Show HN: StackShare – discover and discuss software stacks - <AUTHOR> http://stackshare.io/ <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. In general, I think there's great potential in anything that connects developers with other developers to provide reviews of software.

Recently, I tried to research some of the new CMS/API platforms that have been released in the last year. There was no information. I'm sure these API's have been used thousands of times, but developer has written a review. So I'm left making decisions off marketing pages and PR-driven blog entries. Implementation takes hours that I don't have, I just want a trusted review.

It's really dry territory. You can do well here.

<comment><USER3> I'd especially love that for eCommerce systems as well. They require a bit more of a commitment than a CMS (at least that is the usual case).

Right now, the only mature ones I know of are all PHP based :/.. I hope that's just me missing something though.

<comment><USER2> Not really. At least e-commerce has a pretty capable incumbent (Shopify).

CMS is an interesting case, though. There are 4-5 companies trying to take on WordPress. I could go with the incumbent, but I'd love -- LOVE -- some real dev reviews of that stuff.

Like, where's the fucking unboxing video for developer software?

<comment><USER4> Can you mention which 4-5 companies you think are doing a good job of taking on WordPress? I can only think of one or two, off the top of my head.

<comment><USER2> Maybe "doing a good job" is an overstatement at this time. These companies seem to be taking shots at the CMS component of Wordpress:

[https://www.contentful.com](https://www.contentful.com)

[https://prismic.io](https://prismic.io)

[http://osmek.com/](http://osmek.com/)

[https://buildwithcraft.com](https://buildwithcraft.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for creating this site! I am a Computer (Software) Engineering student and love to develop web applications in my free time. I am always looking to further my skillset and it seems this will prove really useful in understanding the choice of infrastructure/tools/languages by large companies.

Can anyone recommend any resources to better understand the interaction between the aforementioned choices (e.g. why would one company prefer a certain combination of language and infrastructure over a different combination)?

<comment><USER6> If you go to an individual company's page, you'll see references which may include a post/article about why they chose x over y. Tumblr's tech stack page ([http://stackshare.io/tumblr/tumblr](http://stackshare.io/tumblr/tumblr)) has an article about why they chose Scala over other options and it's pretty neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting site. A valuable tool for startups and developers looking to expand their toolset.

Please make a shortcut for "I use this", so we can add technologies without navigating to their individual pages. I added 10 technologies off the top of my head but I keep being reminded of other ones I use and adding them involves a lot of clicking and back and forth.

Added to favourites!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, will do! Currently, you have to add them to a stack or contribute/vote on content on their page. We'll definitely look into making that easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great! I like being able to see so many different Utilities and DevOps tools being used. But it seems like many of the top stacks don't mention the application frameworks or languages that they're using. Why might that be the case?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is neat. One thing, would it be possible to show "verified" accounts? Meaning if someone puts up the stack that Twitter uses, how do I know for sure this isn't someone's guess and someone at Twitter actually posted it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! That has been a requested feature for quite some time so we added it: [http://stackshare.io/parse/parse](http://stackshare.io/parse/parse) (more here: [http://stackshare.io/stacks](http://stackshare.io/stacks)). A lot of the non-verified stacks have citations, so even if someone didn't post their stack you can see where the info came from.

<comment><USER9> Ah I didn't notice that. Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand what is up with your site - this and the old LeanStack - but when I have Ghostery enabled I'm completely unable to click buttons. Mind taking a look at it maybe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. We gather metrics on site usage so we can monitor how people are using the site. We're looking into a fix.

<comment><USER11> OK, guys, if you are watching me using your site then could you PLEASE announce that in a very big red block on the landing page or in a way that cookies are announced on many sites nowadays?

You should accept that usage monitoring is an inacceptable privacy invasion for many people nowadays and we would like to be informed about that kind of monitoring before using a site, so we can decide if we like it or not.

<comment><USER12> Do you really expect any site to not use Google Analytics in this day and age?

Or am I talking to a troll (username)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To avoid some confusion, this was actually called leanstack.io, and it was launched back in 2013.

<comment><AUTHOR> We wrote a blog post about the relaunch: [http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now- stackshare](http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now-stackshare). We should probably link to the post on the homepage though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very cool! Right this morning I was looking at who's using django+mysql.

Can I ask you how accurate is the data and if/when it's "certified" from the source? From my morning search I found pinterest and rdio using both django and mysql, but this is not reflected in StackShare (missing mysql for pinterest, missing both django, mysql for rdio -- again, I'm not sure about my results, it's just a coincidence that I was searching that).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Some stacks have more info than others for sure. The quality of the data will get better as more companies claim their pages and verify their stack (e.g. [http://stackshare.io/mailgun/mailgun](http://stackshare.io/mailgun/mailgun)). For stacks that are not verified, we're inviting users to be community moderators and contributors to these pages to beef up the citations :)

<comment><USER14> Awesome, thank you for the details!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really cool, I've wanted to create something like this myself for some time. How did you go about initially curating enough data?

On another note, it would be great to see a brief description about why the company uses a particular technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you asked! We started off filling it out for the popular startups, which eventually created the desire for others to join in and do it themselves (hence the rebranding from Leanstack.io to StackShare).

Regarding your suggestion, every page has this tab: [http://stackshare.io/stackshare/stackshare/details](http://stackshare.io/stackshare/stackshare/details). This feature was released today so not many stacks have the details just yet. But we'll be highlighting companies every week and having them fill this out, so stay tuned! Also, feel free to share your stack :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First of all, thank you. It's great!

I'm interested in the 'business' aspect of this site. How do you plan to make profit ? How can you make people come back to the site when the stacks don't change that quickly ?

</comment><comment><USER17> Dammit this was one of my startup ideas...oh well. Nice work btw. It might be interesting to group companies by industry. Considering I work in education, I would want to know what LMSs and CRMs are used by educational institutes for example.

Which raises another thought: wouldn't some organizations want to keep their stack secret from competitors, since a mature stack is usually the result of years of experienced decision-making.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is great. I'll definitely show it to my students (undergrad Information Systems majors) who are trying to figure out what tools to learn.

</comment><comment><USER19> Where are the Windows stack components? For example, I don't believe Stack Overflow runs solely on Redis for their data storage.

</comment><comment><USER20> Awesome idea. Top Trumps for Software Stacks!

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice, I've been using [http://www.slant.co](http://www.slant.co) for this sort of thing. Different stacks and commentary from folks on plusses and minuses. The rating system is nice but the question I'm always trying to answer is "Can I solve problem X with Stack Y?"

</comment><comment><USER22> hmmm... doesn't seem to detect cfml as being used. other than that, very nice!!!

I scanned the cfwheels repo: [https://github.com/cfwheels/cfwheels](https://github.com/cfwheels/cfwheels)

picked up almost everything that we're using

</comment><comment><USER23> Leanstack.io was extremely useful for discovering services. Needed best A/B testing tools? I used to go to Leanstack. I don't seem to find any reason to visit Stackshare. I don't really care whether Twitter uses Zendesk or Freshdesk.

<comment><AUTHOR> StackShare has even more tools and services than Leanstack did, with more ways to discover them. Perhaps our messaging needs some work. StackShare is still very much about finding the best tools: [http://stackshare.io/mobile-a-b- testing](http://stackshare.io/mobile-a-b-testing). Would love to hear your feedback, shoot me an email if you're up for it: yonas [at] stackshare.io.

EDIT: Just noticed you're behind Virtkick. Funny enough we just listed you last night: [http://stackshare.io/virtkick](http://stackshare.io/virtkick)

<comment><USER23> That's indeed extremely funny. I spotted it some time after I wrote the original post, then started writing my auto-trolling reply to self. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice site. I've been the user since it called leanstack.io . It's pretty useful!

</comment><comment><USER25> This and the then leanstack.io is actually close / already fulfills #54 idea in [https://github.com/samsquire/ideas](https://github.com/samsquire/ideas), great and very interesting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been created before, really cool idea!

<comment><USER27> [http://leanstack.io](http://leanstack.io) is very similar.

EDIT: Oh, leanstack.io now redirects to stackshare.io... So I guess this is a rebranding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cool idea, but there seem to be a few duplicates for Java. When I search 'Java', I see 3-4 duplicate results, only the first one has any companies listed, and the rest seem to be empty?

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like the scanning may be broken. I just tried it with [https://seatgeek.com](https://seatgeek.com) and it says the site isn't public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eh, sorry. Should be fixed now. Try pasting in the URL

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice work yonas... here's my side project as well, doing something similar :)

[https://packageindex.com/#!/](https://packageindex.com/#!/)

All the best Yonas...

</comment><comment><USER31> Great job! I wouldn't have created [http://hackertoolbox.com](http://hackertoolbox.com) if I knew this. Time to kill myself!

</comment><comment><USER32> One feature I would request is search. Say I want to see all stack which have Ec2 or digital ocean in it.

Rest this will seriously be helpful to us.

Edit: Its already there but not directly.

</comment><comment><USER33> Oh, neat. This will save me ~5 minutes of recon time if I ever need to do a pen-test for any of the companies that are submitted here. ;)

<comment><USER34> I've also been finding it useful to identify companies for product validation testing by seeing who uses various underlying components that are within my core demographic, combined with LinkedIn/moves.io to find someone to speak to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The front page's "Sign in with Github" doesn't work for me on Chrome/Linux (Chromium 37 on Ubuntu 14.04).

</comment><comment><USER36> Joshu had the very interesting [http://www.stackparts.com](http://www.stackparts.com)

</comment><comment><USER37> Had a similar idea and an awesome name "What the Stack?"

Wish I would have went with it seeing how awesome this is.

</comment><comment><USER38> Doesn't let you submit a new site on mobile :(. Nexus 5 with latest stable Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Browsing" button on the main page doesn't work for. Firefox on OSX.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry! Do you have javascript disabled? If so, you'll have a very hard time using the site because of how we're tracking events.

<comment><USER39> I never disable javascript. Also no Ghostery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is basically leanstack right? Whats the catch, rebranding?

<comment><USER41> We explain the relaunch and new features here: [http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now- stackshare](http://stackshare.io/posts/leanstack-io-is-now-stackshare)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is there a way to embed this inside a company website?

</comment><comment><USER43> No RSS feed... really?

<comment><USER3> I didn't know people still used that. What would you want out of the RSS feed from this site? (Actually curious :3..)

Edit: Ah, didn't see the trending updates before now. Altering my question a bit: is there a lot of ppl on HN using RSS?

<comment><USER43> Oh... look how many people switched just to feedly after google shut their service down.

What I want to have out of a feed? Getting the updates/new stacks without daily checking the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> When did IaaS/PaaS/SaaS products become part of the "stack?"

<comment><USER34> When did it not? I've been interviewing people for the past few weeks asking them about their stack and they all invariably say at one point "running on (aws|heroku|azure)". The [PaaS wiki entry]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service)) itself says it's providing a "solution stack" as a service.</comment></comment>


How one woman got 50% female speakers at a tech conference - <AUTHOR> http://www.attendly.com/how-one-woman-defied-the-gender-gap-by-achieving-a-5050-gender-ratio-at-a-tech-conference/

<comment><USER3> "get as many women on stage as I possibly could."

Isn't enforcing a gender ratio just more gender discrimination? How is "we need more $x" any less discriminating than "we need less $y"? You are just discriminating against the other gender.

Counting a 50/50 gender split as a win is silly if you have put together a shitty conference just to satisfy some ratio. Why not have the best person for the job? I don't care if you are male/female, black/white/pink/purple/transparent, straight/gay/transgender, human/animal/robot/script, able bodied/disabled or anything in between....put the best person in the job - that is real gender equality.

<comment><USER4> She knew the issue was the lack of submissions, so she worked hard to get lots of talk submissions from women. When she actually selected the talks, she did so without knowledge of the person's gender. She got the ratio she wanted by encouraging submissions, not by enforcing a quota.

<comment><USER3> "She got the ratio she wanted"

That's my issue - the ratio _she wanted_ just perpetuates this gender discrimination. Unless the gender ratio of expert speakers in this industry is somehow exactly 50/50, she has discriminated against one gender just to satisfy her magical ratio.

Whether she did this blind to the applicants gender is of no consequence - <USER2> thinks it was a win when IMHO, is just gender more discrimination.

<comment><USER5> Her blind judging produced an even gender split. How are men discriminated against?

<comment><USER6> Is it unfair to point out that discrimination is evident if the proportion of women speakers at the conference is not equal to the proportion of female experts in the field? That the general population is a little over half women does not imply that every profession's demographics are 50/50. Before claiming that the _true_ problem is that women are less likely to apply and therefore a system based on people applying of their own accord must be flawed, perhaps we should first take a look at the demographics of the field itself (and eventually we'll have to go all the way back to middle school, when girls with a talent for math or technical subjects seem to suddenly lose interest).

<comment><USER5> In this (and other similar) case(s), we can conclude that there's no difference between male and female speakers, since the gender ratio resulting from blind judging matches the submission pool. In other words, there's no essential gender difference in technology, there's just a demographic artifact of sexism.

So if the larger demographic continues to mirror that artifact, that's not an argument for reproducing that artificial split in the conference. Indeed, taking care to mix the submissions pool to reflect the larger gender split does nothing but perpetuate an artificial and historical and culturally driven imbalance, when we can clearly see that no essential difference between the sexes exists. It's not discriminatory to balance out a contingent happenstance that doesn't accurately reflect essential differences.

A bit shorter: There's nothing discriminatory about the removal of undeserved advantage.

<comment><USER6> "It's not discriminatory to balance out a contingent happenstance that doesn't accurately reflect essential differences."

It is when you are doing something that gives people a career boost, and being a speaker at a conference is definitely a career boost. If you keep targeting a minority in some field to speak at conferences, then the members of that minority will have an advantage in advancing their careers -- they are being given more of a voice than other people. If the imbalance in the field itself is large, which is the case in technical fields, then that minority is getting _more_ of a boost.

In other words, what you are doing is trying to hide the fact that you are giving an advantage to a particular group. It is no different than asking GRE questions about polo.

"A bit shorter: There's nothing discriminatory about the removal of undeserved advantage."

That is not what happened here. Nobody had an undeserved advantage _in the conference admissions process_ ; the problem lies elsewhere. Conference speakers are a surface-level problem.

If you start in a field where women and men are equally represented, but where men dominate conferences, this sort of thing might make sense. You are starting in a field where that is not the case, painting a "fix" on the surface of it, and calling it a victory. It's not a victory, it is discrimination, and the effort spent on this farce should have been spent on solving the broader demographic problem (but I suspect that the author of the article has run out of ideas on how to solve that problem, and has instead chosen something easier to work on).

<comment><USER5> If you're saved from competing against a certain number of potential competitors in getting accepted to a conference, you have an advantage. If you're saved from such competition because of historical demographic imbalances, you have an undeserved advantage, and removing that advantage is not discriminatory, any more than forcing the conference organizer's nephew to go through the blind judging process is discriminatory. Or do you think systemically mitigating nepotism is discriminatory to those with familial connections?

Perhaps a different question is in order: If men have an advantage in getting selected for conferences because they're men, then do you think the blind judging is discriminatory? After all, it removes an advantage they have.

I've responded elsewhere about how diversity at conferences assist in addressing the root cause of the imbalance. I would observe here that your prescription to address it in middle school rather than at conferences is too cute by half: lack of female participation at conferences is part of the lack of participation in STEM generally that serves to dissuade girls in middle school from continuing in STEM.

<comment><USER6> "lack of female participation at conferences is part of the lack of participation in STEM generally that serves to dissuade girls in middle school from continuing in STEM."

Do middle school girls go to conferences? Do they read conference proceedings? _Are they even aware of conferences_?

<comment><USER5> I've replied to this in responses to you elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If your system of finding worthy students or speakers to promote is to have them come to you and ask, but a solid body of research shows that women won't do so, you've institutionalized a gap"

This applies just as much to finding employees. The resumes don't just appear out of thin air usually, and it's no excuse to say you just didn't get any from women.

I myself used this excuse in the past, but I hope not to make any excuses in the future.

<comment><USER7> Investing time to target a certain demographic seems discriminative to the excluded demographics. If equality is the goal, this seems hypocritical.

<comment><USER5> Not when the targeted demographic is historically under-represented. Making an effort to include those who wouldn't be is not the same as reducing submissions from those who are normally included.

<comment><USER7> How does a demographic become a)targeted, and b) under-represented? It comes across as arbitrary. Especially in the context of running a business to deliver value.

I think if you see all people as just people, a notion like "targeting a demographic" comes across as racist / sexist / and plain old discriminative. But that's just one opinion.

<comment><USER5> A demographic gets targeted just because it's under-represented. Women are under-represented in STEM for historical reasons that amount to widespread sexism.

You suggest gender-blindness is the solution. I don't disagree that such blindness is a worthwhile goal, but to simply say "let's all be gender blind now" without addressing an existing under-representation just cements the imbalance. Demographics realities have inertia. Women don't go into STEM just because that's not something 'that women do'. It's only appropriate to be blind once the imbalance is wiped out.

That's not to say that affirmative action as previously imagined is the right way to address the imbalance--it's been shown not to be for a variety of reasons. But as this shows, and as GoGaRuCo shows, when you eliminate gender advantages for men, women are selected equally in blind judging, so there's no essential difference between men and women, just an historical artifact worth eliminating.

<comment><USER7> I don't accept the notion of a demographic being "under-represented". I think it's arbitrary and you haven't addressed it. There is no "correct" amount of representation, and trying to offset workforce statistics due to some misplaced sense of morality is hardly altruistic. If people are discouraging women from STEM, address that. If people are racist, address that. You feel there's too many white people in your office? The answer isn't affirmative action, it's to quite being a racist. There's no such thing as too much of a race (unless, you're a racist).

To say more women should be in STEM is sexist. I mean, if more women get into STEM, great. But to say an entire sex _should_ do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't _want_ to study stem. It's possible they value other knowledge that is equally important. To say that they're _under- represented_ is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that the imbalance is what's discouraging women from entering STEM careers; addressing it just means doing things like this conference is doing to increase female participation.

 _But to say an entire sex should do something is nonsensical. It's entirely possible they don't want to study stem._

You realize these two sentences contradict each other, I hope. You say that it's non-sensical to discuss what the entire sex should do, then try to talk about what the entire gender may or may not want as a reason for (or against) acting.

 _To say that they're under-represented is to belittle what individuals choose to do with their lives._

No, it doesn't, because it doesn't require any individual to do anything, or to give an individual responsibility for what the entire gender does.

When I talk about "under" represented, I mean that absent the historical injustice of sexism, you would see a different gender balance. And as this conference and GoGaRuCo demonstrate, when you control for the historical imbalance, women and men are selected equally to speak in a blind process, thus showing equal ability, if not interest; it's reasonable to assume that after correcting the historical artifact, gendered participation ratios would be much closer.

I've already agreed that affirmative action isn't the answer, but this-- community outreach, basically--isn't affirmative action in any sense.

<comment><USER8> > The problem is that the imbalance is what's discouraging women from entering > STEM careers

I hear this quite a bit, but it always seems to be asserted without substantiation. What evidence is there that it's true?

And, more importantly, if we're going to make distinctions between individuals based on their membership in putative demographic categories, why not also distinguish between those who internalize that demographic category as part of their identity, and those who do not? It would seem that an inhibition to pursue one career or another due to demographics would likely indicate that one is part of the latter category; but would we not be more likely to prefer the former category, and want to work people who assert their own ambitions without allowing themselves to be constrained by internalized abstractions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > In her own words: "I always end up sitting in a room listening to the same > four straight white men agree with each other on some panel."

How does she know they're straight? Does she know each and every one of them on a very personal basis?

</comment><comment><USER10> It's impressive that she went through all of that extra effort to solicit submissions from a particular group and then didn't give any special preference to that group when accepting submissions.

<comment><USER11> Almost incredible. Or is it uncredible? I always confuse the two.

<comment><USER10> I'd go with the former :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Saturday's New York Times carried an article "How to Attack the Gender Wage Gap? Speak Up", pointing out that women earn only a fraction of what men are paid. The Times cites some numbers: "77 cents for white women; 69 cents for black women. The final dollar — so small that it can fit in a coin purse, represents 57 cents, for Latina women."

While for the non-profit organization described in the article this is seen as a problem, a profit-minded business owner might see this as an opportunity. Why not find an industry with mostly male employees, offer jobs at 57 percent of the current wages in that industry, attract an all-Latina workforce, and crush the competition with labor costs that are a fraction of those in the rest of the industry?_

[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit- opportu...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2012/12/17/profit-opportunity- if-women-earn-less-than-men/)

</comment><comment><USER13> How could the selection process be gender blind when she knew some of the applicants? Surely she would be able to tell who each individual was when she was going through the applications.

</comment><comment><USER14> Now we need one woman, one black and one homosexual getting 50% speakers of each group at a tech conference.

<comment><USER5> Which isn't a problem if you have blind judging of submissions--just make sure that your submission pool is diverse, and pick the best papers without reference to race, orientation, or gender.

<comment><USER6> ..and if the field itself has a diversity problem, then what do you do? This is not a conference-level problem; it is a problem that starts _much earlier in life_ and which will only be fixed _by solving it earlier in life_. Go to middle schools and figure out why girls who were doing well in math and science in elementary school suddenly lost interest in those subjects, and once you have worked your way from there to having more diversity in technical professions, we can talk about whatever diversity problems are left at conferences.

<comment><USER5> It may not be a conference level problem, but diversity at the conference level can go a long way to showing girls in middle school that STEM careers are viable for them. We know that a lot of the reason girls drop out along the way just is the perception of STEM as a male dominated field (and paralleling that, in countries like China where it's not considered strictly male, we see high female participation).

<comment><USER6> "diversity at the conference level can go a long way to showing girls in middle school that STEM careers are viable for them"

When was the last time you saw middle school students wandering around at a conference?

"We know that a lot of the reason girls drop out along the way just is the perception of STEM as a male dominated field"

Yes, clearly that's part of the problem. So why didn't the organizer of this conference go out of her way to invite middle school girls to see all the women she managed to get into the conference?

When I was an undergrad, the EE department had a problem: the policy of doubling female enrollment each year had to be revised to having female enrollment at all. Part of the solution was to print new admissions pamphlets that showed equal numbers of men and women, and equal numbers of white, Asian, and black people (none of these proportions even remotely reflected the reality of the department) smiling while working on their breadboard projects (also somewhat disconnected from reality). This is forgivable, of course, for the following reasons:

      1. It is an advertisement.  Advertisements always paint a rosier picture.
      2. Nobody received any sort of career boost from being featured in the pictures.
      3. The pamphlets were sent to high schools, which is exactly who the department needed to target to meet the goal of increased female enrollment.

Compare that to the conference:

      1. Conferences are not advertisements for a field or job (usually)
      2. Being invited to speak at a conference is a career-booster
      3. The demographics at a conference have no impact on middle or high school girls' attitudes about math and science.

<comment><USER5> I'll ignore your more ridiculing arguments.

You continue to try to locate the problem in middle school while removing any means, direct or indirect, of addressing it. As you observe, speaking at a conference is beneficial to one's career; fostering female participation in conferences advances the careers (and visibility) of females in the field generally. You don't need to bus in a bunch of twelve year old girls and point at the female speakers. You just need the field itself not to look so totally male. In medicine, rising female participation outside of nursing has demonstrably accelerated the rate of female participation since the 1970s. The same can happen in the rest of the STEM field. It's obviously not a turnkey solution, but is valuable as part of a general attempt to diversify the field.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prison Striker's List of Demands - <AUTHOR> https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/08/22/historic-us-prison-strike-humane-conditions-political-rights/ <comment><AUTHOR> The question is, how can society's interests be better served as regards the mass incarceration of offenders? Is it slavery, or does it just look like it to a minority of the population in, related to, neighboring with, or heading for prison?</comment>


"We want Google to be the third half of your brain." – Sergey Brin - windy-topology https://twitter.com/LifeTechPsych/status/1290698420148219906 <comment><USER2> I'd rather have a "bicycle for the brain", so it can go farther, function better and be healthy rather than a crutch or replacement for key functionalities.

Right now, I see a lot of tools and interfaces that make it lazy - <AUTHOR> consumer level stuff. Perhaps Krug's Classic "don't make me think" was taken too far. Perhaps a new book, "make me think better" would be more useful in improving human critical thinking capacity and expanding the human experience.

<comment> windy-topology "Bicycle for the brain". Now that's one of hell of a metaphor.

<comment><USER3> At least it wasn't the final name of the computer.

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Bicycle.txt](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Bicycle.txt)

<comment><USER4> "Macintosh seemed to be acroynm proof."

Must-Acquire Computer, Integrated, Not Too Overengineered, Sensible, Hyped

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The successors of GPT-3 might achieve that. They should be able to operate in both text and image/video domain, having all these modalities as both input and output, have a longer context window and be up to date with the recent news/publications in the domains of interest of the user.

But fundamentally it shows it can be done. It's a general language interface to a massive trove of knowledge and can perform a yet undetermined number of symbolic manipulation and reasoning tasks. A future version could be VR enabled, creating a holodeck like experience - something that could prove to be very addictive.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately, that would make me nearly 1/3 stupider, which I can don't think I can afford.</comment>


Probiotics for bipolar disorder mania - <AUTHOR> https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/probiotics-for-bipolar-disorder-mania-2018062514125 <comment><USER2> My mother was diagnosed with bipolar and treated with lithium and other drugs for years before she was diagnosed with celiac, and autoimmune disease that centers around the small bowel. It was assumed that I would have this issue myself, and indeed I've had many times where my moods dominated my life. It never felt like 'me' to be depressed, or hyperactive, and I had a wide variety of other mood and neurological issues such as anxiety, confusion, constant fatigue and insomnia, along with a variety of unexplained groups of physical symptoms. So, obviously I turned out to have celiac disease too.

Now that I have stopped consuming gluten, the trigger for celiac, my moods are much more stable. When I inadvertently consume some, part of the reaction I have (which is days long) includes psychological symptoms. Now, in the absence of frequent gluten poisoning, these symptoms stand out.

However, with all this experience, I have no idea how my microbiome affects my mental health. The effects could easily be explained by the immune storm kicked off in my body by gluten. I also have little idea of how my health observations relate to normal people who don't have celiac. Probiotics don't seem to affect my sense of well-being.

There is a startup in Los Alamos focused on personal microbiomes. I'm thinking of getting analyzed: [https://www.viome.com](https://www.viome.com)

<comment><USER3> Same experience. Bipolar relatives, volatile in childhood, diagnosed at 20, way more stable now since switching my diet. From severe diagnosed anxiety disorder to calm in one week after removing gluten from diet. Symptoms, especially self harm ideation , grandiosity and anxiety come back for exactly 48-72 hours when I ingest it and then subside. Life changing. Probiotics and other vitamins never made that much difference by comparison. Bipolar has many causes though. The only biological difference between those who self harm and those who don't is zinc deficiency.

<comment><USER4> Do you take magnesium? I have the same kind of thing. When I add magnesium, and stick to the diet, I feel like a normal human being.

<comment><USER5> I started taking vitamin D (D3). I did so because of a family history of cancer et al. I had no expectation of a psychological effect.

Two days later, I was asking myself what the heck had changed. My mood seemed much more stable, even, comfortable.

The only thing that had changed, was the vitamin D.

Now, if/when I run out of it and don't get to the store for a few days, I notice my mood regressing. Particularly when I haven't recently gotten significant, direct skin sun exposure.

As for magnesium, more recently I read that, among other things, it helps with vitamin D absorption and/or utilization. This is not its only apparent benefit. And, unlike some other supplements, there appears to be direct observation of subjects/people to back up claims of these other benefits. I don't know about studies that elucidate the relative biochemical mechanisms.

<comment><USER2> Vitamin D improves my mood and also peripheral neuropathy (extremity tingling). I was probably fairly low on it from living in a sunless place and having celiac. Apparently, some of the effects like peripheral neuropathy in celiac are linked to poor absorption of vitamins due to the typical intestinal damage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dr. David Perlmutter has a fantastic talk (called Brain Maker, and associated with his book of the same name) on this mind-gut link. Synopsis here:

[https://experiencelife.com/article/healthy-gut-healthy- brain...](https://experiencelife.com/article/healthy-gut-healthy-brain/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if gut flora has more to do with absorption of the medicine than anything else.

<comment><USER8> Sure - there are plenty of things you can eat or drink to increase absorption and metabolism, one famous interaction is with grapefruit: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit–drug_interactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit–drug_interactions)

<comment><USER9> Also garlic extract, curcumin and piperine (or bioperine), change how things are metabolized and processed in the liver. I take those and they amplify the effect of a medication I take, so I have to be extra careful with dosage.

<comment><USER8> On the flip side you can often get by with lower dosages, which in some cases mean less side effects.

<comment><USER9> I concur. The medication was in fact causing nasty side effects and I was able to cut the dosage in half. I may even be able to ween myself off it entirely once I find the right combination of natural alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, there was a book called GAPS-- Gut and Psychology Syndrome published in 2004, whose author claimed you can relieve some psychological disorders with her protocol designed to heal your gut and populate it with better flora. I don't think it is a cure-all, but there are thousands of Amazon reviews saying this changed their life.

I have ADHD, and had moderate success with it when I could stick with it...but the protocol is brutal. Absolutely brutal. With the added difficulty that I'm allergic to some of the staples of the diet. I've never been able to make it more than a couple weeks. The suggested duration is 18 months. Those who have stuck with it have reported good results.

I believe the GAPS diet is based on something called the "specific carbohydrate diet." Which, if I understand correctly is from the 1920s.

<comment><USER11> > The suggested duration is 18 months. Those who have stuck with it have > reported good results.

Perhaps being able to stick to a "brutally" difficult task for 18 months is also highly correlated with already having good mental health, or a remission period?

<comment><USER10> I have often wondered something similar about these self-help books. I've tried a number of these diets over the years and they all have a thing in common: the diet is very if not outright impossible to follow.

When the diet fails to achieve its goals, inevitably, I blame myself.</comment></comment></comment>


Event industry loses an innovator - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crowdvine.com/2010/02/06/event-industry-loses-an-innovator/

<comment><USER2> I can relate to this post quite a bit. During the dot com boom, I worked as a consultant to quite a few startups. All of them have since disappeared, but all were great ideas that would have survived had they not need to be immensely popular immediately. One example was a movie streaming service that would right now be way ahead of netflix, which wasn't even a thought at the time, but there just weren't enough people with broadband then.

Compare that to now. I'm running a bootstrapped startup that has time to wait on customers. We have the patience to work with existing customers and nurture them and make them very happy. We are cash flow positive and there's really no reason we won't keep growing forever.

We got started several years ago and are in a market that sees newcomers come and go within the span of 6 months. I've watched the industry leader crash and burn -- it was venture backed by SAP Ventures and many big names in silicon valley, but it was too soon. Not enough customers and the vc's closed the doors.

Some of our competitors do what they do precisely _because_ they don't have a long term vision. They have the short term vision that wants to pop! Get big fast or die. But not all technology gets big fast. Sometimes a patient slow growth of customers is the way to go. That's the traditional way businesses get started, grow and succeed, but today, it seems the majority of tech entrepreneurs think the only way to go is the vc path to spectacular growth, but old style businesses still work in technology too.

Lesson is, take your time. Get profitable enough to quit your job and concentrate on the business and own all of it for yourself. Slowly grow your revenue like you would a salary or something else. You don't need a million dollars a year to be happy, if you're making $100k or even $40k on your own with a product you've developed, you can easily live off that and have all the freedom and luxury that comes with being your own boss -- or well, having customers who are your own boss. But with even 10 customers, it becomes a lot easier to say no to the wrong direction and focus on the path forward.

On the other hand, it's almost impossible to say no to an employer or a venture capitalist that pays your rent and they can easily steer you in a direction that isn't in your long term best interst, which is and should always be happiness.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have done one investor funded startup (not a huge success) and now three years into a bootstrapped startup (slowly beginning to be successful), I can see the attractions of both models.

However, it's very apparent that investors have very different motivations to founders. Averaged over their work, investors need to have a few big successes and don't mind if most fail. But a founder only works at one company, so their expected return is less in this "go for broke" model.

Taking funding gives you the resources to do more. Bootstrapping gives you the time do it right.

Time will tell which model is best for me. I suppose it's whether you take a short or long term view of your career, and your desire for size of success.

<comment><USER4> I talked to a lot of people at the Business of Software conference (basically a conference by and for boot strappers) and a huge number of them had five hard years followed by easy street. I know for myself, the three years we've been going have been as much about learning new skill sets as they have about building customers and product. Three years in, things are opening up a tiny bit, but I definitely feel like we're on a five year plan.

<comment><USER3> So, only two more years to go!

That timetable makes sense. There's just so much to do and learn, and the number of people involved is inherently limited by the resources available. Three years is probably the time needed to build something wonderful and learn about the environment within which it exists, and then you've got two years to learn how to sell it!

<comment><USER5> You should know how to sell it from day 1.

<comment><USER3> "No plan survives contact with the enemy." ~ Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke

Of course, one always 'knows' how to sell the product from day 1. It's just that the more you do, the more you know about how to actually sell it. I've found that being in a startup is a continual learning process, where you mainly learn how little you know!

If you've been successful in your startup with the same sales plan that you had at the very beginning, then I'd be somewhat shocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is interesting to see how one competitor assesses the demise of another but the author does not really offer much to show that "VC is a competitive disadvantage" or that it really was instrumental in EventVue's failure in this instance.

The EventVue post explaining the failure (linked in the post) identifies several key mistakes involving flawed execution but not suggesting that the company had overextended itself on account of its funding. The money raised was apparently a small angel round, with a somewhat larger follow-on round, one would assume from the same angels. At some point, they determined that there was no good market worth pursuing and shut it down.

I don't see anything here to implicate VC funding as the culprit. In saying that, I would add that I love bootstrap companies and believe that, in general, they represent the wave of the future for the startup world. I just don't think anything in this piece supports the idea that VC funding kills companies (VC funding, whatever its shortcomings, is and always will be an integral, and major, part of the startup world and, indeed, of its premier segment).

A prime strategy of many of the bootstrap companies I work with is to use bootstrapping, coupled with angel funding, to build valuation while _deferring_ any attempt at VC funding and, then, once initial goals are met, to approach VCs from a position of comparative strength and high valuation so as to get good terms. Others, of course, seek to bootstrap their way toward an acquisition. I would say only a minority plan to build for the long-term in the way the author of this piece discusses (this path can be treacherous in fast-changing tech markets).

The post itself is a good one. I just think the author assumes rather than proves his point about the effect of VC funding on a startup.

</comment><comment><USER7> Classy post. And I'm glad the bootstrapper is still around.

</comment><comment><USER8> _our first competitor.. are shutting down.. this is bad for the event industry.. they blame themselves.. I blame venture capital._

Yet still a very happy and self-satisfied blog-post.</comment>


The Soviet "Bone Records" (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3032206/how-soviet-hipsters-saved-rock-n-roll-with-x-ray-records <comment> guard-of-terra In 80s, Soviet bands also recorded their own albums on tape and they distributed those by copying from tape to tape.

How they got hardware to make records is another fun story entirely, or more like a hundred: there's this book "100 tape albums of Soviet Rock" (100 мангитоальбомов советского рока) with in-depth comments on notable examples.</comment>


The most modern browser there is: Internet Explorer 9 reviewed - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2011/03/the-most-modern-browser-there-is-internet-explorer-9-reviewed.ars <comment><USER2> I really don't know how this is on HN - this is barely much more than a PR plant espousing how fantastic IE9 is. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad IE9 is more standards compliant than past IE versions, but this is basically a promo piece. This made me chuckle though, in the tradition of "it's not a bug, it's a feature":

"In contrast to the other browser developers, Microsoft's approach to standards support has been conservative. The company doesn't want to ever have to remove or fundamentally modify a feature that it has implemented due to changes in specifications. As such, it has taken a policy of only implementing those specifications that are unlikely to undergo any further changes. As a result, Internet Explorer 9 will compare unfavorably on sites like HTML5 Test, but Microsoft views this as far preferable to making developers have to alter their real-world applications just because a specification has changed. "

<comment><USER3> You obviously stopped reading after the first page.

The second page of this article points out a lot of features that Microsoft FINALLY got around to implementing and some of the short-comings that are still lingering. If I remember correct, the last couple paragraphs claim that Firefox 4 or Chrome will pass up IE on features in the near near future. Not exactly a PR plant at that point.

<comment><USER2> No I read the second page. They looked like "half-criticisms" that won't affect the IE userbase - "geeks won't like it", "the 64 bit version sucks" etc.

<comment><USER3> True, those aren't exactly the harshest critiques.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No-one cares if the browser is modern right now. In 2 years, when Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, et.al. have moved on and are even more awesome, we will be stuck with the _exact_ same IE 9 that was released today (sans security fixes).

Microsoft has taught me to dread Internet Explorer, and I see no reason not to feel the same way with this one.

<comment><USER5> Right, we're getting a nice snapshot of technology with IE9, and if that doesn't include Web Workers or some other feature, fine. But the key advantage of Chrome is that WebGL barely worked a few weeks ago, it's better now, and it will be much better a few weeks in the future. Without agressive updating, IE9 will be out of date in a very real way by September.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a fairly inflamatory headline, and the reviewer's definition of "modern" is never explicitly given. I'd argue that the Chromium and WebKit nightlies I downloaded this morning are more "modern" than IE9.

 _Edit:_ Still, kudos to Microsoft on what appears to be a solid, modern web browser. I'm just taking issue with the review's angle.

<comment><USER2> The reviewer gives a hint at their definition of "modern" as "most recently released" when they state "It's arguably the most modern browser on the market—for a few weeks, at any rate."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> IE9 runs on exactly 0 mobile devices. I don't think it's fair to call a browser "modern" when it's the _only_ browser that doesn't run on at least one mobile device. Safari, Opera, Chrome [1], and Firefox all run on a variety of platforms including many mobile devices.

And given that most people see "mobile" as a defining element of modern tech, it's pretty awkward to call a Windows Vista/7-only web browser "modern". Microsoft even has their own, Windows-based mobile platform but it runs IE7/8. If IE9 is modern, why can't I hold it in my hand like _every other web browser_?

[1] While I suppose Chrome isn't branded as such on Android, the Android 3.0 browser is so close in both appearance and capability (and likely, code) that it seems silly to keep them apart.

<comment><USER8> I do not associate the word "modern" with "mobile" at all (at least not in the Windows OS / desktop browser market).

Though, falling over backwards trying to post something negative whenever Microsoft is praised is associated with a few other things such as: zealotry, lack of confidence, ignorance.

<comment><USER7> I am pleased with IE's changes and Microsoft's dedication to bring a better web along. But I strongly disagree that this alone means that IE is now "modern" because is so many other ways it is stuck in the past. It may be an excellent browser (I don't know, my OS doesn't support it) and it may be the fastest out there and it may be very standards compliant. But that definitely doesn't automatically make it modern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Props to Microsoft for

      1. Breaking compatibility with WinXP for performance gains.
      2. Not supporting non-finalized web standards.

<comment><USER10> Actually I disagree with point #2 because their definition of "finalized" is stuff that other browsers have done for 2 years.

Are we really going to have to wait another 2 years for cache.manifest, geolocation, web fonts, web sockets, web workers, drag and drop (and many other things that I can't think of off the top of my head)?

<comment><USER11> Why don't they just finalize these things and put MS's feet to the fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The IE blog is quite good and devoid of any marketing / bs: <http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm currently a big fan of Chrome, but it sounds like IE might be finally worth using. I can't wait to try it.

Also, it seems to me as though Microsoft, at their best, can do a really good job with a product (see also Kinect, Windows Phone 7[1], Bing[2]). But then there are the huge flops like Vista and Kin. It almost seems like what Microsoft really lacks is someone who understands quality and can kill bad projects before they are released. There are still great products being made at Microsoft, but it's sometimes hard to see them past all the crap.

[1] Too bad about the update situation though.

[2] I realize Bing is bleeding money, but I think Bing is a well-designed search engine in search of a sustainable business model.

<comment><USER13> Generally in agreement - albeit a GNU/Linux, Android, iOS and Google user as I still think those a superior to your respective examples.

The one product I'd point out your wrong about is Bing - its been proven very clearly that they literally steal their search result rankings from Google by crawling Google instead of running their own algorithms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Though Windows XP's market share is declining on the back of strong > corporate uptake of Windows 7, it's still the most common version of > Windows. And it can't be used with Internet Explorer 9.

> The performance improvements made by the use of DirectWrite and Direct2D > allow a new class of Web application to be developed.

Sorry it does not allow anything, IE9 won't make IE8,IE7 and IE6 magically go away. Overall this whole article is pointless, it's just an IE9 praise completely out of touch with reality.

<comment><USER13> I've measured on large sites (millions of unique users) IE6 is less than 4% of traffic. So I don't understand why people still hold it up as a problem. No one cares about it anymore, even serious eCommerce sites have given up on that 4%.

IE9 being stable means a large number of users will upgrade. This allows creating web applications with far more capabilities than was possible previously with a large group receiving the best experience. IE7/8 can survive the same content with progressive enhancement, feature detects, shims and so forth.

The reality is IE9 greatly improves the browser landscape. Its a step forward. Sure it might not be as good as Chrome/Safari/Firefox/Opera by a web developers or power users standards and it may not be updated as often. But the average windows user does not care about your opinion. None of the available browsers are "modern" either. All have serious bugs and braindead behavior in some way or another.</comment></comment>


SoundCloud Spammers on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/11/soundcloud-spammers-on-twitter/ <comment><USER2> I've noticed Twitch has a similar problem. If you enable Twitch to tweet for you when you go live, you often get favorited by bots that advertise selling followers/viewers.</comment>


Show HN: Newco-legacy, open sourcing a failed startup - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blaze33/newco-legacy <comment><AUTHOR> Back in 2012-2013 I worked on a startup project called NewCo, as in the New Company. The idea was to offer a place where consumers would exchange information about the products they used and loved thus empowering you to make better and faster buying decisions.

We never did any money, except like 30€ through affiliate programs, that's why we failed. Also because of strong disagreements between the co-founders ;)

Long story short, the original website is still running at: [http://newco- prod.herokuapp.com/](http://newco-prod.herokuapp.com/) and I wanted to replace a feedback form that no longer worked by some comment about the startup story. Problem: I could no longer run the website locally and my code push were rejected by heroku. Two days of rabbitholing later I managed to rebuild and deploy the app and decided to opensource it: [https://github.com/blaze33/newco-legacy](https://github.com/blaze33/newco- legacy)

We always hear a lot of success stories and I thought it might be of some interest to HNers to show you the work of a failed startup. I left some advice to future entrepreneurs in the README.

The stack is old: Python 2.7, Django 1.4, Heroku cedar-14 (upgraded from cedar-10 this week-end), redis, postgresql, celery.

Feel free to share your thoughts, but be warned this is a messy codebase, we were young and unexperienced ;)

I should be online this evening if you have any questions.</comment>


Officer handcuffs 8 year old child with mental disorder - <AUTHOR> http://motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/kentucky-school-cop-handcuffed-8-year-old-boy-mental-disorder

<comment><AUTHOR> An 8 year old child is about 127 cm (50 inches) tall and weighs about 25 kg (56 pounds).

There's no suggestion the child had a weapon.</comment>


Show HN: Use Dojo to learn, build, and deploy web apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.dojoapp.com <comment><USER2> The headline talked about using Dojo but the tutorial is 100% Sinatra and ROR. Is Dojo used in other tutorials or is the word Dojo just used because it is in the URL. The layout make it appear as if it is associated with the Dojo toolkit. I understand that Sinatra and ROR can be used with Dojo, but I feel the title and branding is misleading based on the fact that the tutorial contained no Dojo in it.

<comment><USER3> A coding dojo is a way to improve your skills and has nothing to do with any particular language or framework - see <http://codingdojo.org/cgi- bin/wiki.pl?WhatIsCodingDojo>.

<comment><USER4> People (like me, too) are going to assume Dojo the framework over dojo-the- special-kind-of-room when there is no article (a/an/the) used.

Capitalization makes a difference in the English language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I understand that this isn't about the Dojo toolkit nor the fellow who submitted the post to it here (Thanks!), I can't help but feel that the folks who created this service made a real blunder by naming this thing "dojoapp" simply because of it's uncanny naming resemblance to the Dojo toolkit.

Try to Google it; you get drowned in results to the toolkit, not their site. Mention it to anyone else and be sure about the resulting confusion. It's like creating a new service called BMWApp which then has nothing to do with the car...

</comment><comment><USER6> The intro tutorial is great! Just the right mix of brevity/content, and totally convinced me to sign up.

Only suggestion - find a way to speed up the deployment process. It might just be the HN effect, but once I finish my first "app" - I want to see it in action, not stare at a spinner for a few minutes.

EDIT: Looks like you're deploying to heroku, so I see why it takes more than a few seconds. It might be nice to tweak your UI, to encourage people to go through a tutorial while they wait for a deploy (rather than staring at a spinner).

<comment><USER7> Yep, the wait time is mostly from Heroku. Allowing people to continue the tutorial while it deploys is a good idea, reminds me of the article about Asynchronous UI a few days ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was exciting. Yup, I sound like a complete dork, but for someone who just doesn't have the ability to pick up coding like he used to, this was great. A few explanations in the tutorial confused me from a complete novice standpoint, but I am really looking forward to the "Blog in 30 minutes"! Glad I signed up, and if I'm your target "customer" then feel free to email me if you want feedback, etc. I'd like to see something exactly like this for Objective C and developing iPhone apps.

<comment><USER7> we'd love to get your feedback. i wasn't able to find your email, could you hit us up at founders[at]dojoapp.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I enjoyed going through those tutorials, and I think I know more about Ruby now! What's the time scale on further tutorials? The platform (including the ability to deploy apps quickly and easily) is great! I'd be particularly interested in the node.js tutorials that are tantalisingly listed on your site.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really like this. It'd be great to see some Python tutorials though.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a great way to teach programmers a new framework or tool.

</comment><comment><USER12> twitter bootstrap for the design win?

</comment><comment><USER13> I LOVE IT!

</comment><comment><USER14> Dojo has already lost the battle.

I used it for awhile and it is a cool framework. However, Jquery has it beat in terms of documentation (code and usage) and community support (I can find pretty much any component I need with Jquery).

<comment><USER15> You should take another look at the link - its all about ROR and Sinatra, not Dojo Toolkit.

<comment><USER14> How does this invalidate my point?

The link title includes "Dojo" and I was stating my opinion. I see the Dojo fanbois have downvoted me.

<comment><USER16> The people who realize that this isn't Dojo, the JS framework, and is instead Dojo, the Ruby Deployment Tool... they're the ones who downvoted you.

<comment><USER14> well, it's not my fault.

It's the fault of the person that named a ruby development tool "Dojo" when it's clear there was already a javascript framework with the same name.

so..maybe they should be downvoting themselves? (like I have your responses)

<comment><USER13> I think that's the shittiest argument I've ever seen.

You didn't even open the link before just leaving a negative comment about it.

It takes a lot of work to write web apps, and when people say negative things about them, it hurts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What SaaS expenses do you wish you could reduce? - <AUTHOR> What are your biggest SaaS related expenses?  which ones do you want to reduce? <comment><USER2> 1\. SEMRush and AHREFS - it sucks having both. They're both amazing but they do very similar things (neither 100% replaces the other). 2\. Trello - I hate trello. It's bulky and irritating. I'm slowly migrating to AirTable, which is much better.

<comment><USER3> tangent

> 2\. Trello - I hate trello. It's bulky and irritating

at $LEGACY_IT_ENTERPRISE_DAYJOB we have jira, which has been configured to death with about 100 custom ticket states -- mostly synonyms such as "done", "story done", "closed" ,... -- and 200 custom ticket relationships, i.e. the union of all possible states and relationships every project manager ever wanted on any project in the last 10 years. we are of course required to use this one monolithic jira tarpit to make it easy to centrally govern and audit changes (compliance...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I spend ~$1.5k/mo on Heroku (~27% of monthly revenue). I'm using 2–4 (auto scaling) Performance-M dynos because I was tired of sharing resources and having spotty response times (as were my customers). Once I moved from Standard-2X to Performance-M, my response times dropped from ~500ms avg w/ random timeouts to <90ms avg w/ no timeouts, but my costs skyrocketed. I want a managed hosting provider that rivals Heroku but doesn't make me feel like I have to pay an arm and a leg to get decent service. I don't want to, nor do I have the time to, move to and manage infra on AWS yet.

<comment><USER5> why not just run DO droplets at $5/pop?

<comment><USER6> > I want a managed hosting provider that rivals Heroku but doesn't make me > feel like I have to pay an arm and a leg to get decent service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Heroku. Used to be paying around 1,500 month, but with some major surgery got it down to ~$750. You can't really go any lower without becoming a "hobby" app.

</comment><comment><USER5> Splunk. We spend so much there and we want to process even more data with it. I could retire in short order on the amount of money we spend on them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not really saas but lots of people want to reduce their AWS bills

</comment><comment><USER9> DataDog

</comment><comment><USER10> Intercom

<comment><USER11> Check this: [https://intercom.rocks/](https://intercom.rocks/) (save money on your monthly Intercom bill with automated contact archiving)</comment></comment>


Alternative search engines to Google (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/02/25/say-goodbye-to-google-14-alternative-search-engines/ <comment><USER2> Bing offers a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, its search relevancy is actually really great, its special search features (weather, elections, etc.) and graph tools are generally better than Google's and they overall just seem to try harder on search nowadays.

On the other hand, search isn't the only important thing - presumably that is why Google doesn't seem to focus there. Bing has seemingly given up on some of the big things, like Maps, and failed to promote others (like Translator) in ways that really compromise the core offering.

Bing Maps used to have a very legitimate edge over Google; then they stood still for years and I'm not sure they could ever catch up.

To make matters worse, Bing has lost lots of cool, useful features; features that I could show someone and then expect them to legitimately consider Bing. For example, searching for a song used to let you immediately read the lyrics without ads, listen to the song through Zune or buy the song through various providers. Wolfram Alpha used to be directly integrated into the search engine; it was extremely powerful and convenient.

I really would have liked to see a Bing that didn't take as many steps back as it took forward; that Bing could be a real contender.

<comment><USER3> > _Bing has seemingly given up on some of the big things, like Maps_

As far as I'm aware Bing (along with Facebook and Yahoo!) are backing [https://wego.here.com/](https://wego.here.com/) these days. I'm curious to see where that goes...

<comment><USER4> Interestingly wego.here has more up to date satellite imagery for my house than either Bing or Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using DuckDuckGo for about a year without ill-effects. Although sometimes I have to go to Google, often when the results are disappointing I try !g and the results with Google are just as disappointing. It's also actually easier to switch to an image search using !gi than it is to click the image search with the mouse at Google's site.

<comment><USER6> DuckDuckGo isn't that great, but the _!bang_ options make it easy to diversify, and branch searches to multiple targets, to compare outcomes.

Two things become obvious at that point, and the main one is that other search engines don't just customize search results to individuals, they actually spend costly human resources currating and QA'ing results. DuckDuckGo's search results kind of suck, and the reason they're not as good is because the results are not groomed to the same degree, by as many eyes, nor to the same level of quality.

The other obvious thing quickly noticed is that DuckDuckGo's _!bang_ operators are so, so, so much more handy than some of the other horrendously mangled, inscrutable query strings you wind up landing on, that would require 5 or 10 clicks, navigating the intended user interfaces of the parent sites that actually host the results.

Compare using _!googleimages_ on DuckDuckGo, to what actually happens when you click and type for results at [https://images.google.com](https://images.google.com)?

It's kind of silly that you can't just pass a query string to Google, and that DuckDuckGo does their query strings better than Google does for it's own product.

<comment><USER7> Is the !g bang gives you personalized results as good as google results ?

Also, it's a bad design decision to make bangs belong to search engines. In the past the firefox extension lookpick[1] solved that problem very well: They crowdsourced search engnines, had their own search box in the right corner of the screen, and to make it easy to pick the right search engines, search engines used searchable tags.

On top of that, if you add easy help for search operators for each site(also crowd sourced), would be really useful.

I wish there was something like that for chrome.

[1][https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lookpick- sear...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lookpick-search- box/?src=collection&collection_id=1f728b3c-e875-9e75-7d1c-693cca77aaf2)

<comment><USER8> Chrome has built-in support for multiple search engines (many sites take the liberty of doing this automatically). You can customize the keyword that triggers each one.

For example, if you want to search HN you could add:

URL: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%s](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%s) Keyword: hn

Then you simply type "hn" in the omnibox, hit space, and enter your search term.

[https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426)

<comment><USER7> Sure adding your own is possible, or using some chrome extension like SearchBar, but having everything available, crowdsourced, and tagged, is totally different experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the recent news covering Google Search's often insane "sugested answers" ("Obama is the current king of America, and is planning a military coup"), fake news SEO trickery, and the general bad feeling about how they rank their results for the last year or so, I've had the thought that Bing/DDG might become competitive again, not because they improve, but because Google slowly got worse. Google is basically the MS Windows of search, due to their dominant position they're constantly targetted, so you're more likely to get the info/search equivalent of a virus.

Hardly comforting.

<comment><USER10> We developing [https://bubblehunt.com](https://bubblehunt.com) \- it's search platform, where every user can create own search and provide independent results, like miniGoogle. Now it is alpha version. We love this project because we can provide information that we think is important, interesting and truthful. More info: [https://medium.com/@bubblehunt/faq-9dd92c741b23](https://medium.com/@bubblehunt/faq-9dd92c741b23)

<comment><USER11> Needs a non-facebook and non-twitter way to signup. Not everybody has social media accounts.

<comment><USER10> Maybe Github, G+, ...?

<comment><USER11> That works too; perhaps I should create my own authentication service and api...

<comment><USER10> It is good idea, but for developers...many users can't create own authentification method Tell me please about your search engine Ronsor, it is your code? Or you use some open-source project? Why you create this search?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently discovered Ecosia (ecosia.org). Seems to use results from Bing, maps from Google, and has an easy 'out' to show results from Google.

Nice 'hook' as well. From their About Us page: 'Ecosia is a social business run by a small group of dedicated people. We work together to create tools that empower everyone to easily do good by planting trees. We believe our trees have the power to make this world a better place for everyone in it.'

<comment><USER13> Thanks for mentioning Ecosia. I was actually working for them over a year ago.

They're a bunch of really good people on a great mission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Bing is very good for doing... umm... "movie" searches. The preview functionality works well and is very useful.

</comment><comment><USER15> The problem I have with most alternatives is that they are mediocre at best in regional results. Google really excels in that area. I tried Bing a few years ago and every time I had to search something in Greek the results were dreadful when compared with G. I guess it might be better nowadays but I'm already hooked with G. so no point moving on.

<comment><USER16> Tried using Duck Duck Go in Ireland I find myself switching back to Google a lot

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One search engine to consider is Searx [0], you can easily host your own instance locally or on a public facing server [1]. What it does is aggregate search results from multiple engines (Bing, Google, Yahoo...), proxying your request making tracking and profiling impossible.

[0]: [https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/) [1]: [https://searx.laquadrature.net/](https://searx.laquadrature.net/)

<comment><USER18> I remember trying yacy years ago – do you know how they compare?

<comment><USER19> Yacy is a search engine. Searx passes your query off to other search engines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What the article skips over is !bang searches in DuckDuckGo.

This allows you to search other engines, but still have theirs as default

All the engines mentioned can be searched via it. !b !bing !s !startpage !vimeo !giphy etc.....

<comment><USER21> Absolutely love the bang searches in DDG. The most used for me is !w for sure, easily go to a wikipedia article.

Only issue I have with it at the moment is that it tends to look for articles in my native language instead of in English but you can probably configure that somewhere and I just have not looked yet. It falls back to English anyway when it can not find one in Dutch.

EDIT: For people on here, !hackernews might be useful :-)

<comment><USER22> !wen goes to english wikipedia

!wit goes to italian wikipedia

and so on

<comment><USER21> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://searx.me/](https://searx.me/) and [https://www.qwant.com/](https://www.qwant.com/) and [https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/) will respect your privacy

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been slowly transitioning to DuckDuckGo recently, I love some of their quirky features [0] - though old habits die hard. I guess it is a matter of making their engine the ubiquitous one via the default browser URL/search box etc.

[0] - [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-really-cool-things-you-can- do...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-really-cool-things-you-can-do-with- duckduckgo/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Stopped using Google a while back. Used [https://www.startpage.com](https://www.startpage.com) for years. Just switched to [https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com) late last year.

<comment><USER26> Cool but requires shit (js at least)

<comment><USER27> [https://lite.qwant.com/](https://lite.qwant.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article doesn't seem to say, so, how many of these search engines use their own index and don't "borrow" one from another larger engine? DDG uses Bing and Yandex, for example.

<comment><USER29> I'm willing to bet no one* does their own search crawling aside from companies the size of Yandex and larger. Google carefully manipulated web standards to make sure you can't do that effectively without tons of upfront investment. You pretty much have to run a customized headless browser to get real content. And then you have to figure out how to interact with whatever you get, since increasing number of websites are SPAs. Google itself has it easy, since developers actively modify their site to fit Google's capabilities.

But hey, everything is "fine" as longs as the Web keeps a bunch of developers employed with six-digit salaries. They will put up with any amount of accidental complexity and ignore any effects on future innovation as long as their jobs are secure. (And those jobs are more secure than ever because you need ever increasing number of specialized professionals to keep the increasingly complex technology stacks operational.)

\--

* One exception I know of: Web Archive. But their coverage is pretty spotty and they aren't strictly speaking a search engine. Still, it's an awesome effort. At lease someone tries to swim against the tide.

<comment><USER11> My search engine crawls its own results. The downside is the index is very tiny, under 100,000 pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> No Baidu? Yandex aside, I'm curious as to what other major non-English search engines are there.

<comment><USER31> [https://chorki.com/](https://chorki.com/) This is a search engine for Bangla language serving more than 1milion informations, a startup from Bangladesh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I tend to use EpicSearch.in as much as possible (generally in the Epic Privacy Browser), then click to Bing/Google if the results aren't good. EpicSearch's results are so-so (built on Yandex), but it's TOTALLY private and has no ads so it's my first go-to option. Maybe 25% of the time I'll click onto Bing or Google.

</comment><comment><USER33> I find that each search engine has a slightly different "dialect", and I've been tuning my search wording for years on google. Using other search engines is actually sort of challenging and often frustrating. I do like peekier.com though. I feel like it's a step forward for innovation with great layout/menu- design.

</comment><comment><USER34> Thanks! I was completely unaware of Boardreader; if done right it could solve the problem Google created when they stupidly removed the discussion search filter.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know why no one linked [https://peekier.com](https://peekier.com) in the comments yet.

</comment><comment><USER36> I run a personal blog and occasionally I see some traffic from Ecosia:

[https://info.ecosia.org/what](https://info.ecosia.org/what)

It uses money generated from ads seen in search results to plan tree. Nice idea, not sure if the underlying implementation is Google.

</comment><comment><USER37> For the record, DDG has past 15 million direct query threshold in March.

[http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/13/)

They really started growing again since August last year.

</comment><comment><USER38> is it really an alternative if it's using google's data?

</comment><comment><USER39> Question: Why vertical search engines dont succeed much?

<comment><USER40> There are tons of successful vertical search engines, but the line between "search" and an app gets blurry. As examples, Amazon, Octopart, Spotify (if you count music search), the DPLA (a non-profit library search), Shodan, IconFinder, etc.

I've explored this in personal projects- a search engine for lectures ([https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com)) and stock photos ([https://stickstock.com](https://stickstock.com)).

<comment><USER41> Also Kayak, HipMunk, Yelp, YouTube, Netflix, AirBnB, Alibaba, etc.

It ceases to be considered "vertical search" and becomes a category in its own right if you do it well enough, even though the way you interact with many of these apps is that you type in free-form text into a search box and it performs some fuzzy matching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Can anyone tell me if I am logged into chrome and use a non-google search engine, are they tracking the queries I make in the omni box?

</comment><comment><USER43> [2016]

<comment><USER44> Thanks! We updated the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://tsearch.in](http://tsearch.in) is also a good alternative

</comment><comment><USER45> Always trying to find options for my genealogy searches

DDG "gave" me unknown family bible location recently (in La)

What about millionshort?

</comment><comment><USER46> Some Boardreader linkes are broken, especially ones from stackoverflow. It could be useful.

</comment><comment><USER47> most of the engines don't pass my simple test - enter name of movie and i expect to see aggregated basic info and ratings of movie at least from 2-3 websites without opening them

it's a bit better with currency exchange 5USD to EUR

<comment><USER48> Duckduckgo is pretty good in that respect: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arrival&t=ffab&ia=meanings](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arrival&t=ffab&ia=meanings)

However, the real reason your wish will not be granted is that those 2-3 websites are absoluely opposed to such a scenario, as people will not visit their websites anymore. If I remember it correctly, Google had that feature years ago and was sued by Yelp(?) because they basically stole all their traffic.

<comment><USER47> no ratings, no basic information, now let's compare it to this

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=arrival](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=arrival)

unless there will be another engine which will provide me with same information as you can see on right side of screen I am not even bothering to try it, it's such basic feature that I think every engine should provide it

Google has this feature, so I am not sure why they can and others can't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I like Bing webmaster tools. In some areas it is even better than Google's

</comment><comment><USER50> bing isn't half bad, but i still use google a hell of a lot</comment>


Ask HN: Work 15 hours/month Earn 100K USD/Year...now what? - <AUTHOR>

DEAR HACKER NEWS:
5 years ago, I was lucky enough to start a non-public SAAS for a large global company. Before I showed up, they were doing things manually, spending > hundreds of man hours per month and outsourcing totaling 200K USD/year.
After working like crazy the first two years, pulling all-nighters and automating everything as much as possible, I've shrunk their entire workforce down to 1 person (myself) and after a lot of optimizations now I only work ~15 hours a month earning 100K USD/year.
What they get is better quality than before, 10 times faster turnaround, and their budget slashed in half. Not to mention all their internal staff and facilities are free to work on other things.
I tried approaching potential clients in their same niche market. But it seems like the other players don't specialize in this area as much as the biggest player.
So I've concluded this is a deadend road for me, this task is at 100% optimization, effiency, and quality. But I find no use for this core technology in any other area except for this one company.
So I'm sitting on my ass and earning a good yearly pay while doing nearly basically nothing. What worries me is what should I be doing now?
P.S. No vacations to pat myself on the back, cuz basically it's a vacation at home for me everyday... and it's been like this for quite a while so I'm getting bored. I'm eager to work like the first two years and getting excited again... it's a rush for me to encounter a complex problem but to find a simple elegant solution. I find the process of writing code and learning new technologies enjoyable also. Especially when you're not sure and testing things out and suddenly IT WORKS!
Sincerely, DOING NOTHING AT HOME (for now) <comment><USER2> So you make $100k a year working 15 hours a week, and you're worried...? Something is wrong here. I think you're asking the wrong people for advice. We should be the ones asking you for advice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correction: Make that 15 hours per month, equivalent to approx. 4 hours per week.

I have no special formula, I was just fully prepared with all the right skills at the right place at the right time and worked my ass off.

Actually, I'm more worried about not having a backup 2nd income.

I'm not sure if I should continue in the web startup / IT world. Seems like everyone is getting into this bandwagon, maybe it's time to jump off this wagon and try something entirely new...

<comment><USER3> Live relatively cheaply and save. If you don't find something else before this revenue stream starts to dry up, you will at least have savings with which to fund the incredible burst of energy/motivation you feel when things do start to dry up! (Said lightly, but something to think seriously about doing.)

Don't skimp on experience, though. Keep finding more of it, until the next thing clicks. (Wherever that might be. Maybe you'll find the next great cookie recipe. Experience (experiences) come in all shapes and sizes.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You obviously have plenty of time available - so why not find ways to simplify what you have done and make it less targeted and thus being of broader appeal to other similar companies. Other options would be find other types of niches that you would give you that same excitement - your time is available so you wouldn't be losing out at all by experimenting with cool new projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Actually, another option I'm leaning towards is to temporarily get out of the computer biz all together and try something entireley new. The only way to find new technological discoveries is to go out in the real world again and see what kind of real world problems exist. The same way how biologists need to go out into nature to find new species and learn from interesting animal behaviors.

For example, if I were to apply to become a pizza delivery man, I'll find ways to simplify and optimize the traditional delivery process. Then when I open my own pizza store, I'll have the most efficient pizza delivery system, maybe this will be the killer service that will bring down Dominos and Pizza Hut.

So if you see a pizza delivery dude next time, maybe it'll be me... ;-)

<comment><USER5> Been a pizza delivery guy myself and there is not much to optimize since the core problem is delivery, which requires you to get in car, drive to location, give the pizza, get money and drive back. It is only when you have multiple deliveries do you have opportunity to optimize your path of travel on the basis of traffic and distance between the delivery places.

<comment><USER6> but there any many inefficiencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you diversify into other niches?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, what I developed for 5 years is non-transferable to other industries/niches. If I were to go into other industries/niches, I would have to start from zero again. What I stumbled upon is a niche within a niche. And the core tech is useless outside of the 1st niche. (if that makes any sense)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Find a goal, and pursue it! =)

</comment><comment><USER5> Start a start-up</comment>


Guide to Computing: A visual history of computing 1945-1979 - <AUTHOR> https://www.docubyte.com/works/guide-to-computing/ <comment><AUTHOR> These are really amazing. Took me about 5 minutes to notice the little expand + in the top right corner of each image.

Elliot 803 makes a great phone wallpaper.</comment>


"In the future, the biggest land animals will be smaller than they are now" - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/divide-and-diminish/

<comment><USER2> Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure.

Human civilization evolution is faster, then natural evolution.

</comment><comment><USER3> In the future, metaphors will be even thinner because bloggers keep stretching them...

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if it's a metaphor. Normally, predators will eat the smaller, younger and sicker animals, leaving the larger and stronger ones to survive. So there is pressure for prey animals to get larger to escape predators and pressure for predators to get larger in response. (Of course there is also pressure to remain small to reduce metabolic needs, and the size of the organism is as such dictated by the balance of these and other forces.)

However, hunting inverts this pyramid, culling the largest and most attractive individuals and leading to the survival of the smallest and least showy. And lo and behold it seems to be happening: <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE50B73320090113>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how I can short animal sizes.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm guessing the dominant animal (man) in prosperous places would get larger and stronger.

<comment><USER7> Maybe. Humans are getting larger from one generation to the next, but we're still not as tall as our agricultural ancestors.

<comment><USER8> Can you give a reference for that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ... because the world is going to become a bunch of islands. And it'll be lame because it'll be boring, because each island won't have much diversity.

And then something from another island will notice we're tasty. Then we're totally boned.

In summary: stop building crap! Especially those damned islands!</comment>


Why do so many artists have synesthesia? - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/07/why-do-so-many-artists-have-synesthesia.html <comment><USER2> Synesthesia is the awareness of relations between different types of experience, with experience defined as sensory data.

To be synesthetic is to have a mapping from one type to another, as in the examples given of Natural numbers -> personality archetypes, audio -> video.

After a glimpse of it an an emotional moment, I intentionally developed my synesthesia. I think others could develop it if they like. However, rationalism is an obstacle preventing most from experiencing synesthesia. In order to e.g., see a high C as red, you must be more trusting of your subjective experience than reasons.

<comment><USER3> Is any of that true, or is it just what you believe?</comment></comment>


FOSS community phrases that annoy me - <AUTHOR> http://www.bomahy.nl/hylke/blog/foss-phrases-that-annoy-me/

<comment><USER2> I must add one here: "But it's not <x>'s fault."

I hear this one a lot if I mention to someone that I've installed Office on a Windows machine so that I can open a document (it's not LibreOffice's fault that it can't open a DOCX file perfectly) or installing Photoshop to open a PSD (it's not Gimp's fault it breaks some of the layout).

And they're right, it isn't their fault. If MS/Adobe/whoever opened up their file formats, the world would be a better place - but hey, they haven't. Until they do - or until somebody improves the support (this is the point where the other annoying phrase comes in: "Why don't you contribute to the project?") - I have work to do so I'll use the tool that works best.</comment>


Master's Degree or Startup? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently on year 4 of a 5 year bs/ms program a prestigious university in CS. I can graduate now with just an undergraduate degree. I am also part of a startup that has the potential to get seed funding from angels and eventually VCs.<p>I'm wondering what is the value of finishing up my master's degree compared to graduating early and pursuing my startup. Obviously my choice is highly dependent on the success potential of the startup, but does anyone know the added value of a masters in cs? <comment><USER3> I initially planned to pursue an MS in computer science after undergrad, and had gone so far as being accepted into a program, and attending classes for nearly the entire first semester.

I bailed out at the first semester when I considered the opportunity cost involved. I'd be spending an additional two years (or a little more, depending on how much I could afford all at once) in a program that was 95% theory, while missing out on two years of learning practical work through employment.

But, I think a 5 year BS/MS program is different. Finishing in five years even with just a BS isn't out of the ordinary anymore these days. You haven't graduated yet, so you still are 100% within the "in school" mindset. And it's only a year out of your life instead of two.

I don't regret dropping out of the two year MS program, but I do regret not having pursued the 5 year BS/MS package when I would have had the chance. I would have gotten the additional education, but it would have cut that opportunity cost in half.

</comment><comment><USER4> Go for the masters - it'll be harder to get it later, and if you put in the work, benefits are guaranteed. A startup can go wrong in innumerable ways, so don't get hung up on a particular one.

"Opportunities are like trains - there's always another one coming." - <USER2> Branson

</comment><comment><USER5> I think you should stay in school. I never say that to anyone but 1 more year at a good university will fly by, most american kids take 5 years for a liberal arts degree at a state school. Like the other poster said, startups come and go.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree - do your masters if you can afford to. People rarely get the chance later in life to do intense studies when you got a full time job requiring overtime, family and other responsibilities. In the end it's a better investment that will benefit you for many years to come.

</comment><comment><USER7> As others here are saying, finish it up.

I did the dropout thing from MS and it bugs me still to this day. And this is even though i had/have successful startup path in my career...

</comment><comment><USER8> You will get lots of opportunities in your life to create a business. You only get one chance of getting your master's degree.

</comment><comment><USER9> do both at the same time. do the masters thing at night if there are night classes, or on weekends. or just skip class when you can afford it, and just go the assignments to get the degree.

</comment><comment><USER10> Finish-up your masters... You'll thank yourself later!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys! Seems like a pretty good consensus.</comment>


The Next Evolution in Small Screen Design: Bezel-Less Screen - <AUTHOR> http://rikacomet.blogspot.in/2013/01/the-next-screen-evolution-bezel-less.html

<comment><USER2> The bezel-less screen look nice and futuristic, but they don't seem very practical. When holding a mobile device, your fingers will naturally extend beyond the edge. So your fingers will either cover content or triggers controls on the edge of the screen. To avoid that problem, apps would need to layout their content and controls with a virtual bezel to avoid touches.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true, if you see this: [http://www.yankodesign.com/2007/08/28/two-brix- are-better-th...](http://www.yankodesign.com/2007/08/28/two-brix-are-better- than-one/)

Seokwon Hong's original design, did take care of that problem by leaving margins in each app, that are un-interactive.

Another solution can be minimized mode, where the device uses 90-95% of the screen in normal phone mode, and 100% (no margins) when attached to other screens.</comment></comment>


Who retracts opioid guidelines after accepting that industry had an influence - <AUTHOR> https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m105 <comment><AUTHOR> The title should be "WHO", the World Health Organisation retracts opioid prescribing guidelines.</comment>


I love GitHub (look at the commit history) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/IonicaBizau

<comment><USER2> Hehe, was actually just last week discussing with friend possibility of writing something like:"Hello World!" with the commit history, but I see you beat us to it :)

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks! I am glad to see this post here. I used my own generator of commits that is open source here: [https://github.com/IonicaBizau/github- contributions](https://github.com/IonicaBizau/github-contributions)

(contributions are welcome!) :-)

Also, checkout my answer on StackOverflow: [http://stackoverflow.com/a/23414628/1420197](http://stackoverflow.com/a/23414628/1420197)

...and don't forget to follow me on GitHub to get notified when I create new projects. :-)

[https://github.com/IonicaBizau](https://github.com/IonicaBizau)</comment></comment>