Ask HN:I'm selling all my stuff and moving to SF to work on my startup. Advice? - <AUTHOR>

I finished college in the Midwest this year, and I've decided San Francisco will be the best possible place for me to live as I build my business. I don't have any serious commitments, I paid off all my student loans and my company is bootstrapped and profitable, so moving to SF shouldn't be very difficult, and I'm not too scared of the cost of living increase. I plan to fly to SF in about two weeks and then look for a place to live once I get there.
That said, I still need your help if you live in SF or have gone through a move like this before.
My questions:
1. Where should I live? I would like to live somewhere     close to the startup scene, with a vibrant neighborhood and safe enough that I don't have to worry about walking around alone at night.
I'm leaning heavily towards the Mission right now, maybe SOMA if I can find a nice place there. Is there a specific area of the Mission I should focus on?
2. Where should I stay as I look for a place to live? A hostel? Are those $150 a week hotel postings on Craigslist legit?
Or, if anyone is interested in letting me crash on their couch for a few days in exchange for marketing/SEO/PPC/getting traffic consulting that would be great :)
3.What events/meetups should I attend once I get there to meet like-minded people?
4. Any other advice about living in SF that would be helpful to a newcomer? What do you wish you had known when you moved  to the bay area?
Thanks in advance for your comments. Hopefully this thread could become a good resource for others looking to move to the Bay Area. It would be great to get in touch with others doing something similar, please email me at ilya[at]unviral.com. <comment><USER3> I made the move over 4 years ago now (wow).

Quite honestly, you can only do so much pre-planning before you you arrive. Really, you gotta spend time here and work out what works best for you.

On where to live, quite often it comes down to price. Check housingmaps.com to see what a 1BR works out with in different parts of the town and compare to your budget. You might want a different living arrangement if you are up for sharing and/or want to run a business from home.

2\. AirBNB and other couch surfing sites. Do know _anyone_ in SF - <USER2> with them will help you get to know the city quicker than staying on your own. Honestly, I lived here for over a year before I really got to know anyone who had spent time living in the city for sometime (most of the other people I was working with also moved in recently at the time). Point is, I learnt so much more about the city once I spent time with being who had lived here for 5 years+.

Also be aware we have a large homeless population, and so as those folks pull themselves out of homlessness, the hostels and residence hotels are their half-way-house/first foot on the ladder. You might not want this to be your first experience of SF.

3\. Check Plancast, Facebook events, Meetup.com for SF

4\. I could write a book on this subject, gosh...

* Consider up front whether you want to run a car or not (I assume you do now living in Mid West) - and price in your budget and where you live accordingly.

* SoMa is a great to live because it's close to startups and lots of amenities... but it's not a "neighborhood" in the true sense, dangerous + skuzzy in the middle (5th - 12th streets) and when I lived there I'd go for weeks without ever leaving the area. So consider whether you really want to work + live in the same place.

* ...Assuming you are not going to live in SoMa, consider what kind of person you are - as the other neighborhoods very much cater to different types of personality. For every person who tells you to live in Mission (hipsters living in grittyness) you'll find someone who'll tell you to live in Marina or Pac Heights (LA-wannabe party scene in more up-market living). If you fit into one of those personality types you probably won't want to live in the other, etc.

* Getting a network of friends + contacts going is really important. I actually spent 6+ months doing this BEFORE I moved here by visiting back and forth (from London, UK no less).

* Don't live in Tenderloin or Bay Shore (dangerous) and while Richmond and Sunset areas are much cheaper, they're so far out from anything.

(sorry if the above is kinda random and all over the place. Honestly, I've written this out several times - have you tried searching for other threads on this subject?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I've read every single thread on the subject, but they either don't apply to me or have conflicting/vague information. Here's a few for reference for anyone else researching a move:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1510553>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=65936>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=54034>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=102933>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (2.) I just moved to SF ~4 weeks ago. I lived in one of those antique hotels while looking for a place the first week I was here. I probably should have gone the AirBnB route instead, but it was still cheap and not all that bad.

(1.) I kind of lucked out by finding a good roommate situation through college friends. We ended up getting a really good deal in the Nob Hill area, which I like a lot so far. If it weren't for my roommate who is more into the "Marina bro" scene, I probably would be living in Cole Valley, Hayes Valley, Duboce Triangle, or the Mission with a rando off CL (which I hear isn't weird like it is elsewhere - I'm from Dallas).

(3.) I have no idea... When you find something cool, let me know. I actually met the guys/startup I work with/for at a YC event. Twitter, HN, and even blogs are always good places to meet new people, though.

(4.) I never realized how urban/densely populated SF was. Parking, grocery shopping, doing laundry, and receiving packages are all huge hassles (for me at least).

I walk to get around way more than I ever have. Invest in comfy socks and walking shoes and adjust your diet accordingly?

I also never expected it to be so cool out here. I wear a jacket every morning on my walk to work and a fleece or sweater for the rest of the day.

The food out here is really good. Every restaurant seems to take their food/service extremely seriously, which is cool.

There are tons of tourists everywhere - many from Europe.

I'm still a noob to SF, but it's pretty cool so far. I kind of just jumped in and am figuring everything out as I go...

Good luck! :)

<comment><USER5> _my roommate who is more into the "Marina bro" scene_

Can you explain what "Marina bro" is? I did google it w/ no luck. I know where the Marina area is, but that's about it. Sorry, East coast here.

<comment><USER4> This explains the "Marina bro" better than I could: <http://uptownalmanac.com/2010/07/wont-you-be-my-bromate>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually just did this, been living in SF for a little over a month now. All of the advice in people's comments so far is spot on.

I ended up in the southern tip of the mission where Mission, Noe Valley and Bernal meet and love it. $800 a month in a nice 4 bed 2 bath, w/d in unit, new everything.

I had been watching the rentals/roommates space on Craigslist for 5-6 months while saving up to move. Unfortunately for both of us, we missed the bottom of the rental price market. They have definitely been trending up over the past few months as the tech scene is starting to get frothy again. So watch dates if you are reading articles on people moving here.

I stayed with 3 different hosts off of Airbnb.com for a little over 2 weeks while finding a place. I would book for 4-5 days. I lost two places to live at the last minute, and both hosts had other people booked so I had to find new Airbnb hosts last minute. BUT, it was super easy, Airbnb has a short notice/standby feature where they literally tell all of the hosts who want those alerts that someone needs a place fast. I had 6-7 host offer within an hour both times.

One interesting note on cost of rent that I just noticed...You very rarely have to turn the heat on and most places don't have AC. As opposed to the Midwest (I'm from Nebraska) where either one is cranked year round. This time of year in NE our electric bill would easily be $150+ a month (in a small two bedroom), and I've seen insane bills for heating with gas in the winter. So for me there is really $100-$200 a month that moved from HVAC costs to rent.

I cut my possessions in half before moving back home, and then again before moving out here. I boxed up all my stuff really good and left it at home. Flew out here with suitcases full of clothes, then had my 4-5 boxes shipped UPS once I found a place.

I sold my car. I've been extremely car dependent since I was 16. Adjusting to this change in transportation has been the hardest thing to adapt...but honestly it has been easier than I thought and not having a car is awesome. You said you come from the Midwest too, so I imagine you are car dependent has well so here are my quick tips to ditching it in SF.

       -  Sign up for the ZipCar program.  $50 a year, $8-$12 per hour (gas and insurance included) cars on demand.  I have never been more than 4 blocks from a ZipCar when I needed it for getting furniture off craigslist, big store run, etc.  Good phone apps

       - Get a Clipper Card (previously TransLink) and either load cash or passes.  I signed up to Autoload a Fast-Pass every month.  $60 for unlimited MUNI and BART every month, a little more than one tank of gas.  And they work smooth.

       - I use the built in Google maps on my iphone to plot a route and see what line I need.  I then pop over to an app called Routesy that is better for getting a complete picture of the stops and ETAs for any MUNI or BART Line.

       - Get a bike, I snagged an insanely awesome bike that was barely used and 3 months old with receipts off Craigslist for well under half price. Pro Tip:  Google maps for bikes will plot you around the hills as much as possible.

As for food costs, SF expands the high end options but still has plenty that is affordable. There will be tons of places you can eat for $20, $30, $40+ a meal if you want, but at the same time you can find plenty of places to grab a bite for under $10. And the $10 meals here are a lot higher quality than in the midwest.

Feel free to drop me a line if you want to chat more or grab a coffee/drink when you get here. schaecher.michael gmail

<comment><USER7> >Unfortunately for both of us, we missed the bottom of the rental price market. They have definitely been trending up over the past few months as the tech scene is starting to get frothy again.

I don't think that has to do with the tech scene, Bay Area rents are higher for summer move-ins and that cycle happens every year.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, you could very well be right. In Lincoln, rent prices fluctuated lowest during the summers and highest during fall and winter

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1) the mission is great for living, but soma is better for getting work done (and closer to most things startup related)

2) if you find someone who lets you crash on their couch, go for it. give a few neighborhoods a try before you settle down! my first place that wasn't a friend's couch was a warehouse listed on airbnb. worked great and gave me the time to figure out where i really wanted to live.

3) it feels like people here are perpetually busy and barely have the time to hang out even with their closest friends. there's a seemingly endless supply of interesting people too. few strangers will throw a welcome party for you even if you are awesome (unlike where i am from). that makes people seem unwelcoming to a certain degree initially, but don't worry, it just takes a bit to grow into a social circle here and then you'll be perpetually busy and socially oversaturated too.

4) it's much easier to approach people when you have something to talk about. unless your project is in full gear, you might have an easier time getting to know interesting people through doing interesting things or sports. startup meetups and such work too, but being active together or even just picnicking together in dolores park gives you an entirely different connection. there's a lot of fun and cool stuff happening here that's not startup focused, and it's easy to join in and offer to help, and you'll be surprised how tightly connected this town really is.

5) a lot of people use hackerspaces as some of the first places they visit in a new city to meet people. depending on the space and the moon phase you might meet truly awesome people and/or complete weirdos. give it a try, cowork there for a bit and see who you get to know along the way.

6) get a bike. i've resisted initially, but there's simply nothing that works better here (including cabs, muni or your own car). see jwz's advice on bikes in sf: <http://jwz.livejournal.com/883988.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. San Francisco, as a city, isn't _that_ big. I don't think its worth focusing on having to be in one particular area of it, simply because everyone else is. You don't have to worry about traveling to/from the city until you're in Berkeley or Mountain View or elsewhere in the bay area. Worst case, you take a cab. And I can't think of a scenario where it would cost over $20 (tip included) to go somewhere within the city by cab.

I spent the summer in the Bernal Heights area,(pretty close to the southern edge of the city - just south of the Mission). Its somewhat far away from SoMA (30-45m by muni + bart -- made this trip daily to go into the office, its not that bad). I've really never had any problems getting around the city whenever I need to go somewhere.

2\. It'll take more than a weekend to find a place, but likely less than a month. I'd suggest to sublet for a month, but, no reason why you can't use AirBnB or something similar on a weekly basis.

3\. Most of the events/meetups I follow are for iPhone/Mac dev-type things, not marketing (which seems to be your area of interest). So I can't help you there, sorry. But, if that is your cup of tea, there's weekly NSCoder night, an iOS Dev Camp coming up in a few weeks, and so on. Github has one, the Cappuccino folks do, etc. Lots of stuff going on.

4\. There's no such thing as a weekly muni/bart pass. Maybe its because I'm used to NYC where the MTA has these, but, this really surprised me.

<comment><USER10> There's a weekly Muni pass, though it's harder to find and intended for tourists.

<http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm>

BART has no passes, but if you pay $10 extra for a monthly Muni pass, it'll work on BART within the city (only). That's what I did before I decided the mission was too grim'n'gritty.

To the original poster: Muni buses are notoriously unpredictable, as in sometimes they just don't show up and the next one is filled to capacity. Muni trains are pretty reliable (except for some complaints that the N-Judah can turn back before the outer sunset), and BART runs like clockwork (off grade FTW).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> SOMA is either very expensive or very sketchy. Mission is a better place to live IMO.

Look up Craigslist and get a sublet.

Get a friend who's pretty active in the startup scene and friend that person. You will discover all kinds of interesting events that person's attending.

</comment><comment><USER12> Congrats! I am in the process of doing the same thing. I sold all of my stuff and moved out of Austin a couple weeks ago. I'm traveling/couch surfing right now but will be in San Francisco soon. Looking forward to some great answers from people who have done the same thing...

<comment><USER13> Im in Austin too. What is your name / company? What made you decide to leave Austin? It does have a growing tech hub.

<comment><USER14> I'm wondering the same thing as well. After scouring the country for quite a while, I'm planning on moving my company down (or starting my next one) there in the next year or so.

<comment><USER15> Wondering if you can briefly explain why you picked Austin? I'm considering a visit.. if that goes well maybe a move..

<comment><USER16> For me, it's the whole package. Tech hub, low cost of living/high salaries, nice people, _warm_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I moved to SF, I (fortunately) had a couch to crash on for a week. The city is eminently walkable. I spent the first few days just walking through neighborhoods and looking at whatever apartments on Craigslist I could schedule walkthroughs for. I walked the Mission from 26th and Potrero back and forth to 14th and Dolores, all of SOMA, up and down Hayes Valley and the Haight. I knew from doing a little research beforehand that the Marina and North Beach weren't my scene.

Once I found a neighborhood that felt comfortable, I narrowed my focus and drilled down on finding a place.

If you can do something similar, I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I moved to SF just a few months ago and wrote about my experience in-depth. I hope this post answers a lot of your questions!

[http://paulstamatiou.com/atlanta-to-san-francisco-moving- cro...](http://paulstamatiou.com/atlanta-to-san-francisco-moving-cross- country)

I moved from Atlanta, sold all my stuff and drove out. Definitely a great feeling to not be tied down to many posessions. I live in the Mission and love it. My email is in my profile if you want to ask any questions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Map of where to live: [http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&#...
Rooms to rent: http://www.airbnb.com/travel/san-francisco/ca
Events to look at: http://plancast.com/search?q=san+francisco

</comment><comment><USER20> Some ways to save money:

* Avoid SoMa

* Ditch the car - use ZipCar

* China Town for cheap produce

* SafeWay delivers groceries

* Costco! It's downtown so you don't need to go far.

* Goodwill for simple things (just bought a replacement keyboard there for $3)

And some ways to save time:

* Wash and fold laundry service! Most of the US is missing out by not having this.

* You can get a good cleaning person on CL for not too much. I get it once a month to do a deep clean.

</comment><comment><USER21> Since you haven't moved yet... you may want to consider some other cities that have startup culture, even if on a smaller scale, that could be more fun and where you would be competing against a smaller group of people for the capital available. Cambridge Massachusetts is affordable and has a lot of tallent (MIT, Harvard, Tufts, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER22> When I first moved here, I stayed at this place: <http://www.kenmorehotelsf.com>

Its a long-term stay hotel. They give you a room, breakfast and dinner for $50 a night. People are nice and its a good location (as far as checking the city out).

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=111...](http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=111291639665197066699.00048b3c0d910bf1a232a) This map was posted here some time ago. Might be helpful for newcomers

</comment><comment><USER24> 1\. Mission. Try to be near a park, and away from BART.

2\. <http://www.elementssf.com/>

3\. Github drinkup.

4\. Too general of a question.

<comment><USER3> I would disagree with 1. from above...

If you don't intend to run a car in SF you prob want to be within a few blocks of a BART of MUNI Street Car stop.

<comment><USER24> Let me clarify. You can't be in the Mission and not be within a five minute walk of BART. BART stations attract crazy homeless people, which kills the livability of the surrounding block.

You can generally describe property value, livability, etc of the Mission knowing only the proximity to bart and parks.

<comment><USER3> ...or don't just live in the Mission.

Honestly, most of the Mission has those kinds of social issues - and to choose to live there is to choose to accept (and embrace) them ...

* Homeless and crazy people around the BARTS and most of the Mission St corridor,

* Sureños and Norteños turf battles around 21 street

* The projects in the middle

* Drunken hipster fucks riding around with pointless fixie bikes with no breaks and no gears _(dude, didn't you study physics at school? can't you see we have hills in SF?)_

Where in Mission can you live without any of these issues before you are getting into Noe Valley, Bernal Heights or Potrero?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've heard the east bay is a good option because it is much cheaper (though it will take a ~45 minutes* to get to SF for whatever meetups you'd like to attend).

* From Berkeley, by BART

</comment><comment><USER26> To eat: try the superstar shrimp at Burma Superstar on Clement and anything in Blowfish Sushi on Bryant.

</comment><comment><USER27> SOMA is bland, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER28> Expect to spend at least $1,000/month in rent in San Francisco. The competition for anything less is fierce. Essentially you're competing with everybody who doesn't work in tech but wants a room.

Ignore the guy who said "avoid SOMA" because you can find some great deals here. There's a building in this small alleyway on Sumner that has huge 2-bedroom apartments which could comfortably be converted (and often are) to 3-bedrooms for $1800/month. If you realyl want to be cheap, my current building is filled with AAU students who double up the bedrooms and split $2825 4 ways to live in a building with a pool and a fitness center a cross the street from Twitter (sort of).

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Why SF?</comment>


Show HN: Lock and cache using Redis - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seamusabshere/lock_and_cache <comment><USER2> So this is for read through caching with distributed locking. There are a couple scenarios where this is interesting.

1) If calculating the item in the cache is so expensive to some system, and might happen so many times concurrently, that you'd rather block than duplicate work. 2) There is something not-idempotent about the operation you are blocking on.

But, coming from experience, be very very very very careful with distributed locking and put lots of logging/monitoring/timeouts around it if you have to do it. Avoid it if possible. Try hard to use a different persistent data structure, store, or algorithm that makes the locking irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> I already use Redis-Mutex for such use cases: [https://github.com/kenn/redis- mutex](https://github.com/kenn/redis-mutex)

What's the difference?

<comment><USER2> Looks like this uses a Ruby version of redlock under the hood: [http://redis.io/topics/distlock](http://redis.io/topics/distlock)

Seems to be just a little abstraction so you don't manage the locks yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, wait, maybe I'm misunderstanding. Why would you want to serialize all concurrent actors on a cache read?

<comment><USER5> It only serializes on a cache miss.

<comment><USER4> That's what I was missing. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Don't be a Lonely Planet Entrepreneur- startup mythology's death of capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://spreadsong.com/dont_be_a_lonely_planet_entrepreneur_startup_mythology_and_the_death_of_capitalism

<comment><USER2> Let's torture the metaphor a bit: learning about a city from the other people in your hostel will probably teach you a lot about nightlife, but it might not let you discover that the local museum has an amazing permanent collection of wood-block prints, or that there's an incredible local tour guide who does an english-language walking tour of historical points starting once a day at 9AM. Your dorm-mates probably won't get you to the top of Mount Fuji, lost in the English countryside, or working for board in a private farm in the south of France.

When you're traveling, the experiences accessible from the Lonely Planet strategy have the potential to go much deeper than what you can learn from the guy in the next bunk. That doesn't mean that you want to bury your nose in the guidebook, but it's probably not a bad idea to use it once in a while, either.

I'm as pessimistic about the Magical Internet Business Model (tm) as the next guy, but I still recognize that there are businesses that cannot be founded via bootstrap methods. Thanks to the magic of the cloud, you can now very quickly and cheaply build social-media-whatzits, sheep-throwing widgets, and 99-cent digital hoo-hahs for the iPhone. But you are not likely to build the next Amazon or Amgen or PayPal in your bedroom, using Heroku. Your method of travel strongly influences the places you can go.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comment. On the metaphor end, while traveling I usually wind up moving around based on meeting people who live in the country, it usually leads to some really memorable but non-flashy memories... no Mount Fuji's, but lots of hole in the wall spots hanging out with great people, off the wall drum concerts, and more of the day to day experiences of being in another country.

I think the cool part of your comment is the implicit point of timeframe- if you have less time, your best bet is to make sure you have a great experience by going the big bang route- making sure you hit the top of Mount Fuji and making sure you hit the major parts of the country. If you have more time, or are sure you'll return, you can just kind of fall forward through the travel experience and see what happens.

Relating it back to business, if you look at Starbucks or Walmart, they expanded aggressively, but there was a 20 year time-frame there for building out the business. They had time, they used it to the full for sure, but they also were able to execute on their long-term plan. I think the whole raise funding -> one year runway -> sink or swim flow is just an odd way to build a long-term business.

We started off approaching things from that perspective, it didn't work, and we fell into our current approach- my viewpoint is completely dictated by my very limited experience. Our long-term plans are massive in scale, but our short-term plans are two week ship periods to grow revenue and give us a more solid base to operate off of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> the premise seems a stretch.</comment>


Show HN: cisimple - CI for mobile (iOS and Android) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cisimple.com

<comment><USER2> How does it handle developer certs from Apple? I'd rather not share mine with a 3rd party or my code. One could easily just run jenkins/hudson/travis (with plugins) locally and do it, which would probably be faster too since it would have less contention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Setting up a ci server is painful. cisimple makes that pain go away.

Also you can upload your certs/profiles to cisimple. If you're concerned about security there's more information about how code and certs are handled on the faq: <https://www.cisimple.com/faq>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Haha, finally I got competitor for mine <https://hosted-ci.com>

Probably I need to get it out of private beta faster :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Bonus points : when I first read the title being that I'm a French speaker, I read it as "si simple" since it's the same pronunciation, which means "so simple"

<comment><AUTHOR> That was si intententional

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For cloning big projects, the "deletes code every time" policy would really hurt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Congrats guys!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the "stack" for streaming/transcoding video? - <AUTHOR> I am proficient in node.js. I have videos on my server that are .mkv and various other file extensions. I can stream .mp4 through node quite easily but when it comes to other file types, I have no clue what library or language would be best.<p>Is streaming/transcoding too big a task for a solo developer? <comment><USER2> Unless you are doing live video, there is no reason to transcode real-time. Do it all upfront. You need to decide on your requirements and transcode everything to your desired format.

I'd suggest [https://aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/details/](https://aws.amazon.com/elastictranscoder/details/), its quite affordable and much easier than doing it yourself, assuming it does what you need.

From the research I've done, I'd suggest MPEG-DASH for reasonable cross-ish platform adaptive streaming without requiring fancy video servers. Your requirements and platforms might be different than mine though. Research is required.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have done video streaming with this library for node: [https://github.com/fluent-ffmpeg/node-fluent- ffmpeg](https://github.com/fluent-ffmpeg/node-fluent-ffmpeg). As some one else pointed out, do the transcoding up front.

</comment><comment><USER4> ffmpeg/ffserver is the tool for you [https://ffmpeg.org/](https://ffmpeg.org/)

There are plenty of bindings for any language

<comment><USER5> Can I use it for audio streaming as well?

<comment><USER6> yes. easily

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a MSFT employee I feel obligated to pitch our media services: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media- services/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/media-services/)

I do not have any first hand experience with them though so I can't offer any insight to how well it all works.</comment>


Guinea Worm Is Set to Be the Second Disease We've Ever Managed to Eradicate - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/guinea-worm-is-set-to-be-the-second-disease-weve-ever-managed-to-eradicate-jimmy-carter <comment><USER2> As written, the title is wrong, though the article does contain the correct statement that "Guinea worm disease is on the brink of becoming the second ever _human disease_ to be completely eradicated through human endeavour".

Rinderpest, a viral disease of cattle, has also been eradicated: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_dise...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_infectious_diseases)

<comment><USER3> ISTR that when the last wild California Condors were taken in for captive breeding (the species was down to single-digit numbers) the conservationists, naturally intending to give their new charges the best care available, gave them an insecticide bath ...

... Not realizing that mites and lice are _extremely_ fussy about their host species and frequently can't live on another organism. As a result of which, the conservation process inadvertently rendered two species extinct.

(Moral of story: we tend to pay attention to charismatic megafauna and to horrible zoonoses that kill us, but in doing so our actions can have unforeseen side-effects. I don't think anyone's going to mourn the passing of the guinea worm _but_ it has a life cycle that includes stages in non-human host species, and I don't think we're paying nearly enough attention to the implications. Oh, and the same goes for malaria, zika, and so on.)

<comment><USER4> I do think that there is good reason to make these decisions intentionally i.e. don't drive species extinct by accident. But I'm not sure that an intentional thought process should lead to different conclusions. It depends on what the goals of conservation are.

Humans have, by our presence, drastically altered a variety of ecosystems in ways that can't be undone. In the case of the Condor parasites, it's unclear, but it's possible that if the mites and lice had been left alive that would have been the difference that drove the condors extinct. A non-intervention approach might have extincted all three species.

A more extreme example: in the Galapagos, human-introduced flies have been killing the finches that inspired Darwin. A non-intervention approach is arguably the most natural, but this would likely cause the finches to go extinct. Intervening to kill the flies might save the finches, but it also involves ecosystem changes to kill the flies and interaction with the finches that demonstrably has already modified their behaviors. Ultimately, returning the finches to their original state is not an option, so any course conservation takes will result in an ecosystem that differs from what Darwin observed.

Given we can't undo the changes we've already made, it makes sense to make these kinds of choices based on human factors. It makes sense to choose majestic condors over lice and mites, historically valuable finches survival over their unmodified behavior, human health over guinea worms, and human health over malaria and the mosquito populations that carry it. Extinction of mosquitoes in particular has far-reaching ecological effects which we should strive to understand and mitigate, but I doubt that any of those effects will be more compelling to me than the suffering caused by malaria.

A pragmatic view of conservation realizes that change is inevitable, and the best we can do is push that change in positive directions, and further, that "positive" is subjective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The sad thing is, that we could be a lot further in eradication of many diseases. We are on a good way with polio and measles, but the uneducated and plain stupid people that refuse to vaccinate are a grave danger to that endeavour. Also, the shortsightet and ideologic agenda of many "ecological" organizations for banning DDT was a huge setback in the fight for the eradication of malaria, as is now the zealotry against genetic therapy and stem cell research.

<comment><USER6> Just to give some perspective. These are some examples of what vaccination is up against :

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727330/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727330/)

The situation is improving slowly, but only in a few ways. It used to be the case that both the mainstream of islam and extremists were against vaccination (and even now the mainstream is wary of it : apparently it proves allah doesn't have power, and of course the disease and it's effects is the fault of the vaccine, not a major flaw of allah).

But extremists are as much against polio vaccination as ever. Apparently they're going to defeat the world with "muslim wombs" and polio vaccination is apparently really a secret plot to make them infertile. (in a way it is of course : more surviving children will extinguish one of the main reasons for having many children, and if it happens the same as in the west in the 20th century, number of children will drop by a lot)

One more thing daesh and muslims are fighting to "save" : [http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/data/upimages/polio_victim_a...](http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/data/upimages/polio_victim_afghanistan.jpg)

<comment><USER7> The first article you link,

"Religious Opposition to Polio Vaccination," Emerg Infect Dis. 2009 Jun; 15(6): 978. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727330/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727330/)

is quite helpful. Significantly, it was published two years before Osama Bin Laden's compound was discovered and he died.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The rare Guinea Worm faces extinction. Yet despite growing public support for environmentalism and preservation of endangered species, few people will speak out on the Guinea Worm's behalf. In fact, the United Nations and several prominent U.S. agencies are leading a quiet campaign to eradicate this dwindling species forever from the planet. Is the Guinea Worm the world's most endangered species?"

[http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea-worm/](http://www.deadlysins.com/guinea- worm/)

<comment><USER9> I actually can't tell if this is serious or should be on The Onion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I often wonder if there is any argument to be made that completely eradicating the Guinea Worm, Anopheles mosquitoes, Variola major and Variola minor (SmallPox Virus) is not a 100% good objective.

My perspective (as well, I'm guessing, approximately 100% of humanity's, to quite a few significant digits), is that any significantly lower being that hurts humanity, or presents a threat, has no right to exist, and therefore we'll terminate its entire existence.

But, you can see, taken to its logical conclusion, that thought pattern could lead to less than desirable ethical behaviors.

Perhaps we draw the ethical line at the vertebrates. And maybe Octopuses.

<comment><USER11> I draw the line at "my species come first". So if someone cares more about other species than about humans that's unethical to me.

<comment><USER10> I read some interesting articles about Cecil/Lions in South Africa. While, in the west, there is a lot of support for Lions as "Majestic Creatures" \- there are a lot of people, particularly those who live in the same habitat as the Lions, that are not such big fans, and are more than happy to see them wiped out to the point where they only exist on Wildlife Reserves/zoos. There are also lots of scenarios where we try and protect, at incredible costs to human welfare, protected species like the spotted owl, or gopherus agassizii, the California/Nevada tortoise that's endangered by Solar Panels in the Nevada Desert.

While all of us (for any reasonable definition of all of us) are happy to see small pox, guinea worm, malaria, ebola, and now zika, wiped out in the name of advancing humanity, it's pretty clear there is a greater divide when it comes to lions, owls, and tortoises.

And, before you say, "Well, the owl/tortoise only have _financial_ impact" remember that $$$ can be easily translated into lives simply by dialing up safety standards/inspections/health care/etc... With incredible returns in the third world, and, even some low hanging fruit in the first world as well.

<comment><USER12> Along the same lines, advanced human civilizations have pretty much always wiped out large predators in the vicinity of their dwellings. If you look at where large predators such as lions and tigers are, they are in under developed areas where people in the past did not have the ability to eradicate them. Now that they are able to, the people are often lectured by outsiders who in no way face risks from these animals that they should not do what is best for themselves, but sacrifice their livelihoods and perhaps their lives for some greater environmental good. Many times the modern conservation movement smacks of leftover colonialism where white people in safe areas purged from large predators attempt to keep brown people from bettering their lives by doing the same things that the white people's ancestors did- eliminate threats to themselves and their livestock from wild large predators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's fantastic. Hopefully he's successful. What disease is next?

<comment><USER14> We're getting Malaria under control but it's far from being eliminated.

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7572/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7572/full/nature15535.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The educational tshirt ([http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/ins...](http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/10c._educational_materials_df.jpg)) is quite wonderful. Selling them in the West would help raise funds - I would want one!

</comment><comment><USER16> Biologically speaking, you should keep this species. Because its unique biochemistry possesses the secret of penetration and adoption to human immune system. If the species is lost, this will be lost too and we shall hardly ever achieve tech of curing human body with internal self-delivering mech agents, like the famous "Kremlin Pill", just going through the body, not the intestines.</comment>


Any amount of running linked to significantly lower risk of early death - <AUTHOR> https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/any%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8camount%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8cof%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8crunning%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8clinked%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8cto%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8csignificantly%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8clower%e2%80%8c-%e2%80%8crisk/ <comment><USER2> An important part:

> This is an observational study, and as such, can't establish cause. And the > researchers caution that the number of included studies was small and their > methods varied considerably, which may have influenced the results.

People who are sick or have other health issues will do very little running, so correlation and causation and all that.

<comment><USER3> Similar to how a low BMI has higher death rates than overweight BMI IIRC. People tend to lose a lot of weight when they are really sick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My preference is to see what the NHS "Behind the Headlines" sites makes of such studies [1], rather than read press releases.

> The findings support general understanding that physical activity is good > for health. However, this does not mean that running in itself is necessary > as an activity. The comparison groups may have included a varied mix of > those who were sedentary and those who took other forms of activity but just > did not run.

[1] [https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/running- reduc...](https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/running-reduces-risk- early-death-study-reports/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Someone more likely to run is also more likely to do a million other healthy things

</comment><comment><USER6> I was skeptic, so I looked at the related paper: [https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2019/09/25/bjsports-2018-...](https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2019/09/25/bjsports-2018-100493)

It looks like a fairly good systematic review and meta-analysis. Their "Assessment of study and evidence quality" seems quite comprehensive, and they filtered out several studies affected by selection bias.

They mention the causation possibility:

> the association between running and mortality may partially be explained by > assuming that sick participants (who are more likely to die) were less > likely to participate in running.

Still, even if "running" isn't a direct cause for increase longevity, we can't rule out that more promotion of running would have positive effects (placebo effect, have unhealthy people use running as a keystone habit to build other healthy habits, etc).

What I'd love to see is more meta-analysis like this one for other sports. I believe that running is known for its orthopedic stress risks, and other sports like swimming might be seen to deliver the same positive effects as running, without the negative impacts.

</comment><comment><USER7> This podcast has an episode on that study, highlighting the constraints: [https://open.spotify.com/episode/67MXt1VL6BoXt0PW5i6pA0?si=G...](https://open.spotify.com/episode/67MXt1VL6BoXt0PW5i6pA0?si=GWdupcT7QYSyfN5WAE9Y2g)

</comment><comment><USER8> Medical meta study is becoming increasingly concerning. This is lazy and not very useful rubbish.

<comment><USER9> I would just take it for what it is. The sample is not that small, and there can be more things included, like people who run do other things beneficial for their health. Even so, if somebody smokes and starts running, they might quit smoking because they want a better breathing pattern and it obstructs them while running. So might that be attributed to running? Dunno, I'm not an expert. But I would write this thing off.

I would also like to see data on walking. For example people who walk regularly more than x kilometers daily (those who go to work by foot) and so on. Do other activities like the elliptical have the same benefit? I shouldn't run for any prolonged period because of ankle issues, but I can happily ride the elliptical for 30-45 minutes. I suppose the answer is yes...

<comment><USER10> > I would also like to see data on walking. For example people who walk > regularly more than x kilometers daily (those who go to work by foot) and so > on. Do other activities like the elliptical have the same benefit? I > shouldn't run for any prolonged period because of ankle issues, but I can > happily ride the elliptical for 30-45 minutes. I suppose the answer is > yes...

I've been doing all sorts of cardio machines and fitness experiments, and I personally consider elliptical a meaningful sport activity (although low- effort for my personal conditioning).

Walking is very low effort overall on the body musculature and cardiovascular conditioning.

In the big picture, my biggest critique to walking is that it's associated to a checklist mindset: "I've done my 1 hour walk for today and I'm done", while doing "real" physical activities implies a different attitude - as you wrote, "people who run do other things beneficial for their health".

Entering the anecdata field, I've found that my body seems to have a threshold for metabolic stimulation - with 5-times/week low-effort 20-minutes runs (+2 weight sessions), I struggle to get to low bodyfat percentages; I need higher effort and slightly longer sessions.

While this is a strictly individual sample, I think finding one's own impact of different activity on their body is the foundation for real effect. Maybe walking works for a handful of people on earth :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Need multiple regression analysis to see how individual factor contributes. If running is there many others may be excluded but it is the excluded one might explain more.

</comment><comment><USER12> any amount of running already excludes all the people who can't run. how do they control for that?

<comment><USER13> Is it supposed to be an independent variable? Seems given that people who can run are already over the hump by default.

<comment><USER12> This is a meta-analysis of many other studies of varying quality. There are many limitations, including the inclusion of a study that did not show effect , exclusion of people with heart disease problems etc. They are described in their discussion section here: [https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2019/09/25/bjsports-2018-...](https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2019/09/25/bjsports-2018-100493)

this seems to put a few grains of salt in this all-or-none preclamation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hey, has anyone read the book Born to Run?

<comment><USER15> Yeah - I really enjoyed it. Takes a somewhat more humanities based approach towards describing the history and understanding the relevance of running for humans. It inspired me to get out there and put some more miles in.</comment></comment>


Newrelic High Response Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.dazedpro.com/newrelic-high-response-times/ <comment> e-mod Awesome writeup bruh!</comment>


Stack Exchange for Emacs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vermiculus/sx.el/ <comment><USER2> As it happens, the Emacs Stack Exchange site launched in public beta a couple months ago.

[http://emacs.stackexchange.com/](http://emacs.stackexchange.com/)

(After first seeing the title, I assumed that's what this post was about!)

<comment><USER3> That's certainly what the title implies, perhaps "Stack Overflow on Emacs" would have been a better title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is Yet Another Example of the amazing utility of being able to easily and stably extend one's environment. emacs is just a text editor, but this project is changing it into a Stack Exchange client. That's useful!

<comment><USER5> Emacs certainly is not just a text editor. Emacs is just a big REPL, a REPL with a powerful text editor instead of minimal command line interface. Right on the homepage: [http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/), it is written that:

"GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing."

Text editing is a subset of Emacs and Emacs Lisp, not the other way around.

<comment><USER4> > Emacs certainly is not just a text editor.

I know. But it was written as just a text editor—but an extensible one, and so it has grown to be a lot more. Which is really pretty awesome.

<comment><USER5> > But it was written as just a text editor

No it's not. It is really a big REPL optimized for text processing. You compare Emacs to the like of Python, not just some random editor. Unlike other editors that have an _optional_ extension language, if you remove Emacs Lisp, effective you remove Emacs. Even file opening is written in Emacs Lisp.

<comment><USER4> Dude, I get what you're saying, but you're like a guy who comments on a Facebook picture of a newborn with 'The reason you think he's cute is purely evolutionary.'

Yes, of course emacs is a big REPL optimised text processing. But it's optimised for text processing because…it started out as a text editor.

The whole point of what I wrote is that emacs started out as a simple text editor (yes, I'm aware that its origin was as text editing macros for TECO) and due to its extensibility it can and has become so much more.

Really, I think you got _way_ too hung up on the word 'just.'

We both love emacs. We both love having a fully-extensible text editing environment.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough :)

I just wanted to clarify in case someone read your comments and have a wrong impression that Emacs is a text editor like Vim. Nothing more, nothing less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Emacs makes complex things possible and simple things hard: [http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=74](http://www.tjradcliffe.com/?p=74)

That post is the fifth most popular thing on my blog, all from search-hits looking for how to count words in Emacs.

<comment><USER7> What's your definition of simple, in this case? A million different users want a million different simple things. An editor that gives all of these functions equal weight is not an editor anyone would want to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> if you're only using StackOverflow, I created a small mode called sos-mode: [https://github.com/omouse/emacs-sos](https://github.com/omouse/emacs-sos)

The difference is that sos-mode is made for getting answers quickly and being able to copy/paste any code snippets. The output buffer of answers uses org- mode so it's easy to tag the list.

A full-blown stackexchange mode may be good if you're answering questions or looking for a lot of answers but I don't see that happening a lot. Most users are anonymous (sos-mode doesn't require login) and just want to get some answer.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a killer idea! Looking forward to seeing where it goes... will be as helpful, if not more, than ERC has been for me while searching for answers.

</comment><comment><USER10> I never fully "got" emacs even though it was the popular editor during university times and I occasionally use it for quick server admin stuff.

Today I feel it has missed its boat with good looking and user friendly stuff available like Sublime Text, Atom, Eclipse and even cloud IDEs.

I cant help but to laugh quietly to addons like this.

<comment><USER5> Can Sublime Text/Atom do all of this here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8639804) ?

I want to jump to any file at any time regardless of where I am in the project instantly, can Sublime do it? And even if a project has 30-40k files, it must be fast and make me jump instantly. See the demos in this guide for details: [http://tuhdo.github.io/helm-projectile.html](http://tuhdo.github.io/helm- projectile.html)

Atom has a limit of 2MB text file which is worse than Vim in the 90s.

<comment><USER11> > I want to jump to any file at any time regardless of where I am in the > project instantly, can Sublime do it? And even if a project has 30-40k > files, it must be fast and make me jump instantly

Yes, Sublime handles that smoothly. Do a linux tree clone, enter the directory, run "subl .", then ctrl+p (or cmd+p) and start typing whatever. It fuzzy-completes your typing and immediately displays your selection as a preview in the background as well.

Video here: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjc9k8ocwiukq5t/sublime- linux.mov?...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjc9k8ocwiukq5t/sublime- linux.mov?dl=0)

(note the percentage in the footer, it was indexing in background the files for code completion and other stuff, since I had just cloned it, but the file jumping still works smoothly).

I skimmed through your other videos, and I didn't instantly see anything that I couldn't do with a recent editor as well.

<comment><USER5> Emacs also has that preview feature when you move the highlighter to a selection. However, I feel it annoying because screen keeps changing while I narrow to a file or a set of files, and luckily it is off by default.

How about other thing? Like switch between source and header files without configuring anything? Or Jump to any file I see instantly, even without full filepath and you only have just a name and without typing the filename? [http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm- projectil...](http://tuhdo.github.io/static/helm-projectile/helm-projectile- find-files-dwim-1.gif)

Can it do powerful automatic indentation: [https://github.com/Bruce- Connor/aggressive-indent-mode](https://github.com/Bruce-Connor/aggressive- indent-mode). It does not only indent the current line, but the whole Semantic context around your cursor. Demos inside the homepage.

Beautiful compile output: [http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation- compile.gif](http://tuhdo.github.io/static/c-ide/compilation-compile.gif)

Open man page for symbol at cursor: [http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm- man-woman.gif](http://tuhdo.github.io/static/part3/helm-man-woman.gif)

Emacs can save any arbitrary window layout and restore it later. You can even have workspace in Emacs, each can store a set of window layouts (i.e. one for debugging, one for reading doc, one for just source code...), can be saved as a _bookmark_ and later restore in future session. In Emacs, you can bookmark everything, even a git commit.

<comment><USER11> > How about other thing? Like switch between source and header files without > configuring anything?

Yes (ctrl+alt+up).

> Or Jump to any file I see instantly, even without full file path > and you > only have just a name and without typing the filename?

I'm not sure I understand. I mentioned fuzzy completion before, the way it works is that it matches even subparts of the paths and/or filename, with the only requisite of preserving left to right. For instance if I type "bmx25" I can find boot-related imx25 files, because it will match the "b" from the boot path, and then "mx25" from the filename (even a few directories down the path).

> Can it do powerful automatic indentation:

I never saw such a plugin; generically speaking, plugins can do stuff on keypresses (in a separate thread of course to avoid blocking), for instance you can configure the linters to run at each keypress, at each save, every Nth seconds, after N idle millesconds, etc.

So it depends whether you want to compare the richness of the ecosystem or the core capabilities of the editor.

> Beautiful compile output:

I honestly don't know; it doesn't that by default, though there might be some plugin to that effect; when I use compiled languages, I prefer a linter-like approach to showing compilation errors, so I don't use this kind of plugins in my own environment.

> Open man page for symbol at cursor

yes, this is supported, though I personally switched to Dash ([http://kapeli.com/dash](http://kapeli.com/dash)) recently, which is similar but much more powerful than just man, as it allows to cache and index documentation from dozens of programming environment and frameworks, taking care of the different formats, etc. So for instance with the same shortcut I can get the help for a POSIX function from its man page, or a Boost class method from their official documentation, and everything is blazingly fast because of local cache and index, so my computer doesn't need to go to boost.org to show that page.

> Emacs can save any arbitrary window layout and restore it later.

You can do that in Sublime, but you need to define a project (which, in its most basic form, is just a "save project" command after having opened a directory); at that point, you have a shortcut to switch between projects with fuzzy completion, and each project keeps the full workspace, ALSO including unsaved modifications to files (which sounds crazy but I love it) as it means that you can do it without even thinking once.

\---

Generally speaking, I don't think there's a world of difference. I find vim harder to replicate in its more advanced features, with its approach to command combinations which is totally different from anything else; but emacs introduced to the world the concept an extendible editor based on complicated, targeted commands (which is the one in widespread usage today), so I think that any sufficiently advanced editor can get very close to emacs in most features.

Obviously emacs has many years of history and contributors that created a vast ecosystem, but there might also be some ecosystem bias given its legacy (e.g.: I think it's safe to assert that most web programmers don't use emacs, so I think it's normal to expect Sublime or Atom support for web programming to be generically more advanced).

In fact, I don't think Emacs have a specific paradigm that is hard to replicate, as it's the contrary (what used to be special in Emacs 20 years ago as become the default for all editors nowadays). We can battle on the last advanced feature in one specific workflow, but I think the discussion then becomes anecdoctal or at least very niche-related.

If look at Atom for instance, they introduced a concept where the editor window is not simply line-based, but they can open graphical windows within it, which is a paradigm shift which might introduce unique features, very hard to replicate. See for instance their nested CSS editing feature, which is very nice because it helps my brain limit the context switching a lot.

<comment><USER5> If you want image display, there Emacs has it eons ago, and people write plug- ins for it, like this one: [https://github.com/josteink/wsd- mode](https://github.com/josteink/wsd-mode)

Emacs is also a fine PDF reader. I can search text in the PDF file with highlighting and a table of content side by side. All can be controlled with the keyboard: [https://tuhdo.github.io/static/emacs-read- pdf.gif](https://tuhdo.github.io/static/emacs-read-pdf.gif). I never use Evince again.

<comment><USER11> No, I don't want image display. I want to replicate Atom's inlining editing features. Did you look into that? This is one example: [https://discuss.atom.io/t/expand-css-rules-inline- html/12437](https://discuss.atom.io/t/expand-css-rules-inline-html/12437)

<comment><USER5> i think skewer-mode is close enough: [https://github.com/skeeto/skewer- mode](https://github.com/skeeto/skewer-mode) for live editing.

I don't think that inlining feature really help much. Generally, if you want to access a css element in Emacs, you jump in, edit and jump back in an instant to see your result.

See also web-mode: [http://web-mode.org](http://web-mode.org)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.

(just kidding. I don't like SE but I'm sure this is a great tool for people who do like SE.)

<comment><USER13> Please don't have an opinion when posting on StackExchange. Democracy and committees are what make America great and why we chose XML over S-Expressions.</comment></comment>


Beautiful visualization of wind currents on Earth - <AUTHOR> http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-83.51,19.99,605

<comment><USER2> Don't forget to click on the bottom-left button and check the different options.

Example of a high altitude with temperature:

[http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/ove...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-5.76,48.35,605)

And many different projections, Stereographic is awesome:

[http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/over...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=total_precipitable_water/stereographic)

[http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/o...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/overlay=temp/stereographic=43.00,20.00,136)

Please someone make this as an app for a desktop background!

\-----

I found this option for total cloud water[0] and the checked the weather in France[1]. Pretty useful.

[0]:[http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/o...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/overlay=total_cloud_water/equirectangular=-350.50,47.48,1106)

[1]:[http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/France.htm](http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/France.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Desktop background would be amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Beautiful. Reminds me of how I used to run xplanet as live desktop with bump and cloud maps (updated every few hours), accurate stellar background, etc. I wonder if there's something similar, more modern, with more possible data feeds.

</comment><comment><USER4> Previous Discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6924854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6924854)

</comment><comment><USER5> This looks great. I just wish it didn't have to completely refresh when you turn the earth. Maybe in V2 :)

<comment><USER6> Hi. I'm the creator of the site. Unfortunately, each time the globe orientation changes, the distortion caused by the projection needs to be recalculated. Tried to think of ways to make this faster or save computations, but haven't found any good solutions yet.

<comment><USER7> From a usability aspect at least, you could keep the same distortion until the interaction ends, and then tween the distortion values to the new orientation over a second or two. Technically it'd be 'wrong' for a short time, but it'd be nicer to use.

Awesome work regardless though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazing. I've been tracking a delivery (Seiki 4k monitor incidentally) which I believe is currently on this flight: [http://www.flightradar24.com/ABX2040](http://www.flightradar24.com/ABX2040)

It always looks as though the course they take is unnecessarily far north. I have to consciously remind myself that the map projection and the prevailing winds play a factor. This really does beautifully illustrate why they take the route they do.

<comment><USER9> This is not far north because of winds, it's just the shortest line!

Great circle distance (Curves in Mercator, straight lines on globe) vs. Rhumb lines (Straight in Mercator, constant course angle against meridians)

[http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ComparingLoxodromesAndGrea...](http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ComparingLoxodromesAndGreatCircleRoutes/)

[edit] added picture for explanation

[http://i.imgur.com/wJS0ry1.png](http://i.imgur.com/wJS0ry1.png)

Lines of same color have identical course

<comment><USER8> Sort of, journeys in the other direction are pushed even further north (or, actually north of the straight line) though which I believe is because of the winds. - i.e. it's a factor, isn't it?

<comment><USER9> Jet Streams are a factor but their position varies.

The appearance as a northbound curve is the effect of the straight Orthodrome/Great Circle line projected into Mercator.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight#Transatlan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight#Transatlantic_routes)

[edit] I think it's fair to assume the winds are relatively stable and more intense further north so eastbound (US > Europe) flights might deviate even further to the north.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks#Route_Pla...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks#Route_Planning)

[http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/ove...](http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-5.76,48.35,605)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some days ago I posted this: [http://scalgo.com/live/global](http://scalgo.com/live/global)

It's modelling all the water flow levels in the world using very detailed GPS data. I mean, you can model a sea raise or a river level raise.

I didn't even get 1 point. OK, design isn't as cool as this wind one, but I think it deserved a bit more love since they process a crap ton of terrain data for the water flow modelling...

<comment><USER11> It's hard to give credit for something indiscernible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a very similar style to parts of this incredible visualisation of Earth weather [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COWE6sMzdqI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COWE6sMzdqI)

</comment><comment> T-zex Well done! Interestingly there is a tornado like structure in the Crimean area.

</comment><comment><USER9> other than that this beautiful web-app gets constantly updated with new data like

Relative Humidity [%], Air Density [kg/m3], and Wind Power Density [kW/m2]

[https://twitter.com/cambecc/status/438674275285757952](https://twitter.com/cambecc/status/438674275285757952)

here is the obligatory link to the old discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6924854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6924854)

</comment><comment><USER13> This REALLY blew my mind. The the "Earth" menu at the bottom left - you can see sea currents, temperature map, winds at different heights... terrific.

</comment><comment><USER14> GitHub sources: [https://github.com/cambecc/earth](https://github.com/cambecc/earth)

</comment><comment><USER15> Noticed this tool on suspicious0bservers youtube channel a while back. He uses several tools daily to monitor earth and solar weather:

[http://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers](http://www.youtube.com/user/Suspicious0bservers)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is amazing! What is being used for geocoding IP addresses? It's one of the more accurate returns I have come across in quite some time.

Also, how live is this data? If the data is live enough, this could be immensely useful for small-craft off-shore fishing.

All around, superb work!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is awesome. Is there a better way to zoom out than to click on "Earth" and choose another projection to reset the zoom level?

Edit: Wasn't working before, Chrome restart fixed it. My bad.

<comment><USER18> Try mouse scroll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is lovely, but I believe it's a copy of an earlier visualization by Viégas and Wattenberg: [http://hint.fm/wind](http://hint.fm/wind)

</comment><comment><USER20> Do ocean currents follow these same lines?

<comment><USER21> Take the Antarctic Circumpolar Current or the Gulf Stream: looks like the wind defines ocean currents.

</comment></comment><comment> Link- Aesthetics aside, how accurate is this?

</comment><comment><USER22> wait. is this live? anything similar for clouds?

</comment><comment><USER6> what the hell? why was this post deleted?</comment>


Firefox Voice: Browse the web with your voice - <AUTHOR> https://voice.mozilla.org/firefox-voice/?source=commonvoice <comment><USER2> I published a minimalistic launcher app[0] recently and I was wondering if I can add a voice assistant in it to execute simple commands like "call someone" or "search this". Google assistant is completely off on my phone.

Now this looks amazing. I hope that at some point it will exist outside the browser. If they had an Android SDK, I'd add it in my app right now.

[0]: [https://github.com/tanujnotes/Olauncher](https://github.com/tanujnotes/Olauncher)</comment>


What's wrong with higher learning? - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendanpickering.com/?p=57

<comment><USER2> Higher learning is the same as it has always been - a status symbol for the elite.

In some circles, all the know-how you need is the ability to say, "I was a legacy at hah-vud, dontcha know."

What this planet needs is a shakeup of the university system, maybe for one year let in everyone who wouldn't normally make the cut.

<comment><USER3> This is the most bizarre comment I have ever read...but I like it.

<comment><USER4> This comment is preposterous. It is clear that something needs to be done, the question remains: How long until people realize that a stack of those millionaires and billionaires didn't make their money from playing the slow and steady route?

Those guys at the top of forbes wealthiest list are college or highschool dropouts - and look at them now.

<comment><USER5> I would say that being on top of the "forbes wealthiest list" isn't the only worthwhile goal in life.

It would be interesting to know if the post author and the above commentor have ever attended university.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You raise two excellent points, and not just in reference to higher learning - how about our kids?

I have an 8 year old who barely gets off the couch, he's like a vegetable. I wish there was a smart person bootcamp i could mail him off to.

<comment><USER4> It's impossible to assess the tangibility of something like this. These are institutions of higher learning, what do you expect them to do? Start giving lessons in Beer Pong and how to gel your hair, BRO?

Brendan does raise a good point, it's not always the price of the education that matters, it's what you learn and how well you use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you like this, it had been banging around in my head for quite some time now.</comment></comment></comment>


Reddit bans 3D printer data files for firearms - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/reddits-policy-against-transactions <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious how the "they're a private company, they can ban whatever they want, it's not a 1A violation" argument fares when you have government officials publicly urging Reddit and other companies to ban 3D-printing files [0]. Do these companies feel free to act independently, or does this signal governments attempting to use wink-wink-nudge-nudge influence on private companies, then being able to claim that it's the private companies that are exercising their own rights to censor? Seems like we are entering an interesting future of public-private cronyism.

[0] [https://www.menendez.senate.gov/news-and- events/press/menend...](https://www.menendez.senate.gov/news-and- events/press/menendez-to-tech-ceos_you-have-the-power-to-keep- untraceable-3d-printable-gun-designs-off-your-online-platforms-use-it--)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you find what sites/services can help your business? - <AUTHOR> I see all these new y combinator companies/things people post on hacker news that would greatly help with various projects. For example, maybe I would like to use Stripe for my payments or Amazon S3 for storing data. But then there are less known companies like RankScience (randomly googled) that can help with your product. Is there a site that can help you find these more nuanced services?<p>I often read through new y combinator companies and think - oh I could use that, that would be useful. But I'm sure there are plenty of more established services that I just don't know about and wouldn't think to google but are super useful. <comment><USER2> I just completed building this:

[https://awesomelist-fi.nder.site](https://awesomelist-fi.nder.site)

Taking jnv/lists[1] as root url, crawling every awesome list on github, and project front pages. Indexing all the text using bleve search library [2]. Serving cold with semantic-ui.

The crawler is a single threaded slow crawler, that keeps on crawling, starts at the head again after completing the tree.

[1] [https://github.com/jnv/lists](https://github.com/jnv/lists) [2] [http://www.blevesearch.com/](http://www.blevesearch.com/)

edit: https

</comment><comment><USER3> top of my head:

alternativeto.net

ProductHunt

Capterra

<comment><USER4> I'll add StackShare to this list.

[https://stackshare.io](https://stackshare.io)</comment></comment>


GoDaddy hires former Yahoo and Microsoft exec Blake Irving as CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgear.com/godaddy-hires-former-yahoo-and-microsoft-exec-blake-irving-as-ceo-11260413/

<comment><USER2> Announcement of Blake Irving leaving GoDaddy in 5...4...3...</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for your TODO, how much HN material you actually read? - <AUTHOR> I've seen many, MANY times a lot of amazing articles and links here in HN. The problem is that I read only 20% of things I would like to read because of "not today, I'm too busy".
I would like to start saving all links, articles, and other information I'm interested in.
I'm curious, how much material here do you actually read and what are you using as your TODO reading list? <comment><USER2> I read whatever interests me, sometimes immediately but generally by placing it in my Pocket ([http://getpocket.com](http://getpocket.com)) for later perusal at my leisure. Sometime I come across something relevant to a client/colleague; I tend to share those, with a brief comment, in real-time.

</comment><comment><USER3> hacker news now allows you to access your upvoted articles, so you can use that as a todo list, no ?</comment>


Monitor your WooCommerce stores automatically - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FahadUddin92/WooAlerts <comment><USER2> I'm interested in everything WooCommerce related.

But I'm trying to reduce notifications on everything I do, not have more.

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is for store owners who are obsessed if their store is working okay. You can set a notification, "email me when there are no checkouts in a day" and it will email you. The reason is to get over the obsession to continuously check your store.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Effect of losing flash on games devs? - <AUTHOR>

I can't help noticing that pretty much every JavaScript game is trivially hackable.  Is there a way to prevent this without going client/server and building a significantly more expensive product?  Is this even a problem? <comment><USER2> I'd say that your last question is key here. Is there a problem, really? Well, it depends on the target of your game.

You can apply several layers of security on top of your game, and you will likely deter 99% percent of tinkerers.

You'll never be able to stop someone really determined into breaking your game.

I've had some experience before with games and the hacking around it. There are many measures to take in account, but they depend very much on the game in question.

The fact that a game is made in flash is never an impediment to hacking.

Some games will only send short, timestamped input signals to the server. The server runs a simulation of the game and it has an authoritative state of the game. Then, it is a matter of sprinkling several validation checks related to the player's position, where can he shoot at, etc.

Once you get to that point, you'll say to yourself: "Is this really worth the hassle?"

It really depends on your game. If it is a puzzle and you are worrying about the leaderboards being hacked (an incredibly easy thing to do sometimes), then you should summarize the game's actions and come up with a hard limit. Meaning, you should ask the question: "How many blocks can the player destroy in the 30 seconds that this round lasts?"

If you sum up the time from when the player clicks a block, animation triggers and then the block is destroyed, and that number is 1 second, then it is likely that the player won't be able to destroy more than 30 blocks during a round.

I don't know, this is just an example but it can be way different from what you want.

Let me know the type of your game and I can give you a few pointers if you like. While hacking may not be a problem, it sure is a lovely subject to research and analyze.

I'm sure you know this but it is always good to have in mind: never trust the client.

</comment><comment><USER3> Homomorphic encryption is probably something to consider. It'll make your games a million times slower though.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to follow a page from email? - <AUTHOR>

What I need is to follow the changes on a web page, without visiting it. When there is a change in my personal wiki page for example, I want to receive an email citing the change. <comment><USER2> Are you looking for something like <http://www.changedetection.com/> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the one. Thank you very much.</comment></comment>


Ford Is Building a Transportation Operating System - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ford-future-operating-system/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to see that Ford is investing in entire transportation stack at the same time. They are working on a self-driving car, ride sharing service AND a service to manage those rides efficiently for organizations. From my limited knowledge of Ford's activities, it seems like they are significantly behind GM and Waymo (and probably Uber too). Anyone know the timeline and how they are stacking up against these other companies?

<comment><USER3> And bikes. They're working with cities around the Bay Area to sponsor bike shares. I can see the biker/trip data also feeding into their data lake. If they can make meaning through all that data, it seems like a good long bet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "The bigger risk is doing nothing," executive chairman Bill Ford told WIRED > back in 2015, as he outlined a future where a single, digital ticket could > buy you a ride on a car, taxi, subway, bus, or bicycle. "I am very confident > that we can compete and morph into something quite different."

We already have that in Los Angeles. It's called a TAP Card.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most reputable automakers wouldn't be caught dead running Ford's software, especially if it means putting a Ford shield on their vehicle. Where you might see it is in budget vehicles and public transportation, if Ford plays their cards right. These things may help generate some revenue, but neither of them is likely to be good for the brand.</comment>


RepoRangler: A Dockerised, Free, and Open Source Package Manager - <AUTHOR> https://reporangler.com <comment><AUTHOR> So I started building this project cause I wanted something like satis, but something that was more dynamic and less basic. But I didn't want to pay $25,000 a year for storing php packages on s3 and I didn't think that this software deserved paying the price Private Packagist wanted either.

So ok, lets make my own and see what happens. Who has an interest in package managers?

<comment><USER2> Your github link doesn't work, your site has random images literally titled "random image" and profanity, your docs are nonexistent. I dig your enthusiasm but I have no reason to believe you're capable of accomplishing this project if you can't even finish the website for it.

I think you should have waited until you had some steak to offer with the sizzle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn you're right. The reason for the broken github links is because I moved everything into an organisation instead of my personal account.

They're fixed now.

The profanity I'm comfortable with

The Random Images are because I'm busy writing the php/satis service and I just prioritised that over offering a blank website.

The docs are on the github, check out the php-service, it's working (within reason) right now.

The current status is that I can take the satis generated files and serve them, I'm working now on actually generating the package data dynamically from a database.

Maybe you're right about the sizzle thing. But I've seen worse on this site. So I guessed I wanted to gauge interest as much as I wanted to show off, see who was interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> So right now the PHP service is capable of running and if you provide it the satis generated "include" files, it'll serve the packages to composer and it'll install correctly.

Right now I'm working on authorization so you can provide packages to public, or private, depending on your auth level.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Now the auth-service is faking user data, but returning replies that I can actually use in the php-service to generate the correct package list</comment>


Personality Insights – IBM Watson Analyzes Twitter Posts - <AUTHOR> https://personality-insights-livedemo.mybluemix.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> I came across this today on my twitter feed and tried it. It was fairly accurate. Definitely an interesting 'big data' use case.</comment>


How fast are malloc_size and malloc_usable_size in C? - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2017/09/15/how-fast-are-malloc_size-and-malloc_usable_size-in-c/ <comment><USER2>
      This matches a performance pattern I have observed: the
      standard C libraries under Linux have very fast memory
      allocation compared to Apple platforms.

A couple of releases ago Apple rewrote their C runtime (loader, memory manager, etc--all the stuff that's needed to bootstrap a typical process) in C++. Because it didn't yet have suppressions, you got to see the horror show every time you ran Valgrind.

C++ isn't intrinsically slower than C. But whoever decided to rewrite it in C++ obviously had some very misguided, overly complicated conceptions about how to approach things. The smart thing would have been to stick to C, which makes you think twice (and more) whenever you feel compelled to implement some grandiose cathedral of abstraction and indirection.</comment>


The Crucible Effect and the Scarcity of Collective Attention - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/07/21/the-crucible-effect-and-the-scarcity-of-collective-attention/ <comment><USER2> Not trying to be snarky, but oddly enough I had a hard time paying attention to this article. I found myself skimming a lot towards the bottom.

I'm really unsure whether there was something useful in there for me or not -- lots of name-dropping, business-book mentioning, even some allusions to complicated math. At the end of the day, what I think the author was trying to say is that 12 is the optimum size for a creative group and that 150 is the optimum number of active fans you should have for your blog, and that 10,000 is the number of hours you have to spend on something to be good at it.

It would have been much better if the author had picked _one_ point and made it cogently. Instead the article had this rambling, diffuse feeling to it.

I liked some of the data, and liked the points. The style just wasn't for me.

<comment><USER3> _I had a hard time paying attention to this article. I found myself skimming a lot towards the bottom._

Me too, but for me it was more of an excitement to see the next point. Rather than being poorly written I'd say it was too interesting (if that's possible).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A good description of cultural expectations at the top. Good comparison of ping pong in India, China and the US and what that means for the skill of play at ever level, prom casual to pro.

If enough people are great at something it's easy to learn greatness.

But then what seems like an interesting article just kept going and going and going... tl.

</comment><comment><USER5> Tell me what the Roman Army didn't know and don't cover it with 'pseudo- scientific', jargon.

Though the exact numbers of men in a legion varied, the basic pattern of organization remained the same. The smallest unit was the tent group (contubernium), composed of 8 men who shared a tent, a mule, and eating equipment. These were organized into a disciplinary unit called a century (despite the fact that a century typically had 80 rather than 100 men), under the command of a centurion. The basic fighting unit was a cohort, composed of six centuries (480 men plus 6 centurions). The legion itself was composed of ten cohorts, and the first cohort had many extra men—the clerks, engineers, and other specialists who did not usually fight—and the senior centurion of the legion, the primipilus, or "number one javelin."

</comment><comment><USER6> This article is just filled with gems. The "Crucible" idea is both aptly named and powerfully explanatory.

I do not think college is terribly good at educating. Even so, I'm forced to admit the cliché is probably right: it's a powerfully life-changing, valuable experience. I came out of it with a radically reshaped worldview, tremendous energy, and much knowledge. My rate of progress while in college (in fact, mostly a few specific years) was much higher than any other time I remember.

...But I don't look back and think of important classes taken or works read. I see myself surrounded by brilliant, energetic peers. That's the Crucible Effect he describes. We talk about it when thinking of "startup-friendly" communities, or hacker groups, or even preserving the "character" of these boards. We're trying to keep the Crucible Effect intact.

Interesting.</comment>


What was the final straw that made you stop programming with python? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-final-straw-that-made-you-stop-programming-with-python?share=1 <comment><USER2> I still use Python at work, but the lack of "real" threads in the language feels very silly when you are running your code on AWS with instances with tens or hundreds of (virtual) cores. I'm aware that you can write multithreaded extensions in C, write async code or use the multiprocessing package but these solutions feel quite clumsy.

My personal interests have been towards CUDA and Clojure for years.</comment>


Show HN: Create interactive stories with your kids - <AUTHOR> https://ikidoo.com/ <comment><USER2> I took me several clicks to see whether you even have a free tier, and then I wasn't able to try it out without giving you an email address, I closed the tab. _Please_ , if you have a free tier anyway, provide some way to play around with a demo without jumping through hoops. Limit it by time or by story elements or characters or whatever, but just provide _something_ to get me interested and see how it actually behaves.

Personally I'm on the fringe of your potential customer base: No kids myself, but plenty of kids in the family that I read to from time to time, and whose parents I could recommend this to, if I saw that I liked it. Make of this what you will.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just added a "try it free" button where you can create a demo story. I hope it helps. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is an interactive story? I did the "try for free" thing and don't understand it at all, started typing random things so maybe I could see the result and understand it, but was then prompted to select a plan, then I got into a "how to create a story" that was teaching in a very odd way what I should do in the website.

<comment><USER3> I guess you should point people to "The Missing Lab" story so they understand what is an interactive story.

But basically it's just a series of phrases with stuff you have to select afterwards.

I like the idea, but don't like that it happens all inside a computer screen and all by just random clicking. I was expecting something happening in the real life (but I don't actually know how).

Anyway, this is the end of my useless feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Your feedback was very helpful. I'll think about ways for improving it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please slap an explainer video on the top fold asap. I bopped on and off. Wanted to have a show-and-tell and get 'sign up' or start - without any grounding on what this is and what i am making. love the concept, i think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! We're preparing a video. Hopefully, it will be online soon. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Kids are becoming more impacient for reading."

=>impatient

I was hoping to see a video of it being used, but didn't find one after a bit of looking

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we'll fix it. Our video isn't ready yet but we just enabled a demo story where you can try it by yourself (just click on the "try it free" button). I hope it helps.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my app: Hacker Weekend - <AUTHOR>

Here's the URL: http://hwknd.com
It tracks tweets for new github.com repositories created this week, and posts them in a nice searchable list. It also displays languages used, collaborators and you can view readmes inline by clicking on the project's void.
There's also a search landing page for bookmarking purposes at: http://hwknd.com/search
Searching is word separated OR, and also indexes readmes and language names.
And a Language Wars chart (total lines of code this week): http://hwknd.com/languagewars
Also, if you sit on the home page, it will automatically inform you for any changes and display a (!) in the title, and then auto-refresh on window/tab focus.
It is written in node.js and runs completely stand-alone, with only a few modules dependencies (no extra processes).
Source code is at: http://github.com/stagas/hwknd.com (might be a bit behind in features) and is MIT licenced so you can fork it or clone it and run your own version.
I apologize for double posting this earlier this week, but there have been so many additions and features since then (it was just a blank page back then, all of the above was missing) that I felt I should repost: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=1955488
Feedback and suggestions are welcome. <comment><USER2> Positives:

\- Dig the concept overall, I need a way to track new additions to Git.

\- It's fast

\- Adds more items as I scroll down, however it would be great to know when I've gotten to ones I've already read.

Some suggestions: \- RSS?

\- The dropdown readme functionality is awkward and not intuitive. Confusion as to where the hit area is and the expected interaction/net effort result.

\- Simplify and ease opportunities to engage, add the add a repo to the homepage, maybe sidebar it.

\- Repos should open up to new window?

\- Allow someone to create a cart of things to research or auto-watch items without clicking through to each repo.

\- Spend a little more time on the UI. Alternating row colors, maybe reduce the contrast of a white background against the creme background data set.

\- The most significant data point on the page is the descriptions of what each package is, not the package name. I'd consider making that the title line.

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, thanks for taking the time to review. Your observations are really helpful.

I should add a thicker border separating pages. Also to notice is that infinite scroll is entirely client-side, so no Javascript enabled browsers will just get the pagination as normally.

RSS, yeah, it needs one.

The dropdown moving into view is an experiment, and I'm just testing to see how it goes. My thinking was to scroll the readme into view, and scroll up a bit more to put the next element right under the mouse pointer. So if you try clicking somewhere below the middle of the screen (depending on the size of your screen), you can browse the entire list without using mousewheel or moving your mouse from position, and every readme will scroll to the position you are looking. This is especially helpful if you do a search for something and want to view all of this week's items. But if it turns out to be confusing I'll remove it.

Links with target _new and _blank isn't something I like too much, so I leave it to user choice if they want to middle click or normal click, which is what they're used to already.

The cart idea is interesting, and has some potential. I think it should be made to watch the repo on your account on github, so it'll probably require you to login with your github credentials. Also something for the future as I'm not ready to do logins yet.

The UI needs work.

You're probably right about the description as title I'll try that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Update: I tried description on top and didn't look as good. Maybe our mind isn't used of thinking so big paragraphs as titles and it was strange. If descriptions where short it would make sense, but now it's just random text which isn't easy on the eyes.

Also tried removing the autoscroll, and it wasn't as good either. The reason is I catch mousewheel over readmes because it was annoying when scrolling through a readme, to have the page scrolling when it ended. So now, if there was no scrolling to the next element, you wouldn't be able to scroll down unless you moved your mouse away from the readme. I hope that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> clickable: <http://hwknd.com></comment>