No One Is More Excited For Google Glass Than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/02/21/no-one-is-more-excited-for-google-glass-than-facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg/print/ <comment><USER2> Someone in a Reddit comment coined the term 'glasshole', likely in reference to the type who walk around with the bluetooth piece talking loudly about 'important' things.

For those who have seen the film Children of Men, there's a scene in there of a young man in a nice apartment who is playing video games on a strange, futuristic headset which, if I remember correctly, somewhat resembled Glass. He looked like he had psychological problems.

We're getting closer and closer to Surrogates/Gamer/Sleep Dealer/etc, something I'm not excited about at all.

<comment><USER3> I find this mentality so, so strange to see, especially coming from what I assume are fellow engineers/programmers.

We're at a time where almost literally every single book every written is with me in my pocket everywhere that I go, as well as every piece of music ever recorded, and every film ever made.

I have the world's largest library, bigger than anything that the Greeks or Egyptians could have even dreamed, and I carry it with me, every day, in my pocket; most of the people I know do too! We're all constant patrons to humanity's most complete and largest collection of art and information.

And now this library is being made even _more_ available to me. I can immediately call up the sum of human history just by glancing in my peripheral...

...and this _scares_ you? You don't like it?

Is this fear?

Certainly there will be assholes. One of the saddest things I saw last year was people at burning man constantly hiding behind a gopro or other camera, and I called them out on it _constantly_ "be here with me! Don't hide behind that lens!" etc.

But these people have existed forever. There has always been cameras.

And for distractions there has almost always been books.

The glass isn't "new" in that sense, it's just better.

<comment><USER4> Famously, "Cyberspace is where you are when you're on the phone." With Google Glass, that becomes "Cyberspace is where you are."

That has obvious pluses, but it's foolish to ignore the minuses on the other side.

It will always be there, always demanding a fraction of your attention.

You'll get used to it, certainly. But that won't mean that it's not taking part of your attention. It will just mean you got used to it taking part of your attention.

The question is how much attention we have to spare.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, our brainpower is finite. We have dramatically increased the amount of data available to our brains, but not our brain's ability to process it. I believe that cellphones, Google glass, and other "augmented reality" systems are all just stepping stones on the path to a direct neural link to cyberspace. Hopefully, by the time we reach that end, we have the ability to boost our brainpower so that the new surge of information does not diminish all our other senses.

At present, too many people equate "having literature on your cellphone" with "understanding that literature." For certain types of information (e.g. manuals, data tables) having a searchable format is almost as useful as already knowing the contents. Having a searchable copy of Hamlet, however, is not nearly the same thing as having read it. When the day comes that I can have a ethernet port in my head, and downloading a text file of Hamlet _is_ virtually the same as having read it with my eyes, I will gladly sign up. But until then, looking around at all the people with various headsets, phones, and now Google glasses, I will chuckle to myself, because all I see are glassholes missing out on the world around them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I bet he likes it, now users don't even have to submit anything any more to be monitored :/

<comment><USER7> That's my thought: Zuckerberg would likely support any development that increased the amount of personal data users were willing to submit to a service. Reducing the friction of doing so is secondary, and in these ways the interests of FB and Google are aligned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really?!? Because I'm pretty sure no one is more excited than me...

</comment><comment><USER9> Did anyone else get a malware warning? Not sure if I accidentally clicked something on the page or if it was triggered by something loading but my office malware blocker stopped a redirect then I was able to continue reading the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> No malware, I linked to the 'print' page of the article which has a cleaner design but Forbes.com is doing a redirect it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> you can become a tester for $1500: <http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-to- get-one/>

<comment><USER11> Interesting marketing term for what is traditionally known as a "customer".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's a great reason not to buy it.

I'll pass. Gladly.

<comment><USER13> The thought of Facebook on Glass makes my blood run cold. Thank you for reminding me why early adoption may not be recommended here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Which is why Google will probably keep the API's as tight as possible in the beginning, and as integrated into Google+ and Youtube as possible, and Zuckerberg and Facebook deserve that.

Sure you might be able to share some pictures, although probably not in a very easy way, but I'm sure Facebook will not be able to have any kind of deep integration into Glass or Glass apps.

<comment><USER15> Consumers will want facebook integration. If it isn't on the glass, there will be other products pretty soon that will have it

<comment><USER16> I agree with you. But there are different levels of integration. I can't imagine glass will be much different than Andoid when it comes to Facebook.

Setup your Google+ account to sign in to Google Play, and then you can install the FB app, if you want to.

In fact, when I imagine the Google Glass software, I imagine a modified/extended version of Android. That way it fits together with everything else - phones, tablets, google play, google+, etc.

<comment><USER17> > In fact, when I imagine the Google Glass software, I imagine a > modified/extended version of Android.

My first guess was that it pairs with your Android phone. Does anyone have access to one that can comment on what it is doing?

Can someone throw me one so I can start reverse engineering things? please?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That will be because the nefarious asshat (Zuck) can find more ways to obtain data without you having much choice.

</comment><comment><USER19> _No One Is More Excited For Google Glass Than Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg_

Yeah and no one is more excited for FB stock's relative comeback than Brin. Please.

<comment><USER16> If I was Mark, I would be incredibly excited. Imagine the advertising opportunities. You (as a FB user) would wear Glass because it allows you to stay in easy contact with your friends. In exchange, FB gets location data, that they can use to sell ads. Imagine if FB could popup an ad (or a coupon) for a store as you walked passed. Or tell you how many of your friends liked the restaurant across the street (displayed if the company opts in (for a fee of course)). And the ads would be displayed right in your face. Just think how much a company would pay for that.

<comment><USER20> presumably you could do all that on a phone too, yet they havent....

<comment><USER16> On a phone, you could ignore the ad, and there's limited screen space. On glass, you ARE going to see it, and the screen space is your entire field of vision.

Edit: I think Glass actually solves a huge problem with mobile for FB/Google/MySpace/etc: displaying ads. Right now, they make virtually nothing from mobile users, which is a threat to their company as more people use their phones/tablet/etc to access the site. With more screen space, they would easily have room for non-intrusive ads, and ads similar to what is displayed on the desktop. So they should be able to fix their problem with mobile.

<comment><USER19> _Edit: I think Glass actually solves a huge problem with mobile for FB/Google/MySpace/etc: displaying ads._

Who's problem is that? I have never heard a _user_ complaining that only 2 ads fit on the small screen. Have you?

<comment><USER16> The part you quoted clearly says it's a problem FOR fb/google/etc. They have acknowledged the problem repeatedly in the financial statements. Maybe try reading a little closer?

<comment><USER19> _The part you quoted clearly says it's a problem FOR fb/google/etc. They have acknowledged the problem repeatedly in the financial statements. Maybe try reading a little closer?_

So poor FB and Google have a problem because they cannot fit 50 ads on the screen. What a shame, they cannot make another $10 billion a year. To solve their problem we will wear some cheesy glasses so we cannot escape ads. Get what I tried to say? The glass solves Google's ad "problem," if but only if enough users become Glassholes. But why should they? What problem do they solve for average Joe that cannot be solved by iPhone or Android or W Phone? None</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Honda's 130mph Lawnmower - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23342347

<comment><USER2> They should replace the lawnmower blades with an inverted fan blade. >the chaparral 2j would literally suck itself onto the track, like a vacuum, giving itself unparalleled traction. (was later banned from racing)

[http://antholonet.com/EngineersCars/Chaparral2J/Chaparral2J....](http://antholonet.com/EngineersCars/Chaparral2J/Chaparral2J.html)</comment>


Binary Optimization and Layout Tool by Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebookincubator/BOLT <comment><USER2> I've written a short blog post about it, and similar link time optimization tools: [http://perl11.org/blog/bolt.html](http://perl11.org/blog/bolt.html)</comment>


Why does the volume control let me set the volume only to even numbers? - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170321-00/?p=95795 <comment><USER2> Mine goes to 11</comment>


Does Henry Kissinger have a conscience? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/does-henry-kissinger-have-a-conscience <comment><USER2> Of course not. Henry Kissinger is a sociopath, and a primary characteristic of sociopaths is the inability to feel shame or guilt.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please see Betteridges Law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)</comment>


Let a thousand flowers bloom, then rip 999 of them out - <AUTHOR> http://www.gigamonkeys.com/flowers/ <comment> not-a-10xer >Engineers' effectiveness, on the other hand, is hard to measure. We don't even really know what makes people productive; thus we talk about 10x engineers as though that's a thing when even the studies that lead to the notion of a 10x engineer pointed more strongly to the notion of a 10x office.

Management has a vested interest in pushing the meme that there are no 10xers: it gives them an excuse for not paying these engineers what they're actually worth. The rest of us just go along with it because it assuages the inadequacy we naturally feel when we compare ourselves with someone like Linus Torvalds or John Carmack.

Clearly there are 10xers, and some of them even post here: Walter Bright, Bryan Cantrill, and Ted Unangst.

Edit:

I'm also not surprised Seibel would say something like this given his past demonstration of lacking social awareness by titling his book of programmer interviews "Coders at Work"\--a title that one of his interviewees, L. Peter Deutsch, rightly objected to, much to Seibel's shock. Deutsch in 1984 co- authored the seminal paper on building efficient virtual machines for dynamic languages through just-in-time compilation and inline caching, techniques which ultimately gave rise to the JVM. He deserves an immense amount of respect for this and other accomplishments, and we do him and our profession a great disservice by publicly referring to him as a "coder" or anything else that elicits something less than awe from the general public.

Could you imagine doctors referring to some highly-regarded brain surgeon as a "cutter" or "butcher?" No, instead they talk them up as "brilliant" or even god-like, yet we do the equivalent with "coder" (and allow the media to do it too) all the time.

<comment><USER3> Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman were 10x physicists. Then there are probably a couple more 9x physicists, many of them with Nobel prizes under their belt. A lot more 5x physicists. A whole mass of 2x physicists. Another whole mass of 0.5x physicists. I don't think anyone wants to seriously dispute that there's a bell curve of aptitude in pretty much any human endeavor, whether that aptitude came naturally or was nurtured due to hard work or both.

But the 10x gospel we see in software engineering is an entirely different beast: the claim is that there's a small group of people who "really get it" and that everyone else "just isn't made of the right stuff". It assumes both a kind of determinism (you do not become good, you either are good or you're not) and a hard dichotomy (there's no ordinary engineers, just bad ones and great ones).

Of course management would prefer to make ordinary engineers better than to let a couple of brilliant minds work their magic. But that's just common sense: [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_I_Never_Hire_Brilliant_Me...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_I_Never_Hire_Brilliant_Men)

<comment><USER4> Totally agree.

One thing I've noticed: the people who talk about 10x engineers almost uniformly believe they're either apart of that elite cadre, somewhat close to it, or will one day ascend to its ranks.

I believe that there are nodes in a network which have greater inherent value than other nodes, but can only achieve 10x value when working with other nodes of similar caliber in the context of the problem they are solving.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice article, but I can't agree with everything inside.

1\. Engineers are not computers, so saving 5 minutes a day will not increase productivity by 1%. Most engineers work with passion, and don't look at the clock. They are focused on delivering a certain task, and they will make their best to deliver it, even with the interruptions, even if this will require them to work 10 minutes more at the end of the day.

2\. The benefit of the tools is a clear win, but as these tools will not change so much over time, after the initial boost of productivity, the effect will no longer be noticeable. You can't increase performance each month compared to the last month just by using the right tools. So I think the EE team make sense to be created "on demand" and not as a permanent solution. Time should be a parameter in the effectiveness model

3\. If you grow to a large scale enterprise, as the people are not computers and reaching agreement between large number of individuals is not easy, the bigger the number of people in the EE team the harder will be to approach solutions and test them.

<comment><USER6> Argument #1 does not really make sense, since by repeatedly applying the same logic it implies that engineers will work an infinite number of minutes each day. A variant of this argument that I've often heard is this:

"My decision to take the plane does not negatively impact the environment, since the plane would fly with or without me in it."

<comment><USER5> The point I was trying to make is that for engineers you can't do a simple math from minutes to productivity. The interruptions are big productivity killers, but all engineers take voluntary breaks. A break helps productivity, but there is a limit, above that it harms. The same with the interruptions, some might help, too many will not.

<comment><USER7> A break the engineer chooses is chosen and is unlikely to interrupt flow. An interruption caused by the tooling is not chosen and is more likely to interrupt flow.

Tooling cruft also increases the startup cost of some tasks. Where the amount of pain you will experience trying to do it may inhibit your desire to dig in.

The author was generalizing he wasn't assuming perfect accuracy. But in an engineering organization the size of Twitter the productivity gains of a dedicated tooling team add up fast. Much faster than you might think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I mostly like this post, but there's something that troubles me about it.

One of the distinctions I learned from Lean literature was that bureaucracies fall on a spectrum between _controlling_ and _supportive_. I had honestly only ever experienced the former: rules and mandates to make me do what other people valued. But I came to realize that there are other possibilities. For example, when my team jointly makes a checklist we follow, that's a kind of supportive bureaucracy. I could imagine scaling that up, but it's certainly rare.

In this post is a hunger for power that makes me uncomfortable. Sure, any short-term mess can be solved by bossing people around. But I've seen places where centralized quality groups become strongly counterproductive. Every mandate they issue is intended to clean up a mess. But as developers become disempowered, they do less and less cleaning on their own.

Hopefully that won't happen at Twitter; there's a theme of wanting to build trust. But there's also the theme of ripping stuff out, of controlling the chaos, of whipping things into shape. That sounds much better to the person holding the whip than to those getting whipped with it.

</comment><comment><USER9>
        GOOOOAAAAALLLL! Fail Whale.
        GOOOOAAAAALLLL! Fail Whale.

Oh yeah, fail whale. I guess Twitter really has come a long way in the past five years. Despite all of the shit they get for not building out their product in a visually-engaging fashion, I have to say that I can't remember the last time their product failed me. Props.

<comment><USER10> That's true, but I can't help but feel like it was an extremely low bar to hurdle. If "35.6 million tweets during the Brazil/Germany final" is to be believed, that is only 5k tweets per second on average...maybe 50k peak due to heterogeneous volume during a sporting event. Call me uninformed if that's what it is, but that seems like something that should be easily handled by any decently architected system on the JVM. I couldn't even count the number of shit systems at Amazon that process that kind of volume with less than 4 9's of availability.

<comment><USER9> [http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture- tw...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/8/the-architecture-twitter-uses- to-deal-with-150m-active-users.html)

<comment><USER10> Facebook is getting 43x the QPS of twitter, and they are doing it on MySQL.

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/11/4/facebook- at-13-mil...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/11/4/facebook- at-13-million-queries-per-second-recommends-minimiz.html)

<comment><USER11> You're quoting a post which is 5 years old and comparing it with one that's two years old.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Once your engineering org gets to be a certain size the benefits you can > obtain by investing in making all your engineers slightly more productive > start to swamp the slight gains that one team might get from doing things > their own, slightly different way.

I like to think of this idea as group vs. individual velocity. Yes, you personally might be able to go faster by introducing new technologies - <USER2> everyone else is slowed down by having to learn it. Knowing which few of these technologies will be an overall win is the tricky bit.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article repeats the assertion that there is no such thing as a 10x engineer but doesn't site anything that shows such. It has become a popular meme but I know counterexamples from people I have worked with that were significantly more effective (10x minimum) engineers than others.

Does anyone have anything that shows they don't exist? I'm starting to think it's something average engineers like to repeat to convince themselves that there isn't anyone really 'better' than them. Sort of a reincarnation of the condescending "there are no winners or losers" thing we do with childrens sports.

<comment><USER14> I've come to dislike the idea of the "10x engineer" partly because it puts software development too much in the realm of factory work or even craft-work, which it is not. Fundamentally software creation is creative and inventive. It is _not_ a matter of stamping out a certain number of widgets per day. It is not a matter of churning through some number of bugs, lines of code, function points, or what-have-you. It is design work, it is creation, it is art and artisanry. To purport to measure developers against one another along some linear measure is to miss the point entirely. It is the same as asking whether Mark Twain and Walt Whitman are "10x writers", or whether fillet mignon is 10x better than a PB&J. Not only are these things non-linear, they exhibit complexity that is irreducible to such simple measures, which is why we try to avoid the attempt (although somehow we refuse to learn that lesson when it comes to movies, television, and video games, but I digress).

The top tier of developers are _far more_ than 10x more valuable than the average developer. Not because they produce 10x more lines of code, or "crush" 10x as many bugs or sprint points, but because they build. better. systems. Period. They write better code. They build the right stuff. They promote better team cohesion. And they execute on difficult projects more effective.

And they don't just make one order of magnitude difference, often they make _multiple_ orders of magnitude difference.

Here are three fairly common scenarios involving such "keystone" developers:

There's a large and crucial code base which is owned and maintained by an entire team, but there is one developer who has a much different relationship to the code than the other people on the team. They wrote most of the original code, though it has grown much since then, and they know far more of it than any other single person on the team. Tasks related to the code which would require much more time and often the collaboration of multiple team members can be done alone and with much less time by this person. If they leave the project will live on, and it may even flourish, but the development velocity and the capabilities of the team will be significantly diminished compared to when the key developer was around.

There's a core feature on a very important product that is in development, and there's one developer who seems to have an outsized impact on it. They've gone the extra mile to make sure the feature is designed and implemented well, they've put in the hard work to get the feature shipped with excellent quality (both in the code behind the feature and in the way it works and feels to end- users). They've made sure that the right work has gotten done and the most important core aspects have shipped. And the end result is a phenomenal product that attracts and retains users, engenders customer loyalty, and ultimately results in a massive amount of revenue for the company.

There's a tiny team or a startup working on an ambitious product. Despite their limited resources they produce something of significant value and quality, something that normally would require a much vaster number of average developers working for much longer to achieve a similar result. This leads to runaway success.

These scenarios happen all the time in the industry, and they speak to a gulf in capabilities between the most capable devs and the industry average. And it's not necessarily about "productivity" it's about getting the right work done, done well, and done efficiently. You put a top tier developer and a middle of the road developer on the same task for a week or two and the difference isn't that one has written a lot more code than the other, the difference is that one developer has something that _works_ and something that you wouldn't mind keeping around.

This is another thing. Good developers learn and build from their past projects. Which means that over time the developer is getting better, and also what they're able to deliver based solely on their own work grows exponentially, because it builds and builds and builds, like compound interest. Whereas mediocre developers are building foundations of sand, they can only build so high before everything comes crashing back down and they have to tear down and replace what they've built before with something a little bit better. Mediocre developers tend to spend their time running in place.

P.S. Another huge factor is culture, mentoring, leadership by example, and work environment. Top tier developers raise everyone around them to a higher level through their example and their interactions with others. Learning from better developers is a hugely important way that devs get better at their job. And merely getting into a mindset that getting better is possible and valuable is important in its own right. Additionally, working with talented engineers, people we look up to, people we take inspiration from, etc. are important reasons why devs show up to work every day. When an "anchor" dev with a lot of talent leaves a team or a company it can trigger an avalanche of talent leaving the org as other talented engineers decide that the work environment isn't as worthwhile as it once was and they leave as well, accelerating the process until a lot of the talent has evaporated from the org. This is a very common process in the industry because the people who tend to be the most talented and the most intrinsically motivated tend to have the easiest time finding other jobs and tend to be the most sensitive to the quality of the work environment. Unless you're immersed in the work environment and sensitive to these things you may not pick up how drastic these changes can be until years down the road when the impact of a team that has lost all its talent finds itself vastly less able to execute on important projects effectively.

And while I've talked about a lot of "soft" subjects such as "art" and "work environment", these things absolutely have an impact on the bottom line.

<comment><USER15> > [...] it puts software development too much in the realm of factory work or > even craft-work, which it is not. Fundamentally software creation is > creative and inventive.

I assure you, it _is_ craft. It's much less in the realms of art, science, and invention, and much more in the realms of putting well-known patterns together to build something, sometimes even something _new_.

I assume you have never seen a modern woodworker at work?

<comment><USER14> Craft and art exist on a continuum, there is no break between them. Often people who are not or do not know artists imagine that the creation of art entails some magical skill, some special step that is lacking in craft work or engineering work. That some "quintessence" is injected into the process which breathes a vitality of art into the work that would otherwise be absent. But this is a false impression of art. the creation of art is precisely as you say, putting together well-known patterns to build something, sometimes something new.

Wood-working using the skills of working the lathe, the chisel, the rasp is fundamentally the same sort of thing as painting using brush strokes. And both skills can be used to create either a work of art or a work of craftsmanship. It's a matter of skill and intent. Fundamentally though, creating a painting, a poem, or a song is mostly craftsmanship, it's the application of skills to build something in a familiar way.

There's no magic breath of life that elevates a crafted work into the realm of art, rather it's the purpose it's made for and other factors which make that distinction. Something that is considered "not art" would typically be something that is completely unoriginal and has a purely practical purpose.

Art, on the other hand, tends to involve creativity and originality, it tends to not just be for a practical purpose but also to be evocative, emotional, and communicative.

You see, the method and skills of construction are not the differentiator here. Both a EULA and a sonnet can use the same medium (written language) yet while one is purely practical and ordinary the other communicates more than mere facts and details, involves some degree of originality and creativity, and engages the reader at a higher level.

Software dev is a very wide ranging field, so it is difficult to talk about it holistically. However, in my experience it does not fit the description of unoriginal rote work. Often there is creativity and originality, as well as subtlety and fine artisanship. It is a new kind of thing which does not neatly fall into either the manufacturing/engineering/"craft" or "art" buckets, and for that reason it requires different ways of thinking about the work and the workers.

The most important point here is that when you give craftsmen the task of making 20 chairs, they will do so. Some with greater efficiency than others. But this task is nonsensical when it comes to software, because it is only ever necessary to make one of a thing in software, copies are free (or as nearly so as makes no practical difference). Instead the equivalent task would be to make 20 different chair _designs_. And now it becomes more clear that we are not dealing with craftsmanship, we are dealing with design work. Creative work. The closest analog to which is art. And how do you judge an order of magnitude difference in design work? How do you objectively measure the difference between an Eames lounge and plastic patio furniture? Objectively you can't, but subjectively we are aware that the difference between middle of the road design and top tier design is much more than a single order of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Amusingly, that was Chairman Mao's approach as well.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, from the title you'd expect an article about Chinese politics. Turns out it's just an Effectiveness Engineer using fancy phrases without understanding their historical significance.

<comment><USER18> This happens so often in this community that it's cringeworthy.

When I got to the first mention of Twitter I hit the back button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At first I expected an article on Twitter platform for 3rd parties where 1000 flowers bloom and 999 of them get ripped.

Twitter has a horrible, slow moving, bloated interface. I m facing countless examples of disturbances every day.

Maybe a single platform based on PHP could be better, if Facebook is so usable?

<comment><USER20> Really, Facebook?

Yesterday I spent half an hour on my mobile just to find out where the "view profile as it would look to someone else" page had been moved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I strongly suspect the mathematical formula suggesting that 10,000 engineers could be as productive as 45,000 with the right support is a case of "in theory, but not reality."

When tree farming was invented, the initial crop was wonderful, but they soon had to come up with a term meaning "forest death" for the sickly, underdeveloped trees that followed. A monoculture of the same plants quickly strips the soil of essential nutrients and if you cannot identify those nutrients and aggressively resupply them, you will soon find that the trees you wanted to grow and harvest will no longer thrive and somnetimes will no longer survive. A forest can produce healthy trees for generations because of the diversity of plants growing therein. Different plants use different nutrients and some replenish the nutrients used by neighboring plants.

Obviously, software tools are not plants. But I have my suspicions that the diversity of code he describes developed in part for reasons like "different engineers happened to be experienced with different languages, tools, etc" but there may be cases in there where it developed that way because it was the best way to handle it. So when you start standardizing things, you may be killing off things that are critical to the health of the codebase and the company.

I can see value in having someone dedicated to serving the needs of the engineers so they can be more productive. I can see a need to clean things up. But complexity itself often has inherent value that cannot be replaced or improved upon with a simpler solution. Sometimes, simplifying things amounts to throwing the baby out with the bath water. I hope they don't wind up doing that.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> That was an enjoyable read. As mentioned in the article, here's the link to the same talk he gave at Facebook's @scale [0], though the sound gets ridiculously out of sync after a bit.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IyXcLFO9ns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IyXcLFO9ns)

</comment><comment><USER23> > Alex Roetter, now our SVP of Engineering, then an engineer, personally led > the effort to convert what Scala code the ads team had already written into > Java.

I'm having trouble understanding why on earth you would rewrite Scala code to Java. The Scala code runs on the JVM and can interoperate with the Java, so what is the point?

<comment><USER24> That's cool if the Scala bits are mostly static bit, not so much if they see active development.

When (say) 5% of your codebase is Scala and the rest is Java, and your engineering team prefers working in Java, those 5% become stumbling blocks. The context switching slows you down and increases the risk of introducing errors.

Also, a tool chain that will support two languages in parallel, while obviously not impossible, is necessarily more complex than only supporting one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _> Twitter's first line was written in 2006 by our now interim CEO, Jack Dorsey._

Really? Not Noah Glass?

Also, no mention of Pivotal Labs role in helping Twitter get rid of the fail whale...

<comment><USER26> What role did they have? Unless you mean the pivots that Twitter hired full time? I worked at Twitter during the entire transition from the monorail to the current architecture and there was ~0 Pivotal Labs involvement in that process. I know they had a big impact on the earlier phase of Twitter but when it comes to getting rid of the fail whale a large part of the credit goes to Marius and Raffi, neither one of whom were Pivots and I can't think of a single Pivot that built a service at Twitter that is in production today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm really interested in the "standardization" part near the end. Is the end goal to have Twitter building everything with Java, or everything with Scala, or something like that? It does seem to go against the grain of "use the best tool for the job".

</comment><comment><USER28> > E = (eng - ee) * (1 + b * ee^s )

He posits that model and draws many conclusions from it. But how reasonable is? I would expect the improvements in efficiency factor to decay much faster. If everything is done exactly right, there is an optimal efficiency factor. With no ee's there are deviations from that perfect process. As more ee's are added, more deviations are fixed and you get closer to optimal efficiency. These assumptions would mean that efficiency should converge as number of ee's approach infinity. My model suggestion would be

E = (eng - ee) * (1 - b * s^(-ee) )

</comment><comment><USER29> The article discusses the kinds of problems that wildly successful teams of 1000-s of engineers have. As such it is kind of irrelevant for most of us - not everybody will grow their team to 1000 engineers or assume the role of VP Eng in a large organization. A more practical matter to consider, are these problems worth worrying about from the start or is "let the thousand flowers bloom" strategy part of the twitter's success?

</comment><comment><USER30> I was discussing this article with another ex-Twitter employee yesterday. I quit in the middle of this monorepo clusterfuck, and my views are very different - I believe most of what happened was a Battle of the Egos. I can name names but its not worth the trouble, Twitter was a generous employer etc. He remembers most of this as a Battle of the Languages ie. Scala vs Java vs Ruby thing. Seibel has this 3rd version, having joined much later in 2013. The list of ex-Twitter engineers is probably in the thousands at this point, so you are going to hear a whole different set of narratives.Twitter is Roshomon 2.0. One thing is certain. The lack of profitability is very much due to throwing lots of cash at lots of engineers who wrote and rewrote the same bits until kingdom come, driving each other and the market nuts as to what all the fuss was about.

</comment><comment><USER31> Once you get 4.000 Engineers in EE, it is worth considering creating some tools specifically for EE. Let's call this team Effective and Efficient Engineering, thus EEE.

</comment><comment><USER32> The question that has been arising for me, is what amount of resources do you devote to engineering effectiveness in a relatively small engineering org (~25 people)?

It seems like the presented formula would say to not devote any resources, but there seems to be some good return on some effort put towards it. Right now, I've just considered it some percentage of my job to work on.

<comment><USER33> If you have only 25 people, you have few enough that you can reasonably discuss just about everything with the whole team. So, you can reasonably talk about what kind of "engineering effectiveness" work you need, and its priority relative to the other tasks on your list. How much time you spend on it then depends on where the task falls on [https://xkcd.com/1205/](https://xkcd.com/1205/) as well as how much time you can spare from your current workloads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Once upon a time, there were multiple repos and multiple tools for different jobs.

Then Twitter grew to thousands of engineers, many of whom were from Google. Now everything is being converted to enterprise Java in a single, monolithic repo.

Is that an improvement or just bureaucratic standardization and cargo-culting from engineers raised in the google3 monolith?

</comment><comment><USER35> Minor side-issue: 2014 WC final Germany/Argentina; Brazil/Germany was in semi- finals.

</comment><comment><USER36> I was constantly being reminded of Taylor, while reading the article. Is this the scientific management of software engineering? It looks a little too constraining for a rapid-changing discipline as SE.

</comment><comment><USER37> is it just me or this article points to a huge lack of technical leadership inside twitter?

I wonder how much allowing things drag for so long cost the company? millions in salaries?

</comment><comment><USER38> Offtopic, but why is "monorepo" pluralised as "monorepi", while "repo" is traditionally pluralised as "repos"?

<comment><USER39> I'm guessing the author is poking fun at the idea of having more than one 'monorepo' by giving it a deliberately silly plural.

<comment><USER40> The plural of "bordello" is "bordelli", so there's that. (And that's all the Italian I know.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wish people would learn what the hundred flowers campaign was and not use such dumb and insensitive titles for their blog posts. It's like calling it "the final solution to the twitter problem".

<comment><USER42> I wish people would learn that words and phrases can acquire meanings of their own, independent of original meanings, origins and associations.

"Let a thousand flowers bloom" has an entirely clear and positive meaning for the vast majority of English speakers.

<comment><USER43> Unless you know about "let a hundred flowers bloom", then it immediately acquires a meaning at best sinister. Ignorance should not be an excuse for callousness.

<comment><USER44> Actually it is an excuse. Callousness is about intent. Someone isn't being callous if they have no idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Wandering Mind Heads Toward Insight - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124535297048828601.html

<comment><USER2> This is pretty much just a poor copy of a new yorker article from last year:

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer)</comment>


DIY – I Built a Desktop Robot That Responds Entirely in GIFs - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5h15f4/i_built_a_desktop_robot_that_responds_entirely_in/ <comment><USER2> Hey if anyone has any questions, Im here to answer!</comment>


Apple Sued for iMac Display Deception, Steve Jobs Suspected Closet Megatron - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/374281/apple-sued-for-imac-display-deception-steve-jobs-suspected-closet-megatron

<comment><USER2> I don't care for differences between the 20 and the 24 inch monitors. Apple isn't claiming they're the same and I wouldn't expect them to be identical. But if the new 20'' model is actually worse (display wise) from the previous 20'' model, and Apple didn't make this clear, then I think the lawsuit is justified. When upgrading to a newer generation I expect everything to be BETTER unless explicitly stated.</comment>


Hacking means typing long lists of instructions into your computer. - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbrFFP7bXU 1980's expose of the how hackers live.  And by "how hackers live" I mean all of the silly stereotypes.<p>Also, sick background riff.  Those wacky hackers!<p>(My apologies if this is a repost; it almost has to be but I couldn't find anything.) <comment><USER2> Hahaha. Wow, that's hilarious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ain't it though? They're referencing the stereotypical programmer behavior with such breathless wonder.

Of course it probably wasn't stereotypical back then, but I was an 8 year old hacker who worshipped Steve Jobs when that was filmed so...</comment></comment>


Exploring the BBC Micro:bit Software Stack and OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattwarren.org/2017/11/28/Exploring-the-BBC-microbit-Software-Stack/ <comment><USER2> It's important to point out that _EVERYTHING_ to do with the MicroPython work on the micro:bit was done by a community of volunteers working in their spare time. Source code here: [https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython](https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython) Documentation here: [https://microbit- micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://microbit- micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

I estimate around 80 people volunteered time to bring Python and associated tools (such as the browser based editor, command line tools and a native editor called "Mu" [https://mu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://mu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)) to micro:bit.

At the heart of all this work was the creator of MicroPython, Damien George who volunteered a huge number of hours to bringing a full reimplementation of Python3 (without standard library) to micro:bit. Check it out, it's awesome. MicroPython is both a reimplementation of Python 3 but on the micro:bit also has music, a simple speech synthesiser, funky display functions, radio and a simple file system all built in. :-)

<comment><USER3> The work done on MicroPython is amazing, it is the 21st century version of Basic for tiny devices.

It even allows compiling to native code and use of inline Assembly.

[http://docs.micropython.org/en/v1.9.3/pyboard/reference/spee...](http://docs.micropython.org/en/v1.9.3/pyboard/reference/speed_python.html#the- native-code-emitter)

[http://docs.micropython.org/en/v1.9.3/pyboard/pyboard/tutori...](http://docs.micropython.org/en/v1.9.3/pyboard/pyboard/tutorial/assembler.html#)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For some background on the design decisions, here's the 'Key design constraints' from [https://github.com/sparkslabs/microbit- prototype/tree/master...](https://github.com/sparkslabs/microbit- prototype/tree/master/doc) (the technical specs of the microbit prototype, written in Dec 2014) :

> Programmable - The device must be reprogrammable

> Simple to program - via a graphical browser based UI

> Small - maximum 5cm x 5cm

> Cheap - manufacture cost must be approximately £2 or less when produced in > large scale - for example batches of 100,000 units

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just noticed that the BBC have re-released some of their archive of 'BBC Micro' related TV programmes from the 1980's, see [https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p031v2bg](https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p031v2bg) (probably UK only)

<comment><USER4> Those have been on the iPlayer for a year or so now. Definitely worth a watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the Micro:bit and have used it in many "Coding for Managers" workshops.

Currently I switch for my workshops to the Calliope Mini [1], very similar (they talked to the Micro:bit guys), but has additionally RGB LED, microphone, sound, Grove sensor connectors (2) and motor drivers for two motors for robots (but is more expensive).

[1] [https://calliope.cc/](https://calliope.cc/)

<comment><USER6> Nifty, I hadn't seen Calliope before. I'll check it out next time I buy some experimental kit for my classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I'd imagine that for a large amount of computer programmers (currently in their 30's)..."

40s/50s surely. the 80s is 30 years ago.

<comment><USER8> In the UK programming was taught on BBC Micros in pretty much every school from the age of 5-6 years old as part of the school curriculum. I'm in my late 30s and learned Logo and BASIC almost 35 years ago in the early-mid 1980s. I then went back to it when I was 11 and learned BASIC "properly", and then by 14 was writing C which is around the early-mid-1990s.

Most of my colleagues from the UK went through a similar curve, taking in Atari and Amiga machines at home not just as games machines but piqued by their capability to produce software of their own.

The UK 8-bit market was one of the biggest economic helpers the country has had in generations. We then went about squandering it.

Whilst I was a teenager the school curriculums moved to teaching PowerPoint and Excel which basically meant STEM entrants at University fell off. I was one of the last years to be able to learn how to code at school.

Detecting an impeding and urgent skills gap, a couple of years ago a proper computer science GCSE was kicked off (by the much maligned, but on this occasion perhaps quite right, Michael Gove MP), but only 11% of pupils in the UK sat it last year, and most schools are struggling to hire teachers so the quality of the kids they're turning out is a problem for us as a country and economy.

This is something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about right now. An open-source set of text books with teacher notes might help a lot of kids get exposure to the skills they need for the workplace in 30 years, the way I got exposure.

Yes, the RPi and microbits stuff is part of that, but there needs to be some steps beyond that. Kids need to be able to go home, look at the PC or laptop and think "I could make something on that", and get the guidance needed to do so.

<comment><USER9> The BBC Micro didn't have the UK schools market entirely to itself.

I was born in 1971 and both my primary and secondary schools had LINK 480Z computers by Research Machines. The primary school only had the one, but the secondary school had a lab with 12 or 16 (I forget) of them. Later on it replaced them with a larger number of RM Nimbus PCs (again from Research Machines) which used 80186 processors. Yes, you read that right: 80186 processors. As you'd expect, they were not properly compatible with real PCs.

I was lucky enough to get a BBC Micro at home a couple of years after starting secondary school; my parents held off because they thought that maybe it was just a short-term interest. I think they might be convinced by now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the RM machines, they were pretty cool as well!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For more information on the runtime (the underpinnings of MakeCode): [https://lancaster-university.github.io/microbit-docs/](https://lancaster- university.github.io/microbit-docs/)

We are using the approach taken with micro:bit to support other resource constrained devices, like the adafruit circuit playground: [https://makecode.adafruit.com](https://makecode.adafruit.com)

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.nordicsemi.com/nordic/content_download/108537/184...](http://www.nordicsemi.com/nordic/content_download/108537/1840103) states "Nordic Semiconductor's nrF51822 is the brain of the micro:bit combining the latest Bluetooth low energy, _ _ANt+_ _ and proprietary wireless technology with a 32-bit ArM Cortex-M0 microprocessor"

So, the hardware supports ANT+. The software stack doesn't seem to, however. Does anybody know whether that is possible/worked on? If not, is there similar 'beginner' hardware that does?

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, the PXT language (TypeScript subset) does have a native code backend.

[https://makecode.com/language](https://makecode.com/language)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I completely missed that, thanks for pointing it out ([https://makecode.com/language#static-compilation-vs-a- dynami...](https://makecode.com/language#static-compilation-vs-a-dynamic-vm))

I assumed that the PXT worked the same as MicroPython, but it seems like it actually compiles directly to machine code, nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This computer seems the least interesting if all computers I can think of. It's like they actually tried to make it not have exciting potential.

You have to really work to hobble a modern computer to remove the excitement factor but somehow the BBC rose to the challenge.

<comment><USER13> I just had a look to see how to build an android app to make a hot/cold beacon finder and where to buy beacons.

You know what? I'm already bored. And that's before I've started trying to install eclipse and what sdks I need and whether to use kotlin and how to setup the right things.

I mean, I found the google docs and one of the first steps is

> Request an OAuth 2.0 Client ID

Great, going to get some young kids excited by explaining what oauth is and how to log into the google developers console.

Next up, what XML you need to know to create an interface and add what threads are and ...

Or:

[https://makecode.microbit.org/projects/hot-or- cold](https://makecode.microbit.org/projects/hot-or-cold)

Done.

<comment><USER14> I think that sums a lot of 'progress' up to me; I've had several abortive attempts to 'get into programming' over the last 20 years or so, and all of them have floundered early on on various pre-requisites which just seemed too much to deal with. I'm now persevering with Python (which seems in some way to suffer less that others, but also because I'm sticking at it this time as I want to change career), but I can remember giving up when it seemed I had to write about 50 lines of code just to get a window up with an OK button. I'm sure the same is true many multiples over with kids, and the micro:bit seems a good solution to that.

<comment><USER13> If it helps, I've recently started adding more UIs to things and the main way I'm doing it is with web pages.

Easy to make, lots of tutorials, requires another language unfortunately but still a useful skill.

Not always applicable, but can be a good approach.

Best of luck, I know there are some hard steps to take (particularly the stage of "ok I can write code but what can I actually _do_ with it"), but things really build after a while. Oh, and I've been coding for maybe 17 years and

1\. I keep writing code that's wrong 2\. I get basic things wrong all the time 3\. I still have to regularly look things up

My wife is learning to code, and I think she felt these things meant she wasn't doing well at it, but it's really common. I'm just used to it and have more experience finding my mistakes because I've made them so much.

> and the micro:bit seems a good solution to that.

I think so. I think there's a huge step forwards when you can get _something_ working quickly, then build from there.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for all that - one of the most honest and helpful comments I've seen on here, and particularly useful for me! Usually people don't let on about them, so I feel much better.

I'm buying my youngest step-child a Micro:bit for Christmas. Well, I say it's for him...

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'm buying my youngest step-child a Micro:bit for Christmas. Well, I say > it's for him...

I think that I'll be doing something similar ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems like the RISC-V ISA would make more sense for a project like this, no?

<comment><USER16> There is a very long history regarding the BBC and ARM, you could say that without the BBC ARM would not have existed at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> > you could say that without the BBC ARM would not have existed at all

Huh, I'd not thought about it like that before. Yeah I guess ARM/Acorn does owe the BBC quite a bit!</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: You can upvote and save very old stories by resubmitting them. - <AUTHOR>

What is interesting is that it appears to work  for most stories regardless of the story's age and still gives karma to the original poster.<p>The oldest one I was able to upvote was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2 (changes pictured at http://i.imgur.com/ISDYNta.png) but https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1 didn't work (instead of upvoting the original it was submitted anew). <comment><USER2> Yeah, this behavior isn't desirable. We'll probably fix it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes indeed, but no amount of upvotes could bring any old post back to frontpage.

Also, resubmitting even the oldest stories will give karma to the original poster...

<comment><AUTHOR> >no amount of upvotes could bring any old post back to frontpage

No practical amount, at least. I wouldn't be surprised if the weight function used to sort the stories had no hard cutoff based on time, so you could beat it in theory if not in practice if you upvoted an old story at a sufficient rate. You could call it "story escape velocity". Of course, for stories old enough the escape velocity may not be achievable due the limited bandwidth and other resources that HN has even if you had enough users trying to upvote it.</comment></comment>


How do I make sure I never miss anything interesting on hacker news? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Just obsessively visit every five minutes. Like everyone else who should be writing code.

<comment><USER3> Love the obsessive part :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First: Don't worry too much, it's bad for your health.

You can read some filtered versions like:

Best (less gravity): [https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best)

100points (filtered): [https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100](https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100)

Last: As a public service, please check Newest [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) from time to time to pick interesting stories before they disappear unnoticed. It's nice to be the first to upvote a story and see it later in the front page.

</comment><comment><USER5> I like cperciva's daily top hacker news posts:

[http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/)

I've noticed that I missed some great articles, even though I visit Hacker News every couple of hours or so.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have an additional monitor dedicated to HN that refreshed on /newest every 30 seconds.

<comment><USER7> You cant be serious... What do you do a living? Doesnt that setup drive you nuts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you use the Chrome browser or Android/iOS, install 'Pushbullet'([https://www.pushbullet.com/](https://www.pushbullet.com/)) and subscribe to Hacker news channel in it.

Pushbullet will send you a notification whenever an article on Hacker news gets more than 500 upvotes. Generally, such articles are interesting.

</comment><comment><USER9> Change your definition of "anything interesting" to stories about Paris Hilton's dead dog. If the definition includes much of anything technical, it's a lost cause.

Even if you could read all of HN, you'd still miss interesting stuff because everything interesting doesn't make it to HN. That's why people can submit stories.

</comment><comment><USER10> Subscribe to the Hacker News Newsletter

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

<comment><USER11> Yes. This newsletter is very useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Read [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs) ;-)

(P.S.: Somebody please invite me to that site.)</comment>


Google Maps increases risk of developing Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2019/05/29/google-maps-increases-risk-developingalzheimers-expert-warns/ <comment><USER2> of course no credible medical sources for this clickbaity title are provided</comment>


Google Gives Oracle a Tutorial on API Copyright Law - <AUTHOR> http://johnkoenig.com/google-gives-oracle-a-tutorial-on-api-copyright-law/

<comment><USER2> > The chief beneficiary of taking down Android would be Apple, chaired by > Ellison's friend Steve Jobs.

It seems exceedingly unlikely that Oracle would go after Android simply to _help a brother out_. It's much more likely that Oracle sees the potential for this to cement its control over Java so it can also control licencing revenues.

<comment><USER3> Right, it's not just J2ME. I remember reading that Sun was taking a cut ($10?) on every Kindle sold since they are running some version of java on it; presumably that is still true for Oracle and they see that slipping away (Nook uses Android for example, and I think the announced Amazon Tablet does too) It would be a pretty big loss to Oracle if they go from $10 per Kindle to $0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Oracle has made Android a target in spite of the fact that Oracle has little or no stake in mobile devices, now or on the horizon"

I guess the author never heard of J2ME. One of the reasons why Oracle are up in arms over Android is that it does an end run around their J2ME licence revenue.

<comment><USER5> But this lets the author go on to make up odd theories in the vein "What is Oracle really up to?" (accompanied by a photo of Larry Ellison), culminating in the notion that Oracle really hopes to lose this at the Supreme Court level. Sure, lots of companies bring expensive lawsuits so they can set a precedent against their case. Uh huh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bandwidth back.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded"

Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fjohnkoenig.com%2Fgoogle- gives-oracle-a-tutorial-on-api-copyright-law%2F)</comment>


Show HN: ScreenToVideo – Record your screen and make a video tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://screentovideo.com <comment><USER2> I was looking for software like this the entire day! So will give it a try. However, what really shocked me is how little of these editing software /recoding products had a demo product intro video on the site / hero... I seriously think that if you are trying to sell me video demo software you should be able to show it to me in a great demo video. I think link 2 of the 10 sites had a reasonable / any video.</comment>


Updating Logitech Hardware on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2017/05/22/updating-logitech-hardware-on-linux/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome. I've used Logitech hardware for the past 15 years and Linux for the past 12. Thank you Logitech and thank you Richard.

It's been a long journey but bit by bit, we're getting out of second class status.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is super great. Impressed by Logitech as well for providing all the raw details to make this happen.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hadn't heard about LVFS until now.

Shame to see list of supported/supporting vendors is so short: [https://secure-lvfs.rhcloud.com/lvfs/devicelist](https://secure- lvfs.rhcloud.com/lvfs/devicelist)

<comment><USER5> Now that both Red Hat and Canonical (among other enterprise distributions) will be using this for firmware updates, I'm increasingly optimistic about more vendors joining in. LVFS is still a fairly young project, so I see the size of that list as encouraging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good for me that I read HN otherwise I wouldn't have know this vulnerability.

What is really worrying is that this is 1 year old yet the unifying receiver which came with 2 products I bought a month ago from a larger retailer (AMZ DE) had an older FW. And while it is understandable that the stock AMZ has might be older than a year, what is unacceptable is that they don't integrate a warning in their software eg. Logitech Options, which should inform you to update the vulnerable FW on the unifying receiver.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is great work! Simple tasks such as managing peripheral devices is still a source of a lot of friction for Linux desktop. I am gladdened by Logitech's purported support for this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's time to see if we can get vendors to adopt fwupd, or something which can rely on the same dataset, as a standard cross-platform mechanism for updating firmware on devices which can conceivably be supported. I imagine it would take a considerable burden off of those vendors; marketing it as such has a decent chance of success. Not sure if Richard Hughes (thanks for assembling my ColorHUG by the way, if I go back to work in the next month or two I'll definitely get a ColorHug+, since I'm interested in verifying open source scanner calibration workflows) wants to make a living maintaining a firmware updater, though. It'd probably have to be somebody else.

</comment><comment><USER9> For once, somebody is handling a security breach correctly. Yay, Logitech!

<comment><USER10> Am I missing something? From what I read, the author was frustrated by _the lack of_ correct handling of the breach, and wanted to fix it himself. Logitech sent him a bunch of info on how the protocol works, but the author did all the hard work of writing the Linux firmware updater and patch, no?

<comment><USER11> Yes and no. Officially, Linux isn't supported, so Logitech could have just sent a link to the Supported Systems page and been done with it.

Instead, they sent documentation and got the Dev in touch with Logitech's internal dev team, and a Linux solution was born.

Would it have been cool if Logitech just did it from the get-go? Sure, but I think there is an element of "Cool" from Logitech's willingness to be a resource for the Linux community.

<comment><USER12> I'm more happy with the way this turned out than even if Logitech just released a closed-source Linux updater.

Props to Logitech. The more info out there about a device, the more likely I am to buy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> While i welcome the openness from Logitech, there are some elements that irks me.

First off i do not like the trend of giving every damn vulnerability found a cute name and logo.

Second, the tool presented here seems overly reliant on the presence of the Freedesktop permissions model.

Rather than having a tool that root can run to do the firmware update and leave it at that, there is talk of daemons and d-bus interfaces to schedule updates and whatsnot.

Maybe all this makes sense once one has 1000s of computers one wants to manage from a central UI. But for individual desktops it seems massively overdesigned.

</comment><comment><USER14> Superb! We need more of this! I love my Logitech kit as it always seemed more reliable than the generic 2.4ghz stuff, this will make it better - thank you.

</comment><comment><USER15> nice.. the OSS pairing stuff is great (solaar), now it will be better.. will continue to recommend logitech items to everyone I know..

</comment><comment><USER16> TL;DR: using free software to ease the process of downloading and running binary blobs.

f/loss is starting to look like religion as long as we have these arbitrary boundaries.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure if you're implying they should have used incomplete, unstable reverse engineered verion, or just used Windows to do the update, but if its the latter:

      For people running Linux exclusively, like a lot of Red Hat's customers

      Some devices are plugged in behind racks of computers forgotten, or even hot-glued into place and unremovable

Hardly seems like ideology was the limiting factor.

<comment><USER16> I'm talking about the software actually being updated; i.e. not the stuff running on the CPU.</comment></comment></comment>


Overview effect - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect <comment><USER2> why are we not sending all greedy autocratic leaders of world to a space station for a three months vacation?

<comment><USER3> so that they can make up a better autocratic plan because they get another reason to make people "united"?</comment></comment>


Coursework vs. Production Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.martyhu.com/blog/coursework-vs-production-code/

<comment><USER2> The big difference between coursework code and production code is the size and scope of it. When you finish a course after 4 months you never have to look at that code again. And it's only going to be so big because, over the entire course, you spend at most a few intense weeks on it.

I just got a call tonight about some code I wrote that has a sorted history that is well over 10 years old. I work on a code base every day that contains over 6 years of code I've personally written. In education, you rarely experience that sheer amount of code.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing you meant "sordid" history, as in:

      Sordid \Sor"did\, a. [L. sordidus, fr. sordere to be filthy or
         dirty; probably akin to E. swart: cf. F. sordide. See
         {Swart}, a.]
         1. Filthy; foul; dirty. [Obs.]
         2. Vile; base; gross; mean; as, vulgar, sordid mortals.

(1913 Webster's)

<comment><USER2> Yes, yes I did. That's what I get for posting a comment 10 minutes before bedtime and now it's even too late to edit.

The only code I have with a "sorted" history was part of my coursework. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Dark, a New Programming Language for 'Deployless' Deployments - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/dark-a-new-programming-language-for-deployless-deployments/ <comment><USER2> how is it different from those "function as service" platforms?</comment>


Senators Tillis and Coons want to restore US software patents - <AUTHOR> https://www.law360.com/articles/1171672/what-coons-and-tillis-learned-at-patent-reform-hearings <comment><AUTHOR> See also the Google cache:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CiCY-f...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CiCY- fq2sJEJ:https://www.law360.com/articles/1171672/what-coons-and-tillis-learned- at-patent-reform-hearings+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=be)</comment>


Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity - <AUTHOR> https://lethain.com/digg-v4/ <comment><USER2> it took them a month to figure out Python function's mutable default argument feature.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an instant messaging app which has a tree like view? - <AUTHOR> What I am looking for would be similar to treeverse for twitter? (https://treeverse.app/)<p>It would be interesting to visualize and browse telegram threads in a similar way. <comment><USER2> Can't think of any off the top of my head, but the first thing that came to mind is this from Max Krieger: [https://a9.io/glue-comic/](https://a9.io/glue- comic/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This paucity, in my opinion, is the major failing of messaging platforms. Their threading is no excuse for a full fledged tree like structure of conversation. I'm imagining a reddit like interface, but for messaging. Maybe it just becomes a forum instead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Telegram doesn't really have threads so I'm not sure if this kind of visualization would be very helpful.</comment>


Show HN: nyan-mode.el - Nyan Cat for Emacs (my first real Emacs minor mode) - <AUTHOR> http://nyan-mode.buildsomethingamazing.com/

<comment><USER2> If instead of a constant rainbow, you use a gradient that changes colors from left-to-right, that would have been a better visual indicator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably. It would also be good if there was a visual indicator of how much text is visible in the buffer relative to buffer size (like sml-modeline does). However, this mode is Nyan Cat first, visual help second. :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well done, well done :) My Emacs is now containing significantly more Nyan Cat than before, this pleases me

</comment><comment><USER4> You magnificent, magnificent bastard.

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome. I was using sml-modeline before, but it was not nearly cute enough.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm all for Nyan Cat becoming the new Hello World.

</comment><comment><USER7> congratulations Temporal this looks great! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :). I'm happy you like it :).</comment></comment>


Child-tracking wristbands edge us closer to a dystopian future - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/10/child-tracking-wristbands-dystopian-future-ces-2014

<comment><USER2> The thing that pisses me off about prognostication like this is the assumption that this will become the norm. Between thoughtful parents and school systems who choose not to participate through to the realities of poverty and the wealth gap something like this will never occur. For the small segment of the population which does use it -- those among the wealthiest of the middle-class -- it will be a short-lived fad which lasts the three or so years that this current crop of students happens to be between the ages of 9 and 12. Then puberty starts to kick in and they refuse to wear it. Not to mention the social stigma which will follow a child wearing such a tracker.

Since GPS first landed in consumer hands this future has been pitched at us. Each time it's gone quietly into the night. First it was a shoe (since trackers were larger then), then a wrist-band, then a custom phone, then any phone, now it's back to the wrist-band.

It's a bad idea which gets progressively worse each time it comes up and less scary because all you have to do to make it go away is to make it un-cool.</comment>


FBI joins criminal investigation into 737 Max certifcation - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/fbi-joining-criminal-investigation-into-certification-of-boeing-737-max/ <comment><AUTHOR> A French court brought criminal charges against Continental for their role in the fatal (and career ending) crash of the Concorde. They were later overturned.</comment>


Ask HN: Please help, can't expand fast enough - <AUTHOR>

Hi
I have actually been on HN for over a year but wanted to create a new account so that these more private details of my company can't be tied to my actual business.
I am essentially a sole founder. My wife is excellent and runs a business as well yet we have kids so when 1 is working the other is not. While we both work into the night I say we would only accomplish the work load of a single person working full time on a startup with no kids.
After 3 months of development I finally launched my paid service, launched my free part of the product 3 months ago. (using a freemium model) and instantly started getting sales.
I have done no marketing other than to get at the top of a low searched keyword on Google (which I didnt actually try hard to get anyway) and this brings in around 20-30 users per day of which about 10% convert to premium within 7 days.
But with that I am only getting $20-$30 per day. ($9.95 once off payment) Yes this model only works for once off payments as they use the product for a set amount of time, then they may use it again later but it isn't a continuous payment model.
I also listed more advanced monthly options that aren't actually available yet, as I am still coding them, yet I have already received 3 requests on when will they be ready. So who knows how many more actually want it yet didnt bother to ask.
On top of that I need to work on upgrading to the cloud as I am currently getting anywhere from 3k - 8k page views a day with a steady increase and outputting about 2.5Gb per day in bandwidth.
The problem I am facing is as you can see the potential is great, its gaining traction, I have testimonials on how great the customer service and the product is compared to others out there.
I have ideas and stats that show I could push to the head of the industry if implemented. Yet I just need the time to code and market it.
I just don't have the resources to push out things fast enough, let alone even start marketing it. I have consulted with a lot of retail stores and other companies with their online advertising, conversions etc and I know exactly how to push this forward, again if I had the time to market. Yet if I brought on more users could I keep up with support questions and feature requests?
Just to let you in on my experience: I am also coding this myself having worked 7 years from developer to lead architect previously. Then have been running various business / startups for the last 3 years.
I have done other startups in the past, obviously they didnt work out as hoped, unlike this one :)
How can I progress forward? So far the options I have thought of are below. Hoping for some new ideas.
1. Investors. Certainly open to the idea although wasn't originally but now I actually have a reason for investment (to fund growth) and not just keep me working to see if an idea pans out.
Initial problems with that are: I have never pitched before, do not know any investors specifically in tech and am based in Perth, Australia (so about as far away from the tech industry as I could get :) ) And while Perth is booming due to our mining sector in the state I do not know of any investors or if there are how to get in contact with them and if they are knowledgable enough to look at tech.
I don't just want the money, I would love experience and mentoring as well. I know they could give great general business advice but tech experience would certainly be an advantage.
2. Co-Founder. Again another idea that is worth looking at, but I am unsure how you would find the right person. They are tech conferences around but mainly for employees of the large mining sector. Not anything entreprenuerial (as I am aware of). I could look online overseas but again wouldnt know where (except on HN)
On top of that, any recommendations on how you would know they are a right fit? Or even how I would split considering I already have a business generating revenue.
3. I can easily get 1 week dev contracts to bring in about $5k and that could be used to hire a dev for a month.
The problem with this and why I am VERY hesistant towards it, is it seperates my focus from the product and I need to keep doing it until the startup generates enough revenue to hire them. I believe startups need 100% focus and this is just a distraction.
4. Just keep going. Looking like the option I am taking at the moment, is just to keep pushing forward and see how far I can get. I already work until 2-3am in the morning (which actually works out well as that is when the US is awake) and I don't watch tv. The reason I probably have kids I suppose :)
Over the last month I have been exercising more and eating better and it is giving me a boost in energy. Not enough to boost my productive by the amount needed though.
5. Bank loan - unlikely in my situation, I no longer have my cushy $150k yr job. Like I said, have been building startups for the last few years and I don't have the cash or income to justify it, especially in these times.
Any advice, other options appreciated. It is certainly on the brink and just need to push through the last stretch to profitability. <comment><USER2> I try to raise money from time to time for my small biz/startup. Here are a few things I've learned:

Pay attention to the unit economic model. The lifetime value of a customer ($9.95 in your case) minus the cost to a acquire a ew customer. This requires you to show an investor how you can use the money to acquire new customers via ads, cold calling, PR, etc.

Market size is important. Can you make a rational guess as to who will buy your product and how many potential buyers there are?

Delegate. If any part of your job can more effectively be done buy a junior person, do that. As a single founder, it will help if you show you are capable if this.

Cash is king. Good people will join you for cheap if you can sell the upside for them, but they rarely do quality work for free. 5,000 bucks can go a long way!

Do you have an unfair competitive advantage? What makes it hard to copy what you do?

Take advice only from successful people who understand why they were successful. What sounds like a good idea and what actually works are often different. In my case, you might use some of my ideas in this comment, but you want to validate them yourself.

Talk to your customers. That's a frikkin' gold mine of information.

Learn to stop working when it isn't working. Try it, fail, stop, step back and look for an easier way or different way.

One book I found useful is the Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. Pitching Hacks buy the guys at Venture Hacks is a good read, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply.

I have a great dashboard for showing sales, revenue, time to upgrade, etc. I love analytics. Luckily as well, the lifetime value of the customer isn't $9.95 as while I have only had paid options available for 1 month, already people are coming back and purchasing again, which means my lifetime value of a customer keeps getting higher.

As for est potential market I can say that just by looking at Google searches over 20k+ per month search for the product / thing I am offering. Obviously I don't rank #1 for all of these search terms plus it doesnt calculate the other methods. Honestly I wouldn't know any further on how to estimate the potential buyers, only that I am in a growing space and other companies worth millions are already in there.

Delegation, 100% agree with there :)

An unfair competition advantage is always a hard one to answer. The advantages I have at this point in time (but can be copied) are freemium model, feature set and future feature set. I am focussed on one particular aspect where as other companies in the space are spreading out to other areas, diluting their focus. As time progresses it will be harder to catchup to code wise but not impossible.

I put customer service above all else and due to this receive so much praise and recommendations which is why I am getting repeat sales and increased users. Again repeatable but they are unlikely to take customers as loyalty is certainly being built.

I love talking to customers, you are right they give such an incredible amount of information and I have tailored and improved my product because of this. Someone actually contacted me due to bugs in the software. After she was so blown away by the customer service she is setting up a rolling purchase order to use our service for their 17 local tv shows. I didn't even know but it shows that you should treat each customer with the same amount of dedication. She wasn't even a paid customer at that point either. Obviously once that is setup my income increase significantly but larger corps take so long to get these things rolling. (I know, working in them for so many years)

Haven't heard of pitching hacks but will certainly check it out.

Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You covered most viable options. If I were you I would continue with #4 and give that feature of monthly subscription to generate steady stream of revenue. You seem to have a product/market fit so in this situation I would outsource someone for a help with marketing, it seems you have good SEO potential, you can find good companies/freelancers on Elance. If you can separate wheat from chaff you'll reasonable SEO service for about $500 a month - I'm currently paying European based company for SEO services that much - zenoseo. If you have more cash find someone to help you with PPC, like Google Adwords, run few cheap test campaigns and see if ROI is good, if good continue otherwise wait some time. Additional customers you get from marketing will give you more cash. Then hire a developer. If at that time you still need cash try to get an investment. The simplest way to start is with angels. See if there is local angel group or try AngelList - there are good guides how to pitch to an investor. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I am currently working on the recurring revenue as my major priority. At the moment I certainly believe I must act on what will give me the revenue to help expand.

Thanks for the suggestion on AngelList. I assume you are talking about Angel.co - I just typed in angellist.com into my browser and it took me there. I will have a look around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before hiring a developer, why don't you try to outsource parts of the dev for example on oDesk/eLance. Granted, it will take you some time to find someone good, but if you give a few small projects to several devs and take the best, you'll get to it. Also, it won't cost $5k/month so you don't need to do consulting for it, but you can just throw the revenues you get from the app at it.

Same for design, and other things that can be outsourced. I recommend reading "start small, stay small" by rob walling, for all things outsourcing and small apps.

Anyways, it's much better to be in your position than just not having any revenue :-) So keep going at it, and keep us posted!

<comment><AUTHOR> I have thought about outsourcing though am concerned since it's an in house developed product and I am working on it all the time I would prefer someone who I know and can trust and who is focussed on it and not freelance work.

However I dont have any experience in outsourcing small sections of a larger project, so a learning curve ahead if I choose that approach. Then if bugs appear the coder who developed it might not be available hence I would have to take time learning newly written code to solve issues.

Thanks for the book recommendation I will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No matter what path you take, you need to solve the labor issue. And at this stage, if you don't have enough money to properly hire someone, have you considered asking HN if someone is interested in being a cofounder? If the idea is interesting enough (but I guess you can't discuss it in much detail) I'm sure there's some reader out there who could do it.

If you don't want to broadcast more details to the world, you can send me a private email. Intransigence123 at gmail dot com. I'm sure a lot of other people would give more specific advice or help you find someone

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea itself isn't new. I haven't invented something that no one already has (just yet anyway, coding the next move). The idea involves actually taking the current industry to the next level but requires I get all the basics done first, which is where I am almost complete on. I am suprised how quickly I got to this level actually.

Also as far as I am aware having researched many companies in the industry, I am the only 1 that can target multiple platforms on the web simulatenously. Most only target Facebook. I also only focus on 1 aspect at the moment. That is I suppose my strength in the market. And I am also the only one offering a solid freemium model which is why I am gaining quick popularity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> its good you're making money.

1\. Without knowing the idea, it may not even be a fundable idea. As they call it a lifestyle business. So this is always the hardest thing to do, Raising is a time sink.

2\. co-founder will be hard to find someone to work for equity.

3,4,5 - yes , make some money, and outsource parts that you can. Hopefully your site will make money, and put it back into the business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply.

It does have a lifestyle business aspect to it, but as stated they are people looking for the monthly option already. So there will be lifestyle + recurring revenue depending on the businesses needs.

<comment><USER7> There's an option you may not have considered (and I know this is a heretical suggestion on HN):

Get a job at an established company doing this. If your product was independently developed in your spare time and in an area that has other companies in it you're probably the sort of person that other people who have money want to hire. There are developer jobs out there that pay $100k a year. It's likely more than you'll make with your startup and might give you more time with your kid rather than working current job + part-time at night. It might also be less stressful and eliminate concerns about taxes/incorporation, etc. There's a boom on right now for talent with a demonstrated interest. You might want to consider taking advantage of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion.

Actually I am working 100% on this startup, day and night. No other income. It is a fully setup company, family trust, pty ltd (similar to inc, in the US).

I have had job offers of over $200k but startup life is for me. Getting a job is lower on the list than going bankrupt :)

<comment><USER7> Good luck!

I know I can't be alone in hoping to see more from you on this. I'm curious what the service is and will watch for another post about a $9.95 one-off fee Perth-based web business :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 6\. Work on introducing efficiencies into other parts of your life in order to free up more time/energy/mental focus for the business.

You have mentioned that you are eating better and exercising more. But what time sinks do you have that could be eliminated or reduced? Most people (at least in America) spend quite a lot of time on just maintaining their personal possessions. I have few personal possessions and it gives me more time for other things. Most people have lots of very inefficient processes in their personal lives and are typically reluctant to consider making changes which would eliminate housework or reduce travel time for common tasks and so on. For example, many Americans have long commutes to work and complain about how negatively this impacts their lives but will not consider moving to shorten the commute. (I know that is a poor example for you since you work from home, but it comes to mind because I find it so baffling. They typically state that they live far away because they don't want work to consume their lives but the net result is that work consumes more of their lives due to the longer commute eating up more of their time.)

<comment><USER9> >They typically state that they live far away because they don't want work to consume their lives

People typically have long commutes because they a) can't find suitable employment within a reasonable distance of their existing home, or b) can't afford to live within reasonable distance of where they work. Not everyone can simply pick up and move. In a two-income household, it's a balance in commute distance for both parties. Some people would rather commute an hour for work and live near family. Some people simply can't sell their homes. I've never, however, heard anyone say that they live far away because they don't want work to consume their lives.

<comment><USER8> Well, you and I clearly know different people. The most common reason I have been given for a long commute to work is that they don't want to live near their job. I am well aware that in two income families and other situations, sometimes compromises are necessary. But I know people currently and have known people in the past who really were free to choose and freely chose a long commute, not because they _had to_ for any of the reasons you cite. And I have also known people who complained bitterly about the cost of gas and other burdens of living with a long commute who blew off (as in dismissed without a real reason) any and all suggestions for trying to improve the situation. After a while, I stop being sympathetic.</comment></comment></comment>


Yellow dye 1 could be the key to immortality - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature09873.html <comment><USER2> _In The Pipeline_ [1] covers this well. [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/04/01/live_long_an...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/04/01/live_long_and_prosper_and_be_bright_yellow_at_the_same_time.php)

Researchers were speculating that if they could just bind _something_ to defective proteins they could get them cleaned out of cells. Noting that they could see the defective structures because they were staining them yellow, they used their yellow stain. Instant 60% lifespan increase in (yellow) nematodes. If only nematodes could award Nobel prizes.

Other non-dye chemicals were found to work similarly. If this goes anywhere in the end, I don't think we need to fear being ruled by an upper class of chartreuse immortals.

[1] Best known around HN for the "Things I Won't Work With" series: [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/)

</comment><comment><USER3> *cancer.[1]

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_I>

<comment><USER4> I don't understand: the article appears to report on the effect of Thioflavin T (ThT), which is not among the numerous synonyms for Sudan I that the wikipedia article lists. I followed the Sudan III and Sudan IV references, and didn't find anything there, either.

I am not a chemist; just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great unsubstantiaed link-bait title + only $32.00 paywall for the secret to everlasting life. What fun the internet's become!

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome linkbait + paywall

The intro paragraph was definitely written by a scientist</comment>


The Recode Project — An active archive of computer art - <AUTHOR> http://recodeproject.com/

<comment><USER2> The ReCode Project is a community-driven effort to preserve computer art by translating it into a modern programming language (<http://processing.org>).

Every translated work will be available to the public and contemporary artists to learn from, share, and build on.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's cool. I think my first computer-related job was circa 1984, when I worked for Vera Molnar and her husband. Some of her art is in that archive, but there's more at <http://www.veramolnar.com/diapo.php?y=1984>.

All I really remember is being asked to draw triangles on the screen; an amazing interactive computer graphics simulation of a beach that let one adjust sun position and wave direction with knobs; and that I don't think I was ever paid; I don't really mind.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wonderful initiative. Everything CC-licensed, code on Github. Cool!

Just wondering why they don't use Processing.js so you can view the works in the browser.

<comment><USER5> HI there, I'm the creator of ReCode Project. We had some works that would not run in the browser and wanted to treat all works as equally as possible. Also, we are trying to reach beginners as much as experts and as of now Processing.js is not being taught in most educational programs. I thought regular Processing would provide full functionality and better accessibility. I suppose accepting .js translations wouldn't be a big deal, I'd just have to do some more work on the site. It's a valid question and one I think needs revisiting. Thanks for bringing it up.

<comment><USER4> Hi mepler. Thanks for the comment. My main concern wasn't translations, but simply being able to view the examples in-browser instead of having to copy- paste stuff to a local installation (which many people might not have). It might make the barrier to entry lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool stuff here , thanks for sharing.</comment>