Gmail on iOS: Why does Gmail take so long to load whereas Mail stays in memory? - <AUTHOR>

Are all apps treated equally in iOS and does Mail get special privileges? <comment><USER2> Gmail is a hybrid app where certain elements are developed in html5 and displayed in UIWebview. Mail is a native app.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, I think we're comparing different things here. You can install Gmail (POP3/iMap) inside Mail.app

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Apple can use private/undocumented APIs which are forbidden from App Store apps. I believe you can run a strings command on the itunes file to see what the APIs are called.

<comment><USER5> This is complete speculation, and not even good speculation.

Gmail for iOS is essentially a single-site web browser, whereas the Mail app is a full iOS app utilizing the full CocoaTouch frameworks. A native app is going to have a faster experience.

Also, use objdump or something, like a professional -- not strings.

<comment><USER4> It's not at all speculation, I just didn't feel the need to prove it. We're not obsessive about that here, not like Wikipedia or Stackoverflow.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17580251/what-exactly- is-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17580251/what-exactly-is-a-private- api-and-why-will-apple-reject-an-ios-app-if-one-is-us) [http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/15/launch-center-pro- develo...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/15/launch-center-pro-developer- must-remove-undocumented-apis-to-apple-apps/) [http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/04/06/apples-use-of- private-...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/04/06/apples-use-of-private-apis- for-ipad-gives-it-unfair-advantage/)</comment></comment></comment>


Cloud66 major service incident — "missing servers" - <AUTHOR> http://status.cloud66.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Full text of their email to customers:

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Today we had a major service incident on our site. As a result of this incident some of our customers lost their virtual servers.

We are still investigating the cause of the issue and our service will be shut down until the investigation is over.

Here is what we know: </comment><comment></comment><comment>====

\- There hasn't been any signs of security breach or abnormal activity anywhere on our systems.

\- All sensitive information is encrypted throughout the system, including cloud API keys.

\- The affected stacks were across Digital Ocean, AWS and Rackspace.

Here is what we are doing: </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

\- We are working hard to find the root of the issue, but we need to keep the systems shut down until we are sure our customers are not exposed.

Here is what you can do to restore your service: </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=====

\- If you are not affected by this issue, you will not be able to redeploy until the service is restored. We will keep you posted.

\- If you are affected by this issue, we can help you with your latest deployment Git SHA (if you don't have it), redirecting your traffic from our DNS.

\- If you are affected and were running on Digital Ocean, they might be able to restore your server from an automatic pre-destroy snapshot they take.

We are very sorry about this and understand the disruption it has caused to all of our users, we are working hard to restore the service as soon as possible.

</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>===

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Summary: Cloud66 is a provisioning service for Ruby on Rails (it installs the servers, databases etc onto your AWS/Rackspace/DigitalOcean server). It seems Cloud66 has started destroying some virtual servers without permission.</comment>


Werkbank – the new table in the Sitterwerk Art Library [video] - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/157990864 <comment><USER2> I had designed something like this with QR codes for an office. A camera would sit over top the desks to keep track of each folder and any stack that built up on top of it. That way anyone could quickly find what they need on any desk, instead of asking around.

Then, when storing and pulling any folder, it could go in any cabinet or box, instead of a previously defined, rigid, alphabetized and categorized location which would inevitably need to squeeze more than it could fit or waste a lot of space. A camera would (theoretically) automatically judge distance and location of a drawer in a storage room to accurately tell which one it went in or came from, or manually could be shown to the camera, as would need to be done in the case of a box. By consistently putting the folder in the front of the drawer or box, the computer could tell users the order and where exactly it sits (eg 2nd from the back, etc), which the color coded label would help identify.

QR codes still seem a little bit nicer than RFID here, except that Werkbank's image recognition goes even further than generic folders and makes good use of book cover images. It just seems like that robot costs a lot and has an unfortunate delay from when someone puts something away to when it updates a shelf's index. RFID seems better suited when it gets embedded in something like a toy or a farm animal, which a sensor can pick up near various "hot- spots", than when pasted flat on a book, tag, etc.

I'm so glad to see someone did this, and this library's (shared) approach seems to like a big step into Bret Victor's concept of Seeing Spaces: [http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/](http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Found thanks to Sidnicious in another thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266124)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha, this reminds me of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. It's a good (nerdy) read!</comment>


Coronavirus: Germany puts on crowded concerts to study risks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53871617 <comment><USER2> URL points to another article. This is the correct URL: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-53875370](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53875370)</comment>


Survival guide for busy people - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/thinking-about-startups/survival-for-busy-people-aa42a0d63767

<comment><USER2> My addition to these good points

* Skip TV. Lots of people spend hours every day in front of a TV, I don't. I watch in dedicated bursts and usually that means a movie per week. * Books. I love reading books but do that on long flights, on vacation or when I have real "off time". * Sleep. I go to bed when I'm really tired, never before. Lots of people go to bed before they are tired which is insane. * Kids. Spend dedicated time. I drop them off at school every morning, spend some time before/after dinner every day. * Weekends. Try not to work weekends and again have dedicated time with kids and family activities. I do weekend work in short bursts when needed and save the rest for recreation.

</comment><comment><USER3> My short tips: 1) write short emails & respond quickly 2) remove notifications on your computer & phone 3) create gap time (showers, walking, running etc)</comment>


Minds Destroyed by the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/minds-destroyed-by-internet/ <comment><USER2> The "next generation" is always destroyed for there's something out there just for destroying them. In the modern era it's the Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/you- name-it. Before these it's video games. Before video games it's the TV. before the TV it's rock music. Before rock music it's the pesty comic books. It's not that the concern from the so-called "older generation" is totally irrational, it's the case that we have to come up with new strategies to deal with the bad influence the "new things" have, if they ever have any; it's our very own responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, but this smells like bullshit.

First, the anonymous email is from someone unwilling to go on the record.

Second, they won't even say what classes they experience a 95% failure rate in. Nor do we know what school. These details really count. A community college is not an ivy league medical university with an interdisciplinary STEM curriculum and SEAS programs.

Third, the professor is sort of complaining that the students are basically all behaving as ADHD cases, but it's just a quick email rant, so there's probably more going on...

It could be hundreds of little things affecting why this one professor is stuck in the doldrums of a really bad group of students. Are there lots of meat head athletes trying to coast on sport scholarships and float through his department? Lots of schools accept mediocre drop outs.

I don't doubt that recent batches of students suffer from severe lack of focus and motivation. It's probably all too true that technology has produced some detrimental cultural shifts that leave students drifting even more aimlessly than ever before, but this complaint lacks meat.

There's nothing to back up this guy's complaints. It's just an hastily written email venting frustration.

How do we prove true facts that validate it?</comment>


Project Gitenberg - <AUTHOR> http://gitenberg.github.io/

<comment><USER2> The idea has a lot of merit. So for that two thumbs up. But I would much rather see a separate website for it. Using Github feels very strained. Perhaps Github would be willing to help set you up with your own instance of their platform which you could modify to better suit the purpose. Maybe even Project Gutenberg would be interested in participating in that.

BTW, I recently learned the Gutenberg was _not_ his name and is really a significant historical inaccuracy. His name was Hannes Gensfleisch. "Gutenberg" was just one of the places his family resided.

<comment><USER3> > Perhaps Github would be willing to help set you up with your own instance of > their platform which you could modify to better suit the purpose.

Alternatively, you could use, and customize, an open-source self-hostable alternative, such as gitorious [https://gitorious.org/gitorious](https://gitorious.org/gitorious)

> BTW, I recently learned the Gutenberg was not his name and is really a > significant historical inaccuracy.

Do you have any source for this fact that Gutenberg wasn't using "Gutenberg" as his last name?

<comment><USER4> I don't think the 'Gutenberg' name could be described as a historical inaccuracy, but there is some truth to it. From Wikipedia:

 _Wallau adds, "His surname was derived from the house inhabited by his father and his paternal ancestors 'zu Laden, zu Gutenberg'. The house of Gänsfleisch was one of the patrician families of the town, tracing its lineage back to the thirteenth century." Patricians (aristocrats) in Mainz were often named after houses they owned. Around 1427, the name zu Gutenberg, after the family house in Mainz, is documented to have been used for the first time._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My biggest question is this: did the idea for this originate with the pun, or did they think up the great pun afterward?

<comment><USER6> Idea first, pun after. But thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What advantage does this offer over Project Gutenberg's own Distributed Proofreaders[1]?

[1] [http://pgdp.net](http://pgdp.net)

<comment><USER8> As a long time DP contributor, I'd say the models could not be more different. DP is elaborately and deeply organized around the model of a great many people doing a great many small units of work (stop by once a day and proofread just one page for very specific things). This minimizes the responsibility any one person needs to feel for a book. And like the citizen science projects at zooniverse, individual mistakes are corrected in a multi-pass process where multiple people (5 or 6) see every page.

The new project follows the Github programming model, which means if a person wants to contribute to a book she has to clone the book, make local changes, push, issue a pull request. This is far, far more complex than stopping by pgdp for a ten-minute proofing session. Very few of the drive-by proofers at DP could manage that technically, or would want to be that involved.

Most important it lacks the QC inherent in the DP model of having multiple later reviewers catching earlier errors. Who will do line-by-line vetting of the accuracy of pull requests? Besides the inevitable detail mistakes, there are potential problems similar to those faced by Wikipedia: who will even notice if some local zealot decides to insert editorial comments in, or to bowdlerize the language of, some classic?

It's true that DP's work ends when the book is posted to PG, and that PG has only a feeble update method (email to their errata contact). I could certainly see something like this project as an adjunct to PG, dedicated to continually refreshing the library, but with editorial control over which books go into it.

<comment><USER6> Oh yes. GITenberg is not a replacement for DP in the slightest. New books aren't likely to come out of GITenberg as it currently exists. That is what distributed proofreaders is for.

At some point, I would like to investigate DP tools and see if there is something I could contribute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing I would like to see out of this project is a better version control system for prose. Git is great for code, but it's not at all any good for editing text.

<comment><USER10> +1, in code the basic unit is usually a line, but in prose it is the sentence. I've tried using git with LaTeX and it always ended up with weird situations where you had to put each sentence on a different line to make it work effectively.

<comment><USER11> I think this could be made easier by using the git database as a substrate - there's nothing in that that's tied to line-oriented files (maybe the compression algorithms make some assumptions?).

It's the diff-viewing infrastructure that needs to be completely replaced for prose.

<comment><USER12> Indeed. git diff --color-words will often do the trick for prose, but the real solution is plugging a sentence-oriented diff viewer into git difftool. git difftool is extendable by setting git config variables, so it's very much doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's a great step. I was toying with a related idea last week actually. To me the next great step would be to great around that a framework/tools to help translation of of those ebooks.

What often happens is that editors have one translation of a book, say Les Misérable, and keep reprinting the same translation independently of the quality. So I was thinking that a github like platform to foster translation would be a great idea. Looks like gitenberg might by the project just for that.

But maybe it should pick a clone (gitlab ?), self host and fork/extend that tool to ease the use so that non-developer could use the site without git knowledge. Then again, tailorisation for translation might not be needed.

<comment><USER14> > But maybe it should pick a clone (gitlab ?), self host and fork/extend that > tool to ease the use so that non-developer could use the site without git > knowledge

We're on the same wavelength here. I forked GitLab to make a 'github for writers'. Still backed by git repos, but a simplified web UI for less technical users. If you're interested in working together, lets chat.

<comment><USER15> Hey, I was writing a very long comment about GitBook, Penflip, Leanpub, Softcover... then found your profile and realized you're Penflip's owner.

I'll still reproduce the comment here in case you can get some insights or anyone else is interested.

\---

I've been researching on Markdown+Git book publishing (inspired by 'Markdown to Ebook'[0]) and found that there are already three 'GitHubs for writers': GitBook[1], Penflip[2] and Arturo.io[3]. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses:

# GitBook

Just a publishing platform backed by Git.

## Like:

\- Standalone app.

\- It is a bookstore.

\- Publishes to major stores.

## Dislike:

\- Ugly MSWord-like typesetting.

\- There's no "social collaboration" at all, seems like it's just backed by Git. Not sure if small-scale collaboration (couple authors) is supported in the app or you have to deal with Git complexities yourself.

\- Seems technical-oriented. No fiction categories.

# Penflip

Penflip seems to fit your idea more _(note: now I know why it fits your idea :P)_ , being collaborative like GitHub.

## Like:

\- Collaborative.

## Dislike:

\- It has no integration with bookstores.

\- It's not a bookstore and you can't discover books easily.

\- Looks more like a "free books" platform using 'free' in the FSF sense.

\- It's hard to find a complete book to peek into, but the output seems to be just as ugly as GitBook's. AFAIK they let you customize output, but seems typesetting is not LaTeX-like and suspect won't be up to the job. Defaults are very important, it should be beautiful right out of the box.

# Arturo.io

Arturo.io's page is currently down (some cert error). It looked just like a bunch of webhooks for GitHub. Seemed immature and not for less technical users (still requires Git/Hub knowledge).

\---

As non-Git alternatives I found Leanpub[4] and Softcover[5].

# Leanpub

Social bookstore and publishing platform.

## Like:

\- Lean Publishing.

\- The author-reader interaction is awesome.

\- Their PDF output is beautiful.

\- It's a bookstore (90% royalties!) with social-network aspects.

\- Makes it really easy to create bundles, sharing royalties with other authors, etc. Really awesome feature.

\- Tools for marketing are awesome. Integrated with Google Analytics.

## Dislike:

\- I can't download their toolchain (but a local workflow is somewhat reproducible following 'Markdown to Ebook'[0])

\- Does not rely on Git, but in Dropbox. No proper version control.

\- No collaboration.

\- Does not publish to major bookstores (but allows you to do so).

# Softcover

Major Leanpub competitor. In the publishing aspect seems to be pretty much the same, but their store philosophy is different. Their aim is not to be a bookstore but just a payment processor. You deal with your own marketing, set up your own domain.

## Like:

\- I can download their toolchain. As far as I can tell, I could self-publish not using their platform without hassle. Not being tied to a provider is a _HUGE_ selling point for me.

\- AFAICT still supports Lean Publishing with their generated landing pages.

\- Their PDF output is beautiful.

\- It's a book payments processor. 90% royalties!

\- Lets you control your own marketing, domain, etc. (has downsides)

## Dislike:

\- Since you control your own marketing there are no social network aspects. Each book is supposed to be its own page. No bookstore. No way to explore and discover other books.

\- A bit too technical.

\- DIY version control, no integrated collaboration.

\- Does not publish to major bookstores (but allows you to do so AFAICT).

Even though I'd love a Git-backed workflow I'll stick with one of Leanpub or Softcover because of how beautiful they look. I can still Git it myself. Major selling point for me and the non-techie friends I've been talking to.

The bookstore integration in both is a big selling point too!

I still consider Leanpub since I can replicate their toolchain and seems so easy and powerful for my non-tech friends. Letting users discover your book in the bookstore is really useful.

\--- EDIT:

Now that I know you're from Penflip I will summarize:

I can see you're not a competitor with publishing platforms. As far as I can tell, you're more like GitHub, in the private-repo business instead of taking a cut from sales. Penflip seems great for social collaborative stuff, but I wouldn't choose it if I planned on selling my book.

As I said typesetting is very important. Your platform is awesome, but rendering really put off my friends. Penflip books like like HTML rendered to a PDF (which I guess they actually are). Did you consider moving to LaTeX- based rendering for PDFs? Markdown -> LaTeX -> PDF is the way to go.

Git is a great selling point, but secondary. Book authors just don't know it yet, even though it's one of those features that you just love when you try.

\---

[0] [https://leanpub.com/markdown-to-ebook](https://leanpub.com/markdown-to- ebook)

[1] [https://www.gitbook.io/](https://www.gitbook.io/)

[2] [https://www.penflip.com/](https://www.penflip.com/)

[3] [https://arturo.io/](https://arturo.io/)

[4] [https://leanpub.com/](https://leanpub.com/)

[5] [https://www.softcover.io/](https://www.softcover.io/)

<comment><USER6> This is a fantastic overview of this part of the publishing space. GITenberg has a mailing list, and needs to start collecting breakdowns like this. I would love it if you would join us: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gitenberg- project](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gitenberg-project)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for your kind words, I recently researched the topic and thought someone might benefit from it.

I fail to realize how this could be useful for GITenberg though. Do you intend to publish the books or automate the publishing perhaps? If so, as far as I can tell GITenberg files are not structured, and won't lend themselves easily to automated publishing.

I guess the great thing about GITenberg is anyone could do their own structured .md version and request a pull. Would be cool with some automation to generate and release cool PDFs if .md file is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats Seth! I had to unfollow you while you were making all those repos because it clogged my feed.

GitHub should really put some work into improving their feed algorithm so one project can't just clog it all.

<comment><USER6> In retrospect, I didn't need to make 80k+ commits with my own account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has any consideration been given to works which may start in this platform? My wife is an aspiring author, and we'd like more information. I'm sure there are many topics to cover, and we're interested in hearing all of them. However, I specifically wonder about the adoption of open source licensing to such works.

Thanks.

<comment><USER18> I imagine it working similar to the original Project Gutenberg site: [http://www.gutenberg.org/](http://www.gutenberg.org/)

For example, known books by established publishers, but with a self-publishing arm [http://self.gutenberg.org/](http://self.gutenberg.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting, but I am not sure that I would have done it with multiple repos. Why not build a single repo with a convention for adding/updating works. As it sits right now, there are 2100+ _pages_ of repos. It also means that in order for me to contribute to more than one of these, I'll need to pollute my own account with multiple forked repos.

<comment><USER19> From another perspective, one repo should allow you to gain more traction as all stars/forks/pull requests/commits will be aggregated on it, and thus produce higher visibility on GitHub (and probably anything that scans github stats).

Additionally, using a single repo would allow me to fork and specify my own styles that I want applied to any work I "compile", and these might be hyper- specific.

I'm actually willing to help consolidate these repos if you're willing to go in this direction. I'd also like to hear reasoning for multiple repos if there's something I'm missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice, but NB that page is _REALLY_ hard to read.

        body {
            color: black;
            font-weight: normal;
            font-family: verdana;
        }

Helps a lot from my experience.

<comment><USER6> Gah! This website was thrown up quickly. I wasn't intending to post to HN until after I had fixed up the website. Someone beat me too it :-S

Pull requests welcome: [https://github.com/GITenberg/gitenberg.github.com](https://github.com/GITenberg/gitenberg.github.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that :-/ A librarian friend posted it yesterday and I thought it worth sharing here. I would have held off if I'd known the creator was on HN. I do feel guilty about racking up all this karma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For anyone else who finds the font too thin and light to comfortably read, this helps: [https://readability.com/bookmarklets](https://readability.com/bookmarklets)

</comment><comment><USER22> I really love the idea behind this! I think it's a way to disrupt the books industry with all those editor firms. What's powerful about this is that every person could be listened and her book could easily spread around the globe.

I found [https://www.penflip.com/](https://www.penflip.com/) a few months ago... It isn't focused on building a digital library yet but what I like of this project is the good execution. It would be nice to merge them together!

</comment><comment><USER23> I like the idea of git for ebooks. That being said, a lot of the free books available from project gutenberg have been around for quite some time.

Besides translations, what can people besides the author contribute? Doesn't it, on some level, ruin the character of these books? If you look at a non- fiction book from 80 years ago, is it worth bothering to correct the information when you can probably find it at your fingertips on wikipedia?

<comment><USER24> Like others, I am doubtful that this is the best way to go about it.

But to answer your question, the main area where I've found Project Gutenberg's epubs could be improved is in their navigation outline (the toc.ncx file). For example, they often use top-level headings for each line from the title page, then put the entire book under the last line. Whereas other books are closer to what you'd expect, albeit at inconsistent levels of detail. For my project, I abandoned their TOC's altogether and created a simpler format.

The images are also at a bare-minimum of resolution. In some cases, higher- quality versions are available in the public domain (such as on Wikimedia Commons). Most of the books are also scanned on archive.org, and so can be referenced there in facsimile. These tend to be higher-resolution scans (although those are all monochrome that I've seen).

For corrections in the works proper, I have occasionally submitted corrections by email but never received a response.

Otherwise, they are perfect, and I thank them for their outstanding work.

 _EDIT_ : There are also rare cases (I think Seneca was the one I came across) where the id's are not unique across the book, even if they are within the HTML files. I couldn't find anywhere in the EPUB specification that would require this, yet for practical purposes I think they should be made unique across the book, since the division into HTML files is arbitrary.

Further to that, there are some PG books that have a unique (serial) ID on every paragraph. Again, this is not required, but it's extremely helpful when it's there (for anchor referencing). It would make the whole library more usable if this were applied consistently, and the serial id's are apparently mechanically applied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If folks are interested in contributing, the mailing list is here: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gitenberg- project](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gitenberg-project)

</comment><comment><USER25> One obvious need is for a build system that makes ebook files out of the git- managed source. And what should our source be, anyway?

</comment><comment><USER26> Why don't you add some kind of index/search?

<comment><USER6> Because parsing the original metadata from Project Gutenberg is time consuming to write. I wasn't going to submit it to HN until I had an index/search api, but someone beat me to it.

<comment><USER27> But what/where is the metadata? Is it functionally equivalent to the Gutenberg's info (e.g. in the RDF dump). Or something else?

I was looking to write an alternative search for Gutenberg, based on the RDF dump, so would be happy to collaborate/discuss ideas.

<comment><USER6> Yep. The RDF/XML data. I have a mirror of it on github: [https://github.com/sethwoodworth/PG_rdf_metadata](https://github.com/sethwoodworth/PG_rdf_metadata)

I would love to have a complete python parser for the metadata. I strongly recommend collaborating with the Gutenberg package posted to HN a few weeks ago (and his rdf branch): [https://github.com/c-w/Gutenberg/tree/migrate-to- rdf](https://github.com/c-w/Gutenberg/tree/migrate-to-rdf)

GITenberg has a mailing list and would love to have you!

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gitenberg- project](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gitenberg-project)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't understand the weird obsession with Git. Its a version control system not the cure for cancer. Anytime someone shoe-horns it into a product they talk about how Git is so amazing and solves all these problems, but what they are really talking about is just a version control system, not Git specifically.

Using Git for just about anything other than what it was built for is a terrible idea. I mean the underlying system is incredibly powerful and could be useful in various projects, but the interface is horrific. I swear its like someone tried to make Git as difficult as possible to use. Programmers have a hard time understanding and using Git, non-programmers will just laugh and walk away. Every time a programmer has an issue with Git, whoever helps them has to sit down and explain the underlying system for 20 minutes and draw a bunch of sticks and bubbles. Non-programmers will never put up with this.

<comment><USER29> > Every time a programmer has an issue with Git, whoever helps them has to sit > down and explain the underlying system for 20 minutes and draw a bunch of > sticks and bubbles.

This isn't true at all for a lot of people. I know a lot of people that just read the docs and are able to solve the issues. Others will Google the problem and find the solution on stack overflow. Everyone learns differently...

> Anytime someone shoe-horns it into a product they talk about how Git is so > amazing and solves all these problems, but what they are really talking > about is just a version control system, not Git specifically.

Git is amazing and does solve a lot of problems, but there are problems that aren't solved by Git. Even Linus himself says this here: ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8)).

Using the github API, rather than git, for creating epub books and pdfs is a great. Using git to control changes as the do is perfect as well.

> Non-programmers will never put up with this.

Ermm don't assume that everyone gives up right away. With the GUI interfaces we have today, Git is really simple once you learn it.

<comment><USER30> > Git is really simple once you learn it.

Pretty much everything is simple once you learn it. That's what learning is. But git certainly doesn't go out of its way to make that process easy.

<comment><USER31> >Pretty much everything is simple once you learn it.

I wouldn't say so. A lot of things are designed-by-committee implemented-by- the-lowest-bidder messes that are painful and complex even once you know how they work.

Git may have some weird design decisions but for the most part it's well- implemented and follows a simple conceptual model.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Good time for someone to build a GOOD secure email replacement? - <AUTHOR>

I don't have the skills necessary to build it, but this feels like this scandal could be a good catalyst to start an adoption of a secure email replacement. <comment><USER2> Perhaps someone could explain how starting from scratch and building an encrypted p2p email system would be insecure?

That is, an imaginary mail client (hosted or local) with encrypted storage, transfer and constant processing of emails routed to other active mail clients. Perhaps split and routed over several nodes, as with Skype. Without the PGP-style need to exchange keys in advance, and based on an open standard of some kind. File transfer could be interesting this way, as with BitTorrent Sync.

Spam filtering an anonymous, encrypted service such as this seems nigh on impossible. Could there be a way to enforce accountability? Or whitelisting only messages you want to receive on reviewing sender/title details? Not any practical way I can conceive. Perhaps the only way is to manually approve each new contact. Clicking 'no' to 1000 spam addresses a month might get a little tedious, however. A shared blacklist could do the trick, but it's hardly a robust solution.

I've often thought this to be the most obvious direction to look in for a solution, yet I'm very sure that I'm simplifying the likely vast problems its developers would face.

<comment><USER2> So, after using HNSearch for recent PGP comments, it turns out that at least one such solution exists [1]. It can be found here: [https://bitmessage.org](https://bitmessage.org), along with its interesting whitepaper from 2012 outlining its operation.

I'll try to submit it to HN to raise awareness.

[1] [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5845858](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5845858)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In the end, isn't it more about where it's built than the product?

If the product is within reach of an unreasonable governing body, then it's in danger right?

</comment><comment><USER4> Email is secure iff you use it properly. Just like everything else.

<comment><USER5> How about a system where it's secure even if the user is dumb.

<comment><USER4> Do you have _one_ example of a system that is secure even if the user is dumb (for example forgets to lock the front door)?

<comment><USER6> Bio-metric passwords (i.e. fingerprint / eye scan).

<comment><USER4> Fingerprints are left all over the place all the time, and it is probably not much more difficult to acquire eye scans.

And for such a system, the user would have to re-use his passwords at many different places again…

<comment><USER7> "My name is Werner Brandis. My voice is my password"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28551069 <comment><USER2> UK to allow _tests of_ driverless cars on public roads _to start_ in January.

In the same way that has already begun in the rest of the world. Same legal/insurance issues stand (as elsewhere) and are likely the bigger barrier to adoption.

<comment><USER3> That's what it says, yes.

Have such tests already begun the "the rest of the world"?

<comment><USER2> As tlrobinson says, I was trying to clarify the content of the article, as the title could easily be mis-interpreted to mean that there were no restrictions.

In addition, I suspect that the cars will be 'self-driving' cars rather than 'driverless' (the distinction being that the former has a human behind the wheel, which can take the wheel at a moments notice).

As for the rest of the world, from the article:

      The US States of California, Nevada and Florida have all approved tests of the vehicles. In California alone, Google's driverless car has done more than 300,000 miles on the open road.

      In 2013, Nissan carried out Japan's first public road   test of an autonomous vehicle on a highway.

      And in Europe, the Swedish city of Gothenburg has given Volvo permission to test 100 driverless cars - although that trial is not scheduled to occur until 2017.

<comment><USER4> The case of 100 volvo cars on the streets 2017 is a bit different than just allowing controlled tests on public roads, that is 100 cars given to customers for every day use, not engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When ever I see a new place or country allowing a test of these cars this wired article always comes to mind [1].

I think the two main questions will be liability & drivability -

1) when (not if) these cars get into a serious crash, who is to assume liability? Is it Google who created the algorithm? Is it the Audi integrator who fused Google technology into the Audi? Is it the fault of the mapping software that did not update the fact that the signals had been moved to a different position on that street?

2) More mundane - will a driverless car be able to drive every single place that a drivered car would? When a flash flood closes down the freeway will this autonomous beast be able to drive on the back road that is normally closed to traffic?

Having said that I cannot wait for Cars-As-A-Service where the Cars park themselves & disappear when I don't need them and magically reappear when I do (without humans - Lyft, Uber et al. need not apply).

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-robot-car-of-tomorrow- might...](http://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-robot-car-of-tomorrow-might-just- be-programmed-to-hit-you/)

<comment><USER6> You always voice the same concerns, I always hear the same concerns. It's crazy to me that people get hung up on the liability issue.

1) Liability is assessed exactly as it is now. We use the same system to determine which car was at fault. If it's your car, you are at fault. Someone will insure a self-driving car, especially once the safety record is established. Your current provider might not, but someone will. If you were using the self-driving system improperly (e.g. in weather it can't handle well in yet), you may also be subject to different rules or even criminal prosecution.

Vendors may also be willing to pay for that insurance as part of a monthly fee just to shut people up over this very easy-to-solve "concern."

If no one is willing to insure your self-driving car, I'll start that business. I could charge a premium for a service that costs me less to provide!

2) People seem to think self-driving cars should be perfect before they're introduced. They won't be. Neither are we. It just has to be better (under given weather/traffic conditions) than we are _to save lives_. We'll have steering wheels in the cars for a long time which you'll have to use when the car can't safely drive itself.

The Wired article is just clickbait using the fear angle. We face the same decisions every day, and "unavoidable" accidents will be even more rare than it is now as this technology evolves.

<comment><USER2> While I agree that liability will be assessed the same way it is now, the answer isn't always:

      If it's your car, you are at fault.

There are examples of situations where a car producer/manufacturer was at fault for accidents, caused by bad software. The question is where that line will be in the myriad of situations that will be more complex due to the the introduction of automation.

The control system itself is then a part of the car, which will dramatically increase the likelihood that it is at-fault in the case of an accident. It presumably would have to be audit-able in the case of an accident to identify whether it made the 'correct' decisions or not, adding additional legal and technical complexity.

If privately owned, would there be regular sensor cleaning/calibration tasks that need to be met before the manufacturer is deemed liable? What about tire pressure?

There will be a lot of factors that could go into deciding whether the user or manufacturer was at fault in the case of an accident that simply wouldn't be a problem now, because the user of the vehicle is also the one responsible for maintenance.

<comment><USER7> > _" The question is where that line will be in the myriad of situations that > will be more complex due to the the introduction of automation."_

It will be determined via litigation, as it is now. Technological complexity of subject matter has yet to present any serious roadblock, or cause any significant change, in the prosecution of the law.

Similarly, whether neglected maintenance (or third-party modifications/parts) contributed to a collision will be determined in court, just as it is now.

As a side note: given the service opportunities afforded by self-driving vehicles, I would be surprised if operators and insurers didn't subsidize or operate "while you sleep" maintenance service plans. e.g. Once a month or so, while you sleep, your car will drive itself to the shop to get checked out, ensure updates are received, recall services performed, etc.

Manufacturers would add a revenue stream and lower their legal costs/exposure and consumers would have yet-another-hassle of car ownership removed.

<comment><USER8> _Technological complexity of subject matter has yet to present any serious roadblock, or cause any significant change, in the prosecution of the law._

Ridiculous. To cite only one counterexample, self-driving cars will make the controversy over the EU's "right to be forgotten" law look like a polite discussion over a beer.

That said, the problems are solvable and we'll all ultimately be better off for facing them.

<comment><USER9> >> _has yet to present any serious roadblock_

> _To cite only one counterexample, self-driving cars will make..._

Hey, something's not right... ;).

Please clarify your point with a non-circular example.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking.

<comment><USER9> I read your comment as following:

> _... it has yet to happen ..._

Ridiculous. To cite only one counterexample, it will happen.

<comment><USER8> Correct, that's what I said. The OP claimed that technical implementation problems were not considered a stumbling block for legislation, and I mentioned the "right to be forgotten" mess as a counterexample, where a fundamentally unfair, unworkable law has created a new human right out of thin air, one that's causing a lot of trouble for Google and other search engine providers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A friend of mine noted that you could put self driving cars on the road in Italy right now and nobody would notice :-) I agree with the consensus that driverless cars are inevitable. And knowing that they are inevitable is kind of like knowing a train is going to derail on a curve before it does. You get some time to think about what is going to happen next.

In the train case you would do things like get movable property out of the way, for the cars you can think about things like a defensible yard barrier. Some people already do this for drunks, but putting a 12 - 14" 'step up' along the edge of the property that borders the street will stop most out of control passenger vehicles. Laws will get tested and litigated, new ways to analyze risk will be developed, planners will want to think about how they design roads/signage/maintenance around them.

I suspect this a 'moonshot' technology, which is one where you can demonstrate it in 1969 but can't actually repeat it commercially until 50 years later in 2019.

<comment><USER11> I'd say that the defining aspect of the original 'moonshot' technology was there was (sadly) no opportunity for commercial gain. Contrast with here, where, for a myriad of reasons, people could easily be convinced to pay substantially more for a driverless car (once safety is well-established).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For the last decade or so, human learner drivers in the UK have had to pass a video "hazard perception test" based on their ability to recognise potential developing hazards (kids playing near the roads, a cyclist confronted by a line of parked cars, a vehicle approaching a junction onto your lane) at a very early point before their movements make their entry into the roadway inevitable.

This strikes me as something which is particularly difficult for an algorithm to process effectively (without generating lots of false positives, which also fails that segment of the test) especially based on the fairly low resolution video human users are presented with in normal test conditions.

Hope they're not going to waive that for the bots, even if they do have 360 degree vision and superior concentration and reaction times.

<comment><USER13> That's true. I think of turning right at a crosswalk where some pedestrian is really anxious for their turn to walk, so they're standing right on the edge of the curb. I always pay careful attention to them and rely on my human intuition of body language, eye contact, etc, until I feel comfortable that they're going to remain on the edge of the curb instead of steeping out in front of me during my turn. A robot can't do this.

<comment><USER14> A robot should always assume the person might suddenly enter the street regardless of body language or other clues and drive at speeds that allow safe stopping if that occurs.

A person driving should do the same.

I don't see the discrepancy.

<comment><USER15> The discrepancy is there are ~millions of years of evolution to account for our ability to immediately process and react to unexpected actions around us - whereas self driving cars, doubtlessly, will not be debuted to the public with nearly as much complexity - humans are not designed with affordability and profit in mind. Theoretically, what you're saying is correct, but the practical reality is likely to be a lot different. The best possible implementation isn't likely to be the one which hits the mass market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who will be a vendor of those cars?

It seems to me that it's clear that driverless cars are the future, which is going to become real very soon. Any progressive government would (and should) allow such testing, even given the inflexibility of the state's bureaucratic machine. Allowing is an easy part. The hard part is actually _building_ those cars and to my knowledge no UK firm does this at the moment.

<comment><USER17> Lots of the fundamental research is being done in the UK. Both academic (eg at Oxford) and also industry led.

The fact that no major consumer automotive marques are British doesn't mean there isn't a very strong auto industry in the country.

<comment><USER16> I mean more of a "who will build the technology to allow those cars be driverless", not who will build the car bodies themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> An autopilot, great. But _driverless_ , as in, no way for anyone to take control? No thanks. There are plenty of places your GPS can't take you the last few hundred metres, nor would you want it to, you want to decide where to park based on a variety of factors.

</comment><comment><USER19> How will the taxi unions feel when someone combines uber/lyft with self driving cars?

<comment><USER20> That occupation will disappear, save for a few high-end human driver services, IMO.

After the taxis come the trucks. I am quite certain shipping companies will be the quick ditch humans. After all, this means no more travel expenses & salaries, no more breaks, probably automatic unloading too! Goods will get cheaper, although hundreds of thousands of people will be out of work.

I am scared.

<comment><USER21> I seriously doubt that truck drivers are going out of business any time soon. First of all, there's a massive fleet of trucks requiring drivers, and replacement trucks are expensive. Second of all, truck drivers also serve as a security guard. Even if we have self-driving trucks, I imagine they'll have a chaperone for a long time yet.

I expect that trucks driven by a human-computer team will be safer than trucks driven by either one alone.

<comment><USER22> The theft part is massive, if you had a truckload full of computer parts travelling down the motorway at 3am when it's dead. What's to stop some gang with tire traps. Bam! vehicle is over and they have 30 mins to loot before an error is realised.

<comment><USER23> This is possible in the current configuration, too. In fact, it may be easier to compel a human driver to keep quiet than a networked onboard computer relentlessly feeding speed, position, tire pressure and other telemetry to some sort of remote monitoring facility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Self-driving cars need to be trained to run on left side now.

<comment><USER23>
      return -EWRONGSIDE;

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone else notice in the video that neither one of them were using seat belts? I love this tech. but I am not sure I have this blind a faith in it.

</comment><comment><USER26> But that's the worst month they could have chosen! June would make a lot more sense.

</comment><comment><USER27> When I will see "UK to ban manual driving on public roads"?

</comment><comment><USER28> January? Wouldn't it be smarter to start in the summer when the road conditions are optimal?

<comment><USER29> I think all weather conditions should be tested?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> good!</comment>


Ice Age Asteroid Crater Discovered Beneath Greenland Glacier - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/science/greenland-ice-crater.html <comment><USER2> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18458138#18458855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18458138#18458855)</comment>


SCOTUS Rules Against Stanford in Bayh-Dole Patent Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=21376

<comment><USER2> I would understand if the decision was that patents coming from federally- funded research couldn't be assigned to a third party. That could be a good idea! But if the conflict is between two recipients of that funding, I don't see how I as a taxpayer have a horse in that race, _except_ insofar as I think people who sign contracts should continue to be bound by them.</comment>


What's the best way to update a site after going live? - <AUTHOR>

I am going to be going live with my website soon. As of now I simply trial and error my way into updates and fixes but this isn't going to work after launch.
I'm guessing the best way is to host a complete duplicate of the site in a hidden sub-folder and work with that. Updates and feature builds can be done to the duplicate and after testing I can replace the live site with the updated copy.
I'm not a tech guy so I'm just wondering what people have found to be the best method for this.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Source control and a reproduceable install using some sort of build system ( which can range from very simple, to incredibly complicated )</comment>


Social bookmarking sites better at search than google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/are_social_book.php <comment><USER2> I don't think Google had the superior results for the cited queries. Sure, they had the official page for the product first, and the wikipedia entry second. But are those really the most useful web pages about those products? I am not so sure - I don't count the Wikipedia article because it seems to me people might just go to Wikipedia directly, they don't need a search engine for that.</comment>


Nokia Reportedly Selling Off Qt - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1MTc <comment><USER2> I'm glad that Nokia have decided to do this. I understand that it might be financially motivated, but given that they've made a bet on the Windows platform, it's a nicer move than just mothballing the whole thing and eventually shutting it down.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.phonenews.com/nokia-closing-qt-australia- office-q...](http://www.phonenews.com/nokia-closing-qt-australia-office-qt- asset-sale-likely-20861/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder who will be a candidate for buying it, depends how much Nokia will want to offload it for.

<comment><USER5> Google has used it for some client apps (Earth, MusicManager). Skype uses it (though post-MS that seems subject to change). Intel already employs some of the senior Qt people.

I think the most likely resting place will be a non-profit of some sort along the lines of the Mozilla foundation.

<comment><USER6> There is already a nonprofit reponsible for the project infrastructure.

<http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/09/12/qt-project/>

And a governeance model that looks open to the community.

<http://qt-project.org/wiki/The_Qt_Governance_Model>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would it help Google if they bought it as their own dev tool for Android? Something like Apple's own Xcode? Or are the incompatibilities too great to bother with it?

<comment><USER8> > Or are the incompatibilities too great to bother with it?

Yes. Also Google already has multiple development platforms, including one for Android (two, if you count Java and C++ Android development separately, they do have separate development kits).

<comment><USER9> Qt could provide a GUI toolkit for C++ on Android.

Last I checked, native apps on Android were limited to raw OpenGL.

<comment><USER10> That would still require some sort of NDK backend for the Qt toolkit, since X11 is not compatible with the native Android windowing system. I'd imagine that's no small feat.

<comment><USER11> Well Qt doesn't require X11. Qt's backends are actually VERY flexible, essentially all you need to do is provide it with a 2D drawing surface in most cases.

There is already an Android port of Qt in progress here, with a lot of things (including Qt Quick and QWidgets) already working: <http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/home/necessitas/> Several apps using Qt have already been published in Google Play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nokia sold the Qt licensing business over a year ago. The remainder was in the offing as soon as the Windows deal went down.

<http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/07/nokia-sells-qt/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Had a friend who saw the warning signs and bailed early enough. Queensland (the state Brisbane is in) recently had it's government shed tens of thousands of workers in a bid to reduce debt. Seems to be a great time to be hiring talent in Brisbane?

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder what this will mean for the future of headless browsers built on Qt WebKit, e.g. PhantomJS.

<comment><USER13> I had no idea Qt was used for that.

<https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/tree/master/src/qt>

They didn't mention it in their readme at least.

<comment><USER15> I also use it for wkhtmltopdf <http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/> , is the only decent solution that works with javascript pages and from almost all languages : python , ruby , php

<comment><USER16> We're also using Qt for controlling our info displays: <http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/qt-air-cursor/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ?!?! Didn't this happend already last year or so. They sold it to Digia iirc.

<comment><USER16> They only sold the commercial licensing: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/07/nokia-sells-qt- licensing-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/07/nokia-sells-qt-licensing- and-services-business-to-digia/)

The actual development of Qt has still mainly been happening at Nokia, though with an increasing number of outside contributors thanks to the new governance model: [http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2012/01/10/qt-4-moved-to-open- gover...](http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2012/01/10/qt-4-moved-to-open-governance/)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for clearing things up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> but, but -- Qt moved to an open-source model a year ago.

qt-project.org

</comment><comment><USER19> Sad qt was a really good framework and excellent use of c++

</comment><comment><USER20> Do they have any more feet to shoot?</comment>


Oculus Refund. - <AUTHOR>

Oculus: Is it not a good idea if the founders of Oculus give some part of the profit to the initial backers in kickstarters. <comment><USER2> I'm so confused about this whole thing -- Supporting Oculus in Kickstarter did not entitle those people to any equity in the company, they received exactly the level of reward that they chose. Why would they think that?

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting question, worthy of some psychological/sociological research, I think.

Certainly people who invested in this must have had some expectations beyond just getting the chosen reward. The primary reward was a developer kit. That's not much good if the product is never offered for sale. So there must have been some expectation of that.

Note that the Rift is still not available for sale. Will it ever be? Maybe not, if Facebook decides to kill it and incorporate the technology into some other project. Will the end result be some DRM'd-to-the-hilt Facebook-games- only device? It's possible.

Going further, I expect that many of the investors had a "we're all in this together" feeling. To be fair, the Kickstarter page[1] encouraged this. Some quotes:

"We hope you share our excitement about virtual reality, the Rift, and the future of gaming."

"... we want to make the Rift available to all game developers, today, so they can be part of the development process. Kickstarter makes that possible. Your voice will be critical to making the Rift hardware and software as great as they can be."

All this is just guessing, by the way. I'm not involved in any of this stuff.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus- rift-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oculus-rift-step- into-the-game)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oculus is owned by a public entity now, it would be a disservice to Facebook shareholders.

The whole situation is FUBAR, wasn't the whole point of crowd sourcing so that companies wouldn't have to sell out like this?</comment>


An actual job description from Naval Ravikant's new company - <AUTHOR> https://angel.co/company/apex-10/jobs/584437-founding-mobile-engineer <comment><USER2> Surprised that someone so thoughtful would post something that seems so tone- deaf. That being said, it certainly will attract a very specific type of candidate (which was likely the goal all along).

DHH's response to this was particularly entertaining: [https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1149299479088160768](https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1149299479088160768)</comment>


TablePlus – Native GUI tool for relational databases (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://tableplus.io/ <comment><USER2> This piece of software is superb. It's lightning fast, the UI is so easy to use, in terms of productivity it's super nice (small things like "copy as an insert statement").

It has been my daily driver for months now, but only for personal projects. I tried to get a license at work, but our lawyer said their EULA is a no-go :(

<comment><USER3> >It's lightning fast

I think this depends on the database rather than the software itself.

<comment><USER4> I've just compared TablePlus to PGAdmin (the new web one), on a fast query which returns 1000 rows. The responsiveness of TP is really noticable

<comment><USER5> yep, compared to SQL management studio as well the difference is night and day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Replaced Postico with TablePlus, mainly because needed to access MySQL databases too, and Redis support doesn't hurt. Good UI, frequent updates and the free version isn't too limiting.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've used it on MacOS and it was great, really nice interface. Too bad there isn't a Linux option.

<comment><USER8> > Modern, native, and friendly GUI tool

Need to add Mac-only to that list.

<comment><USER9> There's a Windows version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Echoing what others are saying. This is a great tool and one few new tools to enter my daily workflow in years. For a long time, I saw very little improvement in development tools, but this and Paw, an API client, have given me faith in beautiful, native Mac developer tools.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ever since hearing about TablePlus (here), I've been using it for side projects. I tried to introduce it at work but the lack of Oracle support in the windows client was an issue.

<comment><USER12> Yeah a tool like this is going to be situational for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fast, nice looking, cross plattform. Pick any 2.

<comment><USER14> So one which one does this fail in your opinion?

<comment><USER15> It's on 1.5 platforms (Win version is limited and not fully released).

<comment><USER16> Sighs, I've been trying to skip paying the apple tax for years but still like this still keeps in looped in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've used it for a few months. It has a nice feel to it, and a few things Postico doesn't have, such as exporting to JSON. The author is also quite responsive on GitHub and has even added a few small features I requested. Overall I find Postico to be a bit more suited to my needs, but nice to see another polished app in this space.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can it generate ER Diagrams like DBeaver?

[https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver/wiki/ER- Diagrams](https://github.com/dbeaver/dbeaver/wiki/ER-Diagrams)

<comment><USER19> i think no feature like this currently

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous "Show HN" from a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16339004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16339004)

</comment><comment><USER21> In many ways I like TablePlus, but at least on MySQL, I'm not fond that it single-quotes all data types in the "Copy Rows As > SQL Import Statement", including decimals and integers. I don't want to introduce potential data type casting errors into my export. Sequel Pro, while less advanced in other ways, doesn't do this; it properly only quotes the data types that should be quoted.

</comment><comment><USER22> My biggest Problem with nearly every SQL client: Expandable Tree UI Components are the bane of usability. They're slow, error prone, and a million other reasons.

SequelPro is a bastion in this regard and has a simple table listing on the left side. Unfortunately, there's only one author on the project and he's pretty busy with his day job.

The screenshots of TablePlus looks tree free. I'll definitely be downloading!

</comment><comment><USER23> I use this on a daily basis for Postgres and some really basic Redis work. Recommended.

</comment><comment><USER24> I own TP and I like it overall. I just can't stop using Sequel Pro, it's just so damn snappy and easy to use. I need to give TP another try but it was really hard to break my habit of using Sequel Pro.

<comment><USER25> SequelPro for Mac and HeidiSQL for Windows. Those two are really light weight and easy to use.

But for me the best id DataGrip. It's not light, but cross platform and get works done.

<comment><USER24> I pay for IDEA so I could be using DataGrip (or close enough? I wish JetBrains was clearer on this). Do you it from within another IntelliJ IDE or standalone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is beautiful software designed and implemented right. If you do use this then don't look back at other similar tools or you'll be sorely depressed to use them.

No, I don't work for this company!

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's a free native GUI for Oracle: [http://www.pebblereports.com/sqlpal/](http://www.pebblereports.com/sqlpal/)

</comment><comment> VvR-Ox How does it compare to Sequel Pro ([https://www.sequelpro.com/](https://www.sequelpro.com/)) that would make me want to pay?

<comment><USER28> I've used both for some time. TablePlus has a beautiful UI and looks better than Sequel Pro for sure, but I find Sequel Pro to be more capable and easier to use. Redis support of TablePlus isn't too great either (searching on keys doesn't work), so I need to use another tool for Redis management anyway.

<comment><USER29> Hi, I just added Redis advanced filter. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can somebody elaborate on what GUI framework this project is using? On windows, the text sometimes is so blurry that it reminds me of WPF(?)

<comment><USER5> It is WPF: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18004842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18004842)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Really nice software, switched from Postico several months ago, no regrets. The UI is perfect, it's fast.

</comment><comment><USER32> I use SequelPro for Mac (and love it!). Has anyone used both and can explain whether it is worth switching?

<comment><USER33> It's worth switching. Autocomplete/autosuggest is faster, when conneting to a server they infer which credential is wrong.

I guess the catch is the software isn't free -- you have to pay or access it through a paid bundle like SetApp. If you query a DB everyday though the price it's worth it. If you only need a a few queries now and again then maybe SequelPro is the better option.

<comment><USER34> Actually Table Plus is free to use with some limitations. You should check it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This looks great! Bummer it has a per-seat license, instead of per-developer, though.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is anyone aware of software like this, but web based (saas)?

<comment><USER37> phpMyAdmin?

It is nice for free and in a few deployment scenarios. I do feel like it encourages bad practices however (e.g. not using a VPN to manage databases, but rather relying on web authentication).

<comment><USER36> Thanks, but isn't that only mysql mostly? TablePlus supports a very wide range of databases, I'm looking for a single database manager in the cloud for multiple different db types (postgres, mysql, mongo, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Used this once but it was terrible at the time.

</comment><comment><USER38> awwww, no tux.

</comment><comment><USER39> It looks nice but what I really miss is a metabase like app with a few edit options. Anything out there? This would replace so many internal crud apps

<comment><USER40> For desktops Libreoffice Base is nice.

See here for more: [https://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft- access/](https://alternativeto.net/software/microsoft-access/)

For web hosting, I would push PHP. Each page is it's own end point!

<comment><USER39> I don't mind it being a desktop app but I don't want users specifying database connection info and having a raw database view. Metabase has admins setup the database connection and then users go through the regular email/password access. You can create all sorts of custom data views (not sql views).. hah, this sounds like an ad. So, a simple email/password protected login possibly with 2fa and then allowing operators to edit results of predefined custom views is what I'm missing. Typically this is reimplemented everywhere

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Nevada-Smith TablePlus' authors should read "How white space killed an enterprise app (and why data density matters)"

[https://uxdesign.cc/how-white-space-killed-an-enterprise- app...](https://uxdesign.cc/how-white-space-killed-an-enterprise-app-and-why- data-density-matters-b3afad6a5f2a)

<comment> Nevada-Smith Data density is particularly important for this type of application's success. My post wasn't meant to be pejorative; rather, they should read the article with the goal of improving the "data density" of their tables, and other areas.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:Continuous Delivery for an On-Prem Installable Product - <AUTHOR> How can we have a continuous delivery for an On-Prem installable Product when we need to support multiple versions? More importantly, in such products, the codebase is not in a single repo. The repos can grow/shrink across versions.
To elaborate more on the Problem statement. [ ON-PREM Installable ] Let's say you roll out first version( v1) of your product and you deploy it to 2 customer environments. Once you deploy you need to support like providing hotfixes, minor version upgrades. In the meantime, you continue to innovate and add new features / remove a few features in the next major version(v2). But since you already have customers on version v1 and it will be the choice of the customer to accept/reject the newer versions. You would get new customers for version v2. So now you have 2 major versions out there with customers using 2 different versions of your product. So the problem now becomes 2-fold. You need to have your team continuously support both the versions. Now the easier thing would be to discontinue the older version as soon as you have new version rolled out. But the downside is you cannot term your customers on older versions as active customers, neither they will be able to back you on the new innovations that you added to the newer versions.
Hope I have been able to elaborate on the problem. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> The problem is 2-fold, 1) a business/contract problem 2) a technology problem.

The business problem is that your on-prem customers need to accept the idea of being being upgraded to the latest version automatically or on a specific cadence (ie every day, week, month, etc). If they're not willing to accept this, they need to pay you more for the extended support (LTS) of an older version. Many enterprises will be hesitant to accept auto-updates b/c they fear that your application will break during update, you can alleviate that concern with technology as well.

The technology problem can be overcome by using a cloud-native architecture for your on-prem product. This will ensure that your product has the level of reliability that is needed for true modern on-prem deployments you're describing. It will allow customers to do canary updates, rolling updates that will minimize downtime (just like you do for SaaS based CD). Multiple repos, different components, no problem, package them as Docker containers and then deliver the new manifest (k8s, swarm etc) that includes the new images. The key to success here is automation. You have to have a level of rigor for automating every production change with automation (often packaged as a new migration container for the new version). There are other systems you can build to solve for this as well, including release channels that will allow you to push different versions to different customers or staging environments based on specific licenses for each customer.

We've spent the last 4 years turning this problem into a product: www.replicated.com and it currently powers the on-prem versions for Travis CI, CodeClimate, CircleCI, Terraform Enterprise, Gradle and many others who know a lot about CI/CD.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find GoCD a very good candidate. It's a Continuous Delivery first, free & open source software. Do have a look.

<comment><AUTHOR> @sidcool, Thanks for the cool open-source project. One query is all the documentation are about how to make things work when you have a single repo to deal with. The problem complicates when we have to deal with multiple repos that can grow/shrink across versions.

<comment><USER3> GoCD scales very well for multiple repos. It has pipelines as first class citizens. And builds can be configured to have a workflow across repos.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Python gaining popularity - <AUTHOR>

These days I see a lot of startup using Python. Earlier it used to be PHP, then came era of Ruby (mainly because of Ruby on Rails) and now it is Python.<p>Any special reason or everybody is just going with the flow or am I missing something? <comment><USER2> When RoR was all the rage (the one-true-rage even!) couple of years back, there were a lot of people in the Python world, who were concerned that Ruby might steal the thunder from Python.

Python people attacked this "problem" in multiple ways. One was the emergence of competing frameworks like Django and Pylons. The other was to work hard on other product lifecycle stories. Some of which were influenced by what was gaining traction elsewhere (automated deployments, TDD). But, some new things also took flight in the Python world, like WSGI, which inspired similar endeavours (Rack, Plack/Perl).

Also, Python has better overall ecosystem. You want libraries for obscure (say HVAC) protocol, you have a better chance of finding it in Python, than in Ruby.

I think more developers relate to "don't be too clever" attitude taken by python than admitted among this crowd.

While RoR was busy redefining the entire Ruby ecosystem in it's own image, Python people were busy building stuff that were truly framework agnostic. Eg: Paste, WSGI, SQLAlchemy, Various templating languages like Jinja2, Mako.

Today, it is very easy choose from _many_ competing python frameworks without drinking any one brand of kool-aid.

<comment><USER3> +1 Python stands tall with its rich library, for a relatively recent convert from java to python it was nice to see such vast applicability of a language and also the support it enjoys outside the typical commercial / "web" worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Basically, you're seeing just as much Python as ever. However, because Rubyists aren't making such a spectacle of themselves, you don't hear as much about Ruby/Rails as you used to. And what you do hear doesn't get as much traction as it used to because after several years of ruby news the community has grown more tired of it.

<comment><USER5> I think you're right on this one. The idea that Python is suddenly experiencing a reemergence doesn't feel right to me - it makes more sense to talk about this trend in terms of relative activity.

Note: I use and love Python, and I'm doing my startup in Python, but I'll admit that I don't know much about the Ruby community. I will say, however, that we decided early on not to use RoR because of its scaling issues.

<comment><USER6> Subtle trolling.

<comment><USER5> Was that a self-referential comment? I'm not sure how you're contributing to the discussion here.

<comment><USER6> Oops, I did not realize that you are the same person who I had replied to till later. Well, I'll assume you aren't trolling then, but realize that many shared the sentiment for good reason (the comment was at 5 points surprisingly, before I made the last, very stupid reply). The reason would be that there have been thousands of wasted programmer hours due to discussions initiated by someone saying "rails can't scale", when they obviously don't know what they're talking about, so it does come off as trollish.

It became a something many said because of Twitter's scaling problems, which is probably how you heard about it. But later, it became clear and commonly accepted among the community that Twitter's scaling problems did not stem from rails itself, but other parts of its infrastructure. Saying "rails doesn't scale" really doesn't make too much sense, because scaling the application layer is arguably the easiest part of scaling: essentially you add more app servers, and load balance between them. The hard part is scaling the database etc.

In Twitter, at first they had a lot of issues because the queuing software they wrote wasn't great for their workloads and was pretty slow. And there are a ton of other moving parts as well in the application and the team must have kept hitting walls in all the various parts. They may have even had some rails issues at some point, but that's a far cry from saying it can't scale.

And anyways, if you want to keep it light weight, I'd use one of the smaller Ruby frameworks. You really can't go wrong with Sinatra.

<comment><USER5> Welcome to HN, binomial. You can assume that we're not trolling (most of the time). Thank you for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that "bad technology" can kill a startup, but slightly different variations of good technology don't have much effect. Choose what you know/like best. And Ruby and Python are both in this latter category.

I think it's just that Ruby enjoyed a brief surge of hype which pushed it to the forefront of the startup founders' mind; this has now ebbed a bit and Python use rises up to its natural level.

I wonder if Ruby will come back a bit, though. There hasn't been much hype, but in the last few months the Ruby community has really gone for broke, with rails 3, ruby 1.9.2, rvm reaching maturity and bundler to handle dependencies. Things are changing so fast I think the magnitude of the changes haven't sunk in for most people but it's a whole new environment and really impressive IMO.

<comment><USER8> As a person who uses Ruby as their primary language, I regularly take a look at Python, hoping that something really draws me in - but nothing ever does. Not because I have an issue with Python, but rather because it's just too similar to Ruby (or Ruby too similar to Python, take your pick). I feel that my time would be better spent learning a language that will expand my mind more.

<comment><USER9> I used Ruby and switched to Python. Most of the answers to my questions got answered with links to Python solutions and code.

At some time I decided to give it a try and wasn't disappointed.

<comment><USER8> Any comments on the experience? Anything you like more/less in Python/Ruby?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought javascript/node.js is the new hotness. It's so hard to keep up with the latest trends!

<comment><USER11> Just recently one of my college professors said Python was not a 'production level' language. I just came back from an internship where they wouldn't even install Python on the server and told me to use 'Powershell' instead. The majority of the world is still running mostly on Java and C#, let alone something as 'radical' such as Python or node.js. It's amazing the amount of resistance I came up against in the 'real world' of things which seemed so common place here on hacker news or reddit.

It's possible I just live in the wrong area and I'm going to the wrong schools, but that has been my experience so far.

<comment><USER12> Powershell? hahaha!

<comment><USER13> Well it's probably the best modern shell (since it's objects being piped, you don't need regexs everywhere like currrent gen unix shells), but it really depends if he was attempting something command-linish or not.

<comment><USER14> It may be the best modern shell if you like OO and if you can tell me what's the difference to, say, an interactive Python session.

I think the most flexible kind of interfacing between independent apps will always be text based. It makes no sense to impose some typed object model onto those interfaces. That just causes more dependencies which is exactly what you want to avoid for that type of integration.

<comment><USER15> Well, first, the object-orientedness of powershell is just one more layer. You can work on a text-based basis in powershell, just send out strings :P

On the other hand, this very feature of powershell is amazingly powerfull, and allows you to lay out some things fare more logically than you could/would do in a text based shell, not to mention purely interface with more complex applications written in .net flawlessly (like doing a small GUI for your script in five seconds for example).

When you work with text, you're basically reinventing parsing at every pipe, and that, too makes no sense at all, for certain applications.

EDIT: What you said just reminded me of something on dadgum <http://prog21.dadgum.com/74.html>.

<comment><USER14> If all programs I'm connecting are .NET based and hence share a common type system, why would I need a shell script at all? I don't see the point of inventing yet another programming language for that purpose. I could just as well use any existing .NET based language to do the same thing.

Apart from that, the power of the Unix shell isn't primarily the shell scripting language itself. It is the design of the programs it connects. You need small programs that do one thing. Windows software isn't built like that (neither is Java software by the way), so it doesn't matter much what the quality of the shell is I think.

<comment><USER15> >If all programs I'm connecting are .NET based and hence share a common type system

Well to set it apart from C#/F#, Powershell is dynamically typed, so you don't have to bother with the types of your objects.

To set it apart from Ironpython/ruby, or any other dynamic languages on the CLR, Powershell is made to be a __shell scripting language __. It means that tasks common in system administration are made to be simplified, that command to deal with the filesystem, processes, services and anything else on the system are builtins, and that it interacts very well with other apps, all things that are definitely __not __true with python or ruby. ipython brings you an inch closer, but with powershell you have the full thing.

> Apart from that, the power of the Unix shell isn't primarily the shell > scripting language itself. It is the design of the programs it connects. You > need small programs that do one thing.

Well those programs (grep, awk, sed, cat, and many others) are __meant __to be used in a shell environnement. With powershell, most if not all of the utility of those commands is replicated in equivalent commands. Those are not binary executables, but built-ins commands. But you can add new ones very easily, by coding them in powershell itself and adding them to your environnement in a way that has been thought out for that very purpose. I see no diminution in power, quite the contrary.

But i see no real interrest in preaching to somebody who has already made up his mind. All i can say is, if you have the occasion to try it extensively, you really might change your mind on the subject :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since you are comparing it to PHP and Ruby, it appears that your comment refers to their use in web development. I can't say much about the broader use of the languages, but here is some perspective regarding the web development side.

A little over a year ago I compared the jobs available for PHP, Django and Rails (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=805931>). I did the same again 3 months ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1459119>). A quick glance now shows the same trend and ratios (eg, simply hired has 20,125 PHP jobs, a 25% increase in 3 months; 5,334 Rails jobs, a 39% increase in 3 months; and 1,153 Django jobs, a 25% increase in 3 months).

TL;DR: PHP, Django and Rails jobs are all on the rise, there are vastly more PHP jobs than either Rails or Django jobs and there are many more Rails jobs than Django jobs, and this applies to startups, too.

<comment><USER17> Wait, that makes no sense. Why compare a language like PHP with a framework like Rails or Django. Shouldn't you compare CakePHP, Symfony, or Zend, instead of PHP? Or compare PHP against Python and Ruby?

<comment><USER18> Practical considerations I would assume: Django dominates the large majority of Python jobs, while Rails dominates the large majority of Ruby jobs out there. PHP has a much more divided split.

<comment><USER14> Django does not dominate Python jobs at all. Just look at this:

Python 19,381 jobs [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=python&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=python&l=)

Django 1,057 jobs [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Django&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Django&l=)

Django doesn't even dominate Python web related jobs if you accept "Python JavaScript" as a proxy for Python web related jobs: [http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Python+Javascript&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Python+Javascript&l=) gives you 4,671 jobs. Granted for many of them Python is not the main skill asked for.

Python is used by sysadmins and by scientists and even in financial services combined with C++. The combination of Python and C++ is requested 7,165 times. Compare that with "PHP C++" 3,051, "Ruby C++" 2,277, "Java C++" 25,675 and "C# C++" 13,045.

So Python has become a language that is very broadly used in all kinds of development jobs.

<comment><USER16> _Django does not dominate Python jobs at all._

We are discussing web development jobs in this particular thread.

 _Django doesn't even dominate Python web related jobs_

Yes, it does. SimplyHired: Django 1168, Pylons 143, TurboGears 18, Zope 96, web.py 5.

 _"Python JavaScript"...Granted for many of them Python is not the main skill asked for_

Exactly the problem with that approach. It's relatively common to list a bunch of languages including Javascript, Ruby and Python in desired experience for any non-MS web development job, but pretty uncommon to list specific frameworks unless that's what the job is for.

<comment><USER14> That Django dominates among Python web frameworks is undisputed. But you can't just count all Python web dev jobs towards Django even though it isn't mentioned in most of the adverts. Many employers might not care about the framework or leave that to the developer they hire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A large part of it is that Django is maturing and gaining traction as a great alternative to frameworks like Rails. Many of the complaints of Rails, such as extensive magic and monkeypatching, are less of a problem with Django, so to many it's a fresh breath of air.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pesonally, I like Python because it is simple, oo, lot simpler to debug and goes well with javascript/json(utf-8 by default).

I am big fan of Tornado - tornadoweb.org

Almost free hosting by google appengine is not bad either!

</comment><comment><USER21> 4 reasons, why Python more popular than Ruby:

1\. Google App Engine

2\. Good webdev ecosystem (Django,etc.)

3\. Science/Engineering and Machine Learning libraries - replacement to Matlab

4\. Good support for system scripting

<comment><USER22> It seems immensely unlikely that Python is more popular than Ruby because it has a good web development ecosystem, given that the one thing everyone knows about Ruby is that _it_ has a good web development ecosystem.

(Note that this applies even if, contrary to conventional wisdom, Rails is really no good at all; and even if Django is spectacularly good. As long as "everyone knows" that Rails is a superb web development framework, Python is not going to be more popular than Ruby for having a good web development framework. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no particular view on the merits of RoR and Django; I haven't used either.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I started using Python because of Google AppEngine.

<comment><USER24> Same here, but then I learned that there're projects focused on running Ruby on AppEngine.

<http://code.google.com/p/appengine-jruby/wiki/GettingStarted>

<comment><USER25> What's the status, though? Last time I looked (several months ago), sloooow startup time was a real problem for that approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the main reason is because Google uses Python, so many of the top programmers learn it.

<comment><USER27> Personally, I attribute its use (at least in science / engineering) to the numpy, scipy, matplotlib combo. It makes prototyping fast, flexible, and rivals (surpasses IMO) Matlab.

<comment><USER28> Anything is better than Matlab.

<comment><USER29> Spoken like someone who hasn't written nearly enough Fortran.

<comment><USER30> .. or COBOL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31>
                                      /-> Ruby on Rails
        C++ -> Java -> Perl -> PHP ->
                                      \--> Python

<comment><USER32> What is this diagram supposed to mean? Apparently it's not "X evolved from Y" as, say, Perl is not derived from Java. It also can't be "X was popular (for web applications) after Y" as surely Perl was more popular prior to Java and C++ was never really popular in this area (and continues to be popular in others). "X is superior to Y" would be comparing apples to oranges. What am I missing?

<comment><USER33> I think he's trying to show the progression of the popular consensus of "the new web framework". Either that or he's showing what he thinks is the average developer's progression through frameworks.

My alternate one is showing what I think is the popular consensus of which framework to use. It branches out at the end because we don't have consensus yet.

<comment><USER32> Yours is more like it, but I think there's little point in including C++ in the lot. It hasn't ever really been used for web application development, at least not nearly to the same extent as the other languages in the original diagram.

By the time the Internet took off in the early 90s, Perl was already around and much more popular for this purpose.

If you're going for rather exotic languages (in the context of web application development) I think it would make more sense to include Common Lisp.

<comment><USER34> Apparently okcupid is coded in C++, and they're proud of that fact. It blows my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is something about Python that everybody likes, whether it's the syntax, functional programming features, NumPy or one of the other numerous libraries. This quiet support allows Python to remain potent while fads die down.

<comment><USER34> Or the readability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think what you must be referring to is the adoption of Python for web-based startups. Python has always been popular in certain industries/niches.

From our perspective we use what we feel is best and we use more than one language on some of our projects. For example, we have a LOAD of legacy code in PHP and we use it still quite extensively for some of our sites. We use Python on some of the same sites for parsing and anything requiring heavy lifting.

Ultimately - use what you feel is best for the job at hand

</comment><comment><USER37> Could this be seen as a correction in the market? Is the market reacting to technologies (i.e. Django and ROR) that are speeding up development times as well as improving productivity?

<comment><USER30> I'd like to think this was the case, but I think they're just going with the hot new thing.

If Python on Skates took off tomorrow, every startup would start using it ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Many reasons from my PoV.

Recently, I could kick off writing Cocoa apps in PyObjC with very little bit of learning to do. Within a day I feel confident on how to build my app.

I know a few profs who find it easy to train their students in Python and get them productive within a week. Even if its an electronics course. <http://pykata.appspot.com/statements/>

Besides prototyping/experimenting in Python is much easier. It was zillions of options for whatever you wish to do - webapps, scientific computing, visualization, network apps, interfacing hardware, and what not.

</comment><comment><USER39> <http://github.com/languages>

<comment><USER40> Thanks for the link and for those that aren't aware Github was written in ROR. No idea if it is still based on ROR. The Rails repository moved to Github when Github launched.

[http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/4/11/rails-premieres- on-g...](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2008/4/11/rails-premieres-on-github).

I'm sure Bitbucket would probably show a slightly different breakdown of language use by it's customers. Anyone have links for that?

<comment><USER41> GitHub is still Rails for the frontend, but they have a fascinating combination of bits and pieces of Ruby, Erlang, Node.js and even some Python running the backend.

<comment><USER42> And also C, Bourne Shell & Perl because _git_ depends on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ruby>

look at the "question tagged" and "Related Tags". maybe ruby is still focus "too much" on rails, on the other side, python has better overall ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER44> The available jobs data suggests that Ruby is growing faster (note that the absolute numbers are still in favor of python)

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,ruby,java&l=...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,ruby,java&l=&relative=1)

<comment><USER45> Also, Python's lead is getting larger over time: [http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,ruby&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=python,ruby&l=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's the whitespace. It makes the code more beautiful, and that does matter.</comment>


Live: Barcelona - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhs2d9FhqT8 <comment><USER2> Why are the events in Barcelona getting ZERO coverage in the US media? Trump is an idiot and all, but why aren't Barcelona, Hong Kong, and the Farmers shutting down Holland even making the news here?</comment>


Ask HN: Better missed connections - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I've always liked the missed connections on craigslist. It's when you come across random people around you, and you want to reach out to them but due to various reasons (confidence, circumstances, timing, etc) you didn't. But that feeling bothers you till you want to get it out somewhere.
I'm wondering if there's an app where people "subscribe" to these attributes, like "girl with red dress who was at caltrain station in Palo Alto", and if someone sends a message to these attributes and you would get notified. It's an interesting search and matching problem to solve, but do you guys think it's useful?
There are other use cases for a service like this when all the features are built. But I think missed connections would be a perfect fit as a MVP. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> I have created an Android app that solves this exact problem. It's called Crush Feed. Login with Facebook or manually and create a personal description e.g ethnicity/eye colour/hair colour etc. When you post on the app you'll use the same values to describe your crush. If a user matches a certain number of values they receive an alert. It's early days and certainly MV at the moment. I'm currently working on new features to make the product more interactive. If you want to know more reach me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

check out the app here [https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=OC5FVN...](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=OC5FVNqDD4fT7QaDo4GYCA&url=https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer%3Fid%3DCrush%2BFeed&ved=0CCUQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNHai19GY0EFwv6Bo3k0Uuk2lvFIXw&sig2=Tcf5NOB_yxi3yFa4l4Vsgw) [https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=OC5FVN...](https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=OC5FVNqDD4fT7QaDo4GYCA&url=https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer%3Fid%3DCrush%2BFeed&ved=0CCUQFjAA&usg=AFQjCNHai19GY0EFwv6Bo3k0Uuk2lvFIXw&sig2=Tcf5NOB_yxi3yFa4l4Vsgw)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the process of putting the finishing touches on Slipper, which is basically what you're talking about. I've developed a number of algorithms that intelligently route posts to individuals based on a number of characteristics (including physical appearance & location, as you mentioned above).

We require facebook authentication, but we require no manual input from the user, so no need to subscribe to attributes or anything. All the analysis and routing comes from our back-end

Check out our splash page at SlipperApp.com. If you want to talk more, shoot me an email at elliott @ slipper app dot com - I can shoot you a beta download link if you'd like, and I love talking missed connections!</comment>


Glimpses of Long Distance Relationship Through Yahoo Answers - <AUTHOR> http://answers.yahoo.com/activity/qa?show=Vi4lBNXNaa&link=question

<comment><USER2> Cute. :)</comment>


Our Best Hope for Civil Discourse Online Is on  Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-reddit-change-my-view/ <comment><USER2> Man, these articles nowadays...</comment>


Data URI Generator via Drag and Drop - <AUTHOR> http://datauri.com/ <comment><USER2> I love the clean design. Focus on the functionality, branding below, concise explanations of what's what.

Thumbs up! :-)

You may want to explain the files aren't uploaded to server -- that they never leave the computer (security); you may also warn upon exceeding 32KB size (IE8 limit).

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't work in Chrome on OS X. I get the name of the file and no URI. Worked in FF5, though.

<comment><USER4> Scroll to the right. Some exotic CSS thing that happens when your data URL is simply way too long. Fixed in Chrome with:

      .dataurl {
          word-wrap: break-word;
          white-space: inherit !important;
      }

But that removes the scrolling altogether and replaces it with a box as tall as needed to support the data link.

EDIT: Just came back from the article explaining how this is done. Very simple and very, very clever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone please give a few examples for what this could be used for?

<comment><USER6> If you put data (usually little icons) in a data: URI, the browser can load the image without having to make another request to the server for the image, because the data is right there in the URL. It doesn't have to touch the network or disk.

If you put that in an <image src=data://...> tag, it would be rendered inline just like a normal image. So that's the main advantage: the data is _in_ the URI. It's usually used to reduce the number of requests made to the server for icon images.</comment></comment>