Ask HN: What will be the future for email? - <AUTHOR> Email is probably one of the the oldest (and most used) services of all time. Email killed the Fax and Letter Writing in general. Today, it is the de facto communication tool for businesses.
In recent years were born hundreds of services that have tried to make email less painful.
In your opinion what will be the future for email? <comment><USER2> > In recent years were born hundreds of services that have tried to make email > less painful.

Most if not all of those services were proprietary and tied to the success of one company. Only the Darkmail alliance to the best of my knowledge is actually putting out a new open protocol not tied to their bottom line. Not sure if they have actually put out an RFC yet.

It's like people saying Slack will one day will replace IRC or XMPP. It will never happen. It may if slack started as it's own protocol with a simple RFC and the company was an implementation of said open protocol. Offering a paid option with the option to also do it by yourself for free.

The future of email will start with a new open standard and RFC everybody has access to. It will offer benefits not facilitated by current technologies and will be easily adopted when such happens. Until this happens though there is no reason to replace email. Companies are not going dive into one company and create some massive monopoly who will then hold them hostage.

<comment><USER3> > It's like people saying Slack will one day will replace IRC or XMPP. It will > never happen.

XMPP has already been "replaced" by Google Hangouts, Facebook Chat, and WhatsApp, which are all proprietary extensions of XMPP. Very few of my friends use a chat service which allows XMPP federation. Facebook chat doesn't even allow you to use a third-party XMPP client anymore.

"Embrace, extend, extinguish" is still very much alive.

<comment><USER4> I use fb chat with chat secure on android. Xmpp seems to work fine?

<comment><USER5> How? According to [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/chat](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/chat) XMPP access was disabled at the end of April.

<comment><USER4> Oh. Well, then I _used_ to use XMPP with fb chat :-/

(I'm not sure when they killed it - chat secure doesn't appear to log in now, and the last message I received via fb was apparently on May 4th).

<comment><USER4> Hm. It's back - Just got a fb message via xmpp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > In recent years were born hundreds of services that have tried to make email > less painful.

I actually haven't seen many services that try to make email less painful. Most services I've seen have tried to _kill_ email, and almost always by replacing it with a walled-garden, closed protocol.

So far, email has resisted this, and I really hope it survives. Email is a truly federated, truly open protocol, and distributed open protocols are by far the best way to encourage an open exchange of ideas.

<comment><USER6> There have been a fair number of attempts to kill email, but I'd say there have been many more products aimed at _enhancing_ it. Popular examples are gmail and spam filters. Neither of them are native "email" concepts and did not exist until email became tremendously popular, and both made e-mail considerably less paintful when they were introduced.

For many more products that enhance email (and a few that try to kill it), check out this list:

Email Apps - Things that make email less paintful": [http://www.producthunt.com/e/email-apps](http://www.producthunt.com/e/email- apps)

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how gmail makes email "less painful"? I'm not even sure it makes _webmail_ less painful.

<comment><USER7> Really?

With Gmail, you set up an account, then you start sending email. It doesn't get easier than that.

It's easy to take for granted the sheer number of things Gmail and similar services take care for you. I've recently set up my own email server for fun. Now _that_ was painful. The number of settings I had to twiddle with is definitely way too much for the average user.

<comment><USER4> How is that any different from Hotmail or Yahoo? (Web)mail as a service is about as old as http, smtp and imap. Hotmail even was a cool startup runnning on all FreeBSD before MS bought them up...

I don't think it makes sense to compare X as a service, to implementing X as a service. Of course it is a bit of a hassle to set up email. But it's not _really_ that hard: the hardest part is probably setting up SSL certs. Now, if you want to complicate things with spf/dkim, anti-virus and greylisting -- things do get a little complicated.

Personally I think spf is strange band-aid, and luckily I get bye quite well with just greylisting against spam (most spam I get is actually to a throw- away address that got leaked in the Adobe/Macromedia hack: yay site-specific email address!).

This here, is an example of what I mean:

[https://scaron.info/technology/debian-mail-postfix- dovecot.h...](https://scaron.info/technology/debian-mail-postfix-dovecot.html)

It's not exactly rocket science[1] for someone that is able to set up a secure server with password login disabled and only regular-user login via ssh keys -- which I consider the minimum for any internet-facing system unless you have a very special use-case, and a really good plan.

Now, if you can't set up a server -- you can't set up a server. I'm not saying we shouldn't make it easer -- eg:

[https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-07-mailpile.html](https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-07-07-mailpile.html)

or:

[https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-08-11-roundcube.html](https://blog.sandstorm.io/news/2014-08-11-roundcube.html)

(Note, these both rely on sandstorm.io handling incomming smtp, as far as I can tell. At least for now. Not sure if allowing stmp/imap in/out of a sandstorm.io-container is likely to be implemented -- but then again setting up a sandstorm cluster/cloud isn't likely to be as easy as _using_ sandstorm to run apps... such is the nature of things).

[1] [https://scaron.info/technology/debian-mail-postfix- dovecot.h...](https://scaron.info/technology/debian-mail-postfix-dovecot.html)

[ed: re: email and sandstorm.io -- I was both right and wrong it seems. When running sandstorm.io it is possible to set it up to send mail (requires a working smtp-server), and receive mail (requires some twiddling and ability to set up a (sub)domain with proper MX records, or a traditional smtp server set up to forward email into sandstorm.io. For more info see: [https://github.com/sandstorm- io/sandstorm/wiki/Configuring-y...](https://github.com/sandstorm- io/sandstorm/wiki/Configuring-your-server-for-email) ]

<comment><USER6> To some Gmail may not been very different from Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, and email predates those products as well. All three were invented with hopes of attracting users by brining a better experience to email. That was precisely the point of my comment—that there have been a large number of products that have been introduced to enhance email.

A few of these products have been very widely adopted. Some others have been adopted but to a lesser degrees. Some (e.g. spam filtering, which used to be completely independent of mail clients/services) have become so universal that they are now shipped as features of the clients themselves.

Sometimes products are so successful that it's hard to remember what it was like before they came out. While every person has preferences for this or that service, there is a reason why so many people now use gmail instead of what they used previously, which was often their ISP provided address and a desktop client. _Good_ clients are just one such example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've thought about this on and off for a few years and have one thought: e-mail will find a way out of the inbox. It is now an almost ubiquitous way to deliver something to a contact, especially on mobile.

I know this is fuzzy, but I imagine Facebook notifications being sent via e-mail and if Facebook is "installed" either on the device or via opening the browser, opening the e-mail would deliver you to Facebook, or just display as a regular e-mail otherwise. Taking this one step further: if I deliver you a to-do list item, it would open in my default to-do list app making e-mail more of a platform or launcher than anything else.

If you ever figure out how that would work, let me know. I've tried and haven't been able to connect all of the dots connecting those sending the e-mail and those receiving the e-mail as a platform, how it interoperates and where to start. I'd use the hell out of this though.

<comment><USER9> >> I know this is fuzzy, but I imagine Facebook notifications being sent via e-mail

A while back I envisioned an open-source Facebook app. Updates would be sent through email. The email client would recognize such a message and forward it to the app. Decentralized Facebook with direct communication would be great for users. I envisioned much more than just that, but you get the idea. By using email, things can be non-realtime, distributed, and private. There are already protocols for encrypting email, so not even your ISP could monitor your stuff.

<comment><USER10> Wow, I had the very same idea. But everyone I told the idea basically said: "email is a horrible protocol stack, you don't want to build anything on top of it" or just something like "email is dead". I still think it is good idea.

<comment><USER9> Like many things, it's a fantastic idea for people and a poor idea for business. The main advantage is that it keeps business out exactly opposite of how facebook invites it in and ruins everything.

email is a fan-fucking-tastic protocol stack BTW. It's detractors all want to do something the user doesn't want or need.

<comment><USER11> "fan-fucking-tastic protocol". I agree completely. it's time for our systems to centralize email as a first-class citizen and treat it as among the main ways to interact with the system.

Ping me at email@example.com if you agree. I'm organizing something and I want to have people who think email is still underused onboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would likely have the following traits:

1\. Decentralization 2\. Realtime 3\. Spam protection 4\. Contextual

1\. Decentralization typically generates wide adoption, once it's able to overcome the barrier of entry to wide adoption. An excellent example of this would be JavaScript. It thrives largely because nobody owns it, and contributing to its success it's often used as a means to stave off the advantages of competing platforms.

2\. Realtime meaning push, just because it's a modern technological expectation. Email frequently is realtime, except IMAP/POP.

3\. GMail et.al have gotten pretty good here. Future solutions would need to be as good, ideally with some built-in mechanism for unsubscribe as well.

4\. Contextual messaging would be the defining feature. It's a broad term that simply means some manner of object graph between messages that would natively support arbitrary organization of messages (flat, nesting, topic stream, overlapping (for edits), etc...).

<comment><USER13> 5\. Encryption as part of the core protocol, always on.

<comment><USER14> Is it possible (in principle) to have an email-like-service with end-to-end encryption so that no one other than the sender and receiver can decipher messages?

<comment><USER15> Yes. Why not? You just have to encrypt the message before sending it and decrypt it after you received it.

[https://github.com/google/end-to-end](https://github.com/google/end-to-end)

I think the actual challenge is to do it with senders/receivers you do not know. I do not have enough secuirty experience to be able to answer how you can encrypt something on one end but decrypt it on the other hand without knowing the key? I guess something like HTTPS would work.

<comment><USER16> > I do not have enough secuirty experience to be able to answer how you can > encrypt something on one end but decrypt it on the other hand without > knowing the key?

You distribute public keys. That's what people do for PGP nowadays, and you have repositories of public keys you can access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the problem is not so much email, but teaching people how to use email correctly. My company recently sent the entire office on a full day Outlook course. Going in everyone was thinking how this was such a waste of a day. Going out everyone was so greatful.

I personally though I was fairly proficient, what is this course going to teach me. I was placed in the more advanced group and really learnt a bunch. Techniques to optimise workload and reduce the impact of high email counts. I learn a bunch about the tasks feature, something I'd never given time to and now couldn't live without. And really liked the effect around the office to reduce the email spammers and get them using more effective lines of communication, or just shut up.

Given how used email is, I'm amazed more companies don't train people on this and general communication process. It's well worth the investment.

<comment><USER18> My problem with outlook is that many of the advanced features are only on their windows client. The OS X client is missing so many nice bits, it can almost be better to use the web client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As long as these "hundred of services" are incompatible with each others, emails will still be useful. Can I call a skype contact from what's app or viber or app X W or Z ? no ? so don't expect me to install app X W or Z or even skype, i'll stick with emails. Sure there jabber and Co, but all these hip apps seem to reject any form of open protocols. The web is successful, emails are successful because both are based on open standards.

<comment><USER20> E-mail is also decentralized! This means anyone can join the network without a sign-up process or approval from an authority. But I see e-mail heading in a troublesome direction regarding this.

Maybe for a new messaging protocol, there need to be a computational cost, or blockchain for sending messages, to prevent fraud and spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What a strange question. Email is decentralized, has opt-in encryption, and is usable by anyone with access to the Internet. It might be frustrating to receive a lot of it, but I don't know what 90% of the people who use email would want to "improve". It seems to be a fairly solved problem as a protocol - the improvements are probably just to whatever client you use to access it.

<comment><USER22> I suspect that email is fine, but at present is fallong victim to an "engagement bubble." As newsletters proliferate, they will become less effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> E-mail predates the Internet. It's been around for decades and will be around for many decades more.

</comment><comment><USER24> Only thing annoying about emails is the long address. Other than that, how much simpler can it get? I don't see email addresses getting any shorter than they already are. They are somewhat easy to remember (a lot more so than a phone number) and they are somewhat descriptive. I don't see the form of email getting replaced by any other form. I do think there could be some underlying technical changes though.

<comment><USER25> Well, the address length depends on your domain.

I have an email address with 8 symbols.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am not sure it will come to pass, but I would like to see the following features:

1\. Email user and domain certification. For example, when I receive an email from firstname.lastname@example.com, there would be Email Certificate Authorities that would ensure the email was from John Doe and he works for Acme Inc. Or that email@example.com is again John Doe and that jdoe.org is his personal domain.

2\. Email archival services. These services would collect, store, and index email including all attachments. Would like legislation that would require all commercial Email providers to submit all of an individual's email to the archival service of the individual's choice.

3\. Ability for email recipients to charge email senders an optional delivery fee. This will allow individuals to profit from being the target of spam email.

<comment><USER27> #1 already exists in the form of S/MIME, which uses the same kind of certificates as SSL and TLS do. Problem is, the certificates cost money (with the exception of StartSSL's) and basically all webmail clients don't support them.

(Aside: It does make sense why webmail clients don't support _sending_ S/MIME email, but I'll never understand why they refuse to do something useful when they receive a S/MIME signed email. If they did, that could pave the way for something akin to what EV does for the Web, so that I could look for a green bar that says "this email is signed eBay International AG" and know I'm not being phished, for instance.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _In your opinion what will be the future for email?_

I don't think email is going away. In fact, I expect quite the opposite: Email will expand as a platform for other not-exactly-realtime messaging.

For many years now we have had things like meeting invitations, electronic airline boarding passes, and concert tickets sent via email; I think we will see more things like this, and with a greater degree of integration so that for people with suitably "intelligent" user-agents, these messages will be automatically filtered out of the incoming email and processed separately -- much like we used to do with procmail, of course.

<comment><USER29> I agree with you. Just because it is decades old technology doesn't necessarily mean it has to be replaced with something. I have observed that the familiarity and usage of email among teens is alarmingly low. Then again, I don't see any better alternative to non-realtime, guaranteed delivery, suitable for both formal and informal communication and can-handle-all communication protocol like email. Perhaps todays teens will lead the way for building the alternative to email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> At Sonar (sendsonar.com), we're seeing SMS take e-mail's place for conversations. Of course, e-mail is great for longer-form information sharing. But for conversations, SMS is often the right channel.

<comment><USER16> > we're seeing SMS take e-mail's place for conversations.

Even with the 140 characters limits?

<comment><USER30> Even with the limits. The back-and-forth is fairly quick, and longer messages are just broken up into multiple messages. Like regular conversations though, people tend to keep it short and sweet.

<comment><USER16> But SMS is not free, right ? How do you deal with the ongoing operator costs?

<comment><USER30> Not free, but fairly inexpensive. Most US mobile plans provide unlimited SMS messaging to their customers, and many foreign ones provide free incoming messages.

For business, the value of reliable delivery, timely and increased customer engagement tends to far outweigh the costs.

<comment><USER16> > For business, the value of reliable delivery, timely and increased customer > engagement tends to far outweigh the costs.

Aren't there cases when phone networks get massively congested and SMS are not delivered until hours later? Such as New Year, Natural Catastrophes, etc... in that sense Email delivery is superior because it's fully decentralized.

<comment><USER30> We did receive inquiries from companies about being able to deliver SMS messages during recent natural disasters.

Turns out that people need to communicate during calamities and often prefer text and so do services that are delivering services to these people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Email is pretty much here to stay. It is more that users and organizations need to "learn" how to manage emails better. Furthermore, email might not be the main way of communication with your customers anymore, but still will be one of the main pillars.

This is one of the reasons, why I started my 6th company called Helpmonks ([http://helpmonks.com](http://helpmonks.com)) in this space. It simply helps organizations to collaborate on emails. My company is not the only one in this space.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hope people will stop send HTML-formatted emails.

<comment><USER33> Given that businesses can track when (and from what IP) recipients open those emails through tracking images, that's not likely to ever happen.

Although, of course, you can always choose not to open html emails as html.

<comment><USER34> That is a pretty serious bug in whatever email program allows tracking images to work in email. Seems unlikely anyone would use such an email program. Which email program are you talking about?

<comment><USER35> If your e-mail program sends a HTTP request for an image based on an "img" tag in a HTML-formatted e-mail, it can get tracked based on the URL.

Many e-mail clients will not show images from e-mail addresses that are not in your contacts list for this reason (for example, Thunderbird). They make the user click a button to make the decision to proceed with the image download an explicit action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I hoped to have seen more services built on top of email, especially IM. Products using email as a transport layer rather than the presentation layer per se. But I guess, its inherently slow and tough to scale with its default architecture, considering the overheads.

</comment><comment><USER37> I feel the only "tool" to make email less painful is to teach people how to use it.

</comment><comment><USER38> In the same way that fax and letter writing still exist, email will always exist. We still don't have any other system for global personalized store-and- forward that is remotely transparent (ie. bigcorp-independentish), much less free.

</comment><comment><USER39> Probably a controversial opinion, but I feel Google Wave's model is going to be the future of Email. Not sure how far in the future, my best estimates are 5 years at lease.

</comment><comment><USER40> Maybe this is the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Finally, I visit San Francisco. HN, what must I do/see before I leave? - <AUTHOR>

Hiya,
After many years of dreaming, I finally get to visit 'Silicon Valley'. I came in on Saturday evening. For first timers, your transportation system is the most confusing I have seen. Yup, it includes Lagos, Nigeria :P.
If this were to be my last trip here, what would you recommend I do? Where do you recommend I visit?
I would love to visit famous startup offices (Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox etc). Meeting PG would be an honour too. Do I just show up with a big smile and expect to be shown around? What would you advice?
I would also love to meet you HNers over beer or water. Sorry, I do not drink coffee.
Yesterday, I spent the whole day indoors and that is a bit embarrassing. It is already 8am so today is almost finishing. Asides a few booked hours here and there, my calendar is basically open.
I am staying on 3rd Street and would be around until the weekend.
PS: Are there any parties holding? I am great as gatecrashing uninvited. <comment><USER2> Go see the sea lions: <http://www.pier39.com/SeaLion/sea_lion_webcam.htm></comment>


London may elect it's first Muslim mayor - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2016/05/04/476783550/londoners-could-elect-citys-first-muslim-mayor <comment><USER2> That's a very odd article. Not least because "it's" means "it is" \- not "belonging to it."

For those outside the UK, it is important to note that the Evening Standard is ideologically opposed to the Labour party - to the point where their election coverage is discredited to the point of parody.

No idea who "Corbin Frank" is meant to be. The audio clearly says "Gordon Brown."

I'm proud to live in a country where someone can rise from humble beginnings to high office. I'm just sad he's the exception rather than the norm.

Oh, an most people couldn't give a toss which religion he is. Despite having an official state religion, we're far less fussed with religious acceptability that the (supposedly secular) US.

<comment><USER3> > I'm just sad he's the exception rather than the norm.

Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer, worked as a scientist and became PM, despite huge party opposition at the time because she was middle class. Gordon Brown went to a comprehensive. John Major didn't even go to university...

<comment><USER2> Oh, aye, it happens. But look at the current cabinet and try to find a bloke who didn't go to school with the PM...

<comment><USER4> Of the 14 male Cabinet ministers (excluding the PM) only 3 went to Oxford; of whom only Gove and Osbourne attended at the same time as Cameron.

<comment><USER2> I never let the facts get in the way of my prejudices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > London may elect it's first Muslim mayor

The original headline is "Londoners Could Elect City's First Muslim Mayor" If you're going to change it, may I suggest "its" not it's" as in [http://grammarist.com/spelling/its-its/](http://grammarist.com/spelling/its- its/)

( _edit_ I see that's the verbatim subheading of the original article. Still not a great choice)

Sadiq Khan (Labour) is leading in the polls, with Zac Goldsmith (Conservative) running second.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. However, if you're going to correct someone's grammar on the Internet, may I suggest that you use correct grammar yourself, per [http://grammarist.com/usage/as-per/](http://grammarist.com/usage/as-per/).

<comment><USER7> I be capital too since "it" refers to London?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This country's gone to the dogs ever since Corbin Frank left office

<comment><USER3> Greatest Prime Minister we never had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> it has been quite a ugly and dirty campaign lately (1) with a lot of press over some Labour members' antisemitic remarks (2), and criticism of the level of Goldsmith's Conservative campaign (3)

because of that divisive aspect, I'm a glad that it's over now. My sympathies to the USA, hang in there until November.

1) [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/30/battle- londo...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/30/battle-london-mayor- dirtiest-fight-zac-goldsmith-sadiq-khan)

2) [http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/ken- livingst...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/ken-livingstone- suspended-from-labour-after-hitler-remarks)

3) [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/30/tories-...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/30/tories- proud-toxic-goldsmith-campaign-london-mayor)

[http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/london-mayor-race- conse...](http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/london-mayor-race- conservatives-game-religious-and-racial-divisions-538083247)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KBpBkkbpjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KBpBkkbpjs)

</comment><comment> angry-hacker What does the term 'Muslim person' even mean? Is every other white politician Christian politician? Is it religion, name, background?

This guy is in favor of same sex marriage and received death threats because of it, I doubt he is a Muslim in religious sense, or if he is, then very 'bad' one according to the teachings.

Belgium gay beauty contest had a 'first gay muslim' contender. I chuckled when I read it.

It is also complicated with term Jewish.

Is everyone

</comment><comment><USER9> "or rather a mayor that happens to be Muslim", but then I guess that wouldn't get as many clicks...

</comment><comment><USER10> "he was Britain first Muslim cabinet minister under Corbin Frank"</comment>


Tech companies blamed for 20 years of falling wages in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-companies-blamed-for-20-years-of-falling-wages-in-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> wouldn't have anything to do with supply and demand?

Say more workers coming to the area and/or more workers being trained in technologies skills.

Not say that's the case just it's a possibility.</comment>


FBI refutes Trump claim that Clinton's private email server was hacked by China - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/fbi-refutes-trump-claim-that-clintons-private-email-server-was-hacked-by-china/ <comment><USER2> The term "refutes" seems incorrect here. Perhaps "denies" instead. I was expecting a public demonstration of proof or evidence against the claim beyond an assertion.

<comment><USER3> how do you prove a negative?, all you can say is that within the bounds of the technology and skills they have to hand, they where unable to detect any intrusion, that does not mean that there is a guarantee that there was none.

The risk that there was may be very low, but its still there.

The only secure system is an air-gaped one, and even then there are evolving threats that circumvent that protection.

<comment><USER4> It's not a negative, the assertion was the the hack was carried out by a different country, namely China. This is a claim that could be backed by evidence but was not.</comment></comment></comment>


Why is scaling a web application hard?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.webforefront.com/archives/2010/11/why_is_scaling.html

<comment><USER2> _However, there are two particular design choices that increase complexity when attempting to horizontally scale each tier: Decoupling and sessions._

Session is by far the deal with the devil that comes back to haunt you later in life. Introducing a stageful concept into a stateless medium was destin to have ramifications. I remember the first implementation of the concept of session in a web framework. I remember a developer that I worked with going on and on about it and I remember thinking right there that is a very dangerous pattern.

At our shop we do three things. One we only store the most critical information in session (if at all), we have an audit script on our source control system that generates a warning to the leads any time new access to session is developed and finally we always ensure that session can be recreated from a stateless medium. Therefore session acts like an in memory cache for us.</comment>


DC power poised to bring savings to datacenters - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/01/14/02TC-dc-power_1.html

<comment><USER2> 208v AC is easier to find than DC, it works with (most) existing power supplies (look on your power supply... most say that input voltage can be 100 to 240 voltage, and most are auto-switch, though a few still have to be manually switched) and it still gives you a nice efficiency boost. some of my servers run 208v. As a bonus, many places will give you a 30A 208V circuit for less than the cost of 2 20a 110v circuits. (watts is volts times amps, so that is quite a deal.)</comment>


Financial YOLO on Elon Musk and Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://songz.quora.com/Dear-Elon-Musk-I-financial-yoloed-on-you

<comment><USER2> So... How much did you guys make?</comment>


Mapping the Deepfake Landscape - <AUTHOR> https://deeptracelabs.com/mapping-the-deepfake-landscape/ <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps I should have posted this article, where I learned about the report: [https://qz.com/1723476/deepfake-videos-feature-mostly- porn-a...](https://qz.com/1723476/deepfake-videos-feature-mostly-porn- according-to-new-study-from-deeptrace-labs/)</comment>


Dropbox stopping Public folders on new accts after July 31st - <AUTHOR>

Just received this email from them:
We wanted to let our developers know about an upcoming change to the Public folder for all user accounts. In April, we launched the ability to share any file or folder in your Dropbox with a simple link. This new sharing mechanism is a more generalized, scalable way to support many of the same use cases as the Public folder.
After July 31, we will no longer create Public folders in any new Dropbox accounts. If your app depends on Public folders, we recommend switching to the /shares API call. Public folders in existing accounts, however, will continue to function as before.
Please email us at email@example.com if you have any questions or concerns.
- Dropbox API Team <comment><USER2> I wonder--will new users after the cutoff be able to just _create_ a folder named Public in their Dropbox root, and have it act semantically like a Public folder does now? I've deleted my Public folder before, and after recreating it it's still "the" Public folder.

<comment><USER3> Doubt it. It sounds like every folder is the "public" folder, in a sense. It's about time, too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Relevant API:

<https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/api#shares></comment>


Ruby hacker proposes to quit his job and work only on OSS while living on donation money - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2008/03/id_love_to_quit_my_job_sort_of.html

<comment><USER2> I think this model would work better if he wanted to take time off to start up and develop a new OSS project.

I can see a lot of people donating to get 'Some really cool project' built.

But I doubt that faster bug fixes and improved documentation in open source reporting software is worth 60$ to too many people if you take away the feel good factor of donating to open source

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, i certainly know of businesses using open source projects that would happily pay someone external to fix a bug or add a feature to a given project. Why they wouldn't just assign one of their own developers is a mystery, but that's the way it is.

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of businesses that do pay people to work on various open source projects. Google, Apple, IBM, possibly even Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Perl Foundation (<http://foundation.perl.org/>) has done this quite a bit. There's a good model to follow.

Hacker News' own benhoyt has <http://micropledge.com/> which seems well suited to the task.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find it hard to convince a corporation to donate money for an OSS. It would need approval from people not familiar with OSS. May be the model is to do it, thru consulting. For example, start working in Ruport, then advertise your self as a Ruport consultant, find some customers that are willing to pay for support or consulting, as you are able to charge for it, you can spend more time working in the project. I think several people have been able to do it. Companies are used to pay for support or consulting, they are not used to pay for something that is already free.

Some companies have been able to do it with great success. SpringOne, JBoss, JGoodies come to my mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are a number of examples of this. For instance, the guy who developed Passage, Jason Rohrer, lives entirely off donations ([http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason- rohrer/supportMyWork...](http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason- rohrer/supportMyWork.php)) and he releases all his software under the GNU GPL.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for posting this; I enjoyed reading about his lifestyle:

[http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason- rohrer/simpleLife.ht...](http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason- rohrer/simpleLife.html)

People who are determined can Find a Way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd throw in some cash the second he decides to try this. Working full-time on something is much more productive than working evenings.

<comment><USER10> is he working on something you need, or would you just support him for the sake of idealism?

if you do need the end product, then it seems reasonable enough. but if it's idealism you seek, how many hackers should set up donation bins before you stop donating to each new one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something similar happened before with the Haiku OS project back in 2005 when Axel Dörflel worked on it full time for a few months using donated funds. (Link: <http://haikunews.org/print/1125>)

</comment><comment><USER12> Bram Cohen (who supports his family off of grateful BitTorrent users) is the exception. A lot of programmers are paid to work on open source (however, they are mostly employed by large Open Source advocates like IBM).

<comment><USER13> I'm not so sure he supported his family on donations for very long. BitTorrent turned into a pretty well funded venture (of which he is chief scientist) a while ago.</comment></comment>


Show HN: YouTube, Vimeo and Twitch Bundled in a Universal API - <AUTHOR> https://cloudrail.com/integrations/interfaces/Video <comment><AUTHOR> This is our latest universal interface. We've bundled YouTube, Vimeo and Twitch into one single API. So for example the function uploadVideo() works exactly the same for YouTube as it does for Vimeo. Looking forward to hear your feedback!</comment>


TCP Client for Unity3d - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vovgou/loxodon-framework/tree/master/Loxodon.Framework.Connection <comment><AUTHOR> This is a network connection component, implemented using TcpClient, supports IPV6 and IPV4, automatically recognizes the current network when connecting with a domain name, and preferentially connects to the IPV4 network.</comment>


Chrome is the new IE - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bdc/chrome-is-the-new-ie-1a21c1efc133#.3uae32q82 <comment><USER2> As a web developer, this article is almost exactly opposite of the truth.

Safari is the new IE to me, and he reinforces my point.

His example is that Safari opts not to implement web standards in favor of those things that make Apple specific websites better.

This is the exact behavior that created the stimga of Microsoft's IE. We need more standards and collaboration and less browser vendors working to create their own specific experiences.

<comment><USER3> Care to name a few of those things? Besides that A LOT of the new things in HTML5 _standard_ first appeared on Safari (and mobile, for that).

<comment><USER4> WebRTC

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a full time engineer on the web and I don't really agree with this. I much prefer working with Chrome than any other browser. Even IE edge (supposedly Microsoft's fresh start) doesn't have all the full support for various features as Chrome does -- just head over to look at the comparison tables at caniuse (ex: [http://caniuse.com/#search=blend- mode](http://caniuse.com/#search=blend-mode)).

And the developer experience in other browsers (save for maybe Firefox) are vastly inferior to Chrome's dev tools. Firebug in firefox used to be the best, but even with Mozilla's new efforts at the developer edition of Firefox, the experience is still poor. Lack of correct support for sourcemaps, performance, and general UI polish of their tools are still lacking.

Another point I feel should be made is that IE still doesn't have a native Max OS or Linux release. This is an embarrassment to Microsoft, and its why I still don't take anything they do seriously on the web. If you're going to create a new browser, you should at least make it accessible to most of the devs -- many of whom don't even use your OS anymore.

Chrome also has a few very useful projects, such as Chromium, node webkit and Electron (what slack uses). Where is this kind of support from the other browser vendors? Why doesn't Apple have a fully integrated native browser development envrionment for Safari? Why did Mozilla's FireFox OS die on the vine and why haven't they come up with something like Electron? The executives and senior technical leadership at these projects and companies should be embarrassed.

<comment><USER6> > Why did Mozilla's FireFox OS die on the vine and why haven't they come up > with something like Electron? The executives and senior technical leadership > at these projects and companies should be embarrassed.

That's more than a little hyperbolic, given that Electron and node-webkit aren't Google projects and are in fact coded to an API Google explicitly considers unstable and liable to break at any time.

Disclaimer: I'm probably included in the group of people you claim "should be embarrassed".

<comment><USER7> When last I was looking into this, Chrome's embed API is much better documented and supported than Gecko's. It seems that the Gecko API that does exist is largely due to the efforts the Sailfish OS / Jolly people put into it. Hopefully servo doesn't follow the same path. I'm hoping to be able to get into that code base soon-ish. :)

<comment><USER6> > When last I was looking into this, Chrome's embed API is much better > documented and supported than Gecko's.

Sure, but WebKit2 is better than both, as only WebKit2 is a stable API that is C-based and can be used from multiple languages [1].

> Hopefully servo doesn't follow the same path.

Proper embedding support, with a supported API, is a key goal of Servo.

[1]: [https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2](https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKit2)

<comment><USER7> It's great to hear Servo is focusing on embedding support. The developers seems pretty responsive to feedback as well, which is great. Thanks for the info on webkit, need to follow up on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's one hell of a clickbait title. In order for any browser to be "the new IE", developers would have to hate it and dread developing for it/supporting it. Ask any web developer today which browser is their favourite, go-to browser for development. This statement holds absolutely no water.

Secondly, the author cherry picks a couple things that haven't been implemented in Chrome, glossing over the fact that Chrome tends to support _way more features_ than any other browser on the market, and is more often than not the first and the best implementor of web standards. A quick perusal of caniuse.com or the support matrices on MDN will drive this point home (honourable mention to Firefox).

<comment><USER9> > In order for any browser to be "the new IE", developers would have to hate > it and dread developing for it/supporting it.

Oh, so Safari then?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Chrome is unfortunately contributing to the web's bad reputation by caring more about developers than end-users."

Actually, this is my favourite part about it. It's fast and it has its priorities in the right spot: me, as a developer. If you don't like Chrome, well, then don't use Chrome :)

Another point I would like to make is Apple's ridiculous refusal to allow anything other than Safari on the App Store. I feel that this is holding back the web more than anything, at the moment.

<comment><USER11> How do you feel about Google disallowing anything other than Chrome on their desktop OS?

<comment><USER12> That's not really fair, in the case of ChromeOS, the browser is the OS.

<comment><USER13> And honestly, _this_ is why people say Chrome is slow or Chrome is a memory hog. There's so much non-web-browser stuff in Chrome it's just become tremendously heavy. That doesn't make it bad, and Google has recently done things to lighten it (like removing the feature of mirroring Now cards in Chrome), but it's the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A response from a Google engineer working on Chrome: [https://medium.com/@slightlylate/cards-on-the-table-i-m- an-e...](https://medium.com/@slightlylate/cards-on-the-table-i-m-an-engineer- on-chrome-caveat-emptor-etc-etc-ec0f9dae26b7#.hiy6h2ivg)

<comment><USER15> Great response. A couple key points:

-The author was comparing an unreleased version of Safari to Chrome Stable. Comparing stable-to-stable would be more fair, and when comparing the unreleased Safari to Chrome Dev or Canary, some of their complaints are moot.

-Apple only has to support 2 platforms and a limited amount of hardware. Google supports 4+ platforms and a huge variety of hardware. That means things like GPU rasterization take longer to ship.

<comment><USER6> Apple has to support 4 different GPU manufacturers, in fact. And Chrome isn't using the native Direct2D on Windows, which would have made this easier: rather they chose to reinvent it with Ganesh. Ganesh is OpenGL only (also Vulkan) instead of using native Direct3D. I don't think the cross-platform burden is that much higher for Chrome in this specific area.

<comment><USER16> That's hardly accurate summary of the situation.

Chrome uses Skia, a 2D rendering library.

Skia uses Direct2D (DirectWrite) on Windows for font rendering ([https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/src/ports/SkTypef...](https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/src/ports/SkTypeface_win_dw.cpp))

Skia has a GPU backend that uses OpenGL where that's native.

On Windows, those OpenGL calls are translated to DirectX with a very sophisticated OpenGL translator called Angle ([https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp](https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp))

Therefore Chrome does use DirectX on Windows, via translation layer from OpenGL.

Saying that Chrome i.e. in this context Skia, doesn't use Direct2D for rendering is like saying "On Windows Chrome doesn't use native Chakra JavaScript engine".

Skia IS Direct2D, except it's cross-platform and being improved by Google literally every day ([https://github.com/google/skia/commits/master](https://github.com/google/skia/commits/master)). It makes engineering sense for Google to have their own, cross-platform, high- performance 2d rendering engine instead of a thin layer of whatever the common-denominator they could implement on top of 2d functionality provided by the OS.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't aware of the use of DirectWrite, thanks.

> On Windows, those OpenGL calls are translated to DirectX with a very > sophisticated OpenGL translator called Angle > ([https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp](https://github.com/google/skia/blob/master/gyp/angle.gyp))

I'm aware of that. But ANGLE can't possibly be better than Direct3D; in fact, it tends to lag behind new D3D releases for obvious reasons.

> Saying that Chrome i.e. in this context Skia, doesn't use Direct2D for > rendering is like saying "On Windows Chrome doesn't use native Chakra > JavaScript engine".

Yet that's still a true statement. And if Chakra were technically ahead of V8, then that would be a valid criticism of Chrome's choice here.

> It makes engineering sense for Google to have their own, cross-platform, > high-performance 2d rendering engine instead of a thin layer of whatever the > common-denominator they could implement on top of 2d functionality provided > by the OS.

I don't think that's clear at all. Direct2D is very good for what it is (although neither Skia nor D2D is a good API for GPUs really, as NVIDIA and others have pointed out in for example [1]). There's no architectural advantage that Skia has over D2D; they both feature very similar immediate mode APIs. D2D is being improved by Microsoft all the time, with a multi-year head start on Ganesh _and_ the advantage of tight integration with the graphics drivers. In fact, the entire point of Alex's post is to acknowledge that Ganesh's rollout has been slower than that of CG::OGL (Apple's Ganesh equivalent, which has been shipping in _stable_ Safari for a while) and Direct2D (which has been shipping in IE since 9 and Firefox since 4).

[1]: [http://developer.download.nvidia.com/devzone/devcenter/gameg...](http://developer.download.nvidia.com/devzone/devcenter/gamegraphics/files/opengl/gpupathrender.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a pretty terrible article. It asserts the point that Google is doing a disservice by focusing on things that improve developer productivity, but doesn't even entertain the idea that reducing the overhead on more technical matters allow developers to focus more on UX.

The author should come back when Safari fixes some of its blatant issues/missing features that directly impact being able to improve UX.

<comment><USER18> Well the author is UI designer. I guess that says a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Concerning web pages, HN seems to be split into two sides: one side wants to use the newest shiny stuff to make shiny apps while the other wants to have simple pages that are loading fast. The OP blatantly seems on the first side, and I am on the second one.

> The web deserves efficient, innovative, delightful experiences, and Chrome > is holding the web back by making it hard (if not impossible) to create > them.

Nope, the web deserves pages that are loading fast, and don't require a new hardware that the majority of the viewers don't have to be read properly.

Also, OP works at Stripe, I see no need to add "position:sticky", "backdrop- filter", or "scroll-snap-type" (not sure I know what those are) to a page that does payment processing.

</comment><comment><USER20> On any platform other than iOS, Safari is the 3rd best browser on its best day. Just because something is pretty, doesn't make it good. This guy is clearly a student of the Jony Ive school of thought.

<comment><USER21> > Just because something is pretty, doesn't make it good.

I understand that you are taking a shot a Apple's focus on design, but what part of Safari makes you think they sacrificed function for form?

If you don't like Safari then give some detailed insight on why that is. A comment like that would move the discussion forward and be interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The "Safari is the new IE" article was about them being slow to adopt APIs and the yearly release cycle attached to OS updates.

This is about visuals and UI based APIs that can be polyfilled. They matter but not as much as stuff like WebRTC and Service Workers IMO.

Google can fix these problems with updates and polyfills. Apple can't do that. Some iOS and Mac OS users will at some point be left out.

Nothing in this article matter that much "position:sticky, no backdrop-filter, no scroll-snap-type, gradients" they're useful, but not critical.

Doubt we'll see apps that aren't possible without these. They just make the experience nicer, they don't make products happen though.

Meanwhile on the Chrome end we've got web apps like Emojoy ([https://jakearchibald-gcm.appspot.com/](https://jakearchibald- gcm.appspot.com/)), Offline Wikipedia ([https://wiki- offline.jakearchibald.com/](https://wiki-offline.jakearchibald.com/)), Instant.io ([https://instant.io/](https://instant.io/)), PeerCloud ([https://peercloud.io/](https://peercloud.io/)) and even Facebook ([http://Facebook.com/](http://Facebook.com/)) all providing features and services in Chrome (WebRTC, Service Workers, Background Sync) that can't be polyfilled or will have to provide a far lesser experience in Safari because it lacks even a way to polyfill these features (only things I can think of are AppCache and WebSockets which don't get the job done for these services).

</comment><comment><USER23> Chrome as the new IE seems like a stretch without mentioning Firefox.

<comment><USER24> Firefox can't be the new IE. It doesn't have the market share that IE did, even still does, have.

<comment><USER23> Sorry you misunderstand me. I didn't mean that Firefox is the new IE, but rather that it's difficult for _anything_ to be the new IE, because of the choice now available. Chrome, Firefox, IE, and safari all now have reasonable market share.

The article is for some reason ignoring all but two browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Chrome is the "new IE" but for a whole different set of reasons than what the author mentions in the piece. It seems that a lot of designers aren't testing their designs against other browsers other than Chrome. I routinely find pieces of web pages that don't look (or work) as they are supposed to but they work once I perform the same action in Chrome. It's ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER26> I struggle to think of how an article could be more wrong. It's just nonsense. All browsers - Chrome, Safari, IE/Edge and Firefox are constantly adding new features, improving performance, and fixing bugs. Obviously they have different priorities, but this is just nothing like the age of IE.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find it interesting that the author himself accepts (or doesn't oppose, to be more correct) that the title is linkbait[0].

[0]: [https://twitter.com/bdc/status/626200664520044544](https://twitter.com/bdc/status/626200664520044544)

</comment><comment><USER28> A more buttery web doesn't necessarily equate to a more bettery web ;P

</comment><comment><USER29> > _Mobile Safari can easily handle, say, a Photos.app-like interface with a > translucent navigation bar, native-like swipe gestures and smooth > animations. Chrome handles none of this. No position:sticky, no backdrop- > filter, no scroll-snap-type_

It's interesting that the things he lists as Safari having only work via a -webkit vendor prefix.

<comment><USER30> These features are all standards track but not final, much like the features that people praise Chrome for having that are not in Safari. Chrome's policy is not to prefix when they ship a feature to everyone, even if the spec is not finalized yet. Safari's policy has been to prefix in such a situation but there is consideration of changing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> One big problem I had with IE was the update cycle. Whereas Chrome (and subsequently other browsers) updated every six weeks or so, non-technical Windows users just had whatever the OS installed by default, e.g. IE6, etc.

So while Chrome _might_ does have quirks and issues, the frequent update cycle compensates for it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Browser monocultures are bad.

</comment><comment><USER33> The author should read the response from Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER34> Just two web browsers, surely some mistake

</comment><comment><USER35> Hell yeah!!</comment>


What are your biggest life/career regrets - <AUTHOR> Personally, I should have done more internships during university. Furthermore, I should have done more projects to show my skill instead of just learning a skill. Lastly, I should have started to take responsibility for my life earlier. What are your top regrets? <comment><USER2> Focusing more on regret and perceived failures than what I learned from the experiences.</comment>


Gravit – Open-source design tool - jarek-foksa http://hub.gravit.io/browser/ <comment> jarek-foksa It's worth noting that Gravit.io is a JavaScript rewrite of Stagestack project [1] which was an attempt to create commercial clone of Macromedia FreeHand from scratch [2]. Stagestack project failed due to lack of funding from FreeHand community.

[1] [http://www.stagestack.com/](http://www.stagestack.com/)

[2] [http://www.freehandforum.org/news.html](http://www.freehandforum.org/news.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> ... but Joel Spolsky said you should never rewrite code ever ever ever...

<comment><USER2> Whereas what Joel said is debatable, this snark comment is wrong on so many leves it's funny...

1) Joel was talking on the context of a software business -- if you have working code it can be detrimental to business to do a rewrite from scratch, it will take you years, you will leave stuff off, piss off your customers, lose ground to the competition etc. It's not like Gravit.io has that kind of "business reasons" at this moment (this is their initial version offering), so his reasons do not apply to it.

2) Gravit.io is a port of a project to another language. This is not a rewrite -- much less a "rewrite from scratch". Again, Joel's reasons do not apply to the situation.

<comment><USER3> I think he was trying to be funny

<comment><USER2> Yeah, hence the "snark" moniker, but funny works better if it's also clever and/or coherent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This may be the first time I try a web app that is as snappy as a desktop one. Congratulations!

What front-end frameworks/technologies did you use?

<comment><USER5> >> "What front-end frameworks/technologies did you use?"

Why is that everyone's first question? I get this constantly when I demo my stuff at meetups and hackathons. None. The answer is none. And they look at me like I just admitted to being a person who prefers to breath water. Vanilla JS is not that hard. It's a sight easier to know one language than to have to relearn the darling framework of the year all the time.

<comment><USER6> Vanilla js is not that hard when you have thing like document.queryselect or you're building trivial web apps. Sadly when you're building enterprise grade software and you have to support things like Internet Explorer 7 it makes a lot more sense to use a framework like angular than vanilla js.

<comment><USER5> Having been involved in lots of different types of projects over the years, "enterprise" software is not different from other types of software in any way.

<comment><USER6> Sorry but when I'm writing my hobby projects I don't have to worry about supporting a 13 year old browser.

<comment><USER5> The occurrence of this in enterprise is grossly overstated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Random thoughts; (1) A classic drawing tool made slick, beautiful. (2) Flash is not needed for this type of work at all, thanks to HTML5 (3) It's fast enough (4) View source shows nothing, which means all the UI view generation functionality has moved inside JS.

<comment><USER8> (2) Maybe it was faster for him to build that way, due to experience, etc.. (3) strawman argument, perhaps he chose his technologies for other reasons besides premature optimization. You're essentially accusing him of making a design mistake IMO. (4) The fact that right click is disabled doesn't tell us anything about the software architecture, your statement reads as if its a critique.

<comment><USER7> I was indeed praising him. 2) he used html/js, and i'm glad flash isn't needed to make such a tool 3) i was happy it's fast enough. 4)no u misunderstood; i pressed ctrl+u and have seen the source code, indeed. it's an empty body with few JS files. I find it remarkable as HTML's document centric approach with viewable document structure disappeared from view and moved into the JS files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Source code: [https://github.com/quasado/gravit](https://github.com/quasado/gravit)

</comment><comment><USER10> You might consider overriding the delete/backspace button. I tried to delete a spline and ended up back on hacker news :-)

<comment><USER11> It's definitely one of those web apps where I'd be totally fine with a `window.onbeforeunload` popup asking me whether I really want to leave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone here manage to figure out the secrets behind this apps blazing fast performance ?

<comment><USER5> Load performance is mostly due to the few number of files that are being included, though minification also helps.

Application performance is typical of modern, hand-coded JS. Or rather, I should say, the only reason I can see for why people tolerate bloated frameworks is because they've just come to expect JS to be slow. There is a reason some of us insist on sticking to vanilla JS. It's not because we're crotchety, old, greybeards. We wouldn't be touching JS at all if that were the case.

It appears they might also be using layered canvases to render different parts of the workspace that update at different rates. So that prevents them from having to redraw the checkered background every time you move the drawing. And it prevents them from having to redraw the existing drawing every time you add a new element and are still adjusting it.

Pretty standard techniques for anyone with experience working with Canvas, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on the great job. Nobody would raise an eyebrow for this work if it were not browser-based. Does this say something about the state of web apps?

</comment><comment><USER14> For offline usage, has anyone used both Gravit and Inkscape for any significant period of time, and can comment on pros/cons?

This might be a dumb question if they don't really occupy the same space. But naively it seems to me like they overlap somewhat, and maybe I should move some of what I currently do in Inkscape to Gravit? (I'm not all that proficient in Inkscape, and at first usage Gravit seems simpler.)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is awesome!! Played around with it for awhile. Very snappy, great UI. Very functional! Well done.

</comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't click on the Save item in the File menu.

<comment><USER17> It's a demo...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm impressed with the responsiveness on the iPad, it feels like a native app!

<comment><USER19> Same on n7. Developer should phonegap this thing and drum up some revenue on the app stores, OSS or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice interface. I'm trying to get better at very quickly implementing UI's from the ground up (also moving past bootstrap/foundation). What was your approach to making this interface? Did you use a pre-processor? Did you modify an existing framework or generate css output from a photoshop mockup? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is very good. I think it's designed to be an Adobe Fireworks replacement. Great stuff!

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice work! It might be cool to allow people to share designs. So if I was creating a web page, I could browse through web pages other people have created and import one, then use that as a foundation for my own design. At any rate, this is pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is kinda cool, and might help out the web crowd which is working with Chrome OS at the moment.(I'm writing this comment on a Chromebook right now)

Why anyone would use this rather than inkscape on either Linux or Windows, however, is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was looking for something similar frantically the other day when I couldn't use pixlr (it needs flash and my laptop was very old).

But, how do I insert an image from my computer as the layer?

</comment><comment><USER25> Has a nice UI (albeit cloned from Photoshop).

Save/Export doesn't seem to work on my machine (Chrome 37, Mac OSX).

Would be nice to see some kind of SVG export instead of raster formats.

<comment><USER26> There's an intro to the app on their blog. Sounds like they were going for Freehand/Fireworks rather than Photoshop :)

All saving also disabled for me, guessing the back end isn't quite there yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That loaded much faster than expected. I'd very much like a peek at the code (could not find a link to Github or Google Code).

<comment><USER28> [https://github.com/quasado/gravit](https://github.com/quasado/gravit)

Found on [http://gravit.io/](http://gravit.io/), upper right corner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fantastic...have a similar initiative though of a little different flavor. Will share soon.

All the best

</comment><comment><USER30> This is great. I could see it replacing much of my Illustrator work.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just wondering, why is the title of this submission allowed to remain as "Gravit - Open-source design tool"? Under HN's dogmatic rules, shouldn't it be renamed to just "Gravit"?

<comment><USER32> While this was once a problem, your information is like 6 months out of date. The mods have been pretty good at balancing "informative" and "close to the original submission". pg even said that the way the rules were being interpreted weren't the way they were originally intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Trash buttons don't work.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is not open source! this is free software

<comment><USER35> GPL

[https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/quasado/gravit/blob/master/LICENSE)

<comment><USER36> I think he means free software as defined by the FSF, which has different definitions for free-of-cost, open source and free/libre software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I came expecting a free alternative to something like AutoCAD. Instead I got a blank page, and after reloading with JS enabled, a core dump from a browser that ran out of memory.

For a snappy drawing program, native code remains the way to go.

<comment><USER6> I disagree, this is really fast and totally rivals a native app. What are you computer specs and what browser are you using?

<comment><USER37> Do you disagree with the core dump on my hard drive? Firefox 31 ESR, Atom N450, 1G of RAM. Gimp for instance runs pretty smooth (although there are much faster still options if you don't need all the features); I use it a lot.

<comment><USER2> > _Do you disagree with the core dump on my hard drive?_

No, he and I disagree that your experience is typical for everybody. Most people in this thread (including me) praised this for its quick loading, snapiness and speed.

Perhaps "Atom" and "1GB of RAM" doesn't cuts it for this kind of in-browser app, despite GIMP (a native app) running "pretty smooth). It makes sense if this has a minimum memory use requirement -- below which you can't run it at all because you don't have enough space that it needs to load, and after which you're OK and it's fast.

That said, people have run it on their iPads, and it's extremely snappy there too.

I'm also not sure the core dump was because of "out of memory". How about some glitch with your graphics card driver and the canvas renderer (which is not uncommon)?

<comment><USER37> > I'm also not sure the core dump was because of "out of memory".

      out of memory: 0x0000000000020000 bytes requested
      Segmentation fault (core dumped)
      [..]
      #0  0x0000097c6124c82a in kill () at <stdin>:2
      #1  0x0000097c74ed6fd4 in XRE_FreeAppData ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #2  <signal handler called>
      #3  0x0000097cd08b6957 in mozalloc_abort ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libmozalloc.so.1.0
      #4  0x0000097cd08b6a07 in mozalloc_handle_oom ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libmozalloc.so.1.0
      #5  0x0000097cd08b6707 in moz_xmalloc ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libmozalloc.so.1.0
      #6  0x0000097c73667172 in NS_CycleCollectorSuspect3 ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #7  0x0000097c736624d0 in NS_DebugBreak ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #8  0x0000097c73660702 in NS_DebugBreak ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #9  0x0000097c75548bf9 in js::IterateGrayObjects ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #10 0x0000097c7554f8a5 in js::IterateGrayObjects ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #11 0x0000097c7555242c in js::IterateGrayObjects ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #12 0x0000097c7365e71f in NS_DebugBreak ()
      ---Type <return> to continue, or q <return> to quit---
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #13 0x0000097c7365e644 in NS_DebugBreak ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #14 0x0000097c73661e9c in NS_DebugBreak ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #15 0x0000097c736634ed in NS_DebugBreak ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #16 0x0000097c73664d0d in NS_DebugBreak ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #17 0x0000097c73665d7f in NS_CycleCollectorSuspect3 ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #18 0x0000097c74474d6a in DumpCompleteHeap ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #19 0x0000097c74475cdc in DumpCompleteHeap ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #20 0x0000097c736b2fcb in XRE_AddJarManifestLocation ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #21 0x0000097c736b3135 in XRE_AddJarManifestLocation ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #22 0x0000097c736b006d in XRE_AddJarManifestLocation ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #23 0x0000097c73648291 in ?? ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      ---Type <return> to continue, or q <return> to quit---
      #24 0x0000097c738b8006 in std::vector<std::pair<int, int>, std::allocator<std::pair<int, int> > >::_M_insert_aux ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #25 0x0000097c73888ec9 in std::_Rb_tree<int, std::pair<int const, std::string>, std::_Select1st<std::pair<int const, std::string> >, std::less<int>, std::allocator<std::pair<int const, std::string> > >::_M_erase ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #26 0x0000097c7431f7fe in js::BaseProxyHandler::finalizeInBackground ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #27 0x0000097c74f0bf93 in XRE_StartupTimelineRecord ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #28 0x0000097c74ecd2ea in XRE_InitCommandLine ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #29 0x0000097c74ecd4d1 in XRE_InitCommandLine ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #30 0x0000097c74ecd8b6 in XRE_main ()
         from /usr/local/lib/firefox-esr-31.0/libxul.so.1.0
      #31 0x0000097a4a703f87 in atexit () from /usr/local/bin/firefox-esr
      #32 0x0000097a4a7038b1 in _start () from /usr/local/bin/firefox-esr
      #33 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()

<comment><USER2> Fair enough!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why/How Did We Evolve to Eat and Breathe Through the Same Passageway? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Part of it probably has to do with lungs originating as gills. Passage of water across the gills was what was crucial for optimal oxygen intake, and taking water in through the mouth facilitates that for fish. Getting food stuck was probably less of an issue because if you had proper flow of water it'd just get flushed right back out.

And the incremental nature of evolution favors the adaptation of similar but suboptimal structures over the development of entirely new structures and especially of new topologies (changes in what passages are connected to one another or pass all the way through the body).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

One more Q: Do fish and birds have gag reflexes as we do? Is gag reflex just a mammalian thing.

<comment><USER2> That I don't know. Most birds have the ability to regurgitate food for their young, but that's not the same thing as a gag reflex. Maybe google or Wikipedia have more info?

<comment><AUTHOR> There seems to be whole slew of reflexes.

That's what made me wonder..if we were to redesign human anatomy, what changes would we have to make?

Eating and breathing through the same passageway seems to be an unfortunate and fatal bad design.

Ditto with reproduction. The digestive system is pretty neat as is the neurological and brain circuitry(as much as we understand it)

I just don't get when we eat and breathe through the same tube..and give birth so close to where we poop. Seems like bad design.

<comment><USER2> What does "bad design" mean in the context of a system that wasn't designed?

Evolution is a process that involves tiny random changes stabilizing at or near local maxima. Where you end up is largely about where you started.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right in a way.

It's just that sometimes I feel that if evolution can be tinkered with..or improved upon, I could come up with a better design.

Purely theoretical, of course

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The lungs originate from the intestinal tract. Some fish would gulp air. This got better and better... and hence became lungs. (FYI, the gills turned into various features of the neck and lower face including ear bones and the jaw, with some of this happening long before functional gills were lost)

<comment><AUTHOR> Remarkable. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DRY</comment>


Show HN: Haaash- Launch your own Quora in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://haaash.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Just over one year ago, I became fascinated by the idea of one-clic deploy Q&A for product makers. Part of it because building our main product was hard and complicated enough that when it came to addressing users questions i wished i had a magic button. A button that i can push and get a beautiful space for users questions, just the same way we get a blog on Blogger.

Today I'm excited to share it and we'd love to take it further. I'll be thrilled to hear your thoughts, feedback and questions.

</comment><comment><USER2> I like your product, and there are too many aaa's in your name.

I found these other names that are free right now, if you're interested.

qaaz.com ( 5000 USD )

qooqleplex.com ( 11 USD )

aqra.com ( 3400 USD )

qadfly.com ( 11 USD )

qwora.com ( 11 USD )

quorify.com ( 11 USD )

qarrle.com ( 11 USD )

hashtaq.com ( 900 USD )

oraqle.com ( 5000 USD )

qillum.com ( 11 USD )

harqee.com ( 11 USD )

qeyring.com ( 11 USD )

quzzli.com ( 11 USD )

qally.com ( ~1000 USD )

qahaz.com ( 11 USD )

hazaq.com ( 11 USD )

qadify.com ( 11 USD )

qarity.com ( 11 USD ) ( like Quality )

aqeous.com ( 11 USD ) ( like AQueous )

haysh.com ( ~2300 USD )

qarry.com ( 16000 USD )

sahaah.com ( 11 USD )

qahihi.com ( 11 USD )

qadidi.com ( 11 USD )

<comment><AUTHOR> Great thank you, we'll think about it. Do you have any feedback on the value proposition, pricing? TY

<comment><USER2> On the plans page the copy is pretty clear, except for "come with a 30 day trial, could be unset anytime" probably works to say "free trial" and "cancelled" at any time, to match common usage if that's what you mean.

The pricing looks good. And the value proposition for this type of thing is great -- who wants to train people to use their product when people already using it can train people new to it?

I guess the incentives work to be there for people participating answers about a product, so that those people actually care about providing answers. Your business isn't really to the businesses you sell Q&A forums to, it's actually to the people you entice to participate on these Q&A forums.

Here are some ideas :

\-- A "your company name"-wide login so that a person can write answers on my product's forum, on someone else's products forum, and so one. And this person, and others, can see the reputation points they've accrued on the different Q&A forums where they participate. This makes it easier for people to be answerers across their areas of expertise and aggregates a view of their reputation ( collects the common wealth of their contributions ) across all the places they participate, incenting them more.

\-- A way, and this is quite huge, for companies to actually PAY expert people who are contributing value on the Q&A forum you provide to that company, as a form of outsourcing technical support, through the mediation of your service. You can take a cut of their pay, and in effect, you step into the "two sided marketplace" or "sharing economy" space for product experts and technical support. These power answerers are providing value to people by answering their questions, providing value to companies for helping people use their products and getting paid by the companies you are providing Q&A forums for. This would really work. And you are providing value to incent people to be these power answerers, which is another contribution to me choosing to say that your business is really to those people.</comment></comment></comment>


Advise Me HN: Parallel Computing n00b - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I have recently picked interest in parallel computing. I watched some clips on CUDA now i've just seen an introductory tutorial on some chip which was in the playstation. I'm prepared to get an SDK and don't want to be locked into some technology that wont fly, or begin learning something that is a 'no no'. Help with pointers. <comment><USER2> Get the Pthreads O'Reilly book. It's the best introduction to various ideas and primitives that you will need to think about parallel programs.

Also I would recommend OpenCL over CUDA if you're worried about being locked- in. It's got some of the lowest-common-denominator funk to it, but it's a lot more portable.

</comment><comment><USER3> dont forget parallel is much larger than cuda, gpu's just happen to be largely parallelizable chips. If your really basic, play around with java and get a feeling for threads and synchronous, maybe write a map/reduce program or 2 and run it on aws.</comment>


How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html

<comment><USER2> How many of these were due to officer involved shootings? How about how many were shot by officer's weapons?

Further, how many of these were drug related?

Since Newtown, we've all seen increased discussion about the 'need' for more restrictive gun laws.

However, we're still not seeing any honest controls (at least in this unscientific slate article) for how overly restrictive drug laws create opportunities for violent individuals to monetize their willingness to commit violence.

We also don't see any consideration of how many of these people in the Slate article are shot by cops.

Finally, if you consider 43k people die a year from traffic accidents... then you get an understanding of what we're dealing with. Nobody is trying to outlaw cars, which kill just as many people.</comment>