Introducing NowJS or "How to make a chat server in 12 lines of code" - <AUTHOR> http://nowjs.com

<comment><USER2> Rival node.js RPC project (dnode) author chiming in here.

This is pretty neat and I like the emphasis on getting stuff going in as few lines as possible but I'm not convinced that return values and implicit result callbacks are the way to go for asynchronous requests, which is how I understand this project to work. Often when you want to make a remote call you'll be doing some I/O on the server side, which in node is asynchronous so you can't return right away. Passing along a callback from the client side works much better when the I/O actions have some values to call the client back with.

<comment><USER3> Hey substack,

The implicit callback is definitely my least favorite part in building NowJS. You can still pass in an additional callback to do any asynchronous I/O. We're trying to find ways to make this experience better for the next version

<comment><USER2> The solution I settled on for dnode is that a deep traversal finds all the functions in your argument list, pulls them out, and wraps them. This part of the protocol is a reusable module if you want to go with it:

<https://github.com/substack/dnode-protocol>

It's written for continuation-passing style but it shouldn't be too hard to retrofit it for other call styles if you want to preserve explicit returns for instance.

<comment><USER3> Awesome. I'm looking into this for next release

<comment><USER4> You guys have the hacker nature. I dig it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Blending this with browserify + backbone + redis will be really easy to do. I think it will definitely simplify the dev of our app ; allowing us to share even more code between the client and server so that we can maximize code reuse.

<comment><USER2> On that note, (browserify author here) I would love to see projects like nowjs start to abuse the "browserify" field in the package.json for client distribution like dnode v0.6 does (presently in staging until socket.io-node v0.7 lands). With this field you can `require('pkgname')` in your browser-side code just by specifying 'pkgname' in your require list, even though pkgname might have both server and browser-side components.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like it would be amazingly convenient. We'll definitely look into that for next release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great stuff!! So, do you open up 2 channels? One for the client to make calls to the server (this could just be normal HTTP) and one for the server to make client calls?

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends. We're built on top of Socket.IO (<http://socket.io/>) which uses a websocket connection when possible. It falls back to assorted other transports if websockets are not available.

<comment><USER2> And in the next release of Socket.IO Guillermo has promised us multiple channels, so projects like nowjs should get channels for free!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, I've already thought of a bunch of cool ways I could use this. Although, it does remind me of runat="server" for some reason. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we've taken a little inspiration from Jaxer. But NowJS is much friendlier since you have the power of the Node.js support.

<comment><USER8> I think ASP was first to implement this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> how does this compare to dnode?

<comment><USER2> Nowjs seems to have a replication system baked in with harmony proxies so when you update data structures these changes get pushed out to the clients. I chose to have dnode just make copies but I do plan on writing a replication middleware at some point with the .use() functionality that landed in dnode v0.5 so I'm interested to see how well this replication approach turns out with nowjs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All attempts to pretend that remote calls are local calls have failed thusfar. Chances are you will regret going down this route.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you present some examples? We'd be interested to learn from the past.

<comment><USER10> Sure: dcom, corba, rpc, soap. The lesson I learned is that you can't abstract away the network barrier; to the contrary - that barrier must be the central point of the design of storage and communication components of the app.

<comment><USER2> I suspect that previous attempts haven't been successful for a number of reasons but especially because they tend to be synchronous. Node is a great platform for asynchronous rpc because the asynchronous character is already designed to make the programmer have to think about where the high-latency barriers are. I ran into this problem with drb in ruby for a job queuing system and had to write my own thread pool and polling system to compensate for it. Handing a callback off to your remote method does seem to work reasonably well at addressing these common rpc pitfalls.

<comment><USER11> "I suspect that previous attempts haven't been successful for a number of reasons but especially because they tend to be synchronous."

No. Node.js has no special contribution to asynchronicity, which has been in common use for something like 20 years now. Every UI-based program you have ever used is asynchronous-event based, even if it has synchronous components, to say nothing of the many many other Node.js-like libraries that have been written over the past decade in other environments, many with more capable languages that Javascript. None of these have been able to fix RPC, and many of the biggest and most well-funded attempts like CORBA and COM have come from smack in the middle of some of the largest piles of event-based code in the world.

The reason trying to pretend a network transaction is a function call fails has to do with the different semantics of a function call versus a network transaction. Latency differences even when everything is working correctly certainly are a factor, but are really less interesting than the problems of the unreliability of the network and the fact you are crossing a semantic boundary. Every network transaction can fail. Every network transaction might succeed, but with unacceptable levels of latency. Every network transaction might initially succeed but cutoff halfway through, or dribble its results in one byte at a time, or send you a gigabyte unexpectedly, or any of a variety of other failure cases you must at least be ready for, even if you can't "handle" (because in some cases there is no "handling" them). Furthermore, every network transaction incurs a serialization step, in which the semantics of the local program must be re-enforced on the data, possibly with failures thereto. For instance, you might get back JSON that specifies an integer greater than 5 billion in size where your environment is still only 32-bit; no local function call can do that. (Which isn't to say local function calls are therefore perfect, it is just that their failures lie in other places. For instance, your overlarge number got truncated somewhere else in your program, but it wasn't a function call that did it, it was some actual math computation somewhere. The point is that there is a different sort of semantic failure that can occur with an RPC vs a local function call and this inevitably leaks out of any abstraction you could try to wrap around the RPC.) And that was simply one tiny example, not the totality of the issues you can encounter, the vast majority of which are far more subtle than that.

RPC (where "procedure" is an old synonym for function) should by design _not_ deal with these issues if it's really going to be "RPC", because by definition of RPC it really ought to look like a function call. Therefore it must handle all of these issues implicitly, and since no one answer is adequate for all cases, usually incorrectly. You can't seal over network issues anywhere near well enough to make dealing with a network as easy as dealing with a function. You must deal with latency issues, but again, these are ultimately the least interesting aspect. You must be able to deal with serialization and semantic issues; if your language forced you to deal with that on every function call you'd never use it. You must have some way of dealing with the various network failures and even throwing various appropriate exceptions only gets you a subset of the actions you might actually want. You must, inevitably, allow these things to poke through somewhere, at which point your are "configuring" your RPC call, at which point it is really no longer a "procedure call" at all, it's something else.

That it has historically imposed an additional point of synchronous behavior in some cases is because languages up to this point have also been largely synchronous, but that has nothing to do with RPC's far more fundamental failures as a network communication metaphor. It is also the case that if you've absorbed too much Node.js hype that you may underestimate the world's understanding of the problem; take a moment to search for "asynchronous COM", for instance. The first hit I get is an article from April of 2000. The synchronous problem is easily and trivially solved by turning RPC calls into futures objects instead, which has been done, and has not salvaged RPC because it is not the core problem RPC has. And there are other solutions, too, which also don't work.

Regrettably, calling things over a network _must_ be more complicated than a local procedure call; all attempts to make it otherwise have indeed failed to live up to their promises.

<comment><USER10> I feel bad for you having type this well-reasoned argument only to have one person appreciate it (beside me, didn't need any convincing to start with).

Couple of things I'd like to add are versioning problems (on the net old and new versions of code talk to each other, which almost never happens in local calls), and time-travel problem where an operation succeeds, only to have all of its effects reversed because the remote server failed and was restored from a day old backup.

Interesting thing about rpc is that it is so very sexy, and it is tempting you to think that you will add error handling later. So it hides 99% of all problems from you under a sexy appearance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> n00b question here, but I installed it with npm and I'm trying to run the chat sample, but node says it can't find ../lib/nowServerLib.js

I'm still trying to figure out node so pardon my ignorance, but am I supposed to run this from a specific location? anyway, the project looks pretty cool, looking forward to playing with it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool stuff!

I'd love to see an example as to how you'd integrate that into a Python/Django project.

<comment><USER14> redis.publish(some_listener, payload)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about errors and exceptions? Will they propagate to the calling side?

<comment><USER3> In the typical node pattern, errors should be sent as part of the callback for asynchronous IO. For exceptions, a "throw" statement will not be automatically propagated to the other client, best practice is to catch the errors and call a client side function in that case. Exception handling will be improved in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great stuff Darshan!

</comment><comment><USER17> But will it blend?</comment>


Elon Musk says he is having the most "painful year of my career" [Updated] - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/08/elon-musk-says-the-last-year-has-been-excruciating/ <comment><USER2> Well... It could always go Zuckerberg-worse. To be fair, the level of criticism of Musk vs Zuck is a bit off balance.</comment>


Why we stopped using Helm tests for our integration testing in Kubernetes? - <AUTHOR> https://kyma-project.io/blog/2020/1/16/integration-testing-in-k8s/ <comment><USER2> Very cool, literally having a discussion about helm test right now.

Thanks for posting!

Do you have any tests that require docker to be available within a test container?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this about Helm2 or Helm3?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are using still using Helm 2, we planned on migrating to Helm 3 sometime in the future.</comment></comment>


DevOps Blues (Revised) - <AUTHOR> http://rbcarleton.com/DevOpsBlues.mp3

<comment><AUTHOR> This song tells the tale of a late night and a broken web site, sung to the Twelve-bar blues. The drums and bass are courtesy of a Boss DR-3 drum machine. The guitar and vocals are real.</comment>


Ask HN: Taking a bad acquihire offer vs. taking a good job offer - <AUTHOR> My startup, of which I'm a cofounder, has been approached by another startup that wants to acquire our product and also wants to hire us to continue working on our product under their umbrella.
At the same time, we, the founders, had already started to consider shutting the company down, for different reasons. So, this offer couldn't have come at a better time.
However, the offer is not that good and we think we could get better jobs, pay and a more exciting role  if we just looked for a job somewhere else.
So, getting to my question, what would be the advantages of taking an bad acquisition offer? Is it worth taking, regardless of how low it is, if I want to do another startup or look for a role of more responsibility in the future? <comment><USER2> Taking a bad offer starts everyone off on the wrong foot. Additionally, the founders are such an important part of an early product's success or failure, you should have some upside that you are excited about and so should your team, to a lesser degree.

Additionally, it's really hard to go from founder to working for someone else. REALLY HARD! REALLY REALLY HARD! The acquirer knows that and so should you. If they really want the founders, they'll craft an attractive retention plan.

Negotiate. If they don't know that you're considering shutting down, use that to your advantage. Depending on your situation, product and team size, as well as the situation of your acquirer, get help. Do you have advisors / investors? They'll know the players and the game or will be able to point you towards someone who does. If someone wants what you have, someone else probably does too; creating demand will help ensure you get the best value.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another possibility is to counter-offer with an offer like the following.

We will sell you the IP for $XXX,XXX (USD) and 2 months of PT work from each of the founders to ease the transition. Founders will stay on 3 days a week for the first month (at a rate of $2400 a week) and then down to 2 days a week for the second month (at a rate of $1800 a week). Primary purpose will be to do finish out in-progress features, update documentation and work with employees of the acquiring firm to do hand-offs.

This type of arrangement helps you hand if off and be able to put on your resume that you sold your start-up as compared to just saying that you shut it down. Second, it helps the acquiring firm to have a chance at a successful hand-off. Third, it gives you and your co-founders a transition time to look for other jobs without immediately going to zero income.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO there are a few factors to think about:

\- Is it a substantial amount of money to you and the other founders? The signal to me is no based on referring to it as "bad acquihire".

\- Are you still hyped to continue working on your product?

\- How long do you have to stay...? Anyone can tough out a few months, but what if it's a year or more? Is that what your team wants to do? Is there a team consensus?

\- One that's less important but still matters from an optics perspective for your CVs, your accelerator, etc is that you can call this a small acquisition or acquihire in the books, which doesn't have the same stigma as "failed".

</comment><comment><USER5> do you have employees? are there other people depending on the success or otherwise of your startup? if so, what is the right thing to do by them?

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you have investors? Pretty vital detail...</comment>


OxyGEN: Open-Source AMBU Respirator - <AUTHOR> https://oxygen.protofy.xyz/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure about the exact mechanics, but we are being advised to minimize 'bagging' (ie using the ambu-bag to help patients breath before they are intubated) as much as possible. We worry about the markedly increased risk of aersolization of the virus by ambu-bags. So, I'd be sure that isn't an issue with this device before pushing it out too broadly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm impressed. Maybe those guys in Italy who 3d printed the valves can 3d print some of these components. I'm guessing the doctors there would be willing to try anything at this point.

<comment><USER4> Seems like this can be produced much faster on a CNC. 3D printing of large parts is extremely slow.

That said, I'm not even sure this is useful at all in practice, since I'm not a doctor. This needs to work on an intubated patient, and be able to maintain a sanitary environment, neither of which it'll probably be able to do to the extent required by health and safety regulations. But I'd love to be proven wrong by someone more knowledgeable in this case.

<comment><USER3> > This needs to work on an intubated patient, and be able to maintain a > sanitary environment, neither of which it'll probably be able to do to the > extent required by health and safety regulations.

I totally agree with you... but in the case where there are no respirators available at all, I'd rather have a 10% chance of secondary infection or contamination than just die.

I don't see a device like this as being a replacement for a $50k computer controlled machine, but as a stopgap in desperate emergencies.

<comment><USER5> > I totally agree with you... but in the case where there are no respirators > available at all, I'd rather have a 10% chance of secondary infection or > contamination than just die.

But what if that 10% requires much more and longer medical care, doctors attention etc, such that someone else dies because they didn't get treatment? I'm not saying it definitely is, but presumably the tradeoffs from a medical perspective are about more than about one personal perspective (which of course is a rational perspective)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> SEAT (VAG), Spanish car maker, making use of this.

[https://twitter.com/tierraymadera/status/1241662339528773632...](https://twitter.com/tierraymadera/status/1241662339528773632?s=19)

[https://twitter.com/jcarlosnorte/status/1241708833476575233?...](https://twitter.com/jcarlosnorte/status/1241708833476575233?s=19)

</comment><comment><USER7> Not a ventilator. No intubation = not a ventilator. Great work, but these guys should really avoid using the term "ventilator" given current circumstances; it just muddies the water around a very important issue (ventilator shortages).

</comment><comment><USER8> Sure. When the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, then this works.</comment>


Ask HN: Any reason to get WHOISGuard? - <AUTHOR> All I've found in the past is this makes it a pain in the ass to kill the domain. Any good reason to use this? That is, if you're doing something you don't mind your name attached to. <comment><USER2> Really, it is a trade-off between the advantages (displaying professionalism (openness = trust = professionalism); offering opportunities to be contacted) and disadvantages (lots of spam, just like being in the phonebook).

By making it easy to contact you through your website, you can directly affect how advantageous it is to keep WHOIS records public. Likewise, you can mitigate the disadvantages by having in place efficient methods of dealing with spam.

I offer two personal anecdotes.

Years ago, when I was maybe 13 or 14 (7-8 years ago), I setup a simple image hosting website. My WHOIS information was not guarded.

My spam filter was pretty good, and I didn't mind - keeping in mind that this was a relatively tiny website - deleting maybe the single spam message a week (simply classifiable by their headlines). I did receive a spam phonecall (!) from some no-name domain company, and that did freak me out a little.

But I also received an important email - not through the website's form - offering to purchase the website for $400. Considering that the name was worth nothing (something like imagehoster4u.net or w/e), the script was generic, the design horrible and the traffic minimal w/ horrible RPM, $400 was a great offer that proved genuine (big money for me then!).

</comment><comment><USER3> If it is a personal website, who-is-privacy is ok. If business, then better have the details there as anyways you need to provide these details one way or the other on your website. Normally before I purchase a service or even provide my email id to a New service (read stranger), I check if the domain is legit. If its behind a who is privacy, I would hesitate in giving my info to them. But that's just me.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you don't mind your contact information (potentially residential address) out in the wild, I would suggest guarding your WHOIS information.

Doxing, increased email spam, and spam snail mail are all reasons I chose to protect my info.

<comment><USER5> If you don't have a business address (just home), and you don't think it will harm your business to do so (if the domain name pertains to such), you can get a P.O. Box (in the U.S.). Just remember to actually check it reasonably frequently, just in case.

You can also get a "street address" by purchasing a similar "P.O. Box" service from a private party, e.g. The UPS Store. Although it's pretty easy to figure out what such an address is, i.e. don't expect to "fool" anyone who takes a halfway serious look at your address. It does make receiving non-USPS packages possible.

I tend to favor not listing my personal address, if for no other reason than you just never know what problem(s) might show up unanticipated.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Looks like beyond spam/privacy/pain in the ass to get rid of domain, I'm not missing much

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. Most of the time it comes free from the registrar (NameCheap).

<comment><USER2> Could you please elaborate?

While the service being free means that there is no barrier for usage, this is not itself a reason to use it.

The OP stated that he - hypothetically - does not mind his name attached publicly to the domain. Can you please provide some reasons as to why he should care and, thus, why "yes", he should use it?</comment></comment>


Firefox sets record with 8 million downloads in 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23888572-5014111,00.html <comment><USER2> Well, but still they haven't solved the memory leak issue.</comment>


Patriot's Bill Belichick gives 5m 25s response on his dislike of tablets - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ZackCoxNESN/status/788411998006603776/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc^tfw <comment><AUTHOR> Credit where it's due, I like how he speaks well of the IT person on staff, Dan. Keep up the good work, Dan.</comment>


Ask HN: How to build a help section like this? - <AUTHOR>

browsing segment.io I found the help section with a neat little search box, and what appears to be frequently asked questions.
I also noticed the same thing on cloudflare.
Wondering if there's some existing code I can use, or a provider specializing in such thing?
example: https://segment.io/help/ example: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us <comment><USER2> Happyfox, help desk software organised a webniar on how to build an effective knowledge base. Please check out the link, [https://www.happyfox.com/customer- service-webinars/proactive...](https://www.happyfox.com/customer-service- webinars/proactive-customer-service-with-knowledge-base/)

</comment><comment><USER3> We offer an knowledge base widget that you can add to any page of your existing website and inherits your design and blends into. You can check it out at [http://userdeck.com/guides](http://userdeck.com/guides) and if you have any questions or feedback, I'm all ears!

</comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug, but my company Desk.com ([https://desk.com](https://desk.com)) provides a Knowledge Base as part of our Support platform.

</comment><comment><USER5> We are using uservoice ( [https://www.uservoice.com/](https://www.uservoice.com/) ) for the whole customer-support and KB part, and we like it...

</comment><comment><USER6> The specific Cloudfare link that you have is to the ZenDesk helpcenter platform.

</comment><comment><USER7> Take a look at Zendesk. You have other platforms, but I don't remember any other names.</comment>


Markdownify - <AUTHOR> https://tibastral.github.io/markdownify/ <comment><USER3> I would love to see a really good WYSIWYG-like thing that creates Markdown.

I'm one of the founders of Perch ([http://grabaperch.com](http://grabaperch.com)) and we have almost 6 years of experience with Perch - and many more of creating custom CMS solutions before launching Perch. We've always tried to get people to write Textile or Markdown.

When we were developing custom solutions we actually had pretty good success with getting our clients to use Textile, once we'd explained the benefits. With Perch we ship our default templates (which are really just samples) using the MarkItUp editor and set to use Markdown, and not allow HTML. However it's all configurable and we offer editor plugins so people can switch to using Redactor, CKEditor, TinyMCE or create their own editor plugin.

In discussing this stuff with our customers who are developing sites for clients, it's not something that inserts HTML that they want. They just don't want the end client to see the Markdown as they don't think they will cope. I think there is often an assumption that they won't cope, but for whatever reason they end up installing CKEditor or whatever and it allows in a load of junk markup. This makes me sad.

So, an editor that created Markdown yet allowed for some sort of preview of how things will look I can see the benefit of, if just to encourage confidence in not using things that allow inserted HTML.

<comment><USER4> Personally I completely understand end-users for wanting a purely visual writing environment. No "show HTML", no markdown codes (and escape characters!) etc.. There is a reason desktop writing applications became fully visual three decades ago!

The value of Markdown is that it defines a limited set of semantic blocks and text styles so that the markup and css needed to render the content is finite and predictable upfront.

It seems to me this advantage could be achieved with an editor designed specifically with this idea in mind. The editor could be fully visual, but it would respect a pre-defined set of rules regarding content semantics. The editor could output an XML or JSON tree of content with semantic labels that you could then run through a markup generator. That way you have full control over the markup.

Once you have that you no longer need to limit yourself to what markdown offers. Maybe you want to give authors the ability to create "warning" and "tip!" blocks when writing help manuals for example. If you define those blocks then the editor would allow the author to insert them.

<comment><USER5> What I want to see is something like Texts[0] on the web. It's WYSIWYM, I can write Markdown and see the result instantly, or if you don't know markdown use the built in toolbar to format your text. No preview mode needed!

[0] [http://texts.io](http://texts.io)

<comment><USER6> Texts.io is new to me, but looks fantastic. Does it use a two window (Markdown and preview) though? I've never been pleased with the idea of my writing being available as a "preview" alongside the source, I want just one window to worry about.

<comment><USER7> Texts is single-window, WYSIWYM ("what you see is what you mean").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love this approach.

I've seen too many double-pane markdown editors, which strike me as an uninspired, bloated interface.

Markdown is already readable! You don't need to waste half your interface on a preview that's visible all the time, when you can just syntax-highlight the Markdown to be its own preview.

<comment><USER9> The best interface I have seen yet allows you to switch between source and rendered text on a paragraph-to-paragraph basis[1]. There is really no reason why the text you are currently NOT editing should not be rendered. Unfortunatly this approach is a little bit more challenging to implement, why so few editors use it.

That said, I fully agree with your stance on double-pane editors.

[1] [http://www.inkcode.net/qute](http://www.inkcode.net/qute)

<comment><USER10> I have long held the same opinion as the parent comment and even attempted to build it myself a few times, but I hadn't seen qute, and I think I like that approach even better. Well, a hybrid; the paragraph currently being edited could be highlighted as markdownify does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Isn't a specialized "editor" is antithetical to the very idea behind Markdown, which is to make written text as readable as possible both in plain text and the web? Markdown syntax is already too simple. The original authors even mention "plain text e-mail" as their biggest source inspiration. [1]

[1]: [https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/](https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)

<comment><USER12> The text is still readable as plaintext, but I think you could concede that styling it a bit does make it easier to see the effect of your markdown.

It's like how, say, Sublime text has a syntax highlighter for markdown files. Sure, you could argue that ____is enough to signify that the contained text is bold, but it 's hard to deny that also bolding that text in the editing stage is helpful.

Syntax "highlighting" like in OP's editor will always provide more than just plain text formatting can. So it's not really antithetical anyway. Sure, markdown is made to make written text as readable as possible in plain text, but that doesn't mean it can't be even more readable in a non-plain text setting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Clients always want wysiwyg editors and __you __know that 's bad for them, > so this is a great compromise for them and for you

So far any time Ive released a content editing text area that uses markdown to the mass public, it's resulted in everyone treating it like a normal text box because they don't want to learn markdown. Wysiwyg editors, as much as we hate them, always gets much better adoption.

<comment><USER14> Markdown is primarily for writerly writers with workflows. That's where all the benefits accrue.

That's where it matters whether mark-up is done inline with content creation, or whether it's a post-pass process of fiddly buttons and menu options. That's where it matters whether the mark-up is lightweight, or overbearing. That's where it matters whether formatting is treated consistently from one piece of software to the next, or a constant surprise. That's where it matters whether the resulting file is locked away in a proprietary binary format, or not. Etcetera.

If you're building a proprietary end-to-end service -- for editing a little bit of text, storing that text, and then displaying that text -- whether your solution incorporates markdown is, at best, probably irrelevant.

<comment><USER15> I'm nodding my head in agreement to the points you make and wondering why we're not having the conversation about AsciiDoc instead, especially with regard to the constant surprise you mention.

[http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/index.html](http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Storytella[0] takes the same approach. It uses a Markdown editor in a single pane, no preview, which is also based on CodeMirror[1]. CodeMirror makes this kind of editor straight forward to build, with a lot of configuration and extension options. This seems to hide a lot of the configuration, so I would think is great for dropping into new admin or comment systems where you need rich text but don't want to allow arbitrary HTML.

I would consider switching over to it, as it would mean less code for me to manage, but I'd need the CodeMirror extensibility exposed.

(disclosure, I built Storytella)

[0] [https://storytel.la/](https://storytel.la/)

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

<comment><USER17> I tried building something similar to your product a couple years ago, but found CodeMirror syntax highlighting lacking since you couldn't style multiple lines which seemed like a must for Markdown.

E.g. try setex headers:

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

Only the ===== are styled as a header in Markdownify. Did you manage to solve it in Storytella? (too lazy to sign up and check myself, sorry.)

<comment><USER16> I've always used the starting hash header form:

# Header

## Header

So I haven't come across that issue before. Thanks for pointing out a possible issue!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is fantastic! I've seen a few of these WYSYWYG-like Markdown editors, but I like this because it doesn't come with an ugly toolbar and has automatic list, numbered list, and quote insertion upon typing the return key.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a lovely app for OS X called Mou that does this quite well: [http://25.io/mou/](http://25.io/mou/)

<comment><USER20> I recently switched to MacDown which is influenced by Mou and open source, it's great: [http://macdown.uranusjr.com/](http://macdown.uranusjr.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The problem which this is trying to solve is that clients like WYSIWYG and developers want control over their markup.

But, why not make a simple WYSIWYG -> Markdown editor? I've never found an elegant and mature editor which does this

<comment><USER22> WYSIWYGs have its own set of problems and this is why most popular websites have WYSIWYG editor but do have Markdown.

Some issues:

      - <USER2>
      - Error prone (want to close a bold style but can't unless you copy/paste text)
      - Doesn't work well on mobile/tablet
      - Clutter the HTML as the rendering of WYSIWYG needs a lot of wrapper

<comment><USER13> Both Wordpress and Gmail have full blown wysiwyg, and many other sites such as facebook and Twitter have wysiwyg-like features in their messaging/commenting. What site bigger than these use markdown?

<comment><USER23> What "wysiwyg-like" features do Twitter and Facebook have? I'm not aware of any.

<comment><USER13> User tagging. It's not a traditional WYSIWYG editor feature, but it means the implementation of the actual editor input field faces the same problems WYSIWYG editors do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great work! Always happy to see people working towards a WYSIWYG editor for Markdown.

I did a similar project¹, with strong focus on editing math, inline, and "real time" wysiwyg. It failed. The problem is that most such approaches treat Markdown as _code_ instead of _text_, and inevitably mistake syntax highlighting for semantic, text-driven styling (as if one would style nouns, verbs, adjectives, instead of
,
, , etc.). Thus they use a code editor such as CodeMirror (like this one does, too). And then you must style `.cm-` syntax markers instead of the eventual (html) nodes that would be the output of a real Markdown parser. Which makes it impossible to just throw in any arbitrary html5 css-stylesheet. Which is imho the whole point of wysiwyg Markdown editing.

What you'd really want instead is true Markdown parsing, which normalizes the user's input into a parse tree, then renders to clean html. But syncing input and output over an AST is quite impossible as long as Shadow DOM is not available in browsers. Cfr interesting discussion, over at Github (re: Quill editor).²

As for Markdown parsers: there's many of them. The OP's project uses @chjj's marked.js³: wouldn't harm to mention that on the homepage or in the README, since behavior (markdown interpretation) is very different from parser to parser. (I used to maintain a repo which lists all available Markdown parsers, apps, etc.)⁴

Meanwhile there's CommonMark⁵, of course, which has already some really fast implementations in JavaScript. (Plus, they're "Standard" ;-)⁶ Would be nice to see one of the CommonMark reference implementations incorporated into a WYSIWYG editor like this one.

¹ [https://github.com/rhythmus/mathdown](https://github.com/rhythmus/mathdown) ² [https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/74#issuecomment-4294...](https://github.com/quilljs/quill/issues/74#issuecomment-42942223) ³ [https://github.com/chjj/marked](https://github.com/chjj/marked) ⁴ [https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources](https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown-resources) ⁵ [http://commonmark.org](http://commonmark.org) ⁶ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264733)

</comment><comment><USER25> > Clients always want wysiwyg editors and __you __know that 's bad for them

Not a fan of wysiwyg, but a bit arrogant no?

<comment><USER26> No.

All the wysiwyg I used are very bad. Even as a dev knowing what's up, I wouldn't use them.

What you see is very pretty, <w:ptab alighment="RIGHT" relativeto="MARGIN" leader="DOT">

but what you get is very ugly

</w:ptab>

<comment><USER27> The only person reading that markup is a computer...

If it works, use it. If it's visually broken, don't.

All else being equal, pick the best user experience (i.e. not the one that breaks when grandma types in an asterisk).

<comment><USER26> I wish. But really, it mess up a lot of thing.

Styles may be wrongly applied, javascript may bind to the wrong dom elements, etc.

Most of the time, everything look really good in the wysiwyg box but breaks in the website. That empty tag might have a padding that adds extra whitespace on the website. Perhaps you added a
 or
 tag without noticing and this empty tag gets added to your navigation as an empty element.

I worked on a project where the user was using and modifying the same content page for the last 5 years. The page was glitchy as hell. Trust me, it didn't even look like HTML anymore. Hell, at first glance the whole HTML code looked like a big regex.

<comment><USER28> I really have to wonder why wysiwyg is so difficult on the web when it's a solved problem on Desktop. I recommend looking at what markup iWorks Pages produces when you export to html - it's quite clean. Why not making a simple wysiwyg that

1) doesn't do _any_ styles, it just operates using pure html tags. So no font for example.

2) cleans up empty tag as soon as possible (but at the latest when you hit save).

3) treats newlines as follows: single newline =
, double newline = new
 tag. Regarding
 tags there is exactly two states: Having one open and having none open.

Does it really have to be that hard?

<comment><USER27> This is pretty much what CKEditor does if you configure it to do that (simple toolbar, enter inserts
)

Thinking about it, the correct thing to do is to use
 for each _line_ , but allow the user to specify single or double spacing.

This is approximately what real word processors do, because often you will want one line to be left-aligned (e.g. to show English text) and the immediately next line to be right aligned (e.g. to show Hebrew text).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> People are not born knowing how to use WYSIWYG, they learn it, and it is not easy, it is not more "natural" than writing Markdown or any other thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Funny, this is the kind of solution that programmers come up with (as opposed to UI designers).

</comment><comment><USER31> I use SpaceGray theme in Sublime Text which provides syntax highlighting for markdown, which I simply adore and find indispensable. One thing I always missed in it was the better formatting of different headers, I am glad to see this and other features implemented so properly.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think I may be in the minority for just not liking Markdown in general. I don't understand the hub-bub around it.

<comment><USER33> People tend to like it because it's plain text, easy enough to sanitize input, represents most of the typical syntax people already used for a generation in marking up plain text. Doesn't require knowledge of HTML tags, and doesn't introduce the copy-paste pain that WYSIWYG editors introduce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Codemirror is such a great peace of code!

</comment><comment><USER35> Call me crazy but I still can't see what all the hype is with Markdown, BBcode, and all these other formatting languages that come out every few years. What ever was wrong with just defining and using a subset of HTML?

<comment><USER36> Markdown and its kin are easier to read raw. Surrounding underscores, for example, break flow much less than  tags.

<comment><USER35> Interesting. Perhaps readability-wise yes, but in terms of actually writing it, I always find myself googling Markdown cheatsheets because I can't remember for the life of me whether single-asterisk or double-asterisk is bold or italic (the HTML counterparts are hard to screw up), and what the assortment of other symbols do. Like, my brain's parser wants to explode.

Also, * in Markdown appears to map to HTML , , and
 and this drives me nuts, especially when these have to be used together.

<comment><USER37> You can produce
 with '-' instead of '*'. '-' has no other meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That's great. One thing: You may want to know that the link input is broken on the iPad. If you already have an open keyboard, you can't insert text on the alert form.

</comment><comment><USER39> Would upload to s3 work?

<comment><USER40> For images? That would imply that you'd be serving your images directly off s3, which is more expensive than Cloudinary.

Since the project is less than 100 lines of code, I bet you could customize the image uploader to fit your needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I failed to see any mention of iPython notebook which does the same thing. Who borrowed from whom?

<comment><USER37> Perhaps the author independently invented the technique. Or perhaps he copied it from one of the other editors that highlight Markdown like this, such as Mou, MacDown, or Sublime Text and Emacs when using certain themes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42>
        **foo*f**f*

The WYSIWYG should be closer to the Preview for these messy cases.

</comment><comment><USER43> You might want to consider changing the name. It's not great practice to use the name of someone else's open source thing to name yours. It's fine in the tagline.

<comment><USER44> A little confused here, what open source thing are they basing the name off of?

<comment><USER45> there is a PHP and python "Markdownify" , both are HTML to Markdown converters, so they are different to this project, there is no Markdownify in the JS world that I'm aware of.

A better name could be WYMIWYG, "What you markdown is what you get" :P

<comment><USER46> It sounded so familiar, that name. Thanks for pointing out, you are right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Meh. Still doesn't come anywhere close to Emacs and Org-mode.</comment>


How Will Technology Change Criminal Justice? - <AUTHOR> http://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2016/01/how-will-technology-change-criminal-justice.html <comment><USER2> I'm much more interested in how science can change criminal justice. For too long, the scientific community has been content to leave the justice system to its own devices. Letting it carry on as a scientific backwater, like nutrition or social science. Consequently, police have technology without any idea of how to use it, or more importantly how to understand its limitations. For example, forensic experts are routinely allowed to testify about random match probabilities as if they are equivalent to the probability of guilt, even though in practice lab error dominates the random match probability as a source of error.

This is an area where technologists can succeed where their colleagues in the physical sciences have failed. It is easy to pass off quackery as reliable forensic methods. It would be a disaster if, e.g., it was as easy to pass off quackery as legitimate data forensics. The only way that can be prevented is if the legitimate practitioners, the institutions that represent the mainstream of the profession, are vocal in calling out the charlatans that use unreliable methods.

<comment><USER3> I agree. In the spirit of that other article posted a few days ago ("It's better to let n guilty people go free than to imprison one innocent person"), I'm of the opinion that the field of criminal justice needs a _huge_ overhaul in terms of rigor. We need professional statisticians working on cases that involve guilt and innocence. We need to provide accurate probabilities to jurors. We need replication and peer review of lab results.

As a society, we owe a fair and accurate trial to everyone, and if we have the technical resources to improve upon the existing process, then I think we have a moral obligation to do so.

<comment><USER4> > the field of criminal justice needs a huge overhaul in terms of rigor. We > need professional statisticians working on cases that involve guilt and > innocence. We need to provide accurate probabilities to jurors. We need > replication and peer review of lab results.

This misjudges the fundamental operation of the justice system. Talk about probabilities is there to sound good, not because the justice system wants to _use_ statistical calculations.

[http://volokh.com/2014/01/02/wrongful-convictions-proof- beyo...](http://volokh.com/2014/01/02/wrongful-convictions-proof-beyond- reasonable-doubt/)

> So here we had a case where there were no other witnesses, no "corroborating > physical evidence," a "word against word situation," yet the judge concluded > that Montgomery was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt because the judge saw > "no motive whatsoever" for Coast to lie (though it turns out that Coast > indeed had such a motive).

> My sense is that in such cases convictions are fairly common (though not > universal), especially when there's no obvious motive for the witness to > lie, but sometimes even when there is.

This wasn't just any word-against-word situation. This was a girl retroactively accusing the neighbor of raping her _seven years in the past_ , when she was 10. No evidence was ever offered (nor could it have been, really); no support of any kind was ever required for her to have a young man thrown in jail for several years.

And my observation in passing earlier, that her accusation _couldn 't have been supported by any evidence even if it had been true_, is significant:

> What's doing the work in many of the convictions, I suspect, is that the > very ubiquity of the risk makes factfinders realize that — if we were to > constantly consider this generalized risk, in the absence of more specific > information — a wide range of crimes couldn't be effectively prosecuted. > That's especially true of child molestation and rape, but it's also true of > many sorts of felons' possession of guns, robberies, and the like.

We've created a justice system that requires large numbers of punishments for crimes which could never be demonstrated under ideal conditions. It shouldn't surprise us that we then don't prosecute those crimes with statistical, or any other kind of, rigor.

Consider a very typical word-against-word: a traffic cop writes you a ticket for running a red light. You show up in court and say "it was yellow". The cop says "it was red". He doesn't have to give evidence; his word is worth more than yours. Why?

<comment><USER5> Off the top of my head, and not that I don't have sympathy for the point you're making, but:

* Because their individualized incentive to lie --- or, more likely, to retcon a false belief that the light was yellow when it wasn't --- is far less than yours. In fact, it probably does not matter to them one way or the other if you win your case; they won't lose a penny.

* Because they're a third-party observer tasked with monitoring your compliance with the traffic light, whereas you drive through hundreds of lights without burning a milliseconds thought on any of them.

* Because they're trained to monitor compliance with lights, and you're not.

* Because they've testified repeatedly before the court and have a track record, and you don't.

* Because given the cohort of people contesting tickets, you're statistically likely to be wrong, because so many people contest tickets for bogus reasons.

I'm not trying to argue that the police are always right about traffic tickets (although it _is_ the case that I have less sympathy for people cited for traffic violations than for almost any other offense [and I get cited too!], given the risks that noncompliant driving imposes on everyone else).

<comment><USER4> As I understand things, traffic tickets are generally revenue to the police, so they do care if you win your case. They'll only really notice if large numbers of people start doing this, but a principle that their unsupported word is no better than yours will certainly rise to that level.

There are a lot of process reasons to give the police the legal right to overswear civilians. They basically boil down to the same problem discussed in the Volokh piece, which is that without that right they lose the ability to prosecute (I'm not claiming they are prosecutors; I want to use that word in a more general sense) most of the cases that are meant to be their job.

But this isn't compatible with the much-vaunted notion of "innocent until proven guilty"; it's actually a judgment that most innocent people should discover that it's impossible to be found innocent once they're charged.

<comment><USER2> Police don't have a "legal right to overswear civilians." They have very diffuse incentives to lie (the fine goes to the municipality), while individuals have a very specific incentive to lie (the fine comes out of their pocket). Thus, considering their incentives, their testimony is generally considered more _credible._

<comment><USER5> More importantly, _individual_ police officers usually have _almost no_ incentive to lie, because losing traffic ticket cases costs them nothing personally. Quotas assigned to traffic police are for _issuance_ of tickets.

It would be different if they got a bonus or something for winning cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Horrible title. The OP has fallen into the trap of describing policing as the entirety of "criminal justice". Cops are only one of many branches of the criminal justice system, one that has very little authority in comparison to courts or corrections.

I thought I would be reading about forensics or how technology might help corrections officers rehabilitate offenders, but instead it was about what to do with all the traffic cops if cars drive themselves ... a purely hypothetical problem atm.

</comment><comment><USER7> The major thing that needs to change in our criminal justice system is that defendants' privacy should be better protected by the legal system. In olden days, having your court record accessible to the public wasn't too much of a problem, because in order to know about someone's criminal past, you had to walk through the courthouse and spend all day poring over dusty file folders. Which would only be done by people who really cared (especially since they'd have no way of knowing which of the thousands of courthouses in the country to look in, unless you told them where you were convicted).

Now that we have powerful computers that can store and index all those records, and ubiquitous networks that can deliver the data anywhere, you can get instant information about anyone's interaction with the criminal justice system right from your desk (or your phone) with a few clicks and a few dollars on your credit card.

If convicts, or even people who have only been arrested but never convicted, now have a ton of trouble getting education, employment, and housing, how are they supposed to improve themselves or re-integrate into society after their release?

</comment><comment><USER8> Instead of building more prisons, geofence non-violent convicts to specific areas for the length of their sentence. Sci-Fi writer David Brin's "probationers"is one way (although somewhat extreme).</comment>


Show HN: Nudge – Klout for healthy living - <AUTHOR> http://www.nudgeyourself.com/index.php

<comment><USER2> Awesome work.

I have been working on an open source API to accomplish similar things (specifically just re: aggregation of data from disparate sources): [https://github.com/jdjkelly/quantify](https://github.com/jdjkelly/quantify)

It's Rails + Postgres, and so far aggregates meal, weight, and sleep data from Withings and Fitbit - but I've been focussed on building out a framework to easily aggregate many, many more sources.

Maybe we could find a project to work on together - contact is in my profile.

<comment><USER3> I believe Tictrac ([https://www.tictrac.com/](https://www.tictrac.com/)) is working on a similar system

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah there are some great platforms out there like TicTrac and Runkeeper but the value in our platform is certainly going to be the algorithm. Aggregating data for personal use is something those companies are doing well, but we thought there was an interesting niche in regards to quantified selfers being able to compare each other, independent of lifestyles or tracking applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are attempting to aggregate and index people's health tracking data using our proprietary algorithm into one healthy living score. Would love feedback on UX as well as general concept.

Thank you, Mac

<comment><USER4> Hey Mac - great looking stuff. The marketability of a single healthy living score is pretty clear, but isn't it a fairly artificial and opaque approach to making an actual measurement? The measures inherent to the donut chart-y UI element that's part of your site's hero loop (appears to be hydration, nutrition, sleep, activity) looks more useful to me than the single score.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think to an individual at the moment the segments MAY be more useful than the metric itself; however, the value of the metric becomes more apparent when comparing individuals or populations. I know I get really excited about the prospect of being able to better index cities, states, etc. That is really interesting observation though.

<comment><USER4> The "metric" in this case is a score contrived using your proprietary algorithm. The value I read you describing appears more relevant to you/others interested in measuring populations. It doesn't seem especially helpful to the individual. To imagine one person say, "hey, I'm a 41, you're a 36" sounds like personal vanity metrics.

It's like two people comparing their BMIs - it doesn't tell a lot. I do see your app being potentially _very_ valuable in being able to tell individuals when their behaviors are or are not in line with vetted guidelines, or _nudge_ (heyo!) them to do healthful things at a rhythm in line with their best days.

I once worked on a payments platform whose viability depended on mass adoption. One of the reasons we failed, I believe, was due to being more focused on feeding data to merchants and banks vs. providing value to the consumers who were the actual ultimate hurdle to adoption.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that is a great point. Funny enough, the original platform we launched about 18 months ago was geared exclusively for corporate wellness, but after reading the market we realized there was a significant niche here in comparison amongst friends using different tracking applications.

I say all this because I think we realized even B2B platforms need to have consumer appeal to be successful. I think once we are able to integrate more platform and build and more social hooks, it will be more appealing to users. Love your feedback though - think you have some wonderful points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea and the overall design but on the 'Log' page the top circles are a little confusing. I was trying to tap on them initially and it took me a few minutes to realize that they just showed the status. If they were different then the rest in some way it might make it more obvious.

I would also love Fitbit integration. I know a lot of people who have them (myself included) and because I would still have to use two apps might prevent me from using Nudge long term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, great to hear someone else mention the logging circles - will definitely talk to the team about that.

Fitbit is definitely on our list of integrations and we are trying to integrate as quickly as we can. Once you sign up we can keep you posted with upcoming releases.

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't integrate with enough things, and there isn't a way to delete my account, which I definitely want to do if you're not going to support any of the trackers I already use.

To be honest, a lot of the tracking apps already try to become the dashboard, and integrate with each other pretty well. I don't really see enough differentiation here to give me a reason to log into yet another thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are focusing primarily on integrating more platforms in order to make the metric more relevant to everyone. Some platforms DO integrate other app; however, we are trying to aggregate data in a way that makes it easier to compare. Nudge will become more and more passive as we continue to integrate.

We have more on the way, so keep your eyes peeled! Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Didn't really address the fact that there isn't a way to delete my account. And I've already received a marketing email, so... now I really want to delete my account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Which trackers do you sync with? Could you list them here, I think that would be helpful. I also found this helpful [http://blog.nudgeyourself.com/health- tech-and-food-nerd-blog...](http://blog.nudgeyourself.com/health-tech-and- food-nerd-blog/bid/369346/The-Nudge-Factor-Part-I-Just-the-Basics)

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently Moves, RunKeeper, MapMyRun, MapMyRide, other MapMy's... have another coming really soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My problem with these health monitoring systems is similar to the problem the FDA had with 23andMe. It's one thing to collect data and present them in an easy to accessible way. But it is another to attempt to give out medical advice based on the data. How far are you planning on taking the data in terms of interpretation?

<comment><USER9> That's a great question. At this stage we are certainly not interested in becoming overtly "prescriptive" in any way. Our first focus is on providing a cool utility to avid health trackers to aggregate data from their apps and gadgets in one place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trying to signup it asks for my weight but doesn't say what unit of measurement is expected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately it is only in lbs right now - metric coming later this week though. Sorry for the inconvenience, but thanks for pointing that out!

<comment><USER11> To give my interpretation, I assumed it was free text, and that if I put a unit at the end it would pick it up. This could be quite neat if it set that unit as my default unit for recording in?

Also thanks for releasing this, I've been building something similar but not making much progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great idea, I'm on board but would really like to know which apps/devices you integrate with before downloading. I figured if I scrolled down a bit there would be a list. Maybe I missed it somewhere?

<comment><USER9> Currently Moves, RunKeeper, MapMyRun, MapMyRide, other MapMy's... have another coming really soon!

<comment><USER12> Add UP to that and I'm in. They've got an open API now, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> May be a small matter, but I feel the slogan "nudge yourself" to be a little ... odd. "Give yourself a nudge" sounds better to me. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER13> Any chance you could integrate with the Sleep Cycle app?

<comment><USER9> Yes absolutely, we have reached out to them but haven't heard anything back yet unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you really want to associate yourself with Klout?

<comment><USER15> I get that some people despise Klout, but it symbolises "one score to rule them all" (aka the mother of all online map-reduce) better than any other service I can think of, among a tech-savvy audience.

Also it's OT, but there are actually many positive aspects of Klout to businesses dealing with multiple accounts and thousands or millions of followers and interacting accounts. They are less applicable to individuals, which is why it can come across as a narcissistic "social media guru" gimmick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You're doing something right. I have never been so well hydrated than when I used Nudge in an inter-office competition.

</comment><comment><USER17> Any chance of Sleep as Android integration?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have actually had a few people mention that recently and I definitely want to look more into it. How has your experience been with it?

<comment><USER2> Fitbit has a reasonably good sleep API - as does Jawbone.

<comment><USER9> cool. we just started working on Jawbone, and hopefully will get around to fitbit in short order.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Metric system option would be nice too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we are working on that update right now. Hopefully will be releasing that within the next week.

Really appreciate the feedback!</comment></comment>


Yes, We Will Have No Bananas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/opinion/18koeppel.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> This post is a duplicate. see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=220873></comment>


A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making - <AUTHOR> https://www.boston.com/news/health/2020/03/17/coronavirus-decisions-without-reliable-data <comment><USER2> Original article here:

[https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the- making-a...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as- the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable- data/)</comment>


Ask HN: Privacy-focused web analytics platform for blog/small site? - <AUTHOR> Heya HN! I currently run a small, statically-hosted site on Neocities which has been great, but I've grown a little unhappy with my use of Google Analytics as a way of seeing what posts, etc, are the most popular.
I was wondering if there were any recommendations for privacy-focused website analytics that weren't super expensive (in particular, a quick search shows a few hits, but all of them look like far more than what I'd need and with a monthly price—I wouldn't mind, except I'm a current student so 15$/mo isn't impossible, but it's enough to make me reconsider).
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Try Fathom. www.fathom.io

</comment><comment><USER3> Your server logs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have access to server logs as this site is hosted on Neocities.

<comment><USER3> Maybe look into setting a small server and just pinging it from the main page (via an img tag, etc?).</comment></comment></comment>


The Mutual Friend Phenomenon - <AUTHOR> http://3degreesnation.tumblr.com/post/11030883436/why-im-betting-it-all-on-a-gut-reaction A single idea that Brian Scordato has spent the last six months of his life building a social media product around. <comment><USER2> Thinking back, a lot of my closest friends have been friends of my other close friends. It does make a lot of sense. Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, rcfox! 3Degrees will go public soon, keep an eye out!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nicely done, thanks.</comment>


The AlphaSmart Neo 2 keyboard: for writing without Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/04/14/the-alphasmart-neo-2-keyboard-for-writing-without-twitter/ <comment><USER2> But .. if the internet is such a distraction because there's so much to read on it, maybe we don't _need_ more writing?

<comment><USER3> And if you have that little self-control, that you need a device that absolutely can't twitter, maybe that's the issue.

But you phone in airplane mode (it becomes really booring with that), plug in a keyboard, hack away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have one. I needed to install linux kernel 4.4 for it to be recognized by my computer as a usb device. Kind of annoying that more recent kernels don't know what to do with it! Is that considered a "regression"?

<comment><USER5> But why did you connect it to your server? All joking aside, I thought the Alpha was supposed to emulate a keyboard when transferring data. Is that not the case?

<comment><USER4> It does. I just couldn't get it to mount with any kernel newer than 4.4. But with 4.4 it's plug n play!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So it's a Z88 for the new millenium, nice.</comment>


Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/26/microsoft_clarifies_upgrade_trick/ <comment><USER5> Recently my mom ended up with windows 10, despite not intending to upgrade. No idea how it exactly happened.

Anyway, as a result all her .docx files got associated with microsoft office (yes, during the upgrade windows "forgot" her preference for libreoffice) and to add insult to injury, the files wouldn't even _open_ , instead whenever she double clicked one of them she'd get an ad urging her to buy an office 365 subscription to allow her to see her own fucking files.

I'm done with Microsoft, forever. No matter what they do, I will never trust them again.

<comment><USER6> Same happened to my mom just yesterday. My mom happens to be an anxious 75 year old woman who takes a long time to acclimate to anything new on her computer, and also relies on said computer for several critical areas of her life.

She called me in a panic from 6 timezones away, and I had to drop what I was doing and spend a good half a day walking her through the various transition and setup steps. Every 30 minutes she would plaintively ask me why she had to do this - she was perfectly happy with what she had and had no interest in anything new. Every time she asked and I had no good answer, vague thoughts that included the words "class" and "action" swam through my head.

<comment><USER7> How many of the hundreds of millions of people using Windows computers are affected like this that don't have someone tech-savy to ask for help? There's no possible way Microsoft didn't think of this scenario, which can only mean that they simply do not care.

<comment><USER8> I am certainly in agreement. From what I can see they used social engineering for a few months, then dark patterned it so users would install. (Im referring to users being slowly trained to close the window saying upgrade, then that same click agreeing and installing).

Which in my opinion is exactly that. Social engineering to get them use to it (same action over and over), and dark pattern (doing something do so they would agree to something they didn't necessarily want to).

Very scummy in my opinion. I wish I could change but I am very much stuck on Windows (my only product uses windows voice recognition engine. . . .I don't have the knowledge to wrote my own).

Edit: typo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Windows Nein upgrade _is_ malware, IMNSHO.

\- Uses intentionally confusing UI to trick users into installing ("upgrade now or upgrade later?" \- note the absence of "do not upgrade")

\- IMSHNO installs without user consent (closing a "upgrade now?" window counts as "no" anywhere, _including MSFT UX Guidelines_ , hello there hypocrisy)

\- breaks existing applications (not every box is just Firefox+LibreOffice: specialized apps and drivers do not work well in WinX)

\- while the downgrade ("better to worse" is never an upgrade) runs, you can't use your device ("preparing for blahblah, wait.")

\- erases (or at best hides) user data ("yeah well we just put it all in this completely different folder without notice, it's not like you need your documents, right?")

\- is very difficult to revert

\- phones home (again, MS claims there is user consent. So do all the malware writers; I don't think so.)

Each and every of these are traits commonly associated with malware; thank God for GWX Control Panel.

(To be fair, pre-installed Windows 10 is usable, better than Vista even - <USER3> breaking working installs of W7 for no obvious reason is a big no-no)

<comment><USER10> I generally agree, but I wouldn't necessarily call Win10 a downgrade - it's definitely better than 8 (I would think twice about upgrading 7 as having Win7 means that you likely have a pretty old hardware).

I honestly don't understand what's going on. This looks like one of the most idiotic thing an IT company has ever done, and Microsoft doesn't care. They don't even try to explain it. And they fucked up big time - rarely any kind of scandal from the computing world reaches the general public, but this one did. I've been asked by random people for advice on whether or not to upgrade; people seem to know Win10 is "evil" and are annoyed by nagging.

<comment><USER11> Win 7 became available starting at late 2009 and was popular well after 8 came out, I would suspect most computers that sold with it preinstalled would have no problem running 10.

Does 10 even have higher system requirements than 7?

<comment><USER12> They just increased them. You now need 2GB for the 32-bit version of Win10, iirc. That's the only change, though.

<comment><USER13> What would someone with 2GB memory do with a computer? State at the desktop? Once you start opening tabs, Firefox and Chrome can easily take up 4GB memory if available.

<comment><USER14> Isn't it only 1.5GB that'd be left for user apps? I seem to recall 32-bit windows only had 3.5GB total accessible for some reason.

<comment><USER11> 32bits can only address max 4gb ram and I think video ram was counted for or some other overhead. With 2gb the 32bit maximum should have no effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Microsoft is simultaneously more open than ever (dev-related) and acting just like the 90s (consumer-related). So strange, Windows 10 is pretty nice but they risk destroying reputation with spyware and deceit. I am assuming they are desperate to get people onto the continuous upgrade train to avoid the Windows XP situation occur inn again.

<comment><USER16> That's being nice to Microsoft.

Another way to see it is that they want to monetize their users by taking a cut of the software installed with the app store, with bing integrated in the OS, and with ads being served directly in the OS.

And they care more about monetizing their users than their users privacy or interest.

<comment><USER17> > "…they care more about monetizing their users than their users privacy or > interest."

Sadly this is true for all but a handful of companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've ended up installing GWX Control Panel to thwart this BS: [http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/](http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/).

Feel all sorts of ridiculous for having to do so, especially from a security perspective, but here we are.

\--

I've read that one way to go about this is to create a disk image, upgrade to W10, and then restoring from your disk image back to whatever your current version is.

This way, you can also install W10 past the deadline of ultimo July - <USER3> Windows might continue nagging you in the inteim.

Haven't tried it, but at least you'll save the potential $100 if you intend to upgrade down the line.

<comment><USER19> Keep in mind that the prior windows key/OS combination may be invalidated by MS during (or at any point after) this process, leading them to treat a running instance of the prior OS as a pirated version.

<comment><USER20> I'm counting on it. When all this began I replaced my legit Windows 7 copy with a pirated one because it isn't eligible for the 'Windows 10 upgrade'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Equally as bad is OSX. Decided to downgrade from El Capitan to Mountain Lion because I've a 2012 machine and my GPU blew under El Capitan. Now i can't access my iPad 2 Air because it's forcing me to upgrade iTunes and the only way to do that is to update back to El Capitan.

I have to commit the dirtiest, skankiest, filthiest trick by using Windows to access my iPad now.

<comment><USER22> You don't need to connect to any device to update your iPad OTA updates have been standard for a reeeaaaallly long time now

<comment><USER21> Yes, don't need to connect to update, but if you want to transfer music, movies, photos in bulk to the iPad that isn't on iCloud or whatever, then no joy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't it funny that Microsoft had this whole Scroogle campaign and now they're doing exactly that but much worse because they slip stuff you disable/removed back in via updates and updates cannot be selectively ignored/disabled in Windows 10 anymore?

<comment><USER24> Someone on a more popular tech site needs to pull this out and write a piece about it (Verge, Ars).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The line to "unauthorised computer access" has be crossed several times.

Usually investigators are overzealous with prosecuting this crime, but i doubt anybody will neven ever start investigations against microsoft.

<comment><USER26> If you really feel that way, why do you not file a police report then?

<comment><USER25> As i'm not a windows user this is not worth my time and i probably couldn't even file a report.

But the real reason why i don't is that i'm not a US citizen and my local "hacking" laws are less strict.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The worst thing about it for me is that I have two computers not compatible with windows 10 (super old graphics cards). Yet the upgrade prompt continues to appear.

I know the machines aren't compatible because I upgraded one using the nagging prompt and... kaboom.

<comment><USER28> Why don't you roll back the the patch. Just search google for the KB number and uninstall. Then go into windows update and hide it. I did this on a couple of systems at work. _edit_ : oops, I missed someone already posted it below.

<comment><USER9> And then MS _silently reenables this KB_. Yup. About 6 times so far.

<comment><USER28> Strange, I have not had that come up yet. Maybe I have not installed the updates which cause it to auto re-enable yet :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find all of the outrage over this to be completely overblown. Everyone complains that OS upgrades are too difficult and so they desperately try to avoid them. This results in running 7 year old code that is going to stop being supported in a few short years.

Windows 10 is a _free_ upgrade to a an operating system that will be supported for much longer than 7. Also, Windows has adopted a new release cycle that eschews long monolithic upgrades for a more continuous and easy to manage upgrade process. This may be the last time you need to hunker down and do a painful upgrade.

I empathize with non-technical users for whom this is a trying experience, but literally every other vendor gets a free pass because you replace your phone every few years, or you've adjusted to a yearly upgrade cycle that is pretty painless.

I feel like Microsoft is trying to give people what they want, and all they get in return is kicking and screaming. Until in a few years when they stop supporting older versions of Windows and your Mom gets infected with Randsomware. Then you'll still blame Microsoft, and won't be able to believe that they want to charge you $100 for the privilege of getting on a supported OS.

<comment><USER30> >I feel like Microsoft is trying to give people what they want, and all they get in return is kicking and screaming.

They're not giving me what I want. Windows 10 isn't what I want.

We wanted Windows 7 with modernizations, not Windows 8.1 with more spyware baked in.

>Until in a few years when they stop supporting older versions of Windows and your Mom gets infected with Randsomware. Then you'll still blame Microsoft, and won't be able to believe that they want to charge you $100 for the privilege of getting on a supported OS.

What planet do you live on where "supported" means "immune to malware"?

<comment><USER31> «We wanted Windows 7 with modernizations, not Windows 8.1 with more spyware baked in.»

Hahaha. I wanted Windows 10 to be an upgrade from Windows 8.1 not a downgrade to Windows 7.8. Windows 10 is absolutely a "Windows 7 with modernizations". It lost a lot of Windows 8's charm (literally as well as figuratively) due to complaints from the same vocal crowd that is whining about "spyware". Microsoft will never make y'all happy, but it's still trying, while meanwhile y'all will keep coming up with excuses why Microsoft is the devil and Windows n-2 was really the peak of what Windows should ever aspire to be.

(That said, I do really like Windows 10 and even if I'm disappointed it didn't carry through some of the things I really liked about Windows 8.1, I'd still rather use Windows 10 than Windows < 10.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A few years ago there was usually a huge "don't change my facebook" uproar every time facebook changed the functionality or layout of the site. Yet every time a change was implemented, a few weeks went by and most people forgot it ever changed and loved the new layout and/or functionality.

Facebook could and can do that because they own facebook, and you are the product (being sold to marketers, etc.)

I think people are slowly realizing that the situation is the same with Windows, there's always been complaints when new Windows versions came out, Win98 => ME => 2k => XP => Vista => 7 => 8 => 10\. But usually people only experienced the switch whenever they got a new computer with a newer version of Windows on it.

Edit: [http://www.allwelike.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/09/26-Faceb...](http://www.allwelike.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/09/26-Facebook.jpg)

<comment><USER33> There is an important difference between a new feature on a social network and a whole new OS. Many people have software and/or drivers installed that won't work on a newer OS.

<comment><USER32> I agree! I just think Microsoft either has not taken into account the possible backlash from breaking people's printers, scanners, webcams, programs, etc. or maybe they have taken it into account and decided the backlash was worth the increased Win10 marketshare.

<comment><USER34> Backlash? It will take years for sales to be affected (the general population cannot switch to Mac/Linux in less time) and the courts won't lift a finger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> as far as I know for Windows 7 and 8

uninstall and block these updates to stop WX nag and auto install

WX related - KB 3035583 WX related - KB 3150513

uninstall and block these updates to stop Windows spyware

Spyware - KB 3068708 Spyware - KB 3022345 Spyware - KB 3075249 Spyware - <USER4> 3080149 Spyware - KB 3146449

<comment><USER36> Keep in mind that you have to be vigilant every time you install updates. Microsoft can (and often does) release multiple versions of updates, and it appears the ignore flag is not preserved between versions.

<comment><USER37> The fact it still tries to peddle me _SILVERLIGHT_ despite that getting "Hide Update"d every time it's ever been offered makes me think that (separate from W10-related strategic malice) there's also basic incompetence in the way Windows Update is designed/operated. I don't believe it's in MS's current interest to actively promote Silverlight and yet there it is again and again.

<comment><USER38> It's the Windows update system being a horrible mess instead of a proper package manager. Each time you hide it, what you get is apparently a new update with the same name. If you hide it enough times, you eventually hide every available update and it won't reappear (at least, until they issue a new one). Really annoying!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This story lasted only 4 hours on HN frontpage, despite a lot of interest and engagement.

* Constant starting/shuttering of their mobile OS offerings.

* Using sock puppets, advertorials and other shady methods to shape opinion.

* Disregarding user privacy in Windows 10 (and extending that to Windows 7/8 via security updates)

* Forcing users of Windows 7/8 to update to Windows 10. It's basically malware at this stage.

<comment><USER40> Maybe because every day a rant about this is being posted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What does pressing esc key do? It usually has same functionality as pressing X button right? If pressing esc installs windows 10 too I am speechless

<comment><USER7> It's more of a notification than a question dialogue. It tells you that Windows 10 is a "recommended update" now (instead of optional which it was before). That means no matter how you close the window, now you'll get the update unless you actively disable it in time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I love the "it's worked like this for months" quote. Yeh, you silently switched the behaviour for a single case a couple of months ago in an feature people rarely use. How could anyone be upset about that?

</comment><comment><USER43> How come there is no legislation that limits what software corporations are allowed to do? Just imagine if regular companies that deal with physical stuff were allowed to do the same. It's like if they broke into your house to replace or 'upgrade' your stuff without your consent. Companies can literally break into people's homes and change stuff.

</comment><comment><USER44> To remove all of MS's nagware and spyware on Win7 and 8 use this: [https://github.com/th3power/aegis- voat#aegisvoat](https://github.com/th3power/aegis-voat#aegisvoat)

</comment><comment><USER45> Just in case anyone may be interested.. [https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows](https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows)

</comment><comment><USER46> A bit OT: Is there a reliable way to keep from sending the keystrokes back to the MS servers?

</comment><comment><USER47> Okay Microsoft gets a ton of hate for the, but the standard for today is software that automatically updates and often even one cannot control update at all since the software resides in the cloud. Maybe this is the most egregious case so far, maybe it isn't, but it's clear that we'll be seeing a lot more of this in the future, not just from Microsoft.

<comment><USER9> Does that upgrade in the cloud result in nonfunctional computers? QED.

<comment><USER48> That's semantics. If my work depends on software that broke after an automatic upgrade, then the computer is "nonfunctional" to me. Alternatively, your computer isn't nonfunctional because Microsoft force-installed Windows 10 on it - you can still remove Windows and install something else.

I think it was foolhardy of Microsoft to "force" the update(or more aptly, trick people into updating) because it would be practically impossible to verify that the upgrade would go smoothly on all machines. However, I don't see their action as notably different from any other essential software I install on my computer.

<comment><USER9> What _is_ notably different is the automated nature of the install: I want to install essential upgrades during scheduled downtime, not meddle with reverts during a working-day rush hour when the computer is supposed to be doing something useful (i.e. people depend on the workstation to be up so they can do their jobs, and other people depend on that, etc.) _This_ is the huge f-ckup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> baku-fr As I see it, the popup is merely a notification that the upgrade has been scheduled. Why not taking the time to read it and cancel the upgrade? It's been like that for years (remember "the computer will restart in 10 minutes" popup from Win7?)</comment>


Aging Shapes Narrative Identity - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/how-aging-shapes-narrative-identity <comment><USER2> I'm not even positive is the same concept as the author is referring to, but long ago someone told me "(almost) no one views themselves as a villain in the story of their life"

Remembering one concept has been incredibly helpful with difficult situations over the years. When someone is behaving in a way I find problematic, is opposing what I find is right, or generally acting "crazy", it is incredibly useful to remind myself that, in their telling of the story, they will somehow be the hero. Spending time figuring out how that can be has given me valuable insight and let me find win-win solutions that were seeming intractable

<comment><USER3> > they will somehow be the hero.

Or the victim. A lot of actual villains think of themselves as having been _made_ a villain. The story is often that they realized through their own victimization that non-villains were just prey, or that the reason they are bad now is because someone or something destroyed all of the good within them.

<comment><USER2> True, and important because it can cause awful outcomes, but in my experience people are generally just operating from a different set of priors, perspectives, and incentives.

As they say about paranoia, sometimes they really are out to get you. But you probably shouldn't live life assuming that all the time.

<comment><USER4> That's the problem with behavioral discussions - at least amongst the general public at large, there is almost an epidemic inability to analyze a situation from any other perspective other than one's own. Unfortunately, many of those people are also politicians and lawmakers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They give the idea of _positivity bias_ a fairly negative framing, like it's a form of denial rather than a genuine change of perception about things.

I've generally tended towards an optimistic bias and that is in part because I don't see things in black and white terms. I've long said things like "A stove can burn you and a knife can cut you, but you also need both to put a meal on the table."

That's not some Pollyanna view with rose colored glasses. That's an honest assessment that anything that contains power to accomplish something contains power to do good or harm.

As you get better at extracting the positives, the occasional burn looms less large in your mind. You rejigger those calculations and spend more time appreciating the many hot meals you ate and less time complaining about the occasional blister that was involved.

Young people sometimes take good things for granted because a lot of the positives in their lives were given to them by their parents. If you stop seeing it as a given, you are more grateful that anything ever goes right and your mental accounting shifts.

It's not denial or white washing. It's just a change in perspective.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice article. Nautilus is terrific. The research here isn't all new though, it goes back to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. I love checking in on the stages every once in a while, it helps me figure out what goals would make me happy. Also helps to better understand people who are at a different age range.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if it's my English, but I cannot parse this title into anything meaningful. Could just as well be "Turtles Run Bicycle Lambda".</comment>


Leaked tablet pics. Look pretty real - <AUTHOR> http://i.engadget.com/2010/01/27/is-this-the-apple-tablet/

<comment><USER2> _Just 13 hours to go -- we'll find out if any of this is the real deal soon enough._

That's a problem I have with speculation like that. Why spend time spreading/checking out rumors on something that's literally going to be announced tomorrow?..

<comment><USER3> Because it's so much damn fun!! ;)

<comment><USER4> Fun? By now it will be an anti-climax.

I am praying to all the prankster Gods that Steve Jobs walks on stage tomorrow and announces something totally non-tablety - like, the iFridge (keeps track of whether you need milk! shows you videos while you cook! manage your recipes! your kids can email their artwork to it straight from their iPod Touch!).

Man, in fact I wish he'd just do it as a joke, just co I can see the blogosphere wet its pants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A big iPod. I still don't know why all the hoopla about it.

1\. It is not portable enough 2\. It probably is not powerful enough to replace your laptop

Useful for the few people that have money to spare, but not sure will be useful to all people.

Now, if you can dock it to a computer setup, it will be a great grandma/granpa computer, but still, I don't see this selling 10s of millions in a year.

<comment><USER6> I don't own any Apple product, but I would like to have something like this, especially for ebook reading, and then web surfing/checking emails. I have been using netbook for that, which is quite OK, but something more practical without the keyboard and with touch screen could be better for media consumptions. Simply, I am waiting for something like an iPhone with at least 8" screen, and Apple Tablet seems to be such a device. But I will wait for the Microsoft offer first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a couple friends with friends at Apple. Stuff I've heard from people on the inside:

\- 3 product verions/3 & 4 figure price points (people working on apple.com)

\- March ship date

\- Carrier-tied (AT&T), US launch only for now

I was really excited for it, but if it is a carrier-tied device then I may pass on it. Who knows though, this could all be BS - there's so much secrecy within Apple, I'm surprised more hasn't leaked yet.

<comment><USER8> An unlocked, unsubsidized version of the device would make sense. A $200 subsidy would be a much smaller fraction of this device's price than the iPhone's. I'd be very reluctant to sign up for another monthly data plan for this device, and I think wifi would be sufficient, especially if you have your smartphone set up to support tethering. I'd gladly pay more for greater data usage on a single plan that I could share across all my devices, as opposed to paying for a separate unlimited data plan for each device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting thing about Apple Tablet is that, at least among my friends, it raised a debate about the perfect portable machine.

There's so much speculation that if you filter out some simple facts, you basically get one's picture of the machine one imagines.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder what unique part of the tablet can be used to identify the source. I've heard that Apple sometimes provides altered information to track leaks.

<comment><USER11> The map in the background?

(not sure if I'm joking or not...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm more excited about the iPhone on Verizon rumor. Hope I don't have to wait until June.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great set-up - sticky so incriminating they must be blocked out, a black cover pulled back, white apple connector cables everywhere . . .</comment>


Simple 3dim Fluid Sim - <AUTHOR> https://www.shaderoo.org/?shader=Th3OWx <comment><USER2> Why it shows some crazy high FPS numbers (50-250 fps), when it's clearly rendering at <5 FPS ?

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, shouldn't do that... what system/browser/hardware are you on?

<comment><USER2> MacOS 10.14.6 Chrome 78.0.3904.108</comment></comment></comment>