Show HN: Bear – Minimal blogging platform - <AUTHOR> https://bearblog.dev <comment><USER2> Small suggestion -- it seems like you're using the wrong units (or maybe abbreviations) for your displayed average page sizes. You're using lower-case b to indicate bits, but I suspect you mean upper-case B to indicate bytes? Also, the lower-case k is the correct prefix for 1,000, but lower case m is milli, or 1/000\. You want M for mega, which is 1,000,000.

Also if you _really_ want to be precise you should consider whether you're using binary prefixes vs SI prefixes, e.g. kB (10^3 bytes) vs kiB (2^10 bytes). That doesn't matter as much because the error is small for these lower values, but the casing errors definitely do matter. "mb" means millibars to me, not Megabytes!

<comment><USER3> Huh... I've always described 2^10 bytes as a "kilobyte" (kB) but I've always hated the ambiguity, even if the difference between 2^10 and 10^3 is usually not important. Thanks to this comment, I learned there is an formal set of units which are distinct from their SI counterparts[0].

      1000^1 kB, 1024^1 kibibyte (kiB)
      1000^2 MB, 1024^2 mebibyte (MiB)
      1000^3 GB, 1024^3 gibibyte (GiB)
      1000^4 TB, 1024^4 tebibyte (TiB)
      1000^5 PB, 1024^5 pebibyte (PiB)
      1000^6 EB, 1024^6 exbibyte (EiB)
      1000^7 ZB, 1024^7 zebibyte (ZiB)
      1000^8 YB, 1024^8 yobibyte (YiB)

It looks like those units have been around since 1995, but they haven't seen much mainstream adoption. Too bad.

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

<comment><USER2> Now that you're aware of them you're going to start seeing them everywhere. There's more adoption than you realize.

<comment><USER4> I've been aware of these for around 20 years, I've not seen that nomenclature growing in popularity.

It doesn't help that it just sounds silly to my ears.

<comment><USER5> Nail on the head. They're just weird, at least in the context of English phonetics. That's the reason I discourage their adoption. I'd much rather we just all agree that kilobyte means 2^10 bytes. Or find words that aren't weird.

If I remember correctly, a big motivation for this change was the fact that disk manufacturers intentionally used base-10 definitions so they could advertise larger numbers for disk capacity. But presumably they still do that, and presumably people still often don't notice.

<comment><USER6> Why should we use 2^10? Bits matter in the small—a machine with a 12-bit word and 1024 words of memory or whatever was popular in the '70s—but at the scale of gigabytes, individual bits don't matter anymore, so may as well just use decimal because that's what our number system is based on. I don't see any point besides retro nostalgia to use base 2 after you move out of the each bit counts space.

<comment><USER2> SI prefixes are fine for mass/block storage and network speeds, because there's no particular reason they would fall precisely into buckets of powers of 2. But for CPU cache and system/GPU memory in particular, and maybe even some flash memory, it does continue to make sense to use MiB and GiB, because of the particular way that memory itself is addressed and packaged. Memory very much does fall precisely along power of 2 boundaries.

For example, I recently bought two 32 GiB DIMMs for my computer. I guess you could call them 34.3597 GB DIMMs, but that's strictly worse! Knowing that they're exactly 32 GiB makes it makes it obvious that it takes 2^35 bit pointers to address every location by byte in one of those DIMMs (so they obviously require a 64-bit architecture to take advantage of!), or 2^36 bit pointers to address memory locations across both of them.

<comment><USER6> Sure. I support the distinction of GiB for RAM and GB for everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Bear" is a well-known note-taking and writing app [https://bear.app/](https://bear.app/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was trying to play on the word "bare". Yeah, I realised this a bit too late

<comment> mark-r I have to say I like the character based logo. Inventive use of Unicode I'm guessing.

<comment><USER8> It's a fairly well known koamoji. Kaomoji is the horizontal counterpart to smileys and they can get very creative.

If you set your iPhone to Japanese keyboard it comes with hundreds of these build in

        ('ω' )

<comment><USER9> Bold to assume this person has an iPhone :)

<comment><USER10> I copy paste them :) [http://japaneseemoticons.me/all-japanese- emoticons/](http://japaneseemoticons.me/all-japanese-emoticons/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Since HN seems to be on a blog-kick lately, I'll repost the idea that I'm still waiting for someone to build:

A blogverse of some kind that allows for algorithmic discoverability & aggregation (ala Medium) without the bullshit/terrible UX.

The real value proposition of Medium is that a well-made aggregator benefits readers and writers alike. Readers find more authors they like, writers find more audience. There are also network effects with shared comment logins, inter-blog citations, etc.

I really think a blogging renaissance is waiting to happen. These ingredients plus a business model not reliant on ads, massive js overhead, and other nonsense could jumpstart it.

<comment><USER12> What I want is a Yahoo-style directory for blogs. Blog owners can put their blog in exactly one category. Users can star the blogs they like, similar to GitHub, and identify the low quality click generators/marketing blogs.

I personally find Medium to be a horrible way to find content. Maybe it works for new content, if that's what you're after.

<comment><USER13> The success of search engines prompted Yahoo to ditch its original product (the curation and categorization of the web) in favor of its competitors automated (and thereby game-able) crawl-index-search approaches.

Now, decades later, there seems to be a shared yearning for the curated web, perhaps in response to the low signal:noise ratio of search. Isn't it funny, how the world works in cycles?

Curated search (domains chosen by a set of humans with no financial conflicts of interests, with some grokkable categorization and full-text search) might be the nirvana we're searching for. I think the GP has a point, that the need for a sustaining business model tends to strongly conflict with this equilibrium.

Wikipedia has sort of evolved to partially fill this niche, but it periodically struggles with funding. I agree there's not a similar filling for blogs, yet: maybe GitHub will evolve there, but it will face the same pressure of other platforms owned by public for-profit companies.

<comment><USER12> I was probably one of the last users of their original directory. It was my browser homepage until the day they removed it.

I eventually stopped using it because it didn't keep up. These days, search is for many purposes completely useless. If I want to find someone to do work on my house, the last place I'll go is Google. It's truly amazing just how worthless the results are. You'll get results from Michigan and Florida and Oregon all for the same search, in the same town, and claiming to be a local business. I imagine it's a fraud-ridden garbage dump if you actually try to use Google to find businesses to do work for you.

On the topic of blogs - not completely useless, but overrun with shallow, uninformative trash posts by SEO experts. I think Google is more vulnerable now than at any time in the past 20 years.

<comment><USER14> > _You 'll get results from Michigan and Florida and Oregon all for the same > search, in the same town, and claiming to be a local business._

It's worse if you are non-US. Google seems to think that _anywhere_ in the UK is local to me for businesses, and that's AFTER I've added loads of filters to stop American results from showing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Things I would like in a blogging platform:

* Generate lightweight static website

* Good clean default CSS so I don't have to mess with it

* Automatically upload website to CDN and trigger expirations as necessary.

* Self-hosted

* Runs on AWS Lambda or any other Function as a Service equivilient

* Has a super lightweight CMS that I can easily use on both desktop and mobile, so if I have ideas I can start writing anywhere, and can also make minor corrections to existing posts while on the go.

* The CMS can be a frontend to git, but git is hard to use on mobile, so I don't want the CMS to just be git.

If anyone knows of something that meets these requirements I'd be super grateful!

<comment><USER16> Except for being "self hosted" and the "front end to git" we're building that as a commercial service.

[https://pluma.cloud/](https://pluma.cloud/)

Not much to show yet but you can follow us on Twitter for updates in a couple of months: [https://twitter.com/plumacloud](https://twitter.com/plumacloud)

We're also considering providing our CMS as headless via an API so that you can connect it to your SSG and make your own template, host it wherever you want, etc, but we haven't decided yet on the pricing for that but it would be much cheaper than our main product.

<comment><USER17> I think the mailto: link on your page is misspelt as mailt:

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love that this exists, I wish I'd thought of it first, and I like you for making it.

I think you should improve the default stylesheet a bit, I like [http://matejlatin.github.io/Gutenberg/](http://matejlatin.github.io/Gutenberg/).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh, this looks neat

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think that product template could use either `aria-hidden="true"` or `aria- label="bear"` HTML attributes for screen readers sake (and reconsider title and OG properties); not an expert in this area nor having SR at hand, but I guess that

        ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

would sound like 'pharyngeal voiced fricative - bullet - letter ain - bullet - glottal stop', what is hardly beneficial for screen reader users. Cool Unicode "picture" though, it's a pity such doodles hurts accessibility (sad smiley).

<comment><USER20> Given that we can't expect everyone to use aria attributes, shouldn't screen readers just have a list of all widely used smileys with descriptive names (if they don't have it already)?

<comment><USER19> Good point and interesting question indeed. Finally tried simple speech synthesis demo [0] and in Win10 Firefox it really reads out some "basic ASCII- smileys" as their descriptive translation (and ignores any other set of non- alphabet characters, with few exceptions like underscores and asterisks).

Compiled all predefined textual emoticons offered by Gboard app in Android [1] and let the Narrate speech synthesis in Reader view (F9) read them aloud (uses presumably the same synthesis as example) - quite predictably most of them weren't heard at all, but those simple ones that were have surprised me.

So most probably there is no problem with that particular Unicode bear in screen readers after all.

[0] [https://mdn.github.io/web-speech-api/speak-easy- synthesis/](https://mdn.github.io/web-speech-api/speak-easy-synthesis/) [1] [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/myfonj/f6b0ed1c783d16a79d...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/myfonj/f6b0ed1c783d16a79d1d8a48292eb7f9/raw/Gboard%2520textual%2520emoticons%2520list)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wouldn't twtxt be a better candidate as the most minimal blogging platform?

[https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is pretty rad

<comment><USER22> Used this years ago for twitter [https://www.floodgap.com/software/ttytter/](https://www.floodgap.com/software/ttytter/) It was amazing... everyone thinks you're working with the terminal open ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For other similar-ish related tools/writing platforms:

* [https://write.as/](https://write.as/)

* [http://txti.es/](http://txti.es/)

* [http://telegra.ph/](http://telegra.ph/)

* [https://txt.fyi/](https://txt.fyi/)

* [https://verbatim.link/](https://verbatim.link/)

* [https://www.pastery.net/](https://www.pastery.net/)

* [http://ix.io/](http://ix.io/)

* [https://commentpara.de/](https://commentpara.de/)

* [https://rwtxt.com/](https://rwtxt.com/)

* [https://distbin.com/](https://distbin.com/)

<comment><USER24> I'm surprised nobody has attempted to put the content in the URL yet (to display on a static page with styling using JS [needs a tag filter...] to insert an URL parameter into some node). It would accommodate at least 2KB of text, local caching and fast hosting all in one.

<comment><USER25> Not sure if it's what you mean, but:

(hashify) 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2464213](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2464213) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3407197)

(shortly) 2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3834643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3834643) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5696127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5696127)

<comment><USER24> Yes, that's what I mean. But only Hashify still exists apparently...

<comment><USER25> Yeah, the pages linked from those HN links don't seem to exist, but you can still download it:

[https://github.com/lucaspiller/shortly](https://github.com/lucaspiller/shortly)

I was always quite fascinated by the concept, but I suspect liability and lack of control over the content is a fatal issue and why nothing much seemed to come from it.

If someone makes a 'bad' page, which is inevitable, the domain with the hashify/shortly code would be held responsible and the only way the site owner could 'remove' the content would be to stop the service.

<comment><USER26> > Storing a document in a URL is nifty, but not terribly practical. Hashify > uses the [bit.ly API][4] to shorten URLs from as many as 30,000 characters > to just 20 or so. In essence, bit.ly acts as a document store! [1]

bit.ly et al. seem to be able to get away with being agnostic processors. I'm surprised there haven't been more stories about their services being abused.

[1] [https://hashify.me/IyBIYXNoaWZ5CgpIYXNoaWZ5IGRvZXMgbm90IHNvb...](https://hashify.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)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What are the limits on number of posts, post size, images...? What is it going to be priced at? Will there continue to be a free tier if/when it becomes paid? Sorry, I can't try any platform that doesn't answer questions about its future. I hope you'd provide more details on the homepage.

</comment><comment><USER28> I appreciate the no-bs lightweight website sentiment as much as anyone, but I think there's also something to be said about drastically improving readability with some line-height and font styling.

<comment><USER29> I really recommend [https://write.as/](https://write.as/) for those looking for minimalism with a bit more styling

<comment><USER30> There's really nothing more minimal than [https://telegra.ph](https://telegra.ph)

It just gets out of the way.

<comment><USER31> It has consecutive urls, relinquishes your drop of privacy.

.../140 -> test test test

.../141 -> My personal depression diary entry no.3 ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This looks exactly like what I've been searching for all this while. Do you plan to release a self hosted/open source version of this? The one thing that makes me uncomfortable about a blogging service - what happens if they shut down?

<comment><USER33> 너무 힘이들것 같아요

<comment><USER34> What does this mean? Why is this here?

<comment><USER35> Lol. It's someone's language? Looks like Korean

"I think it's too hard"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Landing page is straight to the point, describes what is different about Bear, and links to an example blog. Great!

The only question I still have is what is the editor like?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've added it to my notes, thanks. Maybe a full demo interface would be a good idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So can I self-host this? The comparisons make no sense if I can't self-host the thing.

<comment><USER38> From the creator elsewhere in the comments:

> You can't self host it, otherwise you'd be better off writing your own basic > HTML pages or using a static site generator. You can check out the source > code on github though > [https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog](https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog)

<comment><USER39> Looking at the source code, you could self host it making some changes in the code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've had a similar idea after looking for something like this to use as a log for interesting stuff that I found on the internet. I ended up building a small ruby app for this ([https://github.com/adnanh/mikro](https://github.com/adnanh/mikro)) and it powers my (b)log which is still alive at [http://blog.hajdarevic.net/](http://blog.hajdarevic.net/)

Since then, I've wanted to enhance it with URL unfurling, link preserving in terms of creating a snapshot of the linked URLs, smart bookmarklet etc... but never got around to doing it, as life tends to get busy, and other things take priority over that :-(

</comment><comment><USER41> Heads up: it doesn't have no JavaScript at present, because Cloudflare's email protection system is in place. (I _hate_ that thing. It mangles non-email addresses _all the time_ if they look even _vaguely_ like an email address, e.g. a package with version number "firstname.lastname@example.com". Penalising users that disable JavaScript.)

[https://herman.bearblog.dev/](https://herman.bearblog.dev/) contains a "Get in touch" mailto: link that gets ruined, and the following script is added:

      <script data-cfasync="false" src="/cdn-cgi/scripts/5c5dd728/cloudflare-static/email-decode.min.js"></script>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah shit. Turning it off. Thanks for the heads up

<comment><USER42> Safari on iOS 13.4 crashed loading [https://herman.bearblog.dev/the-gods-of- toil/](https://herman.bearblog.dev/the-gods-of-toil/)

Not blaming bearblog, but FYI

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wondering how people feel about analytics on small sites such as these? Including a Google Analytics tag seems to go against the ethos of such a site, but a lot of people like to know who is visiting their blog and so including some sort of analytics should be an option.

Self hosting seems to be a decent tradeoff. Analytics services like Fathom [0], which provides a free, self-hosted solution, let you track basic statistics about your site without the data being siphoned off to some company. I have seen discussion around whether the use of analytics should even be necessary, but I feel like that's a separate conversation :)

[0] [https://usefathom.com](https://usefathom.com)

</comment><comment><USER44> Really cool! I like the idea to use a note taking/writing tool as a headless CMS and thought of this for Emvi [1] too. We provide access to everything through our API already... You can see usage of that here [2] and on GitHub [3].

The loading times of on Bear Blog seem a bit too high? Where does Medium for example take 16s to load?

[1] [https://emvi.com/](https://emvi.com/)

[2] [https://wiki.sts.wtf/](https://wiki.sts.wtf/)

[3] [https://github.com/Special-Tactical- Service/wiki](https://github.com/Special-Tactical-Service/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER45> Hrm. I'm getting a certificate error when I click on the example site, on firefox dev (up to date within the past couple days at worst):

        https://herman.bearblog.dev/
        Peer's Certificate issuer is not recognized.
        HTTP Strict Transport Security: true
        HTTP Public Key Pinning: false
        Certificate chain:
        ... skipped ...

Interestingly, this one works (from browsing github issues): [https://hyprtxt.bearblog.dev/](https://hyprtxt.bearblog.dev/)

I'd be happy to paste the whole thing somewhere, I'm just avoiding large blobs here.

</comment><comment><USER46> Love the "early internet" feel of it, and of course the speed.

The domain name could be improved, considering that it will be part of every hosted blog. Something more concise, or rolls off the tongue easier.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to get a better domain. I tried so hard. tiny.blog, bare.blog, bear.blog, petite.blog, smol.site, etc, etc.... Small domains are competitive if you're on a shoestring budget :P

<comment><USER47> I scored text.garden a while ago which in retrospect would have been great for something like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> [https://txti.es/](https://txti.es/) comes to mind, but I guess its lack of account system makes it not very blog-friendly.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've not worked out when firefox reader view is visible and when it isn't, but for this blog it isn't, which is a shame because I find the chosen font unreadable.

<comment><USER50> I actually just wrote a blog post about this topic: [https://videoinu.com/blog/firefox-reader-view- heuristics](https://videoinu.com/blog/firefox-reader-view-heuristics)

In a nutshell, the paragraphs (<p> tags) do not contain enough text to contribute to the readability score. Reader view heuristics rewards paragraphs of at least 140 characters.

<comment><USER49> Thanks, that's really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What are the economics of this?

Presumably you are paying web hosting fees out of pocket. If this is successful, what's the plan for when you no longer want to be that charitable?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting fees are pretty negligible. If it becomes a burden, then I'll cross that bridge when I get there. Thing is, if enough people are using this to make me have to upgrade my hosting, that's a great problem to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I sign up but no email was send.

The css should either leave the default colors alone or set both the background and font color.

The source of this page contains much more cruft in meta tags and <!-- Microdata --> than actual content. [https://herman.bearblog.dev/markdown- test/](https://herman.bearblog.dev/markdown-test/)

<comment><USER53> The only problem I have with that page is that the meta description contains too much content. Otherwise, the source is very clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Note to security researchers: per the TOS, this platform censors publication of malware, worms, viruses, and other such software.

I'll never personally use a publishing/hosting service platform that tells me, in advance, that they will censor my legal content.

</comment><comment><USER55> I noticed someone asked about self-hosting: I already had a PHP site so I wanted an easy way to integrate a blog in my site. I ended up creating a micro-blogging library[0], which just renders markdown as blog posts. The advantage is that there is no build step, you only write markdown files (VSCode has live-preview by default for markdown) and you have easy versioning as markdown is just text. [0]: [https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown- blog](https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog)

</comment><comment><USER56> I might like it if I didn't have to sign up, and if I could self host it.

</comment><comment><USER57> Love it! Also, I think it'd be more impressive to be consistent with your units when comparing page sizes e.g:

       4mb
       1mb
       4mb
       3mb
       0.005mb

</comment><comment><USER58> I am glad that people are creating these services, but I always see a problem with this: what happens if the developer can no longer maintain the service or does not scale economically. All the blogs will end up being lost. Unless the developer is a philanthropist who plans to keep this up to the end of the day, I see these services as ideal for very specific things, not as your new home.

</comment><comment><USER59> I wish there was something like this for math blogs. I've tried Jekyll with MathJax but it looks kind of ugly. Any suggestions anyone?

<comment><USER60> You can visit [https://upmath.me/](https://upmath.me/) and on the preview side, choose `md`. You can get latex equation as SVG URL hosted on s2cms.ru CDN. It's pretty fast and supports any website that supports markdown+images without the need for MathJax or Katex. Example post here [https://katr.bearblog.dev/latex/](https://katr.bearblog.dev/latex/)

<comment><USER59> Will give it a try, thanks for the example post!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This is cool!

As mentioned in other replies--some small styling tweaks for readability would be useful and would literally only cost bytes (on the order of the x-clacks- overhead on the page...)

If you're focusing on an extremely small page size, I'd prefer an external static, cached stylesheet than inlining all styling on every page load. That and a less complicated email obfuscator. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the awesome feedback. Yeah, I've come to realise that I'm the only person partial to Garamond ;)

I've turned off the email obfuscator (courtesy of cloudflare), and will be doing a bunch of styling improvements over the next week.

<comment><USER61> Nah, I actually like the Garamond. I was referring more to adding a bit more line-height as mentioned in the (then) top comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I don't understand the desire to have no stylesheets. The default styling on the web is not a great example of design or usability.

<comment><USER63> But it has one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Hey a quick question Do you think can I host it myself. I really like the platform and can this support google analytics.

</comment><comment> 0-O-0 This looks minimal, but a random page that I've visited [1] duplicates article's text 6 times across different meta tags. Sure something that can be improved.

[1] [https://herman.bearblog.dev/why-i- journal/](https://herman.bearblog.dev/why-i-journal/)

</comment><comment><USER65> Is it open source? Could I self hosted it?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't self host it, otherwise you'd be better off writing your own basic HTML pages or using a static site generator. You can check out the source code on github though [https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog](https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog)

<comment><USER66> Love to see Django apps out in the wild! It might be worth adding a COPYRIGHT file to the repo, to clarify if we do or do not have the right to run this software on our own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Nice to see these minimal sites. I also tried to make my own blog as minimal in used bandwidth as possible without sacrificing my features. A full page load with all resources is around 22 kB.

Just a note, there seems to be an errant </div> at the end of the generated HTML.

</comment><comment><USER68> >"Blog platform Avg. page size

Medium ~4mb

Blogger ~1mb

Wordpress ~4mb

Ghost ~3mb

Bear ~5kb (yep)"

There is definitely something to be said with respect to how bloaty many blogging packages are these days...

Actually, come to think of it, that would be a great name for a new blogging service... call it "bloaty" or "bloatly" or something like that...<g>.

It could also refer to the fact that with most blogs, the signal to noise ratio of the words comprising the articles is similarly bloated, as well... so "bloatly" would be a great name! That'll be my next Y Combinator submission for summer 2020!

"Bloatly"!

I can picture my future company's Y Combinator interview:

YC Staff: "So what does your piece of software do?"

Us: "It's a blogging platform, the very first HAAS (Hot-Air-As-a-Service) platform out there... <g> Great for politicians and salespeople! 1.21 Gigabytes of useless JavaScript per page... the Internet will end before you successfully download any page!"

YC: "So what do you call it?"

Us: "We call it _Bloatly_ \-- now _give us our $150,000 check!_ " <g>

(Kidding, obviously! <g>)

</comment><comment><USER69> So glad minimal websites are becoming more popular! Great idea. [https://catfish.dev/catfish-developer.html](https://catfish.dev/catfish- developer.html) also follows that ideology

</comment><comment><USER70> Does it have RSS?

<comment><USER71> [https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/issues/2](https://github.com/HermanMartinus/bearblog/issues/2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I like the lighthouse numbers a lot:

[https://twitter.com/asculthorpe/status/1265374476100947971](https://twitter.com/asculthorpe/status/1265374476100947971)

Performance: 100

</comment><comment><USER73> Unless network speeds are reversing to the modem age, browsers switching to Trident/Gecko and PCs to single core CPUs exclusively, this is 100% hipsterism.

As if using scripts or CSS is solely a choice of the CMS...

Get real.

<comment><USER74> You probably don't know how many people still use slow, expensive and limited (often every part extreme) connections and old CPUs. And even on a Core i7 with a 100 Mbit/s channel many websites still feel slow.

<comment><USER73> Perhaps in rural areas in Africa and Asia. But these areas are plagued by poverty either way. Reading John Doe's blog on a 5KB web page is probably their last concern... :)

<comment><USER75> There are plenty of people in the developed US who have unreliable and slow internet. Consumers benefit from lightweight products. This is not really difficult to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I use even a shorter version on my site, a cross between pastebin and ascii blog [0]

[0] [https://embit.ca/scratch](https://embit.ca/scratch)

</comment><comment><USER77> The comparisons are all to large content management systems. However this seems like a better fit for static site generators. Would it be better to compare to Jekyll, Hugo, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, serving static files will always be the fastest, but this is for people looking for a service like Medium, or Blogger, where there's no need to handle anything locally.

<comment><USER78> to be clear, you don't _need_ to do anything locally. It's possible to use static blogs without touching your site and there are lots of competing tools out there that will give you a web front end to your static blog.

For example. I use Hugo, with Forestry.io and don't have to touch my filesystem (or even my personal computer) to blog. I just go to a web page like all the CMS blogs.

I'm self-hosting rather than using something like netifly so the setup was a bit more geeky BUT it's totally doable and doesn't have to be tooo geeky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Good idea but not sure if I would call it a blog hosting platform. My understanding is that it hosts a single parsed markdown file on a subdomain of my choosing.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can write as many posts as you want in markdown, check out the example blog herman.bearblog.dev to see what I mean

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Is this different from the note taking app "Bear"

<comment><USER38> Yes. The only similarity is their names.

<comment><USER80> Why have the same name that is linked with a well known app. 1. it confuses the user 2. No unique branding as this question is going to crop up again and again. Why the author wants to compete with this name ? Just curious

<comment><USER81> Competition was not intended: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312634](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23312634) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Be careful, you might be running into trademark violations with the popular note-taking app Bear. Seems like both fall in similar genres.

<comment><USER83> I don't think you can trademark a generic work like "Bear" .. so long as the author isn't using the logos from that app or conflating its brand, it should be fine (IANAL)

<comment><USER84> You absolutely can trademark a generic word for specific circumstances. That's why I can't set up a computer shop called Apple. It was also the subject of many lawsuits between Apple Computers and Apple Records.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Does anyone know a blogging platform that allows you to export your content as a standalone static site and or markdown/csv?

<comment><USER86> micro.blog

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I need something simple like this but with syntax highlighting, images and Latex support with the option to host it myself.

</comment><comment><USER88> I need to be able to write math and coding content. So coding blocks and math blocks for writing latex would be ideal.

</comment><comment><USER89> This is great. Is there a way to export your data? This would be the only thing stopping me from using the service.

</comment><comment><USER90> nice initiative ... something which reminds me of ghost !

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

[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost)

</comment><comment><USER91> This is wonderful. I'm thinking of doing something similar. Please could you email me? Detail in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER92> I love that bear looks as good (if not better) on by blackberry passport (Sq display) as on my galaxy S9

</comment><comment><USER93> Looks good ! What is this header ? "X-Clacks-Overhead" :) We getting Discworld meta as well ?

</comment><comment><USER94> Is anyone going to mention how it says Medium takes 16s to load on average? That can't be right?

</comment><comment><USER95> Cool project! I think you'd do well to expand the example blog with more entries and content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Will do

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Any R blogdown writers here? I started using it a few weeks ago and love it.

</comment><comment><USER97> Add an option to use a black background, and it's perfect.

</comment><comment><USER98> I see the page and example blog, but where's the platform?

</comment><comment><USER99> I like it. I actually built my own platform last year in a similar vein ([https://senryu.pub](https://senryu.pub)) but made a few different trade- offs; I allowed myself a couple of fonts (which make up most of the page size), but I can very much appreciate going even further towards minimalism. Mine's a slow-burn project that I go back to every now and then and just add small daft features just for myself, as nobody else uses the bloody thing (probably because I put a paywall on it to stop spam). Poem formatting? Absolutely.

I'm all for more platforms like this existing, I'd love a return to a legible, lightweight internet.

</comment><comment><USER100> Nice to see a minimal Django-based blog platform!

</comment><comment><USER101> The example project page is super hard to parse

</comment><comment><USER102> " _Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue_

" _Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to bearblog.dev because this website requires a secure connection._ "

???

</comment><comment><USER103> That landing page is beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER104> Advogato feelings here.

</comment><comment><USER105> can we do it by nocss ;D

</comment><comment><USER106> Change the font from Garamond and that will eliminate 50% of the style complaints.

I've always found Garamond text online hard on my eyes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I am a startup employee "getting screwed" by offshore talent - <AUTHOR> I believe I'm in a unique situation and I'd like your opinion. Last year I joined a nice startup based in SV (Palo Alto). I joined right after the company got a seed round from a VC of 3M, with post-money valuation 12M.
At the time there was just the founder, and I joined together with 3 other guys (all developers). The deal for me was a bit more than 1% of incentive stock options for a 40% salary cut, with the "very vague" promise that the salary would have been brought to market rate at some point, if things went well.
Now, one year later, we're doing quite good, we're having a bit of traction and in SV there are 3 people in the engineering department (plus some marketing guys): the founder, me and one of the other initial guys.
And here comes the interesting part: the rest of the dev team (~10 people) is in a foreign country with cheap cost of labor. The founder, immigrating from Europe a few years ago, has maintained some very good connections with talent there: I'm telling you, those guys are good and they ask roughly 30% of what a comparable developer would ask here, and they're happy with that.
I wasn't aware of this plan originally, and now whenever I give a hint about the raise (especially lately since we might be close to another round of funding), I get the clear impression that it's not going to happen, considering the goldmine of talent abroad that he has found, and that with my raise he could easily buy another developer for a year.
Despite liking this job a lot, it is very hard for me to stare at what I'm losing, especially because the equity is not that great and my technical skills and managing capabilities have improved a lot (seriously, a dramatic improvement) during this past year, so if I changed job I might be able to easily negotiate a 20% (or more) of what I was making before joining the startup, bringing me to an effective current salary cut of more than 50%!
What would you do? <comment><USER2> Sounds like you learned all your lessons in one go. Well done.

Never take a pay cut in exchange for lottery tickets. Check. Never take a pay cut in exchange for a vague promise of returning to your real rate later. Check. Never let anybody position your market value in the context of what another developer has negotiated for himself. Check.

You got all that out of the way in the first year. Time to move on to that better job that pays you in money. Bet you'll never make any of those mistakes again.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Note that an effective salary cut of 50% means you can _double_ your salary with a new job.

2\. The single most effective way to get a salary raise is to show how much you're worth on the market, ie, get an outside offer. Use this tactic carefully.

3\. My unscientific method is to value stock vesting at Series A companies at 40% of face value due to them being high-risk assets.

Worth to VC = 1% / 4 years vesting = 0.25% / year * $12M = $30k / year.

Worth to you, adjustment for being a high-risk asset: ($30k / year) * 40% = $12.5k / year.

That's how much your equity is worth, maybe a bit more since you have additional traction.

<comment><USER4> _" That's how much your equity is worth"_

On the other hand, if the company never becomes successful enough to go public or be bought by a larger company, your equity is worth zero.

As for what to do: I agree with the people who say look for a job somewhere else. They've already lied to you about bringing your salary up to market rate, so why should you trust them to look out for your best interests in the future?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really don't understand the thinking that %1 equity should have anything to do with salary especially after the company raised some money. That %1 is compensation for the risk you took joining a company with a questionable future... pretty much every new business by the way - even one that raised three million bucks. The only way you should ever, ever earn less than market rate is if you are a founder with a founder level stake and control in the company. Call it 10% or more... and even then it's a bad idea not to pay founders after raising capital. People who are worried about their bills are less effective. So yeah, I agree with samt in this thread "Either double down and ask for a shit-ton more equity, or quit and find a better job. Life is too short."

edit: You are not getting screwed by offshore talent you have already been screwed by the founder :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Either double down and ask for a shit-ton more equity, or quit and find a better job. Life is too short.

</comment><comment><USER7> First, determine what leverage you have.

How essential are you to the startup's success? (how much would it cost to "replace" you). This might be higher than you think .. they may _need_ a couple engineers physically in SV.

What % of your equity is vested? With standard terms, I'm guessing 1/4th (so 0.25%), unless there is a cliff longer than a year (which I've never seen).

How likely is the startup to exit in different scenarios: acquihire, bought for user base, bought for product, or IPO. How likely are each of these scenarios?

Just remember, this is a pure _business_ decision. Don't worry much about "loyalty", "promises", "reputation" etc. If you're seriously good, these things don't matter much. Simply calculate the likelihood and payout for the possible decisions and then pick.

That's how good founders should make decisions _and_ how good employees should make decisions. I wouldn't hire people who didn't think this way, or work for people who didn't.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have you already had a serious discussion about you being unable to stay if you can't get a fair pay rise?

I think your last paragraph says it all. I would find another job. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER9> What i would do ?

I would definitely start looking for a job elsewhere. If he believe that with the talents he has abroad at the 1/3 of your salary he can do what he wants, then you will soon be deemed over-paid.

Getting the raise will be extremely hard, unless you are really core to the company and they will be affected heavily if you leave.

I would start looking for another job that it will make you happy as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> You shouldn't have a problem finding a job at this market but before you resign, communicate with the founders. Send them email telling them what your expectation was when you first joined the startup. Since the company is doing well right now, the right thing to do is to raise your salary to the current market. If they deny your request, just move on.

</comment><comment><USER11> First, your math is way off. If the company had a valuation of 12M, 1% equity is $120k. 4 year vesting makes it $30k/year. Also, VCs get preferred shares, making your equity worth even less than $30k/year.

So, you were an idiot to take a pay cut of $30k or more for this job.

At this point, moving on is your best option. When you get a new job offer, don't take a counter-offer, just leave.

Echoing the points the other people made, never take a pay cut on the vague promise they will make it up to you later. That never happens. When you took the foolish pay cut, you established yourself in their minds as an idiot, and they will never properly respect you.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fish or Cut Bait?

Areas to explore: Do you trust the Founder? Do you still buy into his vision? Does the Founder actively demonstrate that he respects you as a valued business partner, (even if you are junior)? Are you financially/mentally prepared to walk?

Before you bail-- suggest a serious one-on-one conversation with the founder. Get some clarity on where he is on growth plans and compensation. Also, it's fair to share with him exactly what your expectations are. Manage up, look for a win-win scenario. Friday afternoon is a perfect time for this conversation. Suggest you guys go grab a beer together.

<comment><USER13> Would recommend lining up other potential companies/offers before that conversation, in case it turns into a quick "thank you for your time" and being let go. Not necessarily as leverage for the raise, but as a contingency plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Get an offer letter from another company with fantastic salary, bonus, and stock options - Google is always hiring good solid engineers, and so is Apple and 300 other SV companies.

Once you have good offer letter then go to your CEO for a 'man-to-man' talk.

If he has any ounce of courage then he will match the offer or it will be your last day at work.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER15> Just as a datapoint: raising their next round might be easier if they have a CTO in the US. You could be that CTO. But also, look for another job.

</comment><comment><USER16> run

</comment><comment><USER17> > with the "very vague" promise

So it wasn't in writing. Therefore it didn't exist. Writing has a memory that promises do not. Everything jasonkester said.

I would merely add that anyone who makes promises, vague or not, but won't commit them to writing has precisely no intention of keeping them. Full stop. They might decide to keep them at some point, because they're feeling magnanimous or something. At the intersection of "make promise" and "refuse to document", they're telling you "I want the flexibility to not keep my word without consequence and I'm betting you're gullible enough to believe me". And if they say something like "we're doing this on trust and trust is important to our success" or "there's no need to bring a lawyer into this", you are rapidly approaching a 100% guarantee of getting screwed.</comment>


Google Wave: Up and Running - <AUTHOR> https://www.bookdepository.com/Google-Wave-Andres-Ferrate/9780596806002 <comment><USER2> Didn't Wave get killed a long time ago?</comment>


FTC is reportedly considering a 'record-setting fine' against Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/ftc-is-reportedly-considering-a-record-setting-fine-against-facebook.html <comment><USER2> Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be at least an order of magnitude less than what Facebook truly deserves. And very likely only a tiny fraction of this year's profits for Facebook.

The US needs something more akin to the death capital for companies. Or at least imprisonment for executives that _willfully_ make decisions that break laws (I assume FB did break a law here, otherwise there wouldn't be a "record fine" to talk about).</comment>


Ask HN: Is LinkedIn Premium Worth It? - <AUTHOR> What has been your experience with it? What were your initial goals, and did Premium help? What features did you discover that were valuable? <comment><USER2> The only thing I did was find the hiring managers for jobs I was interested in, but to be honest you don't even need premium for that. It's blending more and more into some generic social media monstrosity and wild west playground for recruiters to spam you even when disabling the option for hearing about new opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dunno about premium, but as an infrequent user, I get the impression that features that used to work, now require an upgrade to premium to activate.

Based on my perceptions, I won't be upgrading to premium.</comment>


Hello from a libc-free world - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/hello_from_a_libc_free <comment><USER2> It's not "hello world" if it doesn't print "hello world"; the runtime doesn't even need to know about "hello world" in this "version".

It's not even that much harder to actually print something without libc; just include your own stub for write(2).

</comment><comment><USER3> Nearly 100 upvotes for a page that fails its stated goal and which spends 100's of lines to do something you could do with _one_ system call (sys_write) and a string constant?

<http://asm.sourceforge.net/intro/hello.html>

<comment><USER4> The stated goal is not the real point. The real point is to learn about how programs are executed on real systems. Unfortunately, the second half which would (hopefully) have completed the example does not exist.

What you linked to is great, but it uses a different approach to explain the subject. That approach presents the correct thing to do, and explains some of it. The benefit of this approach is that it's short and sweet, but the downside is it's easy to miss subtle points. For example, what you linked to never explains _why_ you have to call sys_exit. Someone reading this would know that's the right thing to do, but they may never really understand why that's so.

An alternative approach - which the posted article does - is to try the obvious but wrong thing, then explain why it fails. Fix that problem, and try the next obvious but wrong thing and keep iterating. The problem with this approach it can be a long process, particularly if you just want to know how to do something and are less interested in the why. But the benefit is that by seeing how things fail, and then seeing the fix for them, the reader can gain a deeper understanding of what's going on.

In general terms, one is more of a reference, and the other is more of a lesson. I like the try, fail, fix iteration for explaining things. I've used it many times when teaching. I find that it matches well with what we would actually do on our own, and for that reason, tends to stick with people better than simply saying "this is how to do it."

<comment><USER3> I'd be more inclined to sympathize if it had actually worked. As it stands it is a perfect example of how little knowledge of what goes on under the hood is present with the current generation of programmers. That's sad, because even if you never use that knowledge in your 'day job' I think that such knowledge does make you a better programmer.

If you write a blog post about something like this at least finish the damn thing rather than to leave a bunch of obviously wrong snippets laying around to confuse whoever lands on that page.

There are plenty of good pages on introductory assembler on the web, this isn't one of those and I'm really surprised to see it this high on the homepage. Maybe it shows how much the HN crowd would like to get a little bit of insight of what actually powers their computers, the error is mine in assuming that such knowledge would be commonplace here.

<comment><USER4> I upvoted it because if the reader reads through it, they will leave with more understanding of the system stack than they started with. As someone who has been deeply involved with teaching a systems class, that's near-and-dear to my heart. I think it succeeds in that goal. I'm far less concerned that it doesn't actually emit "hello, world".

That it fails at being an introduction to assembly is, I think, missing the point. It doesn't try to be. It's just trying to demystify some of the system stack.

As for HN itself, I've known for a while now that there's a pretty wide range of people here. While I think the percentage of people will almost no systems experience is more than it was a few years ago, the number wasn't zero a few years ago, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do we use xorl to store 0, but mov for 1?

      mov $1, %eax
      xorl %ebx, %ebx # Why not mov for this one?
      mov $0, %ebx    # Wouldn't this work as well?

I'm guessing mov would work in either case, but there's some reason people always do the xorl instead?

<comment><USER6> Both will work. The xor version is an old trick that many years ago was faster to execute. I do not think that is still the case, but there is still the difference that the XOR opcode is only one byte and the mov version is multiple, so it saves a few bytes in the executable.

<comment><USER7> More importantly, these days, is that it saves a few bytes in the caches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its hard to express how sad reading that made me.

The second thought was, what the heck are people being taught in school these days? Can you get a CS degree these days without writing a compiler? Seriously?

As a tutorial on a blog about Arduino's or some other processor family, great stuff. As a blog entry from a company like Oracle, not so much.

And as others pointed out, had the person approached it from first principles they would have arrived at the equivalent of 'puts()' a lot sooner.

</comment><comment><USER9> But now the program doesn't even print "hello, world"...

<comment><USER10> And it's from March 2010 but there's no Part 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link for Part 2 seems to have been removed from the site, someone linked Part 2 on G+[0] on Lamernews, where I originally found this part 1 as well.

[0] [https://plus.google.com/113789777314020158193/posts/8SekPWzx...](https://plus.google.com/113789777314020158193/posts/8SekPWzxkjS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://timelessname.com/elfbin/>

<comment><USER12> I thought of this one instead: [http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htm...](http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html)

<comment><USER13> Indeed; so did I, back when it was first posted (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1195802>). But then, I would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Part 2: [https://plus.google.com/113789777314020158193/posts/8SekPWzx...](https://plus.google.com/113789777314020158193/posts/8SekPWzxkjS)

</comment><comment><USER15> gcc -m32 -static -nostdlib -x c - <<< 'int main(void) { int s = 12; char *m = "hello, world"; int n = 1, d = s - 8; asm("int $0x80"); d = (n = 0) + 1; asm("int $0x80"); }' && ./a.out # Hello from a libc-free world on Darwin 11.2.0, GCC 4.2.1, x86

</comment><comment><USER16> There are also smaller implementations of libc, eg.

<http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc/>

</comment><comment><USER17> The article is for march 2010. I don't think there will be part 2.

<comment><USER18> archive.org has a copy of Part 2: [http://web.archive.org/web/20101023104654/http://blog.ksplic...](http://web.archive.org/web/20101023104654/http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/04/libc- free-world-2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the _`string'_ quoting format in the _ld_ output is breaking their "syntax" highlighting.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do when you don't have enough problems to solve? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes I come home from work at the end of the day and I still have the hankering for a problem that needs solving with code.
The issue is, if it's something that someone else has already done a strictly better job of implementing, it tends to feel empty. Now, obviously it's uncommon for an individual without a PhD or a senior FAANG position to do something that's both generally-useful and truly an improvement on what's out there already. So most of us instead occupy ourselves with solving narrower problems specific to a given organization.
But that still leaves the question: what problems can I truly solve - even small, narrow ones - in my spare time? Outside the context of a job or even a business idea. <comment><USER2> It's hard to find problems without narrowing your focus. Your goal is to pick an area and get informed and educated on it. Once you know enough you'll find areas where you can make a difference.

Also, talk to more knowledgeable people in that area as they will be able to identify areas of pain.

One of the fundamentals of software engineering is a needs analysis. A process where you ask a lot of questions that help you understand where and how software can help. But you need to focus otherwise you won't be able to get any usefull information to act on.

</comment><comment><USER3> An exercise to get you noticing problems around you, is take note of what you/or people around you complain about.

If you immediate say "Why don't they do it this way..." take notes and leave it for a few days. The goal is to get in the routine of flexing those mental muscles.</comment>


1 guy in a straightjacket can do more in .5h than IBM engineers can do in 50. - daniel-cussen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHzV4LZnvHc <comment><AUTHOR> The company doing this, Miracle, got so much press from this stunt that they pulled another one: If you contact them with an offer from a company on their black-list they will do the exact same job for half the price.

What companies are on their blacklist?

Only one:

IBM.

</comment><comment><USER2> User mixmax already mentioned this ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126306> ).

<comment> daniel-cussen That's where I saw it. I posted i thought more people should see it, but the credit should go to mixmax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is absurd and stupid.

But entertaining as hell to watch in fast forward.</comment>


Show HN: Tax plan impact calculator - <AUTHOR> http://taxulator.com/ <comment><USER2> May I recommend [http://taxplancalculator.com/](http://taxplancalculator.com/) ? It takes in to account state taxes, which potentially can make a difference between a tax cut and a tax hike. It also shows you an estimate of your federal taxes under the current laws, so that you can ascertain its precision against last years returns.

Its author, Maxim Lott, is a journalist and has been tweaking the calculations over the past couple of weeks reflecting the latest changes in the bills. You may have seen his predictive markets analysis site [1] in the run up to 2016 US Presidential Election.

As a matter of disclosure, the author is a friend and I helped him debug a couple of small issues.

[1] [https://www.electionbettingodds.com/](https://www.electionbettingodds.com/)

<comment><USER3> No matter what income I put for California, it always says:

"No impact from end of state and local deductions"

Same at $30k, $300k, and $1M. I don't think it's accounting for SALT at all.

<comment><USER4> You need to check the itemized deduction box

<comment><USER3> My bad, thank you. As expected, I pay a bunch more under both these plans.

<comment><USER5> And get a lot less. Hooray.

The problem with a lot of reporting on these tax "plans" is that it doesn't take into account the massive cuts that'll be needed once this thing gets passed.

That and any increases to health insurance costs due to repeal/uncertainty/etc wipe out any saving for most people.

But hey if I could lobby this easily to get my pet thing into a tax bill I would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't have business income or capital gains, which is pretty important to have considering the contents of the GOP plan. The pass-through rates in the bills will have a big effect on small business owners.

Edit: The more I play with this, the more flaws I find. I work at a tax policy think tank and I've been involved with more than a few tax calculators, and this one isn't reliable. It fails basic tests, like applying the standard deduction if itemized deductions are less than that amount.

Second edit: Here's a tip. It's a lot easier to calculate marginal rates on income if you go through the brackets backward rather than forward. That way, you just check if income is >= the current bracket threshold. If yes, subtract threshold from income, add that multiplied by the rate to the running total of taxes owed, and move to the next bracket. Else, just move to the next bracket. Way easier than what you're doing.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for feedback. We will add the itemized v standard deduction minimizer soon. We thought we'd let user direct but I agree we should take the min and change that.

Re tax brackets, we are looking to add state tax soon so it is much easier not to hardcore the running totals. The computation time is insignificant but code is cleaner with our current method, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't include Pease, which makes quite a difference.

I don't believe the AMT exemptions you're using are correct (although they are widely reported). The bill updates the "original" AMT amounts from 2012, which need to be inflation adjusted.

I made these accurate graphs that include everything. They also compute your state taxes for you.

Senate: [https://jsfiddle.net/4ec6eLz5/](https://jsfiddle.net/4ec6eLz5/) House: [https://jsfiddle.net/bsjryfLo/](https://jsfiddle.net/bsjryfLo/)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for feedback! Indeed we didn't include Pease, and we will look to add that shortly.

Re AMT, When I read the bill my interpretation was that the new levels were the correct numbers for 2018 and increase from there. I'm certainly not a lawyer and relied on other 'widely reported' interpretations. Given how many reported things turned out to be at least moderately innacureatr when we did fact check them, it would not surprise me if you are right.

I really like your site and the graphs. The fixed property tax deduction seems like a limitation (I personally pay close to 2x your NY rate and have some friends who pay more) but it certainly does some things that we don't, Pease included. Had I found your site a week ago we likely would have had to build our own!

We made our code available on GitHub so by all means feel free to contribute and improve it if you like!

<comment><USER8> You're right about the AMT. I misread the bill the first time.

This means the "40%" figure being thrown around is off, it's only a 30% reduction

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be more useful if they made it clear what has been factored in here. As is mentioned elsewhere, the bills have to be reconciled, and there are significant variables remaining. The SALT deduction is still up in the air, as are the details around mortgage interest. For people in some states, these two details could swing things between saving thousands and paying thousands extra.

edit: should have included property tax, which is more of an issue than mortgage interest for existing homeowners.

<comment><USER7> Sorry about that. We need to add more info. The code is available on github. The latest info we could get our hands on. 10k cap on property tax deduction in both house and senate bill and no state income tax deduction in either. No change to mortgage deduction as current mortgages are grandfathered in under both plans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be cool if the govt had to develop an open-source tax estimator whenever tax-change bills were introduced (or make modifications to some base tool). An iteration of a tax bill would be presented alongside the tax- estimator tool so that citizens and businesses could run real numbers through the hypothetical tax-changes.

<comment><USER7> Totally agree. And it could also show net impact to the deficit/surplus (yeah, right) across the whole population given the gov had all that data. Would be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> All the calculations seem to happen here:

[https://github.com/nick264/gop-tax-plan- calculator/blob/mast...](https://github.com/nick264/gop-tax-plan- calculator/blob/master/client/utils/calculator.js)

Cannot speak to the soundness of the calculations, but there looks to be a ton of guesswork involved, and it does seem fairly simplified in light of the size of the bills being considered.

<comment><USER7> On a dollar impact basis, there wasn't much guesswork at all. What there was was a bunch of disparate contradictory sources online so we had to plow through that, given that reading through and internalizing the legislation (both old and new) was quite the bear. A number of folks have already made suggestions on github which is great (and appreciated).

I wish we had documented every hard coded number with a source but we only started doing that at the very end of project when we were reconciling different sources. We plan on documenting everything going forward with a source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As the tax plan has not yet been finalized, I'm not sure what the use of this calculator is. You don't really know what your new taxes will be yet. I would wait until it is reconciled and signed to worry about that. YMMV.

If you want to influence the outcome of what is in the tax bill, then finding the thing in it that you don't like the most (and preferably it is in only in one of the bills) and advocating for that to be removed or changed is probably the most useful. Academia was up in arms about losing its special tax break on tuitions (only in House bill), got a bunch of press, and it looks like that might be left out in reconciliation.

<comment><USER13> Even though the bills are not finalized I think people would like to have an idea of what changes they may be facing, and it also benefits people who like to get informed before debating the issue with others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This only tells me what would happen next year. What about 5, 7, 10 years out?

<comment><USER7> Working on it ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stupid question: in all of those calculators, I never know if I should include my personal income or household income (including my spouse). Is it an obvious thing that everyone knows? as it's never in the (?) tooltip... in any calculator I found online (I'm an expat, so perhaps I just don't get the obvious)

<comment><USER9> If you file jointly as a married couple, you would include both. But if your spouse is a not a US taxpayer, then you'e likely not filing jointly. In that case, only your income would apply.

But take any of these with a huge grain of salt, because expats have very different rules to play by, including some generous exemptions.

<comment><USER16> Expats have generous exemptions?

<comment><USER6> Currently US expats can exclude up to $102,100 of foreign earned income. However, you're still required to file US taxes if you're a US citizen. Doesn't matter if you were born overseas to American parents and have never been to America; still gotta file. The US is weird like that.

<comment><USER16> Oh, I thought you meant EU expats in the US.

<comment><USER9> Ah, I see the misunderstanding. Although I would note that if you are not a citizen or permanent resident, then I believe your foreign-source income is not subject to US tax. So for example if you had a home in another country that you rented out, that wouldn't be taxable in the US even though it would be for a similarly-situated US citizen.

<comment><USER6> Can't promise the IRS would see it that way. This is just something I'm not sure about, but my wife was an immigrant to the US and they weren't shy about asking her about foreign assets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This has an intuitive interface and computes quickly. With 2 competing bills in the House and Senate that haven't yet been reconciled and formalized, a calculator like this is never going to be perfect, but at least we can begin to see the implications these proposals could have on our tax liability.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very nice tool. Added to PH: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/taxulator](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/taxulator)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll add the calculator I built: [https://www.republicantaxcalculator.com](https://www.republicantaxcalculator.com). It takes into account state and property tax deductions as well as some of the other major changes. Github here: [https://github.com/BrendanAndrade/taxplan](https://github.com/BrendanAndrade/taxplan)

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I'm just daft, but this tool is a bit confusing at first because I didn't realize it wasn't comparing the difference between itemizing now and taking the standard deduction under the new plan (and there isn't a way to do that without manually crunching the numbers). Or better said, it doesn't pick your best deduction under each plan like you would if you were actually filing taxes.

</comment><comment><USER21> This doesn't account for SALT deductions it seems, which is a huge reason why instead of my bill going down by 10% or so, it goes up about 5%.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this calculator is counting "State/Local Income Taxes" as a credit instead of a deduction. Input a salary of $60,000 and a $6300 deduction into "State/Local Income Taxes".

$6300 was the single filer standard deduction amount from 2016. It shows different outputs when toggling between itemized and standard deduction.

</comment><comment><USER23> I thought SALT and Student Loan deductions were eliminated? They're still listed here. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER24> The Senate and House plans do different things with these deductions (house eliminates, senate curtails) and it's not at all clear what will come out of conference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looking really good!

I recently started working on something similar: [http://politisee.com](http://politisee.com), with a little different goal. Rather than calculate the net result for a single person, Politisee for a single person, Politisee tries to summarize and compare plans, and shed light on how they perform broadly to society (i.e. at all income levels). However I do plan to add the personal side too. For now I'll be linking to yours.

One of the challenges of the broad approach is getting everything into an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm definitely going to be taking some inspiration from your work.

</comment><comment><USER25> The personal exemption is incorrect. It doesn't add the children into the total ([https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/f1040.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf)), but you can enter it by hand. Also, Student Loan Interest is an above the line deduction (line 33 on 1040), i.e. you can deduct it regardless of whether or not you itemize.

</comment><comment><USER26> If this interests you, I would also recommend checking out [http://open- source-economics.github.io/Tax-Calculator/](http://open-source- economics.github.io/Tax-Calculator/) and [https://github.com/open-source- economics/tax-calculator](https://github.com/open-source-economics/tax- calculator).

</comment><comment><USER27> Would like it to consider IRA/401k contributions.

<comment><USER28> Just put in the income net of deductible 401(k) contributions as "gross income."

<comment><USER29> ....net...gross

<comment><USER28> There is a reason "gross" is in quotation marks. That subtraction is more or less accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I have my 2016 tax return pulled up and filled everything out. It looks like I'll pay a few hundred more due to the State and Local tax deductions being removed. :\

Every calculator on here gives a different result though.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is this calculator accurate? It seems everyone no matter the income seems to benefit somehow.

Or is it that Trump, like Reagan, is about to grow the US debt by untold amounts?

<comment><USER32> I'm not sure what the point of the Reagan debt reference is, Obama's eight years by far holds the record for the greatest public debt accumulation in US history, and that was accomplished just through sheer spending irresponsibility.

The US is heading toward trillion dollar deficits no matter. There's absolutely nothing that can stop that, unless someone wants to dramatically slash entitlements - which is never going to happen. You can't raise taxes on the rich enough to find $1 trillion in new revenue. To plug the hole with tax revenue, it'll be necessary to dramatically raise taxes on everyone in the top 50% income wise, matching what other advanced welfare states do in taxing the middle class a lot more by necessity to pay for entitlements.

The annual tax cut cost is going to be about $150 billion per year, roughly $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, assuming mediocre revenue gains from it. The eight Obama years added about $9 trillion in new public debt, and the US got absolutely nothing from that vast fiscal destruction (other than further eroded infrastructure, a mostly horrible healthcare plan, a trillion dollars in new student debt, zero gain in the median American net worth figure, and the greatest wealth gains in US history by the rich).

You can't actually think $150 billion per year matters any longer. It's dramatically beyond game over for the US fiscally. Nobody even dares to bring up the idea of paying down the debt now. It's the Japan debt scenario full steam ahead, $30 trillion in public debt by 2027 no matter what happens. That means permanently low Fed rates, because the US will never be able to afford the interest on $30+ trillion otherwise.

I'll take the 20% corporate income tax rate in exchange for the $150 billion per year cost (plus the big jump in the standard deduction); the $150 billion thrown onto the burning fiscal picture that started with the Bush years, got dramatically worse with the Obama years, and is going to continue through the Trump years, is simply meaningless at this point.

<comment><USER33> Ryan actually just announced entitlement reform is something they're going to attempt in 2018. It seems like it would be very difficult, but there is some chance that those will have substantial long term cuts.

As for the Reagan reference in the parent comment, that's sort of a common comparison to criticize Republican tax (and often defense) policy since the 80s. There is somewhat of a common trend of cutting taxes far more than spending and increasing military expenditures simultaneously. Bush was a much worse offender here though, with Iraq and Afghanistan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is nice, could do with some better support for smaller screens. I enjoyed that the authors names shifted position when updating the page. Nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER35> Couldn't you determine my state income taxes from a state dropdown? Local could still be an addition for more nuanced municipalities.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think the Married Filing Joint standard deduction for 2018 would be $13,000 under the current Code. Your comparison shows it as $12,700.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is interesting, but how accurate is it?

<comment><USER6> Not very.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting, but it really needs to include state taxes to be accurate or relevant.

</comment><comment><USER39> There should be a checkbox for whether you are a graduate student or not.

</comment><comment><USER40> It doesn't seem to consider state tax in the calculations.

<comment><USER41> [https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#tax- calculators](https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#tax-calculators)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This does not account for the massive increase in taxes that graduate students would have in the house plan. In the house plan tuition waivers of graduate students will become taxable and push them further down the poverty line.

</comment><comment><USER43> i got different results between this calulator and the flu.io one. this one seems to appear much more favorable.

</comment><comment><USER44> Feature request: choose a tax year

</comment><comment><USER45> This doesn't account for the whole picture. The tax benefit is dwarfed in comparison to the losses in social security people at and below the poverty line will suffer.

<comment><USER46> I'm assuming you mean "social safety net", not Social Security?

And are you just referring to the individual mandate change? Or are other big parts of the safety net changing from this bill?

(And yes, I understand the long-term policy and political implications, but I'm asking about specific immediate changes in this bill)

<comment><USER47> Republicans have stated they will be cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits after the tax cuts have passed "as they're no longer affordable."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/01/gop- eyes-post-tax-cut-changes-to-welfare-medicare-and-social-security/)

<comment><USER48> If the health care costs in the U.S. were the same as the next most expensive OECD country, health care costs would be $1 trillion less. The trump tax cuts amount to $150 billion a year, so just by bringing health care costs in line with the second-most expensive country they could probably meet all of the shortfall without anyone needing to lose anything. It's possible to make smart cuts to medicare and medicaid spending without affecting quality of care or coverage.

Now, knowing republicans that's not how it will pan out though. They aren't known for making smart cuts, they typically reduce benefits/expenditure while keeping profiteering in place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Eliminating state and local taxes was a long time coming. Why should the no- tax states subsidize the bloated bureaucracy of CA/NY? It would be quite amazing if CA got rid of state income taxes though.

<comment><USER50> This tends to be a widely held misconception. It turns out that CA and NY pay more in federal taxes than they receive back in federal funds. It turns out that it's mostly the low tax states that take in more from the federal government than they pay. Here's one chart: [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which- states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/)

<comment><USER51> Well, sure - but CA and NY also have very high income levels: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita)

We have a progressive tax system, so rich states should be paying more than they receive in federal funds.

The more relevant question is how do the Atlantic's charts look once you correct for income levels? Given that CA's returns are barely less than 1, I suspect that CA is in a situation where the tax deduction is effectively allowing the federal government to subsidize the state.

<comment><USER50> Sure, but we're supposed to be creating a tax cut, not a tax hike. If you want to raise taxes to either reduce the deficit or create new government services that's fine by me. But instead this tax cut will go to cutting the taxes of the wealthy and increase the budget deficit. This will be paid for by states like NY and CA and won't help the tax system become more progressive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Great RoR Books? - <AUTHOR>

So, I'm biting the bullet. After wondering about the hype of RoR, I've finally came up with a reason to design a site using said technology. The only problem is, when looking for a book to learn off of, there were too many choices!<p>Does anyone have any suggestions for great RoR books, or Ruby books in general? <comment><USER2> The Rails Way, by Obie Fernandez. Only RoR book you'll ever need. <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321445619/>

This book is one of the three in plus's comment; another one his comment mentions is "Ruby for Rails", which will get you up to speed on Ruby as a language. It's a great book; get it too.

<comment><USER3> "The Rails Way," is by far the best rails book I've seen. As you might gather from the title, this book really aims at teaching the ruby/rails idioms necessary to get the most out of rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Screw the books. All are out of date, except The Rails Way... but that's way too big for my taste.

Check out www.PeepCode.com. Best bang for $9 you can find. You'll probably find these most interesting to begin with:

* <https://peepcode.com/products/rails-from-scratch-part-i>

* <https://peepcode.com/products/rails-from-scratch-part-ii>

* <https://peepcode.com/products/restful-rails>

Another great resource is www.railscasts.com.

<comment><USER5> Melvin - you can edit your profile to put in your signature information. It helps clean up these comments substantially. thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been through most of the rails books, at least partway, and none of them is a great programming book. The classic, AWDWR from pragmatic programmers is a bit out of date, otherwise I would recommend it. The "Rails in depth" chapters there are quite useful and could be taken out and used as a reference.

"The Rails Way" is a good book but the online version requires Adobe Digital Editions for the DRM and that interface is a pig. This book is clearly not intended as a first book on Rails, but you'll end up buying it if you do more than one project. There's supposed to be a new version coming out soon, so check out the date of publication.

I started Rails as one project of many, but I don't think that pollutes my fundamental finding: Learn Ruby First. In fact I'd like to put together a book of small Ruby tasks and samples to cover the language. The existing books are narrative-based.

The secret question for all Rails developers is: Should I learn the framework by looking at the source? Or should I code by reading the API docs? I started out as an old-fashioned software-is-a-contract guy and tried to build code by following the docs. The docs aren't good enough. The site 'api.rubyonrails.org' has docs that include source, lacking only an on-screen search box.

Finally, a good IDE that indexes the rails source (and your source) to produce a sort of visual-etags would be very useful. I haven't found one I like. That is, I would like to click on my call to 'number_to_currency' and have it bring up the source code in another window frame. I haven't found a solution I like.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried NetBeans? It does a decent job of indexing your code as well as rails, and the Ctrl-Click takes you to the definition of most methods (it tends to get a little confused every now and then).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Rails Way is a great reference, but not great for those totally fresh to it.

For total beginners, I recommend Sitepoint's Build Your Own Ruby on Rails book -- <http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/>

Rails Way is great to fill out your Rails understanding from there, and then I recommend David Black's Ruby for Rails to fill out your Ruby understanding -- it will allow you to do so much more.

<comment><USER9> A quote from the sales print on the sitepoint book: "The book uses Rails 1.2 — the very latest version of Rails"

<comment><USER8> Guess they're due for an update. In general, though, I am a big fan of Sitepoint's easy to read style.

A quick look at a what's new in Rails 2.0 will get any rails noob up to speed. I stand by recommending the book, though caution people to make sure they do follow it with Rails 1.2.6 otherwise mass confusion will ensue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think that a "current, hot, rapidly changing technology" often makes for a "great book", as great books tend to be classics. Just find something decent to get you up to speed and then follow the situation on line, as what you'll have in two years will make most books irrelevant in any case.

That's not to knock rails at all though, I use it exclusively at this point for web stuff.

</comment><comment><USER11> Build your own app in RoR <http://www.sitepoint.com/books/rails1/>

And the Poignant Guide <http://poignantguide.net/ruby/>

</comment><comment><USER12> If you're just getting started with Rails, I'll recommend Beginning Rails by Jeffrey Hardy (who now works for 37s).

The only caveat is that it was written for Rails 1.2.3. The book's site is <http://beginningrails.com/> and the author replies regularly to questions about the book (or Rails in general) over at <http://groups.google.com/group/beginning-rails>

</comment><comment><USER13> My advice: Start with AWDWR or another how-to-build-from-scratch book and take their core example (in AWDWR, a online shopping app example) and transmute it into something simple, of the same scope but of a different domain.

The fastest way to learn is by actual coding - fight ennui and boredom by taking the tutorial code and building a toy application of interest to you.

</comment><comment><USER14> My recommendations: <http://antoniocangiano.com/rails-books/> And there are a few titles coming out soon: [http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/04/02/7-soon-to- be-released-...](http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/04/02/7-soon-to-be-released- ruby-and-rails-books/)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web- development-...](http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rails3/agile-web-development- with-rails-third-edition)

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://toohardtopronounce.com/2008/2/7/the-three-must- have-r...](http://toohardtopronounce.com/2008/2/7/the-three-must-have-rails- books-for-beginners)

</comment><comment><USER16> restful rails is a bit of overdose for beginners, I suggest use rails 1.1.6 to get started. agile web development with rails will give you the initial successes. then for spicing use rails recipe, advanced rails recipe, rails cookbook

for implementing full projects in rails 2.0 practical rails projects

for ruby, beginning ruby, ruby cookbook, The Ruby Programming Language

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendations, guys/girls.

<comment><USER17> What girls?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> RailsSpace: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321480791>

<comment><USER19> RailsSpace is a great learning book.

Practical Rails Social Networking Sites is also decent. It uses the RESTful approach which is cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You don't need books. Just start hacking!

</comment><comment><USER21> None.</comment>