Ask HN: Save developer time by automating setup? - <AUTHOR>

As a (self-claimed) advanced developer with 8 years experience (big company, start-up and freelance), I waste a lot of time when I am starting new web projects - researching and installing all necessary run-times & frameworks, creating a new project and then configuring it to work with the DB, mailer etc. All this saps up a lot of time and energy that I feel is better spent actually building my web application.
With a new technology stack, it could be the better part of a day or two (think Ruby on Rails and MongoDB for Windows). When it's a stack I'm very experienced on (say Linux, Nginx, Play Framework, MongoDB), my local setup is quite short (maybe 5 minutes or so) but I still spend a couple of hours or more  setting up a new server from scratch, buying a domain, setting up A records, etc. There's also another issue with my local machine becoming a garbage bin with all sorts of DBs, frameworks and IDEs.
Somehow, I feel setting up your machine is a "solved" problem, since I always find my answers on one of the StackExchange sites. I've toyed with building a platform where, in a few seconds, you would have a private VM ready with your chosen stack setup and a new project created with all the right configuration. The only problem is that you would need to code on the VM (in a cloud IDE or through a terminal)
Do other developers on HN also think of this as a problem? Or do you see any allied  problems (like getting a new team member to setup everything just right)? Or would a platform that automated setup not be worth your while to use? <comment><USER2> I see a few reasons why this problem has been hard to crack:

1\. A week or so of struggling to get a new box set up is acceptable if you're prepared to use it for at least a few months

2\. Developers are very particular about environment choices, example: choosing between rbenv, rvm, chruby

3\. Mac OS X and Windows developers lag behind in solid package managers, and virtualized dev environments have little (albeit growing) mindshare

I think the right solution will look something like containers/VMs via tools like Docker/Vagrant combined with configuration management tools like Chef/Puppet/Salt/Ansible. Configuration management hasn't taken off though yet among developers and is still mostly perceived as a sysadmin skillset.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm new to Vagrant and Chef but a quick walk through the docs and your idea of container + config management sounds extremely powerful! Chef even has recipes to setup applications and combining that with a PaaS/IaaS should automate all machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> All-in-one solutions (Nitrous, RunKite) provide cloud IDEs and servers, letting you get up and running fast.

PaaS providers (Heroku, DotCloud) host your app, so you don't even have to worry about servers.

Virtual machine tools (Vagrant, VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion) let you run your production setup locally without having to SSH into a remote host.

Laptop configuration (GitHub's Boxen, Pivotal's sprout) let you configure your laptops just like servers.

I'm also working on a project ([http://www.stackmachine.com](http://www.stackmachine.com)) to solve some of these problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the great list of tools to explore. I had already tried out Heroku, Nitrous and VirtualBox but new to everything else on that list. I'm trying those out now and have also signed up on StackMachine... most of the tools solve only a part of the problem but I guess I need to figure out the combination to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You need to learn Vagrant and chef or puppet. It will solve all but 90% of your headaches. The domains/A records issue is still a problem, though. I've been looking for something for that too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've just begun capturing my set up using ansible playbooks. Hopefully after this I'll have an environment that is consistent across development and production machines and encapsulated the process of development and deployment in a consistent way for all the platforms I care about.

At the moment, I'm at the point where the same playbook can be used to set up a vagrant VM, my local laptop, and my digital ocean VM. The next step is to work some docker stuff into it.

TL;DR: ansible +1

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're just looking to manage your personal environment, probably Vagrant + Chef. If we're talking about for a team or organization, a former co-worker of mine wrote a nifty tool called Boxen [[http://boxen.github.com](http://boxen.github.com)] that's definitely worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER7> For development boxes I'd say the best best is vagrant. ([http://www.vagrantup.com](http://www.vagrantup.com))

For prototyping perhaps a public PaaS with a free tier like Heroku would be great ([https://www.heroku.com](https://www.heroku.com))

For a production setup you can use Cloud 66 ([https://www.cloud66.com](https://www.cloud66.com))

</comment><comment><USER8> We forked this internally for a while [https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop](https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop)

</comment><comment><USER9> heroku solves half of the problem. You could do something on top of heroku or one of the open source heroku clones.

also take a look at vagrant

</comment><comment><USER10> Vagrant.</comment>


Can technology plan economies and destroy democracy? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2019/12/18/can-technology-plan-economies-and-destroy-democracy <comment><USER2> This article talks about the future but technology is destroying democracy now. Technology is expanding the rift between the haves and have nots by reducing the number of people needed for a job. We sell technology as a way to save money by reducing jobs not necessarily as a way to expand uses within a company. People without jobs tend to revolt and select an authoritarian government. Additionally, technology has made it possible to monitor anyone and everyone which makes it easier for the few to control the many.</comment>


Shorten the Workweek to Reopen Safely - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/safely-reopen-make-workweek-shorter/610906/ <comment><USER2> We just need to make the office an optional place that people can gather when they feel the need to. I have no problem at all working a 5 day 40 hours work week from home. But this nonsense of everyone waking up at the same time, sitting in traffic, and cramming into "open plan" work spaces has to go.

<comment><USER3> Sorry it won't happen. An office packed with humans is all about stroking the CEOs ego. Its just not the same seeing your servants on a screen vs packed together doing the boss's bidding.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Although offices can have their downsides, I personally can't work remotely because I find it so cold and boring.

<comment><USER5> It's all about _choice_. Employees should be able to work in the environment that is best for their well-being. Happier employees tends to result in increased productivity.

<comment><USER6> It's also about productivity. If the employee functions significantly worse in a remote position, then extending that to them is going to be often a poor decision.

<comment><USER7> I feel like I'm struggling with this now: I have fought for a long time to get my team to be fully remote. After a year of partial WFH, now we're doing it full time. However, several people on my team seem completely incapable of self-regulation unless someone is making them show up. They're up at 3am working, but clearly only getting done >5% of what they'd otherwise do. A few others are getting done at least 120% more. Seems like different strokes for different folks is the name of the game, and some people for whatever reason just aren't in a place in their lives where they are responsible enough to handle the greater freedom of remote work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those living (and planning to stay) in areas with high wage standards (like most of the Western world!), keep in mind that remote work also opens your job to competition from much cheaper places.

Great for the people in those places, but your happiness to be able to skip the commute may quickly turn into a lot of unhappiness because you can't make a living wage anymore.

<comment><USER9> That's why we need something like a universal basic income to alleviate peoples' dependence on a job or wage. Outsourcing has already eliminated many peoples' jobs, that's a big reason why Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric got elected.

<comment><USER10> Universal basic income will make the issue the parent talks about more prominent, not less. If you live in a high wage area, and everyone gets same UBI, your life quality will not improve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How many of us don't want to commute to the office 5 days a week, but also don't necessarily like the idea of working from home when not at the office?

My personal ideal is a dedicated office space in a location very close to my home, like in the nearest downtown, where I would pay a certain amount per month in return for a set of days on which I could reserve personal office space.

The issue with working from home for me is that I feel my personal life and work life become messy and entangled if I do too much work at home. Similar to how good sleep hygiene involves doing as few activities other than sleeping on your bed as possible, I feel for my mental wellbeing it's better to physically separate my work life and home life as much as possible.

<comment><USER12> If your work location is farther away than the nearest downtown you should look for either a new job or a new place to live imho. Commuting more than an hour a day is awful.

<comment><USER11> I live in a great town that's about an hour commute from the big city where I work. I would never make as much money as I do now (or find as engaging work) if I looked outside the city. I also have no interest in moving.

Granted I don't hate commuting. Since I take the bus I get a significant amount of reading done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Offices are hardly the problem areas to reopen - most of them can go remote.

It's the places that can't go remote that is the problem, and those are exactly the places where they need to be open many hours, in order for customers to be able to come.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article has no research or statistics that try to prove why or how this would work and what the marginal difference is over a full workweek.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Apparently the author wrote a book about the topic, presumably that has some good citations, but one can only guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Applying the concept of hot racking on the offices sounds like a good way of embracing the "new normal"

[https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226](https://twitter.com/kashaziz/status/1257012120090292226)

</comment><comment><USER16> Anybody else feeling like if we're young and healthy we should actively try to contract this thing, self-isolate for a few weeks, and be done with it?

It feels almost like this would be the most socially responsible thing to do: reduce the effective R0 and allow things to start getting back to normality.

I'm the farthest thing from a "reopen" protester. But I can't help thinking that as a young and healthy individual, this is a valid option that nobody is talking about.

<comment><USER17> NO. You risk spreading it, young and healthy people are still dying or having severe outcomes - we still don't know enough to predict how it will go.

And we still don't know if catching one strain once confers immunity, or for how long. So you won't be "done with it".

If you do get sick you become a burden on an overloaded healthcare system.

The people talking about this option are rightly being shut down.

<comment><USER18> To reiterate NO! Something that's not talked about enough is that the coronavirus is causing neurological issues[1]. The full effects aren't known, but examples of neurological diseases are MS, Parkinson's and cerebral palsy. That's not something to want to voluntarily get. oh, and that's not to mention that you're likely to get lung scarring or have a long-term cough[2]. The survivors will have major long-term complications.

[1] [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2764549) [2] [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus- covid-19-som...](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus- covid-19-some-patients-may-suffer-lasting-lung-damage)

<comment><USER16> But what is the plan? We can't sit around for five years until there is a vaccine. By then we'll all have caught it anyway. Nevermind that food supply chain will have dried up way before then and nobody will have a job anymore. Even with my posh job at a big cloud provider, I can't imagine the public still caring about any new feature dev if this goes on more than a year, so bye bye "recession proof" job. I can't imagine many other jobs surviving much more than that. That is as much of a non plan as an unmitigated reopen.

I just don't think that works. I think we're going to have to end up making some hard choices about acceptable risk, and how we can use that to get to a better outcome.

<comment><USER19> >> But what is the plan?

There isn't one. Government has done little to nothing with the time they bought with our sacrifices. Mostly this is due to the fact there isn't a lot TO do - getting the hundreds of millions of tests that people want so some large percentage of the country can be tested daily is impossible anytime soon due to raw materials/resources.

Governments release plans to reopen that don't feature a single metric that holds them accountable, much less anything resembling open source / open data that drives their decisions. They bastardize the word "science" as something they are theoretically being guided by. The first tenets of science are transparency, open data, and falsifiability. No plan put forth by a state fits these criteria.

Anyone who points this out on Hacker News is downvoted massively, as you are undoubtedly noticing. As someone on Twitter very aptly put it, the Slack/Zoom/WFH class is more than happy to act sanctimonious about the whole thing while unemployment marches on to 20%.

EDIT:

>> making some hard choices about acceptable risk

People are bad at evaluating risk. Think about all the "Project Zero" slogans out there - no deaths from not wearing a seatbelt, no cancer deaths, no XYZ, no accepting risk of contracting COVID-19 until we get a perfect vaccine, etc. All completely unattainable. But if you point that out or try to have a conversation about it, someone swings down from the top rope with a story about how their grandma died of COVID-19 or that one young person somewhere died of it or had permanent scarring of their lungs (nevermind the statistics showing median age of death from COVID-19 being extremely high and the reproducibility of the lung damage being quite poor) and then you get massively booed and sometimes doxxed/reported to your employer.

It's politically untenable to talk about risk, hence a bunch of halfcocked "plans" of locking everyone in their houses to hide from the virus. We went from "don't overwhelm hospitals" to justifying layoffs/furloughs in hospitals nationwide by saying "oh you want to reopen? well volunteer your grandma to get it first" pretty quickly.

If people were good about evaluating risk, we wouldn't have the lottery fund education, for example.

<comment><USER16> We're fucked aren't we.

I'd never thought it all the way through until last night. But I don't see how we make it though this without something on par with the Great Depression.

Right now Microsoft and Amazon have this little bump due to WFH and stockpiling, giving tech workers reason for hope, but that'll start fading soon and they'll go down with everyone else.

It's the whole boiling frog parable really, isn't it.

        * Some virus in China: no big deal it's China.
        * Some virus here: no big deal it'll blow over.
        * Lots of virus here: no big deal we'll WFH for a while.
        * "A while" is up and more virus: no big deal we'll keep WFH.
        * Unemployment is 6M/wk: no big deal look at AMZN/MSFT.
        * Pork processing plant shuts down: no big deal there's other food.
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
          ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
          This should scare the shit out of everyone still living.

Why do we think that in two years, we'll still have enough of a supply chain that vaccine development can continue unimpeded?

People talk about a V-shaped recovery, but I think we're very close to the tipping point. This depends on the existence of expendable pocket money for the public, an existing supply chain, and stable cash flow. All of this will be gone in about two months. If we're stuck with this for two _years_? There will be no product to buy, nobody to buy it, and no infrastructure to build it. Home values will drop, people will default, and the whole country from NY to SF to Dubuque will look like Detroit of 2008 or worse, cities and suburbs alike, but there won't be a "not-Detroit" of investors to come and fix things this time. Most of us who are young, intelligent tech workers living through a 13-year boom cycle have a hard time understanding this.

Not looking forward to this. The lone bright spot, China (assuming they're able to keep things in check) starts hiring the brightest from around the world, and that's how this empire ends.

<comment><USER19> The main difference here is that the Fed is refusing to fail. They have acquired more assets in 45 days than they did for the entirety of any single QE period. With nominal rates in the gutter and the appetite for US debt still high, the Fed will print, and print, and print. Asset class will get bailed out regularly.

People think this has a major negative impact on the national debt, and while it's somewhat concerning, it's really not that much of an issue as long as people want our debt that we denominate in our own currency.

The problem is that populism will continue grow unchecked as the asset classes are bailed out and their assets are propped up and backstopped by the Fed, while the common man gets a smaller and smaller share of the bailout funds. Politicians will quite rightly point this out and will use it as a lever in their campaigns. If it all sounds familiar... well, the man currently in office is an expert at that angle.

That doesn't mean we aren't fucked. I am merely saying that it's pretty unclear what the future holds, as evidenced by the stock market's precarious position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Social distancing to stop the spread binary version:

Loop: 1) Work monday-friday 6 hours practise strict social distancing. Work remote if you can. 2) Weekend rest from social distancing see friends.

Its like a binary four square wave with on / off.

Reason: If we practice good social distancing the spread time of the Covid is five days.

<comment><USER21> So you are assuming people may get infected during the week end and won't be infectious the next week end?

</comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 Ok, good point, there is just one small detail: the "without cutting salaries" part.

Employees will love it, that's for sure, but I don't think employers will get even. You are basically giving your employees a 25% raise on their hourly wage.

There are success stories of companies that pay their employees above market value, either by paying them the same amount for less work, paying them more, or giving them particularly good perks. It is the idea of quality over quantity: by giving out preferential treatment, you get the best employees, and keep them motivated, and their increased productivity will make up for the higher cost. But there are success stories going the other way too: cheap, borderline slave labor and a high turnover. Sometime a high volume of low quality work is effective.

But in most cases, the usual market value is what works best, that's why it is the market value.

I am not saying that working less is bad, but it is a bit unfair to have the employer shoulder all the costs. Maybe make it half/half: 10% less pay for 20% less work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Measures like this could be packaged into preventative medical care, keeping employees healthy at the office keeps them out of the hospital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If everyone started working fewer hours for the same pay you would be effectively devaluing the dollar. You wouldn't actually be adding more value to the economy.

Value in the economy is created by work and there is simply no substitute for that. Shortening the work week would simply make less value in the economy, making us all poorer and more idle.

Too much idleness I can tell you leads to stress, even more stress than too much work. 40 hours is not too much work.

To solve the problem in the article one could still cut the workforce by half that was present in the office simply by adding more work-from-home time for the workers which I find to be healthy my own experience anyway. our office is made similar overtures, saying when we go back to work lots of us. Be working from home as a way to tackle a space issue.

<comment><USER23> You are making an unsound assumption that longer hours mean more economic output.

In some kinds of jobs this may be true, but in others-- especially ones with substantial intellectual or creative components-- it isn't.

In some cases studies have showed _increased_ output from reduced working hours.</comment></comment>


Your body language shapes who you are - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are#

<comment><USER2> Title is a tad on the sensationalist side. The upshot is that the things you say, think and do affect and even define who you are; this article falls into the 'do' category. Interestingly, the effect of what 'say, think, do' has on who you are as a person has been known for millennia. As humans though, we need constant reminding of this.</comment>


Star Wars: Jedi vs. Sith by Levels.fyi - <AUTHOR> https://www.levels.fyi/StarWars?t=0 <comment><USER2> lol that's not how April Fools jokes work - try again next year. Did someone actually pay some sort of licensing fee to use a star wars logo?</comment>


Math Riddle: Find Optimal Amount of Fence for Farmer - <AUTHOR> http://k2xl.com/wordpress/optimal-fence-riddle/

<comment><USER2> Just a request that someone eventually post an answer (unless the answer is something ridiculous like blindfolding all the cows, in which case, I don't care).

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an actual answer - not a trick question!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I can get it to 2.63896 down from 2.82843, assuming a unit square, but there may be a better trick.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you post the shape?

<comment><USER3> You can fence two adjacent sides, say north and west, and have another fence from the center to the southeast corner. That's 2+(1/sqrt(2))~2.707.

The number I got was from keeping the center to SE corner fence, and finding three straight fences to join the remaining three corners. I assumed these three meet at one point and that the point is on the NW-SE diagonal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are curved fences allowed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes</comment></comment>


Build Cross-Platform Applications for desktop using HTML, CSS, Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://appjs.org/

<comment><USER2> I'm enamored with the idea of writing desktop applications with web technologies, but I'm not enamored with the idea of running a node.js instance locally for every such desktop application.

What I would _like_ to see is a "privileged mode" Chromium (or Firefox) that would let applications break out of the browser sandbox and directly perform operations such as filesystem I/O. Privileged Mode Chromium would obviously be a huge security threat if it's allowed to run any old code, so it would be wise to prevent it from downloading and executing scripts over the network, or maybe have some kind of script signing support in place so that the only scripts allowed to execute are the ones with the app developers' signature on them. Or maybe I'm talking out of my ass here and what we have right now works just fine. Feel free to correct me here.

Also, one question. Isn't the node.js instance serving my application visible to other applications on the same system? Can't a malicious application take advantage of this fact and cause my app to misbehave?

(Offtopic: I must point out an irritating and potentially harmful design trend that is emerging as a result of Twitter Bootstrap's popularity: the top navigation bar that stays in place as you scroll downward. It wastes precious screen space, looks ugly and doesn't add anything of value to the website. Why is it so important that I be forced to look at your website's logo and navigation bar _all the time_? I'm not picking on the AppJS developers here; this is a general sentiment directed towards all the designers who embrace this terrible trend.)

<comment><USER3>
        What I would like to see is a "privileged mode" Chromium
        (or Firefox) that would let applications break out of
        the browser sandbox and directly perform operations such
        as filesystem I/O.

This is exactly what Microsoft HTML Applications do (available since IE 5). In other respects, I'm not a big fan of Internet Explorer, but this is one thing I think it did amazingly right, and way before anybody else. I was very excited to see the headline, and then horribly disappointed to discover that what they're offering is Not As Good as 13-year-old Microsoft technology.

<comment><USER4> It may have been a very good idea, but the sandbox implementation was shoddy, and 'Local Machine Zone' exploits are one of the main reasons IE has such a terrible security reputation. So other browsers should be wary about introducing a 'privileged mode'.

<comment><USER3> People can always install untrusted applications written in C. Why should the fact that your application is written in HTML+JavaScript make any difference? If it's just another native application; the implementation is unimportant to the end user.

Now, security _is_ important, and it would be nice if _all_ applications could be verified as to security. But they aren't. So while it would be good to figure out how to properly sandbox desktop HTML+JavaScript applications, I don't see as how failure in that regard should retard their adoption anymore than it retards the adoption of native applications written in C.

<comment><USER4> The obvious different is that you don't want to execute arbitrary C code just because a compromised ad network is serving malformed HTML. The ease of attack is much greater on the web.

Mozilla has used "no IE-like privileged mode" as a marketing point in the past. There's obvious benefits, but I hope any modern browser is going to be careful about the sandbox is implemented.

<comment><USER3> You're comparing incomparable things. Serving a web page in an unsecured environment is an obvious security problem, but _completely unrelated_ to whether you have written a native application in HTML+JavaScript or something more traditional like C.

Would the C version of your native desktop app download code from an online ad network? Then it is just as problematic as a web app in an unsandboxed browser. If the C implementation of your desktop app wouldn't do that, then the HTML+JavaScript implementation of the same application shouldn't either, and there is no problem.

<comment><USER4> Actually, you the one making this strange comparison to C code.

My point is simple: IE's sandbox was broken repeatedly, creating a bad reputation and scoring marketing points for other vendors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Q: "What's better than this stack for application development?"

A: So many things. Cocoa comes to mind.

HTML/CSS/JavaScript were never created to build applications, and it's very apparent when you do so. I've built a lot of web apps, but out of necessity. I think we're going to actually see the opposite trend in software: moving client-server apps away from browser-based solutions and toward native apps. In fact we're already seeing that movement—and I would argue that a big reason behind it is how much writing client apps in JavaScript sucks.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks really cool, but for HTML5 games to work well it really could do with these things:

1) support for hardware-accelerated rendering with canvas2D

2) support for hardware-accelerated WebGL

3) ability to turn off the extremely restrictive driver blacklists in Chrome (which will turn off hardware acceleration for ~50% of users, and is not necessary if building a desktop app)

Yeah, basically games _really_ need hardware acceleration. I know they don't mention games at all but something like this is great for additional distribution platforms and monetisation, as long as it has hardware acceleration. Anyone know if it covers that?

<comment><USER7> It's based on Chromium so it's pretty likely it will support just about everything and even more.

<comment><USER6> My experience with other wrappers is that's not so, sometimes they're based on Chromium but don't support WebGL, the Web Audio API, etc. etc. I suppose wrapping Chromium is harder than you'd think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think Topcube does this as well: <https://github.com/creationix/topcube>

Topcube, however, is missing the Mac version.

Another interesting idea would be to ditch Node all-together and use HTML5/CSS3 literally for everything your desktop app needs. With localStorage and other APIs being implemented in Chromium, one does not need the server part anymore.

</comment><comment><USER9> The hardest part of all of this is getting a runtime that builds/installs seamlessly across platforms. I just did an 'npm install appjs' as per docs, and it failed (Mac).

I myself have gone through great lengths to create a similar (minus Webkit) runtime for Mac, Windows, and Linux:

<https://github.com/arturadib/node-qt>

<https://github.com/arturadib/node-five>

Despite all my efforts there are edge cases where it simply won't install/build.

Keep up the good work though -- this is a much needed project. (Bear in mind too that Mozilla and other companies are coming out with their own runtimes for web apps, so such projects will likely be rendered obsolete by them).

<comment><USER10> Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?

I already mentioned XULRunner here, and I´d suggest you have a look at it. There are a few applications you may have heard about using it <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner_Hall_of_Fame>

<comment><USER11> ugh. have you ever developed stuff in XUL? It's not a great system. It's also pretty ancient, so there's probably cruft there support old XUL applications built in 2002.

I think the main problem is that XUL is like HTML, but not. So people's brains are already wired to understand html, but when there's something that looks identical to it, but has it's own set of quirks, it takes a lot of time getting used to. It's as if someone took C++ and changed just enough stuff so that you wouldn't notice it until you tried to run it.

How many html tags do you recognize here: <https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_Reference> ?

Lots of the tags are somewhat historical because css wasn't as powerful back in 2002 as it is today. Most people starting to hack XUL won't know the difference between a bbox and a deck tag.

<comment><USER10> I admit not having worked extensively with XULRunner. Maybe 4 years ago was it, but I know that html can be used via the html namespace [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_Tutorial/Adding_HTML_El...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_Tutorial/Adding_HTML_Elements)

It looks quirky, but I thought the most important part of using web technologies is to use Javascript and CSS; which can be applied over XUL elements just like HTML.

Also compared to the current project it is vastly superior in terms of features and functionality that can be tapped into with Javascript.

There is space for improvement, like with most software, but it is in fact a tested technology already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> <http://sandofsky.com/blog/apps-vs-the-web.html> <http://sandofsky.com/blog/shell-apps.html>

Cough.

<comment><USER13> This guy's opinion of course omits the huge problems of walled gardens, dickwad Apple rules, closed platforms, 30% royalty absurdity, and the archaic development process of native apps.

<comment><USER12> To which the counterpoint is "awesome UX". You'll never get that with web tech.

Sandofsky works at Twitter BTW.

You are probably right about most of the problems, though how much of a problem they really are is related to where you place yourself on a purist- pragmatic continuum.

Sandofsky explicitly mentions development: "Today, for high level work, I am as productive using Objective-C as JavaScript." That's my experience as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very interesting - kind of like PhoneGap for your computer.

I'd recommend placing a few screenshots of example apps on the front page running natively on different systems (mac, windows, linux). Well done!

</comment><comment><USER15> Hey men, what about Adobe AIR then? It's out there since 2008, it works on Mac/Linux/Windows/Mobile and it's far more complete than App.js or any other competitor.

You can use flash (OMG) or just plain HTML/JS (I've developed something in the past using both)

But you know, we are in an app era right now and this technology has lost part of his original appeal

<comment><USER16> Adobe Air dropped support for Linux around January of this year I believe. So not quite a full cross platform solution.

In fact, Adobe has been getting worse with Linux support altogether lately (including the Flash runtime).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I personally find disturbing how people wants to do _everything_ with web technologies. Can't they just learn how to write native apps? I wouldn't like to see my desktop full of slow and bloated web apps.

<comment><USER18> > Can't they just learn how to write native apps?

They can, but then they need to either write multiple ports of the app or target only a small subset of the market.

The first sucks (speaking as someone who in fact works on a project that ships a nontrivial native app on several different platforms), and the second loses you customers _and_ creates people who give you bad press because you're "locking them out" by not providing an app on their platform.

Of course web technologies are not the only way to write cross-platform apps, but the other options I know produce results that are even less appealing to users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pokki (<http://developers.pokki.com>) is a similar platform that builds to Windows and supports WebGL.

</comment><comment><USER20> `node-webkit` looks similar to this: <https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit>

</comment><comment><USER21> If your app runs on HTML/CSS/JS where's the point to make locally installed app out of it?

One reason might be a better hardware accessibility (at the moment) but with the pace Chrome, WebGL, etc. are evolving there shouldn't be any reason in near future and you would have cross-platform apps without any installation and update hassle.

</comment><comment><USER22> This seems to be done currently through means like this: [http://www.quora.com/Rdio-online-music-service/What- technolo...](http://www.quora.com/Rdio-online-music-service/What-technology- drives-Rdio%E2%80%99s-Mac-desktop-app), it'd be nice to see an even simpler approach (like appjs) replace it.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you could do a one click install with no internet access this could have huge potential.

Yesterday, while working with C# and sql compact I realised the need for something like this.

Not that I have anything against C#. Love that thing, but it is complex (.NET).

<comment><USER24> Instead of a "one click install" how about a "clickonce install". ClickOnce, the installer/updater built into .NET since .NET 2.0. It can also work for installing via CD or over a fileshare if you don't want it over the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What a waste of time! Appcelerator is putting its titanium desktop framework under opensource which does EXACTLY THAT. It already works on win/lin/mac and would only need a cleanup and update.

Why wasting time and re-creating everythin from scratch?!

</comment><comment><USER26> It felt a bit like Prism (<https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prism>). Unlike them, who are just slapping a browser inside a chromeless window, you are actually building it from the ground up?

<comment> jarek-foksa It looks like AppJS is built on top of CEF framework which is basically a stripped down version of Chromium.

This also means that AppJS-based apps can't be shipped on Mac App Store because CEF makes use of private frameworks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It seems to me that ember.js is a better approach to this - much cleaner application model and richer data support with routing and view state.

That said, I'm with you broadly on Javascript+HTML5 on the desktop. Actually just wrote something up around my thoughts on how to do this with Ember.js if folks are interested:

<http://bit.ly/LybVgo>

<comment><USER9> appjs.purpose !== emberjs.purpose

(former gives a cross-platform runtime, latter is merely a JS framework)

<comment><USER28> The tech is different but the purpose is the same - to give a great application experience with software written in JS/html/css, on every platform with a single codebase. Ember is betting on the browser to be the runtime, appjs is writing their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still find XULRunner better suited for this task.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think for us, this is redundant as we made a direct jump to the cloud, but for applications that need to be built on the desktop, this would be great.

Mike/Verelo.com

</comment><comment><USER30> isn't this is an overkill.. using node.js for running desktop apps

</comment><comment><USER31> What I don't get is, honestly, the reason web apps are so much more awesome on PC's and Mac's than desktop applications are is that they are 0-configure, 0-install, 0-trace. These days, the people with the fastest computers aren't the geeks - they're people who buy a fast clean empty computer, install Firefox _and never anything else_ and just use web apps. If they uninstall any crap that came with the computer, and keep, say, Windows (or Mac) and Firefox updated (both these OS's and Firefox are pretty proactive about this too), then after a year, their computer screams compared with anyone who downloads anything. (Such a person will normally at least start up skype, an antivirus, media programs, office suites, cam software, sometimes bittorrent or other specialty software, etc etc etc. The list goes on. All of which like to update themselves, have an update process in the background, sometimes hanging, bugging the user, etc, and all of which like to start up with the computer.)

Honestly, what the desktop experience is missing is quite simple: 1) seeing the first screen within 5 seconds of asking for it 2) every action takes a few seconds including 'installation' 3) when you close the tab it's gone.

Honestly, even if you have a VM that is 100% in RAM on the fastest computer available today, usually all programs fail at number 2 - if for no other reason than that their installation program requires the user to click Next Next Next Next Finish.

What would fix this? Well, for one thing if any web app also had root access to a non-networked-except-with-its-own-servers 100% do whatever they want with it local VM. Yet to my knowledge there is not even a distribution (of any kind of operating system whatsoever) that is geared toward giving its entire stack over to 1 application, assuming that it is all now 'tainted'.

Off hand, it would seem the requirements of such an OS would be:

\- Fast startup, no unneeded services

\- Very small footprint, so that a web service can go wild on it, modifying it however it wants, removing anything it doesn't want, basically, it's theirs now - and the resulting blob can be written out to disk quickly when the app closes.

\- Extremely secure. No way for the app to break out of its jail, where it has total root.

\- Some graphics acceleration would be awesome if this can be done securely, secure access to opengl, etc.

\- EXTREME STANDARDIZATION THAT DOESN'T CHANGE FOR YEARS OR IS SUPER- PREDICTABLE.

This is the MAIN area where Firefox shines: you can TARGET it. Whereas, targeting Windows: good luck. Targeting Linux: um, a slew of questions immediately pop up. Mac: which version?

The difference between offline games and online games is just huge. Imagine if you could run any hardware accelerated game "right from your browser" waiting a few seconds for it to load. The threshold to trying it out would fall 1-2 orders of magnitude. (I would argue, for an indie house falling 3 orders of magnitude).

I do realize that this overlaps with NaCL. However, NaCL is not really about providing the full desktop STACK to developers in a standardized way: instead it focuses (from what I gather) on just the op codes. That's great, but it hardly provides OpenGL (or DirectX) or a slew of other things that desktop applications have if they want it.

Basically, I am saying: _if VM software is advanced enough that security researchers run random viruses on their everyday boxes with their normal hard- drive mounted, just in a vm, then how is VM software not advanced enough to give a full desktop access to a web site, all cordoned off with write-on- modify semantics and standardized, so that the user has 0 security implications to this_?

Basically, the ONE thing I would add to the experience is putting at the top of any tab that has this, the number of VM's currently running. Whereas I expect flash to work well with 10 instances, that may be asking for too much here.

<comment><USER32> This description is a lot like Boot2Gecko, except that Boot2Gecko is currently targeting phones rather than desktops. Chrome OS is a similar concept (though I admit to not looking too deeply at it)

<comment><USER31> I guess I didn't describe myself plainly enough. What I mean is that it should be just like Flash, working inside an HTML page right from any tab in your browser, no extra 'install' - except a full VM instead of a Flash instance.

If an application (some accounting program say) comes in Windows, Mac, and Linux downloads and is supposed to be downloaded and installed, but works fine if you install it in a VM with a plain image, why can't they put it on the web behind some HTML that asks for a jailed VM - and be given one? So that if you are on Windows, whenever you open that web site in a new Firefox tab, you use its app (right from that tab) in a few seconds without any (visible or persistent) install. Even THOUGH it is a native-only application that isn't built around networking (requests over http) nor any kind of internet technology like javascript. It's just a local program.

If the 'just a local program' could live just as happily in a new tab in a vanilla base-OS, you wouldn't need to go through installing it to try it, or uninstall it if you're not interested: this is where a 'web app' shines. Getting to the first screen takes less than one second (click the link you heard about it from, including on a Google search) as opposed to 15-45 seconds minimum to click through Download, Save, wait for it to download, Double-click in Downloads window (hopefully still in foreground) to open, Click 'Install', click 'I accept' click next, click next, click finish. Click OK and hopefully run now. (If there is no 'run now' then click Start, click Programs, find the new entry, click it.

Likewise, after you see the first screen you can say 'No this isn't what I had in mind at all' and click Back in your browser or close the new tab: 1-2 seconds. On Windows uninstall is: Click Start, Click Control Panel, click Add Remove Programs, wait for it to load, find the program, right-click, click Uninstall, click OK, wait for it to uninstall, click OK. (Or you could wager on whether they included an Uninstall icon next to their program icon in the start menu, but most programs don't).

If this web alternative were possible...then anyone could develop however they normally develop a native application (not app) - instead of having to turn it all into a client-server app or do it in javascript, flash, etc - and just let a user use it from their browser without 'actually' installing it. I guess my concept - since it is based on the usability of using something without actually-installing it (so that it goes into your normal start menu, for example) - is too nuanced for people, or I am not describing it right. :/</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: how do I fill in a 'declaration of prior inventions' - <AUTHOR>

I'm about to start a new job and have to fill one of these in. I don't have any patents to write down, but I do have a number of side projects, open source contributions, and works that I've licensed to previous clients which I don't want my new employer to make a claim on. I'd like to keep my options open wrt monetizing those of my side projects which don't compete with my employer.<p>- How much detail should I give?<p>- Should I even bother with things that don't compete with my employer?<p>- Is this form actually worth anything in court? (It's actually a Japanese company, I've yet to find a good resource on Japanese employment law.) <comment><USER2> _How much detail should I give?_

Enough that someone will be able to look at your work and the declaration and say "yep, this is what he was talking about".

 _Should I even bother with things that don't compete with my employer?_

If your contract has a typical "all your inventions are belong to us" clause, absolutely.

 _Is this form actually worth anything in court? (It's actually a Japanese company, I've yet to find a good resource on Japanese employment law.)_

Ideally the form will prevent anything from going to court. Most people are actually quite reasonable, and the most likely way you'll end up fighting over ownership of your work is if your employer actually thinks they have a right to it.

(I am not a lawyer, have absolutely no experience with Japanese employment law, et cetera.)</comment>


Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110

<comment><USER2> These authors also published "Frequency of word-use predicts rates of lexical evolution throughout Indo-European history" in Nature 2007, [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/abs/nature06...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/abs/nature06176.html) .</comment>


Ask HN: Should I pursue this startup that depends on decisions of "big players" - <AUTHOR>

I have this project of mine (http://welshare.com) that aggregates major social networks and provides a unified interface to them, so that power users can manage their accounts easily.
However, I depend on decisions by facebook, twitter and Google, and that can break my idea completely. For example:
- twitter recently announced that they don't like other vendors writing clients for twitter (http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2011/03/twitter-tells-third-party-devs-to-stop-making-twitter-client-apps.ars).
- facebook had a bug (allegedly fixed now) that penalized stories posted via the API and they didn't appear on other people home streams.
- Google+ are reluctant to provide an API (only a tiny portion so far)
Twitter decides that I can't have anything, other than "retweet" for retweeting messages (screwing my unification), facebook may retain the penalty for 3rd parties, thus making mine disadvantaged, and Google may never release a complete G+ API.
So my questions is: is it worth it to pursue this project? <comment><USER2> Depends how useful it is to you and others. Coincidentally I was just pondering doing the exact same thing today so I can tell you it would be useful for others. Mine was to be billed as a tool for web designers and social media people to give to their clients as an easy way for them to keep up with their accounts and as a selling point for the people setting it up. I don't mind if you run with that idea either as I probably won't execute very soon.

There are a bunch of companies beholden to Facebook and Twitter for similar reasons as you and the ones who are successful are able to enhance the experience in some way that the company providing the API isn't willing to get into. Zynga is good example. The problem is that if you're not big enough then they don't give a shit. If you have a sizable portion of their users and are providing something that keeps people using their platform then you're good. Check out Buffer. Buffer let's you spread out Tweets over time and I'm pretty sure it posts to Facebook too. Somehow they've managed to avoid the pitfalls. But you're saying the Twitter API won't let Tweets come from your app? That's weird because that's exactly what Buffer does and I haven't seen them have any problem. I haven't looked into it but maybe you can go about asking for an exception. You really have to make a great case though.

But to finally give a straight answer I'd say that if it's important enough to you then you should definitely deal with the uncertainty. Find a model that gives you a kind of partner status rather than a leach status in their eyes. Brizzly, Buffer, and Zynga somehow navigated the territory so I think you could too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the points. I'll continue improving and trying to popularize the service.

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's too late and you're not checking back but I did find out you can request that your app be white listed by Twitter using their process and they'll let you go over any http request limits and other API limits. I'll try to get in touch with you by email to let you know.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask PG: What is Your Main Motivation In The Startup World? - <AUTHOR>

What is your main motivation in the startup world? <comment><USER2> I don't even know what this question means. I wouldn't be surprised to see pg ignore it due to lack of substance.</comment>


Apply HN: Wantobuy – Post items you want so sellers can sell them to you - <AUTHOR> Demo: http://www.wantobuythat.com/demo.html
Problem: Within online trading forums, including Facebook Groups, users post what they want in the hope that sellers will get in touch and make the sale. Yet, these 'want to buy' posts aren't standardised or searchable so it's impossible for sellers to see your post and for you to get the items you need.
This issue is bigger than just online communities too, there's currently no central hub for people to post what they want to buy which is viewable to sellers.
Wantobuy: We're standardising 'want to buy' posts so that if you're selling something you can see who wants to buy it, how much they're willing to pay and then sell for the highest price. We're taking this one step further and once users post something they want we'll search top retail platforms (Amazon, eBay etc.) to see if it's already available online and show the user 'wheretobuy' it.
About us: Jack (21) and Sam (22) who have known each other for 11+ yrs and built stuff together in the past (Check out Spaces, which we got to 30th on the App Store without spending any money - http://needa.space).  We're big on sneaker and streetwear Facebook groups (yes, we have camped out for sneakers a few times..) and so will target these first before scaling to further product categories. We're applying because we're determined to learn from the YC network, plus we're about to graduate so the money would massively help us survive whilst we build Wantobuy.
So far: Over the past few months, we've interviewed Facebook Group admins, given them a demo of the app to play with and received extremely useful feedback.
Any feedback, questions or comments would be super useful too! <comment><USER2> This approach makes sense. I also think that sneakers (or streetwear in general) would make for a pretty compelling initial market. You'll obviously encounter the chicken-and-egg problem with this platform, so it would probably be good to try and hack one side of the market. In that light, definitely keep working together with the admins of these huge Facebook groups (I reckon you're in Basement, Supreme Talk, Palace Talk?!). These 40k+ groups make for an incredible opportunity to engage with your target audience. Hell, to get initial traction just raffle a pair of Yeezy's, Air Mags, or that new Gosha among the people that sign-up.

One thing I'd do differently though is start out with a website (vs. an app). It's very true that Facebook doesn't have any form of domain-specific search fields. But it's very accessible. I realize that n = 1 here, but the friction in having to download another separate app to my phone would be too high for me to switch from using the different Facebook groups. I think you'd want to make it as easy as possible to access your solution (or at least submit WTB requests) in order for this to take off. In that light, a website would be much better I think.

On another note, here's a really good read on why Facebook may help you out a lot, but would also most likely be your biggest competitor: [http://alexmuir.com/facebook-is-the-new-excel](http://alexmuir.com/facebook- is-the-new-excel)

Anyway, very cool. Happy to chat more if you like -- I'm at firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers for the feedback Aron!

Yeah, we're both in so many Facebook groups our newsfeeds are purely streetwear posts! As you say, the challenge comes when we want to get people onboard. The great thing is that these WTB posts already exist within the groups so I'm sure we can find a way of getting these on our platform in the beginning so we at least have the supply side of things covered. Yeah you're right, raffling a pair of Yeezy's would get everyone and their mum to download the app - something we'll look at down the line for sure.

I hear what you're saying about the website and we are looking to get something decent up before too long, however from talking to members, a growing number of people are using the Facebook Groups app to get their 'fix' of streetwear throughout the day, so an app would seem like the natural progression there. I do understand what you're saying and we'll certainly look into the desktop presence asap.

Great stuff, thanks again - I'll ping you an invite to test the app so far if you're interested?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This concept is really solid. There's a massive gap in the market to help standardise the 'want to buy' posts. I'm constantly manually searching across multiple selling platforms when i want to pick an item up for that best possible price - usually just scrolling away..! That and checking prices for items i already own & could be tempted to sell, I even got pm'd with a ridiculous offer on some old beaters i posted on a group as a joke!

Price is really key! For myself, a lot of the time i tend to try and avoid the hype / overlook resellers looking a mad price for highly in demand shoes or products. These posts and groups stand out for me within the second hand market. Individuals looking to trade/sell the items they own second hand with around (8/10) wear & a dropped price in mind. Someone buys, doesn't wear as much as they thought they would, sees something they might wear more?, sells on to someone else on a budget they can afford.

Everyones fashion taste is evolving and this idea of the 'two lunch tables' working together, buying, wearing, selling on, especially with high end products is enabling more and more people to get into the GAME! Focusing on this second hand market would be ridiculously useful and really pushing for an organised 'want to buy' community would be a game changer. Just got to have an influx of sellers onboard who aren't looking to resell for retail (or higher)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Toby! Yeah for sure we're looking to control how much people purchase things for so people can actually follow through with their WTB requests - by not allowing silly 'want to buy' amounts for example.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool. I tried to do something when Groupon was hot. I had a site that was a Groupon just for travelers.

As we already had all the tools, we thought it would be easy. The idea was to bring together many people who wanted to buy something and then try to negotiate a better price with the dealer. Neither worked. Do something with big scale is very complicated.

I think only two people negotiating could work. As proven by facebook groups that are horrible =). If you do something with a better UX, than the Facebook, and guarantees for both, I think will work.

<comment><AUTHOR> We were thinking of expanding into something similar eventually related to group buying. Were you focused B2C? We were considering looking into B2B but as you say, I can imagine the complications involved!

<comment><USER4> B2C and small organizations. The problem is that some people don't like to pay, or change their mind. And some people promise things that they can't deliver. Similar to problems that Kickstart has.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know, cheers for that.

Perhaps taking payment before an order is placed so that as soon as the target amount is hit the order is automatically placed.

Amazon has 1 click, we're talking zero clicks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like it too! Streetware, fashion: its like the new liquid asset right now. The part where buyers can "bid" on price is particularly compelling. I'd also like to see the "sell" side of the interface: in other words the data you are going to present to retailers and brands since ultimately they are the ones you will be selling this product to ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Controlling the price 'want to buy' requests will be important. Currently, on Facebook Groups people advertise that they would pay a much larger figure than they intend to which is extremely frustrating for sellers as well as other interested buyers.

I agree, with scale a catalog of what people want to buy and how much they want to pay for it turns us into a market research company of sorts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty cool. I've seen some startups try to tackle this (sorry don't remember the names) but I haven't seen someone actually make the search standardised.

My recommendation would be to make sure people are not giving custom names to stuff but rather choose from a list. This would make the whole searching thing much easier.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great shout, you're right. I think it's about finding a balance between standardising the listing as much as possible but allowing for people to post any item they're after.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For me, this only makes sense if applied to local businesses.

I want to buy some items (let's say some kind of food) and I'm ready to do it on a regular basis, but no store near me has the items. This app would make a win-win for me and the store.

<comment><AUTHOR> Local businesses are definitely important! We want to satisfy the casual sellers and the smaller businesses too.

Ideally, we'll sync up with the stock these businesses are currently holding and then be able to let them know who wants to buy their products. Win-win since businesses are accessing new customers that didn't previously know about them and the buyers are getting what they need.

I like the locality aspect though and I agree that should play a big role in this side of things.

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey guys, this is a really interesting idea! One question - i'm new to the wtb concept, and i'm not a member of any facebook groups so i'm curious as to why someone would post a wtb instead of shopping around online?

<comment><USER9> It's Sam here...there are 2 main types of wtb post:

1\. Items you cant find anywhere - they may be rare or in limited quantities such as a pair of Nike Air Mag sneakers. In this case you'll be better placed to find your ideal product.

2\. When you don't know exactly what product you want - people create 'want to buys' for generic items e.g. 'a black trucker hat'. This way, wtb posts can actually aid product discovery and make the whole shopping experience easier and less effort since sellers are coming to you and not the other way round!

Thanks!

<comment><USER10> For the 2nd point, is googling not helpful? As in, can't the user just Google for that stuff and buy it from eBay or whatever?

<comment><AUTHOR> Googling is certainly an option if you've got the time/effort.

But in these Facebook Groups, general 'want to buy' posts are created since there may be a brand/item that you don't know about - someone else may have found something that fits the criteria in the past.

This is a way for people to recommend items to you, tapping into their experiences & learnings and a great way for you to discover new products without the effort of trawling google/eBay/Amazon etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Brit here. When you say "Post" to me that means "Mail".

I couldn't work out why I would want to mail an item to someone else, so they could mail it back to me :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, we're from Britain too, Newcastle originally!

To clear that up, when we talk about 'posting' we mean creating a Facebook post in a Fb Group.

The only time something would be sent in the mail is the same as conventional selling, when something has been purchased.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What do you see as your strategy for handling unsatisfactory transactions passing through the platform?

For example, items not as advertised, credit card chargebacks, or out right fraud?

<comment><AUTHOR> Like any marketplace we're employing a feedback system where users can rate/report transactions to combat dissatisfaction.

On top of that, when a user sells an item they must take a photo on the spot, not choose from their photo library. The photo is tagged with their username and date so the buyer is confident the item they're purchasing belongs to that particular seller.

Payments can only be sent/received using PayPal to start with since this is standard practise with our beachhead segment - Facebook Groups.

Authentication service - for items over a certain price we're looking to offer an authentication service where we can act as the middleman for the transaction. This way we can ensure premium goods are legitimate before sending them onto the buyer.

Of course, with marketplaces there's risk, however, we feel these steps will help to minimise this risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So you are thinking of a number of sellers competing for the buyer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, almost the reverse of current retailers. Instead of multiple buyers trying to purchase from one seller, we're looking at one buyer having multiple product options from other users.

This would help with product discoverability since other users can suggest products the buyer had not originally thought of as well as helping the buyer to get the exact product they want.

Cheers

<comment><USER13> So are these qualified leads? My concern would be people fishing and wasting other people's time. Or someone that currently owns the product and is looking for ideas on how to price. Thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because sellers are able to see what people are wanting to pay for their item (its included in the listing), they can easily identify the going-rate for items and use that to decide whether they want to sell or not.

Like any marketplace there'll be time wasters - I don't sell on eBay anymore because of them - but in my experience, most of the time its the buyers that are time wasters.

In our case - since buyers have gone to the effort of creating a WTB listing, you could argue they're less inclined to waste sellers' time. Of course, the feedback system/reporting users would help us to identify repeat offenders and take action.

Check out our demo which should help explain things: [http://www.wantobuythat.com/demo.html](http://www.wantobuythat.com/demo.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> eBay tried this feature (which they called "Want it now"), but they shut it down. Why will your service fare better?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question!

Process - Although I never got a chance to use it, we have looked into this and it seemed like eBay's service was hard work for buyers. The whole process of creating a 'wanted item' listing and then eventually purchasing that item seemed to be fairly ugly and involved entering auctionId's or setting up new auctions to complete the purchase... not fun!

Fees - eBay fees are sky high at 10% + listing fees. Instead of charging fees we're looking to generate revenue through referral, not charge the buyers/sellers directly.

Product discoverability - We're not bound to one platform. From scraping top retailers such as Amazon, Etsy, Alibaba and eBay we've got a wider search area to find exactly what buyers want.

Community - We're building this for the Facebook Group community because we would love to have something like this ourselves - it would make our lives buying/selling so much easier. As a result, the ability to chat with sellers within the app (not email) and share WTB listings to Facebook Groups gives our users much more power to find what they want, fast!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Trust issues

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Chris, which part are you referring to?

We're only using PayPayl to handle payments, employing a feedback system to combat untrustworthy users and in the beginning only allowing Log In with Facebook so users are authenticated to some degree.

Happy to explain any aspects in further detail!</comment></comment>


SecondLife Sued For Counterfeit Sex Toy Suit - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/16/secondlife_alderman_class_action_lawsuit/

<comment><USER2> Link mildly NSFW.

(Article too depressing to keep reading).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Court Case Info: [http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/09/16/secondlife_alderman_class_a...](http://regmedia.co.uk/2009/09/16/secondlife_alderman_class_action_filing.pdf)</comment>


Peter Thiel's Failed Education Experiment Proves There's No Shortcut to Success - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2013/09/11/peter-thiel-promised-flying-cars-instead-we-got-caffeine-spray/ <comment><USER2> From a quick read - and forgive me if I'm misinterpreting this - it seems like there was a multitude of successful exits. Sure, very few of them went on to do "society-shifting things," perhaps, but most seem to have gotten at least a minor degree of success.

It sounds less like a failed experiment and more like journalistic bias.</comment>


Show HN: Babylon VR – Create interactive VR experiences in less than 5 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfPm9wgyym3Ef9wzV9afZlvGbQahTYAFV44Wa52-1EMrhd-Dw/viewform?usp=sf_link#responses <comment><AUTHOR> In case anyone filled out the form and want to login again:

The login page is here:

[https://beta.babylonvr.ca](https://beta.babylonvr.ca)

And here's the resources for 360 photos:

[https://www.flickr.com/groups/equirectangular/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/equirectangular/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, cool, you could totally make a Myst-like adventure with this.

One nitpick - on a touchscreen drag actions move the screen the exact opposite way that I'd expect (like "natural scroll" on a touchpad). The rotation detection using is cool though.

<comment><AUTHOR> In regards, to Myst-like adventure....

A friend of mine made this: [https://beta.babylonvr.ca/vr/784988](https://beta.babylonvr.ca/vr/784988)</comment></comment>


Drop test confirms Apple totally lied about the glass back on the iPhone 8 - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2017/09/25/iphone-8-plus-case-needed-drop-test-oof/ <comment><USER2> Subject the Moto Z2 Force to the exact same test to which you subjected the iPhone 8 and Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and then report the findings. As it is this is completely disingenuous.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice for first days/weeks/months at first dev job? - <AUTHOR>

So I just started my first development job a couple weeks ago (I've been paid to code before but never as my sole responsibility and never in a software company). I need to learn a new stack, other than JS and the base server language all the frameworks and tools are new. I need to learn the codebase. These things are going well, I think.<p>They know I'm junior and seem to know it's going to take a bit for me to spin up, but I was hoping HN could share advice for how to make my early days count for the most. <comment><USER2> Small list:

* Learn to take orders

* Listen, (so many people dont listen)

* Ask Questions

* Learn as much as you can

* Dont turn up late

* Dont be the first one to leave at the end of the day, wait for one person to go before you pack up.

* Follow requirements

* If you find problems pop your project manager an email (and keep a copy).

* Dont drop production database

</comment><comment><USER3> Make sure you fully understand how the system is intended to work. Its all well and good knowing the stack, but equally important is knowing what you're meant to develop or fix. Also make sure you know the processes.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ask questions. Ask lots of questions. The thing that makes the saddest is to watch a new person flounder and waste days trying to figure out something on their own which I could have easily helped them out with.

<comment><USER5> That reminds me of a HN thread a few days ago about someone getting fired after two weeks since he asked too many questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's OK to say I don't know but I can find out. It's better to over- communicate status. As much as everyone talks about working smart over hard people still appreciate hard work.

</comment><comment><USER7> My advice is to ask your boss this exact question.</comment>


Greece is broken, and can't be fixed - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/02/15/greece-is-broken-and-cant-be-fixed/

<comment><USER2> Björn Wahlroos, a leading banker in Finland says roughly that Germany's just propping up Greece with Euro countries' help packages so that German banks that loaned careless money to Greece wouldn't fail. Why not just default Greece and those German banks?

It's sad for the citizens EU countries that did not lend to Greece. In just today's announced package, my share as a taxpayer is around 2000 euros.

"The world is currently living through the crisis of the euro. According to banker Wahlroos, banks are at the core of the crisis. "Perhaps the most central unrecognised fact of this crisis is that Germany's banking system is rotten to the core." "For most European banks Greece's lack of creditworthiness, or its bankruptcy, would not be too harmful – except for the Landesbank, which is owned by the German states, and Commerzbank, which is partly owned by the central federation, which – after being forced to reduce their receivables from Greece – are in a situation in which their capital is not sufficient for engaging in banking activities." Wahlroos feels that "Mrs. Merkel made the wrong decision in the spring of 2010"."

[http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Bj%C3%B6rn+Wahlroos+%E2%80%...](http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Bj%C3%B6rn+Wahlroos+%E2%80%93+a+portrait+of+a+capitalist/1329103438342)

<comment><USER3> A default is inevitable. However, last time I read about it (month or two ago) government expenses less debt payments was still greater than government revenues. So they still need financing. If they can get revenues and (non- debt) expenditures balanced they can stop pretending they will pay the Germans back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since Greece accepted the new bailout they will have to cut government employment, and employee salaries. And since a large number of Greeks are government employees, the result will be less spending. Less spending leads to a weaker economy.

If they choose to o back to their old currency, the drachma, their currency would be weak. A weak currency would lead to less spending, which leads to a weaker economy.

It's almost laughable, either way they would be, well you know. I feel sorry for the politicians right now.

<comment><USER5> Actually, a weaker currency leads to a stronger economy through more exports and greater tourist income. It only hurts if you owe foreign currenty, and are unwilling to default on those debts. See Argentina after going off the dollar peg, and Iceland after its banks collapsed.

<comment><USER4> But it is the psychological effect of having a strong currency being substituted with a weaker currency that will lessen consumption. Economics is more of the psychology of the consumer than anything else, at least in my opinion.</comment></comment></comment>


Swift performance: sorting arrays - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24101718/swift-performance-sorting-arrays?

<comment><USER2> People don't seem to understand that it's still in a beta stage. A semi-public beta but a beta nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think that's it. At WWDC Apple boasted that Swift is faster than Objective-C. I'm sure the compiler will be improved before its out of beta but people are going to investigate these sort of things and doubly so if you brag that your language is fast.

<comment><USER2> [https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2014-07-04-secrets-...](https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2014-07-04-secrets-of-swifts-speed.html)

<comment><USER3> "While the language should allow for great performance, the current compiler is still a bit rough, and I've had a hard time getting Swift to come out ahead in any performance tests. Most of the slowness looks to come down to a lot of redundant retain/release activity being emitted by the compiler. I expect this to be fixed before too long, but in the meantime, it means that this article is going to be more about how Swift could potentially be faster than Objective-C than about how it's actually faster right now."

Well that is very much in-line with what the SO page is saying, lots of retain release operations.

" I did not try to understand all of it, but the most suspicious parts are 13 invocations of "callq _swift_retain" and another 13 invocations of "callq _swift_release". That is, 26 subroutine calls in the inner loop!"

<comment><USER2> The main difference is that Swift unlike obj-c can be made fast.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why can't I pass std:vector<Child*> as std:vector<Parent*>? - <AUTHOR> https://mcla.ug/blog/cpp-templates-with-subtype-type-args.html <comment><USER2> It's not just C++, nor is it just because of assumptions of the underlying implementation. This is a direct result of type-safety. It would never be "safe" to do the following, regardless of the language:

        std::vector<Parent*> children_as_parents = *reinterpret_cast<std::vector<Parent*>*>(&children);

So let's say I have a X = list<Puppy> and Puppy IS-An Animal.

Then I call append_random_animal(list<Animal> arg) with argument X. If it were true that list<Puppy> IS-A list<Animal> that should be safe, right? (it isn't). But then that function, operating on list<Animal>, could quite legally append something else, like an Alligator which IS-An Animal to the list which is a list<Animal>. But that argument was actually X, a list of Puppies you'd end up with a list of mostly puppies and some alligators which shouldn't be possible. That could get very messy if we later pass that list X to pet(list<Puppy>) when it contains an element of type Alligator...

This is a form of the covariance and contravariance concept.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariance_and_contravariance_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariance_and_contravariance_\(computer_science\))

This is not specific to C++. It's a fundamental rule of polymorphism.

Arrays, Lists, and containers can be covariant (the authors expectation) only when they are read-only. They can be contravariant when they are write-only, which would be pretty unusual. So a mutable list _must_ be invariant.

The fact that C++ does not provide type-safe _immutable, read-only_ containers that are covariant is probably due to the difficulty of representing such.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for bringing up variance -- this is a concept I've since learned about and have added a small update to the blog post about.

I understand your point about the `children_as_parents` example, I've added another update to point out that the mutability of the vector makes it problematic to have the `children` variable.</comment></comment>


ESO finds astroid with rings - <AUTHOR>

They're having a press conference in Brazil right now, with an embargo until 19:00 CET (http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann14021/)<p>But someone pushed "publish" a bit too early with the announcement (since been removed, that's why the Google Cache) http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wral.com%2Fdiscovery-an-asteroid-with-rings%2F13510966%2F <comment><USER2> I clicked and expected something about "Elderscrolls Online". Damn shortcuts for everything. :/</comment>


Papers, Please: The 'boring' game that became a smash hit - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26527109 <comment><USER2> As the article is more about the developer and his story rather than the game itself, the premise of the game isn't quite captured in the article.

Specifically, the tension comes from the fact that you are in some fictional former soviet state, which just opened up a border security crossing again. You've been posted to man it, and now live with your family in a government housing estate. You have a finite amount of time to process people through the security gate each 'day' and you're paid based on how many people you get through, with fines for incorrect processing (which of course gets harder and more convoluted as the game goes on).

At the end of each day, your income and expenses (for rent, food, electricity, medicine for your son/wife/elderly parents as needed) are shown. The tension comes from rushing to process enough people to ensure you don't have to go without food, or turn off electricity, or not medicate your family. However, if you make too many mistakes by rushing, you get fined too much and you don't get to care for your family.

It's really far more gripping than you'd expect because the whole art style, audio and interactions (both between days via a daily newspaper, and with the people as they enter through your booth/events that unfold during that) really help paint a picture of a desolate former soviet wasteland of poverty and misery. Couple that with the distilled essence of 'putting food on the table for your family so they don't starve' being the motivating factor, and it can be quite high-tension to try to not have your family inevitably starve and freeze to death with crippling illness.

For $5 (if you grab it during a steam sale), it's worth the experience for sure. I'd have been happy paying the standard $10 for the unique experience it offers.

<comment><USER3> When I heard the premise, I was kind of disoriented, and the way you've described it maintains that feeling. If you're border control for a desperately impoverished former soviet state, who are all these people who want to _immigrate_?

<comment><USER4> The game explains that the other bordering country is even more impoverished. There are also transit passengers, returning citizens, and temporary workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems likely that a lot of people bought it, like I did, for a novel experience regardless of whether or not the experience is actually fun.

We're living in quite the renaissance of game exploration. I wonder if the indie game genre will continue to flourish or if this is a temporary moment of history. Regardless it is probably as strong as it has ever been right now.

Gone Home is another recent and interesting "game" to check out: [http://store.steampowered.com/app/232430/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/232430/)

<comment><USER6> Since you just linked an indie game on Steam, you probably have to acknowledge that Greenlight is a significant contribution to this renaissance.

Some people might not like to hear this, because Steam is a DRM platform. But if the Pirate Bay had a similar ability to promote the development and sale of indie games, it would have happened already.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I would refer to Steam as a DRM platform. Steam application deployment does have apis built in for DRM, but they are not required for release by Valve. It's up to the developer to decide if they want to DRM lock their game using the provided tools.

<comment><USER7> steam by itself is a DRM. It controls that you are authorized to launch the game, etc. However, I find this kind of DRM acceptable, since it does get in the way of the legit buyer extremely rarely.

<comment><USER8> >It controls that you are authorized to launch the game

Steam provides an infrastructure and API to perform this check, but the developers decide whether to use it. There are many games on Steam which don't use this DRM, and can be launched directly from their install directories even if Steam isn't running.

<comment><USER9> I was about to agree that Steam is DRM, but your comment reminded me of the time I bought a game (Dungeons of Dredmor?) that had a Linux port but which wasn't on Steam. I contacted the developers about getting the Linux port and they said "oh, it's in your Windows Steam game directory, just launch the executable for Linux", and it did, indeed, work fine.

That said, Steam is still not as un-DRMed as GOG, which provides a pretty installer you can copy and back up and do whatever you want with, but it's pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this game, though I haven't completed it for all of the endings. I love the idea and the design, that is...first of all, Lucas Pope is the developer I aspire to be...able to singlehandedly dream up a concept and execute it, _and_ be totally personable on Twitter to the mass of fans he deservedly generated.

I fell in love with the game ever since I saw the YouTube trailer and read some of his game dev diaries...It's hard to think of a modern game that has such limitations -- the color palette, the clunkiness of the interface, the unforgivingness of the scoring system -- for such artistic intent.

But what I think is particularly noteworthy and inspiring was how Pope didn't make the game as a political statement. He (from what I remember in his early podcasts) thought about the idea while waiting in customs, and wondered if a game could be made of the drudgery of this work. His commitment to making a game that excelled _as a game_ resulted in a game that was actually _fun_ , while being an artistic achievement and politically engaging, for sympathizers of both the state and the refugee.

(As counter-examples, I think "Cart Life" is also an amazing achievement in art, but not a very good game because of unintentional bugs. Also, most artistic games in which you mostly just walk around until the game ends).

David Simon, who created "The Wire", complains quite bitterly that his intent was to make a show that raged against institution and bureaucracies, and yet people only talked about Omar and all of his other characters...Simon did such a great job of plot and characterization that it overshadowed his political aims. I kind of see "Papers, Please" as the opposite of that...Pope just wanted to make a great game, and he did such a great job of it that it turned out to have a compelling political message.

Anyway, it has my vote for being included in the MoMA's video game collection. And it's inspired me to go back into games programming, at least as a hobby.

<comment><USER11> Lucas Pope kept a Papers, Please development journal from start-to-finish: [http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=29750.0](http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=29750.0) It was fascinating for me to read because:

1\. The art and design are almost unchanged from the original Photoshop mock.

2\. Pope is wonderfully gracious to the other indie developers who give initial feedback.

3\. He engages really well with the influx of new people that appear whenever his (at the time) beta game gets featured on a gaming news site. He has a knack for knowing which suggestions to consider, and explains to fans why the others won't work with the game. It demonstrates a level of maturity, both in personality and in craft, that few other game developers seem to have.

4\. In the post-release update, he details the internal tools he built to manage the game's development, especially its day-to-day plot.

<comment><USER12> Hey, I want the last three hours of my life back, and that's from just reading the dev journal!

You are correct in his way of dealing with people, really suggests a level of maturity, confidence and open mindedness about him. I like the way that he seems to seriously consider people's ideas, and is not afraid to incorporate me wines into his game. The fingerprinting for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The indie market is quite open to games that really come out of left field, instead of following the same 5 genres indies always go back to, if just because they are easy and well understood.

Lucas had made a couple of nice mini-games before that showing how relatively unconventional gameplay can be quite fun if attached to a good premise. The Republia Times is pretty much the same emotional concept but with different gameplay.

A big part of the game being a hit IMO was the beta was just out there for download, and it was a very polished first third of the game. A few large blogs picked it up, and at that point, if the game is any good, it'll just sell a whole lot. The demand was so big that Steam approved it for Greenlight out of schedule: It was greenlit after just a week or two on the process.

Either way, It's a game that is very easy to recommend.

</comment><comment><USER14> >You know when you play a first-person shooter that claims to be about "how far you're willing to go to protect the ones you love," or "the true cost of a life," or "moral ambiguity," but the gameplay actually consists of shooting hundreds of dudes in the face? And you know how in the back of your mind, you wonder, "I wonder what it'd be like if a game actually designed its gameplay around those concepts rather than just duct-taping them on through noninteractive story?"

>Papers, Please is that game. It manages to ask (and importantly, not answer) questions of duty, safety, privacy, family, self-interest, and morality through an incredibly simple, focused set of mechanics based around checking transit papers and stamping passports.

[http://www.heyash.com/why-i-like-papers-please/](http://www.heyash.com/why-i- like-papers-please/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Since the article mentions the BAFTA Games Awards a few times: Papers, Please didn't win best game, which was to be expected (though his former employer's _The Last Of Us_ did win that and 4 other awards), however it did win for best strategy/simulation, which was a surprise win (not easy for an indie game to take a bafta). It seemed quite popular at the event, had a few people cheering every time it was mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER16> Bureaucracy by Douglas Adams deserves to be mentioned in this context:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_(video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy_\(video_game\))

</comment><comment><USER17> I bought it because I thought there's no way this could be fun, but it turned out not only to be fun (in a depressing way), but also to feature a really great emergent story line, which immediately puts it above 80% of other games.

</comment><comment><USER18> Papers' site: [http://papersplea.se/](http://papersplea.se/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Now we just need a game simulating an analyst in a large SIGINT agency of a fictional superpower. Can you gather enough metadata in a day to feed your family?

<comment><USER20> I would not be surprised at all if this was already in the making. With that in mind, I'm surprised there hasn't been a ton of clones for Papers, Please yet - like how Minecraft and Terraria clones are all over nowadays.

Also, instead of feeding your family, the object of the game should be to keep your EFF-friendly colleague from going rogue, :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And they won! Best Strategy and Simulation in 2014.

</comment><comment><USER22> The article doesn't offer much on _how_ it became a hit.

I learned about Papers Please from nerdcubed on youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV-6YSye2Vo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV-6YSye2Vo)

I bet he hasn't spent anything on, say, a google ad campaign.

<comment><USER23> I think it became a hit as a natural consequence of being so good. He had to do almost no work on promotion, iirc. But I think he was a fairly popular gamedev (or at least not-unknown) before he made Papers, Please.

One thing to realize is that game reviewers like Yahtzee and especially TotalBiscuit always have their eyes open for new games that have new gameplay. That is, games with game mechanics that have never been thought of before. So if anyone here happens to make one, and it's fun, then you'll probably be able to get picked up by TB. And since he has >1M YouTube subscribers, that's quite a lot of publicity.

(Papers, Please was picked up by TB. It's how I heard of it.)

<comment><USER24> > I think it became a hit as a natural consequence of being so good. He had to > do almost no work on promotion, iirc. But I think he was a fairly popular > gamedev (or at least not-unknown) before he made Papers, Please.

Looking at it a little cynically for the moment ... in the old days, the main bottleneck that prevented everyone from having their own commercial computer game was money and juice with publishers, while the second-place bottleneck was juice with console manufacturers. Now those factors are much less restricting than before, so everyone has their own indie game. ;) But that means there are many, many more games than the maximum number that can ever achieve significant sales and attention. So the new bottleneck is public attention, and the new king gatekeepers are the gaming media (including Penny Arcade, Let's Players like Totalbiscuit and so on), who can direct the public's attention to your game. So which players are ahead in the new game? Guys with gaming-media juice, either through having gaming-industry recognition or being ex-journalists themselves. Step forward Tom Francis (PC Gamer -> Gunpoint), Jim Rossignol (Rock, Paper, Shotgun -> Sir, You Are Being Hunted) and Lucas Pope (Naughty Dog -> Papers, Please). Now that _is_ a little too cynical, because the new game does seem to be significantly fairer to people who simply make (or would be able to make given funding etc.) a game good enough to deserve attention, and certainly Gunpoint and Papers, Please are notably good games (I haven't played Sir yet). (I should also emphasise that I'm not any kind of expert here, I'm just looking at the situation from the outside.) But I think there's likely some truth to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A good review of the game from a few months ago: [http://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-papers- please/](http://scientificgamer.com/thoughts-papers-please/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The guy in the second screenshot does not correspond to his picture in the passport... in fact, I think that's a spy.</comment>


Crypto Miner Bankrupt – $10M liabilities [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/ifiberone.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/6/1e/61e9fafa-ecfb-11e8-a272-efe67b30cab7/5bf4622052a78.pdf.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> less than $50,000 in assets

<comment><USER2> I wonder what they are valuing their mining equipment at and if that includes crypto mined so far.</comment></comment>