PyRobot - <AUTHOR> https://www.pyrobot.org/ <comment><USER2> Man, another (potential) foundational AI/ML/Robotics library from Facebook. At some point every major open source library in this field is going to be run out of a FAANG company. I wonder what the impact of this will be in the long run.

<comment><USER3> One impact is that a $5,000 robot is labeled as a "a low cost" robot.

<comment><USER4> Not really. That's just sadly the state of whats "low cost" in that market, regardless if you work in FAANG, traditional industries or academia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Am I the only one who associates the name 'Pyrobot' with the idea of an autonomous flame-launcher?

<comment><USER6> It might indeed be possible to build your own pyrobot using PyRobot.

<comment><USER5> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Readers of this thread may be interested in lower cost options. I built a middle school robotics curriculum around Dexter GoPiGo robots: [https://www.dexterindustries.com/gopigo3/](https://www.dexterindustries.com/gopigo3/)

While you can do visual/block based coding on these, it also has built in Python support and the whole curriculum I ran was Python based.

My criteria for selection of this platform included: \- support for Grove sensors \- flexibility in machining own parts if desired \- Python support \- rPi based

(no affiliation with this company, just a positive real world end- user/educator experience)

<comment><USER8> Is your curriculum online?

<comment><USER9> Yes please share any links if possible educator here as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> More cash in advance spares the time needed for mechanics, mechatronics & software DIY hassle... which on the other hand are the most formative activities to learn robotics for real.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looking over the robots they support, low cost means about "thousands of dollars" in this context, right?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's currently ~5k USD for a (pre-assembled) robot arm that is marginally "useful" (and there are several brands/makers at that price point). I've heard of some that are trying to push towards the ~3k price point, with somewhat poorer tolerances.

I'm excited for the time in the near future when a useful robot arm costs roughly as much as a good laptop i.e. ~1k USD.

At that point, it'll become feasible for hobbyists to get one each and start playing around. Which will lead to an explosion in the variety of things tried, and will positively feed back into creating a healthy community, tons of software which makes it easier for the next set of people to get involved, etc. Much like the PC revolution in the 80s/90s.

At the moment, they're kinda like overpriced toys (for a home user / enthusiast point of view) without a killer app.

<comment><USER13> We need a breakthrough in low-speed, high torque, lightweight motors and geardowns. Basically if we can get economies of scale up on BLDC motors with higher numbers of poles (think hoverboard motors but lighter), and figure out how to mass manufacture harmonic drives, that'll open up the door to all kinds of low cost robotics.

Odriverobotics already has brought down the barrier to BLDC servomotor control.

Or this thing: [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8613852](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8613852)

<comment><USER14> Two thoughts: 1) I haven't seen any clear literature on efficiency of affordable servos. It seems like existing technology must be very efficient, given the pretty uniform torque/power ratio I've seen across the servo market.

2) One of the biggest financial roadblocks I've run across in robotics isn't about the torque available in affordable servos, it's about the ability to get force feedback. Servos/motors are useless for the large set of tasks requiring force feedback, without the additional complexity of building a current sensor and calibrating it. We need a cheap servo with integrated force feedback and an easy means of autocalibration (from a quick search, seems like this feature usually doubles or tripples the cost of an identical servo).

<comment><USER13> Torque/efficiency is still a big issue. A coworker and I put together all the math and specs for a robot which could "cook breakfast", just to see what a PoC would take. For anything approaching human arm levels of strength, in that form factor, you are looking at SWG servos. These are nominally 70-80% efficient, but that drops after a few thousand cycles, if you operate in higher loading regimes [1]. so cooling/maintenance is super important. Planetary gears are also not great efficiency-wise and are heavier.

Force feedback is also super important and challenging.

We just need like, synthetic actin :) Disney is actually working on that [2]. yeah it looks super inefficient but so were vacuum tubes before transistors.

1] [https://eeepitnl.tksc.jaxa.jp/mews/EN/19th/text/206.pdf&ved=...](https://eeepitnl.tksc.jaxa.jp/mews/EN/19th/text/206.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiHkd2B57HnAhVZaM0KHU_xAKUQFjAPegQIAxAF&usg=AOvVaw2F4XHlavPrQQiyKJMZSuwt)

2] [https://studios.disneyresearch.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/0...](https://studios.disneyresearch.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/03/High-Performance-Robotic-Muscles-from-Conductive- Nylon-Sewing-Thread-Paper.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjG- oCP6bHnAhXBHM0KHeT7B4YQFjAZegQIBhAF&usg=AOvVaw1T86dwb46W3evrawujoK5n)

<comment><USER14> Interesting! Thank you for all the great information. I'm opening those links from a mobile app, and both ended up as not found (not 404, but as the sites internal unrecognized URL page). Are they live for you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Cool, but the main problem I have is that I don't have a robot to program and the complexity to build one is way too high for me.

<comment><USER16> This is built on ROS by the looks of it. Most robotics users run everything in simulations anyway (have a look at UR arms). At a basic level look at Turtlebot. You can add all sorts of sensors, simulate environments and even realistic physics.

Even with things like pre-defined movement areas and collision boxes, arm planning software sometimes completely freaks out and produces weird plans that would probably break things. So it's always good to visualise before sending the commands to the physical system.

Gazebo is a common environment: [https://community.arm.com/developer/research/b/articles/post...](https://community.arm.com/developer/research/b/articles/posts/do- you-want-to-build-a-robot)

<comment><USER17> Thank you! I didn't realize it was that common. Seems very useful for building robot AI without needing to keep your robot safe In the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> anyone else wonder/worry what Facebook wants to do with robots...?

</comment><comment><USER19> How much does it cost to build the locobot?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this an alternative to ros?

<comment><USER20> It's built on top of ROS</comment></comment>


Get your site visitors' email, fullname, home address, and accounts with GetMail - <AUTHOR> https://getemails.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> It is telling that their homepage has a video titled "How is GetEmails Legal?" [https://youtu.be/45DoQR66TfQ](https://youtu.be/45DoQR66TfQ)

For those skeptical of the efficacy of GDPR or similar legislation, it is keeping these sorts of seedy tactics at bay at least for now.</comment>


The Enemy of My Enemy - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/the-enemy-of-my-enemy/

<comment><USER2> There won't be any surprising math here for programmers, though some of the author's efforts to explain math involving negatives in pragmatic, real-world terms were quite interesting. I also enjoyed this anecdote:

> The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a > lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double > negative makes a positive, but none in which a double positive makes a > negative - to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in > the audience, sarcastically replied, "Yeah, yeah."</comment>


Show HN: FreePizza.io – free pizza for usergroups, meetups, hackathons, talks - <AUTHOR> https://www.freepizza.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi folks - OP here.

FreePizza.io connects those who want pizza for tech meetups, usergroups, hackathons and tech talks with those who wish to sponsor the pizza - <USER2> recruiters, consulting firms and software companies. In return, the sponsor gets a promotional message opportunity at the event.

Background is I noticed that tech meetups, usergroups, hackathons and tech talks often have pizza and drinks for attendees for dinner.

And I thought "Who pays for the pizza?"

I'm both a programmer and a recruiter, and I know that recruiters want to connect with those tech communities. So I figured, hey maybe I should connect those who need pizza with those who want to sponsor the pizza.

FreePizza.io is the fully built implementation of an MVP idea I had previously [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747) \- which was nothing more than a Google spreadsheet.

Andrew email@example.com

<comment><USER3> This is a great idea.

I know most of the organizers for tech meetups in my area. They all tend to handle the case of food differently

\- One takes donations through patreon, which has worked fairly well. They have an actual board of directors, so it's very legit. I'm not sure if other cities have anything remotely close to this though.

\- For popular technology meetups (react, .NET, etc), usually a recruiting firm will sponsor the pizza. They contact the organizer generally. Usually they will do a 2 minute blurb at the start of the meeting

\- For meetups that are part of a larger organization, they tend to get funds straight from corporate. E.g. CodeForAmerica, GoogleDeveloperGroups, etc.

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

As a side note, I kind of wish it wasn't only just pizza. Some healthier options would nice. Some meetups use jimmyjohns or chickfil-a instead, which are nice alternatives.

<comment> ryan-c Chick-fil-a is an _awful_ alternative - they fund LGBTQ oppression.

[https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-a-still-anti- gay-970f079...](https://thinkprogress.org/chick-fil-a-still-anti- gay-970f079bf85/)

<comment><USER4> That's an awfully dishonest way to describe and frame their donations.

If you've ever donated to the Salvation Army, you too "fund LGBTQ oppression".

<comment><USER5> I mean, that's true as well. How is it (in your eyes) dishonest?

<comment><USER6> To me, it's dishonest because it presents a small aspect as a primary driver without giving proper context. So it was frustrating to me because I had to spend time researching the potential issue to learn it is a very insignificant aspect that I don't think was worthy of my time.

It's like posting "Don't eat ground beef as it is full of rat feces." any time someone posts about hamburgers.

It's true that the FDA allows a small amount of fat feces in ground beef, and all food [0].

But it's really insignificant and almost always irrelevant to the conversation.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been a restaurant owner for decades. It will be interesting to see if this works. Has it ever?

The reason I ask is because, at my places, we occasionally give free food to organizations in our neighborhood because they are in our neighborhood with the attendees also from my neighborhood and it's similar to advertising. They see our napkins and included flyers or coupons and, hopefully, we'll make some of them a regular customer. At these events, however, wouldn't most of the attendees not be from our neighborhood?

Most pizza joints are franchise or personally owned. That means this would be an out of pocket expense for the owner. You may find someone to do this once but I don't see how he would benefit once he finds out no one from his neighborhood is coming in.

This is just my initial reaction to seeing this.

<comment><USER8> The intent is for recruiters/vendors who want to market to the people at the event to pay the pizza place. But I totally agree that that's not very visible on the website right now.

<comment><USER7> Then that's even stranger. Why can't they just contact the event organizers and offer to do that? Then call a local pizza place and place the order.

<comment><USER9> Companies don't usually go hunting for random events to deliver pizza to. Event organizers will run around to find sponsors (cash or otherwise), this site serves as a quick middleman for one specific kind of sponsorship.

<comment><USER7> But companies would go hunting this web site for random events to deliver pizza to? Again, why does someone need a middle man for this?

<comment><USER10> y, cool idea. When we have an event we are organizing we contact potential sponsors and they give us a check ahead of time or bring a check as they usually want to give a pitch at the event and we use it to purchase drinks, pay for the pizza or other food, plates, etc and sometimes give-a-ways. This could be easier, but usually we purchase more than just food with the sponsor's money and usually the sponsor is attending the event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the simplicity. It would be very tempting to make a more general- purpose "we need a sponsor for $X worth of Y", but by laser focusing on "we need pizza for N people," it makes things immediately understandable for everyone involved.

The downside is that there are probably lots of organizations left out by that, but for a really small tool looking for its first audience, that's probably a trade they're more than willing to make.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct - this is exactly the thought process I went through.

In fact you can see here my original idea [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063747)

I called it "EatUp Sponsors" \- a terrible name, but fine for the MVP.

When thinking about a better name I gave alot of thought to a more generalised brand, but then it came to me that every single meetup I ever went to only ever had pizza, and that there would be value in being, as you say, laser focused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice innovation, but i do wish that junk food wasn't the norm at tech events.

<comment><USER13> In what regards is pizza a junk food?

It depends on how you make it and how much you eat of it (calories).

It also depends if you reguraly workout and how many calories you burn.

<comment><USER14> It's starch, dairy and processed/cured meat regardless how you make it. Usually meetups serve from counter takeout chains which makes it even worse. There is no argument for pizza not being a junk food.

<comment><USER15> If that's your definition of junk food, then so is half of the stuff you can order in regular, expensive restaurants.

<comment><USER16> It's possible to make very healthy pizza but the big chains make it pumped full of oil, sugar and meat.

<comment><USER15> Again, if your definition of "unhealthy" contains "meat", then half+ of the regular food is out.

Also, "healthy" pizzas and tasty pizzas as sets have little to no intersection. Which is fine for food you don't eat day in, day out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool! Signed up. A couple notes:

• Seems weird to use Google Authenticator as a single factor for authentication

• I found it annoying to have to do a captcha to fill out my profile details

• I probably won't think to check back. Can you set up alerts to e.g. email me when a sponsorship opportunity comes up in SF or NYC?

• Your verification email went to spam. I marked as not spam - hope that helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there.

I like your idea to get notifications for sponsorship opportunities in your city - I'll implement that.

You can currently get notification of new events for any given group (a group is the equivalent of a meetup or usergroup) - for example on this page [https://www.freepizza.io/group/melbourne-prolog-users- group/...](https://www.freepizza.io/group/melbourne-prolog-users-group/view/) push the "follow group" button.

I'll switch off captcha for profile details.

>> Seems weird to use Google Authenticator as a single factor for authentication

Yeah there's historical somewhat uninteresting reasons I did that, probably I should have gone with straight username/passwords.

thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tried to sign up but I'm not a Google Authenticator fan. You should consider other auth methods... like good ol' passwords.

<comment><USER19> I've had success with the "password less" approach of sending a magic link in an email.

<comment><USER20> Question: When you implement this, at what point (if any) do you have a user create a password?

<comment><USER21> There are companies so freaked out by the idea of leaking user passwords that they just don't use any auth method other than a link sent to the user's email address.

A couple major considerations if you're using that approach:

\- When do those links expire?

\- Do you keep logs of the pages that people request from your server?

An unexpired link compromises the user just as much as a password leak would have, since those links _are_ the user passwords. But server logs generally aren't tied down as tightly as a more obviously sensitive password database would be.

The nightmare scenario here is "every time the user needs to log in, we generate a new password for them, and every password stays valid forever. Whenever anyone actually does log in, we record their password in our server logs, available at www.ourcompany.com/debug/ . Then we send it to a dozen different third-party analytics providers."

<comment><USER19> Ideally, you'd want those links to expire after one use or after a few minutes, and you'd have some means of preventing replay-attacks. (a temporary token stored on the client that gets sent to the server during the email dispatch) Assuming every channel is encrypted, an unexpired link isn't as easily compromised as a password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You appear to need a moderation function.

</comment><comment><USER23> Simple and clever. I hope it works. Also; how about FreeSalad, you know, something for the health conscious? ;)

</comment><comment><USER24> Found a bug: If you select a country from the drop-down, then navigate to a different back, and then go back to the events list, the country is still selected, but all events are listed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pickup. Would you believe it's the only bug I had on my list and you've found it! I'll attend to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting Idea! , but i have a couple of feedback :

\- Don't restrict meetup to only cities. (For example, i used to run a Javascript community in Bali, called BaliJS and limiting our presence to only 1 city is limiting our impact, since Bali is relatively small and we have initiate activity not only in Denpasar)

\- Using Google Authenticator is a little bit annoying, i think you can offer some other auth method like using Github or FB OAuth for example

Cheers,

</comment><comment><USER26> Fun idea, but I suggest I would be much more inclined to go to meetups if there were free salad instead of free pizza. :-)

<comment><USER15> For the record, it's the exact reverse for me - I avoid (and complain about) events that decide to ditch pizza and start serving "healthy food".

Not saying it (just) to be opposite, just to highlight that there are (at least) two populations with strong and incompatible preferences :). Or in other words, a space for products catering to each individually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Thanks for this. Trying to create an event but won't accept the location. Keeps coming up with an error that location is entered in a wrong way and should use the drop-down menu instead, even though that's what I was trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER28> Motion to update your site copy to : "this site uses cookies (and pizza)"

</comment><comment><USER29> Why is everyone saying pizza is junk food? Are you taking about American pizza which is loaded with fake cheese, monsanto soy flour, and tomato sauce fortified with acid? Then may be I aggree.

<comment><USER30> Even with real ingredients, a pizza is primarily flour, tomato, and cheese. Add some cured meats, and maybe some vegetables. It is nutritionally lacking, ergo - junk food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Soo, how about individual OpenBSD hackers who just really like free pizza? :]

[https://brynet.biz.tm/wallofpizza.html](https://brynet.biz.tm/wallofpizza.html)

 _cough_

</comment><comment><USER32> Ohio State University used to have a student group that organized to go to events with free pizza :-)

<comment><USER11> There was some proselytizing group at my school that skipped the middle man by giving out spaghetti and pie weekly in various locations. Your spaghetti just came with some literature about whatever their religion was. I showed up several times. The oreo pie was amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> As all junk food, pizza is pretty cheap, so there is little point in this.

Also, offering free junk food should be restricted in the same way that offering free cigarettes is restricted.

<comment><USER34> > As all junk food, pizza is pretty cheap, so there is little point in this.

Great, since it's so cheap, can I send you my address and you'll pay for my pizza please?

> Also, offering free junk food should be restricted in the same way that > offering free cigarettes is restricted.

Junk food is only "bad" because it's calorie dense and most people 1) are sedentary and 2) don't properly portion food. Otherwise, aside from extreme nutrient imbalance or vitamin deficiency, it's just calories in calories out. It's possible to live off pizza and be very healthy. This is very different from cigarettes which are unhealthy in any quantity irrespective of lifestyle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I love this UI

<comment><USER36> I agree. It appears to be completely usable with exactly 0 javascripts enabled.

Edit: Nope, recaptcha requires JS. Oh well, at least browsing the rest of the site doesn't require it AFAIK.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a little bit of JavaScript for certain things like location identification, recaptcha, country selection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's with the "Incels 4 Trump" event??

<comment><USER38> Trolls rolling in

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Do you offer Branded Pizza? for example, we want to add our logo on the pizza or piza box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea.

Really all we are doing is connecting community with sponsors. You can negotiate with the community to do any sort of sponsorship that makes sense.</comment></comment>


Covid-19 in Hungary: Viktor Orbán pursues dictatorial powers - <AUTHOR> https://hungarianspectrum.org/2020/03/21/kim-lane-scheppele-orbans-emergency/ <comment><USER2> Hungarian here. We are totally fucked.

Many people want the gov to make quarantine real but it's not happening yet.

The old people (they are mostly Orbán voters) are on the streets. When I look out to the window I rarely see a mask. 10-15% of the people. Elderly people and many others still claim C19 is fake. Orbán already has the whole control of the country, now with that we're going to stay here for a dozens of years. Good bye EU, good bye civilization. I'll leave to a better place as soon C19 will go away in the world - if there will be a chance for that, not sure.

Hungarian health is shit. Lombardy has something like 9.3/10 in terms of peoples health, Hungary has 2.2 (higher is better). My estimation is 500k deaths (10 million population) in my country in 3-6 months - based on data from Italy and South Korea plus health data.

The worse thing is our sociaty. We don't have. There are mostly poor, stupid people with no ability to even read, understand, etc. I am not kidding. I know it sounds harsh. That's fckin hungarian culture based on our sad history.

It's done.

<comment><USER3> Hungarian here.

Goodbye civilization? Most people can't read? It's done?

No my friend, isolation seems to be getting to your head. "When I look out the window, only 10-15% are wearing masks". That's far more than many other places.

<comment><USER4> That top level comment is such a typical somewhat smart central European youngster (now maybe in their 30s, like me) that was heavily brainwashed the whole childhood how UE is soooo much superior and civilized, and the their own culture and people are so inferior because of backwards religion and backwards conservatism. For them, the unelected officials ruling UE is a pinacle of democracy, while lawfully elected politicians at home are dictators, and so on.

I was raised in the same environment in Poland, was a subject of the same UE- love brainwashing most of my youth, and have/had plenty of friends with the same view.

<comment><USER5> I am Spanish and I see exactly the same thing here. How it's okay for Germany to rule over us because locals are so convinced our own country and its citizens are inferior. It's so sad, especially since it ends as a self- fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><USER6> These sorts of claims are standard fare for divisive far right parties. Apparently they work quite well given their political rise and the prevalence of that sort of rhetoric even in forums like this.

<comment><USER7> Funny how the left-wing Yanis Varoufakis probably agrees with that statement. But yeah, why don't you far right anyone who disagrees with the mainstream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also Hungarian here. The article summed up the law under debate correctly. Its a slippery slope that we've seen happening in other countries (Russia, which is a kind of a blueprint for this government in many respects, comes to mind). Carte blanche to do anything they please in the name of Protecting The People, suspending constitutional rights and silencing all dissenting voices, this time with jail sentences. Whenever the Covid situation gets better it's easy to make up a new national emergency with a different threat - immigrants, again, attack from EU, again, or something else. The 60% plus rural voters whose main news source is the captured state media (Russian style, again) won't really mind. Then we can stay in this "emergency doctrine" forever. No wonder why wannabe/actual dictators love crisis...

Author makes a good point at the end - it can go another way as well. Let's imagine, what if the country starts to crumble? As pezo1919 pointed out, health/healthcare is in deep trouble. What if tens of thousands die and everyone turns against Orbán? These changes will come very handy as well, won't they?

I'm trying to finish this comment real fast before they pass this law and a black car takes me away for spreading f

</comment><comment><USER9> I spent about six weeks traveling in Hungary in the summer of 2000, enjoying the great food and wine and practicing my rudimentary Hungarian skills. At the time the country seemed to be a place with crappy past and a bright future.

I even was in Budapest during the celebrations of the 1000 year anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Hungary (which was really just the anniversary of the Christianization of the country and the Pope tossing a crown to King Istvan). The fireworks were great and the I stood in the square in front of the Parliament building and watched a then much younger Viktor Orban giving a speech.

At the time, I was under the impression that Orban was viewed as a vibrant leader committed to democracy and modernization. Oh, how times have changed.

He's now a wannabee dictator, stomping on democracy and free speech, and taking the country on a reverse course back to the darker years of Hungary's past.

What the hell happened to you, Viktor? Did you grow to like power too much? You were so promising, but turned out to be so disappointing. Another Mugabe.

Now I feel sad when I think of Hungary and the nice people I met there. I also marvel at the inability of the people to learn from their past. Hungarians always seemed very well-informed and knowledgeable of their history.

</comment><comment><USER10> From the Wikipedia page on demagogues ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue)):

\-- begin quote --

Demagogues usually advocate immediate, forceful action to address a _crisis_ while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. Once elected to high executive office, demagogues typically unravel constitutional limits on executive power and attempt to convert their democracy to dictatorship.

...

Methods [used by demagogues]:

* Scapegoating

* Fearmongering

* Lying

* Emotional oratory and personal charisma

* Accusing opponents of weakness and disloyalty

* Promising the impossible

* Violence and physical intimidation

* Personal insults and ridicule

* Vulgarity and outrageous behavior

* Folksy posturing

* Gross oversimplification

* Attacking the news media

\-- end quote --

<comment><USER11> This post along with this very comment do at least:

* fearmongering

* Accusing of disloyalty

* Personal insult

* Gross oversimplification

If the media law has a clause about being active only in national emergency, it might be OK (not that I'd vote for it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My parents fled Hungary in '56 and landed in the US, on the west coast. I spent a lot of the last decade in Europe, and a lot of my free time in Hungary. Loved it, enjoyed it, thought a future me could retire there.

The parallels between US right now, and Hungary right now, are alarming. It's overtly called out in the press... so it's part of the conversation, but we're full circle on what my parents (and grandparents) went through and how a redemptive arc is, or is not, available.

</comment><comment><USER13> Compare and contrast with the highest voted comment here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663106)

 _" If there's anything the current debacles in Europe and the U.S. has taught us, it's that selfish and/or irrational jerks abound, and asking nicely doesn't work at all."_

Who, whom?

</comment><comment><USER14> It is a long article without any sources

<comment><USER15> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/hungary-to- con...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/hungary-to-consider- bill-that-would-allow-orban-to-rule-by-decree)

<comment><USER14> This is a little bit more truthworthy. But still there is no sources, Just opinions. By sources i mean documents. Legislative documents. They can be interpreted in various ways based on who reads them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People complain about dictatorships, but the absolute best form of government is actually a dictatorship, because it's efficient and looks out for the interests of the people. Of course, this means it has to be a "benevolent dictatorship".

The problem with dictatorships is either your dictator isn't benevolent, or you have a great dictator but then he dies and his son takes over and he's terrible. There's lots of examples in history of excellent dictators/authoritarians: Marcus Aurelius of Rome, and Elizabeth I of England, for example. Of course, with Marcus Aurelius, there was a movie made about what happened there (Gladiator, 2000) when he crappy son took over.

<comment><USER17> No, your first premise is false - even a 'benevolent dictatorship' is not 'the best thing' for the people in most situations. In certain times of crises, maybe, but otherwise, no.

<comment><USER18> GP gave some good points about benevolent dictatorship. Can you elaborate on why it wouldn't be "the best thing" in general? And ideally weight that against all the other scenarios where it is.

<comment><USER19> One other thing that makes dictatorships inferior and democracy preferable over all other systems of governance is transition of power. In democracies, it's encoded in the system in such a way that everyone seeking power wants to play ball. In dictatorship, if someone wants the power, they usually take it by force, leaving a lot of bodies behind - and the very _threat_ of that is already a force making dictators increasingly paranoid.

That said, I think every western country could use a temporary (say, 6 months) switch to dictatorship, because I worry we won't deal with this effectively otherwise. I have no idea how to ensure such a dictatorship would be temporary, though.

<comment><USER17> No - we do not need dictatorships in these crises.

The notion of handing Donald Trump the ability to rule by fiat, let alone other national leaders, is beyond rhetoric, it's not even contemplatable.

We need coordinated, responsible leadership. Most governments have all of the constitutional powers they need at this time.

<comment><USER16> What we "need" isn't important. Coordinated, responsible leadership sounds great, but that's up to the voters to decide. If the voters don't want that, then why should it be forced on them? Who are you to tell the voters otherwise?

The people elected Trump, so why not give him a dictatorship for 6 months? After all, it's within the President's power to declare martial law for times of emergency. It's the job of the voters to make sure they don't elect someone who can't be trusted with the awesome power available to that position. The same goes for any democratic country.

<comment><USER17> One of the more scary things I've ever read :)

The powers of the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary exist to balance one another out _especially_ in times of crises when some dictator could come along and declare himself ruler.

The people didn't vote for a Dictator, they voted for a President with very limited constitutional powers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What are your recommendations for Git visualisation? - <AUTHOR> I like to think I'm well versed enough in how to use git, at least on a day-to-day basis. Having had plenty of experience with GitHub repos, both private and public, I now find myself in a situation whereby I should assume GitHub is not an option, and use 'self-hosted' repos.
With this, comes the difficulty in visualising progress, history and collaboration within a small team. Issues arise due to a no -standard, or non-existent, workflow (but that's for a different discussion).
I believe a visualisation tool would greatly help the team I work with, but with little experience outside of GitHub, I'm looking for advice from those that have used other tools.
e.g. Gitlab: to me, it looks like the answer, or at least something pretty close. But I don't want to commit to something, propose to my team, only to later discover a fundamental flaw or usage restrictions etc.
EDIT: An ideal feature would be the concept of pull requests or merge requests. Given the current team workflow, not every piece of work is to be released as soon as its completed so having some visualisation of things waiting on the wings is important.
Help in research would be grately appreciated.
Thanks community :) <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm the creator of GitSense which is focused on Git analytics and search

Right now it doesn't support analyzing/visualizing merges/pull requests, but it will down the road. What it does really well right now, is it lets you analyze changes across branches, which is a precursor to merge/pull requests analytics. Below is an example of how you can use it to analyze two branches from the rethinkdb project:

[https://gitsense.com/insight?c=bitbucket:gitsense/contexts:g...](https://gitsense.com/insight?c=bitbucket:gitsense/contexts:gs_contexts::default.ccf#b=github:rethinkdb/rethinkdb:next::github:rethinkdb/rethinkdb:v2.3.x)

I write a bit more about how the tool works in the GitSense blog:

[https://gitsense.com/blog](https://gitsense.com/blog)

Right now I'm working on deep integration with Bitbucket and Microsoft, but you can use the standalone web tool, to analyze repos from GitHub/GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket Cloud/Server or GitLab Server/Cloud. If GitHub and GitLab supports injection points in their product, I'll provide deep integration with them as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just spotted this come up on HN New as well, pull requests included: [https://opsnotice.xyz/gogs-git-docker/](https://opsnotice.xyz/gogs-git- docker/)

Another potential I guess, however I've never used Docker or Go so maybe not worth the risk.

</comment><comment><USER3> GitKraken is pretty nice, and free – but it's client software, not a web service.

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have mentioned this in my original post (will amend) but does it handle things like feature/merge requests kind of like how GitHub and GitLab does?

<comment><USER3> No, it's just a client, merge requests aren't part of a standard Git install so it wouldn't know where to even save them. (It does handle them when working with a Github repository).

For that Gitlab is certainly the best option – or a private repository at Github. I'd trust their security much more than anything I could roll myself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Important point well made. Thank you</comment></comment></comment></comment>


iOS 13.2 now available with Deep Fusion - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/28/ios-13-2-now-available-emoji-more/ <comment><USER2> Why is the ability to read incoming text messages limited to Bluetooth devices with the H1 chip? Is there a technical reason for that?

<comment><USER3> I assume it's because the only devices with that chip can identify themselves as being "in ear". So you don't have your phone loudly announcing an embarrassing message for everyone to hear (as my gf's Alexa tried to do).

The problem is you could conceivably enable this in a "safe" setting like your car...only to have an embarrassing message spoken on an occasion when you have a passenger in your car.

<comment><USER4> I assume it's because they want to sell the device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting this dropped so quickly after 13.1.3, which was reported to have terrible battery life bugs. These days I'm giving iOS and MacOS updates at least a week before taking the plunge. Seems there are some pretty major bugs still lurking. Hopefully the fact that they're calling this 13.2 means we're past all that now.

</comment><comment><USER6> "iOS 13.2 also includes new Siri privacy settings that allow you to opt in or opt out of sharing your Siri interactions with Apple."

Without sounding all tin-foil hat, how is Apple planning to prove they are honoring opt-outs? Are they going to have an independent audit or are we supposed to just trust them?

<comment><USER7> Because there's really no reason they'd not honor it, and there is a reason to honor it.

They've only ever needed a sampling of recordings to review. They were presumably drawing that sampling from all recordings before.

Now, suppose only 10% of people opt-in, although I'm sure it will be higher than that. That's still plenty to sample from.

So there's zero reason to not honor it. On the other hand, if they were sneakily not honoring it behind the scenes and that ever were leaked (which would probably happen), that would be a huge hit to their reputation, which would be a big business risk.

So for a rational corporation trying to make money, the profitable business choice is to honor opt-outs -- it's all upside and zero downside.</comment></comment>


Sleep and creativity - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_creativity <comment><USER2> I recently completed the Coursera course "Learning How to Learn".

Sleep was mentioned as being important for learning, as it erases some memories and makes the more important parts easier to remember. The brain rehearses the neural patterns of what you are trying to learn. It helps you figure out difficult problems and understand your topic.

"It's as if the complete deactivation of the conscious you in the pre-frontal cortex at the forefront of your brain helps other areas of your brain start talking more easily to one another, allowing them to put together the neural solution to your learning task while you're sleeping."

It was also mentioned that napping can help creativity, with Dali and Einstein mentioned having an interesting napping technique where they would sleep in a chair while holding something. Dropping the object would cause them to wake up with allegedly boosted creative ideas on the problem they had in mind.

<comment><USER3> > an interesting napping technique

Here's Henri Poincaré on how how he discovered Fuchsian functions[1]:

 _For fifteen days I strove to prove that there could not be any functions like those I have since called Fuchsian functions. I was then very ignorant; every day I seated myself at my work table, stayed an hour or two, tried a great number of combinations and reached no results. One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination. By the next morning I had established the existence of a class of Fuchsian functions, those which come from the hypergeometric series; I had only to write out the results, which took but a few hours._

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automorphic_form#Poincar.C3.A9...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automorphic_form#Poincar.C3.A9_on_discovery_and_his_work_on_automorphic_functions)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> While researching I also found this article: [http://hatrabbits.com/why-sleep- deprivation-is-not-the-key-t...](http://hatrabbits.com/why-sleep-deprivation- is-not-the-key-to-creativity/)

It argues that you should sleep if you are going to do some analytical and logical thinking, and not sleep if you are going to come up with creative ideas. But some come up with creative ideas after sleeping (it was Elon Musk who said he came up with the best ideas in the shower after sleeping), so the area is confusing.</comment>


Muhammad Rabbani convicted after refusing to give passwords to police - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/muhammad-rabbani-convicted-refusing-to-give-passwords-to-police-2017-9?r=UK&IR=T <comment><USER2> I'm not aware of how things should work in the UK, but shouldn't a warrant or similar be required? That some random authority/security figure can demand access to your electronics without some form of oversight is crazy.

<comment><USER3> If you're at a border, they can copy all your files. They can force you to give your fingerprints; or an iPhone face view to unlock your phone.

In the U.S., if you are not at a border; law enforcement needs a warrant based on probable cause.</comment></comment>


Ruby Test::Unit sucks (and why I still use it) - <AUTHOR> http://evan.tiggerpalace.com/articles/2010/12/18/ruby-test-unit-sucks-and-why-i-still-use-it/

<comment><USER2> His contrived example of _i.should have(1).porkchop_sandwiches_ highlights my (shared) biggest problem with RSpec too: over the top matchers.

I already know Ruby's syntax so when I want to query an array's length, I use length (or count or size). I don't want to learn yet another term like "have" and nor do I want to reverse how I normally do this check. _have(1).obj_ vs _obj.length_ are chalk and cheese.

I want my tests to be as close to existing Ruby language constructs and syntax as possible but _clean_ too. Test::Unit keeps us closer to Ruby as Evan demonstrates:

      assert_equal 1, i.porkchop_sandwiches.count

But it's not clean enough, IMHO, and you have to learn a bunch of assertion methods to cover basic cases. So I have a "middle way" I picked up from I use RSpec and avoid its more fluffy matchers in preference for something like:

      i.porkchop_sandwiches.count.should == 1

Now it's more like an "if" condition but you still get the right error message goodness if the assertion fails. It adds the least new syntax to get results using your pre-existing Ruby knowledge. _(Disclaimer: I usually just grin and bear Test::Unit for small projects ;-))_

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately this style of assertions will lead to warnings in your test cases. I find many RSpec projects run their tests without warnings enabled because of this issue.

I MADE A VIDEO WITH FUN MUSIC TO DEMONSTRATE! :D :D

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqc4kxMTCsc>

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<comment><USER2> Interesting to know! (UPDATE: Looks like I'm wrong ;-) See last update.)

It seems this issue was raised in 2008 and a solution (of sorts) suggested: [https://rspec.lighthouseapp.com/projects/5645/tickets/504-wa...](https://rspec.lighthouseapp.com/projects/5645/tickets/504-warning- free-rspec-a-solution-for-useless-use-of-in-a-void-context-warnings) .. David Chelimsky seemed to think Ruby 1.9 would lose this warning but it didn't and he reopened the ticket (and it's still open 2 years later) :-) The "check" workaround seems generic and viable, if noisy.

But I thought I'd see what actually happens when you try a super simple example with RSpec itself:

      require 'rspec'

      describe "a number" do
        it "should be equal to itself" do
          1.should == 1
        end
      end

Running with warnings gives some warnings in _diff-cls_ (oops) but none for the _1.should == 1_ \- the mystery gets a little deeper (RSpec masking it somehow?).

 _UPDATE:_ I think I found the reason after scouring RSpec 2.0's source. Based on your example but putting _should_ in Kernel rather than Object:

      module Kernel
        def should; self; end
      end

      def omg
        1.should == 1
      end

      omg

You get no warning in this case. Curiously, though, if you ditch omg and just run the 1.should == 1 direct, you _still_ get a warning. Confusinger and confusinger.

 _LAST UPDATE:_ I'm leaving the above for completeness but it appears the result is not such a useful one (see tl's response ;-))

<comment><USER3> No, adding should to Kernel fixes nothing. Your definition of the omg method returns the result of the comparison, thus it is no longer a void context. So the return value of omg is the return value of the comparison.

In your RSpec specs, if you only have one "==" expectation and it is the last one of the block, you will not get a warning.

I HAVE MADE ANOTHER AWESOME VIDEO WITH SUPER AWESOME MUSIC TO ILLUSTRATE!!!!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8SB7mcQfrY>

Hope this makes sense! :-D

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<comment><USER2> Ah, so it does - thanks for clearing it up. I _wondered_ why you were throwing that extra "true" in there so didn't do it on my v2 but should have pondered this more deeply ;-) I've updated my comment with the relevant notes.

All that said, though, this is sucky. But since I never run with warnings on, I'm going to put some headphones on and hop around shouting "LA LA LA" whenever I run my specs next.. or I could partake in this grotesque workaround of temporarily forcing warnings off: <http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/1438>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am in the process of rewriting hundreds of rspec tests to work with rspec 2/rspec rails for rails 3. This is killing my "TDD saves time" argument and it is really all the fault of rspec. Rails 3 requires Rspec 2, which has syntax tweaks that seem largely masturbatory. Now I have 183 failing tests, and no confidence whether it is rails changes I need to make, or updates to test syntax that are needed. Essentially I now have a parallel app to maintain and upgrade (the tests) and with test::unit which is _stable_ I would come out much farther ahead effort-wise as I would get the benefit of the tests, without large maintanence cost for the tests.

In summary, Rspec is on a high horse and thinks I should maintain it like it was another app.

edit: And now I'm wondering if I need a test suite for my test suite. TDD Turtles, all the way down...

<comment><USER5> You can still hook up rspec or test::unit to rails 3...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've tried liking rspec so many times, but Test::Unit really is where it's at. I don't understand the obsession with tests reading like english (Cucumber is much worse in this regard). I'll stick with ruby.

<comment><USER7> I find the assert_equal and so on much more readable than the "English" style. What does "should" mean? It's not as intuitive as assert.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, rspec looks confusing as fuck. Here's how we do it in Perl:

        is $got, $expected, 'is got eq expected?';
        ok $foo, 'foo is true';
        like $some_string, qr/foo bar/, 'some string contains foo bar';
        cmp_ok $got, '<', $expected, 'got is less than expected';

No need to learn some new language. It's just Perl. (The only confusing part is whether it's $got, $expected or $expected, $got. But I guess that part is arbitrary, like calling "ok" "ok" instead of n"is_the_first_argument_some_sort_of_true_value".)

<comment><USER9> But Test::More and others have other issues. How most modules do it in Perl usually means: by not cleaning global state between tests and without any isolation. It bit me so many and I wonder why people keep doing it that way.

I honestly expect a lot of cpan modules to have some tests that pass only because they don't run on a clean environment since I found some cases like that already.

<comment><USER8> I don't program with globals, so this have never been a problem. I also feel it's outside the scope of a discussion on syntax.

Finally, I am trying to fix this problem with: <http://github.com/jrockway/eval-clean>. It basically gives you an object that is a PerlInterpreter object, completely isolated inside. The only issue is keeping the lexical scope between eval calls, and I've almost figured out how to do this. (No, Lexical::Persistence is not even close to an acceptable solution :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm missing this particular feature in T::U that I have in RSpec -- nested contexts + lets/subjects blocks.

        context "parent" do
          subject { Factory(:something, :value => other_thing) }
          let(:other_thing) { "Value" }
          it "has 'Value' value" do
            subject.value.should == "Value"
          end

          context "nested" do
            let(:other_thing) { "Totally other value" }
            it "has 'Totally other value' value" do
              subject.value.should == 'Totally other value'
            end
          end
        end

<comment><USER11> Have you looked at Shoulda? It lets you use contexts and adds to the goodness of Test::Unit at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. I only alluded briefly to Shoulda (and Coulda) in my post. I live and die by them.

Context is king.

BTW, while I may beat up on RSpec, I learned much of how I perceive TDD indirectly from David Chelimsky. I may not be an RSpec fan any more but I'm a huge David fan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I completely agree! After realizing that the team at my new job prefers full- on BDD with Cucumber I took a closer look at testing frameworks. My conclusion was that T::U and Shoulda/Coulda in combination with Webrat does just about everything I need it to do. It's simple enough for me to write quickly and I don't struggle to read it 6 months later.

And that's good enough for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Its always a thrill for me when someone finds utility in a tool that I wrote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'll admit it also: I usually just use Test::Unit. I have nothing against RSpec, but Test::Unit does enough of what I need it to do and I am used to using it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Riot (<https://github.com/thumblemonks/riot>) is a nice compromise with just- enough-DSL.

<comment><USER15> I would like to like riot, but not creating a new test instance per test is a Bad Thing™. I just can't abide by it despite the speed boost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> xUnit testing packages are very simple and intentionally don't try to do much. They provide a basic testing infrastructure that everyone who has done unit testing in any language will immediately recognize.

This does not mean they "suck."

<comment><AUTHOR> Read my post. I admit, the "suck" referenced was a bit of a troll. It's how I once felt.</comment></comment>


Greg - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/greg <comment><USER2> This nice summation really reminds me of a quote from _Shawshank Redemption_ which is, I must admit, not the most flattering in a business context:

> _I 'm a convicted felon who provides sound financial advice - it's a nice > pet to have._

The best takeaway for Technical / SV minded folks in this posting is quite clear: The odds of success are greatly enhanced when you have a Top Flight Communicator at your disposal. An ability to "walk amongst the tribes" is very important. It's a lot like getting various human systems into harmony / unison (nerves and cardiovascular for instance).

I can state from first-hand experience with Bids/RFPs for projects worth tens of thousands to billions that the most important person in the room is the Proposal Coordinator and they get the least respect and compensation out of the gate. It's realistically a horribly stressful job that is only rewarding to a very select group of people, one of which happens to be me. I've learned how to herd cats.

If I wanted to be, uh, less generous in my perspective, the Machiavellian perspective is much more clear: "Manipulating people is a profitable enterprise."

That's why I have a photo of Winston Wolf in my peripheral vision every day at work, because his motto makes the most sense in a world plagued by Murphy's Laws...

> _My name is Winston Wolf. I solve problems._

</comment><comment><USER3> > Greg is a world-class recruiter (he plans every detail of interviews, > heavily researches candidate's backgrounds, sends thoughtful and persistent > followups, and so on), and I now believe even more strongly that someone on > the founding team has to be an amazing recruiter.

The early openAI team is clearly superb. What's even more impressive to me, is that the quality of the team has remained incredibly strong as the team grew to 45+ people: IMO/IOI medalists, startup founders and key contributors, world-class Phd's who could easily get tenure-track positions at top universities, etc. [1] [2]

It's not uncommon for a startup to have a strong founding team. It's almost unheard of that just about every single individual of a 45+ person team is objectively exceptional.[3]

Not sure how much Greg is still involved in recruiting, but either way, congrats.

(No affiliation to OpenAI, besides knowing a few people there)

[1] [https://openai.com/blog/team-update- january/](https://openai.com/blog/team-update-january/) [2] [https://openai.com/blog/team-update-august/](https://openai.com/blog/team- update-august/) [3] I don't know any startups in which all of the first 50 employees were truly exceptional prior to them joining the company. I guess Google, for example, might have had an incredibly strong early team, but I'm not sure they were as strong prior to them joining Google.

</comment><comment><USER4> Greg is humble, resourceful, and smart. That combination alone is enough to move mountains. However, what Sam's piece is missing is the "Why?". Why would someone who can do anything do YOUR thing and take any crud task it takes to finish the job, especially after they've made their fortune? Greg should give his own "Why?" about OpenAI. From what I know if 100 years from now someone looks back at this fork in the road of History, they would see two scenarios: Either a couple of big players will own the most powerful instrument in the hands of mankind, to use at their (or their highest bidder's) discretion, or mankind will jointly get to ensure the instrument has a safety handle to protect life and all things most important.

For the latter, I'd bet many of the smartest people here would want to do the crud work, even if they're not cofounders. The job of the ideal co-founder is to spread a mission that matters this much to everyone who would be fit to achieve it, inspiring all employees to be as committed. Well, OpenAI powered relentlessly by Greg, has inspired thousands of volunteers and open-source contributors in addition to it's top-notch staff.

<comment><USER5> I've heard OpenAI isn't actually open source. Is it?

<comment><USER6> They do have open source projects, but their mission is not to necessarily be an open source company. They want to equalize the footing in AI for everyone, and this might require some degree of secrecy so that commercial AI companies do not get an edge. At least, that is my perception, feel free to correct me.

<comment><USER7> > They want to equalize the footing in AI for everyone

Equal opportunity to _pay_ , or actually democratizing it so that anybody who wants to use it can reap the benefits?

I'm willing to bet it's not the latter, given the reliance of AI on large training corpuses and machine time.

<comment><USER6> I think its more about making the same research available to everyone, or other things that are relatively free to distribute (like code, even though, as hinted, it does not mean that everything will be open-sourced as its written).

Although, you do make a good point. If only the most powerful companies can afford meaningful machine time, how democratized can AI be?

<comment><USER7> > If only the most powerful companies can afford meaningful machine time, how > democratized can AI be?

That's the big trick that nobody seems to give a shit about, as they scramble around to make a buck.

Having the research or even the code _doesn 't really give you an advantage_. We're just trading one set of overlords for another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Greg is a world-class recruiter (he plans every detail of interviews, > heavily researches candidate's backgrounds, sends thoughtful and persistent > followups, and so on), and I now believe even more strongly that someone on > the founding team has to be an amazing recruiter._

I maintain a version-controlled text file of people I want to hire for my startup, should hell ever freeze over and I secure funding some day.

The nice part is that doing so usually goes hand-in-hand with the product/market/technology research you conduct anyways, so the practice has a very low time investment attached to it. For the most part, you simply stumble upon desirable people during the course of seemingly unrelated research, dig into their background, and then add them to the list.

On a humorous note, quite a few people on my list later ended up being hired by YC HARC. Hey Sam, what are the finer points of YC companies* trying to hire talent attached to YC projects? Can you offer any pointers? :)

* _Not a YC company (yet)._

<comment><USER9> "should hell ever freeze over and I secure funding some day"

Your low self-esteem is sabotaging you.

<comment><USER8> Ah, it was intended as half tongue-in-cheek. Making light of tough situations is usually for the best.

Sorry for not making that more clear. My smiley face budget had already been reached by the latter portion of that post. Anything exceeding one smiley and you end up looking like you're on something, especially on HN. Heck, even just one can be suspect!

<comment><USER10> Yes it's better to be misunderstood, than to use too many smileys.

<comment><USER8> Case in point: I'm not sure if your comment was genuine snark, or if you simply refrained from adding a smiley.

It's turtles all the way down. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The moral of the story here, clearly, is that when you're one of a pair of billionaires collectively responsible for some of the most successful entrepreneurship successes in recent history, and you decide to have someone handle logistics for a new venture, make sure they're enthusiastic.

<comment><USER12> This is reductionist and offensive.

(1) On a practical level, although I don't know Greg's personal financial situation, he was the CTO of Stripe for five years. He's rich enough not to work. He works exactly because he's enthusiastic.

(2) Secondly, to say that Greg merely handles logistics for OpenAI is to willfully ignore the post as written, and the reality on the ground.

Also, I'm not sure Sam is a billionaire, although well on his way.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's offensive to point out that recruiting an enthusiastic, engaged, and talented cofounder is different for Elon Musk and Sam Altman than it is for the fledgling startup founder that is the standard reader of YC blog posts.

It would have been fine if he was just telling a story about his own life, but when he said "make sure you also have someone like Greg" it became fair to point out that he seems a little bit oblivious as to context.

<comment><USER12> I misinterpreted your first post as being a lot more snarky than this second comment suggests, sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I disliked the article. I think sama is simultaneously over-personalizing and also losing context and perspective.

Sure, maybe it is a generalizable description of virtuous qualities but it also strikes me as something different and much worse. Here's another interpretation "I sure am fortunate that I know this wealthy, well-connected person who helps me with my businesses that require knowing wealthy, well- connected people."

</comment><comment><USER14> > with an average email response time of about 5 minutes to anything

Why is this being praised?

Can't stand the "always on" economy. It's OK to not immediately to respond to things.

<comment><USER15> Especially after he says that he didn't reply back quickly (living in a high- latency environment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From about 20,000 feet higher than the OP, one of the issues about PG, Sam, and YC is the combination of (1) lots of warnings about the dangers of disputes among startup co-founders and, thus, the extreme need for yet another startup co-founder, this one to play _den mother_ , peace maker, mother hen, group psychologist, Chief Cat Herder, etc. versus (2) extreme negativity about a solo founder.

From another 10,000 feet up, here is a simple observation: All across the US, from the largest cities to the smallest crossroad communities, there are solo founders of successful auto repair shops, auto body shops, dentist practices, CPA practices, rental property ownership and management, pizza carryout shops, Chinese carry out shops, _Mobil Travel Guide_ five star restaurants, pediatrician practices, manufacturer representative practices, big-truck, little-truck businesses of wide variety, etc. where commonly the cash to start the business is higher than that of servers, domain name, and Internet connection of a Web site.

So, solo founders do relatively well in _main street_ startups. Since co- founders are not crucial for main street business and since a Web site startup should be in most ways easier, why are co-founders crucial for Web site startups? Since co-founder disputes are so common and potentially destructive, why be so eager to have co-founders and so down on solo founders?

With the above, to me, hiring a co-founder as a recruiter, office peace maker, general evangelist, smiling face, optimistic, good hand shake, meeter and greeter who knows a lot of people is a big slice of cash and equity for the usual thin budget of a startup.

Or, as we often hear, the crucial work of a startup is to keep the _burn rate_ as low as possible and ASAP please the customers/users and get to earnings. In this case, an office peace maker, etc. is at best a nice to have if for free, otherwise not a must have for free, and likely too expensive if have to pay much.

</comment><comment><USER17> Greg sounds like me. Usually gets taken advantage of by people writing articles like this.

<comment><USER18> That's exactly the thoughts that came to my mind. Article is big on complimenting Greg about his qualities being able to follow others, and drive a given vision handed down to him.

Hopefully, this article is simply not doing the Person justice and is simply poorly thought out and comes out as a superficial 'fluff' piece.

<comment><USER19> Different people are skilled at and like doing different things. I'm not the "big, original vision" guy. I'm the guy who pairs with the big vision guy and figures out the myriad details required to make that big vision come to fruition, figures out how to reign in the unrealistic, unachievable, or merely "sometime later" parts of the vision, so we can deliver in the near-term on the parts that are achievable.

That means I often get (and win at) the second-in-command role, but I don't see that as being taken advantage of at all. I've made quite a good career of it and honestly and earnestly enjoy it.

<comment><USER17> The guy who made me work on an MVP for the next 3 month while he was on a vacation told me the same thing.

Apparently, if you have a big enough vision, it's along the lines of "why aren't you working for my awesome ideas for free? I even gave you teeny amount of equity"

<comment><USER18> I think I might use that quote and print it on T-shirts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> YC at this moment is able to recruit the absolute top talent for any position they can envision. Damn that is a lot of power they wield, especially in starting these projects like Open AI and the Basic Income. I'd love to be able to invest in YC, as I think a good return at this point is one of the best bets an investor could make.

<comment><USER21> > YC at this moment is able to recruit the absolute top talent for any > position they can envision.

Absolute top talent? I think you are blinded by the light of YC. Not everyone thinks that or even close to it. [1] [2] By way of example I am reminded when I told a young person that I was helping to look on the page of a vc/angel investor that I do work for and know (among many). I said 'look at what they are doing I can get you an easy interview at any of those companies even if they don't have an opening'. They looked (was a woman iim) and said 'no thanks looks like they are all doing strange weird stuff'. This particular person preferred a traditional and solid company I am guessing, not a shot at the moon. And there are plenty of people like that. Plenty of smart capable people in the world and not all would die to work for a YC company or YC affiliated venture.

[1] Note I make money off the shot at the moon company so don't take this as some kind of sour grapes..

[2] And while most people know who Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos are (what I will call 'the aunt' test) most people have never heard of Sam, PG or YC for that matter.

<comment><USER22> > [2] And while most people know who Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos are (what I > will call 'the aunt' test) most people have never heard of Sam, PG or YC for > that matter.

Sure, but most software engineers probably have. While companies need a _lot_ more than just engineers, having a leg up on engineering recruitment (especially as a very early-stage startup) seems extremely valuable.

<comment><USER23> Highly doubt it :) HN crowd is a small subset of all professional engineers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure that many others could write much better informed or detailed additions to Sama's post.

All I will say is that I worked at Stripe very briefly -- for about three months -- when the company was about thirty people (before I went on to go through YC). Greg was incredibly generous with his time in explaining and working with me as a non-engineer.

I don't think he had been named CTO yet (Stripe was quite title phobic at the start) but it was clear that he was both a technical and non-technical leader of the company. He spent time to explain code and architecture to me, while also chatting through cultural norms and various organizational tensions Stripe was experiencing as it grew.

I think the acculturation to Stripe that he very deliberately supported in me was critical for what (little) success I had with Standard Treasury.

This is all to say that Sama's post is spot on in my experience. Greg exhibited every one of the mentioned characteristics (except recruiting, I didn't interacting with him on that) even when working with someone with which he didn't have to be so generous.

</comment><comment><USER6> I only worked at OpenAI for a short period, but what was written here seems to mirror what I saw, FWIW. I would add in that Greg struck me as one of the sharpest people in the company, and one of the hardest working (he would often stay there late into the night, even on weekends).

</comment><comment><USER24> Greg Brockman:

Went to MIT

Went to Harvard

Was CTO of a 10 billion dollar company for 5 years, starting the year it was founded

Yeah, I'd take a cofounder like that.

</comment><comment><USER25> But why does Greg need a cofounder?

<comment><USER26> (I am Greg.)

Starting something new is incredibly hard. The default is that your company never even forms, and it's on you to overcome the activation energy. I don't think I'd have the mental fortitude to stick that out alone.

In contrast, there's nothing more motivating than working with great people (and it's hard to do better than Ilya, Sam, and Elon). Everyone brings their own core strengths to the table, and if you've picked well your own efforts will be multiplied.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for chiming in. Would you mind giving your thoughts on an important question here?

Which of your qualities specifically do you feel are actually under discussion here, and how would you recommend others build, enhance or foster those qualities if they wanted to do so?

In other words, assuming someone wanted to, how would they become more "Greg?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Greg remind me of Jared in the Silicon Valley TV show

</comment><comment><USER29> If all startups need a Greg and there are only so many Gregs to go around, can new Gregs be deliberately created?

<comment><USER30> I've only worked at one startup, which was quite successful, and nobody there fit the description of Greg (unless you permute it to be so vague that everybody is Greg). Therefore, you don't need a Greg character for your startup to be successful.

Clearly he is a very impressive person with very impressive results and I'm sure I'd enjoy working at a company with him, or people like him.

I don't like this myth though. Startups are chaos, and pretending that as long as you have this magical person there solving all your problems that your chaos is somehow incorrect. The startup I worked for was full of normal imperfect humans who got offended, had trouble figuring out the direction of the company, were not world-class recruiters, were not always thoughtful and ran into problems big and small all the time. The company didn't die because there was a group of dedicated, imperfect people, who didn't want the company to die, not because there was one "Chief Optimist" holding it all together. If there was a "Chief Optimist" role, it was a very mobile position based on who was feeling best at that particular moment.

This isn't to say you can't and shouldn't actively try to make yourself better [1], you should. But you don't need a perfectly formed person working at your startup for it to succeed. And I want to note, I'm not disputing the existence of superhuman individuals, they exist and I'm sure power a lot of amazing achievements. You just don't _need_ them to succeed, a bunch of normal people can do it too.

1: For whatever definition of better you want, in this context it would probably mean being a better startup founder

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Elon and I were both busy with day jobs ...

Epic, lovely understatement there!

</comment><comment><USER32> What was the inspiration for the dinner that kicked off OpenAI? What made you invite Greg to it?

<comment><USER33> I was wondering the same thing. Found this article that sums it up pretty nicely.

[https://blog.gregbrockman.com/my-path-to- openai](https://blog.gregbrockman.com/my-path-to-openai)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Every success DOES need a guy like Greg. But I really worry about the part where Greg was working on the effort full-time, doing it all while the other guys still worked. When it ends in success, it is a great story. When it ends without success, Greg is the guy who put all his time into it, then ends up with nothing. Greg becomes the warning story.

Greg is the guy you need. Not necessarily the guy you want to be.

<comment><USER35> There is a very, very fine line dividing "chief optimist" from "sucker."

<comment><USER36> Sounds like we need a Co-founder basic income?

<comment><USER37> That's a fantastic idea. We could give it a special name to avoid confusion. How about "salary"?

<comment><USER8> You often hear about founder salaries being set intentionally low by VCs to keep founders hungry.

While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood.

For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally- employed peers. They may even have family obligations on top of that. Proceeding to then pay them low wages in the interest of motivation isn't exactly the best idea.

Granted, I do tend to agree with the ethos of having the founder being the lowest-paid employee in the company. Ideally that just ensures everyone else is paid really, really well.

<comment><USER37> We've kind of had the hat-trick of weasely-ness going on recently. They get overworked, underpaid, and then the promise of a big payout at the end is diluted away by investors who were barely involved beyond sloshing a bunch of other people's money in their general direction.

I don't like industries that institutionalize the consumption of individuals enthusiasm or altruism. We've essentially lost medicine to the latter and it sucks to see the startup scene consumed by the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This _kind of_ goes with something I said a while ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12761258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12761258)

A good project manager[0] to keep on top of everything and pick up all the miscellaneous tasks can/will make or break a startup.

[0] Well the title doesn't matter but I used PM so I will stick to that title.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice and sweet love letter to Greg. Shared with our founders.

We have a slightly alternative model: There hasn't been a consistent Greg 5+ years, but there is always a founder willing to be Greg when the previous Greg needs a break. Especially important once people start having children and go through the various ups and downs of life.

</comment><comment><USER40> This might be besides the point of the post, but I'll ask anyway.

@Greg, perhaps you could talk a bit about what you think makes you a productive engineer and problem-solver. What's your workflow like, how do you approach a problem, or learning a new concept, what tools do you use, etc.

</comment><comment><USER41> Cool but why doesn't he get a last name. I don't actually know who it is.

<comment><USER42> Greg Brockman. It's in the second sentence of the post.

<comment><USER43> It's still a nearly context-free headline, which is a pet peeve of mine at Hacker News. The headline should contain actual information that tells me why I care and should click. "Greg" is quite insufficient, with the only saving grace being I can see the domain name and know who Sam Altman is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> @gdb: do you have anything to say about sama's post? and what have been the activities that you found most valuable in your life?

</comment><comment><USER45> >high latency

I wonder if that's a typo.

<comment><USER46> No, I think Sam is saying that it takes a while for Elon/Sam to reply to Greg, and even given that, Greg responds quickly. Thats a good practice because it shows you're eager/dedicated to moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> someone like Greg is going to be hard to come by.

</comment><comment><USER48> Great piece thank you.

</comment><comment><USER49> Damn. Wish I was Greg.</comment>


Hardware Hackers Create a Modular Motherboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/modular-motherboard/ <comment><USER2> This is really interesting. I definitely want to read more, because I've got some questions about it. I wonder if there's a limit to how many can be plugged in before you start seeing power problems on the downstream processors, and how it routes information between processors.

Definitely intriguing though!

Edit: Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much documentation on their website. A lot of talk about open source hardware, but I don't see any schematics, datasheets, etc. Oh well. Hopefully they'll be adding that soon.

<comment><USER3> _Each X Machina module has a 72 MHz processor (currently an ARM chip), a solid state drive of 16KB and 128KB of storage in an EPROM (erasable programmable read-0nly memory) chip. There's also an LED for display output._

These are not going to suck down much power. They have around 1/1000th the processing power of a 3Ghz quad core chip and 1/250th the RAM. If you want to build a useful mesh like this then cooling is going to be the first concern, followed by latency. The best design would be a back plane with these cards inserted into the side. Add power at the top and cool down the sides with the back plane for communication. But that's what a standard motherboard with PCI-X slots look like so it's less interesting.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I know these are very low power. But even if each board only takes 1 watt, if you've got 40 of them you're talking the same power consumption as a laptop CPU, but with a much longer distance for power delivery.

But I'm still curious exactly what the power is, what the resistance of the power connections are, etc.

As you said, it gets more interesting when they're not in a backplane, so I wanted to figure out what the constraints are.

Someone on one of their blogs linked to <http://www.xmos.com/> which is also pretty interesting. It's a single chip with 4 cores, each of which can run 8 threads. And it takes care of all the switching between cores or even between chips.

It doesn't have all the same features as this board does, such as the dynamically switched power/signal pins, but same sort of idea.

Edit: In fact, the modularity of this is one of the more interesting aspects of it to me. I'd like to see how they're switching pins between signal and power dynamically. But, there's no schematics that I can find.

<comment><USER3> There is little problem in supplying power to a grid like this. It's related to the classic _Given an infinite grid of 1 ohm risistors, what is the resistance across a single diagonal? Well known answer: 2/pi ohms._ <http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=92564>

Basically, as the size of the grid increases so do the number of paths to an edge element. The practical limit relates to how much current you can drive through a single, element, but you can always use more than one power connector.

Edit: _USB connection it can support a 3 x 3 grid_ (500 milliamps * 5 volts / 9) ~= 0.3 watts. So 130 of them should equal a low power CPU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is part of the theory behind PCIe - there is a spec for a PCIe "external cabling". The idea is that you'll have your lanes cabled, and you can build a computer out of modular parts (i.e. modular bricks).

(although the main driver at the moment seems to be the ability to plug a decent video card into your laptop).

<comment><USER5> why hasn't this idea taken off? instead of packing a high end graphics card into a laptop where it is likely irreplaceable I'd rather have a dock for my laptop that includes a bay for a better video card. hardcore gaming at home (with an upgradeable part, low power consumption on the road.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. Dell used to support a dock with PCI (not PCIe) plus an extra hard drive, and the usual port replication -- was great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This project is interesting, given that it's open source and you can dynamically add or remove units. As far as power goes, crank down the clock speeds and any processor is going to run cooler. arm is also well known for taking less power.

But about the whole changing your basic architecture, consider Tilera:

<http://www.itjungle.com/tlb/tlb082107-story02.html> <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/23/tilera_cpu_upgrade/>

And it runs linux! ;)Granted it's closed and probably costs a bazillion, but the big guys haven't exactly missed out on the memory bus being a bottleneck.

</comment><comment><USER7> Look like you can have your own cake and eat it too!

<http://www.liquidware.com/shop/show/IXM/Illuminato+X+Machina>

</comment><comment><USER8> Hmmm, modular, clusterable and able to reprogram each other. Is this the rise of the borg?

</comment><comment><USER9> very interesting. I wonder if this architecture would make for a good mpp database appliance - something that is lean and very focused and somewhat power hungry!</comment>


RIP Medical Debt: Nonprofit buying and forgiving medical debt in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://ripmedicaldebt.org <comment><USER2> It's really depressing we live in a world where this is a thing people need.</comment>


Saved Replies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2135-saved-replies <comment><USER2> Awesome. Now I can add +1 comments with just a click.

<comment><USER3> You're able to add +1 through their recent GitHub Reactions update now:

[https://github.com/blog/2119-add-reactions-to-pull- requests-...](https://github.com/blog/2119-add-reactions-to-pull-requests- issues-and-comments)

<comment><USER4> That's the joke :)

<comment><USER3> Ah, been a long day and completed missed it. Thanks for that!

<comment><USER5> +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bad maintainers will rejoice at the possibility of replicating a fiasco like this: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules- core/pull/2023](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules-core/pull/2023) with zero effort. Saved replies are a silver bullet only for those who already took the time to compose meaningful (engaging?) replies. For all the others, a quick way to shoot themselves in their feet.

<comment><USER7> That's gotta be some automated thing gone bad though. Surely a human would not be conducting a conversation like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat feature, should save a bunch of time. I wonder if they'll consider support for variables like {{ submitter }} or {{ owner }} that would fill in a mention to the user who filed the issue or the repo's owner.

<comment><USER9> My new username: andrewstuart'); DROP TABLE repositories;--

:-P

([https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/))

<comment><USER10> Hi andrewstuart'); DROP TABLE repositories;--,

Thanks for sending this in! Based on my reading, this is working as intended and is not a bug in the code. Let me know if I'm misreading something.

Thanks again!

<comment><USER9> That's the output, yes, assuming proper input sanitization, which I would not expect to be a problem given that it's github and they deal with a ton of the most dangerous kind of dynamic content (any kind of code) already.

It was a bad joke, I guess.

<comment><USER11> "Sanitization" is the wrong approach. I would hope Github handles things right, by keeping track of what every value represents.

<comment><USER9> With interpreted text languages, and indeed with machine code, there are no types to associate with a value and a value may very well be executable code. This invariably means that the _only_ approach is to "sanitize" your output for a given context if the type associated with it means it should only be interpreted as data.

<comment><USER11> Interpretation does not prevent typing, and machine code is an execution format. The right thing in any language is: express the operations that you are going to perform in a form that clearly distinguishes between values that represent different varieties of thing. (Types make this easier, otherwise you have to implement more of it yourself).

You talk about code and data as though they were the only things, but they're not; getting one variety of data when you were expecting another variety can just as easily lead to security bugs as getting code instead of data or vice versa. Sanitization very rarely works - and in the rare cases where it does, it still indicates a deficiency in the underlying model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome. I have a repo with only about 1k stars, so nowhere near the adoption of something like npm, etc.

Even on my repo, I still regularly receive issues that say "it doesn't work. Why?" With no reproducable info. These will cut the time on asking for that info and give more time back to other users or the project itself.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget [https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request- template...](https://github.com/blog/2111-issue-and-pull-request-templates) \- even for private repos it really has changed the way we do bug reporting (for the better).

<comment><USER14> I use this on Cachet [1] and find that most of the time people just remove the pre-filled content regardless.

[1] [https://github.com/CachetHQ/Cachet](https://github.com/CachetHQ/Cachet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did you notice how open letter worked on github and competition from gitlab? In a good way of course. Finally github started evolving again.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Please ask support questions on Stack Overflow or the users group. I am closing this."

<comment><USER17> I would be okay with these responses if it was remotely apparent whether Issues acts as a discussion forum or not. It varies for every project unfortunately. For smaller projects, the risk of asking on SO is the maintainer, and anyone else familiar with the project, will never see it as they wouldn't be actively monitoring it.

Hopefully Github's current blast of Issues updates will make it easier for project owners to explain their respective policy on this.

<comment><USER18> This is where CONTRIBUTING.md comes in. If a project doesn't want Issues to be used for support, then it should mention it there. Whether people actually read it is another story :(

<comment><USER16> Yeah this is actually my canned response on one of my own projects, and I'm tired of copying and pasting it. Nobody reads CONTRIBUTING.md

<comment><USER19> In our issues template, we start it with:

"GitHub issues are for bugs / installation problems / feature requests. For general support from the community, see [StackOverflow](link)"

However, we still get plenty of issues filed that are more appropriate for StackOverflow, so not sure there's anything technical you can do without integrating more closely with StackOverflow :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a nice feature for busy repos such as npm ([https://github.com/npm/npm/issues](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues)) but I hope people with smaller repos stay away from it.

I would hate an automatic reply for filling an issue for a small library or such.

<comment><USER21> It has nothing to do with the popularity of the repository, really, but more with the quality of the issues.

>>> I would hate an automatic reply for filling an issue for a small library or such.

If the issue is lets say not reproducible because of lack of information provided, does it really matter if the response was typed out by hand? The response would be the same, give or take a couple of words.

<comment><USER20> The maintainer could see that, due to the nature of the issue, maybe the user OS would matter. Or maybe there's another version on the horizon that changes completely the functionally in topic. A hand crafted reply asking some curated questions/suggestions is not the same from an automatic "not enough information".

It's not about typing, it's about making a conversation.

<comment><USER22> But this is a massive waste of time.

For example, this past weekend I triaged over 600 issues on a project that sees a lot of maintainer churn (ui-select for Angular) - the low quality issues is a lot of the problem, and maintainers waste a lot of mental energy when they have to focus on a lot of issues where the reporter didn't do the basic level of due diligence.

If this feature was released beforehand, it probably would have saved me a couple of hours :( .

<comment><USER20> 600 issues is a lot, I consider that a popular repository.

I'm not against the feature, I think it's (for big repos) a necessary evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not saying that they've copied or anything, but this has been around for a while: [https://github.com/notwaldorf/github-canned- responses](https://github.com/notwaldorf/github-canned-responses)

<comment><USER24> Open Source, eh? canned-responses is MIT licensed, so even if Github just took the time to integrate that code wholesale: hurray, progress for all!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They really have been on a roll with the new features since the Dear Github letter happened

<comment><USER26> Keep in mind that these kinds of features were likely in development prior to the letter, although it's likely the letter accelerated the time table a bit.

<comment><USER9> And probably informed internal prioritization a bit, perhaps bubbling to the top a few simpler yet more-desirable features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They basically took the idea from this Chrome extension:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-canned- resp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/github-canned- responses/lhehmppafakahahobaibfcomknkhoina)

<comment><USER28> The notion of shortcuts for inserting prepared text isn't exactly new.

I was working in a data entry job in 1983 and the system would expand predefined text sequences into the matching full text as needed.

Doing this through a pretty dropdown is the same idea.

I'll bet the idea wasn't new in 1983 either.

<comment><USER29> The implication here, isn't so much that what was created was new, it's "Would this feature had been created had somebody else not shown GitHub a better way?"

Since the commit history for

[https://github.com/notwaldorf/github-canned- responses/commit...](https://github.com/notwaldorf/github-canned- responses/commits/master?page=2)

is fairly new, it's easy to believe this feature was in GitHub's pipeline for a while.

If this wasn't the case, it can sting from a brand perception point of view. GitHub is suppose to be synonymous with innovation, and if you start getting called out for copying, no matter how trivial, it will devalue your brand over time.

The question now is, how closely is GitHub looking at something like this:

[https://github.com/stefanbuck/awesome-browser-extensions- for...](https://github.com/stefanbuck/awesome-browser-extensions-for-github)

and other similar Chrome extensions.

Right now, they are in a damned if they do and damned if they don't, as the result of the dear GitHub letter.

<comment><USER30> I sincerely doubt much of their userbase will look at things so emotionally as to damage the company. Most of github seems to quietly continue ticking over no matter what the drama.

<comment><USER29> I don't disagree. My sister has been using GitHub for years and she's never heard of the dear GitHub letter. The reputation part will have greater impact on Enterprise though.

The reason why Enterprise sales cycles are so long, is because they want to make sure if they go with vendor X, they aren't shooting themselves in the foot in the long run. The trial period for the most part is risk assessment, because once you start building solutions around something, decoupling is extremely painful and risky.

Companies are desperately trying to get off ClearCase (million dollar licenses), but they can't because their existing build systems, verification, etc. are so integrated with it, that decoupling introduces too much down time risk.

If we found a situation where GitHub was constantly copying from Bitbucket or GitLab or who ever becomes the next thing, it's definitely going to introduce doubts about whether GitHub is the right choice for the long run.

Drama will not affect that web designer that is paying $7 a month for a hosting plan, but it will cause doubts for those looking to spend 10s of thousands a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Now _this_ is the kind of feature that really, really, really helps me. This will make my life immediately, measurably better.

<comment><USER32> Really? Why not just a notepad? It is on per user basis. So you can't even have different reply per repo. Or have some variable like user name or repo name. I mean. This really is the same as having a text file opened and copy paste something.

<comment><USER31>
      > This really is the same as having a text file opened and copy paste something.

Convenience is a feature. Two clicks is far better than "have another application open, switch over to it, find the right part in the notepad, select that bit of text, copy and paste it over."

I do a _lot_ of issue triage. The time savings is not negligible for me.

(I do agree that per-repo would be nice, but I'm happy to have this in the meantime)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very good feature. A nice expansion would be "Saved Workflows" to send a saved reply, add label/milestone, assign to user, etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> That's a really nice animated GIF, with very little color and font degradation. I'd love to know how it was made. I have [a couple I made recently here]([http://robenkleene.github.io/2016/03/17/live- search/](http://robenkleene.github.io/2016/03/17/live-search/)) using [gifify]([https://github.com/vvo/gifify](https://github.com/vvo/gifify)). Maybe it's just the color palette that makes it look better?

<comment><USER35> I know a lot of GitHubbers use [http://www.cockos.com/licecap/](http://www.cockos.com/licecap/) to make their GIFs

<comment><USER36> licecap is awesome, but this gif looks like it was programmatically made. Notice the accelerated yet perfectly aligned cursor movement...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why am I getting the Saved Replies dropdown appearing every single time I add a comment? It's extremely irritating. I understand doing it once to tell me that the feature exists, but doing it repeatedly after I keep closing the dropdown is really aggravating.

</comment><comment><USER38> What a coincidence. The discussion board for the github Atom editor just started offering canned replies today also. It is not their software, it is the new discuss software by coding-horror that is getting popular.

</comment><comment><USER39> This should probably be available at the repository level too so if you've got collaborators who need to use the same responses they can be shared.

</comment><comment><USER40> Check out their documentation for less details on the feature: [https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-saved- replies/](https://help.github.com/articles/working-with-saved-replies/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I feel like, much like the PHP bug reporting system's canned responses, this might get irritating quickly. After all, it's too easy to simply copy/paste your "Not A Bug" message and move on, without explaining it.

Nonetheless, probably a helpful tool.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's nice that only you can see your reply titles.

\--

Asshole

[... a very polite request for the user to stop trolling ...]

</comment><comment><USER43> Now they just need a "on vacation" button.

<comment><USER44> The done thing on bugzilla.mozilla.org seems to be changing your display name to include "vacation" or similar, but I haven't seen much of that on GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wish Trello would add this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Clean feature I must say.

</comment><comment><USER47> Would love to save replies on a per repo basis, so that we can store our jenkins commands in saved replies</comment>