'll put you on roads that other Strava users regularly ride on.

This is great for a lot of cases, although sometimes it'll pick a road that's great for road biking on the weekend but not so great for commuting on weekdays.

I wonder if Strava could create two heat maps based on what I imagine are the two big clusters on their user base: road bikes and casual commuter cyclists.

<comment><USER25> > I wonder if Strava could create two heat maps based on what I imagine are > the two big clusters on their user base: road bikes and casual commuter > cyclists.

I want this really badly. Around me (North Germany) the cycling infrastructure is great for the casual commuter, but the quality of paths for road bikes varies dramatically - some bike paths are beautifully smooth and wide, whilst others are bumpy/gravelly and too narrow for safely overtaking slower riders. Distinguishing between them using Strava heatmaps or other mapping tools seems impossible until I actually go out and ride them. Alternatively, an app where I could simply mark myself the roads I have ridden and a quality indicator would be useful (maybe this exists?).

<comment><AUTHOR> In OSM you can add tags of the bike path surface, see below:

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bicycle) [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:surface)

OsmAnd will show you the surface types along a route as you're planning, and you can adjust which surfaces you'd like to cycle on!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Any app that the majority of cyclists are using will win this battle. It's easy to map known bike trails, what's difficult is mapping a good road to bike on. There's so many factors that go into this, but the best and easiest way to get this data seems to be tracking what roads most cyclists are riding. This is exactly why strava heat map is the best for route planning IMHO. You can travel to any area and look at the heatmap surrounding you and instantly have an idea of what roads are heavy cycled.

<comment><USER21> Strava is often unideal for touring, because its recommended routes are where all the local sports cyclists are forced to go due to their thin little tires and lust for speed. Tourers might have thicker tires and so be comfortabke with less smooth roads if it means avoiding cars.

<comment><USER26> That is a good point. I have seen Strava prefer a higher traffic road near me and I then manually adjust that portion. It would be cool if Strava could provide some sort of "Avoid vehicle traffic" preference when route building.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I plan with Strava using it's popularity heat map (I road 9000 miles in 2019). I then cycle using my Garmin 520 bike computer, which is painful to use for directions, but up to the abuse particularly on single track, and I try to use memory based on previewing with street view and satellite photos while planning. I often have to backtrack, typically uphill. But most of the time I'm repeating rides, at which point I'm going off memory.

<comment><USER28> For those who aren't strong and fearless cyclists, Strava can be helpful, but be careful and double-check those routes. I've seen some pretty dangerous segments that I have been very scared on, and they show up red-hot on Strava. Why? Probably because some die-hards go that way a lot, or go that way in a group. And those are probably the types of people that use Strava more than the casual commuter.

In my city there's a 5 lane bridge, shoulder just wide enough for drains, and nothing but a 3-ft concrete barrier 60 or 70 feet above the river. The speed limit is 45, but people drive like that's a mild suggestion. This is a very hot cycle route on Strava for some reason, but I think it's frightening.

<comment><USER27> Totally. I just had a route that was intense blue in the heat map on the start of the road, and then faded to low-intensity as the road progressed. It turned out that the road switched from pavement to something that was a cross between double and single track, while crossing a mountain. Many cyclists turn back, but quite a few continue. I'd like to see how many go in the reverse direction too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have an eMTB and OSMAnd is handy to find trails, classified with difficulty level (when you click on it), and ability to choose to route you to avoid asphalt routes, I just have to find how to add a stylesheet to show colors based on difficulty, and set up BRouter to route only on MTB trails.

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mtb:scale](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mtb:scale)

[https://osmand.net/features/navigation- profiles](https://osmand.net/features/navigation-profiles)

[http://brouter.de/brouter-web](http://brouter.de/brouter-web)

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been looking for a good app like this for a while. When commuting in a new area or going on ride such as [https://rootsrated.com/san-francisco- ca/cycling/paradise-loo...](https://rootsrated.com/san-francisco- ca/cycling/paradise-loop-cycling) it's great to have turn by turn direction which gets on your bike computer and ALSO on your watch. I'm looking forward to apple maps, however I doubt it would be supporting bike loop routes such as paradise loop.

</comment><comment><USER31> For those that don't want step by step navigation but instead use serendipity to wayfind through a city, I can recommend beeline [https://beeline.co/pages/beeline-velo](https://beeline.co/pages/beeline-velo)

It's a simple arrow that points towards your destination, leaving you to work out the route as you cycle. Not the quickest way to get you there but I enjoy the discovery aspect of it.

<comment><USER32> It's a really interesting and elegant solution but 112€ for what looks like a very simple device sounds a bit expensive to me. Does anyone know of a similar system but for the Apple watch?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a regular contributor to OpenStreetMap, I did not realize how poor the bike lanes mapping was around me (surroundings of Versailles, France). There's a lot to fix :)

<comment><USER29> Also, a lot of the new corona-piste are not added, and somes have very complicated pattern of you having to move to a center double new-cycle lane, sometime taken on the old opposite car lane direction, sometimes on your direction, it is very confusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unfortunately I haven't found any good cycling mapping apps for Tokyo. Most apps try to take you down tiny streets but here those can be pretty dangerous and slow - lots of blind corners and super complicated routes. Best I've found is NAVITIME's 自転車 app but honestly it's pretty crappy. I end up just eyeballing medium-sized streets on Google Maps and navigate myself; really wish there was something better for here!

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm curious is there something like OSM but for directions using public transit? Some public repository of bus and train times.

<comment><USER36> General Transit Feed Specification is a format for public transit agencies to publish this information. There are a few repositories like [https://transitfeeds.com](https://transitfeeds.com).

<comment><USER35> This looks really cool! I gotta figure out a way to contribute to this. Is this what OsmAnd uses to pull in transit information?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In the uk, I use cycle streets.

[https://m.cyclestreets.net/](https://m.cyclestreets.net/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Google Maps in Oakland took me straight up Fruitvale headed east....which, if you've ever biked it, is a disaster. Yes, it's a "bike lane", but it's shared with cars and suuuuper busy.

Google should be smart enough to know that there is co-mingled car/bike traffic and safely route my bike away from the cars.

</comment><comment><USER39> Citymapper is a limited amount of cities. What do "real" cyclists use? I get the feeling they use a garmin-like gps devices made for cycling?

In the past, I've tried to plan a route in google maps (for just driving), but once you import and try to use it, it recalculates your route.

<comment><USER40> I know you probably mean road cyclists, but I haven't seen Trailforks mentioned. Nothing beats it for singletrack route planning.

Komoot is good too, but at least in my area of NA the elevation calculation is off by quite a bit. When I've used it for longer routes, I've ended up putting in at least 1,000 ft more of climbing than it has told me would be on the route. Trailforks doesn't have that problem.

If you have a local IMBA chapter, most of them have accurate trail profiles as well.

For road cycling routes, I use Strava. If you want detailed routes that are popular with local cycling clubs, Trek stores usually have surprisingly good handouts on local routes.

<comment><USER41> I've liked Komoot quite a bit for planning longer road bike loops in or near the city — surprised it hasn't taken off more but I suppose it's a pretty niche market. Integrates wirelessly with Wahoo bike computers (suck it Garmin haha) and is free for your local region too.

<comment><USER42> Agree, komoot is what I also use for planning. Shows all the different terrains, elevation, for different sports (mtb, road cycling, hiking).

I don't ever use komoot for recording though, phone uses too much battery. Recording is done through a polar watch, synced to strava. Watch is also best for wind and kitesurfing, no need to bring a big expensive watch on the water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> FYI komoot switched to vector maps a while ago. I generally like it for routing(MTB mostly) but lately they switched to a new (monthly) pricing model for some features I would like to have (difficulty). :-(

</comment><comment><USER44> For those with devices that handle Garmin maps, there's [http://www.openfietsmap.nl/](http://www.openfietsmap.nl/), a free routable cycling map for Garmin GPS units.

</comment><comment><USER45> Every app I have tried is inadequate. Sometimes the best route is going the wrong way on a quite residential street - of course apps don't condone this. Google Maps lets you plan the route on your larger desktop screen then send to phone - nice feature - but then its planning is weird - even when I ask for a bike route and turn on the bike layer it doesn't follow it. It needs options to let you go bike paths vs distance - for me bike paths is more important.

<comment><USER11> Brouter is designed to even allow sections where you need to walk your bike (e.g. a pedestrian-only underpass with stairs) if they provide a significant shortcut to the ridable route.

But please don't ride against traffic flow just because you think that rules only apply to cars, that can be very dangerous to other cyclists who go in the right direction.</comment></comment>


WorkflowCI – IFTTT for developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.workflowci.com <comment><USER2> There is zero information about _who the heck WorkflowCI_ is or trust building before the big "INSTALL" call to action. This could be anyone simply asking for the keys to your Github kingdom. This is what Github says:

      Install on your organization <your company org> @<your company org>
         All repositories
      This applies to all future repositories.

      ...with these permissions:

      Write access to code
      Read access to metadata and vulnerability alerts
      Read and write access to administration, checks, commit statuses, deployments, issues, members, organization
      projects, pages, pull requests, repository hooks, repository projects, and team discussions

How could I possibly click OK and respect myself in the morning?

<comment><AUTHOR> I removed most of the permissions, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This website doesn't seem very informative to me. I only found one screenshot of what it looks like, and I'd particularly like to see how much it costs but the pricing page is just blank in my browser.

In any case, if people want something like this but don't want to tie their entire lives into github or don't want to pay whatever the price of this service is, based on the one screenshot of this tool in action it seems conceptually similar to node-red: [https://nodered.org](https://nodered.org)

Node-red is pretty neat. It's not super-polished and certainly has a grassroots feel to it, but it's a great tool with a pretty sweet set of contributed plugins. I'm a big fan of using the dashboard plugin to make impromptu monitoring pages for whatever random service API I happen to dealing with this month: [https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red- dashboard](https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-dashboard)

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with the other comments saying there is very little information and that makes it hard to understand or trust the product. I am assuming that's just because this is a brand new effort and a relatively early MVP.

It was funny to see this on the front page today because this is actually an issue I have been wresting with myself in the last couple of weeks.

A friend and I just started testing a somewhat similar product called Git Butler - [https://www.gitbutler.com/](https://www.gitbutler.com/). It's IFTTT for GitHub and helps automate pull request and issue workflows.

We've been wondering how much info to include, and what to say or not to say. It's a real challenge! So I've been watching this thread with great interest and really hope more comments come in.

(P.S. Any feedback on Git Butler would be much appreciated. I don't have a lot of experience with this, but this thread is also making me think we should consider doing a Show HN.)

</comment><comment><USER5> FYI the Slack trigger -> Add Slack integration page seems to be broken (at least in Firefox), I get a blank page with the following console error:

[https://pastebin.com/uRAuLuB9](https://pastebin.com/uRAuLuB9)

<comment><AUTHOR> Noticed the exception, trying to fix it, thank you! In the meantime, I emailed you with a potential solution and upgraded your free plan :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am always interested on tools such as this one. I end up using a mix of IFTTT and Google Apps Script for this.

What integrations do you offer besides Slack

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, it supports GitHub, Slack, CircleCI and Google Cloud Build to trigger any custom code in Docker containers. Are there any other specific integrations you would like to have?

<comment><USER7> This seems interesting, I'll play around with it later, thank you.

Some requests off the top of my head:

* ability for actions on github PR comments

* ability for actions on slack messages in a given channel or reactions/options on a message that the bot posted. eg bot asking if a merged PR is ready to be deployed or if it needs to have extra steps taken on it.

* making HTTP requests with templated body from previous steps, eg pr number, git commit, author's email, etc

* ability to export/import the workflow and/or manage the workflows as code

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thank you so much for your feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Over-Engineering an Oil Tank Gauge - <AUTHOR> https://uglyduck.ca/over-engineering-an-oil-tank/ <comment><USER2> My mind autogenerated this meme "and thats how kubernetes was born" ... hehehe</comment>


Looking to rent a bullet for that Leh Ladakh trip perhaps? Try Rideindia - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/rent-bullet-on-rideindia-297/

<comment><AUTHOR> easiest way to get motorcycle on rent for your next bike trip.</comment>


Ask HN: Best blogs about Front-End? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a blogs like the one of CSS Wizardry http://csswizardry.com/ or this one http://snook.ca <comment><USER2> There are a ton out there:

<http://css-tricks.com>

<http://alistapart.com>

<http://smashingmagazine.com>

<http://webdesign.tutsplus.com>

<http://webdesignerwall.com>

Lots of agencies and designers post some great articles and tutorials on their blogs as well, just look around. I usually find that the best way to discover new stuff is to hit the links of whoever is writing a tutorial you like. Check out personal sites, agency blogs where the authors work, etc.

Just keep your eyes open.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, thought I know most of them :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Paul Irish created a google reader feed of front-end blogs located here: [http://paulirish.com/2011/web-browser-frontend-and- standards...](http://paulirish.com/2011/web-browser-frontend-and-standards- feeds-to-follow/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good one, Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> codrops : <http://tympanus.net/codrops/></comment>


"It is with a heavy heart that we report that Tidal is good now" - <AUTHOR> https://www.avclub.com/it-is-with-a-heavy-heart-that-we-report-that-tidal-is-g-1829329262 <comment><USER2> > There are clear-cut numbers here—Apple Music's streams tap out around 256 > kbps, whereas Spotify and Tidal both stream "hi-fi" audio at 320 kbps—but > you can also just listen to it.

As I understand it, Apple's 256 kbps AAC is probably higher quality than Spotify's 320 kbps OGG. And most of us probably lack the audio equipment (DAC of sufficient quality) and auditory sensitivity to hear the difference between either Spotify's or Apple's lossy compressed audio and Tidal's lossless FLAC. But it still grates on me that it's so hard to buy access to a service that'll steam CD-quality audio to me when I can get HD Bluray quality video streamed at me.

But the sins that I cannot forgive music streaming:

\- Most don't allow me to augment their catalog with stuff I own, and stream it back to me via a unified interface.

\- Most don't support gapless playback (no, crossfade very much does not count).

\- Most don't let me browse by genre according to any categorization remotely half as good as any small-town CD shop in the 90s

\- Most will quietly remove albums, artists, and (most maddeningly) tracks from albums according to the whims of some capricious and malevolent spirit.

\- Most have a UI on streaming devices that continually screams, "LOOK AT YOUR TV!" Rather than unobtrusively showing the track title or offering a "I just want to listen to music without distractions."

<comment><USER3> I buy my music, then I pirate a copy for archival and portable use. The artist and publishers get their money, and I get my fair use. I'm not willing to steal stuff, but I'm also not willing to jump through arbitrary hoops once I've paid. It isn't strictly legal, but it is moral.

<comment><USER2> How is it piracy if you buy the music? Do you live in a country that forbids format shifting?

<comment><USER4> Legally, it's "piracy" (infringement) if you acquire copyrighted material from those who aren't licensed to distribute it, even if you already own a legit copy.

Morally and practically speaking, there is no harm, and it's almost indistinguishable from a non-infringing self-made backup copy (unless there are tags indicative of being a pirated copy), but legally there is _technically_ a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If only they didn't use flash for their web app</comment>


Why I hate software patents: IBM patents trim() - <AUTHOR> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,475,086.PN.&OS=PN/7,475,086&RS=PN/7,475,086 <comment><USER2> "IBM does X" is pleasing to look at, but remember one person decided to make it happen. One person said "hey, I want to patent this idea" and everybody else got in line to help make it happen.

IBM has a patent culture. It encourages each employee to file as many patents as possible. When you submit a patent internally, you get a one-time bonus. When it goes from the internal lawyers to the patent office, you get another bonus. When your patent is awarded months or years later, you get another one- time bonus. If you file a certain number of patents, you get a certificate/plaque and more money.

(true story) On the internal IBM blogs, I saw someone was frustrated by their email software. Their immediate response? File a patent for how they want it fixed. Their problem? They hit "send" by mistake before the email was complete. Their patent? A yes/no confirmation popup after hitting send.

Another way to look at the "IBM has more patents than god" issue is from a per-employee financial standpoint. Their employees may need extra cash, so they are filing patents as fast as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> in my humble opinion, you should be happy IBM patented it because clearly they're not patent trolls and it prevents/prevented patent trolls from patenting the same idea.

in big companies, patents are sort-of like trading cards. they're are used defensively. so, if oracle or someone else came after ibm for a database- related patent, IBM could make a patent trade to prevent expensive action from being taken.

it's the corporate equivalent of a superpowers' arms race. they're designed to be a deterrent and aren't (often) acquired for first strike purposes.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, but IBM is one of the largest patent trolls in the world. You just don't hear about it because they target corporations who don't have an extensive IP portfolio to fight back with and cross license.

Here's what's happened at the company I used to work at and what happens at many other companies:

1) IBM comes and says hey you're violating these 10 patents. Pay up.

2) Targeted company goes, hey we're not. Company spends X amount of money and tons of time to prove that they're not violating the patents.

3) IBM goes, oh ok, yeah you're right. So you're not violating those 10 patents. Well, here's another 10 we think you're violating. Now...we can do this forever or you can just pay us $1M/year and have us go away.

4) Targeted company does cost-benefit analysis of legal fees to continue to fight IBM indefinitely or they can pay this "license" fee. Company decides pays $1M to "license" IBM patents

oh and postscript, Targeted company wises up and decides to build up its own IP portfolio as a defensive measure and fills the patent system with even more useless patents.

<comment><USER5> Big companies win most of the time when there are lawsuits involved. But obviously we can't make enforcing a patent harder as a function of the size of the inventing company.

It's a tricky question to ensure "fair" treatment of patent settlements.

Clearly patent trolls with silly patents such as the automatic trim()-on- insert should be banished. In fact, I can't think of ever reading about any CS patent that would have actually been useful and truly an idea worth the grant.

On the other hand, were there more burden of proof placed on the inventor's side, this would discriminate small inventors in traditional patentable fields (like mechanical or engineering constructions). Big companies could just "steal" their ideas and count on them being unable to enforce the patent.

I think the way of the future would be just to give up on the illusion of "intellectual 'property'". Patents don't seem to be incentive when it comes to inventing; instead they seem to incentivise commercialisation. However, all smart people I know would invent new things regardless of any monetary reward or lack thereof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Help the USPTO find the information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications. Become a community reviewer and improve the quality of patents."

<http://www.peertopatent.org/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I've never understood why patents include so much stuff without practical relationship to the idea in question. In this case the patent covers _a computer implemented method of automatically removing space characters from data being entered into a database_ and yet the detailed description includes pages of gibberish like this:

      With reference now to FIG. 3, a block diagram illustrating a data
      processing system is depicted in which the present invention may be
      implemented. Data processing system 300 is an example of a client
      computer. Data processing system 300 employs a peripheral component
      interconnect (PCI) local bus architecture. Although the depicted
      example employs a PCI bus, other bus architectures such as Accelerated
      Graphics Port (AGP) and Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) may be
      used. Processor 302 and main memory 304 are connected to PCI local bus
      306 through PCI bridge 308. PCI bridge 308 also may include an
      integrated memory controller and cache memory for processor
      302. Additional connections to PCI local bus 306 may be made through
      direct component interconnection or through add-in boards. In the
      depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 310, Small computer
      system interface (SCSI) host bus adapter 312, and expansion bus
      interface 314 are connected to PCI local bus 306 by direct component
      connection. In contrast, audio adapter 316, graphics adapter 318, and
      audio/video adapter 319 are connected to PCI local bus 306 by add-in
      boards inserted into expansion slots. Expansion bus interface 314
      provides a connection for a keyboard and mouse adapter 320, modem 322,
      and additional memory 324. SCSI host bus adapter 312 provides a
      connection for hard disk drive 326, tape drive 328, and CD-ROM drive
      330. Typical PCI local bus implementations will support three or four
      PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors.

What does any of that have to do with removing whitespace from text strings before they are stored?

<comment><USER8> The "legalease" is a kind of programming language. Its not human readable. All that garbage is inherited from a parent class.

Patent->technology->computers->text.lets_patent_chomp_and_see_what_happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> anachronism: starting any patent with "a computer implemented method..."

</comment><comment><USER10> Errm, according to that what they've patented is not-trim.

<comment><USER11> Can you clarify, this is what I read: "A computer implemented method of automatically removing space characters from data being entered into a database system comprising ..."

<comment><USER12> The patent is for a database column setting which will 'auto-trim' all data. So instead of having to call the trim function every time you insert or update your database this patented setting does it automatically. Hard to believe these things get patents.

<comment><USER10> To be fair there's been CHAR and VARCHAR for 20 years, but no-one has done what they're proposing. IBM probably make everyone patent everything they do.

<comment><USER13> Not quite. IBM provides strong incentives to patent inventions. It also makes it very easy for an engineer to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The legitimacy of this patent aside - how does IBM think it will benefit from the protection this patent gives?

Just seems like patent cruft than patent misuse.

</comment><comment><USER15> You hate software patents because some companies abuse them? Do you also hate pain killers because some drug addicts abuse them?</comment>


WikiLeaks asked US to help redact information. The US refused. - <AUTHOR> http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2010/11/wikileaks-and-state-department-correspondence/ <comment><USER2> Der Spiegel also cooperated with the US:

 _With a team of more than 50 reporters and researchers, SPIEGEL has viewed, analyzed and vetted the mass of documents. In most cases, the magazine has sought to protect the identities of the Americans' informants, unless the person who served as the informant was senior enough to be politically relevant. In some cases, the US government expressed security concerns and SPIEGEL accepted a number of such objections. In other cases, however, SPIEGEL felt the public interest in reporting the news was greater than the threat to security. Throughout our research, SPIEGEL reporters and editors weighed the public interest against the justified interest of countries in security and confidentiality._

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,731580,00.h...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,731580,00.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that the US _did_ cooperate with the New York Times, when the Times asked for help in redacting information from the WikiLeaks dump.

Cf. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29editornote.html>

Also, Assange's reply to the State Department makes him look like a real douche.</comment>


SoftBank-backed robotic pizza startup Zume plans to lay off up to 400 employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/zume-pizza-robots-layoffs-leadership-turmoil-alex-garden-softbank-2020-1 <comment><USER2> Softbank is getting murdered after the office-space-renting-hype-company (I'm blanking on the name because my brain is filtering BS startups with BS useless features).

I guess, after irrational lauding of this untouchable investment group, it's time for calibration??

Maybe try not to blindly follow people and think rationally in the first place?!</comment>


Ask HN: Review a webpage to Kindle conversion app - <AUTHOR> http://www.hatchetapp.com/

<comment><USER2> I've never used OpenID so it's a turnoff that I can't see more. Also not likely to read long web pages on my kindle.

I'd love to have a conversion service where I could paste a URL for a pdf, have it converted and emailed to my kindle. I'd pay for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can actually sign up via your Gmail or Yahoo email address or OpenID. Does that help?

As for the PDF conversion service, that's an interesting one. I might have to do something there...

Thanks for the reply, jakewolf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice to know more about how the website will be sent to my kindle before giving out my kindle email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question, pyroman. After you've added you Kindle email address, we'll give you a bookmarklet to use to select webpages to be sent wirelessly to your Kindle.

I've just added that note to the page where Hatchet requests your Kindle email address.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is visiting sites like this worth it?  Does it provide a high ROI? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed I've been spending a lot of time on HN relative to other websites.  That time could have been spent on a lot of other things as well.<p>Did you learn enough from HN that made it worth all the time you spent on it?  Did it have (in business lingo) a  High Return on Investment for you? <comment><USER2> It depends on what you read. If I had not been here to read all of patio11's exhortations on A/B testing and sales, I'd be worse for that. I would have had commercial sites running with a major exploit if I hadn't seen tptacek warning about it. Not having that headache was very nice. But any time spent on threads about TechCrunch, TorrentFreak, The Next Web and other such high-drama zones is probably pure waste.

If you're spending a lot of time on here, unless you just find it inordinately entertaining, you're probably getting a low ROI — because 90% of everything is crap. If you very selectively click on stories and just read the recent comments and submissions by patio11, edw519 and whoever else you find to be insightful, you're probably getting a good ROI.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really depends on your area/profession and how that relates to the content on HN. My day job is a network admin so reading around here doesn't really help that much. However I have a few side projects where the 'Show HN' feedback can be invaluable... At the end of the day it's more interesting than reading a newspaper for me, even if there is no value. People with startups I am sure would/do get a very high ROI ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> For me, HackerNews is Edu-tainment.

I learn some stuff, but I wouldn't classify it as productive time. However, I have read some things here that have had a great impact on my life and/or business.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been lurking HN for a while now. In moderation, it has helped in many ways, although in ways not particularly measurable.

<comment><USER4> Off topic, but are you the founder of SmartWater?</comment></comment>


Show HN: RangeTouch – A super tiny lib to improve range inputs on touch devices - <AUTHOR> https://rangetouch.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> While building Plyr (plyr.io) I noticed how fiddly the use of <input type="range"> elements is on touch devices. Having a search around I couldn't find a suitable fix and so created RangeTouch, a small library that improves support on touch devices. Let me know what you think.</comment>


Ask HN: What's wrong with this jobs page? - <AUTHOR> Here's the latest iteration of our jobs page:
http://pubget.com/jobs
Traffic can definitely be higher so that's a SEO/marketing problem but our stats hurt:
bounce rate: 75% conversion: 1%
Are we doing something obviously wrong? What turns you on/off about the site?
Any recommendations are appreciated.
Thanks! -=Ahmed=- <comment><USER2> Initial feedback - It's a fairly clean page, but it's cluttered, and a little disorganized.

My eye is immediately drawn to the giant orange banner. So it takes me a second to adjust and start looking around. Finally I notice "Positions Available", but it's at the bottom right - literally one of the last places my eye naturally falls. I then need to scroll down to see the whole list, but it sort of blends in with the rest of the page.

I like how you've got a bunch of fun shots of your office, and of the team having a good time (it sure looks like a nice place to work, and the Seaport is a nice enough area, transportation and lunch/afterwork-wise that it would enticing for someone who wanted a job in the city), but to me I had to actually work a little bit to find the content I cared about on the page, so my interest fades fast.

If I had a suggestion for you, it would be to reduce the huge banner, and maybe re-organize the page. Make the actual job listings more front and center, and put the stuff detailing how great your team is below it - or on a seperate page that you actively pimp out from your job postings page... (Now that you've seen the jobs, check out why you should work here! sort of thing).

But I'm no design specialist. So maybe I'm way off base here. Good luck with the company, that sounds like a cool space to be in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Super useful feedback...

"I had to actually work a little bit to find the content I cared about"

Does content = job description? We realize Pubget doesn't have brand recognition so we took prime real estate to call out who we are. Do you look for the job description first even when you don't recognize the brand?

<comment><USER2> When I'm job hunting?

Yea, I'd say so. After you've intrigued me with the job itself, then I'd go looking at who you were as a company, then probably back to the job description once more to make sure everything fit together.

Not that potential hires shouldn't "care" about who you are - they should. But first and foremost they should care about what the job position is, and do they fit that role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Don't get disheartened. I'd be surprised if most startup job pages had conversion rates much better than this.

The job market is white hot for programmers right now, and it's easy to get lost in all the noise.

When you're a startup, you're better off actively recruiting folks from local meetups, GitHub, HN, Twitter, and LinkedIn rather than expecting applicants to come to you.

So rather than optimize this, get out of the building and go meet some potential recruits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is true. We do try to attend local meetups and scour the interwebs but can definitely do more.

Like you said, the job market is white hot for programmers... Have you had any experience trying to lure currently employed devs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The ad is sending strong closed monoculture signals. For example the 'our stuff' 'your stuff' job descriptions. Remove every use of the words we, we've, and our and replace them with 'you'. Talk about the person you want to hire and how great the opportunity would be for them.

Prospective employees don't really care about the people that already work there, or what they do, their values, culture, or their bios. If it sounds like the company is full of bad-asses, that's a turn off. Probably a few of them believe this and will make the experience unpleasant.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought the section titles "Driven engineers seeking teammate.", "Engaging Workplace", etc were links to blog posts or something. The images overpower that content anyway.

I typically come to these pages wondering what stack you're using, what positions are open, what your company does, and what it's like to work there. Ideally (for me) they'd be answered in that order.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic checklist!

tech, jobs, mission, culture

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The usual blurb about how great you all are, the awesome environment you provide, and the cool products you create is usually secondary to what job- seekers are looking for. I'm on your jobs page, and you seem to be hiding your open jobs. People are lazy ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I'm hearing "too many words/distractions".

I'm curious about the sequence of questions in your head when you land on a site like this. For me it's:

1\. What are the problems I'd be solving?

2\. Who would I be working with?

3+. Location? Perks? Job desc?</comment></comment>


KDE Plasma Voted Best Desktop Environment in Linux Journal Readers Choice Awards - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/best-desktop-environment <comment><USER3> I have been using KDE for ~eight years in one capacity or another and it almost continually improved with every update. Regressions were quite rare, even during the KDE4->5 move.

I like that KDE applications are at least somewhat consistent in their UX and in the way they organize basics. For example, the way settings and shortcuts are handled is identical across all apps. Kparts makes embedded viewers consistent and good across apps. Support for GTK theming reduces the visual annoyance of the rare GTK app. KWin works very well, has a broad selection of useful shortcuts and has been the most stable compositor I've ever used (AMD/open source).

On the other hand, KDEPIM/Akonadi seems like it is quite powerful, but for some reason I kinda didn't became comfortable with it. Not sure why, exactly. I used KMail and KOrganizer for quite a while, though. Decent tools, but some rough edges when it comes to first-time setup, e.g. the wizards could really use some polishing.

There is a surprising number of useful and powerful utilities in KDE.

<comment><USER4> >Regressions were quite rare, even during the KDE4->5 move.

you must joking right. KDE5 beginnings were terrible.

<comment><USER5> I am pretty sure you mean 3->4\. KDE5 was so smooth, that you were wondering why they were talking about a major release.

The problem with the KDE4 was that people were adopting it too early. I started to use it with the first alpha and saw a lot of bugs during that time, but I always knew that I was using incomplete alpha software. KDE4 wasn't stable enough for every day use until 4.3 or so and many people started to use it with 4.1 which was just the first version which claimed to be usable at all (most basic programs had been rewritten, but many more advanced programs still weren't ready).

<comment><USER6> > The problem with the KDE4 was that people were adopting it too early.

Yes, but this problem was caused by the KDE release team botching their announcement. They had an alpha release, a beta release, and then a big 4.0 release. Then, it turned out that their '4.0 release' was really what everyone else would consider alpha/beta, and they didn't want people actually using it for production environments yet. They screwed up communication royally, sending mixed messages about whether the software was actually ready or not.

source: I maintained some KDE-related packages on arch and the 4.0 release was horribly botched.

<comment><USER7> It was all mixed up due to library frameworks and application suite being released as one big "KDE" package. Kdelibs5 4.0 was ready and stable, but the KDE desktop wasn't. They tried to communicate that since the beginning, but not nearly hard enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Strange to see this, maybe it's the target audience that makes this the result? At the office there are about 40 Linux desktop users, none of them use KDE. Most remote users I've worked with (~100) aren't using KDE either. This is of course somewhat anecdotal, but I suspect that the Linux Journal Readers are a specialised group.

Most systems (out of a pool of about 200) I can query run:

\- Gnome 3 (about 80) \- i3 (about 30) \- Unity (about 25) \- Mate (about 25) \- Others (KDE included, about 40)

And those are minimally managed systems, all they have to run is orchestration software and IPA, so they choose their own distro and DE and everything else.

<comment><USER9> Gnome 3 is everywhere because it is the default in all the major distributions but this doesn't mean people like it. I personally think it actually is the weirdest DE ever and only popular for political reasons.

<comment><USER10> I found gnome 3 really appealing when I switched from OS X to Linux on the desktop.

<comment><USER9> Isn't Unity a way better and a way closer to OS X?

<comment><USER10> Certainly gnome felt more familiar than unity. What felt truly closest was elementaryOS's pantheon.

<comment><USER9> What does Gnome 3 have in common with macOS at all? I use a MacBook every day yet every time I've given Gnome 3 a try it seemed a way too bizarre to me. It doesn't even have a traditional dock (unless you install one).

<comment><USER10> Compare OS X Lion's mission control[1] with gnome 3's dash[2]. By the time I switched to Linux, I never used the dock, instead launching applications with Alfred/spotlight (and switching with some combination of cmd+tab, mission control, and spaces track pad gestures). Gnome 3 maps super+tab to alt+tab which was great for my muscle memory since my super key was where my command key used to be.

What I found annoying about gnome 3 was the persistent useless panel at the top of the screen (I still use gnome at work and I use the dash-to-panel extension[3] to make it slightly less useless).

[1] [http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Mission- Co...](http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Mission-Control-OS-X- Lion-10.7.jpg)

[2] [https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/en.linux/images/9/97/GNO...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/en.linux/images/9/97/GNOME_Shell.png/revision/latest?cb=20150816153038)

[3] [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to- panel/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/)

<comment><USER9> I see. Thank you for explaining. As for me macOS is just the dock, the global menu (both replicated and enhanced nicely in Unity, as well as in KDE though KDE global menu works with Qt apps only and Unity global menu works with Gtk apps only) and a BSD terminal :-) As for Mission Control - I have never used it on Mac but on KDE moving the mouse cursor to the top left corner of the screen shows all the windows in the manner looking a lot like the screenshot in the Wikipedia article for Mission Control. As for the Gnome 3 top panel - <USER2> agree it is the most pointless part of it, I wish it could host the application menu the way it does in macOS and Unity. The problem is Linux apps seemingly lack a standard for this so it wouldn't work with all the apps, that's why I've came to the conclusion I don't need a top panel at all.

<comment><USER7> KDE's global menu works with practically everything now, thanks to gmenu- dbusmenu-proxy.

<comment><USER9> By the way, isn't there something like this for launcher icon based indicators? Many apps show some status (e.g. number of unread messages, operation progress etc) as an overlay to their icons in the Unity launcher panel. Many apps (e.g. Krusader) do the same in KDE. Some (e.g. Chrome) do this in both the mentioned DEs but many non-KDE apps (e.g. Telegram) fail to do this in KDE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> KDE is excellent. Always seemed it got a lot of negativity from people that only perceived Linux as an operating system that should be run on a 5 year old laptop.

<comment><USER12> There's also the folks who end up having to use Ubuntu LTS (16.x) for various reasons, and if they ever try KDE on it will be doomed to inevitably hate it... Hope the story doesn't repeat with their next LTS version.

(Maybe the KDE foundation should dedicate manpower/resources to the Kubuntu project before their LTS releases or something, as they'd massively increase their usage base this way...)

<comment><USER13> Which distro should you use for KDE?

<comment><USER14> opensuse

<comment><USER15> OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, in my view. That way you get all of the new goodies soon after they're released, and thanks to the automated testing there's usually no significant breakage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use KDE because the window manager is easily configurable to do what I want (even if it is weird).

When I moved from running CTWM to a real desktop environment in ~2001, I submitted patches to both KDE and Gnome to add support for my oddball WM config (basically mapping move/resize/iconify to alt+mouse button press). KDE merged my patch. Gnome closed my bug request, saying that what I wanted to do were against the their design guidelines. So I've been using KDE for most of 2 decades..

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's just hope the next Ubuntu LTS version doesn't pack up a "doomed to be buggy and perpetually outdated except security fixes" version of KDE :| ...

Choosing to use Ubuntu 16 LTS, I gave up considering KDE as an option after _trying hard_ to put up either with the official repo one or a newer unofficial one ( _both_ were buggy and unstable, and lacked _essential_ features to me like Win+<number> task switching shortcut that _is_ available in latest KDE, and especially combining this with drag-and-drop freely reorderable taskbar entries to actually enable my "standard" worflow that I can use fine in Windows 10, Unity, or Xfce+custom dock).

Hope the Kubuntu guys take care not to shit the bed with the LTS release (because their non-LTS one were always fine, like in not just up to date as expected, but _waay more stable_ too!)...

<comment><USER17> You should try the KDE Neon distro. It uses Ubuntu LTS as a base and adds the latest and greatest KDE release on top.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't handle dependencies very, some software becomes installable because you can get package conflicts. Fedora KDE spin is better but doesn't run as good on laptops unless you tweak it, both are unsuitable for new Linux users. Is there a good KDE distro that can be recommended to Windows or Mac refugees?

<comment><USER9> I am extremely happy with Manjaro. The only problem is it doesn't include a WiFi driver to support 2013 MacBook Air, you will have to install it manually if you have this model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Totally configurable, which is ESSENTIAL for new users who want their Linux desktop configured to emulate the exact rendering of Windows (XP or 7)"

Funny argument after Windows 8. So KDE gets marketed as ressort for confused windows xp users?

I enjoyed customizing my workspace for years. Now I use gnome shell, I relax and don't waste brain cycles on irrelevant stuff like which icons show up here or there. I don't use my desktop to do work or anything meaningful.

<comment><USER20> Configuring KDE and apps is more then GUI customization.

The file manager has many options that anyone that does any work would be useful, like tabs, splitting the screen, icons/list/detailed view of files, opening a terminal inside the file manager,previews, FTP integrations and all of this is an option, including that you can configure the toolbars to show/hide buttons.

Other example(maybe other DEs have this too) I can have tabs in the terminal app (konsole) and in the tabs that I am SSHed in I use different color scheme(with red on black) so I am aware and not run dangerous commands on a remote server.

My point is that a KDE user is not one that chooses KDE over Gnome due to UI but is more about functionality.

<comment><USER19> At what costs wrt ressource usage & startup time do you get these features? IIRC KDE comes last in all tests about DE performance. I could become potentially interested in KDE if this had changed over the years.

<comment><USER20> Startup is not important if you start the DE once a day, it is like saying Notepad is better then Visual Studio for coding because it starts faster. As of CPU and memory use KDE is not the most bloated DE, This is a myth so you should recheck things with latest versions of KDE,GNOME,XFCE and the others.(use what is better for you but you should not stay away from KDE because of memory or CPU usage)

I agree that a WM will have less features and eat less memory so if you do not need the features of KDE use a WM. Also you can disable some of KDE features like compositing, akonadi if those are the things you do not need.

<comment><USER19> I think this was the test I vaguely remembered. Anyway, such a test probably doesn't really say much.

[https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubu-1704...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubu-1704-desktops&num=3)

<comment><USER20> Interesting,I can't find the link where I seen a benchmmark where KDE used less RAM then XFCE and Gnome3 ,it may differ for different people since Gnome is leaking memory for some people but I also seen reports of plasma leaking(it seems to be more rare)

I am running an older version of KDE and my plasma uses less then 230MB in total(including shared memory)where only one instance of Chrome uses 450Mb and Xorg uses more then plasma for me (it may differ for other versions and configurations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tried most of the popular desktops last year and KDE was the best in terms of dealing with high-dpi displays. Not perfect but better than most.

It wasn't stable for me though and it generally felt sluggish so in the end I switched to Apple.

<comment><USER22> that seems to be a common theme with kde and to a lesser degree gnome. they moved to 'features and innovation first' years ago and it shows. sure its nice that Linux is becoming more accessible for 'normal' people but for me both kde and gnome are getting in my way more and more while stability is suboptimal. i switched from kde to gnome around 2010 then xfce in 2012 and finally i3 in late 2013. for the rest of the apps i'm always looking for the leanest and least sophisticated solution that has enough features and suit my needs. these also tend to be pretty reliable.

like you said, if i really needed all those fancy features and eyecandy I'd rather switch to apple or microsoft.

I'm still taking a look at kde and gnome once a year or so, especially since kde5 looked really clean and nice, but it just isn't there yet..

<comment><USER23> I've always loved KDE and has been a contributor. So take my work with a grain of salt.

But KDE is pretty light these days and it doesn't really get in the way. It's really polished.

2010 was the KDE 4.x times and it was indeed a bad time for the project.

Things are quite different now.

<comment><USER22> i agree that 5 is much better. ever since my kde fanboy coworker upgraded to 5, the amount of cursing about different things (mostly akonadi and kmail) was greatly reduced, but akonadi still seems to be a troubled child.

<comment><USER20> You can not use akonadi or kmail, I did not had a good experience with them either on older KDE so I do not used them, I use Thunderbird for mail and akonadi is off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Since Unity became the default in Ubuntu, I've been using KDE. Was very happy with the 4.x, but not so happy with the bump to 5.x. I've been using 5.x daily since the beginning. Mostly it works really well, though I still have to restart plasma or desktop effects daily. I'm not sure if it related to a bug with Nvidia. I also have an issue with framerate drops with Dota 2. But except from those minor issues, it works really really well, but I still feel that the latest 4.x was more stable than the current 5.x

<comment><USER25> Then you be happy to know that Unity is no more on Ubuntu, it got canned when they ended their phone/tablet plans. The new default is Gnome, which has grown into a fantastic distraction free DE

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> KDE is great. One reason for the votes might however be that GNOME has been alienating both users and developers for a while now with idiotic ideas, and people are fed up with it.

<comment><USER20> Exactly, they managed to irritate the users and developers of the other DEs and WMs, the GTK changes made some important apps(like wireshark, Subsurface) and DEs(LXDE and Budgie) to switch to Qt

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If anything this survey shows how hopelessly fractured the GNOME desktop community is. Add GNOME, Cinnamon, MATE, and Unity and you get 41% (vs KDE's single 35%).

I'd say that -unfortunately- the DE/WM world is irrelevant these days. We need decent UIs & OSes for the mobile world; Android and iOS need competition. The latter is proprietary, the former partly FOSS but data hungry.

<comment><USER28> Waiting to see how well will Plasma mobile be on the librem phone

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not surprising at all, with GNOME 3 being what it is. Configuring, getting help, discussing and contributing to Plasma is a breeze. In contrast, GNOME camp feels like a bunch of very opinionated people that just know better how their users (and other DEs too, when it comes to interoperability) should behave.

<comment><USER14> Can you give me a recommendation where to go for getting help?

<comment><USER7> #plasma on Freenode seems like a good start, had some friendly on-spot conversations there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I shall have to try KDE. I've been an xfce user for years but have been hearing good things about KDE.

<comment><USER30> Protip: Use krunner (Alt-Space) to launch applications once you know their names. It has autocompletion and many neat features such as web shortcuts: Type gg: or dd: <search terms> to open a tab in your configured default browser with Google or DuckDuckGo search. Not very discoverable but very convenient. You can also create your own web shortcuts in KDE system settings.

krunner also supports opening Kate (the KDE editor, roughly similar to Sublime Text) sessions directly.

<comment><USER31> It's also a calculator and unit converter!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> GNOME Shell on Ubuntu 17.10 is eating >1Gb RAM, I think it might be a good time to try KDE (unfortunately, it didn't work to just apt install kubuntu- desktop, so I'll have to do that via clean install sometime later).

<comment><USER33> You should be able to choose the windowmanager at login once youve installed it like that.

Its probably a menu in the top right corner of either your username 'tile' or the screen, depending on your login manager

<comment><USER32> Thanks, I'm quite an experienced Linux user (>10 years). The problems I've had are way beyond this (bootloop, black screen, freezes, had to do a recover from a liveusb etc. etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is surprising to me in that I don't know anyone who uses KDE.

As someone who uses Cinnamon as my day to day at home and Awesome at work, what would entice me to switch?

<comment><USER35> I started with Cinnamon, then switched to KDE. Mostly because it was more intuitive for me, 2% because I liked the new Konquii branding enough to try it that first time.

Now when people want to try "that Linux thing" I hand them Debian KDE if they are a Windows user since it is closer to Windows start menu out of the box, at least for my purposes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> GNOME 2. Although I started with a lovely KDE with Open SUSE 10.1, GNOME (with Ubuntu) was my tool of choice.

I mostly use headless Linux these days, but when I have a GUI at hand, I always miss the old GNOME. I heard there are some continuation project, haven't looked into them yet, though.

<comment><USER37> The name you're looking for is MATE desktop. I've been using it for many years because I never liked Gnome 3 (constant churn, breaking plugins, themes etc). I'm using it on Debian but there's also Ubuntu MATE and Fedora & Opensuse spins

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> On a different note, KDE3 still existing in the form of the Trinity DE.

[http://www.trinitydesktop.org/](http://www.trinitydesktop.org/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't really see the point of this poll: Pantheon wasn't an option in it. Makes the rest look like jokes.

<comment><USER40> I see it's written mostly in Vala - I must confess I have a deep prejudice against Vala, mostly because it seems silly and complicated and just wrong to me to take a programming language and then compile it to C and then further compile it to machine code. We have that situation in Javascript land but at least there it was kind of unavoidable for a very long time.

That said, I may take Pantheon for a spin - I've been a happy KDE user for many years but I never mind trying new things and perhaps learning something new. Everything I've tried so far made me return back to KDE but one must keep an open mind.

<comment><USER41> > I see it's written mostly in Vala - I must confess I have a deep prejudice > against Vala, mostly because it seems silly and complicated and just wrong > to me to take a programming language and then compile it to C and then > further compile it to machine code.

You mean like Objective-C, C++, Eiffel, Scheme, Nim?

Compiling to another native language is a shortcut to avoid implementing a complete compiler backend.

With C being the best option as target language on UNIX systems, given its ubiquity.

<comment><USER22> C++? Unless you're talking about the very first compiler ever or some toy project, you're wrong, and I'd actually guess the same is true for obj-c.

<comment><USER41> Of course I am speaking about CFront.

C++ first compiler that actually generated native code without going through C was written by Walter Bright sold by Zortech, which then sparked the race from all other compiler vendors.

Objective-C started as a macro processor for C, hence the [ ] syntax and @ prefixes, to make it easier to find them.

Nowadays the macro processor is gone, but at assembly level Objective-C code still gets translated into a bunch of objc_msgSend() and similar calls.

<comment><USER42> And objc_msgsend is implemented in Assembler. ObjC does NOT get compiled to C first.

<comment><USER41> That optimization came later in the game.

Again, the point is that Objective-C started as macro processor generating C code, which gregopet states it is silly for Vala devs to choose the same path as Brad Cox and Tom Love decided for their language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not surprising at all.</comment>


Show HN: A Bookmarklet For Two-Step Authentication - <AUTHOR> http://whaatt.github.io/Authlet/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to share this with anyone who is constantly confronted with the minor burden of two-step authentication using their phone. There's a very slight security trade-off which comes with storing your authentication key in a bookmark; in a decent number of cases, however, it's well worth the gain in login seamlessness.</comment>


Some ideas to save the financial system from quants  - <AUTHOR> http://takimag.com/article/standing_up_to_the_oligarchs

<comment><USER2> I have _NO_ background as a basis for this, but I've idly speculated about the following:

1) Put the markets (the trading boards) on a stepped clock, with relatively large intervals with respect to processing speed.

2) For each interval, randomize the processing of queued work items (i.e. orders).

I suppose regulations, or something, would be needed to bridle potentially competitive trading opportunities (meaning, environments, including private, off-board transactions).</comment>


How Cubans deliver culture without internet - <AUTHOR> https://harpers.org/archive/2017/07/the-weekly-package/ <comment><USER2> Sneakernet baby!!!

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a dude with a backpack full of high density storage media.

The more you try to control human desires, the more it finds cracks elsewhere.

It's like putting water under high pressure. It will come shooting out of even the tightest seals, if you press it hard enough.</comment>


Show HN: Wintermute – A Cyberpunk Themed RESTFul API for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://wintermute.design <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool are you planning on expanding it to other media besides novels?

Also is there anywhere we can see what all has been added?</comment>


Ask HN: How to make the area "around" a site clickable? - <AUTHOR>

Check out http://www.collegehumor.com/ and hover over the empty space in the gutters to the side of the main content.  That whole space is clickable sending you off to the advertiser for that day.  What are some good ways of making the entire area _around_ a site clickable?  I'm playing around with a few but not seeing any one standout approach. <comment><USER2> I've made you a little demo, I think this is the most universal way to do it:

<http://ww.com/mousedown.html>

good luck!

Btw, such 'garbage clicks' are an excellent way to get rid of your advertisers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. Duly noted. Thanks for posting this, too. How would I set this js to apply only to the regions outside a site?

<comment><USER2> By checking if any object is located under the mouse pointer in the event handler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This practice seriously pisses me off. I really hope it doesn't catch on...</comment>


Show HN: Lens – Dead Simple Image Annotation Through Google Maps - <AUTHOR> https://lens.collectival.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

I've been looking for a really simple image annotation solution that is quick, mobile friendly, ready to ingest large-format images, easily sharable, etc., and coming up dry. So I hacked google maps to display my own images. Comments are welcome.

Thx, D</comment>


Why PC gamers pirate - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-piracy-survey-results-35-percent-of-pc-gamers-pirate/ <comment><USER2> TLDR: Game disribution platforms besides steam are horrible to deal with, and dowloading from the bay is faster. Not to mention its free.</comment>


Does the Google policy of allowing dogs at work offend Muslims?  Does Google have dog-free zones? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious about this. It seems that such a policy would not create a friendly work environment for Muslims.<p>While I'm not Muslim, I would not like to work around dogs or most other pets for that matter (although I would be ok with a fish tank). <comment><USER2> Generally, I believe people have the right to be offended by anything and voice their opinions about it. Because it can be for anything, people shouldn't have the right to force change. This should be as much company policy as the law allows.

Also, I love dogs. They're so cute! <http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/pups/index.html>

There is a funny story related to this. My company has a tiny branch on the other side of the country. Essentially an elite group of engineers wanted more sun, and started a skunk-works. After paying tens of thousands of dollars for a video-conference system, it wasn't used often. This is because a golden retriever would be the only one on the small office side. He'd come after hearing the system start and would sit in front of the camera. The owner was off doing real work.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is this different from allowing people to bring guns to work that they may point at you occasionally?

<comment><USER3> Normally when you try to make a point using reduction to absurdity you jump straight to nuclear missiles: i.e. "How is this different from allowing people to bring nuclear missiles to work that they may point at you occasionally?"

Unfortunately this is a contrived comparison. People who are bringing dogs into work are not bringing them as weapons that they then deliberately threaten their coworkers with. The key differences here is intentionality: bringing a dog to work is not intrinsically threatening, point a gun at someone is.

Your comparison only becomes valid if the individuals brought their dogs into work and threatened to assault coworkers with them. This is likely not part of Google's acceptable policies.

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is dogs are less predictable than people and may decide to attack for no obvious reason. It doesn't matter that their owners did not bring them to work to intimidate coworkers.

<comment><USER3> Your argument is based your intuitive view on the comparable reliability of dogs and people. It is your personal opinion that dogs are less predictable than people. Personally I find your opinion to be troubling, how can a much simpler creature be more complex and less predictable?

There have been between 17 and 26 dog related deaths per year for the past two decades in the US. There were 28874 gun related deaths in 1999 in the US. These numbers don't tell a very complete story, but I think they are sufficient to raise doubts about your premise that dogs are less predictable or more dangerous than armed humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Religious acceptance is a two-way street. Demanding that other religions accept your religious tenants is bigotry. As a world with diverse conflicting religions we have to remember that our relationship with a higher power (or lack thereof) is a personal issue: we ought to apply our standards to ourselves, attempts to force them on others end with catastrophe.

The typical response to my statement is "What if their religion supports eating babies?" This is what secular government is for, it formulates these things called laws which trump religious preference.

The response to that response is "there is no truly secular government." Imperfection is one of the few realities we can count on, condemning a solution for its lack of perfection is insincere. Remember that we're all using operating systems built the Wrong Way.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are two issues here.

If indeed most Muslims don't like being around dogs, then there is definitely a problem with Google's policy.

The other issue is that some people -- like me -- simply don't like being around dogs even though this has nothing to do with religious beliefs.

<comment><USER3> First, just because most Muslims don't like being around dogs doesn't automatically indicate that there is a problem with Google's policy.

People that don't like being around dogs will place a lower value upon working at Google. People who do like dogs will place a higher value upon working at Google.

If more people like dogs than don't like dogs, Google will benefit from their policy, and those who dislike dogs will suffer for their intolerance. If the opposite is true then they will suffer from their policy and people who dislike dogs will benefit.

Regardless of your policy someone is being discriminated against, so moral arguments will be irresolute. As such, economic reasoning seems as good as standard to judge by as any other. The claims of discrimination by allowing dogs in the workplace suffer from assuming that the status quo is some how more just than an alternative: don't worry, someone gets screwed no matter what.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could make the claim that Google is actually discriminating against Muslims because allowing dogs at work is not critical to its business.

It's against the law to discriminate based on religion.

<comment><USER3> The Muslims would be the ones religiously discriminating against Google. Allowing dogs at the workplace is a secular decision, viewing them as profane is a religious ones.

This argument is without legal grounds. Restaurants serve food that is not kosher, they are not being shut down for discriminating against Jews. Restaurants serve beef, despite offending those of the Hindu faith. Legally these are not grounds for religious discrimination. Neither is allow dogs in the workplace... and other companies have done the same for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't like dogs? Work somewhere else.

The vast majority of offices don't allow dogs. Google allows a lot of things that most offices don't...you take the good with the bad. I've been to the Google offices quite a bit, and dogs are not a major source of annoyance for anyone, as far as I can tell (though, truth be told, I like dogs a lot--though the majority of them are small dogs and I tend to like them less than proper sized ones).

Nobody makes you work at any particular office or in any particular type of environment...it's up to you to decide where you'll be happiest. Seems pretty obvious to me, but maybe I'm too much of a free market fanboy to see how oppressive Google's dog policy is for dog-haters.</comment>


The boss who doesn't believe in work-life balance - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/gallery/20170223-the-boss-who-doesnt-believe-in-work-life-balance <comment><USER2> Wow, that "article" was terrible.</comment>


Rule-Based Programming in Interactive Fiction - <AUTHOR> http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/rule-based-if/index.html <comment><USER3> Slightly off topic but I quite fancy playing some sort of text adventure again. Anyone got suggestions for a good one to start with?

<comment><USER4> I've not played a text adventure in years, but it seems like these might be a good start:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XYZZY_Awards_by_categor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XYZZY_Awards_by_category#Best_game)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone else here been following Chris Crawford's adventures into interactive fiction in trying to get away from the rule based approaches?

<comment><USER6> I did, and he didn't.

I think Crawford has two problems:

1\. He's not a good storyteller.

2\. Stories you tell using a computer _need_ to be rule-based if the computation is expected to have a (controlled/authored) effect on the story's meaning (i.e. if the computer acts as more than a "projector").

What I find ironic is that he ended up making "Balance of Power - <USER2> Century" [1], posted lots of progress reports to his forums detailing all his experiments with numerical calculations to affect the play state, and then the finished game was all about voting for or against countries and tallying up. No storytelling to speak of, no characters you'd care about whatsoever. I believe that Crawford is an obsessed man who tragically misunderstood what a story is.

[1] <http://storytron.com/play-bop2k.php>

<comment><USER5> I agree. Even if he is right in his approach, he could really do with being teamed up with someone who has a personality as strong as his and is much better at the aesthetic and fun part.

The sad thing about BOP2K is that for all the potentially clever things going on behind the scenes, you could probably re-write it with a handful of simple rules and random generators and 99% of users could not tell the difference.

My biggest concern with his approach has always been that ultimately it will just feel like you are randomly poking the world to try and make something interesting happen.The chance of an interesting narrative developing is some where in the realm of winning the lottery.

Add on top of that the chance that it will ever be in form that people actually enjoy and want.

I do applaud the man's passion, a lot of his ideas and willingness to try it though. I hope one day someone picks up his books and surprises us all by making it, or some form of it, work.</comment></comment></comment>


New York's "Shadow" Transit System - <AUTHOR> https://projects.newyorker.com/story/nyc-dollar-vans/ <comment><USER2> Probably the cheapest "mass" transit system I've ever heard of in the US.

And some unique capabilities:

"Two other van lines connect Jamaica Center to the Rockaways. During Hurricane Sandy, when thousands in this area were left stranded, dollar vans continued to run. Anthony Campbell, a driver, told me, "The M.T.A. buses withdrew their service because they said the downed trees weren't safe for the buses. You know, we were smaller, so we were able to travel to and from."</comment>


Kickstarter: Work started, 135$ of 500$ funded,mkvirtualenv helper - <AUTHOR> http://mtr.website/2015/02/02/working-on-project.html

<comment><AUTHOR> We are pleased to announce yourself on Kickstarter with a small django package, for more info please read the description on the Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter is the best way to get an independent assessment and the opportunity to listen to your opinion. It also allows us to assess the demand for the development of necessary packages, as well as make it easier for us, the developers, to increase your efficiency.

Our task is to help to the django developers community by simplifying theirs life. In any case, we will implement the project even if the campaign fail, but your help would motivate us in the future to develop much-needed community packages that are suitable for use in real production projects.</comment>


Can a 4 day workweek work? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/01/success/four-day-work-week/index.html <comment><USER2> I think this is a credible idea. If other countries can do it, why can the US?</comment>


The Last Line Effect - <AUTHOR> https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0260/ <comment><USER2> Continue

The Evil within the Comparison Functions - [https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0509/](https://www.viva64.com/en/b/0509/)

Annotation. Perhaps, readers remember my article titled "Last line effect". It describes a pattern I've once noticed: in most cases programmers make an error in the last line of similar text blocks. Now I want to tell you about a new interesting observation. It turns out that programmers tend to make mistakes in functions comparing two objects. This statement looks implausible; however, I'll show you a great number of examples of errors that may be shocking to a reader. So, here is a new research, it will be quite amusing and scary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: [2014]

<comment><USER4> Is the point of this comment that the point being made by the article is no longer relevant (i.e. 'obsoleted by the march of technical progress')? Or that you might waste a click on an article that you have read it before? Or ... ???

<comment><USER5> It's just how Hacker News works - people like older articles to be tagged by year. It's to make it easier to spot things that they may have already read, or that may be interesting but not as current.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough. And especially with re-titling.

I guess I am getting old and crotchety, so if somebody posts an article about aliasing artifacts using vector EE equipment to play galaxy wars, the quote "[1968]" doesn't seem necessary. It's relevant or not and while time makes all things irrelevant -- it wouldn't be on HN if it wasn't relevant to someone now.

Hmm. I need to rethink my think about that one.

[I am still personally triggered by the people who really really didn't get and yet dog-piled on the Alvy-Smith Rasterization post which remained true - but no one got it. Again ... I need to rethink my think.

Thank you]</comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube: The greatest record of modern civilization - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/video/52570/youtube-the-greatest-record-of-modern-civilization/

<comment><USER2> He alludes to the sad, bud plausible, possibility that Google/YouTube will stop hosting some of that record. After all, it costs money to host all those videos. How big is YouTube's archive today (in bytes)?</comment>


Power of the command line - <AUTHOR> http://www.rosipov.com/blog/power-of-the-command-line/

<comment><USER2> The article includes this as its first lines: " _Disclaimer: I am not advocating any specific tools or methodologies, I am simply sharing workflow I find to be efficient and pleasant._ "

Why bother disclaiming this? Why should the author Rosipov care if he advocates specific tools or methodologies (he does, in the very next paragraph)?

Is there some active force out there that discourages people from advocating or talking positively about command lines and related tools? Is these some force out there that encourages talking negatively about command lines and related tools? Because if there is, that particular force is so in the wrong, for any number of reasons.</comment>