How To Get Started With Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2010/12/lisp-getting-started.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb%2Fhack+%28ReadWriteHack%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Meh, this is pure pandering and whoring for eye-balls. RWW finally discovered that "Lisp" is an easy ticket to front-page, pretty much anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I have not yet finished Dr Conrad Barski's "Land of Lisp", I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in an introductory book as I am really enjoying it.

<comment><USER4> _Land of Lisp_ is probably the best computer book I've read in the 5 or 6 years I've been programming. It manages to be informative and fun at the same time. Where most books teach you how to write boring crap like JSON parsers, LoL walks you through Hunt the Wumpus and teaches you a couple of useful graph algorithms along the way. It devotes a chapter to web applications where you write a web interface using a web server you wrote yourself for a game you wrote yourself. There's even a program that uses a very rudimentary evolutionary algorithm to evolve organisms in a virtual world.

Thanks to LoL, I dug up archives of computer magazines from the seventies and eighties[1] ( _Creative Computing_ , _Compute!_ etc.) The "hacker spirit" sure has changed in the last 30 years. Those magazines were playful. They even had entire sections devoted to computer games and interesting puzzles you could solve using a computer (Core War, for example, first appeared in one such magazine). These days people write Twitter clients and todo lists that run on Google App Engine.

LoL is one of very few books published in the last decade that capture the hacker spirit. It ranks right up there with __why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby_ and _Programming Perl_ [2].

Right now I'm having a blast re-writing old BASIC games in Lisp and then writing programs to beat those games. Most games are easy to beat, but some of them can pose quite a challenge. Fun times :D

\---

[1] <http://www.atariarchives.org/> and <http://www.atarimagazines.com/>

[2] I don't actually program Perl. I just read a few chapters from _Programming Perl_ one lazy afternoon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who programs common lisp daily, I kind of hate scheme. (As an aside, I've had the enlightenment thing a couple of times, also, and it hasn't caused me to quit my job and write viaweb. (It did make me a better lover, however; YMMV)).

Not that it is a terrible idea to start with scheme or Clojure, but scheme seems too pure (I like a REAL macro the same way I like a woman who knows what she wants...).

Clojure was too much Java last time I checked (Stack-trace of doom! Where is my continuable error? God! My eyes! (awesome otherwise, let me know when this has been fixed)).

Anyway, the point being, these all seem to be scheme links, and I've never gotten anything done in scheme other than admiring how fucking beautiful it is (seriously, great trellises).

Here's my guide: 1.) install linux 2.) get sbcl 3.) get emacs and slime. add something like this to your .emacs (defun sbcl () (show-paren-mode) (setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl") (add-to-list 'load-path "~/emacs/slime") (require 'slime) (slime-setup)) (sbcl)

4.) Maybe get/install Quicklisp.

5.) Hack hack hack. Just be stupidly prolific in your spare cycles. Impress your friends, classmates, coworkers, etc. They'll be confused as fuck about the syntax, but you'll know it is no different from any other syntax. (Also you will program fast as hell, you will be the Mercury to their Hephaestus)

6.) Make a modest salary.

<comment><USER2> I disagree with every sylable in this comment.

Scheme is beautiful. Clojure is promising. The JVM is a fine platform, and Java itself is a decent language for the experienced engineer. You don't need Linux to hack in Common Lisp; I have used win32 for my Lisp apps in the last 10 years.

You don't need to make a "modest" salary; I waited tables for $6/hr, and I made six figures .. neither changed my programming ability, Lisp or otherwise, I am still the same kludgemeister.

<comment><USER5> When did I imply otherwise? I had no idea that I had such ability to be so offensive in things that I neither typed, said, or spake.

Apparently differing opinions are meant to be beaten out through karmic justice.

It also seems that you agree with my assertions that scheme is beautiful and Clojure is promising but not there yet. So you don't disagree with every syllable of it, at least technically.

So wtf with the hostility?

Also, this post was entirely based on my experience.

Keyword: MINE. I make a modest salary. That's the truth. $60,000 is not rolling in dough. Why would you even take issue with that?

I don't get it.

<comment><USER2> Thus far, we learned about your sexual prowess, your tastes in women and your salary. Yet not a single actionable insight or intelligence on Lisp: the subject matter of this thread.

<comment><USER5> You haven't disagreed with me in a reasonable way. I make a flippant remark about fabled 'lisp enlightenment' and it becomes the entirety of my post?

I gave a (reasonable) guide to my experience with lisp, state that I like REAL macros, say pretty much the same thing that you repeated about scheme (and Clojure), give a brief setup guide to emacs/slime, and say to program a lot (because programming a lot is the only thing that makes you good).

AND SOMEHOW I HAVE ONLY TOLD YOU ABOUT MY DICK AND MY SALARY?

Whatever, I'm being trolled.

Good day, sir.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Phineas Gage effect - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/how-a-change-for-the-worse-makes-for-a-different-person <comment> awinter-py Missing concept here -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus) conatus, a (very old) philosophical concept that entities seek their own improvement.

Selection bias suggests that most of the things we encounter have grown better over time (to stay competitive). Of course we're biased to view positive change as normal.

Also missing from the article is the case of aging. I've known some 80 year- olds who have stayed themselves and some who haven't. I've known parents who feel like teenagers are 'no longer themselves'.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I take this difference in intuitions to be primarily about the fact that we are predisposed to be charitable towards others.

If they do something oustandingly evil, we're more likely to say that they weren't themselves, whereas if they do something outstandingly good, we say that they were their best selves.

Because of this reasonable bias, I don't think peoples intuitions can be relied on to be any kind of real measure of whether people are discontinuous with their past selves or not.

<comment> awinter-py Interesting that you use 'good' vs 'positive'. An uncharacteristically selfless/moral act can be positive or negative depending on the person and the context.

Take for example a teacher with a history of burnout who one day doesn't go the extra mile for a student. That's uncharacteristic, and morally it's a step down. But given the growth and sustainability curve for a teacher, it's a positive change -- it's normal and expected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting to think of this in the context of psychoactive drugs. If someone gets hooked on heroin or crack, they're 'no longer themselves', but if they take anti-depressants or add medication, they're somehow becoming their truer selves.

Or in the case of insanity pleas in criminal trials.

<comment><USER4> There was an interesting science fiction story I read, once. A man had a bad case of schizophrenia, but the society he was in had a simple ongoing treatment - every morning, he simply had to administer the treatment. Untreated, he became paranoid, violent and murderous.

The story ended up asking the question - is he responsible for the actions he takes off medication? And the conclusion reached in the story is that in a society where such a mental illness is preventable, not medicating yourself is tantamount to murder, since it's effectively choosing to release Mr. Hyde onto the world.

Similarly, you're still liable for your actions if you get too drunk, or too high.

<comment><USER5> The Ethics of Madness, Larry Niven. It sure has a different vibe without the spaceships.

<comment><USER4> I was hoping to avoid spoilers :)

"Madness Has Its Place" is also a good story of his on a similar topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the murder-Gandhi thought experiment: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems that we associate identity with having what you had yesterday but allowing for growth, improvement, and basically adding information. However, if you remove information, then you no longer remember everything that you were before. Being kinder and more intelligence is sort of a proxy to this concept, since we assumed that knowing more information would make you kinder and more intelligent. That may be the key to our intuitions about identity and whether you are the same person who wakes up 10 years from now.

<comment><USER8> >since we assumed that knowing more information would make you kinder

Is that a common belief? I'd never considered the two to have much connection.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, empathy or seeing things from other people's positions is an increase in information.

<comment><USER8> So is reading Mein Kampf.

<comment><USER10> If you acquire actual knowledge, then yes reading _Lolita_ or _Mein Kampf_ can make you kinder, because you realize the subtlety and banality of horrifying individuals. Certainly, taking away such knowledge would make you less who you are.

I would say that more manipulative media and advertising are less that way, for the very reason that they are manipulative. If their goal was not to change who people are, why refer to them or use them in that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you think of a person not as an isolated identity, but as a member of a community which is the "self", then becoming a better member is becoming a better self - your truer self.

But... _is_ a community a "self"? One may say that cells in a multicellular organism are both cells and members; that collective nouns for animals do act as a coherent whole - hills, schools, flocks, herds, pods, troops, tribes.

<comment><USER11> I'm thinking more and more that the self is a member/outcome of a community to some extent, but kind of a community in 'itself' as well.

Perhaps this is more true for some than for others, but personally I feel like a pretty constant activity throughout my life has been trying to maintain, herd, disentangle, integrate, mediate between, etc., various versions of myself.

In my late teens and most of my twenties this could mean actually trying on different lifestyles and 'personalities', but starting in my late twenties this kind of quieted down and I started feeling like a more consistent 'self'. Which is nice in many ways; much more peaceful.

The thing is, I don't actually feel confident that these different and sometimes incompatible ideas of my 'self' actually disappeared or integrated or whatnot. At least not as much as I think they did. If anything, I sometimes feel like they got tangled together and became a kind of 'rat king' monstrosity, a kind of meta-self that both pretends _and_ kind of manages to be one larger organism at peace with its selves.

As I said, it feels more peaceful. It's probably healthy to an extent. But I do feel that in this tangled mess of selves, the weaker and more unusual ones suffered, while the more 'acceptable' and dominant ones have relatively more sway. I became a simpler, agreed-upon version of my selves.

More recently I've (or we've?) been trying to let go of the desire to integrate so much and to accept the fluidity and vagueness of it all. I try to have less of a 'narrative' of myself. Any narrative leaves out important things, so perhaps it's something to do sparingly, if at all.

Of course, this post in itself is evidence that 'I' still like to to tell a story of myself and how it progressed, but then I suppose one desire all my 'selves' agree on is to have a sense of self. All in moderation, I guess.

<comment><USER5> My comment didn't address what it takes to be a "self". Although a herd behaves as an entity in some ways, is it a "self"? Is it even alive, or is it more like a river or a fire? Or mere phenomena?

Is a group of people a "self"?

Perhaps your "real" self is the one observing all the others? As a mind can observe its body, reflexes etc. [Or do several of them have that level of awareness?]

Fallen twigs were branches overshadowed; part of trees' plan.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:Why is mobile Slate showing me an Ad for carpet installation? - <AUTHOR>

I am reading an article about retirement on 401ks on my mobile phone, but at the top i see an add for carpet installation. This is a financial article and i am based in Los Angeles, the Ad is for a carpet upholstery company based in Columbia MD. This is also a click to call ad, is targeting on mobile totally broken since neither my location or content of the article is used in the targeting? <comment><USER2> Have you recently searched on this topic or visited sites related to carpet upholstery?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not at all. I was just surprised how off target this ad was, especially on location since the context is click to call for installation.

<comment><USER2> My guess is it's bad targeting parameters on the part of the company or whoever is placing ads on their behalf, but it's equally possible that you picked up an attribute that they are deliberately targeting against, without your realizing it. (E.g. you're on a VPN running through DC.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> you can chalk this to incompetent ad ops people. When they set up these things in ad exchanges or DSPs, they simply accidentally (or intentionally) set the wrong settings for the campaign</comment>


3D printer to print bridge over water in Amsterdam - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/gravity-defying-3d-printer-to-print-bridge-over-water-in-amsterdam/

<comment> c-rack See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9706526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9706526) (2 days ago)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9715888) (10 hours ago)</comment>


67 Blockchain Articles and Whitepapers That Shaped Crypto into What It Is Today - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/founder-playbook/67-blockchain-articles-whitepapers-that-shaped-crypto-into-what-it-is-today-c538facfceb9?1 <comment><AUTHOR> Happy to add articles to the list if anyone has a suggestion

<comment><USER2> [https://medium.com/@shiyan/bitcoin-in-comic- ded553a57dfb](https://medium.com/@shiyan/bitcoin-in-comic-ded553a57dfb)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!I added it</comment></comment></comment>


HTML UI with Emerj.js: A 60-line Answer to React - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brush.co.nz/2017/11/emerj-js-efficient-html-ui-in-60-lines/ <comment><USER2> This is a clever lib, nicely done! I'm writing in to say that I think your presentation of it could benefit from some focused revision.

In positioning something as an "answer to React", I think it's important to note what React's goals are. The React site ([https://reactjs.org](https://reactjs.org)) describes itself as a declarative, component-based library for building UI that you can "learn once and write everywhere". The crucial thing to note here is that efficient updates to the DOM are explicitly _not_ a core justification for React.

In fact, React's virtual DOM is often described by React developers as an implementation detail, not as a reason for React's existence and adoption. The appeal of React is in its declarative composition model for building UI, which frees developers from tedious data-bound state management on the DOM and beyond (react-dom, react-native, react-vr, etc.).

I believe this lib is better positioned as an alternative to so-called 'virtual DOM' implementations, rather than as an answer to React, since it provides no answer to core React features (declarative, composable components that can target all kinds of platforms).

</comment><comment><USER3> I've submitted a comment on the site but I'll post it here as well:

I think this looks neat. However, last time I implemented something like this, I ran across a few elements/attributes that didn't behave in the simple way I expected.

I can't remember the full list (and can't find my old code), but some things like the "class" attribute, and the "type" attribute of <input> don't like being dynamically changed, at least in all browsers. I think something strange happened with tables as well, and maybe <title>.

So, I ended up needing some special handling for these attributes/elements, in some cases creating a new node with the right attributes and swapping it in.

I don't see anything like this in the Emerj code, so I wonder if it has the same awkward corner-cases. I might go digging to see how DiffDom or DOMDiff or whatever it's called handles it...

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool. I'd be interested to see your code if you ever run across it again.

Part of the purpose of Emerj is to actually avoid overwriting the current .value of inputs -- the idea is to preserve current element state that isn't represented explicitly in the DOM, so you don't delete something the user has just typed in (or <select>ed or whatever).

I haven't run into issues with classes or types or tables, though. I could imagine the implicit tbody potentially causing problems if you generate a DOM structure yourself without one, but in my case this doesn't matter because I use the browser to parse my HTML into a DOM, and it'll add a tbody.

Nanomorph has code to update live input values from the `value=` attribute, but that's actually something I've deliberately avoided for the above reason.</comment></comment>


Business networking is overrated (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/sunday/networking-connections-business.html <comment><USER2> It might be overrated but when I read the crazy whiteboard interviewing, the pains people go through to get money here on HN, I would say it is pretty important. I never had to do an interview in my life (25+ years as a professional), never had to really look for projects or investors. Not because of my parents but because I like to talk and network and connect people. When I need something I know where to ask. Sure maybe it is not required, but it sure makes life a lot easier IMHO.

<comment><USER3> > ... when I read the crazy whiteboard interviewing, the pains people go > through to get money here on HN, I would say it is pretty important.

Networking won't help you get hired at a top tech company if you cannot perform well on "whiteboard interviews". It generally doesn't matter that you have an internal referral. If you don't do well on the whiteboard, it's a no- hire regardless of network. Even famous people get turned away for failing on the whiteboard. e.g. the creator of Homebrew[0] when he interviewed @ Google[1].

[0] [https://brew.sh/](https://brew.sh/)

[1] [https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768](https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768)

<comment><USER4> it will. not at an entry level job, not at a core technical job where you still need to code but anything else (VP, Manager) it will

<comment><USER5> but VP interview doesn't imply whiteboarding to begin with..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems to be less 'networking is overrated' and more 'networking events are overrated/don't work'.

Which makes sense. Those events tend to be about 99.99% desperate business people try to sell you something, and don't really attract the attention of anyone they'd need to attract nor the level of genuine closeness you'd need anyway. It's like the offline equivalents of those 'promotion forums' and subreddits you see online; absolutely depressing as hell because no one cares about anything other than selling themselves and no one in their actual market is around to take them up on the offer. In the same way you can't create the next Facebook by solely marketing to people who want to create the next Facebook, you can't make useful connections from events where everyone has the same self centred goals.

<comment><USER7> Or niche.

Yeah there were a few pyramid schemes and coffee places at ours, but there were a few people looking to problem solve.

But I dont think anyone was successful. I'm looking for a experienced business mentor, lawyer, or co-engineer. None to be found.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article makes very little sense. It disparages "networking", and then goes on to give all of these examples of successful networking. Successful networking isn't about trying to get everyones details, or trying to pump your brand at every opportunity possible - rather it's about working out where you can add value to others.

Silicon Valley is built on networking - the referral paths that lead to talent, capital, opportunities - it's all invite only. That's by design.

Platforms won't solve this. I'm in recruiting, where we're supposedly always about to be disrupted. But the platforms don't solve the two big recruitment problems - 1: you don't need more candidates, you just need a few very good ones and 2: people who have good opportunities don't broadly see the value in setting themselves up on platforms to "just look". But a lot of unqualified tyre kickers do.

<comment><USER9> It's not that "networking" as a concept is useless - building solid relationships helps you spread the word when you need talent, capital and opportunities, or anything really.

I think the point is that "shallow networking" is useless. Simply because I have your business card (or we're connected on LinkedIn), does not mean that I am in your "network", or vice versa.

I think I have quite an extensive "network" (people with whom I meet regularly and who are willing to help with introductions/events/etc).

That has taken a number of years to grow, and most of those relationships started because I helped them out with something, with no expectation of return. In other words, I actually was in a position to help, and I actually delivered.

There's a lot of compounding/snowballing too - every person you help usually introduces you to two or three others over the course of the relationship. It's not even a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" \- I'm genuinely interested in helping out anyone I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Using Jeffery Pfeffer's model, power in business and organizations is a function of performance, credentials, and relationships. These are weighted differently in different places. It's important to know how they are weighted in your field of endeavour, because it describes how people will be sorted for success.

I would argue that it depends on what you are aiming for, and what your desired outcome is. If there is attrition in your field, figure out why people lose. Is it incompetence, a terminal lack of guanxi, or did they get layered by someone from the right school?

<comment><USER11> I like the idea of power as a function of performance, credentials, and relationships. From your experience in the tech industry, how would you prioritize these 3 dimensions?

<comment><USER10> Different types of orgs are defined by how they are weighted.

Security startups, pure performance and relationships, with credentials a distant third. Historically anyway, it's changing.

Since we're talking power, not rewards, relationships and credentials appear to trump raw performance at some FAANGs as their business models professionalize.

Impression is venture funding goes to whoever fits the profile, so ivy credentials with relationships have the advantage over performance.

Different stages weight accordingly. The best businesses require the least competence to operate and maintain, so maturity converges on incompetent, nepotistic snake pits. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The only meaningful connections I've ever made, were made randomly sitting at a bar, dinners, and anywhere else you're forced into sitting next to strangers in a casual(not work related) environment. Seriously, if you want to meet people, eat at the bar.

<comment><USER13> I think the fact that you are at a bar, and not hunting is what makes people more open. When you are networking in an event (where everyone is), you have your guards up.

You basically think everyone is a shark trying to get to you.

When you are relaxed at a bar (alcohol helps), you think people are chilling out; and you tend to believe what the other guy is saying.

Here is another one: Airplanes. I have made some very good friends just by sitting next to someone. (and some very interesting stories).

Another one which is a win-win: High caliber girls which introduces you to their circles. Usually it's a set of another "good" girls that have boyfriends who are rather established.

Another one is being married and meeting other married people through kids activity. I'm speculating here I have never been through that.

<comment><USER14> The other big piece, is think of how you can help the person you're talking to. Don't think about how you can help yourself. People who naturally try to help others, end up getting help in spades when they need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe business networking isn't overrated, but the way you form connections (shallow vs deep) that is the problem.

<comment><USER16> I think that's really the issue.

I've received some big breaks by knowing the correct people, but not a single one of them has been a 2-minute connection from some BS networking event. It's always been a preexisting, unrelated relationship which eventually becomes career relevant.

I'm shocked by the number of seniors/recent grads who contact me out of the blue (god knows where they got my info) asking for recommendations or a break. No, I'm not going to stick my neck out by recommending someone I've never met for an open position.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand, when a recent grad or otherwise distant connection-of-a- connection reaches out to ask me to coffee or a 15-minute call to "pick my brain" about my career experiences (a so-called "informational interview"), I almost never turn them down.

<comment><USER18> This is the way to do it. Then make the ask for a referral, interview, etc. at the end. It usually works, I've gotten a good job doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This has certainly been my experience. The type of connections that seem to really fast track the acquaintances I've witnessed move quickly through career ladders, certainly weren't made at networking events. They were made at weddings, bar-mitzvahs, and dinners. In other words connections that existed with or without business networking events etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> On my very first interview at Google long time ago (when they still did crazy puzzles and combinatorics) I solved two tough problems nobody solved before (interviewers told me). I didn't get in. Three years later another recruiter told me they almost hired me (borderline decision), but nobody knew me, so tough luck lol.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a consultant with a pretty good book of clients now. I could never have gotten started without a network of people I met at business/networking events outside of work.

I've also never gotten a client through a personal or non-work connection. I don't think my social or family network is ritzy enough for that to work.

<comment><USER22> I'm a consultant, too, but I'm new to it and for the past several years relied on luck and recruiters/LinkedIn. Can I ask what types of events? Meetups and tech events? Is that possible as a DevOps engineer, which is very much easy to find via recruiters anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >> Accomplishing great things helps you develop a network.

The author has experience on the networking side of the fence and it's interesting to hear their point of view.

As someone who has experience on the value creation side of the fence (I created a popular open source project), as much as I wish the previous statement were true, it's not.

The problem is that wealthy investors don't know the difference between apparent value and real value. It's just too complex for them to understand and they just don't have the time. Also, investors expect talent to come to them not the other way round. Another factor is that things that only appear valuable tend deliver faster exits so they may be optimizing for smooth- talkers with a sleek pitch deck rather than long term value creation.

I've worked in many companies where the manager doesn't know the difference between a good engineer and a bad one. It's extremely frustrating. You would think that these kinds of companies would go bankrupt eventually but no; they have a monopoly over their niche/sector so engineering quality does not matter at all. They can hire 100 times more people than they need and produce horrible complex code which requires constant maintenance and it will only represent a tiny dent in their budget.

If most engineering managers don't know what a good software engineer is, how can a VC or investor know? Just because they worked at Google and can solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle using recursion does not make them a good engineer

</comment><comment><USER24> Every full time job I've ever had, even the first one, came from networking and connections. Of course there is a balance to strike, and you can't just go to a ton of events and hope that it works out. But going to the right events that lets you make a deep connection with one or two people can be very useful.

</comment><comment><USER25> Its all about knowing the right people and being intelligent. To say its all one or the other is naive. I will say a good majority of networking events are the 'wrong' people. They're all out looking to network and you don't get anything aside from a few business cards of people who can't help you, or ultimately don't want to; they're just looking for you to help them. Every break I've gotten in life has come from knowing the right person, particularly through my university alumni network.

I do a significant amount of business in Japan, and the Japanese perceive America to be all about networking. The reason being, in Japan most folks stay at the same company their entire life, there is no need to really network.

<comment><USER26> > The reason being, in Japan most folks stay at the same company their entire > life, there is no need to really network.

Don't you still need to network within the company, network to find customers, network to find mentors, and so on?

<comment><USER27> I think that's called interacting with people over the normal course of business, and isn't something that's thought of as requiring specific targeted effort.

<comment><USER28> Correctly or not, the term "networking" has come to carry a connotation of attending "networking events" and passing out business cards with great abandon. I meet and keep in touch with tons of people at conferences and otherwise in the course of my daily activities but I don't really think of that as Networking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are entrepreneurs whose primary income is serving as 'glue' through networking. They are constantly tapped to connect companies and bring projects to life. Typically they make themselves available to solve problems for you and make introductions.

<comment><USER30> Is there a business opportunity to figure out how to cut out these expensive middlemen? Some kind of bidding market? TaskRabbit-for-the-enterprise?

<comment><USER31> That wouldn't really be cutting out the middleman so much as it would be becoming the middleman though.

<comment><USER30> "Becoming a cheaper/faster/more convenient middleman" describes almost every technology business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think the author has little idea on what networking is.

The first rule of networking: If you're clearly doing it to further a career, you will fail.

A lot of people criticize it, but "Never Eat Alone" is worth a read.

</comment><comment><USER33> Give First! <\- This is business networking done right.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Networking" in the LinkedIn sense is overrated; having lots of friendly acquaintances and friends who respect you is correctly rated highly. It's extremely useful (and also fun, at least if you enjoy people).

</comment><comment><USER35> > _Spanx took off when Oprah Winfrey chose it as one of her favorite things of > the year — but not because she was stalked by the company's founder, Sara > Blakely. For two and a half years, Ms. Blakely sold fax machines by day so > that she could build her prototype of footless pantyhose by night. She sent > one from the first batch to Ms. Winfrey._

So the take-home message is don't network, just physically spam celebrities with your product. Got it.

</comment><comment><USER36> This article feels like an opinion piece. I say feels like because there were a few studies referenced light heartedly which had me hoping we'd see more.

If this article could gain that higher source of truth I'd argue it's a heck of a bombshell to the conversation...otherwise my experience and many others in comments below seem to differ.

</comment><comment><USER37> You got to get along to get along

</comment><comment><USER38> How about making friends instead?

</comment><comment><USER38> Duh!</comment>


ConvertKit - <AUTHOR> https://convertkit.com/

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but all I see here is a giant wall of text and no clear idea as to what I'm doing here or what you're trying to sell me on. It's also devoid of pictures, so I can't even pick up on visual cues. You've given me the task of reading paragraphs of text trying to hunt out the information I want.

This website is like the sales guy that talks too much. Unless I've hit upon something I want or there is a clear indication this is leading towards something I want, every word on your page is another chance for someone to stop reading. You need to get to the point and make it clear what it is you're trying to sell.

<comment><USER3> Done right, long copy sells. Not saying visuals won't help, but long copy does an important job. IF you have the problem in question that the product solves. If you don't, no amount of copy or pictures will sell you.

<comment><USER4> I have heard that long copy is great for getting the sale, while short copy can be great for getting an email signup.

I do think the copy here is good - the idea of long copy is that someone with the pain point you are pursuing gets interested and just keeps reading and reading... by the time they get to the call-to-action, they're more likely to be convinced of your offering.

Perhaps in this case the higher price, lack of images, and relative ease of assembling such a pipeline for HN regular is turning some people off, but I think it has potential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone that's been following along with The Web App Challenge (<http://nathanbarry.com/category/the-web-app-challenge/>), ConvertKit is the product I am building. Happy to answer any questions!

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a good idea, but its a bit expensive imho. I'd just build it myself. Your audience may be the non-technical, though, so I understand why you may price it this way. My 2c

<comment><USER5> Yep, you could definitely build it yourself. I know I've created this for myself a handful of times. Though after a while, if you value your time at more than $1/hour, you learn that paying $35/month for pre-made software is a great deal.

But I know where you are coming from. I've definitely had that mindset in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like you and I wish you luck. Your target audience is a guy like patio11 who has a 500 dollar course with an ebook and videos and who will probably release more info products? My advice would be to talk to and/or try to sell patio11 on why he should use your service and then bring that back to your design and copy.

<comment><USER5> Yes, Patrick would definitely fit the target market. Actually, I fit the target market pretty well. I have 2 ebooks that have had great first months for sales, but need reliable sales funnels to continue making money.

That's what ConvertKit is going to help me (or anyone else) setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One other feedback item that could make it worth the money is visually creating the sales funnel (e.g. [http://blogs.forrester.com/laura_ramos/09-06-03-silverpop_se...](http://blogs.forrester.com/laura_ramos/09-06-03-silverpop_sets_new_bar_b2b_campaign_design_tools)) as well as showing who is where in the process (<https://mixpanel.com/activity-feed/>)

So if I am going to a meeting and know that John Doe is in my funnel and I know he is on day 9 - I could make a reference to something about it in the meeting and connect on a better level.

<comment><USER9> John Doe, here. I'm a little pissed that you all talk about me like a piece of meat. I'm a human being. I'm so insulted I'm going to write a node app to do all of this in 12 minutes...

John

<comment><USER8> Sorry to offend {sarcasm} but a 12 min app shouldn't cover all that should be offered. Although I do think two week sprints and user testing could help with this process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A surefire way to _not_ convert: say "I'm not sure when the product will be ready."

<comment><USER5> I guess you're right. But I don't want to be the person who says it will ship in February and doesn't until June. Projects get delayed, so I don't want to say a date until I can really stick to it.

That said, development is coming along very quickly, I bet we'll have the first testers using the platform within a week.</comment></comment>


Lazy Lists in Python and C++ - <AUTHOR> http://nonchalantlytyped.net/blog/2011/04/26/lazy-lists-in-different-languages/

<comment><USER2> In Python, I'd normally use a generator: the language and libraries support you in coding that way. Occasionally you run into the only-iterate-through- once restriction as a problem, and for that I stick a memoizing adaptor in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I made a toy implementation of this sort of thing in Forth:

<http://pastebin.com/vHaU3jPW>

This code isn't very well factored, but I think the results are pretty clean looking. With this code:

      : printPair ." ( " . ." , " . ." )" space ;
      1 2 counter 0 5 range zip 1 2 counter 3 7 range zip chain ' printPair map

You get this output:

      ( 0 , 1 ) ( 1 , 3 ) ( 2 , 5 ) ( 3 , 7 ) ( 4 , 9 ) ( 5 , 11 )
      ( 3 , 1 ) ( 4 , 3 ) ( 5 , 5 ) ( 6 , 7 ) ( 7 , 9 )

</comment><comment><USER4> Lazy title: the author gives examples in Haskell, Python, R, C++, and C++0x.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is there an explanation of how Python yield is implemented?

<comment><USER5> Yes. See [http://docs.python.org/reference/simple_stmts.html#grammar-t...](http://docs.python.org/reference/simple_stmts.html#grammar- token-yield_stmt) , and the source code is pretty well commented: [http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Objects/genobject.c?...](http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Objects/genobject.c?view=markup)</comment></comment>


Have We Detected Megastructures Built by Aliens Around a Distant Star? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/have-we-detected-alien-megastructures-around-distant-star <comment><USER2> I'm not saying it's not aliens, but it's not aliens.

I read the paper which quite happily discusses clouds of debris of various kinds and avoids any mention of aliens. Comets sound reasonable. Still, it looks like an object worry keeping an eye on.</comment>


Quantum Theory from Five Reasonable Axioms - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0101012 <comment><USER2> I recall a nudist in Portland, Oregon, from the early '90s, who had an axiomatic basis for quantum theory. Nobody cared. It didn't produce any results any different from any other formulation.</comment>


Fox News debuts bizarre, giant tablets in its newsroom - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/7/4812630/fox-news-shepard-smith-news-deck

<comment><USER2> This comic is 10 years old now, and still as relevant as ever:

[http://okcancel.com/comic/3.html](http://okcancel.com/comic/3.html) [Minority Users]

I wonder what cognitive scores you've got to exhibit in order to be an on- camera operator for the news?

</comment><comment><USER3> New, practical, fast. And gone in 2 weeks after everyone gets sore arms and they can't rotate people around anymore.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is sort of like the Homermobile, only they gave Homer a news room and said "Go for your life and make the coolest newsroom ever to grace this green earth!".

<comment><USER5> Green as in money? Or green as in environmental? This is Fox News, the distinction is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why did they have to make each one look like a giant iPad with the white border and such?

</comment><comment><USER7> Are they actual workers, or just background set pieces? (The people using the tablets.)

<comment><USER8> Yes.

<comment><USER4> Best. Response. Evar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "BATs" = big ass tablets

Anyways, this is completely ridiculous.</comment>


A New Refutation of Time (1947) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1947-borges-anewrefutationoftime.pdf <comment><USER2> There is no refutation in this piece. Borges stated that he would use Leibniz's Theory of Indiscernibles, which holds that objects cannot differ in name alone, but then never mentions Leibniz again. I feel this piece is often given to philosophy students to find out who is really BSing in class or who has really understood the essay form where you state your thesis and then defend it. Thank you OP for reminding me of the days of my youth.

</comment><comment><USER3> Philosophy of time is interesting but hard to follow subject.

My current interest was ignited by quantum cosmology that leads to the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics where history of a system can be described as additive sum of all possible histories.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-consistent- histories/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-consistent-histories/)

<comment><USER4> There was a vogue in the first half of the last century for writing speculative things involving time, generally with little physical basis. I think it was a new idea in those years to theorize and think formally about time. It's less compelling to us now. We think we understand it.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Time seems to me beyond our comprehension beyond the most trivial intuitive level; defined as numbers, a fourth dimension or recursively by some itself timy concept will not do. But claiming that does not exist has to employ some paradigm outside our normal concept of it, perhaps something purely literary?

Anyhow, bookmarked and saved for a rainy day, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER6> What a load of nonsense. If time did not exist, then change would be impossible. If you remove time, you would have to claim things like "I am standing and I am not standing" which is a contradiction.

<comment><USER2> You did not read the whole text. The author affirms that time is a river, and that he is this river. Moreover, the text is written poorly on purpose to mask people like you. He mentions that his argument is based on Berkeley and Leibniz, and mentions Leibniz only once. I laughed at this genius joke of his affirming Leibniz's indiscernibles. There should be a hacker news where people who do not read what is linked are banned permanently.</comment></comment>


Cosmoteer: A starship design, simulation, and battle game - <AUTHOR> https://cosmoteer.net/ <comment><USER2> Cosmoteer is a really great game, I had lots of fun building railgun ships and trying to cut opponents in half, or killing people in a hail of missiles. It's good fun trying to design the optimal ship and I like how building a powerful ship naturally leads to your ship being vulnerable.

I'm working on a game that is a little more "Space Factory" and a little less "Space Combat" oriented because I'm always the guy building the asteroid mining ships. So it's really great to see space games like ours getting some love on HN.

[https://twitter.com/RecallSingular1/](https://twitter.com/RecallSingular1/)

Pretty early days yet. Using Godot and Rust for game dev, it's good fun so far. Hit me up if you have any questions.

Be sure to wishlist Cosmoteer on steam. Lets help our fellow indie devs.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/799600/Cosmoteer_Starship...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/799600/Cosmoteer_Starship_Architect__Commander/)

<comment><USER3> I didn't know Godot supported Rust. How has the experience been? Have you tried any other game engines?

<comment><USER2> Really positive, since I love Rust very very much. It's great to have modern conveniences but insanely fast and safe.

I switch between developing a pure simulation framework and working in Godot. The sim is 100% rust and then I have another crate which binds with Godot. There I can concentrate on updating the scene tree based on the simulation. Since only the simulation needs to be synchronized for multiplayer I expect this will work better long term.

I use these opensource bindings [https://github.com/GodotNativeTools/godot- rust](https://github.com/GodotNativeTools/godot-rust) \- Godot supports dynamically loading your game code in a DLL - Called "GDNative" \- so you can use any compiled language.

For an old discussion of my Godot pros/cons see this post on Reddit. The community stepped forward and was very supportive, so I have decided to stay.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/ch1xsx/i_might_switc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/ch1xsx/i_might_switch_to_unity3d_heres_why/)

I have also tried unity, I wrote a Rust chess AI against it for the "four kings one war" variant. My experience with Rust in Unity was more painful. For instance you need to restart the unity editor to reload the DLL. It crashes painfully often. Loading and switching targets can be very slow, etc.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/c0e5yf/i_created_a_ru...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/c0e5yf/i_created_a_rust_chess_ai_for_16x16_variant_4k1w/)

However, the Unity game itself works very well now and the rust story was very very good. Building on Mac after building on PC was trivial - it just worked. Setting up a new dev machine was just checkout, rustup, cargo test - it just worked.

Getting things to look nice in Godot is trivial. I really just set up basic lighting, ticked some boxes and imported some basic meshes from Blender. I'm only getting started and I think my screenshots look quite nice :D

<comment><USER2> UPDATE: This inspired me to finally write something more long-form: [https://medium.com/@recallsingularity/how-i-use-rust-and- god...](https://medium.com/@recallsingularity/how-i-use-rust-and-godot-to- explore-space-806bb810e950)

<comment><USER4> Great write up, now I'm inspired!

<comment><USER2> Horay! All it takes is a few hours every few days. You'll look back and say -- Wow! I made that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be curious to attach a machine learning algorithm to this to see what sort of insanity an optimized spaceship looked like.

<comment><USER6> In that case, I recommend you to read about the story of Douglas Lenat's Eurisco engine and the TCS Traveler game. It's kinda old but fascinating.

<comment> crooked-v A link: [https://aliciapatterson.org/stories/eurisko-computer-mind- it...](https://aliciapatterson.org/stories/eurisko-computer-mind-its-own)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me a bit of FTL, minus the turns, plus a designer which if it is half as cool as it looks will be amazing fun. Worth a Windows VM.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious if Steam Proton could handle this.

Few games could tempt me to create and maintain a Windows VM, but I'm already running the Steam client on my Linux boxes.

<comment><USER8> FYI, I just tried this on Ubuntu 19.04 with today's update to the Steam client and using Proton 4.11-4. The Cosmoteer demo installed without any complaints, but seems unable to launch successfully.

<comment><USER9> Alongside winetricks ([https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=37322#testdata)), if you've not seen it before, protondb.com is fantastic. In particular, see [https://www.protondb.com/app/799600](https://www.protondb.com/app/799600) for help in getting Cosmoteer to start.

I'm a huge fan of Lutris these days; community participants wrap the above advice into install scripts, and it's surprisingly common for things to magically Just Work (tm).

<comment><USER8> Thanks! I had no idea about Protontricks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Important Note: Multiplayer is NOT SUPPORTED between 32-bit and 64-bit > operating systems!

Does the network protocol pass unsized integers or data pointers between clients? What other CPU architecture dependency might prevent 32-bit and 64-bit clients from playing together?

<comment><USER11> Cosmoteer relies on deterministic floating point calculations to keep the multiplayer simulation in sync between computers. Cosmoteer is also written in C#/.NET, which uses SSE instructions for 64-bit and FPU instructions for 32-bit, which can produce slightly different results.

<comment><USER2> Oh no!

Perhaps you need to either switch to a deterministic physics approach with fixed point math or do some research on float determinism (which is much harder).

Or, give up on lockstep and move to client-server replication with prediction on your own ships?

<comment><USER11> I've looked into all of those things in the past:

\- Making C#/.NET floating point deterministic across x86/x64 is not possible, there's no way for force the JIT to output a specific instruction set.

\- Client/server with prediction works for games that have relatively low numbers of objects that need to be synced (i.e. most first-person shooters). It doesn't work well when a game has thousands (or in Cosmoteer's case, tens of thousands) of individual objects that need to be synced, the bandwidth and CPU costs of keeping those synced is astronomical. Originally that's how Cosmoteer's multiplayer used to work, and it was a disaster, plus the code to keep everything in sync was insanely complicated.

\- Switching to fixed-point is the only remotely-viable option you suggest, and I've strongly considered it in the past. But it'd be a huge amount of work to port all of the floating-point code to fixed-point, and there would likely be a significant performance loss in doing so. Since 32-bit users are only about 2% of all Steam users, I think it's not worth doing.

<comment><USER2> Based on playing your game, it seems you need to sync:

4 bits per object - Reload / capacity status (This is mostly visual for other player's ships)

2 bits - number of people manning module

Damage (4 bit?)

Location (x y), current orders (move, direction, orbit) per Ship

For bullets:

Bullet / missile location, velocity / goal.

Most ships have 20-200 modules? So one packet (~400 bytes) per ship? Plus a "Ship came into visual range" packet with ship layout data.

All the little people, treat them like a client-side effect. Completely predicted for other people's ships. Run the same logic on both based on the network synced capacity status.

Either change your model to predict X time to move resource from A .. B (carried by a person) or have each client claim time spent. It is highly unlikely that a player will observe another player's ship and say "But that person just carried X to Y but the levels didn't move!" So it's a case of each client saying "My ship's module's levels (based on crew) are currently XYZ" and the server / other client going "Hmmm, yep, seems feasible. OK"

It can be done, it's not impossible. Just work - it's a design choice.

I would argue that as long as the ship (as a whole) is controllable but still fully customizable people won't worry about faithful sync of other player's ships. And they will only care about accurate people in the ONE ship they are currently editing (fully zoomed in, no roof).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome, but the quality seems high enough to be a paid (Steam) game? This looks like it deserves a bigger audience?

<comment><USER13> I agree -- game devs deserve to be paid for the hard work they do.

On the site, I see a Steam link on the bottom of the page. And on the Steam page it says "download demo". Maybe this is just a way to get feedback + build a community before rolling out a paid version?

<comment><USER11> Hey, I'm the dev of Cosmoteer. I can confirm you are correct, I'm trying to get feedback, bug reports, and to build a community before switching to paid. In the meantime, thanks for playing!

<comment><USER11> Thanks to you all for encouraging me to sell it now. I honestly don't think I can do that yet given the bare-bones state of the singleplayer campaign. I think there would be a significant portion of negative reviews complaining about that.

<comment><USER14> I'd buy it right now if I could. I got hooked instantly and only slept 4 hours last night as a consequence, I'm sitting at work thinking how I can fix my build. It's seriously decent enough for an early access title, all it needs is more fleshing out for the campaign and some UX improvements on the menus.

<comment><USER2> ... And both of these can be done after releasing into EA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I played this at PAX West and it was a blast! The developer is very friendly and a pleasure to talk to.

<comment><USER11> Hey, I'm the dev, thanks for your kind words! You probably caught me at a good moment before the lack of sleep and standing all day caught up to me. ;)

<comment><USER2> I hope your server survives the hug of death.

Also, I love your game :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This looks a ton like Battleships Forever, which is a huge complement as that is an awesome and underappreciated game. It's also free if anyone hasn't tried it yet [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleships_Forever](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleships_Forever)

<comment><USER17> Very similar to Reassembly also:

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/329130/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/329130/)

</comment></comment><comment> munk-a I'm a bit sad that this is limited to a 2-D plane, but it's interesting to see the focus in this game and compare it to something like space engineers where the components you're placing is still vital, but their location is entirely an aesthetic choice.

It's specifically saddening because we're all so trained to think about these problems and tend to suck at considering them in higher dimensions, and getting better at things like that is fun and helps promote good thinking skills.

<comment><USER2> The location of objects in cosmoteer is actually vital. Ammo factories and reactors need to be near guns or they won't fire often. Engines are physics based. If you don't armour your ship well or space things out you'll get a cascade explosion.

But the lack of 3d is a hard one to solve from a game design standpoint. It's hard to build an intricate 3D object using a 2D monitor and they are more complex to visualize and change.

<comment> munk-a Oh absolutely, not only technically but also because our brains suck at conceptualizing complex systems on a 3-D plane, the fewer the dimensions the more complexity we can handle - hence while a lot of circuitry diagrams are on either a 2-D or 1.5-D plane.

<comment><USER2> I agree, I think that we typically can't see "inside" so we need something 2D ... but people can handle 3D with the right visualisation. In our life experience, we tend to interact only with the surface of objects.

Bear in mind that circuit boards are actually 2.5D - they have up to 8 layers and have tracks inside, connected by either parts holes or "vias."

When it comes to diagrams, I think that is just because we use 2D paper, so we make 2d diagrams. If we had a nice 3D representation I think more people would use that.

Then again, it seems like overkill since you can split a circuit diagram into submodules: power supply, microcontroller, peripherals, ...

The difficulty in most spaceship games is that you create a "border" of hull, engines, etc. You then put in the "filler" for instance crew space, corridors, chairs, guns. What to do when you have so much "filler" that the "border" becomes too small? In Space Engineers I find this problem hard to solve as a player. It's less so in the 2D Cosmoteer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I tried like hell but I couldn't get it to run on my W7 VM or PlayOnLinux or Winetricks. Gonna try a W7 native machine tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER19> How does this compare to _Gratuitous Space Battles_?

[https://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/](https://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/)

<comment><USER20> Looks like a focus on one complicated ship (with crew management as a key piece) instead of GSB's fleets of identical ones.

<comment><USER11> You can have multiple ships in Cosmoteer, but yes, the focus is on smaller fleets than GSB.

<comment><USER2> Another key difference is that you have a lot of control over your fleet in Cosmoteer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My feedback:

* I really enjoyed it.

* It took me a bit to get out of the mindset of games where you slot your upgrades into predefined places on a ships body. Until I got past that, I didn't properly appreciate how cool the game was.

* I found it hard to actually view battles and see what was going on. At a range where I could see the ships, I couldn't really see anything about them. I often wanted to track a ship or to track-with-offset a ship (if I had ships chasing it down), but I couldn't really get the hang of setting my viewport very well. After a while, I got used to speeding up time and then dropping it down to 1/4 as soon as my ships made contact, and that helped a bit, but it was still difficult for me. I feel like having a ship selector of all ships in radar range that I could page between could be good, and maybe make it easier to chase ships down with the viewport.

* While it's pretty easy to know if you need more crew, or power (because of the indicators), it's a lot harder to know if your ship is suffering because of insufficient maneuverability.

* There were a lot more friendly fire events and collisions with my small formation of ships than I thought was really reasonable. I love the possibility of it, but in ships crewed by reasonably intelligent crew, it should be obvious to stay out of the huge plasma beam firing at the other ship.

* I did enjoy discovering that due to my placement, if one of my missile launcher bays fired during a particular maneuver, the maneuvering thruster would blow my missile up.

</comment><comment><USER22> So, FTL meets Dwarf Fortress?

<comment><USER23> I had the same two games in mind when I saw it! Looks promising.

I wonder how the AI behaves... Dwarf Fortress is such a gem of a game.

<comment><USER11> Crew have AI in Cosmoteer but it's not emergent like Dwarf Fortress is. Cosmoteer's AI is deliberately predictable so that you can use your knowledge and customization of how the AI will behave to optimize your ship's design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had some trouble accessing the site; if anyone needs a mirror:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190917180019/https://cosmoteer...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190917180019/https://cosmoteer.net/)

<comment><USER11> Sorry about that, my poor webserver wasn't expecting this kind of traffic. :/

If you can't download the standalone version, try downloading the "demo" on Steam, which despite being called a demo is really just the same version as the standalone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is the steam link:

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/799600/Cosmoteer_Starship...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/799600/Cosmoteer_Starship_Architect__Commander/)

</comment><comment><USER26> This looks a lot like the app Space Arena: Build and Fight MMO: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/space-arena-build-fight- mmo/id...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/space-arena-build-fight- mmo/id1134614037)

Fun game but it had no progression or activities. Very repetitive and not enough reason to differentiate your builds. Hopefully this game adds more content.

<comment><USER27> I didn't like the build and fight game play: designs and then watch AI fight other AI.

Do you control your movements and shooting in this game? Looks pretty fun

<comment><USER28> Yes you do! Came from the Discord to investigate the topic further, don't mind me.

You can totally control your ship (as long as you activate the 'advanced controls' over settings/finish the tutorial), focus certain guns to shoot somewhere on the enemy ship while others target elsewhere, or manually drive and aim your ship with Direct Mode!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone managed to make this work for latest Ubuntu? How?

<comment><USER30> I didn't try it, but Wine says it's silver: [https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=19138)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of Space Pirates and Zombies, at least cosmetically.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron So I downloaded this last night, thinking I'd give it a quick go.

Ended up blowing eight hours building spinning laser death platforms. 10/10

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks like Factorio-level FTL. I like it!

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh man, I really like this. I'm staying up way too late tonight.

</comment><comment><USER33> Directory indexing still on

<comment><USER11> That's intentional, I don't have much to hide. ;) I regularly point people to the cosmoteer.net/downloads directory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have a question for the game devs who are developing games for PCs: Why are you developing new titles for PCs when mobile games are both the largest and fastest growing segment of the market?

I am curious. I was an early web app developer who missed the migration to mobile. I have always regretted it and am playing catch up.

Source: [https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market- rea...](https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market- reaches-137-9-billion-in-2018-mobile-games-take-half/)

<comment><USER2> Financially, mobile games are a race to the bottom and no-one is prepared to pay for anything. It's all nasty F2P and advertising tactics to succeed now.

Also, a complex game like this is not well suited for a mobile game. The mobile interface is just too limited. The constant CPU demands are just too great.

<comment><USER35> Although Apple Arcade launches this week which looks like it will represent a sea change in that market. Hopefully it takes off and we see some more interesting games coming back to touch screen devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I thought this would be an perfect mix between Reassembly and Endless Sky and was happy to download it right now, but than i saw it's for Windows ONLY and also is closed source. :(

Quote: Will there be a Mac and/or Linux version? Eventually I plan to release Mac and Linux versions of Cosmoteer. But right now, I'm just trying to make Cosmoteer as stable as possible on Windows before working on other platforms.

Why is this game free? Will it always be free? It's free because, right now, getting a lot of feedback from players and building a strong community is more important for the game's long-term success than making a small income. Eventually, Cosmoteer will become a paid game, no longer available for free.

<comment><USER37> Agreed. I don't mind paying for closed source games, but not if it's Windows only. Indy game devs should be able to sell their games for a profit, but it's disappointing when they're helping to prop up a monopoly.

<comment><USER11> Hey, Cosmoteer dev here, I just want to give a quick explanation of why the game is currently Windows-only: Originally I tried making the game in Unity but ran into major performance problems with that engine, so I switched to my own engine (there weren't really any other options like Unreal available at the time). But because I'm only a solo developer and I do all my own programming, art, sound, and game design, my time is very limited, so I chose to concentrate only on one platform. (And obviously Windows is by far the largest market for PC games.) I do hope to support other platforms eventually, but I can't promise that and it will probably only happen if Cosmoteer is commercially successful enough on Windows to warrant the investment in other platforms.

<comment><USER37> Best of luck to you and your game. I hope it's successful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"This is Tayo. He's 11 and showed me a game he built called Spike Rush" - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103109919772641 <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist/cynic, but while I certainly love that Zuck is doing things like this, I hope he's not just trying to butter Nigeria up to the free basics anti-open-internet bullshit that he tried to pull on India.

Nigeria and Africa are definitely the next big frontiers for the internet, and I honestly doubt that whatever facebook's got planned is mutually beneficial enough. Though if FB decides to establish and maintain a persistent, competent power company in Nigeria, it might actually be worth it, NEPA is shit.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you're overly pessimistic in this at all. Facebook does what's good for Facebook. So does Mark Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER4> I can't stand this mentality. Why do people think that because someone is a shareholder/CEO in a company, all their deeds from that point on are purely self-interest?

Same shit happened when he pledged 99% of his stock charitable causes. Everyone was up in arms about how the organization was an LLC instead of a charity, claiming he did it purely for the tax benefits, despite that being bullshit.

I guess at the end of the day, once you are a billionaire for creating a successful company, everything you do is based entirely on greed. I'm sure we can come up with a self-interest reason Bill Gates is spending hundreds of millions eradicating malaria too.

<comment><USER5> _Why do people think that because someone is a shareholder /CEO in a company, all their deeds from that point on are purely self-interest?_

Depends on the CEO and company. The behavior of a company reflects the behavior of its CEO. Microsoft and Facebook both have a a history of bad behavior.

<comment><USER4> "bad" is relative. The CEO's of the tobacco companies had a history of knowingly killing people. Microsoft was aggressively anti-competitive, Facebook was (and still is) very much opposed to privacy on the Internet.

A company is many cogs. The fact that Bill Gates was anti-competitive doesn't make him, the individual, a bad person. That's very clear from the work he's doing now. So assuming that all decisions stem from greed, from anyone, is a silly assumption.

<comment> gm-conspiracy I am paraphrasing, but the quote goes something like "Yesterday's robber-baron is today's philanthropist."

<comment> n-gauge Your quote reminds me of Robin Hood.

<comment><USER6> Not sure why? Robber Barons steal from the poor and give to themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Facebook's transparent attempt to own the internet in Africa is scary, distasteful, but strangely tinged with inevitability due to Mark Zuckerberg's unstoppable hunger and relentless competence. I hope Africa is as savvy as the West (has belatedly become) to his self-serving PR stunts, and gives him an almighty neo-colonial kick in the butt.

<comment><USER8> Comparing a company to a colonial empire is a bit silly unless you're talking about the East India Company. I don't believe Facebook has its own warships yet.

<comment><USER9> English East India Company, Austrian East India Company, Danish East India Company, Dutch East India Company, French East India Company, Portuguese East India Company, Swedish East India Company, Hudson Bay Company, United Fruit Company, Danish West India Company, Dutch West India Company, French West India Company, Swedish West India Company, Royal African Company, etc.

I'm not judging if they were good or bad, but there were (and still are) far too many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great to see Mark promoting talent from Nigeria. Africa is yet to untap the potential of its people, and Nigeria will play a central role.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. That's the central tenant of Andela [1]. I just got back from Kenya and was blown away by how talented the engineers were. Going to Nigeria next month and can't wait to compare and see what Zuck was seeing.

1\. [http://andela.com](http://andela.com)

<comment><USER12> Can you elaborate what made them talented?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why are posts like these trending/upvoted?

</comment><comment><USER14> If someone is interested in the original Facebook post (also viewable without an account): [https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103109918599991](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10103109918599991)

<comment><USER15> Yes, we changed the url to that from [http://naijafixer.com/programing/mark- zuckerberg-help-in-pub...](http://naijafixer.com/programing/mark-zuckerberg- help-in-publicising-11-yrs-old-nigerian-tayo%27s-spike-rush-app/msg77/#new), since that one is just a copy of this one, and HN calls for original sources.</comment></comment>


Jay W. Forrester, a pioneer in computer models, has died - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/technology/jay-forrester-dead.html <comment><USER2> "He recalled in 2011 that he once asked students in an engineering class if they understood how the feedback mechanism in a toilet's water tank maintained the water level.

"I asked them, 'How many of you have ever taken the lid off a toilet tank to see how it works?'" he recalled. "None of them had. How do you get to M.I.T. without having ever looked inside a toilet tank?""

This is really surprising. Then again, this is not the first time I've glimpsed the possibility that attendnce at a prestigious school is a very noisy signal.

<comment><USER3> There was a generation of engineering professors at MIT (and I'm sure elsewhere) like Forrester, Doc Edgerton, Doc Draper, etc. who represented a sort of hands on experimentation who I suspect would not have become faculty in a later era. Which I consider rather unfortunate.

<comment><USER4> I remember that! I had the pleasure of being asked that very question by Professor Forrester around 1990. (though I could answer in the affirmative).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> more memorably (ha ha you'll see what I did there) for the majority of people here, Jay Forrester invented core memory which revolutionized computers of that generation. Prior to core, memory schemes were bizarre and klugy, like storing information on the screen of a cathode ray tube, detectable when you scan across it again; or sonic vibrations in mercury which you wait to emerge from the other end.

Primary memory is still called core by old timers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic- core_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory)

<comment><USER6> >Primary memory is still called core by old timers.

Plus we still call them core dumps and have .core files

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A great book by one of his proteges, Donella Meadows: [https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H- Meadows/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H- Meadows/dp/1603580557)

<comment><USER8> This book changed my life. After reading this, I had an insatiable need to learn more about systems and dynamic systems interactions - a passion that led me to getting my macroeconomics degree today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> People used his models without understanding the mathematical solutions. Most of his models had links with first order difference equations with exponential solutions. Hence most factors went to infinity or zero if you ran then long enough. Worse was the Club of Rome projections which predicted the end of civilization by year 2000.

<comment><USER10> Forrester was himself very involved in the Meadows report. Forrester wrote "World dynamics" which is the system dynamics basis for the Meadows report.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I learned recently that Will Wright was apparently influenced by Forrester and it lead to the creation of SimCity. Here a cool article about it. [http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-wrights- ci...](http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-wrights-city-in-a- box/)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not uncommon for influential scientists in different fields to have similar names, but when I was a student I was astonished that there were several with the unusual (to me) name "Jay Forrester". Eventually I figured out that they were all the same person!

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have not stumbled upon DYNAMO before it is quentesential forrester [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNAMO_(programming_language...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DYNAMO_\(programming_language\))

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want some context on the significance and influence of his work modeling systems through the concept of feedback loops, I recommend the second part of Adam Curtis' "All watched over by machines of loving grace":

"The use and abuse of vegetational concepts" [https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352](https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352)

Jump to minute 6:00 to watch the part about Jay Forrester, including an interview with him.</comment>


Hamas frogmen retrieve shells from sunken British WW1 ships to produce rockets - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/manniefabian/status/1305238197610442754 <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the doco with the dives to the ship and the machining - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkarL5uWeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkarL5uWeI)

Here's a bit more on the ships - "Al-Qassam discovers two British battleships sank on Gaza Sea 100 years ago" \- [https://daysofpalestine.ps/post/15007/Al- Qassam-discovers-tw...](https://daysofpalestine.ps/post/15007/Al-Qassam- discovers-two-British-battleships-sank-on-Gaza-Sea-100-years-ago)</comment>


Facebook Fought SEC to Keep Mobile Risks Hidden Before IPO Crash - <AUTHOR> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-fought-sec-keep-mobile-040123164.html

<comment><USER2> This article was already submitted at <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4635223>. I think that this is a good example of why people should submit the original source (as opposed to syndicated articles).</comment>


Rockstar Worked 100 Hour Weeks to Get Red Dead Redemption 2 Done - <AUTHOR> http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/10/rockstar_worked_100_hour_weeks_to_get_red_dead_redemption_2_done <comment><USER2> Nothing to be proud of...</comment>


Hearables That Leave Your Ear Open - <AUTHOR> https://voicebot.ai/2019/08/15/sentien-is-building-hearables-that-leave-your-ear-open/ <comment><USER2> how is the sound of such thing on bone conduction?

<comment><USER3> Bone conduction has come a long way. Sound quality for calls/podcasts/audio books is comparable to regular in-ear headphones. Music quality is sufficient for everyday listening - it performs well in highs and mids, however, bass is not as strong.

Have you ever tried bone conduction headphones?

disclaimer: I'm co-founder/CEO of Sentien (the maker of the headset in the article)</comment></comment>


GitHub: a case study in link maintenance and 404 pages - <AUTHOR> http://chrismorgan.info/blog/github-links-case-study.html <comment><USER3> Surprised nobody mentioned the extremely annoying and misleading 404 response when you are denied permission to view a private repo. I can't tell you how many times people at work tell me my link doesn't work because they aren't signed-in.

<comment><USER4> We do that to avoid leaking the presence of the repository, if it's private. It's a bit of a pain, but privacy's important to us.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps, when the link could be a private repository, the error page should state it's _either_ missing or inaccessible.

All we need is an error code 402.5 "plausible deniability between unauthorized and not found"...

<comment><USER4> The spec actually uses a 404 specifically for this purpose: [http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html](http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html)

<comment><USER6> Sure, and everybody who has read the spec knows that. Alas, that's 1% of your user base.

For the rest of your users it wouldn't hurt to say, "You might see something different if you're logged in." Or if they are logged in, saying, "Were you expecting something different? Maybe you just don't have access yet."

<comment><USER7> Wait, we cant hold github to account for making linkrot and not applying the spec, but when the spec is implemented by them, for good reason, say "but 1% of your user base reads the spec". Thats a bit of a double standard.

<comment><USER6> Are you talking to me? I don't think I said anything like the first half of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > GitHub uses the branch name; you can replace it with a changeset ID and > it'll work, but you'll need to find a changeset ID.

You can press 'y' to expand the URL to its canonical form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, cool. I didn't know that. It's a pity they don't make it more obvious. Post updated to include this tidbit of information. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm really interested in a GitHub person's take on this (holman?). Is my notion of the balance reasonable? (You've got the data, I'm just guessing with it.) Do you think you're likely to assess improving GitHub's 404 page at least?

<comment><USER4> You bring up some good points, and we're always improving pages like these (the 404 itself has gone through a few versions this year already).

I don't think the answer is forcing the canonical URL on every page request, though. I think it's important to retain branch names instead of the full sha. I find this, for example:

        https://github.com/holman/dotfiles/blob/master/osx/set-defaults.sh

…far more usable and meaningful than this:

        https://github.com/holman/dotfiles/blob/0fe9e9963b2389eae4c9de49a4873bd819e19067/osx/set-defaults.sh

It'd be great to be able to support file renames and deleted branches better in the product, but that takes some time to build out. Hopefully we can do better with that in the future (and we have been working on things like this recently- supporting repository redirects was a huge one, really).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Github can definitely improve on this. For instance, if I want to edit a file like so:

[https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket/edit/master/README.md](https://github.com/takezoe/gitbucket/edit/master/README.md)

you will see a 404 if you're not logged in with no information.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, I apologise to anyone looking for a decent 404 page from my site. I initially configured that site (with WebFaction) as a static site, and they don't expose a way of providing a custom 404 page for that. I should switch it to Apache so that I can get a 404 page, but I haven't got round to doing that. (More importantly, I haven't designed the 404 page I want, so the other part of the effort would be wasted.)

At least I gave [http://relink.chrismorgan.info](http://relink.chrismorgan.info) a proper 404 page. The sentiments displayed on it are the same as what I would put for [http://chrismorgan.info](http://chrismorgan.info), though: you won't get a 404 page on my site unless you broke the link yourself.

</comment><comment><USER10> > _Link maintenance is hard; the web doesn't just automatically stay intact; > it requires effort on your part._

This sounds all well and good in theory, but - commercially speaking - <USER2> very impractical for many businesses. I'd be really curious what the ROI would be on a more rigorous link maintenance practice. My general impression is that it's simply not worth it.

> _I should switch it to Apache so that I can get a 404 page, but I haven 't > got round to doing that._[1]

Interesting comment from the OP, whom I suspect also recognizes (quite possibly like GitHub) that the time it takes to do this type of stuff hardly outweighs the benefit.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495675)

<comment><USER6> This may happen to be true for some businesses, but it's not _necessarily_ true. Some toolsets may make it hard, which raises the I. Others make it easy or free, so people naturally do it. The smaller the I gets, the more likely a given R is worth it.

I also think it's easy to underestimate the R here. It's very hard to detect things like brand damage and lost leads, especially when somebody turns up on your site once, thinks you guys are chumps because of a bad first impression, and never comes back. Whereas the I is obvious, because the cost is all internal to the company.

The two factors, alas, reinforce one another. Link rot isn't an obvious problem when setting up a system, because nobody is linking in. By the time the problem becomes noticeable, the system is hard to change, making the cost of a fix high. And that trains people to treat link rot as unimportant, deepening the cycle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite part about the Github 404 page is that it consistently locks up Firefox for me.

<comment><USER12> I don't see how that's possible. Go report the bug. This is a bizarre bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't necessarily agree the author. For example, if someone wants their privacy and wants to delete their Facebook account, when you search the account it should say the account does not exist. It doesn't say it's gone. It just say it is not found. 404 has a good security and privacy implication. For example, when you turn a repo to private and anyone tries to access it without proper permission should see 404 instead of seeing 401.

</comment><comment><USER13> The OP makes valid points but its hard to hate on Github too much. Their users are the ones breaking the links. But its also hard to hate on the users too because the whole point is to develop software and that development is never done.

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends; users break some of the links, but GitHub's design for non- permanence is, to my mind, the biggest problem.

<comment><USER13> fair point

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this Security 101, limit what external users can gather about your systems. Especially when an error occurs, you don't want an exception getting thrown and then the stack trace gets displayed to the whole internet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Totally tangential but, does Mercurial really not allow you to delete things ever? So, for instance, when you accidentally commit a 100MB PSD file and then need to remove it, there's no way to do that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mercurial _does_ let you do it in much the same way Git would, but it requires you to do it very deliberately, enabling (bundled) extensions in the config. For example, the "strip" command, part of mq. As with Git, doing things like that if you've pushed publicly will be difficult and require coordination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://notfound.org/](http://notfound.org/)

<comment><USER17> I wonder whether that works at all for web sites that have essentially global reach. Children from the US are unlikely to appear in Germany all of a sudden, I guess. (Incidentally, the example page for »Other countries« was in Greek which I cannot even read).

<comment><USER16> For something like Github, the more international it is, the better

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If links should be permanent, what happens after a HTTP DELETE?

<comment><USER19> 410 GONE

EDIT: To be clear, this is more in regard to the original articles qualification on the permanence of links: _If for some reason it can't exist any more, don't just let it go: it should show useful error._ Using 410 GONE instead of 404 NOT FOUND after a DELETE is a fairly minimal but direct application of this principle.</comment></comment>


Location-aware search with Apache Lucene and Solr - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/j-spatial/index.html <comment><USER2> A useful article by Grant Ingersoll, of Mahoot fame.

I am using PostGIS for two current customer projects, but when I have time I'll work through Grant's example from this article.</comment>


Show HN: Simple but Powerful IDE for Databases - <AUTHOR> https://www.sqlgate.com/ <comment><USER2> It's hard to find information on this marketing website. Here is a summary gathered from the comments :

\- It's for windows

\- It's not open source

\- They plan to build a cross-platform IDE using Electron

I think we have solid alternative in the open source world and I don't really see how this product is better (This is based on the information provided by the website).

<comment><USER3> What is the open source alternative?

<comment><USER4> There's DBeaver Community

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure the GUI developers of DBeaver are blind sadists who want to punish all database admins for their sins. It would be considered 'cruel and unusual' in any U.S. court of law. It's not just ugly, it's a crime against humanity itself. Small animals within 10 yards of a computer inexplicably die any time the program is started.

That said, it really is quite useful and usually the best tool to get db stuff done quickly. It's my go to dbadmin app.

<comment><USER6> Phew, it's not just me then. I use it in a clean room after locking the house up.

The fact I happened to save one ad-hoc SQL query now means every time I hit the "New script" button I have an interstitial step where I have to say, "No, not that script, a new one" is frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's 2019 and not a single mention of which OS this runs on. I had to download it to find out it's for Windows.

Might want to make a note of that somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very good point. Thank you for the comment! I'll mention it to my team and have that issue fixed. :) We are also currently beta testing a cross- platform IDE, so please stay tuned!

<comment><USER8> Screenshots.

<comment><USER9> This. It's a piece of software yet nothing on the homepage even shows it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure the "free" version of the product exists. After installing from here [https://www.sqlgate.com/product/download](https://www.sqlgate.com/product/download) and handing over a lot of personal information, I received a time-limited trial version. Uninstalled.

</comment><comment><USER11> I guess dbeaver is much better, more powerfull and open source IDE for databases.

<comment><USER12> I just needed a DB-client with which 1) I could have multiple SQLs in a single page/file (hope you know what I mean) and 2) execute single ones based on where the cursor is positioned, 3) without a delimiter at the end of each SQL, and 4) see as well execution plans (for some DBs e.g. MariaDB) and 5) to work with multiple databases (MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Clickhouse, DB2, MonetDB, Oracle, generic JDBC) and DBeaver totally saved me and I don't see any alternative (which I now anyway don't need).

I would pay for the "enterprise edition", but for a fixed amount not limited by usage but based on SW-versions (e.g. get upgrades for 1 year and after that to be able to keep using "the old version XYZ" until I have a reason to upgrade for which I would have to pay again). The 149$/year ( [https://dbeaver.com/](https://dbeaver.com/) at the bottom) sounds like it would stop working after 1y no matter which version I'm using :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One-time fee okay. 40$ a month? Hell no.

<comment><USER14> DataGrip is $20 a month for more features. However, after you've paid for 12 months you get perpetual access, so you can essentially pay for 12 months (or yearly at $199) and it essentially becomes a one-time license to that version if you'd rather not keep paying.

(I've been a DataGrip customer for a couple of years now)

<comment><USER15> Also gets cheaper on 2nd and 3rd year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you have IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, try the Database plugin. It essentially turns IntelliJ into DataGrip (their dedicated database IDE).

<comment><USER17> Now if only they'd do this with clion.

/yeah, I know that it went the opposite way; it just bugs me that I can't have great C/C++ support in IntelliJ like you used to get with the plugin that no longer works...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would be nice to be able to see some high-res screenshots without having to go through watching several videos.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been using Toad for a long time and looking for something better, less buggy, more performant. Watching the video this looks very promising. Looking at the limitation of the Free version, it's too limiting to really give it a try. For example, only one connection at a time, limit to two tabs, no data import and export, clipboard size limit. I need to see how it handles my everyday usage before I can determine if I want to switch.

</comment><comment><USER20> Tried this for a few minutes at work (very heavy SQL Server shop). It doesn't play well with databases that have different schemas but the same table name.

schema1.users

schema2.users

schema3.users

schema4.users

The auto-complete seems to always choose the last one and it displays it as 'users' with no indication of the schema. This alone makes this unusable for me at the present time

</comment><comment><USER21> If on Mac, try Tableplus. Free version is already great. I use it for Postgres and Redis. Recommended

</comment><comment><USER22> Whoa. Proprietary IDE for _Windows_ in 2019.

<comment><USER23> One of the team members is on this post stating cross-platform is coming via Electron.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> is "Show HN:" a paid way for companies to advertise on hacker news? If not, awesome, otherwise, I feel a bit naive in thinking HN was a more pure approach to content and would be very disappointed.

<comment><USER25> Well the guidelines say that _" Show HN is a way to share something that you've made on Hacker News."_ but it looks like the community is satisfied to have marketers promoting (which is what OP does) instead of builders discussing with other hackers.

I share your disappointment and would like to know how the admins see this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love the music for the demo video. Especially the second part. Oracle never sounded better.

Joke aside. Looks like a pretty useful tool. Seems to be focused on workflows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear you like the music! Hahaha. Thanks for taking a look at the video/tool. Always good to get feedback. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Postgres listed twice on the main page:

"Use SQLGate and raise your work productivity from Oracle to SQLServer, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Tibero and PostgreSQL!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! Nice catch! Thanks for letting me know. I'll fix it right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> $15-25 a month? (or $40 a month for all?) (The free version doesn't support basic things like import and export, so it's really not viable for professionals)

DataGrip is $20/month, for all databases, and includes additional ones this product doesn't support. Nor does it have limits like the number of tabs you can have open. And it's cross platform today.

</comment><comment><USER28> ER design, Query builder, Query Debugger, Query planner, DB Report generation are some best features to me comparing to pgAdmin.

</comment><comment><USER29> On the Frontpage, "Start your Subscription" inside the Description for the Free Version there is the Link [0] which leads to a broken "403 forbidden" page.

[0] [https://cms-alpha-www.sqlgate.com/pricing/subscription](https://cms- alpha-www.sqlgate.com/pricing/subscription)

</comment><comment><USER30> Featurelist vs. DataGrip?

<comment><USER31> My main annoyance, so to say, with DataGrip is their certificate handling. It ignores the root certs in MacOS keychain and I have to add those in the app.

But other than that I love it. It's replaced all other SQL tools/ide/admin I've used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 403 Error on this page: [https://cms-alpha- www.sqlgate.com/pricing/subscription](https://cms-alpha- www.sqlgate.com/pricing/subscription)

</comment><comment><USER33> What language is the demo video in ?

[https://www.youtube.com/embed/AqHlNy8nnJc?autoplay=1](https://www.youtube.com/embed/AqHlNy8nnJc?autoplay=1)

<comment><USER34> That looks like Hangul...so Korean.

Interesting, I think this is the first time I've seen a ShowHN from Korea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Any screenshots of postgres execution plan exploration? This is 99% of what I'd consider a new tool for. (Other tool suggestions also welcome.)

</comment><comment><USER36> SQLGate sounds like what the news will call the data breach that happens when everyone who switched to this DBMS gets back door'ed

</comment><comment><USER37> Is the video in Korean for everyone or just me?

</comment><comment><USER38> ....The entire video is in Japanese.

<comment><USER39> That isn't Japanese, it looks more like Hangul than Kanji. So my guess would be Korean.

<comment><USER38> Hmm, thanks for letting me know!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> how is this better than DataGrip?

</comment><comment><USER41> Why does this look so much like IntelliJ with SQL plugin :/

<comment><USER42> FWIW, JetBrains has an IDE for SQL things. [https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/?fromMenu](https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/?fromMenu)

(I've no affiliation with JetBrains).

<comment><USER14> Been using Data Grip as my regular database client for a couple of years, very happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The logo is very similar to Office 365's...

</comment><comment><USER44> Written in Delphi

</comment><comment><USER45> For crying out loud why is your site in english and your videos in whatever asian language that is. Gradeschool level mistakes her, wtf.</comment>


Ask HN: How you measure time to ramp-up for new engineers as a manager? - <AUTHOR> How would we measure time to ramp-up for new engineers (i.e. time it takes before engineer is considered to be productive and on boarded) <comment><USER2> It boils down to the question of how to measure the productivity of software engineers in general, which is hard to answer.

Very hard, juniors can get productive within two weeks, but seniors or leads might need up to 6 months.</comment>