Show HN: Promnesia – an attempt to fix broken web history - <AUTHOR> https://beepb00p.xyz/promnesia.html <comment><USER2> As a PhD student, your post reads like a beautiful research paper. Motivation, prior work, contributions, technical details, example use cases, self- references, future work, even a system design chart. You've certainly sold me on the extension, great work!

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like it might be close to meeting my use case.

I have bad memory and hence try to write down everything I can. But often throughout a single day/week, I do research on a topic and have a bunch of tabs open that I intend to come back to. Or I read an article that several days later that I cannot recall where I read it at (HN, Twitter, etc.) This usually leads to a frantic search until I can find what I'm looking for as well as having a ton of tabs open.

Manually grouping topics together is too hard. What would be great is a tool that knows where I've been, discards bad information (google search result, followed by near immediate close) and some sort of an attempt at topic autoclassficiation (SAP, storage, backup etc.) that gives me the confidence to close tabs knowing that I can get back to a particular topic at a later date.

<comment><USER4> Bruh I've got tabs open from years ago. Hundreds across multiple VMs. I have tabs open that I migrated from my last computer. Someone please help.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've struggled for a while with this kind of overload and ended up with a system that makes it manageable:

1\. make is as easy to 'bookmark' stuff as possible -- with a single hotkey

2\. make it as easy to search over bookmarks as possible -- also ideally with a single hotkey or as quick as you could do google search

My way of achieving this is using org-mode files for 'bookmarks' [0] and using emacs/ripgrep to search over it [1]. Additional benefit of org-mode is that it's very easy to add notes, priorities, refile bookmarks, so the most interesting stuff propagates through my notes, and I don't feel bad about missing out on information that I don't have time to process because I can always quickly find it when I need.

[0] [https://github.com/karlicoss/grasp#readme](https://github.com/karlicoss/grasp#readme)

[1] [https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm- search.html#personal_information](https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm- search.html#personal_information)

<comment><USER5> I'm curious -- Roam Research appears to have won over a lot of folks with this kind of need recently. You didn't list Roam among the prior art -- do you think it's not really relevant? I can certainly see Roam eventually including cross-platform bookmarking/archiving, etc.

By the way, I think you should also take a look at Archive Box, which is very much in this direction: [https://archivebox.io/](https://archivebox.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean, I didn't include it as prior art for Promnesia or Grasp project?

For Promnesia, the goals of Roam and Promnesia are pretty different at the moment (although Roam data can be used with Promnesia, as I mentioned). In addition, I can't personally bet on a closed source tool.

For Grasp, simply because Roam wasn't known (or possibly didn't even exist!) when I wrote it. But even now that I tried Roam now, I don't think I can go back from using plaintext files, it's just so much snappier and more hackable.

Thanks, I used archivebox! Still need to set up a proper automatic archiving, and integration Promnesia with personal web archives is also in my plans!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds like something that would be close to meeting my needs. I, too, end up leaving far too many tabs open and I feel the need to have something in between a bookmark I'll never look at again and may have little context as to why I may have created it to begin with, and a tab just eternally polluting my browser and that might just end up getting sent to OneTab and thus as a "lesser" bookmark. I know Firefox (and probably Chrome as well) lets you leave tags on bookmarks, but these always seem like they're hardly enough. And that's without even mentioning all the different pseudo-bookmarks scattered over many different services!

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey karlicoss, I'm in love with your writeup.

You should know about Timeliner; Matt Holt's attempt at solving some of the data sourcing / data silo problems. [https://github.com/mholt/timeliner](https://github.com/mholt/timeliner)

He also points out Perkeep: [https://perkeep.org/](https://perkeep.org/)

Anyway. Data liberation is a huge driver for me. Making it a primary goal of my next app (primarily for bookkeeping/financial data, but I want to allow users to connect to the third party services I integrate with, eg. Uber, Amazon, etc, and be able to download their own data / play with it via an API).

Feel free to email me / tweet me (@Adys) if you ever want to chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :)

Oh, nice, I bookmarked Timeliner recently, but haven't tried yet. Look promising, I expect this to integrate well in Promnesia, and vice versa, my helper HPI package to integrate easily in Timeliner.

For Perkeep -- I tried it briefly, but haven't exactly understood the problem they are solving. I was planning to try again and writeup my experience with it to spark a discussion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been frustrated by many of the same things, and have recently been playing with Memex.

The solution outlined here leaves me with a couple of questions, though.

1\. Since there's a local app acting as a service, it's not clear to me how this would run on a mobile device.

2\. Once it is running on my mobile device (and home computer, and work computer, and chromebook, and various other machines I use), how do I aggregate all of the data? I'd like to be doing work-related research at home in the evening, and be able to see the fruits of it from the office.

I suspect that the answer to this is the same thing: that rather than a locally-running server, I could put something on my home server or on a cloud- based server, and direct all my various devices to communicate with that rather than localhost?

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone was asking that before, perhaps I should add to FAQ! [https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia/issues/114](https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia/issues/114)

Yep, you could use a VPS or something and host it behind a reverse proxy, that's what I've been doing so far.

Also for mobile specifically, on Android it works under Termux (haven't personally tried yet, but can't see why not, and the person in the issue I linked claims it works).

For data aggregation: it depends on the data source, but the easiest seems to make sure your data ends on a single computer, index it there, and after than you get an sqlite database which you can simply sync with Dropbox/Syncthing or anything else you prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice description of what you're trying to solve - it certainly resonates with me so I plan to try it out!

I've recently started trying Shiori[1] to manage my "bookmarks" and preserving offline copies locally without relying on The Internet Archive, however it still doesn't really help with private content (i.e. Pages only accessible as an authenticated and authorized user) so it'd be great if Promnesia caters for that. Plus the whole data silo thing...

I was a little surprised to see no mention of the "tree style tabs" extension which can help with "where did I get to this link from?" style questions

[1]: [https://github.com/go-shiori/shiori](https://github.com/go- shiori/shiori)

</comment><comment><USER10> You've convinced me to try it out.

My personal knowledge management project, Gthnk (gthnk.com), would appear to plug in easily as a Source - without any special plugin necessary. I really like what you've made!

</comment><comment><USER11> This might be more suitable as a Github issue but since you're here, I'm simply getting an error using Brave: "ERROR: Failed to fetch" (shown in the extension popup when clicking the eye, which is always red)

Another thing: Have you considered adding annotation capability directly into the extension? This is something I've thought about creating an extension for, since I don't use anything like Instapaper.

<comment><USER2> You have to run the local Python server by following the next instructions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! I guess I should make the error more clear in the extension and point to the readme.

In theory, I could make it defensive too and allow using without the local backend (only with local browser history), but not sure if there is much value in this.

<comment><USER2> I think the aspect of knowing where you browsed to a page from, and visualizing a hierarchy of pages within a site that I've visited, are the most interesting parts for me, and those certainly apply to the browser history alone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough! Created an issue [https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia/issues/120](https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia/issues/120)

<comment><USER11> Cheers guys!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am following this post too. I meant, from the first time you published this. I am using Worldbrain's Memex 2 and when I see this post reposted, I check the "Memex 2" section.

There is update! Maybe I will look into Promnesia and StorexHub integration next weekend. Thank you for your effort with Promnesia!

</comment><comment><USER13> Regarding the cleaning of URLs, are you aware of the ClearURLs [1] extension? It seems to achieve much of what you're trying to do.

[1]: [https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls](https://gitlab.com/KevinRoebert/ClearUrls)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh nice, didn't know of it, thanks! Indeed, looks like there is a lot of opportunity to collaborate with privacy enhancement extensions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Also, since the various web archives are getting shut down soon, it'd be great if such extensions could locally and securely preserve pages much like an archival crawler does it, or better yet create a distributed archive that's impossible to shut down or censor. Better yet still if there's local, language-aware index over such pages so that I could search them easily, without Google deciding what I should and should not see.

</comment><comment> m-localhost Great write up for a problem I'm thinking about myself a lot ([https://marcus- obst.de/wiki/Notetaking](https://marcus-obst.de/wiki/Notetaking))

Thanks also for using the Yak Shaving - for one, I got curious what was first, the term or the Ren & Stimpy episode illustrating the term and second, I found a description of most of my modus operandi.

</comment><comment><USER15> Have you thought about using SingleFile/SingleFileZ [1] to download archives of the pages instead of using links to wayback?

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/singlefilez/offkdf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/singlefilez/offkdfbbigofcgdokjemgjpdockaafjg?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER16> Haha, I love reading other people's code :)

      # TODO fuck. why doesn't that work???

Seriously though, this project looks great. I've been tossing around building something similar for awhile, and frankly I'm glad somebody else did it first (and from the looks of it, probably better)

</comment><comment><USER17> The motivations and analysis of current problems resonates with me deeply, thank you for the writeup!

Perkeep is another project that might be interesting to analyze in this context. [https://perkeep.org/](https://perkeep.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been thinking about this problem a lot myself too, and I'm currently rewriting www.historio.us to attack the problem more efficiently. I've been considering various new features, and this writeup is very useful, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome! I've definitely wanted this for as long as you have. I have this idea noted down exactly as you have described somewhere in evernote. Well done! Looking forward to contributing to it.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! I just started using the WorldBrain Memex and was trying to solve the issue of accessing other data sources, so perfect timing -- thanks!

Looking forward to trying it out.

</comment><comment><USER21> It does seem very useful.

And I'm disappointed :( Given the title, I was hoping for a way to fix Google's broken web history. So it goes.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does promnesia server run a local HTTP server? How do you prevent a website from slurping up the entire database?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's a local HTTP server by default. It's also possible to expose it via reverse proxy, and you can set basic auth password in the extension's settings.

What do you mean by slurping here? Security-wise, a random website shouldn't be able to query a localhost because of CORS policies.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, CORS isn't a magic bullet. Suppose a site named evil.example adds a script tag pointing to [http://localhost:1234/promnesia.js](http://localhost:1234/promnesia.js) and a victim loads evil.example. If your JS updates a DOM element with info from the database, evil.example's JS can read that DOM element and report it back to the server, without violating CORS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah I see, thanks! Good point, and I guess basic auth would protect against such sort of attack. So it seems it makes sense to use a token even if it's running as localhost, I could add an option, so it doesn't require setting up a separate proxy.

Either way, I hope I've been fairly reasonable about security so far, but I've mostly been concentrating on the 'plugging in the data' bit, so it's possible I've overlooked something (also I'm not a security specialist!). There is an open issue in case people have any specific concerns or spot something, happy to receive feedback! [https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia/issues/14](https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia/issues/14)

<comment><USER23> I think it's becoming clear that the whole 'local web server to do system things for a browser extension' approach is probably too fraught and should be abandoned for better IPC mechanism that browsers support. I don't think this is some 'drop everything and rewrite stuff' thing but it's worth reading up on and planning for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, possibly. Chrome actually has something called "native messaging" [https://developer.chrome.com/apps/nativeMessaging](https://developer.chrome.com/apps/nativeMessaging) which seems like a potentially more secure (and faster?) alternative, but I haven't had time to play with it yet.

<comment><USER23> Yep, that's one of the things I had in mind when mumbling about 'better IPC'. Safari already only supports that type of model. I think the day is not far when automated scans/app stores/etc start flagging the local http server thing as high risk/potential malware vector. It's an architectural dead-end.

On the other hand, some of the other stuff may not be fully baked:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23173724)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How about just an option for new tabs to retain a "Back" history to their parent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome actually keeps it in the database. However it only works within a single browser and breaks as soon as you're leaving for a native app, note in your todo list, etc. So I feel like correlating timestamps is the way to go here, simple enough and agnostic of specific implementations.

<comment><USER24> I'm talking mostly about normal tabs in normal desktop browsers. When you open a new tab, it should keep the "Back" history of its parent.

Safari for iOS, too, has a feature where you can temporarily go "Back" from new tabs. But like you said it breaks if you do anything else. Kind of a hack for mobile convenience rather than a true feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Justifications are very well-reasoned; a good read in and of itself.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well done. The write up really being together some concepts and creates some clarity on things I've been feeling about for a while.

Is author aware of my history based fully interactive offline archiver? [https://github.com/dosyago/22120](https://github.com/dosyago/22120)

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here, thanks!

Haven't seen your tool in particular, thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I only used [https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox](https://github.com/pirate/ArchiveBox) before, but haven't set up an automatic archival pipeline (yet)!

Also, integrating with local web archives is on my Promnesia todolist! I expect them to be very useful for indirect history retrieval, e.g. "I haven't visited that page, but it's within one link". Having local web archives makes it possible to implement such functionality in efficient way.

<comment><USER26> You have a really interesting way of thinking about all this stuff and have synthesized alot of different ideas, that I believe point to a future for the web. very cool to come across your work. Do you have a blog?

<comment><AUTHOR> My blog is literally the link I posted ;)

Perhaps this page [https://beepb00p.xyz/blog- graph.html](https://beepb00p.xyz/blog-graph.html) would be a good start if you want to explore</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Renting Prosperity - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304746604577382321021920372.html

<comment><USER2>
      But a steelworker in Buffalo, or an underemployed
      construction worker in Las Vegas, can't easily take his
      skills to where they are needed in North Dakota or
      Wyoming if he's underwater on his mortgage.

Maybe the federal government could ease this problem by taking over, temporarily, underwater mortgages while an owner is working out of state.</comment>


Show HN: Visual CSS Grid Editor - <AUTHOR> https://pinegrow.com/blog/introducing-the-visual-css-grid-editor/ <comment><USER2> I would rather use [https://github.com/artf/grapesjs](https://github.com/artf/grapesjs)

I guess it's all comes down to what one likes to grow:

pines or grapes

proprietary or open source

(all pun intended)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also comparing apples and oranges ;)

The feature set of the two are quite different, also the way how they are used. Here is an overview of what Pinegrow can do, including full support for Bootstrap, Foundation, plain HTML, CSS with live SASS editing, WordPress theme export and more:

[https://pinegrow.com/#features](https://pinegrow.com/#features)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Btw. we also have a course covering the basics of CSS Grid: [https://pinegrow.com/courses/learn-css-grid-with- pinegrow/](https://pinegrow.com/courses/learn-css-grid-with-pinegrow/)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you guys want to learn CSS grid I recommend this free online course with an amazing interactive editor/screencast:

[https://scrimba.com/g/gR8PTE](https://scrimba.com/g/gR8PTE)

</comment><comment><USER4> Great work! I've been looking for a tool to help jumpstart my designs before moving to code, especially for grids. Adobe XD is fun to work with, but it's a bit far removed from the code for day-to-day.

Questions:

Do you plan to add support for additional CSS and JS frameworks (e.g. Bulma, Vue, etc.)?

I noticed Atom is supported for real-time updates; is VS Code support planned?

Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Pinegrow is a general purpose HTML & (S)CSS editor, so Bulma (and similar) can be easily used with Pinegrow already.

React and Vue are another story, at the moment I don't have a clear vision of how they could be used with Pinegrow in an effective way.

VS Code is on the list, but not high priority. Our Atom integration is open source, perhaps somebody could/will adapt it for VS Code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love it, this is the kind of GUI tooling that we need for Web development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems similar to Setka Editor ([https://setka.io/](https://setka.io/)) .

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to see what exactly Setka does, but from what I can see, the main differences are that Pinegrow is a desktop app that works with your local projects and that Pinegrow is a more low-level HTML & CSS editor, that let's you do whatever you want with HTML and CSS, but with the help with visual tools.</comment></comment>


Slack have blocked using the website on mobile - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/twitonatrain/status/1210908608898256896 <comment><USER2> There exist plenty of equivalent-or-better alternatives that don't pull shady shit like this. Your tools should serve you, not the other way around.

Zulip: [https://zulipchat.com/](https://zulipchat.com/)

Rocket: [https://rocket.chat/](https://rocket.chat/)

Riot: [https://about.riot.im/](https://about.riot.im/)

Mattermost: [https://mattermost.org/](https://mattermost.org/)

<comment><USER3> Pretty much no one who uses Slack, chooses Slack. The companies we work for do. I despise Slack, yet I use it all day, every week day. It's quite the predicament.

<comment><USER4> Yep, basically don't have a choice and discussing alternatives is hopeless. We had better, once. Now we have this, in a full-blown browser runtime that doesn't integrate with the OS very well.

Actually triggers a good, 8-9 year old memory. Two places I worked at used to communicate through HipChat. It was simple, native, and did the job until Atlassian fucked it up with a massive rewrite. But even then it was still decent.

In both cases there was a massive bike shedding moment where the company engaged in a chat-war, with one half being solely devoted to Slack, and the rest of us holding back and saying why we need to switch. In both cases the Slack advocates went rogue and since they were also the loudest voices, people switched over just to get back into the conversation.

I have no idea what spell was cast on those people by Slack but, god damnit, it worked. It's just IRC in a walled garden and costing 10x as much, with shitty features you can't opt out of (like the new editor and threads, which birthed a whole cadre of slack micro-managers).

<comment><USER5> Were you using the same HipChat that I was? I recall the engineers at my employer (including me) clamoring to get off HipChat and onto Slack. Search was terrible, integrations/automation were clunky, and it was difficult to post code into chat. Slack was a breath of fresh air when we switched.

Also, I think Slack's threads are useful. You can have channels where you just post a single message for your question/issue and then have people reply in a thread, so that messages are naturally grouped together by topic instead of being a firehose of interleaved messages. Combined with good search, this makes Slack more of a valuable knowledge store than just an ephemeral chat tool.

<comment><USER4> We didn't need an all-in-one hub for realtime chat. Hipchat worked great for us, we had a separate WhatsApp group (with the founders and everyone else in there) for the social stuff. We all mingled but if you didn't want to, they'd find the preferred way to talk to you.

I don't want to name the exact place this happened but it was certainly a unique culture that I now miss. It was neither British or American.

It was the only place I've worked where I had easy and direct access to the founders, the C level, and the VPs, as a lowly senior engineer. And not because I brown-nosed my way up; we'd connect outside of work because we liked the same things.

A total tangent, but it's just to say that we never needed Slack in the first place. I doubt many places do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone know why Slack would have done this? I can certainly understand Slack not providing a specific mobile-web experience, but that is _not_ what is going on here. The user specifically switched their mobile browser to "Desktop Site" (one of my favorite features of Android Chrome by the way for sites that mysteriously provide dumbed down versions for mobile that are missing all the content I actually need - looking at you, Square), so the server should just serve them desktop-optimized content. Slack has to go out of their way to prevent this. Why would they care? It has to be a very small portion of their users in any case.

<comment><USER7> "Does anyone know why Slack would have done this?"

"App installs" is a key metric driving valuations for SaaS/PaaS/etc. businesses.

Trading a useful product for dollars isn't that interesting. Collecting an open-ended, continuous stream of intel on a large population is _fascinating_ \- at least until it become generally accepted that this "intel", and the levers for manipulating people based on it, are really not that useful or effective (which is my own prediction).

Slack has the attention today, but the real poster child for this kind of behavior is Sonos - nowhere do you see such a stark juxtaposition between _an actually useful product that people pay premium dollars for_ and pivoting the business model towards shady, sneaky, anti-customer patterns.

<comment><USER8> That's such a good point, especially when competitors like Microsoft are gaining on them ([https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-teams-dethrones- slack-...](https://blog.appfigures.com/microsoft-teams-dethrones-slack- becomes-most-downloaded-business-chat-app/) ) and Discord is growing even faster.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how the "Microsoft is gaining on Slack" narrative would be changed if we had metrics on Lync/Skype for Business users that switched to Slack or Teams.

Basically I have enormous doubts about Microsoft's growth numbers in the space, since I can't fathom that anyone who wasn't already paying for MS products would choose to use teams, and I'm curious if they've made up the ground they _lost_ to Slack in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This and the WYSIWYG debacle indicate that Slack [or their product managers] have stopped caring about a significant portion of their users.

<comment><USER11> Warning: pure speculation ahead.

Look at their stock price. I bet there are a lot of tense board meetings happening right now. Culture flows from the top down, and if executives are panicking about the stock price, it makes sense that they'd lose focus. I mean, if you had stock at slack, it would be easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs and following the money instead of shipping an excellent product.

<comment><USER12> I see a common pattern among utility providing IT companies, that despite the core functionality can be supported by tens of people, it goes ahead and hires thousand anyways, which give raise to features that are neither core nor that anyone wanted. The company then go under as the business can't generate enough revenue to feed the thousands of developer and management that has been brought in.

If you have a good app, keep it that way by not increasing bloat, both technically and organizationally.

<comment><USER13> Patreon comes to mind. They're essentially a members-only blog subscription company. It's beyond me what they need all those employees for. The only difficult problem they should have: dealing with fraud.

<comment><USER14> I'm guessing sales & marketing (and the usual O(log n) amount of management and administrative positions to support that).

It's one of those hidden costs of advertising being a zero-sum game. The waste only grows as you try to keep up with the competition that tries to keep up with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yet another service that forces you to use the app for no reason (FB Messenger, Instagram, Reddit), yet another reason to stop using it

<comment><USER16> > Yet another service that forces you to use the app for no reason

For sure there is a reason behind. It's just not a user-focused reason but a business one instead. One guess would be that the browser is a environment the user can kind of control, so they can block tracking and so on. When you're using the app, you don't have the same control anymore, so the business can receive more metrics from people that they wouldn't before.

Not saying this is good/bad, just that there is most probably a reason behind the choices they make.

<comment><USER17> Not trying to be too glib here, but we get it. That's the problem. HN is pretty tuned in to the trend of walled gardens and creeping control popular apps and platforms exert on their users. It's kind of the point of this article. Of course it's helpful for the business for many reasons.

<comment><USER18> This is the result of the VC market models and the near universal buy-in to the idea limited partner's money (and "advice" that comes with it) is required for starting software companies. Nothing more.

Bootstrapping is pain, but at least you and your customers retain control long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a bad move, especially given the constraints of their mobile app.

For example, their iOS app requires iOS 11 or later which means people with a 5c, 5, 4s and iPad 4th gen will not be able to use Slack. These may be deemed 'older devices' by the tech forward folks like those on here but you would be shocked how many are out there still today. It only presents more resistance to adopt the app at team scale, as they will probably realize soon.

<comment><USER20> >For example, their iOS app requires iOS 11 or later which means people with a 5c, 5, 4s and iPad 4th gen will not be able to use Slack.

AFAIK App Store allows you to download an older version if the current one isn't supported by your OS.

<comment><USER21> Sometimes old APIs are dropped server-side and thus older versions of the apps stop working. I have an old iPad at home where I can watch YouTube from the browser but not from the app (though Safari is so old that I don't really trust that device for anything that requires any kind of security).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Presumably all the commenters here have tested the claim?

Otherwise it appears to be premature or unresearched, or Slack have quickly backpedalled or fixed a bug.

There are reports in the Twitter thread of mobile browser access (using show desktop site), and I'm having no problems on mine.

<comment><AUTHOR> 100% does not work for me. Tried the various things suggested in the twitter thread and I always end back at the "get the app" page.

<comment><USER22> Thanks for confirming. I was more responding to the title claim, which seems incorrect - the desktop site option clearly still works for others. It may be a bug, or a new policy but time will tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In 2019 I got sick of mobile websites offering me their apps again and again. Facebook, LinkedIn and endless others. Stop it.

<comment><USER24> This makes me think something intereating:

Back in the late 1990s I used to have all sorts of software in my computer which I downloaded and installed. Some of it was purchased and other free or open source.

As the time passed, more and more services became "web based" including mail, music, calendar, note taking, etc.

I was part of a small group that did not like that. My reasoning was that there was no need to hack all that functionality in the web browser as it was highly inefficient. That it was better to code the network features into the desktop clients.

Web caught on and nowadays seldomly you get a client program in the desktop.

But now in mobile, we are returning to the clinet software first approach. And for some reason we resist the installation of client software and prefer browser based functionality.

<comment><USER25> > But now in mobile, we are returning to the clinet software first approach. > And for some reason we resist the installation of client software and prefer > browser based functionality.

IMO for any given program or 'app' today, the better it functions offline directly correlates with the desire I have to use it natively on a given platform, as opposed to web access.

Slack is just about useless offline, hence my strong preference to use it in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There seems to be a lot of angry nerds in here, and that basically describes me too. Hoping I can get a response from somebody with a broader perspective:

I'm in a position to switch my company over to one of the many alternatives mentioned in this thread. Has anybody here actually done that, and if I do it how angry is that likely to make my non-technical staff? If I don't want my marketing guy and my customer support team to hate me, can I still switch my company over to riot.im or mattermost?

<comment><USER27> Mattermost CEO here, to the extent it's helpful, here's a demo video of how it looks and feels importing a Slack team into Mattermost from 2017: [https://youtu.be/AKqHWqrAgpk?t=249](https://youtu.be/AKqHWqrAgpk?t=249)

This is when we were largely just an open source project and before raising $70M in venture capital, which has been accelerating development: [https://mattermost.com/blog/category/releases/](https://mattermost.com/blog/category/releases/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I just don't have faith anymore. Every piece of software I find myself liking ends up becoming hostile after 5 years of success.

<comment><USER29> This is why I try to use old software. It has much less feature creep and will stay relevant for the long run. If you can compile it yourself, even better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Stupidest move ever by Slack, so much so that one of my bosses is making the decision to close all Slack-related stuff for the business.

We have a strict no phones policy, so those of us needing to use slack utilize our desktops. Well, no longer, I guess.

Sorry, Slack. You fucked up bigtime, and now I can't wait to watch you hemorrhage out that user base of yours.

<comment><USER31> Desktop slack will keep working on desktop OSes. This is just them blocking desktop mode access from phone browsers.

<comment><USER30> Does not work with our Chromebooks, which is what comprises the majority of our work systems.

<comment><USER31> Oh they count Chromebooks too... Wonder if that's intentional.

<comment><USER30> Chromebooks are essentially running a mobile-focused OS, based in the browser. Makes sense they'd count that as a mobile platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Yet another service not to use on a mobile then. I don't mind not looking at work Slack channels on my personal phone

<comment><USER15> But they are taking away the _choice_ you could have

<comment><USER33> The choice is to use Slack or not. It's their service to offer how they wish, and your choice to use it or not. Tesla doesn't have to make a manual transmission (equivalent) car just because I'd rather drive stick, but I just won't drive a Tesla then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Slack continues the war against its own users" somebody will say.

<comment><USER35> And they will be right. The arrogance of market leaders is more or less a universal constant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Every growth-oriented startup with a popular product eventually ruins that product in the name of growth, which eventually kills the company and encourages somebody to start a new startup to build a product half as good as the original. The Silicon Valley circle of life.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is a shame for mobile developers as well. Deep linking from one app to another can be tricky to get right. Loading slack from the Android emulator browser was an easy way to test various deep links. Not sure why they would care.

</comment><comment><USER38> Slack is absolutely _unusable_ on a slow connection. It's not even just a matter of being patient, it flat out breaks with everything timing out.

I used to use the IRC gateway to maintain contact with some friends, and basically lost access to that social group when they closed down the IRC gateway.

IRC is far more inclusive, plus it's open and federated if you're into that.

<comment><USER39> Yes, IRC is much better, and is something I use. (IRC even works without specialized software, although it works better if you do have it (which isn't too complicated to write).)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder for enterprise licenses if there is specific mention of which clients on which form factors are covered in the license. I expect and hope that customers will get a lot more specific about what they are paying for so that companies can't just turn off functionality that has been paid for.

</comment><comment><USER41> I understand why people don't like this change (limiting options, etc), but I can see slack's POV from a business perspective. The mobile web usage might be so low that maintaining it costs more than forcing people to switch to the app. And mobile web might be a bad experience anyway (because slack is focused on standalone desktop app, mobile app, desktop browser instead), so it turns new users off with the crappy experience. But I don't have the numbers or any other insight, so it could be more simple: "we want more app usage". And even if you decide to just leave it alone, is anything truly maintenance free? (possibly)

This won't be the last thing to turn off mobile web to force-guide users to the app. And luckily for actual mobile web users, there seem to be alternatives.

<comment><USER42> The OP had a browser on the mobile device capable of rendering a "Desktop experience" and requested it. Slack went out of their way do discover that and block that user intent, rather than serve the Desktop UI that they test already in a desktop browser. The user knows they will be getting a desktop UI crammed into a mobile device, they asked for it.

<comment><USER43> And the OP is probably the exact profile of person who will request the desktop page and then open support tickets with Slack when some features break, causing them to spend hours debugging the issue.

The unfortunate reality is that it costs businesses money to support platforms. Blocking unsupported platforms probably results in an extremely small number of irritated users in exchange for saving thousands in support costs.

<comment><USER42> At which point the support folks can close the ticket and say "We don't support that platform, please use the mobile app, or ask your browser developer to better support Desktop-on-Mobile". Not supporting the platform, and actively preventing it are two different things. Especially with all the invasive power mobile apps have on your device vs being contained in a browser.

Too many apps stick their fingers into parts of the device that they don't belong. The well has been poisoned with so many apps abusing their privlege, so privacy conscious folks have to assume the worst when being pushed in that direction especially when the browser app worked without an issue (According to OP).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> _It is not possible to access your workspace from your mobile browser, we 're afraid._

This isn't the first time I've seen a thinly-veiled-fuck-you attitude from them, and it's something that definitely won't make me want to start using Slack.

"Afraid of what? _You broke it!_ "

<comment><USER45> "I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I can't let you do that."

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There's a small irony that this complaint is on twitter, whom don't permit desktop site on mobile either and haven't for a long time.

<comment><USER47> Maybe, but... Twitter actually _has_ a mobile website. You can argue - and I would agree - that "request desktop site" should give you what you asked for, but there's still a difference between "here is the mobile web UI" and "here is a link to download an app": namely, one still allows you to use the site if you can't or won't install a native app.

Slack is actively locking folks out of their site here, a service that folks have paid for even... That is a significant departure from what folks might've seen in the recent past with mobile device detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I still find it interesting how much people despise native apps. Surely that is a big problem for, say, Apple.

</comment><comment><USER49> The sentiment around Slack has changed so much so fast. It was only a few years ago when all anyone could do was rave about it. Maybe it was because on the surface it was the rare decently designed piece of enterprise software.

<comment><USER14> Few years ago they had an IRC gateway, so they seemed like a user-friendly startup, and not another exploitative walled garden.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is why I believe that the user-agent header was a bad idea.

<comment> swagasaurus-rex Is there an easy way of altering the user-agent header for my phone?

I would rather take the desktop site every time instead of being pidgeonholed into stupid m.-.com that forcefeeds me popups of how their mobile experience is so much better.

<comment><USER28> If you have Android and have Firefox, there are extensions that can do it. Otherwise, you would need something to intercept requests because Chrome and Safari on mobile don't have extensions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Nit pick on the title: shouldn't this be "Slack _has_ blocked…" rather than "Slack have blocked"? Is Slack plural?

<comment><USER51> Both are acceptable as you can think of a company as a singular entity or as a group or many parts.

There is a nice analysis at [0]

[0] [https://www.hallaminternet.com/google-trends-can-settle- gram...](https://www.hallaminternet.com/google-trends-can-settle-grammatical- debates/)

<comment><USER52> Typically, in formal English, companies are singular.

<comment><USER53> Only in US. In the rest of the Anglophone world, it's always plural.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Serious question: how is slack doing now that Microsoft is using all is muscles to push Teams?

Maybe the slack board is in panic mode because of that?

</comment><comment><USER55> Browsers are getting more powerful. Eg use local storage for scrolling back in old comments. So even less need for apps now.

</comment><comment><USER56> Slack continue to make product changes that speak loudly. Listen to what they are saying.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ah ha!

Visited in an incognito tab and was finally able to get access to desktop site on mobile it again.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I wonder if I clear cookies if it would work on a regular tab.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> How does this work when Slack wants to open long code samples in your browser?

</comment><comment><USER58> Facebook on mobile is only usable from Chrome

<comment><USER59> I use it via Firefox on Android. No major issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I never use the slack app even on desktop. Always use web.

</comment><comment><USER61> What's wrong with IRC? It still works a treat, and has ever since the early- mid 90's.

<comment><USER52> The main problem for me is - if you're not logged in, you've missed that part of the conversation.

<comment><USER61> There are options for persistent connections, with logs and detachment, etc. ZNC/PsyBNC/Quassel come to mind. ZNC, in particular, is extendable via Perl or Python (or TCL if you're a masochist). I hear good things about Quassel as well, but it's still early in development.

I get Android notifications if I'm detached from irssi in tmux and someone PMs, says my handle, or any number of custom triggers I set. All free & open source (other than the android phone).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Slack is IRC for millennials. This is purely about gather device specific metrics that are gathered via granted 'permissions' vs providing a service users pay for.

<comment><USER63> IRC is IRC for millenials, Slack came much much later

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> To be fair to the devs at slack, it does actually cost them something to re- enable this.

every change to the code base has to be checked on mobile web or things will eventually break. at that point will we see an angry tweet about not fixing that?

i develop on a web based system and we don't support mobile on most of our site because we don't have the resources to. if we started getting bug reports about this more frequently than we do, we may do the same. It makes our product look bad when we let someone do something we don't QA for. We pride ourselves on rapid response to our clients requests, with this we build goodwill. we explicitly state we do not support mobile except for specific modules. even with that prior information, users sometimes try anyway and run into bugs. this experience + being told we won't fix the bug because it's not a supported platform causes us to lose the goodwill we've worked hard to build.

in my local neighborhood there are a ton of wholesale shops that even though there are maybe one or two customers a day (ie the shops are dead most of the time) they refuse to sell non wholesale. it's not packaging, most things are easily sellable one-off. there are no regulations or laws. they choose not to sell to one class of buyers. if they allowed one-off sales, they would then have to start running their business to support doing that correctly- this means having small change, more personnel, probably introduce some security to watch the now increased traffic in their shops etc.

if slack does mobile web, they'll have to do it like they do everything else, the "slack" way.

<comment><USER65> >"mobile web browsers do not provide the best experience; you really should download our app!"

Put a message like that up instead of disabling it altogether.

<comment><USER64> we do this. we still have users get mad when we explain we don't support it :(</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Sublime Text plugin to toggle font to Comic Sans - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seangoedecke/sublime-comic-sans-toggle <comment><USER2> You deserve at least one comment. This is pure evil!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Mind if I quote you in the README?

<comment><USER2> Not at all. Be my guest :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 WHHYYY!! I still might install it...</comment>


Sailfish – a real alternative to iPhone and Android? - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/32922/here-comes-the-first-real-alternative-to-iphone-and-android/ <comment><USER2> No way. The UI is a gimmick. Watch the video.

Seeing him use it does not lead me to believe this will make my life better at all. There are far too many intricate gestures and complex interactions.

This UI does not solve any problems. The interactive tiles that are essentially miniature versions of the full app are just noisy. Part of the beauty of this new mobile experience that recent smartphones have cultivated is modal interaction. One app for one thing. I launch my music app and it's full screen with large touch buttons that are easy to use. I switch to another app to immerse myself in reading or responding to emails.

I never need to do this from my homescreen, let alone see or interact with all of it at once.

The ambient photo stuff is neat but also entirely useless.

Nothing about this is radical. It's just a layer of more playful paint on yet another mobile platform.

Why is everyone so fucking concerned with multitasking?

My android-fanboy buddy showed me something the other day that made me chuckle. He says, "dude, look at this." He proceeded to load a video from the media library, and started to play it in some kind of picture-in-picture mode where it was floating above everything else on the phone. Then he tells me, "how cool is this?! you can use your phone while the video plays." my simple response, to which he had no answer: "when is that useful?" It's not! And he proceeded to admit that, albeit with his tail between his legs. I didn't say that to be an asshole, I just think that these days people are far too excited about gimmicks and useless customizations. He then went on to say something like "well what about if you want to watch a youtube video and also reply to some text messages?" ... society is doomed.

<comment><USER3> >"when is that useful?"

I would like to be able to listen to youtube music videos while doing other tasks.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't work for Youtube. Only videos on the device. It's a joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...a real alternative to iPhone and Android"

There is something about this title that just incites a negative reaction from me. To me, it implies that the current available options are broken beyond repair and that a "savior" is coming to liberate us from them, and boy... do I hate self-proclaimed saviors, especially in the tech area.

Android/iPhone/WP7/Mozilla OS/$xyz are the options we have, and we don't need a _real_ alternative to them anymore than we need anything else. New mobile OS coming up? Great, competition benefits me, the end user, since my devices just keep getting better. But please don't pretend to be something that you are not.

<comment><USER6> I guess headlines was written by journalist anyway. Actually you try to read more from headline than it actually states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The UI doesn't seem like any radical departure. Even the BB10 UI is probably more radical than that. I do like the fact that it's another open source Linux OS, but for now I'm rooting more for Firefox OS, even though it's yet to be seen if it will perform as well as Mozilla claims on low-end devices.

But I've noticed Firefox OS has given Mozilla a lot of incentives to create new advanced HTML5 API's, and I like that. So the more they can keep up the Firefox OS project alive, the better.

</comment><comment><USER8> In contrast to others here I actually kind of liked it. I really dug the idea of making app icons interactive and useful, it's an intelligent use of limited real estate.

Also, I'm not sure if it's just novelty or actually more intuitive, but I really liked how the icon grid scrolls vertically rather than horizontally. Maybe it's because of the aspect ratio of mobile screens but it just looked more intuitive to my eye.

</comment><comment><USER9> They aim to crack China and their reasoning is that the big players haven't got a foothold yet due to being a young-ish market.

At the same time they are looking to developers to create native apps for it and hardly anyone is going to develop for a phone if their primary market is China where 99.9% people steal.

<comment><USER10> "China where 99.9% people steal."

That's a pretty sweeping statement not to be backed by a source with a figure even remotely resembling 99.9%.

<comment><USER9> Source: A friend IOS App collecting analytics data. Sure, I could make it up but that is the data he got back.

<comment><USER11> Right and 99.9% of chinese run iOS... A more likely answer is you are just Racist.

<comment><USER9> I should have been more clear, so let me correct that for you, of 99.9% of those that owned IOS and that downloaded his app - they did not pay for it. For the record it got 4.5 stars with over 800 reviews so it not by all means crap. That is the figure I was given. Given we were talking about mobile, I was using that as my guide for a platform not yet on the market.

China has some of the highest piracy rates in the world—with a piracy rate of 96% in PC software, 93% in motion pictures, and 85% in records and music. ["China Fever" F. Fang 2007, International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) report, Feb. 18. 2010 ]

[http://www.china-mike.com/facts-about-china/economy- investme...](http://www.china-mike.com/facts-about-china/economy-investment- business-statistics/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is off topic, but if your website requires Javascript for me to read a text article, fuck you.

</comment><comment><USER13> No.

There's a lot of options on the mobile space already (iOS, Android and WM8) - which, IMHO is enough (not to mention BB, FirefoxOS, WebOS, Maemo/Symbian/Whatever-Nokia)...

<comment><USER14> I don't think the prize for the 3rd place has been given out yet. Possible contenders are BlackBerry, Bada, and WP. Symbian still sells ok-ish, but is clearly a dead end. And then there are some new players including Tizen, Sailfish, and Firefox OS.

Personally, I'd like to see a properly open alternative do well. Firefox OS would be the best for the web, and Sailfish for Linux in general.

<comment><USER15> > Firefox OS would be the best for the web, and Sailfish for Linux in general.

Agree to this... users do not care about Linux and often has a negative feel among the masses in China; the try to be Windows when you can get the real stuff for 'free'. They care more about access to service and being able to do the same as their friends/colleagues, play games, access to 微信 (weixin, wechat), 微博 (weibo), etc. For this the compatibility layer might come in handy, since without it is hard to find the users.

Note: Blackberry and Bada are not really contenders in China. WP maybe, but purely due to the looks of the phone (eg Lumia), but was faced with no store access in China for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even if someone considers this a 'better' UI than iOS or Android (I personally don't), there's no point in switching because as soon as you do, that $200+ you've spent over the last 4 years on apps is gone forever and you'll only get less quality software as their replacement (if they exist). Apple and Android don't just shoot for a 'sexy' look, they create thousands of docs and demos from their SDK for the developers who then create hundreds of thousands of tutorials to help other developers learn quicker. They then spend millions of dollars and millions of hours creating the next big thing. The successes of iOS and Android are not awarded to a design firm, they are given to us.. the developer ecosystem and for that reason, this will never be a real alternative... at least not for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER17> The UI is pathetic. Why are people so bent on such complex gestures? Scroll up for this, scroll down for that, two finger slide up for another thing. Seriously?

xemacs has a cult following and so will sailfish. But you know how xemacs will do in the "market".

</comment><comment><USER18> So... the big innovation here is "widgets." Something that android has had for years.

</comment><comment><USER19> Application of Betteridge's law of headlines says no.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines>

It's also _not_ the title of the article ("Here comes the first real alternative to iPhone and Android"), but the premise of the article invites a negative response nonetheless.

1\. They have no production as of yet. 2\. They have no carrier partners as of yet. 3\. They have a retail partner who will sell the phones—if the carriers approve them.

The claim is that the retail partners control the mobile relationship with the carriers in China, but that would greatly surprise me. It's not impossible, but colour me skeptical.

It's also my understanding that Europeans don't necessarily get subsidized phones, either—but they still (nominally) control which phones are allowed on their networks.

It gets worse later in the article where it suggests that the carriers and handset manufacturers are going to have even _more_ freedom to modify the base OS than Android manufacturers do. This alone guarantees that Sailfish will not be a viable platform—you will become as locked into a single manufacturer for any app you buy just like you did with "feature" phones that had BREW or JME games & apps.

The suggestion that Sailfish avoids patent infringement is also laughable: there's so many patents out there that I suspect that absolutely no one can write software that _doesn't_ infringe on _something_ these days. They _think_ that they've avoided patent infringement (just as Google does with WebM), but until someone decides to sue over an alleged patent infringement, no one knows whether Jolla would win.

There's an interesting bit buried in the story, too: they have changed CEOs at least once. The current CEO is Marc Dillon; he attained that post in October when Jussi Hurmola stepped down and became a consultant to the company. Hurmola is supposedly looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. According to what I saw on LinkedIn, Hurmola may have only had the CEO position for as little as eight months, but possibly as much as eighteen (Jolla was founded in March 2011). For a startup with big ambitions, I would want as much stability at the top as possible, personally.

<comment><USER6> Where do you collect your facts? I'm not even sure if you don't have bad intentions with your comment. It would be nice from your side to state your relation to Jolla (e.g. competitor)

1\. Headline was written by journalist not by Jolla. OK I got it wrong. You are negative to journalist, right?

2\. You are most probably right about production but you simply don't know. You are wrong about carrier partners: they have one in Finland ([http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/21/jolla-signs-first- ca...](http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/11/21/jolla-signs-first-carrier-deal- with-finlands-dna-to-carry-upcoming-sailfish-powered-phones/)) and one in China.

2\. Europeans can get subsidized phones but don't have to. You can use any phone if you manage to get one. I even used one phone that is not for production just fine (N950).

3\. I doubt that lock is an issue here. You basically can reflash your phone with pure OS if you want to - like you can reflash your N9 with Mer now.

4\. I almost agree with you regarding patents but idea is that Jolla has its own patent portfolio gifted to them by Nokia.

5\. Hurmola according to LinkedIn still works for Jolla. As well they are not hiding why CEO was changed - they are quite transparent regarding that. Sorry, but don't find that now.

I'm not related to Jolla in any way. I'm (mobile) developer who believes that Jolla will succeed.

<comment><USER19> I have no relation to Jolla at all—neither competitor or likely customer. At the moment, I'm not doing any direct mobile development (we will be offering something _for_ mobile in the future, but this is not affected by the existence or absence of Jolla). My entire relationship with Jolla is reading this nonsensical article and writing my comment with a bit of simple (short) research.

1\. Yes, the journalist (or his editor) is lazy here. However, they probably wouldn't cast the article in such a stark light without prompting from Jolla.

2a. Happy to admit that I was wrong here; the article contained no information about these relationships, and Jolla's website is essentially content free.

2b. I addressed this (mostly) in a reply to a sibling comment. My point here was that (again) the journalist was lazy-to-irresponsible for pretending that China is different because of the lack of subsidy.

3\. Unless Jolla exerts some control over the handset manufacturer and/or the carriers that offer Sailfish phones, which Jolla has explicitly said that they aren't going to do, users will _not_ (necessarily) have the freedom to reflash their phone. This is the problem with Android: there have been both manufacturer locks and carrier locks that prevent timely receipt of updates (including security updates) or OS management of your own phone. You have to root and/or jailbreak your phone to make this happen, and some phones actively fight that (e.g., one of the Motorola phones that I remember a big stink about).

4\. Having a nice set of defensive patents gifted by Nokia (hopefully it's done properly so they can _use_ them for defence, rather than merely having a licence to them) is useful, but is not the same as the claim in the article that the are immune to any existing patents. Some of the claims made by Samsung regarding radios clearly indicate that this is not the case.

5\. I looked for the CEO change info on Jolla's remarkably content-free website. I couldn't find it. Hurmola's relationship to Jolla (as noted on LinkedIn) is limited to being on the board, as the transition notes that I _did_ find was related to looking after the Sailfish ecosystem. What I found interesting is that it's not clear to me how long Hurmola was CEO—and again, there's remarkably little information. Regardless of _why_ the change was done, I'd be a little skeptical as a partner about the changes at the top with as little transparency as they exhibit.

I'm neither positive nor negative toward Jolla itself: I think it will fail, but I don't want them to fail. I'm deeply negative to this horrendously awful uncritical article. It's roughly the equivalent of a news report from Fox News, CNBC, or cnet, or an analysis by Rob Enderle.

<comment><USER6> I agree that article is poor. Jolla's official presentations, interviews with them or their twitter feed is much better source of information.

2b. I guess that's poor interpretation what Jolla says about China. In general Jolla puts a lot of hope/weight in China.

3\. Let's wait and see. While betting on China from their side might mean that users will have less freedom not more.

5\. My impression is that Hurmola simply not enjoyed being CEO (he found himself more valuable in other position). <http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/15/jolla-ceo-switch/>

I personally believe that at least one company should manage to take special place in current market (BB10, Jolla, Mozilla, someone else) - I don't want to name it 3rd ecosystem because it is not. My bet is on BB10 and Jolla (BB10 has bigger chances than Jolla, but Jolla might succeed in Europe as well if marketed properly). I personally find Android quite boring/unattractive/wrong and iOS too closed - both as developer and as user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really think these tile widgets are not useful or easy to understand for an average user.

Apple has it right: iOS is just an app launcher, and there is just one tier of apps, none of this widget-y stuff.

I will note that small read-only changes can be beneficial to the user (calendar shows current day in icon), but I wouldn't dare make someone try and interact with that.

<comment><USER6> Well, why everyone should please "average user"?

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2012/07/21/finlands-j...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2012/07/21/finlands- jolla-will-be-the-ferrari-of-the-smartphone-world/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Did they happen to take a look at the phone market in China? They think it's the only way to go, but unfortunately Android got there first. Open source and free. Everything is going Android there, their own app stores too.

Unless they are releasing it for free too then I doubt they will overtake Android in China.

<comment><USER15> Yes, Android is the first mover in the market and also iOS is quite dominant in the rich areas (BeiShangGuangShen). It is the toughest market to deal with, even with the help of D.Phone... why? They would have to compete with local brands like Meizu and Xiaomi (Android) which release good quality for an affordable price. I expect Jolla wants to aim for the richer group of people, like Vertu does(/did)... but these does not shop at D.Phone...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That demo video is terrible. If it really has anything new in it's UI, that guy failed miserably at demonstrating it. Changing the background/ambience is one of the pillars of a "more personal user experience", really?

I'd like to understand why this Quartz guy is jizzing all over this company, but the article doesn't help either.

<comment><USER23> > I'd like to understand why this Quartz guy is jizzing all over this company

Probably been promised a free phone: wait until he gets an old N9 as demo phone without DIY flash instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is it not possible to implement swipes on Android widgets?

<comment><USER25> I know I can scroll the Calendar widget vertically. Don't know about horizontal for other widgets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's meego.

<comment><USER14> Well, actually Mer, the MeeGo spin-off <http://merproject.org/>

Some background on this whole Maemo/MeeGo/Sailfish story <http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/meego-diaspora/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some day, we'll look back on the days of a mobile OS being announced every few months and chuckle.

<http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-01-13/></comment>


Downturn may turn techies to crime, say reports - <AUTHOR> http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-255464.html

<comment><USER2> _"... Forensic specialists at PwC are advising businesses to mount extra checks on areas where staff will be most tempted to defraud the company, such as expenses, access to sensitive customer data or massaging performance figures to win a bonus ..."_

How did the _"Forensic specialists"_ miss the mismanagement of the sharp pointy end of the business in the deregulated financial market?</comment>


Ask HN: What is up with he submissions on the front page today? - <AUTHOR> Today is odd for HN:<p>* How Photographers Help Parents of Stillborn Babies (newsweek)<p>* School Recess Improves Behavior (nytimes)<p>* Adult Fast-Food Diets Tied to Too Much TV as Teen (washpost)<p>* What Do Women Want? (nytimes)<p>The new media/social media PR zombies are here! <comment><USER2> They seem legitimate to me, at least reference the guidelines for the site.

It's not like you have to read them.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you get 0 points on a submission, I wonder?

<comment><USER4> Good question. Doesn't the board mechanics prevent that?

<comment><USER5> It has happened before, as a result of accounts being flagged as unable to vote.</comment></comment></comment>


Should You Have Phone Insurance? - <AUTHOR> http://techpp.com/2013/05/07/phone-insurance/

<comment><USER2> In India we never had this concept of phone insurance. I guess Nokia was the first to introduce it in partnership with some company few months back.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I definitely don't need it :D</comment>


Ask HN: What's your process for reselling your used hardware? - <AUTHOR> I figure that the HN crowd has a large amount of hardware that it cycles through. How/where do you sell it? I'm looking for something painless where I don't have to spend a lot of time vetting the buyer or convincing the buyer that I am a legitimate seller. <comment><USER2> Few years back, I thought about this and came up with some sort of an interesting idea. Make a museum of sort for future generations (for our family) and hopefully for the small community I came from (I'm from a small town in India).

Inspired by a friend of mine who digs up and collects World War items, including buried soldiers, shells, guns, etc. He is funded by the Japanese, British, and a tad from the Indian government and have proudly donated the museum to the public.

I'm not very nostalgic, and so prior to this, I either gave it to someone or sell them off for cheap - stay minimal, and simpler.

Now, I collect/archive interesting items which our family have used. I still sell and/or give off many working devices. I'm preserving the iPhone 3G (first iPhone released in India), iPhone 4, iPhone 6 (but not the 7, 8 which are same as 6). I've analog wired phones, the white MacBook, first MacBook Air, the old 16-inch MacBook Pro (I think, from around 2006) Megabyte capacity HDD, Floppy Disk, etc.

This also extends to some toys, apparels for the kids but they are more of personal interest.

I'm not expecting too much out of this, and will start small but I'm hoping that I should be able to kickstart something in the next few years.

<comment><USER3> My father worked in telecom for 30 years, doing network validation engineering. We recently put together a curio with all the phones he's tested over the years. All the IPhones, countless androids. Old Nokia / bell phones. Just be sure to remove the batteries!

<comment><USER2> Ah! Thanks. I really need to remove the battery from the 2016 MacBook Air.

<comment><USER3> No problem, I spent this past Christmas break shucking old Iphones for his display case. Do it sooner rather than later!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really. Hardware generally doesn't get less useful with age, just less efficient than new/current hardware. Handing that inefficiency off to someone else doesn't do well for our overall carbon footprint.

Instead, buy things that last, use them until you can't, then recycle them: [https://www.techdump.org/](https://www.techdump.org/)

Sent from my 2016 iPhone SE.

<comment><USER5> > Handing that inefficiency off to someone else doesn't do well for our > overall carbon footprint.

Instead, they will go ahead and buy a new item for themselves. Its increased efficiency is unlikely to make up for the cost of manufacturing an entire new item from scratch, carbon-wise.

<comment><USER4> Not if I continue to use the old hardware until it is unusable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I generally don't tend to amass hardware that I will have to sell off later. If I buy something, it's because I expect to use it for as long as possible, basically until it is so far behind the curve that it is effectively useless. At that point I either give it away for someone to tinker with, or hand it off for recycling.

Both my desktop and my laptop are from ~2011, with a few token upgrades here and there. My last smartphone was from 2014, I replaced it last year because it bricked itself.

However I am actually in the process of having to sell some hardware. Some it I have gotten for free (refurb Thinkcentre M72e Tiny PC, old single disk Zyxel NAS), most of it stuff my dad left behind when he passed away earlier this year. Old PCs, various electronics and so on.

Generally if it contains any data, I will either securely wipe the drives or destroy them and sell without storage.

For my particular situation, I already knew his band mates and some of his old colleagues, so they got first dibs on the band gear (amps, speakers, mixers, HDD recorder) and electronics tools. Some stuff was donated after that.

Then I set up basically an open rummage sale, advertised it locally and let people have a look around and make bids (I did look up the general price ranges for most of the interesting stuff). I'm on the third weekend of doing that, once enough stuff is gone, all the rest will go to recycling.

Honestly the most painless way to sell stuff for me has been the local Craigslist-alike, I put a decent description and don't try to get the absolute highest price. That usually makes sure my stuff sells quickly.

</comment><comment><USER7> I sell cheaper things (<£200) on eBay for whatever I get in the auction, even if I only make enough to cover the postage.

More expensive things I try to find friends and family willing to give me something for them. eBay scammers for macs and iPads are a nightmare as it's easy for them to win an auction and then disappear when they see you're not gonna get screwed over. Then you have to start all over again.

I see it more as reuse than selling. The money I make from selling covers the effort of selling it and is a reward for keeping the junk from piling up.

</comment><comment><USER8> Actually I never do. Once a piece of hardware is no longer useful to me, I usually give it away to someone who might have use for it. Often that ends up being my parents which is arguably pointless, given how little they look after hardware in general but... Oh well...

</comment><comment><USER9> Sadly Facebook Marketplace seems to be the most active.

I say sadly because the overall level of intelligence, diligence and responsibility is much lower than Craigslist, eBay or forums. This of course is my anecdotal opinion.

eBay has a bias towards the buyer during disputes and many people are taking advantage of that.

Craigslist was basically sidelined here in Canada due to eBay's heavy advertising of their competitor called Kijiji.ca

A further problem here in Canada is that shipping is pretty expensive so local pickup works best.

</comment><comment><USER10> The last thing I sold on ebay was a 11 year old netbook - the asus eee pc 1000he. I had replaced it's hdd with an SSD 9 years back and when I booted it after a EIGHT year hiatus it booted just fine, running xp and chrome and for the most part working okay. I listed it on ebay and sold it for 55 bucks. I'm definitely hoping that it found someone who actually uses it for something.

In general, if it's still working and I believe it has use left, I find ebay to be an amazing place to sell it. Some times, it sells for far greater value than it should, but from the names it apppears as if it's bought by people who can't otherwise afford any gadget. Definitely feels better than tossing it.

If it doesn't work, or is fully broken, I just toss it in the best buy recycle bin most of the times. Still have my broken Vaio Z (the original RAID0 beauty), if there's any takers I'll ship it for free!

<comment><USER11> My last sale of ebay didn't end well so I gave up. They quibbled over the year of manufacture V year of release for a seven year old computer. Get a life. I negotiated a 20% refund to get the case closed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not aware of any "easy" sale places. Best be is just take a huge hit on the price & it'll move fast. That also assumes it's relatively modern gear.

Personally I go through a lot of gaming hardware. Which means GPU gets outdated but CPU/RAM is still solid. So that makes for a good home server. Or I pass it on to family - a old gaming rig makes for a superb facebook machine.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've sold old computer hardware on both eBay and hardforum [1]. The nice thing about hardforum is a lot of buyers have heatware [2] which makes it easy to judge their legitimacy. I'm sure there's other forums out there that have similar buy/sell sections you can use. To increase your legitimacy it's best to maybe explain a bit about the hardware (e.g. how hard was it run) and have a picture with something showing ownership (e.g. the hardware with a piece of paper where your username is written).

[1] [https://hardforum.com/](https://hardforum.com/)

[2] [https://www.heatware.com/](https://www.heatware.com/)

<comment><USER14> Eh hardforum has a good FS/FT community but the rest of the place is becoming a cesspool of trumpists

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I generally keep all of my computers. I have an extensive computing collection going back to the mid 90s; 1ghz slot cpus, super socket 7 boards, 3dfx cards, a handful of ISA soundblasters, etc.

When I buy a piece of computer hardware I try to think of how it will be perceived in the future for someone whose loves these devices. For example I just retired my main desktop with a 2600k with the original GTX Titan. It's packed away and I may bring it out someday to make a powerful windows XP rig.

</comment><comment><USER16> I find ebay works great, though they do take a reasonable chunk of the money. The reputation aspect is handled for you. Auctions for most things seem to sell for reasonable prices, so it removes the effort of working out a good price. At least in the UK, a few clicks after your item sells on the website and a courier will pick it up the next day from your home. Before this was a thing, working out how to ship large items was more hassle and quite expensive.

</comment><comment><USER17> I generally give away pcs to friends and family and resell Macs as the value tends to hold and be easier to eBay off. My friends swap pc parts based on what each person does (i had a pc box with a good Video card for gaming and i don't game so a friend took it out and replaced it with something less suited for that and installed more memory for me to code).

But Macs always sell easily on basically any platform

</comment><comment><USER18> If it's a phone and it's not broken, sell it on Swappa. By far the best marketplace for phones.

I use eBay for most other electronics. The fees are killer but whatever I'm happy to get a few bucks and get these things out of my drawer.

If you want to sell something fast use FB Marketplace. I sold household items on there in under 3hours from listing to pickup.

<comment><USER19> Tablets, laptops, and watches, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of my projects over the years has been a hardware exchange that would run a program that would get all installed parts in a computer, possibly stress test. Find a buyer and optionally sell you an upgrade for the diferencie in price.

It's called jtronics.exchange, but currently rewriting most of it. If any one would like to help it would be super cool.

</comment><comment><USER21> Try reddit.com/r/hardwareswap, they have buyers and sellers who must verify their goods and also lists if they've committed fraud before, and how many successful sales before that.

<comment><USER19> > also lists if they've committed fraud __on that account __before

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> ebay is the easiest but if the item is going for less than £10 don't bother.

Freecycle is also good as are forums like: [https://forums.servethehome.com/](https://forums.servethehome.com/)

If you have a LOT of gear - ie. rooms full of the stuff as I found in a hoarder family home I had to clear recently you can pay £200 to have a professional IT recycling company to take it all and wipe all the disks on your behalf. They provided certificates for all wiped hard drives and recycled items.

</comment><comment><USER23> Speaking of which, I'm currently trolling classifieds and Facebook marketplace trying to find a first generation threadripper box on the cheap. I'm in Denmark

</comment><comment><USER24> I sold my 2015 13" macbook pro for 900$, just remarkable if you can get almost half the price back after 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hardware forums like forums.serverhrhome.com Anandtech arstechnica etc

Sign up with heatware for reputation and read the rules and there you go

</comment><comment><USER25> I never resell stuff, I upgrade my phone, pc and laptop once every 6 years and keep the previous as a backup. And the one before that i disassemble to parts and only keep those if they're still useable (and useful e.g. if i repair a family members pc) or throw them away.

</comment><comment><USER26> With 8 kids, there's always someone who'll take laptops, etc. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hardware deserves your care. If you're gonna put it down, the least you can do is feel the pain, whatever means to you.</comment>


Galactic Suite Orbital Hotel Taking Reservations for 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.galacticsuite.com/

<comment><USER2> Besides the horrible graphic design/flash and the fact that this is rife with errors... is there any proof that this is anything but a scam?

edit: according to the wikipedia article on this company, they were supposed to have began construction of the station in 2008. Here's another couple of sources instead of the atrocious official site:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5A151N...](http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5A151N20091102) [http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/05/content_1239037...](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/05/content_12390374.htm)

(according to xinhua, it's "expected to be constructed of connecting pods," which would indicate that it has not yet begun construction. I still think this is a scam- somehow I doubt they'll be able to get a station up there and ready to go in three years)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone know of a good book where I can wager against this?

<comment><USER4> I don't think a bookie will want to pay much for it. If you want to wage for it, however, the odds are, pun intended, astronomical.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJXpOsiphhM>

Bigelow Aerospace is a competitor: <http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> It sounds so simple, just a three step process:

Spaceport, Spaceship, Space Hotel.

At least they make it sound simple on the site. Personally I don't know how they plan to get it completed before 2012. It looks to me like a great dream but not particularly feasible, though I must say that the maglev launch system looks fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the space lottery idea is a great way for poor people to go into space.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not "galactic" if it's only orbiting one planet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this a joke? If not, it's simply awesome.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the investors will consider the joke particularly funny...

This involves launching and maintaining a space station and the development of a reusable orbital craft not unlike the space shuttle. That's not easy.</comment></comment>


Crowdsourced Legal Advice - <AUTHOR> http://www.pastelaw.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now I'm banking on the fact that lawyers copy and paste. This is a fair assumption as they have "clause libraries" at all major firms.

In the future I'd hope to tie in the NLP stuff we've been working on to do fuzzy matching.

We're highlighting text we've seen before, so it should be easy to see which lines are actually unique text.

<comment><USER2> FYI: You should reply using the reply links. It's easier to follow threads that way.

Also, does the matching handle blanks or minor variations? Typical clause libraries often taken this form: "The Company hereby agrees to sell you [_________________] shares of stock." You probably wouldn't need NLP to match that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about not using the reply. I was wondering why my comment was on top.

Right now I've got some off the shelf NLP stuff that does Org and Name recognition to remove those things (I've been working on a similar project for a while). The lines should be trivial but not yet implemented. Most "get screwed" clauses don't have underlines as they are boiler plate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> People comment on their _own_ documents. If your doc has the same text as someone else's, we share their comments with you.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool!

Question for you. How do you handle legal copy that isn't in anyone else's document? Or does this not happen often enough?

Even if there's some unique copy, are there plans to let you know which lines they are in your document? It would be useful to give those lines to a lawyer for review instead of an entire document.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm a little confused. How does blind commenting work? That is, how can I comment on a legal document without seeing the text of said document?

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic app. Thank you for making this.</comment>


How Tiny Wings outflew Angry Birds - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupproject.org/2011/03/tiny-wings/

<comment><USER2> Does Tiny Wings let you play music while playing the game yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> The developer tweeted that he's submitted an update to the App Store which includes that functionality. Hopefully it should be added soon!

Can anyone offer any further detail on that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> All of your points are very, very true!</comment>


Crowdfunding platforms crack down on risky campaigns - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/crowdfunding-platforms-crack-down-on-risky-campaigns-5bf43f9e71fc <comment><USER2> From one of the examples, the author writes: _" I concluded that Torquing's founders had_ never _possessed the skills or experience needed to pull off their project. "_

This has been true of so many Kickstarter projects, but has hit hard goods especially. There is so much depth there that isn't obvious to anyone who hasn't done the whole process, and is so totally obvious to someone who has. I have half a mind to start a 'hardware manufacturing boot camp' where students would spend 3 months in classes learning what it takes to bring a simplified product from concept to market.

<comment><USER3>
      > >This has been true of so many Kickstarter projects, but has hit hard goods especially.

People with software backgrounds sometime struggle transitioning their skill set to hardware problems. Often the hardware problems turn out harder than expected.

As someone with an EE/hardware background, though, I am deeply impressed at the efforts that succeed, sometimes surprisingly well.</comment></comment>


Max Levchin: Why It's Time to Reimagine the Financial Services Industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-its-time-re-imagine-financial-services-industry-max-levchin <comment><USER2> All will be great until a few years later Affirm gets acquired by an existing bank for crazy valuations and we get the "Our Incredible Journey" speech.

</comment><comment><USER3> The answer to almost all of his complaints is not : have Google do it, but rather: use a credit union.</comment>


How to Get Ahead as a Woman in Tech: Interrupt Men - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/07/23/study_men_interrupt_women_more_in_tech_workplaces_but_high_ranking_women.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

<comment><USER2> _The results suggest that women don 't advance in their careers beyond a certain point without learning to interrupt, at least in this male-dominated tech setting._

I don't see this. I see that as a person acquires more status they a) feel more confident in interrupting, and/or b) others are more lenient in allowing them to interrupt.

I think one would have to follow someone over time as they move up (or not) to see if their interrupting contributes to advancement or is a side-effect of advancing.

That said, I have a gut feeling that to get ahead you need the ability to persuade, and often this means interrupting to make yourself heard. But, more generally, people need to watch to see what is an effective style for their environment and learn it, and not just cargo-cult certain behavior.</comment>


Basecamp website down? - <AUTHOR> http://www.basecamphq.com/

<comment><USER2> Rackspace had a big power outtage today which knocked us offline today for 2 hours. Looks like they were effected by the same problem.

\---

     In a completely unrelated incident to this weekend's power problems in DFW, a traffic accident caused damage to a power transformer which provides utility power to our DFW data center. Here is the current sequence of events:

        * At approximately 6:00 p.m. CST utility power was lost to the DFW data center
        * Power automatically switched over to backup generators without disrupting service for any customers
        * When generator power was established two chillers within the data center failed to start back up
        * Utility power was re-established through a secondary utility source
        * As a result of temporary data center temperature increases, we proactively shutdown a number of customer servers to protect them from overheating

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/18-rackspace-trouble- knock...](http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/18-rackspace-trouble- knocks-37signals-offline)

</comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations, you're riding the rails!

</comment><comment><USER5> seem to be.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there other communities like Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

I've been devouring your content for the better part of the last two years and I was wondering if there were other online communities that resemble this one in its high quality discourse and activity level? Perhaps there are some excellent subreddits that we should all know about? <comment><USER2> I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but _lobste.rs_ is "the other HN" for me. Admittedly it's not quite as large and active, but then HN is currently hard to beat in that area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lesswrong.com is good. Subreddits will vary depending on your interests.

<comment><USER4> Never heard of lesswrong, but it looks cool at first glance.

I've never been a fan of reddit. My experience with reading it is that everyone tries too hard to be a smartass, and rarely contributes to the discussion/thread. Although, I might have visited the "wrong" subreddits

<comment><USER5> In general, any subreddit that hits the default front page is garbage. If you can find a smaller, niche subreddit for something that interests you, there's usually more focus and better moderation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Okay, I'm about to state what is, around here, relatively unpopular: In one particular respect slashdot.org has what you're asking for. Have you checked them out?

There are a number of problems with them, even more now that their new(ish) corporate overlords have been making changes. But there's one thing they do _better than anyone else IMO_ , and that's MODERATION! So that can often get you the "high quality discourse" you want.

Here's an example. Right now there's a discussion there [1] that's a few hours old. It's about the cost of Google Drive storage. That discussion currently has 254 comments. That would be daunting to wade thru. But that discussion has only 18 comments that have been voted up (and down) to be the "best". Reading just those comments will get you a reasonably good feel for the topic.

That said, I mostly spend time on HN now, rather than on slashdot. The overall level of discourse here is better and more respectful, and the moderation here (while more limited) does work.

[1] [http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/03/13/1834208/1gb-of- googl...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/03/13/1834208/1gb-of-google-drive- storage-now-costs-only-002-per-month)

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's an unpopular suggestion here - every month when this thread re-surfaces, someone suggests it and others "Me too" it. As you said, "In one particular aspect" it's a good analogue to HN - perhaps multiple aspects.</comment></comment>


Venture-capital fundraising plunges 35% in first quarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-venture-capital-20120409,0,5597095.story <comment><USER2> Isn't this a sign that there might not be a bubble?

</comment><comment><USER3> Could this be simply seasonal?

<comment><USER4> Not really seasonal, but the gyrations from quarter to quarter are less interesting. That said, this has been a steady trend for some time as VCs who last raised their funds in the early to mid 2000s but who didn't deliver returns to their LPs (limited partners) are not able to raise more. Markets working.

In addition, the VC asset class hasn't really done very well for LPs so the community of investors wanting to get into VCs is not as gung ho as they've been historically.

What we're seeing is that some VC funds are raising larger and larger funds (these are the funds that have performed well and/or where sentiment/hype is positive) and then there are a host of smaller micro-VC funds. The industry as a whole is becoming more concentrated in the hands of fewer VCs.

It'll be interesting to see if the upcoming Facebook IPO and some other recent positive outcomes as of late (Instagram for example) help to bring VC back to prominence in the eyes of LPs.</comment></comment>


In 2050, Flight Time From Europe to Australia Will Be 90 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/01/24/hypersonic-spaceliner/

<comment><USER2> Aren't we supposed to have hoverboards and jetpacks by now? All we have is a million photosharing apps...

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't it commonly accepted that when R&D say "10 years" they actually mean "hopefully", "20 years" they mean "we don't know how to do it, but we might discover it" while "30+ years" means science fiction?

<comment><USER4> Relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/678/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > But he suggested the project could make enough progress to begin attracting > private funding in another 10 years and aim for full operations by 2050.

So private enterprise will finance some project for 30 years before it starts to become operational? Considering that rocket scientists are usually not idiots, it seems that there could be an actually interesting story behind the "90 Minutes" headline.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10663/115...](http://www.dlr.de/dlr/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10663/1150_read-4515/)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceLiner>

</comment><comment><USER7> What is new here? Rocket powered aircraft concepts have been around at least since World War II. This seems to build on proven technology so why should we need to wait until 2050?

<comment><USER8> The Germans "considered" a sub-orbital bomber for attacking the US in WW2:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbervogel>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Brilliant, I'll be able to dock with it from my flying car :-/

</comment><comment><USER10> you know that the 4h Paris-NY has been killed 10 years ago after more than 20 years of service right ? And what killed it is not technology but economy.

</comment><comment><USER11> In 2013, Mashable is writing ridiculous headlines.

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds extremely inefficient, not to say it's a rocket. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to land this thing.

</comment><comment><USER13> or maybe in 2050 only the super rich can afford to fly, because kerosine got so expensive? Who knows?

</comment><comment><USER14> great.. in 2050 I'll be dead..</comment>