San Francisco Officials to Tech Workers: Buy Your Lunch - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/technology/san-francisco-tech-free-lunch.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17619658)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17621174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17621174)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17613614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17613614)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17611770)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry! I'd missed the previous discussion on businessinsider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> SF should ban private cars, because it deprives public and commercial transportation of customers.

SF should ban owning your own apartment, because it deprives landlords of rent.

SF should ban e-commerce purchases, because it deprives local retail stores of sales.

SF should ban cleaning your own home, because cleaning companies need more business.

<comment><USER4> The irony is San Francisco is considered a 'liberal' city, but "ban this, ban that" attitude is quite conservative/reactionary and not liberal at all

<comment><USER5> San Francisco liberals are not liberal in the sense of promoting liberty. "Leftist" would be more accurate. In fact in America, neither the mainstream left nor the mainstream right is particularly liberal: both want things to stay more or less the same and are afraid of change, both are conservative in that sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, two things:

1\. This proposal is for all _new_ offices, which as usual, creates an amazing unfair advantage to established companies. The old companies will have an old office that can offer the perk of free lunch, whereas new companies cannot.

2\. I have yet to go into some random restaurant and not have to wait an absurd amount of time in line. This city constantly feels like it does not have nearly enough restaurant or activity capacity, everything is just constantly crowded, all the time. So now I guess we will exacerbate that artificially? Lunch times will take 1.5x as long without any actual enjoyment from the extra time since it will just be spent waiting around in line for (probably) unhealthy food.

<comment><USER7> 1\. Why is it such an 'amazing unfair advantage' to be able to offer 'free' lunch to your employees? Because the lunch is not really free, it is paid indirectly from the salary of the employee; new companies can simply offer more salary instead.

2\. Can't companies simply order lunch for their employees? Or pay a third party to serve lunches for their employees in a company canteen?

<comment><USER8> 1\. Free lunch may not be free but while it may cost $X for the company to offer that lunch and while they may deduct that $X from my salary, the value of that lunch to me is not $X but, say, 10 x $X because it saves me time going to and searching for places to eat, waiting in line, waiting for meal to be prepared, paying more per meal, including the tip...etc

2\. Sure, they can. For example, Google will hire "Totally Unrelated To Google, Catering Inc".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This "solution" seems like a combination of regulatory capture by local restaurants that want to avoid competing, and the usual SF Supervisor cravenness / refusal to deal with the root cause of the issue. The restaurants mentioned in the article (Udon place under 1455 Market and The Market) are both expensive and mediocre, which is no recipe for success. Instead of attracting customers through serving a better product, they are trying to eliminate competition.

Around my office in SoMa by Montgomery, there are numerous thriving lunch places. The Bird, an affordable fried chicken sandwich spot, has 40 people lined up outside every weekday, because it is delicious, cheap, and fast. There are plenty of other examples.

The quantity of open air drug use, sales, and other low-level criminality around Civic Center is shocking - it's not an area where you want to spend more time than absolutely necessary. The same group of heroin & crack dealers do business at the top of the BART steps every single day, and the police do nothing about it. The city needs to deal with that first. Perhaps they can spend some of the tremendous tax revenues coming from tech companies, tech workers, and local restaurants on solving that issue.

<comment><USER9> More people exposed to open air drug use and crappy restaurants puts more pressure on there being good restaurants and an end to open air drug use.

<comment><USER5> At the risk of being glib, how? You do not raise standards by reducing competition.

<comment><USER9> You're not reducing competition, you're increasing profit margins and supply of customers. The market incentivizes more competition to reduce profit margins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The irony is that while the Bay area is screaming for globalization and free trade, against rising nationalistic trends, city-level protectionism is the norm now and only expanding.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Two San Francisco supervisors introduced an ordinance last week that would > forbid employee cafeterias in new corporate construction.

Yeah, we could use some more traffic and pollution from everyone driving 10 miles for lunch.

As a progressive liberal, california democrats confuse me all the time.

<comment><USER12> Now I'm not defending SF officials here, but c'mon. This is San Francisco we're talking about - there are restaurants aplenty within walking distance of most tech offices.

<comment><USER13> True, but Mountain View implemented the same ban for Facebook.

<comment><USER14> Again, the Mountain View ban is for a one particular location which has lot of restaurants in the complex. Search for The Village, Mountain View. There are a lot of things wrong with these bans but having to drive to restaurants in not one of them.

(no way in favor of the ban, I like my free lunch very much)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Next Headline: "SF Residents Frustrated with Traffic From Big Tech Lunch Outings"

Subsequent Headline: "San Francisco Officials Require Tech Companies to Use Postmates"

At some point, San Francisco needs to accept what it's allowed itself to become. I've no affinity for tech companies or Silicon Valley, but if it wasn't for the wealth tech companies, nobody would want to go to San Francisco and it'd be a wasteland. I've never seen more feces or smelled more piss in a single area in any other city. If tech moved out, we'd be hearing about complaints about how "if only big tech invested in poor SF neighborhoods."

<comment><USER16> You mean SF wouldn't be an iconic West Coast City for 100 years if tech moved out ?

<comment><USER15> It'd still be iconic and garner tourism, but in an economic sense, it'd be a shadow of its 20th century self. Nearby cities like Oakland would be even worse off as a result. Housing would be much cheaper, but the city wouldn't be as bustling or generating that much wealth.

Again, I'm not defending tech companies, but San Francisco seems to lack a ton of foresight into the potential side effects of its decisions; its actions seem mostly reactive rather than proactive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This won't even solve the problem they're trying to solve. These companies will just order catered lunches. So now you'll have extra traffic in the morning for the extra food deliveries, and the tech workers still won't go outside.

<comment><USER18> The anecdotal example of a local restaurant seeing a big uptick in business on the day a cafeteria is closed seems to suggest you might be wrong!

Every workplace I've had in SV where we had catered lunches, people were pretty likely to walk a few blocks for a meal instead. It wasn't like working at a place with a cafeteria since you were being offered a choice of 1-2 catered items instead of a huge cafeteria menu.

<comment><USER19> Why should we prefer that we support people who work at restaurants vs people who work at tech company cafeterias?

That's what this legislation is effectively doing.

The biggest issue here is the cost it takes to run a business like a restaurant in this city. It's too damn high. Even right near Salesforce in Soma there is not really that great of a selection of food.. I wouldn't blame tech for that. I would blame the city and it's awful regressive anti-housing legislation that has driven up the costs of everything to near unsustainable levels.

Which is exactly the kind of bullshit that Aaron Peskin supports. Hes literally causing a problem, then trying to blame someone else for dealing with the fallout of that problem. Truly a terrible politician for most of the residents of this city.

<comment><USER20> > Why should we prefer that we support people who work at restaurants vs > people who work at tech company cafeterias?

Because restaurants bring a lot of value to the city and area itself. Vibrant restaurant scenes are a key component of a city's atmosphere and an area's walkability.

<comment><USER19> Then the city should make it cheaper to own and operate restaurants and make the city less shitty to walk around in by cleaning up its streets of shit and syringes. A lot of these areas that have tech cafeterias are just plain awful to walk around in.

You can't create a vibrant restaurant scene in these areas just by attempting to force people to eat lunch out at overpriced restaurants that aren't even open on weekends

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _" Two San Francisco supervisors introduced an ordinance last week that would forbid employee cafeterias in new corporate construction."_

In all the tech companies I've visited in the Bay Area (all <1000 employees, not the big campuses) they've only ever had kitchen areas and not cafeterias anyway. You can't ban kitchens or refrigerators, surely, so maybe larger campuses being built could just have more small kitchens local to the employee areas?

Also, if their goal is what they claim, why not just use the tax code by disallowing deductions for food and snacks? That'd stop many companies subsidizing lunch overnight.

<comment><USER22> > In all the tech companies I've visited in the Bay Area (all <1000 employees, > not the big campuses) they've only ever had kitchen areas and not cafeterias > anyway.

There's no point having a cafeteria (or even space to spare for it!) if it will only serve a couple hundred people.

</comment></comment><comment> a-wu > Open drug use is still common on the streets around Twitter's headquarters.

This should be the first priority. If I can't get food from a cafeteria and this is the environment surrounding my office, then I'm just packing my lunch, which defeats the purpose of the ordinance.

<comment><USER18> It's a little naive to suggest that techies are all going to make lunches at home and bring them to work because of some needles on the street. Many techies don't even cook on a regular basis when they're at home.

<comment><USER23> Bringing food from home doesn't have to mean cooking.

Just buy some pre-cooked packaged food from the supermarket and bring that into the office.

(and specifically from the supermarket in whatever suburb you live in, not one that's in SF)

<comment><USER24> Or mail-order things like these:

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

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

I wonder if this ordinance will cause an uptick in their business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I could really see something like France's "tickets restos" / meal voucher system benefitting everyone. Fitting for smaller companies who want to provide a perk w/out an on-site cafeteria, puts some money into the local economy, a little tax relief for employees who are normally buying food for lunch...

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd love it if tech workers, as a protest, would use Uber Eats or Grubhub or Doordash to start buying food from national chain restaurants and having them delivered to the office _en masse_.

"OK, sure, we're buying our own food, but we're sending cars all over the roads at peak lunch hour, we're only buying food from large corporations that are headquartered out of state, and we're paying paying other tech companies to deliver. Local restaurants won't get a dime."

<comment><USER22> Uber and Doordash are both headquartered in San Francisco, are they not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So is San Francisco actively trying to kill their golden goose?

<comment><USER27> Well the "Golden Goose" has been doing its best to kill San Francisco, so,

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I saw an article about this where the author lamented that "SF has plenty of Michelin-star restaurants". Yeah, that's what I want for lunch, fancy restaurant food.

The last thing I'd want is to waste time going to restaurants, day after day. That's what, 30-40 min wasted every day? I could be spending that in the gym! I work with computers all day, every minute of exercise is precious.

It's cool to go out with coworkers and socialize sometimes, maybe once a week, but other than that I just want to gobble down the food and be done with it.

(I don't live in SF or US but I visit every now and then)

</comment><comment><USER29> The rational provided for these measures is very indirect, and, as such, it almost ensures the interpretation that it is retaliatory. If the concern were truly "integrating" tech workers into the community, perhaps the city would move to provide building permits for large urban housing complexes. Employer owned cafeterias create service industry jobs and are likely more sustainable than catering (with take-out waste). The goal seems more to punish tech workers and compromise a significant benefit to their employment.

<comment><USER18> It's retaliation, yes, because these workplaces were supposed to bring benefits for their surrounding neighborhoods (and in some cases got tax breaks/etc on that basis) but they're actually bubbles that don't enrich the area very much while contributing to traffic (as employees commute in from far away).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The result of this nitpicking might end up being a bad middle ground in terms of the scope and efficacy of such a proposed regulation.

The knee-jerk response might be to argue against this based on exactly the non-blanket nature of such a policy (i.e. it does not apply to all companies with in-house cafeterias, tech or not, subsidized or not).

The more practical option that takes advantage of the same sliver of regulation is for a few high paid workers to simply incorporate their own eatery or buy out a midsized one and serve X tech company directly for a good rate. Business as usual, as it were.

This second option may seem malevolent but it doesn't skirt any existing business laws, and once they fine tune their selling points (menu, proximity to company, delivery, perks, billing, credit, etc) it wouldn't be infeasible for them to gain the full on contract with those edges over the existing mom+pop competition.

In a grand backfire someone then gets into a multi-branch cafeteria/catering business that just happens to have big tech as their only clients, etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> At all the offices I've been to without cafeterias, most people end up just bringing lunch and eating at their desk on most days. The hassle and cost of going out for food isn't worth doing everyday, and it's hard to find healthy options other than salad. Because of this, the actual impact of this for local restaurants is probably ~20% of what the naive estimate would be.

</comment><comment><USER32> There are dozens of solutions to this. City officials are never going to outsmart Google, et al.

My favorite, courtesy of Heinlein:

 _On each side of the door was a huge brass bowl — filled with money. More than filled — Federation notes of various denominations spilled out on the floor. He was staring at this when Patricia returned. "Here 's your drink, Brother Ben. Grow close in Happiness." "Uh, thanks." His eyes returned to the money. She followed his glance. "I'm a sloppy housekeeper, Ben. Michael makes it so easy, cleaning and such, that I forget." She retrieved the money, stuffed it into the less crowded bowl. "Patty, why in the world?" "Oh. We keep it here because this door leads to the street. If one of us is leaving the Nest — and I do, myself, almost every day for grocery shopping — we may need money. We keep it where you won't forget to take some." "Just grab a handful and go?" "Why, yes, dear. Oh, I see what you mean. There is never anyone here but us."_

</comment><comment><USER33> These people want workers to spend more time in line and less time with their family.

<comment><USER34> Sorry, I think I'm missing something: did those employees bring family to the company cafeteria to eat with them?

<comment><USER33> They can finish lunch quicker and leave work earlier.

<comment><USER34> Sorry, I'm coming from the perspective that here in Italy you normally have one hour for lunch between 1 PM and 2 PM anyway.

<comment><USER33> Here in the USA there is no set time for lunch. I've found taking lunch in the office as opposed to spending extra time traveling to a restaurant and back lets me recharge in less time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I worked at Amazon in FiDi for almost 2 years and we never had free lunch. It was all part of the "Frugality" core value but I never felt like it was that bad. My current job has lunch onsite and it is better from a productivity standpoint. I probably get 30 minutes to 1 hour more working in because our team doesn't have to do mental gymnastics of picking a restaurant and commuting there and back, but sometimes that's fun. That being said, there are other things San Francisco officials should prioritize over this.

</comment><comment><USER36> A large amount of company provided free food is catered from local restaurants. I suspect this will cause a decrease in net business because many people will just bring their own lunch instead of eating the free food that the company paid for.

For most food-service workers, working in a cafeteria preparing food is generally much better than doing the same job in a restaurant.

Other than virtue signaling about how much they love local business and small business (this happens on both sides of the isle) what does this accomplish?

</comment><comment><USER37> What makes these people think this is a good idea?

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a prime example of how lobbying will favor a very visible small group of people and slightly disadvantage everyone else.

In the end, when you calculate the economic value of the advantage to the restaurant and the economic loss for everyone else (worker's time, benefit to the company, etc etc), this is a net loss in the system.

</comment><comment><USER39> An additional related article, from today: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed- em...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-s-proposed-employee- cafeteria-ban-not-to-13121402.php)

</comment><comment><USER40> And when employees bring their lunch to work?

Will they ban bagged lunches?

This is defying logic.

I want to know what restaurants are paying off what politicians.

Watch the next ban be on home kitchens- ha!

The bigger issue politicians should be addressing is an adequate housing supply.

High rent depletes any surplus income that otherwise would be spent eating out at restaurants.

</comment><comment><USER41> Petition to ban kitchens from the houses of San Francisco Supervisors:

[https://www.change.org/p/san-francisco-government-ban- kitche...](https://www.change.org/p/san-francisco-government-ban-kitchens- from-the-houses-of-san-francisco-supervisors)

Context:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/30/links-7-18-url- mountain...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/30/links-7-18-url-mountains/)

"Two San Francisco supervisors move to ban free workplace cafeterias, obviously directed at tech firms. They argue free cafeterias are denying business to local restaurants and (as per Supervisor Peskin) "depriving [techies] the pleasure of mingling with the rest of The City", which is impossible for me to read in anything other than a cloying sarcastic bully voice. @theunitofcaring has a typically thoughtful and compassionate take on this. I am less thoughtful and compassionate and my take is wanting to start a petition to ban San Francisco City Supervisors from having kitchens in their house. It's literally stealing from the restaurant industry! [EDIT: Commenter "Jeltz" has made the petition]."

</comment><comment><USER42> Taxing these workers isn't enough?! Now CA wants to mandate where they eat? Hard pass.

</comment><comment><USER43> With some restaurants apparently giving up on waitstaff, I guess people can now put more work in their lunch hour serving themselves.

I really do hope those serverless restaurants are cheaper, because otherwise, what's the point?

</comment><comment><USER44> People who have more experience navigating SF politics than I do:

What's the most effective thing readers of this thread can do to make sure this doesn't pass?

<comment><USER45> call your supervisor and tell them to vote no, I did it, if you don't know who your supervisor is, look here to find your district:

[http://www.sfmoderates.org/district- maps/](http://www.sfmoderates.org/district-maps/)

then google search for "district N supervisor san francisco" and they will have contact info

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The tech companies had no problem taking the tax breaks. Twitter pitched the benefits to SF as revitalizing an area of the city. Twitter, et. al. didn't deliver on their end of the deal.

I see this as a renegotiation of the deal when one party (SF) has realized that they are getting shafted.

Twitter, Uber, etc can always leave if they have a problem.

Everyone else that works in SF has to pay for their lunch on lower salaries. If the lunch cost is so unreasonable - bring a microwaveable meal or leftovers from last night.

I really don't get why anyone is acting like this is so horrible.

<comment><USER47> Because (as someone entirely uninvolved) it looks like an absurd bit of overreach, something akin to mandating that locally-sourced toilet paper be used at all businesses in the city.

Go right ahead, but don't mind a bit of sensible chuckling elsewhere in the country.

<comment><USER46> Just bring a lunch from home! problem solved.

<comment><USER19> Stop telling people how to eat lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I enjoy the example of Kagawa-ya Udon. I've been there and it has nothing to do with free food. Their udon is just not that great.

</comment><comment><USER49> This protects restaurant owners and some cashier jobs. Maybe cooks and other workers would be better off working for tech companies?

</comment><comment><USER50> There are more important priorities for the SF Supervisors' time and the law could cause more harm than good (unintended consequences).

More important priorities would be the ones mentioned in the article: the conditions of the street.

Possible unintended consequences: tech company cafeteria workers suffer, people bring food from home, tech companies choose to locate elsewhere, among many others.

</comment><comment><USER51> > "These tech companies have decided to leave their suburban campuses because > their employees want to be in the city, and yet the irony is, they come to > the city and are creating isolated, walled-off campuses," said Aaron Peskin, > a city supervisor who is co-sponsoring the bill with Ahsha Safaí. "This is > not against these folks, it's for them. It's to integrate them into the > community."

So, app developers face the difficulty of having high wages but higher costs, and in every single direction, greedy people are trying to get every dime out of them. I mean $3,258 for 1-bedroom apartments is outrageous! And now, while they're trying to cut some of the few costs they have control over (food), the local government is _openly and brazenly_ trying to force them to spend _more_ money on local lunch shops? Didn't we just read a few months ago about a high profile developer who lives in his car because he can't afford rent? Capitalism with rules that favor greed is pure evil. I'm all for looking for ways to monetize, but you're literally stealing from people living out of their cars.

</comment><comment><USER52> Virtue signaling on non issues is much easier than dealing with the sea of shit and needles on the sidewalks.

</comment><comment><USER53> Who would benefit from this?

<comment><USER54> Only the restaurant owners that believe they have earned business by simply opening shop in the area.

Hopefully companies find a workaround or people start packing though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hahaha, the small town capitalists are fighting the international monopolists and the workers everywhere lose.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm of two minds on this.

1) There's no obligation for anybody to integrate with the community around them and forcing them to is absurd, especially with the bigger problems San Francisco faces

2) I fucking hate the people that get free food in SF because they think they're better than me and I would absolutely love to see them suffer in the most petty ways possible. I think this hits the optimal level of annoying.

<comment><USER22> > because they think they're better than me and I would absolutely love to see > them suffer in the most petty ways possible

Why do you hate them so much? They work at a company that provides them a free perk. There's nothing here about thinking they're better than you.

<comment><USER56> > There's nothing here about thinking they're better than you.

I can guarantee that most people at Facebook, Google, etc. look down on people with my pedigree and employer.

<comment><USER22> I think you're projecting–unless you job is doing something unethical?

<comment><USER56> Well no.

But I do make 80% or less of what they make out of school.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Email from Steve Jobs re: Java and OS X - <AUTHOR> http://flic.kr/p/8M3fPG I just got a response from Steve Jobs re: Java and OS X. Here it is. <comment><USER3> Text:

"Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it"

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

In reply to:

"Mr. Jobs:

I am the CTO and founder of a Software company based in Philadelphia. We create and sell Enterprise software into the health care space.

Our software is Java based, and runs on both the server and desktop. We have been in business for over 12 years now, and are a healthy growing company with about 180 employees.

I am a big Apple customer, as is my company. We love developing and testing Java based software on OS X.

Today in the news were stories like this: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_k...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threatens_to_kill_java_on_the_mac/)

and here's another example: <http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20020338-260.html>

I am hoping you would consider commenting either to me or via your PR channels what are the future plans for the Java programming language and platform on OS X?

One last note - a growing trend over the last few years at all the software conferences I attend is the popularity of the Macbook laptops. Go to any non- Microsoft focused developers conference and the rooms are typically dominated by Mac laptops. One major reason for this is that OS X is a great platform for Java developers.

thanks

Scott Fraser CTO, Portico Systems <http://www.porticosys.com>

<comment><USER4> Missing bit at the end of the original message:

"This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message."

It is amusing that these stern words, particularly regarding distribution, never seem to apply to the sender.

<comment><USER5> That's the footer of Scott's email, not Steve's (Steve's is 'Sent from my iPhone' -- he knows any of his email replies could end up online, of course). He's allowed to share his own correspondence if he wants :)

<comment><USER6> I think ez77 is pointing out the irony that Scott just published Steve's email response for the entire universe to see, but the footer message on his original email indicates Scott would be none too pleased if Steve did the same to him.

<comment><USER4> That's what I meant, indeed. If you unilaterally demand to keep things confidential and undistributed, it would seem consistent to do the same. On the other hand, I realize Jobs is fully aware that most of his replies _will_ be published.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's actually a fairly decent reply; far better than 'nope' or 'you're holding it wrong'

<comment><USER8> He never said "you are holding it wrong." Do your own research instead of spreading FUD.

<comment><USER9> For the record, the actual quote was "Just avoid holding it that way."

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ytech_gadg/ytech_gadg_tc2844>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised at the generally positive approach in HN toward Apple's recent announcements. Apple is about to have control over the user's system no one since mainframe-era IBM ever came close to.

Not only they're about to move desktops/laptops into the App Store's walled garden, they are showing they can drop support for major technologies like Java or Flash if they feel like it. This is not good news for anyone but Apple, certainly not anyone calling themselves "Hacker".

<comment><USER7> I think you may be overreacting a bit here, although we won't know until a few years down the track

Apple aren't about to "move desktops/laptops into the App Store's walled garden", but rather they're about to add an optional place to purchase apps. It's an addition that I think may have some benefit for some users and smaller indie developers. I can see it becoming the way _most_ people purchase _most_ of their apps in time, but I can never see it becoming the _only_ way to do so on the mac.

They also haven't dropped support for either Flash or Java. The new MBAs aren't shipping with Flash installed; so what? OSX is the only OS I'm aware of that _does_ ship with Flash. Java? Well, Java's not going anywhere either.

<comment><USER11> I stated this in another thread, but I will restate here because it seems appropriate.

The App Store will most definitely become the most popular way to find and install applications. Therefore if your app is not in the app store it may as well not exist. The regular user is going to search for the best application within that garden to fulfill their needs which puts all developers at the mercy of Apple to get their app in the store.

I wonder that if this model gains popularity on the desktop, how long it will be before users click that app store icon to find an application they need vs. click the browser icon to find a service on the web that may fit that need.

With strong shift towards web based apps over the past few years it's interesting that a move like this may re-invigorate the desktop app!

<comment><USER12> I think that is true for most indy apps, but stuff from Adobe or Microsoft will be fine. I also expect verticals to continue to do fine (dedicated sales staff and industry rep). If your an small developer then you probably should be in the app store.

People do want native apps (for a bit of humor <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/21/beltzner> )because connectivity is not 100% and the fit, finish, and speed of native apps are better. I don't think your wrong, I guess twitter clients kind of prove the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Aligning the Java release schedules for OS X and basically all other platforms would be fantastic. Rather than some kind of deprecation, this actually makes OS X a first-class citizen in the Java ecosystem.

<comment><USER14> Couldn't they make Java updates for OS X use the new App Store mechanism?

<comment><USER15> Would be against the TOS. Only "safe" apps will be on the app store, nothing that allows other apps to gain root access.

<comment><USER16> Why would java allow other apps to gain root access?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The other thing to note here is that virtually all of Apple's web properties are Java applications. Apple has a tremendous internal investment in Java and Java technologies -- the App Store, Apple Web Store, iTunes Store, hell -- even Ping -- are written in Java (via WebObjects).

<comment><USER17> I am curious, how do you know that they used WebObjects?

<comment><USER18> Having the string "WebObjects" in the URl:s should be a pretty good indicator; [https://store.apple.com/1-800-MY- APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore...](https://store.apple.com/1-800-MY- APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nnmm=acct&sf=wHF2F2PHCCCX72KDY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apple always had a strange, conflicting working dynamic with Sun, a company whose purpose became more aligned to developing technology for the sake of developing technology. Larry Ellison has always had a close, personal relationship with Jobs (and I've always believed that Larry wants to be the Apple of the Enterprise world), so maybe this is a sign that the new boss of Java is handling things differently here, or rather Jobs's personal relationship at work here.

</comment><comment><USER19> Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are good friends. Jobs was the photographer at Ellison's wedding. Since Oracle bought Sun, it's almost certain the two have discussed Java on the Mac and since Larry has shown his enthusiasm for Java (see JavaOne rundowns), I'm pretty confident things are looking up.

<comment><USER20> This is encouraging. Didn't know they were friends. Makes you wonder though why they didn't do some sort of coordinated announcement. I'd REALLY like to hear from Oracle about this soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be nice to get a commitment from Oracle saying that they would support a Mac version BEFORE Apple drops support...

<comment><USER22> Ya. I have a mac and I always assumed that sun/oracle released their own version that was not installed by default. Well, it appears they dont.

>Apple Computer fournit sa propre version de Java. Utilisez la fonction de mise à jour du logiciel (disponible dans le menu Apple), afin de vérifier que vous disposez de la version la plus récente de Java pour votre Mac.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Positive: Jobs appears to be implying that one of the purposes of this change is that in the future Java will not lag behind on OSX

Negative: He gives absolutely no assurance or even hint that there is a plan that this will really happen, or that Apple will be helpful in facilitating it.

<comment><USER24> What assurance can he give when it is not in Apple's power to promise anything about what Oracle would do?

I always wondered why SUN wouldn't also ship an OS X version, they already had to support Windows, Linux, Solaris, with mostly native L&F for Swing.

You can't expect Oracle to spend resources and ship for OS X unless Apple gets out of the way. They are deprecating Apple's runtime here, nothing else.

<comment><USER23> I'm not talking about a contractual assurance here. There are a million ways he could clear the confusion over this. He could easily have picked up the phone and chatted with Larry about it. It would have been simple for him to get some kind of in principal agreement about a handover of the reins. Then he could easily have made a public statement that let everyone know that some arrangements were in place for Oracle to pick up the ball. Or if Larry's playing hard ball he could tell everyone that Oracle is not picking up the ball - either one would be better than just leaving it unstated.

<comment><USER25> I don't know, to me it makes a lot of sense that Apple's CEO doesn't unofficially announce Java OS X from Oracle via his iPhone. The man's a professional after all.

Apple did their part in dropping their own Java version. Reading these comments, it seems likely Oracle would want to step in.

<comment><USER23> > Apple's CEO doesn't unofficially announce Java OS X from Oracle

Where on earth did I imply that? What would be wrong with:

"We intend to offer whatever assistance we can to third party JVM providers ensure that Mac users still have an excellent Java runtime available to them"

Instead we have a bold and inflammatory headline saying "Java Deprecation" and on information about whether Java will continue to exist on Macs at all in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ah, images. The best way to communicate the text of an e-mail. (Yes, we do have transcripts thanks to mahmud and sfraser, but still...)

<comment><USER26> It's nice to have "evidence" of the email.

<comment><USER16> An image like that is approximately as fakeable as the text.

<comment><USER26> Yes, hence the quotes around "evidence."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Actually it is much more than what meets the eye. As a trend emerges where use of iPads/iPhones increases in the Enterprisy land, it will not hurt Apple to be up-to-date with Java. And as Steve puts it, it is better to leave upkeep of Java to Oracle who is standardizing their whole Application suite on Java and are focused on Java.Fact that Steve Job was the best man at Larry's wedding was not the deciding factor here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I added the text as a comment to the image so you can read/copy it more easily.

<comment><USER3> Shucks, I did the transcript too above, at 4x zoom :-/

That will be $0.10, Sir!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sorry, but all the performance talk on Java are bogus. There are UI issues in Look and Feel, Nd some great developers have developed applications that fell 100% native in Java and work very well.

Large part of the web servers and back-end apps run on Java, and no Java on Mac means no macs for many camps. As noted Apple's own web infrastructure is Java based. Facebook, built maybe the world's best performaning databae server in Java, that stores data for 200M+ daily users (500M+). Google runs large parts of their infrastructure on Java. I have seen benchmarks on number chrunching apps where Java beat C++ performance (this is due to JIT, which almost every JVM has today - some only enable in "server mode" though - <USER2> that the Java byte code runs as machine code for the exact processor being used at runtime), not true for all types of number crunching but for some.

Java is not a one size fits alls solution but there are a large number of application areas for Java and hundreds of programming languages that run on Java Virtual Machine platform.

No Java on Mac is an unlikely scenario for Apple, but time will tell...

</comment><comment><USER29> I assume that I can still download the java src and compile/install it on OS X, correct?

I am a Mac user and had never even realized that Apple uses a special distro and Java.com does not offer a JRE/JDK/etc. download for OS X.

After Java is removed, how will Mac users run java apps? What will be the easiest way to get Java back on OS X?

<comment><AUTHOR> You would still be able to run the Open JDK. There is a port for the Mac, but if I am not mistaken it uses the X Server and is not as well integrated with the graphics layer of OS X desktop. Example: <http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/static/soylatte/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> AFAIK the code which makes the Swing UI use native OSX (Cocoa) instead of X is Apple proprietary. I wonder whether Apple will now give that to Oracle or release it as Open Source. Otherwise we're going to be stuck with X Server and ugly UIs for a long time :-(

<comment><USER31> Two thoughts:

First, with some quick Googling/Wikipedia-ing it seems that Java is released under the GPL. Wouldn't the viral nature of GPL make this code from Apple open source?

Second, if Apple cared enough to invest in building the code to make Swing seem native-OSX in the first place, one would assume they care enough to ensure that it stays available ongoing. Otherwise Java applications begin to drag down the 'desirability' of the OSX platform.

<comment><USER32> _Wouldn't the viral nature of GPL make this code from Apple open source?_

No. Apple's Java was based on code licensed from Sun long before Java was released under the GPL. Additionally, Sun's release of code owned by Sun under the GPL does not preclude Sun from licensing that same code under other terms if it so chooses. That's the basis of the dual-license model used by other projects like MySQL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> To those of you hand-wringing about whether or not Oracle will support Mac, if history is any guide, they may well do it. Oracle has always provided decent driver support for the Oracle database on a multitude of operating systems. When Apple switched to Intel, they released native OS X drivers. They have done this in spite of the fact that Macs have a small enterprise footprint. I see no reason why they would behave differently with Java. In fact, their own GUI front end to Oracle is written in Java, so if they want that to run on the Mac, they will need to do something.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's great to hear that this was a practical consideration on Apple's part.

I hope that they ensure a smooth transition of the responsibility to Oracle and perhaps even hand over some of the existing work, if licensing permits it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ok... Now someone email Larry Ellison to see what response we get from him. :-)

Apple is a big WebObjects user. And WebObjects is 100% java based. This means that developers use Eclipse/WOLips/java to develop their WebObjects applications and java on the server to deploy.

There is also OpenJDK and it looks like that will be the route that developers will use to get java for OS X. This may actually be good. You will not have to rely on OS X releases to get java. The only thing that doesn't look good is Swing unless OpenJDK implements Swing using Cocoa instead of X11. :-)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm glad Apple is returning control of Java to Sun/Oracle. Java is the most widely used language in the world (<http://www.devtopics.com/most-popular- programming-languages>) and is great for most programming tasks, especially large projects. IMO Apple has done a sucky job of maintaining Java. Not surprising, since it isn't their business. Hopefully Sun/Oracle will do a much better job of releasing an JVM for Macintosh.

</comment><comment><USER37> Could the guy's email signature be any longer?

</comment><comment><USER38> Last sentence of Steve's reply: "This may not be the best way to do it" tells me that, there may be better way. I really hope that Snoracle will ship OSX distribution of Java.

Anyway, Java developers despite of being geeks, make a good PR for Apple. Just look at laptop covers on any given Java developer conferrence.

</comment><comment><USER39> What worries me is that Steve did not confirm whether Oracle will be releasing Java on the Apple platform. He just says that Oracle supples Java for all other platforms - they have never done it for Apple. So there is still no commitment of Java support on Mac OS X.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is this the way the big companies talk to each other? By getting some random email published?

I don't think apple and oracle had a dialog going here, because why would apple want to look like the bad guy?

So if Oracle says "we'll do this", then great. Oracle will be appreciated again.

</comment><comment><USER41> It should be Oracle's focus to satisfy its customers. If a lot of Java devs work on Mac's then Oracle should make sure that all Mac's have the best java software available to them. This is not Apple's responsibility

</comment><comment><USER42> Portico's stuff requires java 1.3 and is still AWT and based on 1.1. WTF do they care about java 1.6+

<comment><USER43> WRONG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Oracle is truly the demise of Java. I mean look at what they are doing to Open Office.

</comment><comment><USER45> Oracle's lawsuit against google was the last nail in the coffin for Java. If I were you, and was forced to using java code, I would definately either use gcj to compile directly to native object code, or use an oracle supported JVM.

</comment><comment><USER46> Darn top poster.

</comment><comment><USER47> TRWTF is that it took Jobs and Apple's thousands of employees how many years to notice this? Either that, or his answer is pure BS and has nothing to do with why Apple made this decision _now_.

<comment><USER13> Or, could it be that it was a delicate inter-company relationship and it took time (and Sun being acquired by Oracle) for this shift to take place?

<comment><USER48> Either that, or this is all a really highly orchestrated plan of Apple's to phase out official Java support completely after building up a Cocoa developer base. Are there any good numbers on Java desktop applications (aside from Java plugins) vs Java server applications these days? How big of an effect will dropping official "Apple" support complete with UI fancy-ness and some sorta Cocoa bridge? If we have to move to OpenJDK, will server apps really be burned all that much? What exactly is the big deal with having to switch to OpenJDK, anyway? I hear people complain about Apple being behind all the time with Java...isn't this ultimately what people wanted..an up to date Java distribution on OS X?</comment></comment></comment>


Resignation Syndrome - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resignation_syndrome <comment><AUTHOR> there is a fascinating doc on this phenom [https://www.netflix.com/title/81034980](https://www.netflix.com/title/81034980)</comment>


IPhone app review shakedown - <AUTHOR> http://lonelysandwich.com/post/420825330/iphoneappreview-shakedown

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm missing something here, but where's the shakedown?

1\. It's $20. In every company I know you can give and accept $20 gifts from clients and customers without it being considered a bribe.

2\. Paying $20 to have a link to the app store at the bottom of a review is good value for money. It will encourage impulse purchases, and it doesn't cost the review site anything.

3\. The email explicitly states that the $20 don't affect the review process. So you're not paying for a positive review. Why would the review site risk their reputation by asking for $20 bribes?

4\. You can just say "no thanks", so it's not a shakedown.

Geez, people.</comment>


Case study on world news coverage made by social news sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_news_on_world_events_castro.php

<comment><USER2> Poor Wikinews. I keep their RSS around and they've been getting some cool - and different - interviews lately.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the etiquette regarding duplicates? - <AUTHOR> If I wanted to share a link, but the link has already been posted a long time ago, should I submit the link anyway or "necropost" on the older thread? <comment><USER2> _" If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok."_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

If you repost an older story I'd recommend adding the relevant year to the title, e.g. _" Do Things That Don't Scale (2013)"_ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14957007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14957007)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! My apologies for not seeing the page.

<comment><USER3> Also, after a thread is a couple of weeks old, it's no longer possible to add comments to it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ars spends too much time trying to work in Haiku, the BeOS successor - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/ars-spends-too-much-time-trying-to-work-in-haiku-the-beos-successor/ <comment><USER2> We stopped working on BeZilla when Mozilla decided to scrap all native gfx- backends and use Cairo.</comment>


Thou Shalt Not Lie: git rebase, ammend, squash, and other lies  - <AUTHOR> http://paul.stadig.name/2010/12/thou-shalt-not-lie-git-rebase-ammend.html

<comment><USER2> > [If you use git merge --squash some-branch] [w]hen a QA person or your boss > says, "Hey, is some-feature {merged into QA, deployed}" you have to resort > to `git log` spelunking.

Of course you shouldn't use merge --squash in that context. That doesn't mean you should never use merge --squash. You just shouldn't use it to rewrite public history. Do you have a local branch in which you fixed some bugs and which branch has not been pushed out to the world and would you like to use merge --squash to merge it into master? Go for it! But if that branch _has_ been pushed out to the world, just use a regular merge.

The fundamental practice the author is arguing against is rewriting public history. But instead of making that point, he makes these sensationalist, dogmatic assertions that rebase, merge --squash and commit --amend are evil and should never be used. Until the end of the article, where he finally admits that really what he (correctly) has a problem with is rewriting public history.

OK, fine. Just title the article "You shouldn't rewrite public history".

<comment><USER3> I would, but that would mean rewriting public history! So, I'm kinda stuck on that one. :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Linus thinks that it's fine to rewrite history on a _private_ branch: [http://www.mail-archive.com/dri- firstname.lastname@example.com/...](http://www.mail-archive.com/dri- email@example.com/msg39091.html)

> but instead of committing all of your work as you have come to it naturally, > you decide to break your work up into several small, "logical" commits. This > makes you look good, but it's a lie.

No. Breaking your work up into several small, "logical" commits is exactly the right thing to do.

I find this very useful when doing experimental coding: when I don't really know where I'm going or if my changes will work. I end up with a pile of commits that _do_ break tests and thus bisect etc, before ending up with something that works. Reworking this _private_ branch is exactly the right thing to do.

This is in fact the exact model that open source development has used for years. Try submitting a patch series for inclusion in the kernel which include a bunch of mistakes that you've later corrected (as happens naturally during development) and see what happens. You'll be asked to rework it, since it makes it harder to review.

Take a look at the Linux git tree and find me a single merge commit where the branch being merged contains mistakes and corrections. You won't find one. You will find plenty of regression fixes, but these are there because by this time the commits were public and couldn't be fixed retrospectively using a rebase without rewriting public history (which would obviously cause all sorts of problems).

<comment><USER5> > No. Breaking your work up into several small, "logical" commits is exactly > the right thing to do.

The author is not arguing against making small, logical commits. He's arguing against making a ton of changes in your working directory, then running `git add file1, file2... ; git commit` a bunch of times in a row to record a series of commits.

The problem with this is exactly the one he mentioned: almost no one ever goes back and makes sure each commit actually builds and passes tests.

After they finish making a series of, say, three commits they just go ahead and push. It's only weeks or months later when someone bisects that they find out the first commit was broken without the contents of the third.

Mercurial users use MQ for this process, and to me it seems like it's a better and safer method with an uglier UI.

With MQ, once you were ready to create your three commits you would say:

`hg qnew file1 file2 ... --message 'Fix the foo bug'`

`hg qnew file2 file3 ... --message 'Add feature bar'`

`hg qnew file4 file5 ... --message 'Add feature baz'`

Now you've got three patches that appear (mostly) as normal changesets in your repo.

You can `hg qpop` back to the beginning of the set, run your tests, fix anything that's broken and add it into the patch. Then you would `hg qpush` the next patch and do the same thing.

Once you know that all three patches represent a working state you can `hg qfinish --all` to turn them into vanilla commits.

Yes, it's more work, but you've got three "logical" commits that actually work, instead of three "logical" commits that might hopefully work.

MQ is also great for the open source workflow you mention, where you send your patches to a mailing list (for example), get feedback, and rework them.

If someone tells you changeset X has problem Y, you can just `hg qpop` back to the patch, fix Y, refresh the patch with that change, and retest/resend.

If you want even more crazy power, you can make the directory containing your patches a _Mercurial repository_ , which lets you track the evolution of your patches over time. It's very weird and meta, but extremely powerful.

<comment><USER6> > Mercurial users use MQ for this process, and to me it seems like it's a > better and safer method with an uglier UI.

MQ lets you do the exact same thing as the interactive rebase. It's not like it forces you to go back and ensure every single patch is correct after you've qfolded some together or reordered them.

> You can `hg qpop` back to the beginning of the set, run your tests, fix > anything that's broken and add it into the patch. Then you would `hg qpush` > the next patch and do the same thing.

And you can do the exact same thing with your git commits before pushing them, last time i checked MQ had `qpush -a` and did not force you to run your tests between two qpushs.

> Yes, it's more work

Indeed. And if you have no problem with that more work, you can do it just as well with git. MQ doesn't magically make people care.

> If someone tells you changeset X has problem Y, you can just `hg qpop` back > to the patch, fix Y, refresh the patch with that change, and retest/resend.

No you can't. Because if it's a changeset (rather than a patch in a series) then you've already qfinished it and pushed it to a public repository, and you're now rewriting public history.

I don't like git for a number of reasons, but this is a terrible strawman: git provides all the tools needed to ensure each and every commit is correct (whereas bazaar, for instance, doesn't. Not without untold amounts of pain anyway), and I've seen a number of blag posts and comments which recommended exactly that approach: tinker on your local branch, rewrite to your heart's content, and before you push anything to remote test each commit individually. There is nothing which prevents you from doing that, just as there is nothing that forces you to do that with mercurial.

<comment><USER5> > MQ lets you do the exact same thing as the interactive rebase. It's not like > it forces you to go back and ensure every single patch is correct after > you've qfolded some together or reordered them.

It doesn't force you, but by providing easy ways to push and pop patches it encourages it.

> And you can do the exact same thing with your git commits before pushing > them, last time i checked MQ had `qpush -a` and did not force you to run > your tests between two qpushs.

What's the git equivalent of `hg qrefresh`? What about when there are other commits on top of the current one?

> No you can't. Because if it's a changeset (rather than a patch in a series) > then you've already qfinished it and pushed it to a public repository, and > you're now rewriting public history.

In this case I meant that you don't qfinish the patches right away. You leave them as patches while you submit them to the mailing list.

You're talking about pushing to a public repository, which is different than patch bombing a mailing list. In that case the "MQ" way to do it is to push your _patch_ repo somewhere, and other people can grab your patches that way.

It's a bit more complicated, but it does have the nice effect of giving you a "history" of a series of changesets. I don't know how you'd do that with git.

> I don't like git for a number of reasons, but this is a terrible strawman: > git provides all the tools needed to ensure each and every commit is correct > (whereas bazaar, for instance, doesn't. Not without untold amounts of pain > anyway), and I've seen a number of blag posts and comments which recommended > exactly that approach: tinker on your local branch, rewrite to your heart's > content, and before you push anything to remote test each commit > individually. There is nothing which prevents you from doing that, just as > there is nothing that forces you to do that with mercurial.

I agree that you _can_ do those things in git -- I'm only say that it doesn't encourage it. The existence of the index actually encourages doing it the wrong way: checking in states of code you've never tested.

No, Mercurial doesn't _force_ you to do it right, but MQ and its qpush/qpop provide an easy way to do it the right way if you want to, and versioned patch queues makes it easy to track history of patches if you need that kind of power.

<comment><USER6> > What's the git equivalent of `hg qrefresh`? What about when there are other > commits on top of the current one?

There is no direct equivalent as far as I know (short of using one of the quilt-like tools built on top of git) apart from amend for topmost commits, but it's easy enough to do with rebase —interactive (or rewrite in mercurial).

> In this case I meant that you don't qfinish the patches right away

Then they're not changesets, they're patches.

> You leave them as patches while you submit them to the mailing list.

You can do that just as easily from a local branch.

> You're talking about pushing to a public repository, which is different than > patch bombing a mailing list.

I'm not talking about anything.

> It's a bit more complicated, but it does have the nice effect of giving you > a "history" of a series of changesets. I don't know how you'd do that with > git.

I don't either.

> I agree that you can do those things in git -- I'm only say that it doesn't > encourage it

And I disagree with your assertion that mercurial encourages it.

> The existence of the index actually encourages doing it the wrong way: > checking in states of code you've never tested.

Not any more than the ability to `qrefresh` only a subset of your working copy.

> No, Mercurial doesn't force you to do it right, but MQ and its qpush/qpop > provide an easy way to do it the right way if you want to

And it's almost as easy to do the same thing with git.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this depends a lot on your team, your practices, and the way you use source control. At the old job, source control (mostly SVN) was _essential_ for figuring out why a new change to the framework broke a customer-specific customization written six years ago by someone no longer with the company. The company culture was to keep commits and merges so clean they were almost releases in themselves. (It took me, ahem, quite some time to adapt to that style of working -- coming as I did from not using source control at all.)

If they had used git, they would _totally_ have approved use of rebase for optimizing readability/understandability of commits for the beleaguered maintenance engineer in 2016 trying to figure out what why what we did today (in 37 separate incremental commits) just interacted with new code and blew up $MAJOR_UNIVERSITY's payroll system.

I follow very, very different practices when developing by myself. I largely leave the history as it is, warts and all. If in the course of trying to fix a bug I make five exploratory commits and on the fifth one finally find the magic that works, then history just happens to include five increasingly frustrated commit notes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Core disconnect: what is source controls role: is it a journal of all history, or is it a tool to find code.

I fall on the tool side, which means I rebase & amend and keep history semantically organized, and such. All that makes it easy later to find exactly where I made XYZ change. BUT, I admit that it does ruin the journal aspect of every change. rebase -i does in fact change history, and can make things appear out of order.

I think it's ok, the author doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER9> Look, the world doesn't need to know it took me 13 attempts to get the patch right and passing all its tests. The world really doesn't need to see the childish mistake I made on attempt 5 or the cuss words I was using in the #define on attempt 8. Just take the sausage and skip the tour of the factory.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bah, that's bullshit. These are Git features and meant to be used, and these are part of the reason Git rocks so great.

It's not lying, it's cleaning up. History rewriting is assembling all the intermediate crap into a comprehensible patch that as an added bonus also comes with a hindsight, or keeping sense in maintaining your work-in-progress on top of some other branch by continuous rebasing.

It's not lying, it's making sense. It's the same thing _why you don't save your Emacs editing history to have someone else replay it_ to produce the source file. You just save the source file because you've spent time doing work to eventually produce something that makes sense. You don't want to bother other people with your errors. It's of no value to them.

However, the time you do _not_ want to do this with public commits. Anything that you have pushed or someone has pulled is public. Anything that flies out of your local nest shall become immutable.

</comment><comment><USER11> Grow up. It's source control, not marriage. Sometimes it makes sense to make bigger commits (there is lots of reasons to sometimes present the checkin in a manner other than 1000 little incremental fixes; its a naive techie who thinks otherwise) or fix those you have made. Get over it and relax; don't try to add morals to source control.

<comment><USER12> He is light-heartedly using 'morals' as a part of his schtick. No-one is expected to take it seriously.

Underneath the style there are some interesting points being made about how certain uses of certain features breaks other features. I'd be interested to hear your rebuttal.

<comment><USER11> This is supposed to be light hearted?

What am I supposed to rebut? He gives little reason why the features says get broken are more important than the other things. He just states it.

<comment><USER3> That's an interesting response given that I spent quite a few words talking about how great `git blame`, `git bisect`, `git rerere`, and `git branch --contains` are and why rewriting history breaks them. Was it tl;dr? Or did I not get my point across effectively?

<comment><USER13> You didn't explain why rewriting local, private history breaks any of those things unless you keep your local, private branches around indefinitely in un- rewritten form. If I rebase, it replaces my previous branch, not extends it. `git rebase` only breaks bisection if you are using it incorrectly (on public commits).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> However if you do compile and/or run the tests it makes a lot of sense to make logical commits instead of monolithic commits of changes that are not interdependent. And --amend ing a commit message to fix a typo before pushing it is completely harmless.

There's some valid bits in there but commandment-from-on-high writing style is pretty offputting.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fictions are useful. Source is meant to tell a story to the other developers, and only incidentally to control a computer. The history of development is just as much a part of this story. There is a balance between making it clear and making it reflect what happened in a way that's not misleading, but if each release in the new history is actually reasonably tested, I have no problem rewriting private history.

</comment><comment><USER16> If rewriting private history is a lie, is rewriting URLs also a lie? Should we all expose ugly /app.cgi?foo=bar?action=edit URLs because we shouldn't lie? Ss fiction a lie?

If all that is a "lie", I'll happily lie to outsiders to present them a nicer image, as long as no harm is done that way.

</comment><comment><USER17> Though Shalt Not Lie: a stupid article title, idiotic advice, and other lies</comment>


The bacteria in your gut may reveal your true age - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/bacteria-your-gut-may-reveal-your-true-age <comment><AUTHOR> I do not think much would happen - the bacteria change as you age for a reason, for example the cell profiles in your colon change and favor specific bacteria to live there, So even if you tried to change that then there would be colonization resistance and your gut would potentially revert back to its previous state over time.

</comment><comment><USER2> What would happen if you adjusted the quantities of microbes to levels consistent with someone younger?

Alternatively, what if an older person lived with a group of younger people? It has been observed that microbes related to obesity can 'jump' within members of a population.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do not think much would happen - the bacteria change as you age for a reason, for example the cell profiles in your colon change and favor specific bacteria to live there, So even if you tried to change that then there would be colonization resistance and your gut would potentially revert back to its previous state over time.</comment></comment>


Amish Community Not Anti-Technology, Just More Thoughful - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217287028/amish-community-not-anti-technology-just-more-thoughful

<comment><AUTHOR> I especially liked this phrase: "You shouldn't be the first in your neighborhood to adopt the new technology and neither should you be the last."

We have some Amish near where I live. Some drive the traditional horse and buggy. Some drive cars. They see the same doctors we do. They tend to keep to themselves except at farmers markets. Very knowledgeable about woodworking and animals.

I also liked the term: "Amish hacking".</comment>


Ask HN: How do sites like Buildzoom prevent client-seller private deals? - <AUTHOR> Site like Buildzoom charge fees based on closing projects. How do they prevent client and seller knowing each other and deciding to take the relationship out of the platform?<p>There are many other sites like that, but some in particular seem to have no system in place to avoid such behavior apart from "users good will". <comment><USER2> It's typically also in the contracts/ToS. Of course, detecting violations may be challenging.</comment>


Master spec-repo rate limiting post‑mortem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cocoapods.org/Master-Spec-Repo-Rate-Limiting-Post-Mortem/ <comment><USER2> The language in this post is very curious. It seems like they're going out of their way to avoid acknowledging that this was all their fault.

> _issues that our users had._

> _GitHub infrastructure team were quick to explain that this was because of > us hitting CPU rate limits on their end_

and finally at the end of the paragraph

> _which turned out to be caused, besides the high volume of clones, by the > default options we chose to clone this repo._

If it was me writing this, I'd apologise to Github for the (unintentional) bad design of CocoaPods, and the effect it had on their servers.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I first heard about this whole mess it seemed to me that the way they use GitHub was somewhat abusive. I'm glad to see they'll forgo shallow clones for full clones but I still find it weird (and abusive) that they use GitHub for this purpose at all. Shouldn't they self host for this kind of thing?

<comment><USER4> I also find this usage to probably be viewable as abuse, but clearly GitHub has chosen to continue allowing it, even as it has caused them issues like this. I think for them, it has provided some interesting insights about their infrastructure and areas they can optimize (not necessarily because they are lacking). Besides the work they put into this, I can think of at least one other noticeable change they made, which was how the repo pages displayed _huge_ file lists (CocoaPods used to have a _massive_ list of files at the root).

So yes, it's probably not great, but it has given GitHub some fun inf. challenges to build to. If it was something they felt like they couldn't handle, I'm sure they'd politely ask them to hop off their platform ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this sounds familiar, it was the subject of a popular HN post from 2 months ago: "CocoaPods downloads max out five GitHub server CPUs (github.com)" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11245652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11245652)</comment>


Decrypting the Aphex Twin Soundcloud - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cuepoint/making-some-sense-of-the-aphex-twin-soundcloud-f551b6f81344?source=latest

<comment><USER2> If you're an Aphex Twin fan, this, along with his new album, has been a goldmine of great music. Really like this track: [https://soundcloud.com/user48736353001/35-japan-1](https://soundcloud.com/user48736353001/35-japan-1)

Very clearly from when he was working with Trent Reznor on NIN's Further Down the Spiral and made the track "At the Heart of it All" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MdcVdL2kIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MdcVdL2kIY)</comment>


Venmo can access bank balance and transactions if you connect your bank account - <AUTHOR> "If you connect your Venmo account to other financial accounts, ... , we may have access to your account balance and account and transactional information, such as purchases and funds transfers."<p>src: https://venmo.com/legal/us-privacy-policy <comment><USER2> [https://help.venmo.com/hc/en- us/articles/221073067-Verifying...](https://help.venmo.com/hc/en- us/articles/221073067-Verifying-Your-Bank-Account)

I mean it makes perfect sense, they want to know you have enough money to start transfers.

And the ability to do X doesn't mean they're doing X, It sounds like they might be tracking transfers related to Venmo, but their being honest and admitting that same power allows them much more access.

AFAIK they're using Plaid, and nothing here is an unusual application of Plaid

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa! I didn't know they used Plaid. Plaid's terms are even more alarming. Why does Plaid need all this information?

"The types of information we collect from your financial institutions may include, but are not limited to:

Account information, including financial institution name, account name, account type, and account and routing number;

Information about an account balance, including current and available balance;

Information about credit accounts, including statement due dates and balances owed, payment amounts and dates, transaction history, and interest;

Information about loan accounts, including due dates, balances, payment amounts and dates, interest, loan type, payment plan, and term;

Information about the account owner(s), including name, email address, phone number, and address information.

Information about account transactions, including amount, date, type, and a description of the transaction."

src: [https://plaid.com/legal/](https://plaid.com/legal/)

<comment><USER2> A large part is because that's how your bank exposes it. There's not that much granularity in bank account access.

Another part is they're not going to tailor the terms of service per usecase, they'll list everything they _can_ do, then narrow it down per application

<comment><AUTHOR> What?!

They don't have to _collect_ it. They can say that we have access to it but will only collect it when you use a related product.

<comment><USER2> Did you read your own comment or are you too busy trying to force outrage...

The types of information we collect from your financial institutions _may include_, but are not limited to

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can someone confirm if I understand this correctly?

Venmo is what Americans use for small transfers because the US banking system is ridiculously antiquated and still revolves around paper cheque's if you want to make a transfer from one bank to another?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it's one of the easiest ways to send money back and forth between people.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if US banks will ever catch up to the rest of the world in this regard.

<comment><USER5> They have. Look at zelle. I think it's better than venmo because it is a part of the banks Mobile app and instantaneous transfer is the default, while venmo charges for it

<comment><USER3> > Look at zelle.

That phrase doesn't mean much to someone outside the US. I looked it up, it's a thing owned by some US banks (and thus only available to those banks customers? That part isn't clear).

Being better than venmo doesn't mean much either - in other countries interbank transfers are just something you do via your bank - no third party involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Never use Plaid. I'm guessing the apps that would apply to most on here are Venmo and Robinhood. Square Cash probably use them too.

<comment><USER7> You Need a Budget also uses Plaid.</comment></comment>


Operator Overloading in JavaScript (Proposal) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/littledan/proposal-operator-overloading/blob/master/README.md#operator-overloading-in-javascript <comment><USER2> I had a different idea, called UserPrimitive, which allows operator overloading (with some restrictions) on user primitives, but not on objects. The UserPrimitive function takes an object listing the implementation and then returns another function, whose name is a fresh symbol (returned if typeof is used); you can then make your own function to call that returned function to create a user primitive value.</comment>


Researchers replicate just 13 of 21 social science experiments in top journals - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/08/27/researchers-replicate-just-13-of-21-social-science-experiments-published-in-top-journals/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.946735cfe68d <comment><USER2> Mirror: [http://www.sdailynews.com/2018/08/27/researchers- replicate-j...](http://www.sdailynews.com/2018/08/27/researchers-replicate- just-13-of-21-social-science-experiments-from-top-journals/)

For those who can't climb the paywall.</comment>


$20K housing for Serenbe's artistic residency program - <AUTHOR> http://www.artsatl.com/2016/01/serenbe-rural-studio-artist-residence/ <comment><USER2> No matter how it's rationalized this is a long way from Mockbee's idea of the citizen architect that the Rural Studio was meant to foster. Then again Dewey's idea that the product of education is citizens rather than entrepreneurs and workers has been dying everywhere over the last thirty years since Gecko declared that greed is good. Ends justifying the means as academic policy has run along side.</comment>


A VC: This Time will be Different - <AUTHOR> http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/01/this-time-will.html

<comment><USER2> "None of us can predict the markets or future valuations, we all, however, can understand fundamentals. Businesses that solve real pain points with disruptive technology, a huge value/price advantage, and a scalable business model will work ".

Since when has this not been true. The only people who benefit from little gadgets that get widely used for fun are the people that get bought out early on. The only time people (as in customers) will really pay you (monthly, yearly, and so on) is when you are making them money. How do you make the customer money? Increasing the customers ability to sell or by radically streamlining there business processes.

Salesforce is a good example of this, myself I can't reach Salesforce type heights but am working on targeting a few very specific verticals with officezilla.com in a similar way to salesforce but at a much lower price point.

<comment><USER3> From the article: _If there's a lesson to be learned from the $55mm round in Slide at $500mm pre, it's that money right now wants to be with the winners._

So "right now" judging solely by users, Slide seems to be a "winner" but time will tell if it remains one.

Very few companies can easily abandon the data they put into Salesforce, but I can easily imagine Slide's users taking down their party pictures once they start worrying about their more permanent online persona.

<comment><USER2> > Slide raising $55m

Popularity and number of users are great certainly money can be made from ads.

Not sure if they can make $55 million worth of dollars from ads, probably not though. Those investors will be looking for there money (x10) and when they don't get it will force the company to close.

<comment><USER3> _when they don't get it will force the company to close_

That's one theory for what happened to FilmLoop (one of Slide's early competitors).

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/12/filmloop-betrayed-by- in...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/02/12/filmloop-betrayed-by-investors)

Actually it looks like FilmLoop is still around here: <http://filmloop.myfabrik.com>

<comment><USER2> The whole reason I started my own "startup" because I was just incredulous at the companies that would fail when they really could have ran forver with a nice server setup and 2 or 3 people.

Going to the twiistup event not too long ago, I realized that there is some benefit to having a lot of "hands" in a company in that the more people who have a stake in it, the more they want it to survive. Which is probably how Slide even raised 55 million. There has to be a way to do that without taking so much money that it just hangs you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building Stuff To Help You Sell The Stuff You Build - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/patio11/microconf-presentation-2013?utm_source=slideshow&utm_medium=ssemail&utm_campaign=upload_digest

<comment><USER2> Personally I'd suggest you guys wait until they post the video and I transcriptify it, since the talk is better than the slide deck, but if you absolutely HAVE to read something this morning then skip to the section marked "Quick Wins for SaaS businesses" and look for the five bits of advice with big ugly yellow stars next to them.

If you have questions, I'd be happy to... board a 12 hour flight back to Japan in approximately 5 minutes. Feel free to ask me over email some other day.

<comment><USER3> Have a good flight back home, Patrick. It has been a pleasure to meet you in real life. Thanks for all the information you shared and for entertaining us at the buffet. Those stories were gold :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OT: Attended patio11 and Colins email bootcamp, was excellent. Had to share this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Last year's complete transcript and video: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people- who...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2013/04/24/marketing-for-people-who-would- rather-be-building-stuff/)

<comment><USER6> Your link is from his Microconf 2012 talk, where the OP's link on Slideshare is from the talk he did this year, a few days ago.

Complete notes from all Microconf 2013 talks (including Patrick's, Jason Cohen's, mine) are here: <http://www.it-engelhardt.de/microconf-2013-hub- page/>

Videos should be available in a few months.

<comment><USER2> Jason Cohen, Erica, and Rob Walling all delivered probably in the top 5 of talks I've ever seen for SaaS founders. The notes can't do them justice but they ROFLstomp the utility of anything you'll read on the Internet this week. (Obviously, mad props to the attendee who took it upon himself to take notes for you all.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here are some great quotes from the same event:

[http://www.it-engelhardt.de/memorable-quotes-from- microconf-...](http://www.it-engelhardt.de/memorable-quotes-from- microconf-2013/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there / will there be a recording available online?

<comment><USER9> Yes, LessFilms recorded all the talks. No idea what the turnaround time will be. IIRC, last year it took 6+ months to get online.

MicroConf was AMAZING. If you haven't seen Patrick speak, you really need to. And you still have a chance to this month in Philadelphia: <http://baconbiz.com>

<comment><USER3> I think, that it is a marketing thing as well. You just don't want to put out the videos shortly after the conference, because of all the people who paid $700+ to attend. They might feel betrayed and appreciate having a bit of a head start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Agreed - I am actually building my own CMS which I really really need to use to launch my blog Real Soon Now.

So its OSS, which may or may not be a good idea, but this does beg the question - how much of my needs are likely to replicate into the communities needs or is it just worthwhile for everyone sticking with their own me-ware for now?

<comment><USER10> Let me rephrase that to see why the downvotes

I like patio11's approach and agree we should write our own business systems to meet our particular need - I am finishing off a CMS that I have also opensourced (it's text and templates and cookies for tracking, about 100 lines)

Now I am not promoting that codebase, only releasing it cos I don't want to waste a GitHub private repo. But I do wonder if we should all write our own CMS / mailchimp / an tester or if we should community build them or just roll up packages

Partly I am asking what are the common functions we should all have a custom builds and partly where do we draw the line on build vs "buy"

<comment><USER11> What I need and what is almost impossible to find is a good Autoresponder email system with a template editor, a few stats and basic list management/segmentation.

The catch: I must be allowed to self-host. This is almost impossible to find since everybody seems to rely on 3rd party email services.

<comment><USER6> Oy. Do NOT self-host an email autoresponder. I wrote a great comment about this a few years ago on Brian Armstrong's blog--and he's now doing Coinbase after deciding the email stuff wasn't worth it.

Look in my profile to see who I am and why I'd say this, but as a quick summary, I have years of experience and have also helped companies set up autoresponders that do over 1M emails a day, and that's exactly why I say this. It is a clusterf*ck and a rabbit hole a mile deep and a mile wide. Pay the money (or in Mailchimp's case, don't pay any money until you get bigger.) It is worth EVERY penny.

By the way, any good autoresponder (I use Mailchimp and Aweber and like them both for different purposes) will let you easily export/back up contacts, and none of the big companies are going anywhere.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, I'll check it out. Do you happen to know the blog post title? Since comments are loaded via Disqus, I can't search for them with Google :(

<comment><USER6> Ah, finally found it! <http://brianarmstrong.org/blog/my-next-project/> Ctrl-F 'Erica' and read the whole thread of him/me! :) (He did launch the biz, but shut it down not long after that. Coinbase is doing much better! ;)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for taking the time to find the blog post. I definitely need to reconsider whether or not self-hosting is such a good idea or not.

<comment><USER12> Do you want to become an expert in email deliverability, DNS, bounces, white listing, DKIM, SPF?

Or do you want to sell your product?

It boils down to that. Spend your time doing what you are GREAT at and what you WANT to do. Are you great at email deliverability? Do you want to spend your time becoming an expert on that? Probably not.

I know how to change the oil in my car. I know how to mow my lawn. I know how to clean toilets. I don't do any of those things because they are a huge waste of my time that is better spent elsewhere. Same thing goes here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


17yo guy built 14.7" f/2.89 Newtonian reflector telescope - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/frdd1d/im_17_years_old_and_just_finished_building_this/ <comment><USER2> I think the most interesting part of homemade telescope making is that you can check the curve of your homemade mirror to an accuracy of a fraction of a wavelength of light with a handful of common household items. You can do this using the Foucault knife-edge test [1] [2].

> It measures mirror surface dimensions by reflecting light into a knife edge > at or near the mirror's centre of curvature. In doing so, it only needs a > tester which in its most basic 19th century form consists of a light bulb, a > piece of tinfoil with a pinhole in it, and a razor blade to create the knife > edge.

Of course you don't need a light bulb. A candle will do. This means that once you have a level of technology that can make glass discs, candles, something opaque with a way to make a pinhole in it, something opaque with a thin straight edge, abrasive grit in a range of sizes, and some way to coat a glass surface with a thin layer of metal, you can make telescope mirrors.

Much of that could be done in ancient times. The only things on that list I'm not sure about are abrasive grit and coating the mirror.

You want a series of grits from coarse to very fine, and I have no idea when grit making became refined enough to have such a range of sizes.

Coating a mirror can be done with silver. Here are some instructions for doing it at home [3]. You need silver nitrate, ammonium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, detergent, acetone, and nitric acid if you follow this instructions, plus assorted hardware like stirring rods, absorbent cotton, beakers and bottles, and that kind of thing. I think all of that goes back at least a few hundred years.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_knife- edge_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_knife-edge_test)

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

[3] [http://www.webstertelescopes.com/silvering.htm](http://www.webstertelescopes.com/silvering.htm)

<comment><USER3> it is bootstrapping! you use the mirror you are creating to magnify its own errors tens of thousands of times.

Grit sizes are can be sorted by the time it takes them to settle out of a column of water. For a given material, finest take the longest (Elutriative Time).[0]

un-affiliated: commercial source for the parents third link [1]

I will add that building better telescope mounts for pre-existing mirrors can be very rewarding in itself. and can be an easier way to get into the hobby than mirror making, especially without access to other experienced mirror makers.

0 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elutriation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elutriation) 1 [https://angelgilding.com/](https://angelgilding.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I was a kid, I borrowed Jean Texreau's How to Make a Telescope from the library and read it from cover-to-cover many times.[1] I never did have the resources as a child to go ahead and actually build a telescope, but by reading the instructions I had the opportunity to live out the experience in my imagination.

This might make for an interesting quarantine project today ...

[1] [https://www.willbell.com/tm/tm3.htm](https://www.willbell.com/tm/tm3.htm)

<comment><USER5> I picked that book up at a second-hand bookshop many years ago on a whim, not having much interest in telescopes. I was completely hooked! I even started (but never completed) making the mirror grinder.

I still have wistful thoughts of making my own telescope one day when I have more time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian_telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobsonian_telescope)

I once worked with a woman who learned from John Dobson about lens grinding and telescope construction. Watched a Youtube video of John recently. This is too labor intensive for me, but happy others enjoy it.

<comment><USER7> This 90min video by the Dobson himself is a great explanation of how to build one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snz7JJlSZvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snz7JJlSZvw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another amateur (these days professional) telescope maker who started in his teens and has written in length and detail about his projects, Allar Saviauk: [http://www.allarscopes.com/telescopes/index_eng.htm](http://www.allarscopes.com/telescopes/index_eng.htm)

</comment><comment><USER9> When I was in high school I spent an entire summer grinding my own mirror out in the barn for a 6" Newtonian telescope. It was the most fun and satisfying project a kid can do. I bought the mirror blanks and basic parts from a mail order company (it was 1972) called Edmunds Scientific. They are still in business but they sell toys now, they have a serious branch [https://www.edmundoptics.com/](https://www.edmundoptics.com/) but I don't think very many people grind their own mirrors any more.

<comment><USER10> The Edmunds Scientific and Barnes & Noble catalogs were two of the highlights of my youth. I never ordered anything from them, don't know if my parents ever did, but it was such a pleasure to peruse them.

<comment><USER4> A slightly more pedestrian catalog was Radio Shack. And while researching this answer, I just discovered that the Internet has archived all the Radio Shack catalogs. Here's one page listing capacitors from 1979.[1]

The great folks at archive.org have archived a ridiculous number of these catalogs (and even books like Lance Leventhal's classic Z80 Assembly Language Programming! [2])

[1] [http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1979/hr098.html](http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1979/hr098.html) [2] [https://archive.org/details/Z-80_Assembly_Language_Programmi...](https://archive.org/details/Z-80_Assembly_Language_Programming_1979_Leventhal)

<comment><USER11> Those were much more than just catalogs, they were sources for ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I tried to do this as a kid, I was stymied by the impressive costs of the kit involved. Has it become cheaper, or does this kid have enabling parents?

<comment><USER13> He said in the thread that it costed him $4000, that he earned by himself, by working (his parents didn't give him money for this).

<comment><USER14> That's one thing I was definitely envious of American teens of, as a French teenager. I did odd jobs for family friends etc., but that was a few hundred euros every few months at most; I was jealous of my internet friends in the US who were making the same in a week or so by working at the local coffee shop/tee shirt store.

They could drive too, which I cared less about because buses/subways/trains seemed much less of a hassle and much safer.

<comment><USER15> At 17 you couldn't work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Dobsonians scale well; here [1] is Dr. Hänssgen's 42" telescope, which can be de/assembled and un/loaded for transport by one person.

[1] [http://www.cruxis.com/scope/scope1070.htm](http://www.cruxis.com/scope/scope1070.htm)

<comment><USER11> That's some mad building skills. Very impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to do something like this with my kid when they get a little older, but am always hesitant on the health risks on grinding the mirror. Can anyone shed light on the health risks if any?

<comment><USER2> You grind a mirror by hand by taking two glass discs, and rubbing one against the other with a slurry made of abrasive grit and water between them, with the length and direction of your strokes determining which disc becomes your concave mirror.

You start with large grit and work down to smaller grits as you get closer and closer to the desired final mirror curve. The large grits seem unlikely to become aerosolized during this. The finer grits are pretty small (a few microns) so probably could become suspended in air but because you grind wet, not dry, this probably isn't likely. Just work in a place with good air circulation and it should be OK.

There's also the glass particles that get removed to consider. I'd expect that they just end up in the abrasive slurry.

This all assumes you are hand grinding. If you use some kind of power tool that goes a lot faster than the sedate processes that is hand grinding, all bets are off.

There might be other ways things could get in the air. You can deal with all of that by wearing a respirator like you would for painting or sanding (once they become available again...).

<comment><USER18> If I were giving this to my child to do, I would give the child gloves, instruct them not to eat the slurry, and make sure they wash everything each day.

If they break any of the rules, the health risks are minor.

<comment><USER19> Well, to remove the final risk you can wear glasses and a dust mask.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oh brings me back memories :) I did that at his age too. Dobsons are awesome, would dev a tracking system if I were 17 now (with a raspberry pie) keep on the good work!

</comment><comment><USER21> He didn't grind his own mirror, though. If you want to be a real ATM, you gotta make the mirror.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why must we have 'smart quotes'? And if we must, if only they would be the right way around.

</comment><comment><USER23> He did not make the mirror, this is one weekend in workshop.

<comment><USER24> People rarely make telescope mirrors of this size at home, it just takes way, way too long. As mirror radius increases the amount of material you have to (very slowly) grows in a cubic fashion, so a 14.7" mirror requires removing over 8 times as much as a 7" mirror. It takes too long to do this by hand to be reasonable for most people.

<comment><USER25> Given that all commercial mirrors are made by machines and computers, why not the same at home?

<comment><USER19> The jig to do it is somewhat expensive it and hard to put together. The especially hard part is getting the lens to not vibrate at higher speeds, which is probably done by using pneumatic or hydraulic drive or very strong magnetic drive.

And if the thing goes off, you could have tens of kilos of broken glass flying in all directions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> f/2.89 is a very fast scope. The sagitta or "depth of the parabola" of his mirror is almost 1cm.

<comment><USER25> Seems like it would take a long time to grind. I can imagine targeting something shallower but not getting it right and keep fixing it and end up with a deeper lens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's great! Certainly better than huffing glue or supporting communism or whatever most kids are up to these days.

But it would be more correct to say he assembled his own telescope, since it seems like he purchased all the important components, including the mirror.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wow, a 17 year old did something... Why do people point out age, like we are supposed to be impressed. If it was a 2 year old that did this, I would be impressed.

While the act of what this person did is neat, but pointing out the age seems like useless info for a title.

<comment> m-p-3 It's still relevant, a 17 years old teenager doesn't have the same resources and experience than someone in his 40s.

<comment><USER28> Actually doesn't make sense. I know a lot of 40 year old unskilled (in this type of activity) people that don't have a lot of resources available to them. If they did it, it would still be impressive, no matter what age they are.

Teenagers have advantages over 40 year olds, the major ones are free time and energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No one will share how actually it's done?

Reddit comment ranking algorithm didn't let me see OPs comment.

<comment><USER30> You mean other than the detailed comment the reddit OP made with links to all sorts of resources?

<comment><USER31> Which in turn links to a topic on Cloudy Nights that is his build log!</comment></comment></comment>


Serverboards 17.04 Released - <AUTHOR> https://serverboards.io/blog/2017/04/24/serverboards_17.04.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm David Moreno, main developer of Serverboards. Ask me anything.

Serverboards is a control panel to monitorize, manage and automate cloud services. It's very easy to develop new plugins and give access to external services. We have support for Google Analytics, Drive, Facebook Ads, web site, SSH server.. and more[1].

Technically it is developed using Elixir for the backend and React.js for the frontend. It uses JSON-RPC to communicate with each of the plugin helpers, developed in any programming language (even bash), and uses a CQRS architecture.

Currently we are oriented to IT management (SPICE, SSH, Prometheus monitoring…) but I think this idea can be used on many other niches.

[1] [https://www.serverboards.io/downloads/plugins](https://www.serverboards.io/downloads/plugins)

</comment><comment><USER2> Are there plans for a SaaS version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just now we want to focus on gather information on how people use it, if we are developing the proper integrations and so on.

Once we have enough integrations developed, we will definitely do a SaaS offering.

Our idea is to simplify service management (and monitoring and automation), and the first line of simplification is simplify installation by not needing to install at all.

Anyway it is Open Source with an Apache2 license, so it's quite easy to try, if you don't care about the installation itself.</comment></comment>