Tufte on Windows Phone 7 Series interface design - <AUTHOR> http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003cy&topic_id=1&topic=Ask+E%2eT%2e

<comment><USER2> I've got to give Microsoft credit: they tried! For the first time, it's an interface which isn't shackled to the ridiculously inappropriate desktop metaphor. They've designed something genuinely new for the phone.

On the other hand, I'm disgusted by the UI. Incredibly low information density, unbalanced visual elements, and many actions required to accomplish simple tasks. The transitions are beautiful, but they really should have focused on a concise interface suited to small displays.

What designer thought allocating 30% of the screen to show the second half of the word "Pictures" would be a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a ton of respect for Tufte, but I think he is wrong about a few things here.

After using the Zune for a few months, I'm surprised to see him say that it looks like it was designed on a larger device and then shrunk down to fit a handheld.

The UI is quite effective, and I believe the 'negative space' is actually quite effective at training the user to recognize scrollable areas vs. non- scrollable, as well as providing some breathing room rather than a full screen which would look too busy.

I do agree with the comments about the animations. Many animations on the Zune are very well done, and effective, but some (like the swirling name when going to an artist list from a currently playing) does seem to break context and takes a bit too long.

I'm sure they'll be tweaking the animations in future updates.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. Looking at pictures and videos of this UI and actually using it will certainly change ones prior opinion. I thought the Zune ui looked especially awkward. After using it as my personal music player it began to seem efficient and the information hierarchy extremely well thought out.

I think the biggest negative aspect of Microsoft being this late in the game in rebooting the windows mobile line is that theres now an inherent familiarity with the current smartphone interfaces. When all you interact with is an android device all day, the new windows phone ui seems alien. But again; once you use it that perception definitely changes. I know thats my experience as an android user with a Zune. The central question with the new Windows phone is how well does that 'metro' ui scale in the context of a smartphone device.

<comment><USER5> brandonkm,

Nice to know that I'm not the only Android user with a Zune. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Killer Quote:

"...Instead of impressing focus groups, designers should do a thought experiment: Imagine what Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive would have to say about your interface..."

<comment><USER7> Really? I liked: "Of course Microsoft's customers are already familiar with deep layerings and complex hierarchies."

<comment><USER8> Seriously.

I thought the mantra of presentations and UI design was Know your Audience. It would dopey to design for designers rather than trying things out with the people who are going to use the thing.

<comment><USER9>
      I thought the mantra of presentations and UI design was
      Know your Audience. It would dopey to design for designers
      rather than trying things out with the people who are going
      to use the thing.

The problem is: your audience does not know itself. Your audience in general will only know what it _wants_. Knowing your audience means knowing that,knowing how it is different from what it _needs_ , and knowing what it really needs.

At the famous Ford quote goes: "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse".

Jobs and Ive do know those differences so asking questions "what would they say" is not "designing for designers" it is speculating the opinion of those who know the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't used the device itself, but a friend of mine that works at a microsoft shot has. He took snapshots that I wish he would share. It runs on a very similar processor as the nexus one, an arm snapdragon.

According to him, the device is actually quite nice. It is surprisingly fluid and very snappy. He currently uses a G1. From the screenshots I've seen, it looks very nice indeed.

I guess this is where it pays to be a bit ignorant of design- I liked the design and the home screen seemed great to me. I guess it's because I wasn't aware of all the "negative space" they were wasting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Edward Tufte is definitely a recognized design guru but ever since I found out about him I have been _very_ puzzled about the design of his website. I would expect a design guru to have a better website.

<comment><USER12> Context, man, context. That site design is running Ars Digita, Philip Greenspun's original community system (<http://openacs.org/>), circa 1995. If I recall correctly, Greenspun helped set it up. Full disclosure: I am at least partially responsible for a few tweaks to the GUI circa 2007 (constrained the comments, added the local menus (with optional thumbnails).

Here's all the CSS for that site:

.fullwidthtable {}

.forum {color: #CC0000; font-size: 11px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans- serif; line-height: 15px;}

.text { font-size: 15px; color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans- serif; line-height: 21px;}

.textsm { font-size: 14px; color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans- serif; line-height: 21px;}

.textxsm { font-size: 13px; color: #000000;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;}

.link { text-decoration: none; color=#CC0000}

.link:hover { text-decoration: underline; color: #CC0000}

.belink { text-decoration: none; color=#000000}

.belink:hover { text-decoration: underline; color: #CC0000}

.taglink { margin-top: 4pt; }

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seems like off the top of the head M$-style ranting- he hasn't used an actual device so this is just guesswork.

<comment><USER14> You spelled _Microsoft_ with a dollar sign, nyuck-nyuck. How's Slashdot these days?

<comment><USER15> I rather think you're confusing part of his accusation as his own statement.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where would one find visa sponsorship jobs? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in moving to another country for a job (Front-end developer with 7+ years experience), but having a hard-time finding jobs/companies that help with getting a visa
I'm planning to find a job in Singapore/Hong Kong/Canada (open to other suggestions)
Only one that i know is HN's monthly 'Who's hiring' Anyone know any other places ?
Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> You can filter by "Visa sponsor" on StackOverflow's job site. [https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?med=site-ui&ref=jobs- tab](https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?med=site-ui&ref=jobs-tab)</comment>


Airbnb to Remove Listings in Jewish West Bank Settlements - <AUTHOR> https://www.haaretz.com/amp/israel-news/airbnb-to-remove-listings-in-jewish-west-bank-settlements-1.6662443 <comment><USER2> > Airbnb to Remove Listings in Jewish West Bank Settlements

 _Israeli_ West Bank settlements is the issue, though the Israeli government and it's backers tend to conflate the two things in order to dismiss criticism of government policy as anti-Semitism.

> enclaves that most world powers consider illegal for taking up land where > Palestinians seek statehood

No, they are enclaves most world powers consider illegal for taking up land in the State of Palestine, which most of the world already recognizes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting that they're being singled out but not unexpected. Does AirBnB operate in China, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey or do they just consider their atrocities less severe?

<comment><USER4> "a company that has no qualms about renting apartments in dictatorships around the world and in places that have no relationship with human rights is singling out Israel. This can only be a result of anti-Semitism or surrendering to terrorism – or both." \- Yesha Council

This statement _in_the_article_ nods to that idea. I think the statement is more than fair.

<comment><USER5> isn't this just whataboutism refracted through the "anything done Jews is anti-Semitic when it doesn't work out in their favor"?

like do we want settlers listing their apartments on Airbnb or not? if not then this is the right move regardless of airbnb's policies elsewhere

<comment><USER4> They posed that it may be one possible interpretation, which was the fair part.

I think all totalitarian and contested land should be delisted, but this might be a "testing the waters" act.

<comment><USER6> _The_ alternative interpretation presented is that AirBnb is "surrendering to terrorism." Talk about a false dilemma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All part of the new antisemitism. It's become all too acceptable. Here's another example:

[https://freebeacon.com/national-security/cnn-commentator- end...](https://freebeacon.com/national-security/cnn-commentator-endorses- palestinians-using-violence-to-resist-israel/)

<comment><USER8> Can you point me to someone who is vocal and supportive of Palestinian rights that you don't consider to be antisemitic?

<comment><USER7> Can you point me to someone who supports violence against jews who is not antisemitic?

Can you point me to a company that takes an action wrt Israel, but doesn't take similar actions in similar situations elsewhere against other countries that is not following an antisemitic policy?

<comment><USER9> Airbnb have taken similar actions elsewhere, such as removing listings in Crimea due to Russia's annexation. Nor does the action apply to Israel, but to Israeli settlements outside of Israel that are certainly illegal under international law.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FriendFeed Launches Rooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/22/friendfeed-launches-rooms/ <comment><USER2> I like that aspect of Twitter, you can just create an account for an event (lie a barcamp) or an interest group and aggregate messages of related people. It would be much easier if they would enable autofollow, but anyway - I like the simplicity, whereas FriendFeed now seems to have two different concepts to achieve the same thing (or so it sounds).

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been using ff ever since the closed beta last fall/winter. Even though I have been careful to not follow too many people (currently 42) in order to not drown in a flurry of feed items, I have missed a feature such as rooms all along.

Being able to organize discussions on a certain topic in a separate feed should help reduce clutter and provide for "time-efficient" reading.

Right now, you end up doing doing a whole lot of browsing and context switching when filtering news, technical posts, tech talks from among "funny" YouTube videos shared or "liked" by your contacts.

Btw, my ff account <http://friendfeed.com/codesurgeon> and a room I just set up <http://friendfeed.com/rooms/electronic-gaming> \- feel free to join in.</comment>


Show HN: A minimal and idiomatic WebSocket library for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket <comment><USER2> Somewhat unrelated to the actual package but I find that properly written/considered comparison (why X package instead of Y?) sections are a strong indicator of library/package quality, and this library passes that test:

[https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket#comparison](https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket#comparison)

<comment><USER3> agree with your point, but i don't see any performance comparisons, at the end of the day, i'm looking at performance and stability as a leading factor for why i choose a particular library over another. obviously there are other factors like documentation, how well a library is maintained (i.e. any checkins in the last few weeks because there are bound to be bugs), popularity (i.e. github stars), and generally the interface of the library, is it methodical or cumbersome?

<comment><AUTHOR> I updated the comparison, I think you'll find it more compelling in terms of stability and performance.

To summarize, they're about equal in terms of performance but I'd argue my library wins on stability and maintainability as the minimal API enables a tiny codebase, which means less docs, less tests and most importantly, less bugs.

Furthermore, the future of gorilla/websocket is uncertain. [https://github.com/gorilla/websocket/issues/370](https://github.com/gorilla/websocket/issues/370)

[https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket#gorillawebsocket](https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket#gorillawebsocket)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I converted a program today from Gorilla websocket to this library.

The code is much simpler although I still have to clean up my error messages after the websocket shuts down and the context is Done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are the practical advantages of websockets instead of long-polling? As someone who has implemented both I've found much more success with long polling, but maybe because I haven't used a library as solidly written as this one.

Seriously, at short glance this seems like a well-written library, well- documented, solid looking table-driven testing, and a thoughtful write-out of comparable libraries. Only recommendation would be a link/badge indicating test coverage through a UI like coveralls.

<comment><USER6> I'm waiting for a lib like Phoenix Channels with a js client that starts with WebSockets and falls back to long polling if things like firewalls get in the way. I actually found Phoenix when trying to solve that usecase in go.

I feel like because of Go's concurrency model, a standalone version of Phoenix Channels (without all the MVC stuff) would be possible to implement.

Phoenix: [https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/channels.html](https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/channels.html)

<comment><USER7> Phoenix channels don't really depend on MVC. It's common to make use of them in MVC apps, but they can be used standalone.

I'm using Phoenix channels as a PubSub implementation in production, entirely separate from any web framework or HTTP request handling.

As for the transport itself, Phoenix channels do have native support for both websockets and long polling, but I'm not sure offhand if it automatically falls back when websockets aren't available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> any benchmarks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet but in comparison with gobwas/ws, this library is definitely slower but not by much, at least you won't notice until you're serving a million connections.

Compared to gorilla/websocket, they're about the same.

I opened [https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket/issues/75](https://github.com/nhooyr/websocket/issues/75)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Back when http was part of the standard library (I think it was eventually pulled out?), I was building a long polling server with Go and had to fix some stuff to make sure it worked properly. I can hardly believe I wrote some of these patches nearly 10 years ago[1].

With that said, I'm glad to see the Go ecosystem continue to grow. Unfortunately, I haven't used the language for much (corporate jobs were always Java, startup jobs were always JS -- and recently, it's been Python everywhere).

PS: I still brag about Rob Pike & Russ Cox approving my patches ;)

[1] [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/93](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/93)

<comment><USER10> http is still a part of the standard library, and having used it recently, I find the API good enough.

<comment><USER11> Although the package was moved from "http" (in the linked example) to "net/http" in commit de03d502 in Nov 2011, four months before 1.0 and its compatibility promise.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SaaSaholics.com - A forum for SaaS builders (and a contest) - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys,
I set this up a while ago and have tried a variety of things to get it really kicked into gear, and this is my newest attempt. The forum is meant as a community for anyone involved in startups and specifically SaaS based systems (Software as a Service).
I know, why a forum when we have HN? My opinion is because HN is inherently temporal/trend based, whereas a forum can maintain conversations that last months (or even years sometimes). As participation grows in a forum, it only becomes more valuable to both newcomers and veterans alike. So I see SaaSaholics.com being in a symbiotic relationship with something like HN, where HN facilitates trending topics and fresh information and a forum helps for networking and long term conversations.
Additionally, I've setup a contest for the first 5 users to reach 100 posts at the forum. The winners will receive a free lifetime account to my SEO Competition Analysis Tool, serpIQ.com. The details of the contest can be viewed here: http://www.saasaholics.com/thread-let-s-kick-this-place-into-gear?pid=337#pid337
I'd love for everyone to check out the forum and participate if interested. Thanks guys! <comment><AUTHOR> Just for due dilligence, here are the clickable links:

Forum: <http://www.saasaholics.com> Contest: [http://www.saasaholics.com/thread-let-s-kick-this-place- into...](http://www.saasaholics.com/thread-let-s-kick-this-place-into- gear?pid=337#pid337)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've been on SaaSaholics for a few weeks and it has potential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Donnie, thanks for poppin up here! I agree, I'm going to try and dump in a lot of content and new threads there over the next few days to keep things moving forward. Hope to see you around there soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> great stuff !</comment>


Britain's unexplained wealth orders give the state too much power - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/britains-unexplained-wealth-orders-give-the-state-too-much-power <comment><USER2>
        The kicker: The burden of proof falls on you,
        not the government. If you don't prove the funds
        were clean, Her Majesty may be presumed entitled
        to keep the goodies.

That doesn't sound too goo- oh,

        The asset must be worth at least £50,000

Given that the average annual income of someone in the UK is 22,000£, and there are currently 4 million children in the UK that _cannot afford to eat_ ([https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/05/four- million...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/05/four-million-uk- children-too-poor-to-have-a-healthy-diet-study-finds)), with a preliminary study from the UN claiming that 8.4 million people in the UK are affected by food shortages, this just falls under 'rich people problems'.

Besides, if you buy something that is over 50,000£, surely you would keep the reciept for insurance reasons, or just plain book-keeping. If you don't, and the taxman shows up and asks where you got it, then that's your fault for not having possession of those records. If you can afford to buy a single thing that is _twice the average salary_ , then you can afford to pay someone to do that book-keeping for you, _surely_.

<comment><USER3> That 50k is an arbitrary number and can be lowered at any moment. Rich people's problems may one day be everyone's problems. This is a scary law on my limited understanding.

<comment><USER4> The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they need to show that the initial step taken somehow leads to the bad outcome mentioned. The obvious solution is to stay at 50k. I think that the political situation still would create a huge uproar if it were lowered significantly.

<comment><USER5> So for a slippery slope argument to be valid in this case, you would have to show that governments (or the UK government specifically) tend to slowly expand their repressive powers?

<comment><USER2> You can use the exact same argument to argue that the speed limit will decrease forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At some level, this law is a response to how slow the courts are in enforcing other laws. In the case described, the money is surely the proceeds of a crime. But it might take 10 years to prosecute that crime, given multiple jurisdictions and a well-lawyered defendant. Meanwhile, the money causes harm by distorting the economy.

So I understand the desire to do something in the meantime. But let's not lose sight of the proper solution: swift justice for the actual crime.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ugh, that seems very biased given the extensive cases of money laundering that led to UWOs coming into law in the first place.

"Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute"

Ah, the Cato institute who would like states to have no power to speak of, on anything much.

This seems a more balanced brief overview of UWOs, which notes they're not being used often enough yet:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/vishalmarria/2018/10/25/how- the...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/vishalmarria/2018/10/25/how-the- unexplained-wealth-order-combats-money-laundering/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I immediately thought of an excerpt from "Empire of Things" by Frank Trentmann. It is somewhat out of context, considering the parent article describes the legal validation of economic gains displayed as luxury assets, whereas the following excerpt describes the states attempt to preserve the economic virtues of the populace:

"In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Venice senate passed more than a dozen laws and regulations against [sumptuous lifestyles]. Lavish weddings and expensive fur-lined coats made visible inequalities in wealth and status that threatened the republic's ideal of equality and restraint. They also triggered a competitive spending spree which pushed some citizens into debt."

</comment><comment><USER9> When growing up in post-communist eastern Europe, I was a huge fan of such laws. Ill-gotten gains, many rich people with unexplained wealth. Partially tax evasion, but largely theft and receiving bribes. Especially for corrupt politicians, I think such law is necessary.

The problem is selective enforcement.

<comment><USER10> Selective enforcement could indeed be a problem.</comment></comment>


Ex-CIA Software Engineer Goes on Trial for Vault 7 Leak - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-cia-engineer-goes-on-trial-for-massive-leak-11580741119 <comment><USER2> [https://archive.md/IY71v](https://archive.md/IY71v)

</comment><comment><USER3> Full article: [http://archive.fo/THoPp](http://archive.fo/THoPp)

> _Mr. Schulte wasn 't charged immediately, and in conversations with > authorities he denied leaking classified information. But by early April he > faced a different legal peril: while searching Mr. Schulte's devices, agents > found evidence of child pornography, opening up a new line of investigation. > Mr. Schulte was arrested in August 2017 on federal child-pornography > charges._

Yeah, sure they did.

<comment><USER4> The speed a witch folks will imply there is a conspiracy at every turn on HN seems to be increasing with time.

<comment><USER5> HN is passing the Eternal September threshold; this is a standard pattern with any open-subscription message board as T approaches infinity.

I'm old enough to remember transitioning my interaction from /. to HN to get more professional discussion of industry topics. That was a long time ago, and there's no reason to assume most of /. hasn't followed me here by now.

Edit: for those downvoting me, I'd appreciate a clarification on whether I was "off-topic," "troll," "flamebait," or something else; this is not the granularity of feedback to which I am accustom. ;)

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, now that most of the chaff has abandoned /. it has somewhat returned to its original flavor, albeit a bit tainted. I'll not likely return simply because the conversation is a bit more grown-up here and I prefer the uncluttered presentation. But it's better now than it was at its worst.

<comment><USER4> Way back in the day I always felt the /. community was a bit shrill... to the point of absurdity when it came to the topic of Open Source and such. Hopefully they've mellowed a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like this is a good time to ask the question: Why the heck would any (good) engineer work for the CIA?

EDIT: I realize now after re-reading this comment that it could definitely come off as very abrasive. I won't alter it so everyone can see the original. Sorry if I offended anyone, I purely meant it from the standpoint of an engineer who has control of their own career (and likely desires more money/status) and understands the kind of precedent this creates and what it means for preservation of self if one were to work in the CIA.

<comment><USER8> Some people probably believe in the mission and prefer to work for the organization. Not everyone is motivated by stock options or benefits, etc.

<comment><USER9> And what exactly is the "mission" here? Overthrowing democratically elected governments in other countries? Assassinating foreign agents? Starting coups in other parts of the world? Running global drug trafficking operations?

<comment><USER10> Just curious, if these things were necessary to protect your freedom, your children's freedom, and the future of world order, (hypothetically) would you be opposed to your government doing those things?

<comment><USER11> The only one of the four the GP listed that I could see as meeting your criteria is 'assassinating foreign agents'. And I would see the requirement to do that (to meet your criteria) as very, very rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if [https://www.npmjs.com/package/nsaname](https://www.npmjs.com/package/nsaname) is updated with all the leaked names.</comment>


Boston public schools map switch aims to end 500 ye - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/19/boston-public-schools-world-map-mercator-peters-projection <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13911962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13911962)

12+ comments today thus far</comment>


Airbnb website inaccessible in Europe. They forgot to renew their certificate - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/r3bl_/status/822439101798510592 <comment><USER2> Sweden the site is down, but it can still be accessed in FF which is odd that they are the only browser. Tried on Chrome, Opera, IE 11, and Edge. To be clear this is using [https://airbnb.com](https://airbnb.com).

</comment><comment><USER3> That is signed by DigiCert vs. airbnb.de is signed by GlobalSign. Something fishy here.

</comment><comment><USER4> Works fine in France right now.

<comment><USER5> Germany as well. Even in Firefox which loves to nag about invalid certs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just tried replicating it in Firefox, and it seems that Chrome and Firefox accept different certificates for airbnb.com. Tried on three different platforms (Windows, Ubuntu and Android), same thing: Firefox uses a valid GlobalSign certificate, while Chrome uses an invalid DigiCert certificate.

Never seen the same website using different certs for two different browsers before.</comment></comment></comment>


Anti-surveillance clothing aims to hide wearers from facial recognition - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/04/anti-surveillance-clothing-facial-recognition-hyperface <comment><USER3> Looks like it's the same "facial pattern" repeated in different sizes - <USER2> they find a pattern that triggers a specific algorithm?</comment>


An Outcast Among Peers Gains Traction on Alzheimer's Cure  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443624204578060941988428604.html?mod=WSJ_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

<comment><USER2> This is fascinating.

I've been following, at a distance, the developments of AD research.

The culprit is not Amyloid or Tau in themselves, but their misfolded variants, which have prion-like properties: they can't be degraded (and thus accumulate), and turn their respective healthy variants into their pathological counterparts.

Misfolded Tau is intracellular, but it is known to propagate from cell [0,1], causing havoc on its way since its accumulation is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration.

Misfolded Amyloid may not be toxic in itself, but it probably acts as a misfolding template for Tau (it does in vitro) [2].

\--

0\. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22365544>

1\. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19282288>

2\. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22965142>

These may not be the best sources for these very points they're the first relevant papers I could find on the spot.

<comment><USER3> The Alzheimer's prion hypothesis is implausible, or at least incomplete. The proteins should spontaneously misfold at a small rate, followed by dementia 20-30 years later. The incidence at age 90 is something like 50%, and if we follow the exponential curve backwards, something like 0.5% of newborns should have tau prions, meaning several percent of teenagers should have early dementia. Instead the teenage dementia rate is vanishingly low, effectively zero.

We would also expect clusters of Alzheimer's disease in young patients who were seeded by tissue contamination: recreational IV drug use, transplants, blood transfusions, etc. We do not observe this.

The only obvious factor seems to be age. Something changes during aging that enables Alzheimer's disease. Before the change we are essentially bulletproof. After a steady increase sets in. I'm betting on some hormone being the culprit, possibly tied to a reactivated virus.

<comment><USER2> Most interesting, thanks for the insight. I'd rather go for incomplete, then, since the evidence for tau neurotoxicity is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _History is peppered with examples of scientists who struggled against a prevailing orthodoxy, only to be proved right._

This may be right, but it's also an argument used by crackpot theorists.

<comment><USER5> The point is, that having to struggle against the mainstream is not strong evidence in either direction. The difference is, the crackpots don't have any other strong evidence, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"Science is politics," he says. "And the politics of amyloid won."_

This quote is _just_ the kind of thing the public need to read to improve their confidence in the scientific method.

There needs to be a better distinction between established scientific knowledge and the funding decisions for research of unresolved questions. In other words, Science HAS_A Politics, not IS_A Politics.

<comment><USER7> Scientific research requires money, and there is no money without politics.

<comment><USER6> But politics and money typically do not dictate scientific results, as evidenced by the failure of the amyloid-targeted trials mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So how does this fit in with the type 3 diabetes idea that's been floating around reddit lately?

<comment><USER4> Why would you say that if the article didn't even mention diabetes?

<comment><USER9> Because some believe alzheimer's is another form of diabetes. [1]

1\. [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/bittman- is-a...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/bittman-is- alzheimers-type-3-diabetes/)</comment></comment></comment>


Economic Reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/howard-marks-memos <comment><USER2> > Riding to work the other day, I heard about protests occurring in France. > Workers were complaining about potential changes in labor regulations that > would make their jobs less secure. In brief, French workers like it the way > things are: they can't be pushed beyond 35 hours a week, and employers' > ability to terminate them is subject to a drawn-out, torturous and uncertain > program. They also like their lengthy vacations and the extensive benefits > provided by the state. The question is where the ability to pay for above > average benefits will come from if neither the hours worked nor the > productivity per hour is above average. Governments and regulations can't > produce prosperity.

This memo neatly glosses over where the productivity gains in the last 100 years have gone, and makes it seem as if it's fair for wages of the American worker to stagnate while the megawealthy get all the profit. If a worker in 2016 can build a car in a-fourth the time it took a worker in 1935 to build a car, why is it implausible for them to work 35 hours a week with better benefits and more vacation time?

<comment><USER3> > why is it implausible for them to work 35 hours a week with better benefits > and more vacation time?

People could do that if they were all willing to live like people lived in 1935. It turns out that many (most?) people prefer to live a more expensive lifestyle which requires more hours of work.

One consequence of this is that, since the number of people who prefer this is large enough that they've established a norm in many industries which makes it harder to find an employer willing to hire a worker that's going to put in fewer hours.

If you do really want a 1935 quality of life, though, you can probably attain it working 20 or 30 hours per week at a restaurant or supermarket.

It's important to note that this life could be _very_ different from what you have now. You would likely live in a household containing three generations of your family and seldom travel outside the town/county you live in, among other things.

<comment><USER4> > It turns out that many (most?) people prefer to live a more expensive > lifestyle which requires more hours of work.

I don't know that this is quite true. I have asked many employers for fewer hours and more vacation time in exchange for less money. I am always refused. I am frequently offered more money but never more vacation time.

I work as a contractor now, but even now my main client is begging me for more hours. The only people I've seen who successfully negotiate for fewer hours are those so vital to the business that they'd rather have that part time employee than no employee at all.

Mind you that's anecdotes and all that.

> One consequence of this is that, since the number of people who prefer this > is large enough that they've established a norm in many industries which > makes it harder to find an employer willing to hire a worker that's going to > put in fewer hours.

I actually see it as the ones with the power get to write the rules, and make things seem normal. Even if I'd prefer to work fewer hours, I still need some money to survive, and can't quite go jobless.

<comment><USER5> Buying lots of stuff from one person is cheaper than buying some stuff from lots of people. This difference is caused by transaction costs—the effort required to go from desire to purchased solution—and it's core to the theory of why firms form in the first place[1]. Every employer wants as few employees as possible to get a given amount of value because it costs less. They're not against fewer hours just because they're mean or stuck in their ways.

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

<comment><USER6> This, and the fact that if you let your Rock Star(tm) have special treatment of 25 hrs/wk and 8 weeks of vacation the folks who can barely get a day's worth of productivity of that guy done in a week will complain incessantly to the point of it being a real problem.

I say this having attempted to run a "egalitarian" team for well over a decade now. I've learned some lessons along the way. Basically reality doesn't matter to most people - perception does. If it's perceived that one employee is getting "special treatment" the rest demand it, deservedly or not. It doesn't matter if that employee does 5 times the work.

I still operate on the "Get your work done, and I don't give a shit if you're on the beach while you're on Slack with me" premise, but I understand this is only for a _very_ select subsection of employees. The rest simply cannot handle it, and most companies take the easy/lazy way out and simply try to treat everyone as an equal as it results in far less drama. I think this is completely unacceptable, and high performers deserve to be treated as such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 10 pages of libertarian supply-side drivel from someone with a conflict of interest that conveniently ignores all counter arguments or dismisses them as political and "matter of opinion"

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree with everything he says, but he makes a compelling point that the rich will simply leave if taxes are raised too much.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but travel is one aspect of globalization that seems to benefit the rich more than the poor.

<comment><USER8> Which is why they're all _flooding_ in droves from New York over to New Jersey:

[http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/rich-people- don...](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/rich-people-dont-leave- ny-because-of-taxes.html)

Oh wait.

Gee I wonder if it's actually all bluster and empty threats.

<comment><USER9> No, it's simply that a threshold exists at which people will move, and it hasn't been reached yet. Like most of the problems discussed in the economic reality article, this is a tradeoff -- people have clearly decided that they are willing to put up with higher taxes to live in New York instead of New Jersey. But surely you can see that there is a point at which it won't be worth it for many people.

<comment><USER8> Well, the sheer deluge of articles proclaiming an impending exodus every time the idea of raising taxes is mooted and the lack of any evidence for these so called exoduses has made me... skeptical.

Historically the highest US income tax rate was 95%. Guess what?

<comment><USER9> It only takes a few one-percenters moving away from a state to drain tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars from the state's tax revenue. I think this was mentioned in the article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top- taxpayer-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer- moved-and-new-jersey-shuddered.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Answers to his issues with tariffs:

> First, such tariffs are probably barred under trade agreements that are in > place. To impose them, we would have to abrogate those agreements.

So what? Those trade agreements were made under the assumption that they'd be good for America. Now that we know they're bad for America, the assumptions under which they were made are invalid.

> We have to wonder about retaliatory actions – wouldn't other countries > impose offsetting tariffs on U.S. exports that would further harm our > manufacturing base?

We're a net importer. Tariffs in other countries would only really hurt if we did a ton of exports.

> What would happen to our ability to refinance our perpetually growing > national debt if China, our biggest creditor, decided one day it wasn't > quite as eager to participate in new Treasury financings?

Lower taxes and cut the size of government. Stop printing money and allow interest rates to rise.

> What would rising barriers do to one of the main motivations behind the > broadening of U.S. trade agreements since World War II: preventing conflict?

A tariff is not a wall. Trade would still take place and there'd still be interdependence.

> Finally, but most simply, what American wants to pay 50% more for a > cellphone than he does today?

An American who used to be unemployed or paid minimum wage, but has gotten a much better job with an greatly increased salary because he no longer has to compete with desperately poor people who will accept pay far below the US minimum wage.

<comment><AUTHOR> > So what? Those trade agreements were made under the assumption that they'd > be good for America. Now that we know they're bad for America, the > assumptions under which they were made are invalid.

Do we know that? It's easy to quantify slower income gains, but harder to quantify lower costs for goods and services. I'm not even sure what the closes proxy would be. Inflation?

>We're a net importer. Tariffs in other countries would only really hurt if we did a ton of exports.

History has shown that tariffs do result in counter-tariffs, which end up being unprofitable for both sides, driving up costs.

> Lower taxes and cut the size of government. Stop printing money and allow > interest rates to rise.

100% agree.

> A tariff is not a wall. Trade would still take place and there'd still be > interdependence.

But it is a barrier, starting as a low hurdle and tending to rise over time.

> An American who used to be unemployed or paid minimum wage, but has gotten a > much better job with an greatly increased salary because he no longer has to > compete with desperately poor people who will accept pay far below the US > minimum wage.

Where and how do these new higher paying jobs come about?

<comment><USER9> Another very harmful and insidious consequence of tariffs: by preserving non- competitive industries that would not survive in a free market, tariffs delay, and worsen, the inevitable collapse of those industries.

By hiding behind tariffs, we delay the replacement of non-competitive industries with competitive ones. When we finally drop the tariffs and start developing competitive industries, other countries will have had a head start in doing so.

Our companies and workers will be behind their global competitors by years. The countries which declined protectionism and developed competitive industries when it first made sense to do so will reap the rewards.

Someone might point out that we could avoid this situation by simply keeping the tariffs around forever. But that never happens. Eventually, the tariffs will become unpopular because people will know that outside of this country, the same goods cost significantly less. That gap is likely to increase over time. The Oak Tree Capital article uses a hypothetical example of cell phones being kept at a $150 price in the domestic market by tariffs, when they are available at $100 in the international market. After a few years, they will still be $150 here, but maybe down to $80 in the international market. A few years later, they may cost only $50 internationally. They won't become much cheaper in the domestic market because manufacturers will have no incentive to lower prices, because they are protected by the tariff. Furthermore, if the domestic manufacturers were capable of competing on price, the tariff never would have been necessary in the first place. At some point, the tariff will be too politically unpopular to be sustained.

It's worth noting that one of the contributing factors to the collapse of communism in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the obvious and increasing divergence in quality of life between the communist and capitalist countries, and that protectionism and anti-trade policies in the communist countries, along with attempts at central planning, accounts for much of that. They had a good run, but they could not hide from economic reality forever when their neighbors obviously had it so much better. That's why tariffs can't survive indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> According to Buffett: "When I see a memo from Howard Marks in my mail, it's the first thing I open and read. I always learn something..."

</comment><comment><USER12> _> For example, lending people money can enable them to buy things today that they otherwise mightn't have bought until later (if at all). If a consumer buys a boat today with money made available through a low-interest loan, that's a boat he won't buy next year. Lending people money doesn't alter their lifetime incomes, meaning consumers may buy fewer boats later, when the loans have to be repaid, causing disposable income to contract._

Is that really how capitalism works, though? I believed it was more like this: making available loans at low interest rates stimulates the production of boats to large levels. The sale of these boats at profits creates wealth for the owner AND the employees of the boat making company. The employees spend that money and stimulate economic demand; the owners/investors make great profit and thus concentrate capital even more. This capital is then invested in other ventures, perhaps even as low interest loans to other consumers.

Loans/Debt enable businesses, consumers and nations to create economic activity NOW and accumulate the capital NOW; we don't know what the future will look like but the concentration of economic power (i.e. capitalism) has certainly played a most important part in technological progress.

<comment><USER13> > The sale of these boats at profits creates wealth for the owner AND the > employees of the boat making company.

The boat is wealth. The person selling the boat gives some wealth away, in exchange of a monetary profit. That profit will enable him to buy wealth produced by some other person.

Let's make things clearly.

\- There's the real economy. Here, work, capital, natural resources, etc are used to create wealth. People create their valuables and exchange them for things they value more, increasing the wealth of everybody.

\- There's the nominal economy. Here money is invested in acquiring resources, that other people will spend money consuming.

In a simple theory, the real economy works alone and money is irrelevant. But that theory seems to be wrong. In fact, people gladly raise prices, but resist lowering them. That creates an asymmetry and the consequence is that the real economy works well¹ when the amount of circulating money is constant or increasing, but does not work well when it is reducing.

Now, finally, people getting loans makes the amount of circulating money to increase, and paying them back makes it reduce.

1 - At least according to the mainstream theories. Also, only up to a certain point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Faster economic growth? Both may be desirable, but efforts to clean up the environment may conflict with faster economic growth._

It doesn't have to be that way. [https://www3.epa.gov/airtrends/images/y70_14.png](https://www3.epa.gov/airtrends/images/y70_14.png)

But yeah there are tradeoffs

</comment><comment><USER15> Surely bankruptcy is the equivalent of forgiveness, not the equivalent of hell? A debtors prison is the equivalent of hell.

This undermines his point that it's the fear of failure that drives business, since bankruptcy laws reduce the impact of failure.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found it disappointing this lengthy article didn't touch on Basic Income at all. It would have been helpful to see how that (potentially) slots into all this.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't slot in to economic reality. It is simply an unrealistic proposal, for several reasons:

1\. A guaranteed basic income to every citizen, which would be enough for a person to live on without a job, would cost more than the entire annual income of the Federal government. Even if it didn't, people would simply vote to increase their incomes until it did.

2\. It would be regressive: under most of the basic income plans that have been proposed, people who are currently on welfare would get less money from the government than they do now. On the other hand, middle class people who don't need extra money will get it. Basic income would represent a transfer of income from the poorest to everyone else.

3\. It would not replace existing welfare systems. People like to think that it would, but political realities would prevent that from happening. When has the Congress ever passed a simple, elegant piece of legislation that undid layers of bureaucracy, and then prevented it from being changed? It's simply unrealistic to assume that could happen in our political system.

4\. Political, ideological, and moral forces in our culture and society have caused us to have our current welfare systems, and those same forces would cause us to revert to those systems even if basic income were implemented. Some examples of these forces are the social constructions of race and class, views about who deserves money and who does not, and the moral value of work. Basic income is a blank-slate social engineering fantasy that ignores all of these things.

5\. Basic income is likely to be a race to the bottom. You cannot redistribute wealth that does not exist. By decreasing incentives for work, basic income will reduce the amount of wealth created, which will reduce the amount of money that can be distributed to people as their basic income.

6\. If steps are taken to incentivize work to avoid the problem in #5, e.g. increasing the basic income payments to people who have jobs to incentivize other people to get jobs, basic income won't be "basic" anymore. Such incentives would open the door to many other proposals that would result in some people getting more basic income money than others. Many of these proposals will be popular, such as extra money for single mothers, less money for convicted felons and drug users, etc. The forces I mentioned in point 4 would thereby reconstruct our current welfare systems within the framework of the basic income policy.

<comment><USER17> I like the Geo-Libertarian idea of basic income. Thomas Paine wrote something similar in Agrarian Justice.

It basically goes like this:

1) Governments have claimed a monopoly on the land and resources. Basically through military conquest at some point in the past.

2) Before there was any government people were able to use the land freely. So basically they were robbed of something that they could previously use.

3) Fairness dictates that compensation for such a loss must be made.

4) Charge people for the use of land, resources, airwaves, etc.

5) This income goes to all people in the country equally.

This type of basic income does not violate any economic reality that I am aware of.

Now, it will not be enough to so that people can choose to live without working. Such thinking is anti-reality. Absent work, decay (entropy) is the law of the universe. This can not be changed. But it will be fair compensation for no longer having access to the land resources that hunter / gatherers had.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "they had, in fact, been able to acquire vast amounts of wood for $50 a cord, and they'd been able to sell all they had for $40 a cord. How could they be broke? "

By losing $10 per cord?

<comment><USER19> While I get the joke, the question is accurate.

If I had $1000 and bought 50 cords of wood at $50/cord, and could only sell then for $40/cord, I'm left with $800. I took a $200 loss, but I'm hardly broke.

I'd go so far as to argue that this is a common occurrence in business when they haven't identified scalable marketing channels. Often you have to spend at a loss to gather data, optimize your efforts, and THEN hopefully make a profit.

So if I can take that remaining $800, optimize my efforts, and sell them for $51/cord moving forward (assuming no further optimizations), it will take me a little bit to earn my initial cash back, but I'm in essence printing money at that point.

<comment><USER20> I took it to mean, that they had to buy more to cut costs, fuel (less trips), economies of scale etc. Your way is interesting!

<comment><USER19> Heh, well, I'm a marketer, so that model is the basis of my job. It is very rare to be profitable right off the bat. A lot of times you hear all the success stories on how a company hit viral growth, but what you don't always hear are how many of their strategies and tactics bombed and were tossed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > _Rather than believing central banks can make economies more productive, > it's my bottom line that there's a naturally occurring growth rate for each > economy, and that rate dictates the long-term output, not central bankers' > actions._

While I don't disagree in general principle, I simply don't find this observation or belief all too compelling or unique as it's being framed in political context. Ever since Greenspan the Central Banking "toolchest" has been of questionable merit and practical utility. If anything, the asset buying irrational market behavior result (see: US stocks) disconnecting record highs from real-world growth or economic engine performance only seems to acknowledge the "naturally occurring growth rate" concept has merit.

Granted, some people don't like talking about how a negative growth rate can be natural too.

> _The U.S. government couldn't figure out how to stop it in the 1970s, and > the nations of the world can't find a way to start it today._

Oh, they can find a way, they just would prefer not to, methinks.</comment>


IPhone 4S new 14.4 Mbps HSDPA 4G speeds won't help Americans - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/04/iphone_4s_new_14_4_mbps_hsdpa_4g_speeds_wont_help_americans.html <comment><USER2> ....and it's a theoretical max. What's annoying is that the other handset makers are deceiving about 4G. The ATRIX 4G. IT HAS MORE G's!</comment>


Your Reality is Out of Date: Introducing the Mesofact - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/28/warning_your_reality_is_out_of_date/

<comment><USER2> The author has a website dedicated to "mesofacts", including a blog that supposedly will provide a steady flow of mesofact updates. (Given how slowly mesofacts are supposed to change, I wonder how long one can supply a steady flow of interesting mesofact updates for. We'll see.) <http://www.mesofacts.org/blog.html> is the blog.</comment>


Why the Chromebook Pixel Matters - <AUTHOR> http://refer.ly/why-the-chromebook-pixel-matters/c/6e2cf9c47f9311e2bfbf22000a1db8fa

<comment><USER2> Will be really curious to see the next iteration stands up. Would also love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft this week

<comment><USER3> I think ultimately the Chromebook Pixel is going to be great for windows laptops. Google's main goal here seems to be not to actually sell any laptops, but to set a benchmark for reviewers. In every review of any windows laptop right now, the benchmark for build quality is the macbook pro, but reviewer's opinions generally seem to be that the MBP is a sort of pie-in-the-sky thing that windows laptops shouldn't even have to aspire to be. now the another laptop of this quality exists, it should be a bit more of an expected standard rather than an upper bound.</comment></comment>


Professors on food stamps: The story of academia in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_the_shocking_true_story_of_academia_in_2014/ <comment><USER2> Yet another failure of the free market.

</comment><comment><USER3> So what do we do about this?

<comment><USER2> One possibility - The adjunct professors should form a union and negotiate higher wages.

<comment><USER4> There are already unions formed or being formed, and organizations such as New Faculty Majority who are standing up for adjunct and contingent faculty.</comment></comment></comment>


Moses, utility library for functional programming in Lua - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/Yonaba/Moses <comment><USER2> I wrote this library while working in Torch because I missed clojure.core:

[https://github.com/rosejn/lua- fn/blob/master/fn/seq.lua](https://github.com/rosejn/lua- fn/blob/master/fn/seq.lua)

It provides a lazy sequence abstraction based on iterators as well as a nice set of functional building blocks. I think this type of library design is better than the for loop based style of moses because you can handle infinite sequences, partially sampled execution, early stopping, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does this compare to [https://github.com/rtsisyk/luafun](https://github.com/rtsisyk/luafun) ?

<comment><USER4> From a casual glance, luafun tries to compose with iterators as much as possible. It looks like Moses is largely table based, which might be more memory intensive.

Also, luafun was designed around optimizations offered in LuaJIT. I doubt the same is true of Moses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would I use this if I already use Penlight for functional programming utils and classic [1] for OOP in lua?

[1] - [https://github.com/deepmind/classic](https://github.com/deepmind/classic)

<comment><USER6> Because you didn't know that Penlight had FP built in? I certainly didn't, and I've been a user of Penlight for a few years now .. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice library - I've put it on my workbench for some experiments. I've been using lua-enumerable for pretty much the same purpose - its a little lighter (single file to drop into your project) and it grafts on top of table, so its also less likely to impact your other usage of "_", if you use it, in a project ..

[https://github.com/mikelovesrobots/lua- enumerable](https://github.com/mikelovesrobots/lua-enumerable)

<comment><AUTHOR> Have fun with Moses. And well, using the dummy "_" is not mandatory, but just convenient. Feel free to using any other namespace though ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find aliases to be pretty clearly bad API. By all means, include those aliases in documentation so people can search using them, but having a code base littered with two different names for the same thing makes it harder to search, learn from and code-mod it.</comment>


Most New York Coronavirus Cases Came from Europe, Genomes Show - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavirus-cases-europe-genomes.html <comment><USER2> Or, more generally and obviously, the vast majority of Sars-Cov-2 viruses arrived, wherever, via air travel. The pointing of fingers in any other direction is suspicious.</comment>


The PRPL Pattern - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/prpl-pattern/ <comment><USER2> Server side state in http is a wonderful thing to abuse.

One adserving system I worked on had a very expensive correlation process where it joined auction stats with impression stats. Essentially a big Hadoop job, except run in a stream.

Another system I later worked on solved the problem by tying impression requests back to the same server that ran the auction. That server kept the auction data in memory until it either received the impression or until a set amount of time had passed.

Hearing how it worked made me feel a bit dirty, then I realized how much money it saved them to do it that way and I was impressed with the simplicity of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> For applications that have extremely fast server response times, it seems simpler to just send the HTML, keep JavaScript to the minimum and use prefetching for likely next clicks to ensure the next response is cached.

This site is fast, without PRPL.

<comment><USER4> Exactly damn it. Stop making 3Mo sized webpage and wow, it's fast!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's me complaining again that the first few sentences/paragraphs/section don't provide any useful information for me as a new user and I skipped right over them. Who are those words for? They sounds like a project proposal.

<comment><USER6> Those words are meant for people who have the question "why should I go through all this trouble to implement this pattern?"

That said, it _is_ very vague. I think this presentation from Alex Russell does a much better job of demonstrating the need for progressive web apps:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4bZvq3nodf4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4bZvq3nodf4)

<comment><USER7> Briefly _what_ the $THING is should always come first (in everything you say and write, formally and informally), so you can decide whether it's relevant to you. If it is, then you can read the motivation and historical significance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was quite ironic to see the Google IO 2016 presentations about patterns how to make web apps approximate native apps in regards to UI/UX, with the presenters throwing jabs at mobile development, while the Google Android teams were presenting all the goodies about Android development on other rooms, just by using the platform.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's missing a "P" – it should be "PPRPL":

 _Prerender_ , Push, Render, Pre-cache, Lazy-load

But of course Polymer doesn't do prerender, so it doesn't fit the Google's image.

It really bugs me that you'll have to load and parse a huge amount of code to get anything rendered on the screen with Polymer.

<comment><USER10> If your app uses a huge amount of code, then yes. But that's really the fault of the app developer. Not the library.

What developers often do is pull in a ton of components from the web components catalog and not realize that every component comes with a cost. It's no different than working with libraries. Know the tradeoffs.

There are plenty of examples of fast rendering apps that written with Polymer. Check out [https://shop.polymer-project.org/](https://shop.polymer- project.org/) and [https://www.chromestatus.com/features](https://www.chromestatus.com/features), to name two.

[https://ebidel.github.io/polymer- experiments/polymersummit/f...](https://ebidel.github.io/polymer- experiments/polymersummit/fouc/appshell.html) is another example that shows how to utilize the "upgrade" feature [1] of the custom elements API. IOW, the browser can render markup without JS ever running. Unfortunately, this is not something that Polymer leverages very much. It requires more work and is less friendly to new developers.

[1]: [https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting- start...](https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting- started/primers/customelements#upgrades)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _For most real-world projects, it's frankly too early to realize the PRPL vision in its purest, most complete form – but it's definitely not too early to adopt the mindset, or to start chasing the vision from various angles._

This reminded me of the "worse is better" essay, because it sounds very much like the perfectionist "MIT approach".

[https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse- is-better.html)

I personally prefer an emphasis on simplicity over perfection, especially when simplicity means you actually get working code. Is there any sample app around that obeys the PRPL pattern and is a good example to start from?

<comment><USER12> Note that you should copy and paste that link or you'll get a picture of a hairy ballsack.

<comment><USER7> What is any possible motivation for doing that? The only one that comes to mind is "I hate when people link to me from other sites," but that makes no sense. It's not hot-linking to a resource, it's just a page address.

(And apparently a lot of other people want to see that picture, as right now I'm just waiting for imgur to do its thing.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel that this isn't so much a 'new pattern' as just an elaboration on 'pre- load stuff you know you'll need', which again isn't so much a pattern as just being common sense.

<comment><USER14> Design Patterns have always (since the GOF) been the observation and naming of common designs that already occur in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Has some overlap with the architecture that FlipKart used for FlipKart Lite, at least from my understanding of the article:

[https://medium.com/@boopathi/flipkart-lite-the- how-f6eb311dc...](https://medium.com/@boopathi/flipkart-lite-the- how-f6eb311dc943)

[http://tech-blog.flipkart.net/2015/11/progressive-web-app/](http://tech- blog.flipkart.net/2015/11/progressive-web-app/)

<comment><USER16> Hey there. Author of the article here. Flipkart implement a version of the PRPL pattern in production :) We've worked with them quite a bit in the past and I gave a talk with them on their architecture at Chrome Dev Summit last year in case you're interested in learning more about what they're doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I _love_ this pattern. I've been studying web performance for a while in the context of working on my project Gatsby [0] — a React.js static site generator. The next version of Gatsby is explicitly patterned after PRPL.

Gatsby at build time generates a static HTML version of each page. Which makes the initial load time of a Gatsby site super fast. The browser then loads the minimum Javascript necessary to make that page interactive. Then in a service worker, it starts prefetching Javascript and data necessary for other pages so that when you click on a link, it takes very little time to fetch the code/data and then make the page transition.

A couple sites running 1.0 code that you can check out are my blog [https://www.bricolage.io/](https://www.bricolage.io/) and an example site cloned from Instagram [https://gatsbygram.gatsbyjs.org/](https://gatsbygram.gatsbyjs.org/)

I wrote up the performance plans for Gatsby in this issue [1].

One analogy I came up for that which I really like is to JIT or lean manufacturing.

Quoting myself:

"There's a close analogy to just-in-time manufacturing ideas. Companies found that the way to be the most responsive to customers is to actually avoid doing work ahead of time. When they did do work ahead of time this would paradoxically slow them down as the speculative work would get in the way of getting the work done that's actually necessary (resource contention).

For both manufacturing and web apps there's high inventory cost (unused code takes up memory) and a premium on responsiveness. The car customer wants their new car yesterday and the web app consumer wants their app running immediately. Any work you do ahead of time because "they might need it" gets in the way of the app being responsive to the user.

With both you want to wait until the user asks for something and then work overtime to get it to them as fast as possible."

[0] [https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby) [1] [https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/issues/431](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/issues/431)</comment>


Ask HN: If HN was a country, it would look like - <AUTHOR>

As a huge fan of HN and daily reader, I appreciate the diverse and honest perspectives that continually are shared.
That got me thinking about our community at large. I understand that no precise figures of the HN members exist. Still, based on your perceptions and experiences, if HN was a country, what would it look like? (according to:)
Avg. age: IQ: Race: Population (proportionate to real countries): #AnyOtherRelevantMetric <comment><USER2> Please don't even ask about IQ in this context. We have NO IDEA about people's IQ scores here, other than the vague idea that the HN average is higher than the general population average. National-level data on average IQ are of very poor quality,

<http://wicherts.socsci.uva.nl/wicherts2010.pdf>

and reliance on the purported datasets on that issue is a reliable sign of poor thinking about what IQ means.

</comment><comment><USER3> A country full of nerdy men. All that violent virginal angst would probably lead it to many many wars.</comment>


Designing Web Apps - Lessons from Ryan Singer - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2608-ryans-talk-at-future-of-web-apps-2010-london

<comment><USER2> Really helpful to see how a successful team builds apps end to end.

My most recent experience has me leaning towards spending the time to wireframe though. Ryan warns against this as a waste of time "building higher fidelity sketches" (than paper), but to me building a sketch in omnigraffle is much faster than on paper, and it can be easier to convey more complicated user interactions as you can copy and paste etc. Also, for more interactive components of a UI, showing interactions through a wireframe is much much faster than prototyping it in javascript, so it becomes worth it to quickly validate that the interactive UI makes sense (by sharing the wireframes with a few people) before diving into the code (the simple example he had wouldn't really warrant a more interactive UI, but imagine, say, designing mint.com's transaction browsing / management / tagging app). That process might last a few extra hours, but if it saves you from building a snazzy UI that doesn't make sense, time well spent.

<comment><USER3> Personally I like the Wacom Tablet as an alternative to paper sketching. You get (almost) the immediacy of paper with the benefits of copy / paste, layers, undo, erase, etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice presentation. I'll be passing this along to colleagues.

However--isn't this how most web apps are made? The domain-driven design of model->model interactions->front-end design has been around for a long time now hasn't it? I was hoping for something more to come up as I was watching the presentation.

The apps I do by myself pretty much follow what Ryan Singer outlined. It works very well, and once the code has been sanity checked to work I get started on a "high fidelity" version of the front-end and just play with Photoshop until the look is there. 20-25% of time spent is in a notebook full of class diagrams, database tables and lo-fi wireframes, rationalizing what models make sense for the app, how they will interact, what the user/admin will see, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is free space pink colored? - <AUTHOR>

Something that I was wondering for a long long time, and I still have no answer to:
In the drive properties of windows, the free space is marked as pink or purple, the used space blue. Why not a shade of green and red?
Has this a design reason or historical techical reason? <comment><USER2> Probably a Microsoft programmer once wrote a line like this as a placeholder so he could get something on screen:

fillColor = (used) ? 0x0000ff : 0xff00c0;

And then he got an emergency assignment to fix an obscure SQL Server bug related to NTFS extended attributes, and "fillColor" was never touched again.

<comment><AUTHOR> is it 0xff00c0 ?

On my windows machine here its either

0xff00ff or 0x0000ff

Eventually he was just lazy and had no color palette ready?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, lets go back first IBM standard graphics mode ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter) ) had a limited palette which was black, light cyan, light magenta and white. maybe they were being backwards compatible.

Seems as logical as any other theory

</comment><comment><USER4> I know that purple is very close to invisible lights. Maybe that's the reason. Purple, invisible, nothing.</comment>


A Huntington's Breakthrough? - <AUTHOR> http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/03/28/a_huntingtons_breakthrough.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting comment from the original article. I would appreciate if anyone could more simply explain what these 8 diseases have in common:

"9\. Kelvin Stott on March 28, 2014 11:57 AM writes...

I did my PhD on the molecular mechanism of HD with Nobel laureate Max Perutz back in 1993-6. We were trying to testing his "polar zipper" hypothesis, whereby expanded glutamine repeats aggregate into extended b-sheets that are inherently toxic, much like other amyoid-related diseases. And in fact, the mutant protein has been shown to form non-specific pores in cell membranes, just like other amyloid proteins.

That was many years ago, but anyway, I'd still like to share my perspective on this...

The problem I see with the mechanism proposed in this Nature paper is seems too specific for HD and huntingtin, however at least SEVEN other neurodegenerative diseases (SCA1, SCA2, SCA3/MJD, DRPLA, Kennedy's Disease, SBMA, etc.) have been linked to the expansion of glutamine repeats in completely unrelated proteins.

To me this is just too much of a coincidence for each disease to be explained by a different mechanism, and I think any mechanism for HD must be shown to occur in all these other diseases before I would be prepared to believe it.

Just my 2c."

<comment><USER3> The author of that comment is just saying that several other neurodegenerative diseases (the 7 he listed) are so similar to Huntington's disease in terms of disease progression and genetic traits (the glutamine repeats) that it seems unlikely that the glutamine repeats in Huntington's act through a specific enzyme, where for the other seven diseases the toxicity is due to amyloid formation (and the resulting impact via pore formation in membranes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> grandpa has HD, dad has HD, and likely I will as well. Maybe someday we won't have to worry about this disease :(...

<comment><USER5> >>If I knew someone with the Huntingtin mutation, I believe that I would tell them to waste no time taking cysteine supplements

Based on this finding are you going to take cysteine supplements?

Do you know if cysteine supplements have side effects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rule of the news, is there a question mark in the headline title? The answer is always no.

<comment><USER7> Does not apply. This is not a news article per se, but a blog post. :)

<comment><USER8> It's a known _reputable_ source. The fact that it is also a blog, is not truly related to that.</comment></comment></comment>


Public Beta: December 3, 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://letsencrypt.org/2015/11/12/public-beta-timing.html <comment><USER2> I'm really pleased to see this initiative and I've used the private beta with letsencrypt-nosudo[0] to issue a certificate, but after successfully getting a certificate my site failed the SSL Labs test[1] with an 'unknown CA' error, even though I used the newer one that should have been trusted. It was probably down to user error and the additional complexity of denying sudo privileges for the set up script, but it took much more work than I expected. Then I noticed the certs will only ever be good for 90 days, and I'll have to do this multiple times a year!

Bottom line for me is that with DV certs so inexpensive and simple to get, I'd rather pay a few dollars a year for normal commercial certificates. I can do things like use CloudFront at a custom subdomain with HTTPS without needing to point DNS somewhere every few months to get a cert reissued.

I simply can't justify the extra work involved to get 'free' certificates, and I'm happy to continue buying regular DV certs. Maybe these are temporary limitations and if so I will definitely try again in the future.

[0][https://github.com/diafygi/letsencrypt- nosudo](https://github.com/diafygi/letsencrypt-nosudo) [1][https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html)

<comment><USER3> I actually love the idea of 90 day (or less) certificates! Once you automate the process of replacing your certificate (which let's encrypt will greatly help with), it won't matter how short the period is. Also, if a key gets compromised, it'll be valid for a shorter time. Give [https://letsencrypt.org/2015/11/09/why-90-days.html](https://letsencrypt.org/2015/11/09/why-90-days.html) a read! If you want to get more in-depth about certificate revocation, [http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/05/13/how- certificate...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/05/13/how-certificate- revocation-doesnt-work-in-practice.html) is also a great/depressing read.

<comment><USER4> Does Google still penalize short-term / soon-expiring SSL certs in search rankings?

Edit: this does not appear to be a thing that happens.

<comment><USER5> Why do you think that's a thing that's happening?

<comment><USER4> Hrm. Good point. At some point I remember some SEO guru or other claiming that long-duration domain name registrations were good for SEO, but looking at it now, it seems as though that was a correlation !== causation, as MS, Goog, et al register their domain names for decades at a time, and also tend to have high search rankings.

As for the rest, chalk it up to my over-active imagination, compounded with that bad knowledge. SSL is an SEO boost (according to a random Googling), and if domain name expiration was a factor, it made sense to me that SSL expiry would factor too.

TLDR, I was a dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So a slight delay then, previously they announced general availability for November 16th: [https://letsencrypt.org/2015/08/07/updated-lets-encrypt- laun...](https://letsencrypt.org/2015/08/07/updated-lets-encrypt-launch- schedule.html)

<comment><USER7> Given the scope of what they are trying to accomplish and the fact that I've never worked on a project which was delivered on time and with all features complete, I'm pretty happy that the delay isn't longer! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am still unable to run the tool to get the certificates on Windows OS. I know that there are some development in progress, but still far to be finished. Windows OS is running around 30% of the web servers. Please don't neglect it.

<comment><USER9> Don't feel so bad, it doesn't run on Mac OSX or even RHEL. Use the Docker container, it worked for me.

<comment><USER10> Works fine on FreeBSD, also is in ports.

[https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/security/py- letsencryp...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/security/py-letsencrypt/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am beginning to wonder how much effect Let's Encrypt will really have on wide TLS deployment. A very large portion of the web is stuck at shared hosting services, such as Go Daddy, Lunarpages, et al. These services generally charge for TLS hosting, and due to the 90-day issuance on Let's Encrypt certificates it seems somewhat infeasible to use their certificates on shared hosts which offer very limited (if any) shell access.

<comment><USER12> A VPS costs 5 bucks on DO and I've seen (can't remember where) a 3 USD/month offering. So it's rather cheap to move away from shared hosting nowadays.

For me Let's Encrypt came out at the right time. They said they will automate the 90-day renewal process.

<comment><USER13> Side question, does anyone actually enjoy running a VPS? Between managing the sites on it, you have to maintain the VPS, keep it up to date, its prone to security bugs and flaws, etc. Am I missing something here? I remember setting up multiple VPSes on Linode / DO and it was always a painful process of installing the OS, installing the whole stack, configuring everything, setting up users / roles, firewalls, etc.

On top of that, whereas on a shared host i click a button and host a second domain, with a VPS I have to SSH in and manually edit server files.

But everyone always recommends running a VPS so I can't help but imagine I've either missed some magical tool that makes running a VPS a snap or it's just not a realistic solution for most people.

<comment><USER14> On a basic level, shell scripts to do the basic config work in a pinch. But if you can learn the basics of Ansible, setting up a new VM can take just a few minutes and not be painful at all. It's quicker for me to add a new VM and apply a few Ansible roles I've written for a new client site/app than to log into some shared hosting provider and click through their UI to do the same.

<comment><USER15> Have you got any hints on learning Ansible? I've tried but I find YAML quite tedious to write - I'm more likely to reach for shell scripts.

I'd also like to integrate it with [https://github.com/voltagex/junkcode/blob/master/Python/spot...](https://github.com/voltagex/junkcode/blob/master/Python/spotprices/spotprices.py) so I can do "least cost provisioning"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there finally a way to renew the certificate without taking down the web server listening on :443? This was the major thing missing from being able to deploy it in production.

<comment><USER17> There's no downtime when using the webroot method, see here for details: [https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/using-the-webroot- domain...](https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/using-the-webroot-domain- verification-method/1445/7)

<comment><USER18> The downtime happens when you restart the server so it loads the new certificate. This must probably be addressed in the server implementation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a fantastic solution for _public_ web sites. Kudos to the team.

It is hardly usable for internal (non-Internet facing) ones because you have to expose either the site or internal DNS for a check to go though.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hopefully some kind of OpenBSD support comes along. Pretty much letsencrypt- nosudo until then. The standard letsencrypt program doesn't appear to work on Debian 7 due to outdated openssl and what not.

</comment><comment><USER21> The beta was good timing for me. I installed an LE cert on Ubuntu running Apache and it's working fine. The instructions were a bit unclear about whether the "auto" option works yet for that setup (it doesn't). Also, I had an issue with permissions on the cert directory - I use a group for my server permissions (instead of running at root), so had to add that group to the cert directory. But the process is still better than what I've experienced implementing a comodo cert.

</comment><comment><USER22> I tried the beta: it was fast, easy and boring. How it should be.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone concerned with the amount of fraud that will come from this? Won't bad actors utilize this to https all of their phishing sites?

<comment><USER24> These certs are to verify you control the domain name, not that you are who you say you are. Those certificates are much more complicated and expensive. See [https://letsencrypt.org/2015/10/29/phishing-and- malware.html](https://letsencrypt.org/2015/10/29/phishing-and-malware.html) for more information

<comment><USER25> What is the value of checking Google's Safe Browsing API before issuing a certificate when the browser can/should use the same Safe Browsing API to block the phishing website? Move the policy to the user agent.</comment></comment></comment>


Franklin Wise Jumped Off a San Francisco Skyscraper on Sept First - <AUTHOR> Tragic story for the LA tech community. :( Franklin Wise, a 39-year-old software engineer and entrepreneur who started Krave-n in Santa Monica, founder of Silicon Beach Technology Group, and a fantastic Latin dancer with attractive women hanging on him, jumped off a San Francisco skyscraper on Thursday, just after moving out of his apartment to return to a new job in LA. <comment><USER2> I was so sad to hear this. I have known Franklin since he was a young boy and am a good friend of his Mother who is suffering from this tragic loss. Services for Franklin will be held next Friday at San Fernando Mission Cemetery. 11150 Sepulveda Blvd, Mission Hills, CA 91345 · (818) 361-6364. No one ever knows the suffering of another but when it takes a tragic turn like this it makes us all realize and appreciate the life and love of those close to us. RIP Franklin.</comment>


HTML Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> https://websitesetup.org/html5-periodical-table/ <comment><USER2> I have a hunch as to why this table isn't anything like the periodic table of elements.

For those that don't know, a long time ago Josh Duck built an HTML Periodic Table that actually resembled the periodic table. It got taken down, because someone else made another HTML Periodic Table (with clearly different organization and a very different look), and then she claimed that Josh Duck's very different periodic table was infringing on her copyright. She even went as far as to claim that he somehow even intercepted her emails to steal her ideas, and even alleged that Josh Duck and another guy who made a similar HTML Periodic Table were in kahoots because they were in the same country (Source: [https://i.imgur.com/sthuEd8.png](https://i.imgur.com/sthuEd8.png))! Pictures of the periodic table and a detailed story here: [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150417/08423730696/desig...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150417/08423730696/designer- issues-takedown-cease-desist-over-periodic-table-html5-elements.shtml)

By making this table look nothing like the periodic table of elements (or like the ones that people were sued over), I think the creator should be able to avoid being sued by anyone trying to make a quick buck.

<comment><USER3> It's amazing that people remember this! Alara actually filed a suit against me, and that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in the eyes of the law. It involves lots of money being thrown at lawyers.

On the plus side, I later got to meet Mike (the other Australian who she thought I was in cahoots with) and later rebuilt the table into [https://allthetags.com/](https://allthetags.com/), which is a lot more colourful but a lot less punny (shake your phone to learn something new).

<comment><USER4> > that's when I learned the difference between being right, and being right in > the eyes of the law

It sounds like there's an interesting story here. Care to elaborate more?

<comment><USER3> Alara was absolutely sure that I'd somehow colluded with her publisher to steal and republish an illustration from her as-yet unpublished book.

I obviously knew that I hadn't. But once she'd started the legal ball rolling I had to engage a lawyer and respond through the appropriate legal channels. My lawyer told me litigation (going to court) will generally cost tens of thousands of dollars. And in California recovering costs is far from guaranteed, you have to file a counter-suit I think, and prove the original case was frivolous.

Filing a case is not free - she'd already spent at least a few hundred dollars in court costs and possibly much more for lawyers to draft cease and resists and the actual case. Either it was all a bluff, or she truly believed I stole from her. The second option was scarier. When you're faced with someone who is absolutely sure that you're a bad person, and has invested a lot of time and money into chasing you, how do you convince them they're wrong?

Imagine being in Twitter fight with someone who you think is completely off the rails. And now imagine you aren't allowed to just ignore them or block them but are forced to assemble a body of proof and pay a lawyer to convince an independent third party of the truth.

Given this was a webpage that was not making any money (I had tried to sell posters, but never ended up seeing a cent) the cost and time were not worth it.

Mike Riethmuller was the other guy she accused of theft. He managed to find a journalist to cover the issue, and that worked out much better for him! Not living in California also made him harder for her to chase down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The periodic table of the elements is useful because it brings similar elements together. A chemist that knows nothing about an element except its position on the periodic table can predict many of its properties based on the surrounding entries of the table.

In fact, if I recall correctly, a major reason Mendeleev is generally the name we associate most with invention of the periodic table of the elements, even though others had tried to organized the elements into tables beforehand, is that Mendeleev was the first to leave gaps in his table when the next known element fit in better somewhere else, and to predict that unknown elements would fill those gaps, and to successfully predict their properties.

I don't see that in this HTML periodic table, or in Josh Duck's table mentioned as the inspiration for the idea.

<comment><USER6> > Mendeleev was the first to leave gaps in his table when the next known > element fit in better somewhere else, and to predict that unknown elements > would fill those gaps, and to successfully predict their properties

Yes. This is a really powerful concept. By way of example, here a periodic table of data structures [0] that I think has been on HN before. The authors show that there are gaps in the arrangement they've developed, and thus predict types of data structure that haven't yet been researched.

[0] [https://stratos.seas.harvard.edu/files/stratos/files/periodi...](https://stratos.seas.harvard.edu/files/stratos/files/periodictabledatastructures.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm just a little foggy this morning, but what is periodic about this table?

<comment><USER8> Exactly my thoughts. Just call it a table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a good idea, but I feel like it would benefit by forgoing the "HTML" art layout, and being more similar to the actual periodic table, by organizing elements in groups on the X axis and in introduction year/version on the Y axis.

Smaller detail: the the bottom groups buttons would feel more interactive as mouseovers -- and more consistent with the elements cases.

<comment><USER10> It seems to me that the best thing would be to publish a relational database with each element, the type of content, whether the closing tag can be omitted, a list of allowed attributes, a list of disallowed attributes, when it was introduced, what parent elements are allowed, what child elements are allowed, etc. And let the community go to town.

<comment><USER9> I can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment, because this is exactly what the specs provide. You can parse it and get all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand how this table is periodic. Could someone fill me in?

<comment><USER12> I also don't understand this. The boxes don't seem to be organised in any logical way, they just spell HTML?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is missing a few elements that were added relatively recently (like `<picture>` and `<dialog>`). I also find it a bit strange that the categorization comes from somewhere else then the WHATWG living standard[1].

[1]: [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/#toc- semantics](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/#toc-semantics)

</comment><comment><USER14> Too many shades of blue. Almost impossible to map the squares to the "middle colors" of the legend.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice concept. Though, is it a table anymore if it's responsive? Maybe allow horizontal scrolling in smaller viewports b/c on smaller screens looks like an unordered list of html elements

</comment><comment><USER16> Missing the <xmp> element. I know it's depreciated but it is still supported in every browser according to [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/xm...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/xmp)

It comes in handy for debugging.

</comment><comment><USER17> There are many HTML quick references on the 'net. Mine [1] lists the normative reference text (from W3C's HTML spec) along with a transcription into SGML DTD grammar rules.

[1]: [http://sgmljs.net/docs/w3c-html51-dtd.html](http://sgmljs.net/docs/w3c-html51-dtd.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> As a web developer, I'm always surprised by the lack of HTML knowledge by most web developers (including myself). Sometimes we spend a long time developing a component when there is a perfectly good HTML tag with better a11y and i18n support available.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dear scientists, please can the Periodic Table of Elements be restructured to spell out CHEMISTRY. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like the idea of memorizing HTML elements by their position in the table. But color coding might be more distinctive, not just a shades of one color.

Also why the group is highlighted when an element is hovered, but not the other way around?

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be nice to have a coherent overview of the elements but the placement of the headings in this table suggests the author doesn't try to combine different criteria like the periodic table of element does.

</comment><comment><USER22> Neither a <table> , nor clean HTML (doesn't work without JS)

Great idea, though!

</comment><comment><USER23> Nothing periodic about this and could have used more distinct colors for this simple table.

</comment><comment><USER24> All similar tags are color coded, so why not group them together? This is simply nonsensical...

</comment><comment><USER25> I thought HTML was just <div> <div> <div> <div> <div> <div>

<comment><USER26> It is!

With a few span elements and icons in i elements!

The joke is that there are articles from a decade ago talking about the end of everything being a div and the new markup taking over. It never happened. Instead we got the frameworks that double down on divs. Then the website builder things that take div nesting to another level.

Seriously if anyone on this site has a website created the proper way with accessible elements using a decent amount of vocabulary then I would like to know. It does not matter what the site looks like, or what it is about, I just want to find some websites that use rather than talk about proper element use.

I don't see what mankind's problem is - why do we adopt plenty of complicated web technology things and yet nobody can be bothered to structure a document?

<comment><USER27> Well, you asked. Critique me I guess.

[https://wescook.ca/](https://wescook.ca/)

Source: [https://github.com/WesCook/wescook.github.io](https://github.com/WesCook/wescook.github.io)

<comment><USER26> Top marks!

I only tested two pages - didn't read them - but your element vocabulary is excellent. I learned about 'dark mode' and how to do it properly.

Bravo!

<comment><USER27> Hooray! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What is the periodic in this table? Which properties of the HTML tags repeat in every row?

</comment><comment><USER29> menu and menu-item are Firefox-only [https://caniuse.com/#search=contextmenu](https://caniuse.com/#search=contextmenu)

<comment><USER13> `<menuitem>` is pretty much deprecated[1]. However, `<menu>` should work consistently across browsers (at least at a basic level) since it is just a list container (like `<ol>`, and `<ul>`) representing a list of items to be acted on[2].

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/me...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/menuitem)

[2]: [https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/grouping- content.html...](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/grouping- content.html#the-menu-element)</comment></comment>