Preferred number - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number

<comment><USER2> Had always assumed there must be some method behind the madness of standard resistor sizes (why the obsession with 4.7?) but never knew exactly what it was - and the explanation here is excellent. The fact they fall along a twelfth-root scale is an intriguingly direct mapping to musical semitones; I wonder if that was ever significant in enabling the creation of early electronic instruments?

edit - on second thoughts, twelfth root of ten isn't particularly helpful for musical notes, where the factor between semitones is the twelfth root of two. So... carry on.

<comment><USER3> The twelfth root of ten contains a twelfth root of two, but it also has a pesky twelfth root of five. It might still be possible to use series/parallel constructions to cancel out the 5 and still save resistors vs' some other numbering scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The idea here is to get a smooth logarithmic division of each order of magnitude (power of 10). To get _x_ steps that perfectly divide the order of magnitude, just use the _x_ th root of 10 as your factor. In Ruby:

        def series(x, precision=2)
          root = 10 ** (1 / x.to_f)
          return x.times.map {|i| (root ** i).round(precision)}
        end

        > series(2)
        => [1.0, 3.16]
        > series(5)
        => [1.0, 1.58, 2.51, 3.98, 6.31]
        > series(10)
        => [1.0, 1.26, 1.58, 2.0, 2.51, 3.16, 3.98, 5.01, 6.31, 7.94]

And of course, if you want more aesthetically pleasing increments (like for axis markers on a logarithmic graph), just round each increment as desired. I usually find that the [1, 2, 5] series is sufficient.

<comment><USER5> That happens to be the series used for the Euro currency:

[0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500]

<comment><USER4> Yep, that's a good way to minimize both the number of denominations offered and the number of bills/coins needed to make change for a given amount of money.

The USD is close, too. Bills are in 1, 2, 5, although the $2 bill is rare. For some reason our coins are irregular, although people in my experience find all coins a bother.

The "ideal" set of 3 denominations would be 1, 2.15, and 4.64.

<comment><USER6> Is it at all surprising? Coins don't fit in wallets, represent small denominations, and are therefore not worth the trouble.

<comment><USER5> That's because the highest US coin _in practice_ is $0.25—even though $1 coins exist, they are not widespread and overlap with the $1 bill.

Contrast with the Euro where the highest coin is €2 and bills start at €5.

Also prices tend to be inclusive of sales tax / VAT in Europe, so a €9.99 widget can be purchased with a €10 bill and you get 1 single €0.01 coin in change. Whereas your $9.99 widget will be $10.79 (at 7% tax), so you'll get 3 dimes and a nickel (4x the amount of change) assuming you handed over $11. Most likely, you had a $20 so you also get lots of $1 bills with your coins. :)

<comment><USER7> I tried using $1 coins for a while. I found then too bulky and heavy with zero advantage over paper.

I would only use them routinely if forced.

In some US stores they set prices so that the total is an even total after tax.

<comment><USER8> I actually found the contrary. 25 coins hold surprisingly well in a pocket, much easier than a thick set of 25-bills IMO.

25-Bills get wet with sweat and insulate your legs. I kinda prefer 25-coins over that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have often wondered if there are any subtle emergent properties that tend to occur due to humans tendency to round interacting with a given system of measurement.

For example, perhaps cars designed in America tend to be more|less aesthetically pleasing because American designers will round up to an inch whereas European designers are (hypothetically) unlikely to feel the need to round up to 2.54 cm instead of say 2.5 cm.

<comment> semi-extrinsic One thing (which is mentioned in the wikipedia page) is that in the metric system where e.g. meters and kilometers are related by a power of 10, a length which is a preferred number in one unit will also be a preferred number in the other unit. This does not work out for e.g. feet and miles.

So imagine you have a landscape architect designing the interior of a park and a civil engineer designing the city around it. In the metric system, their preferred placements automatically agree. In imperial units they have to coordinate that.

<comment><USER10> What a wonderful example of two opposing hypotheses from same premises, both providing value. I choose both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This section was especially interesting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number#Buildings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number#Buildings)

Basically re-creating the nice aspect of imperial units within the metric system.

<comment><USER12> You could also switch to base 12.

<comment><USER13> All of our human measurement systems would be much friendlier if we had a consistently applied base 12 system. Breaking things into 3, 4, or 6 parts is much more common than breaking them in fifths. Along the way, we could mostly straighten out our measurements for dates/times, angles including longitude/latitude, etc.

(Though I must say, I'm also partial to the Babylonian base 60 system.)

<comment><USER14> Are you serious?

<comment><USER13> Absolutely serious. Using base 12 instead of base 10 would be a huge advantage, if only we had done it 500 years ago. To start, it would make the relationship between fractions and duodecimals much clearer and easier to learn. But it would also make pretty much every type of routine measurement task at least slightly more convenient.

Obviously it's not feasible at this point to switch our number system, as a social/political question. It would cost trillions of dollars and require redoing our whole measurement system, rewriting all our technical books, changing all of our manufacturing standards, [edit: and retraining the whole society]. But our current systems are by no means perfect.

Within the metric system, there are inconsistencies all over the place, especially where we still accommodate important prior systems, like the calendar and time measures. Day -> Hour -> Minute -> Second and especially Day -> Week -> Month -> Year are quite annoying systems to interact with in an otherwise base 10 world.

Angle measures in terms of either 2pi or 360° -> arcminutes/arcseconds are also pretty bad, bearing little relation to the metric system.

Most of the basic metric system units would surely be chosen differently if designed from scratch knowing what we know now. We could also definitely pick better names for them than names of dead men. For one thing, derived units should have a more obvious relation to the base units, in their names. For one thing, we could finally fix the sign for the electron's charge. Personally I'd recommend defining time using the day as a base unit, and then measuring distance with respect to the speed of light divided by 12^13, or similar (but that's just me; perhaps a smart committee could come up with something better).

* * *

Much of our standard mathematics notation could also be improved if we put some thought into it. Fractions are a pretty excellent notation. Positional (decimal) notation is alright, but making some kind of floating point/scientific notation more basic would improve understanding in many ways I think. Basic infix operator notation works reasonably well, though I'm not the biggest fan of the way we handle subtraction or division operators or inverses in general. I like the way we use parentheses. Our notation for exponents is okay but not great, and having two notations for the exponential function is especially confusing. Our notation for square roots, logarithms, and trigonometric functions are all absolutely awful: terribly named, symbolically heavyweight, and revealing nothing about their structural properties. The way we handle vectors and complex numbers is pretty bad (we should use so-called geometric algebra instead, and develop a good notation for it). Our common notations for derivatives are confusingly varied and overloaded, and I don't at all like our notations for summation and integration. In general, we should measure exterior rather than interior angles, since continuing straight is most natural to define as zero angle.

At a more basic level, our languages should have a highly unique single- syllable word for each basic numeral (from 0–9 or 0–11 or whatever), combined with a highly unique and fast to write glyph for each. We should have a single syllable for making a number negative, even "minus" isn't a good word, especially since it's overloaded to also mean subtraction, and we should have a single-syllable word for rotating a vector through a right angle. In speaking, we should compose multi-digit numbers by just saying the digit names, or saying a bunch of numeral names then some marker word, then a numeral name for the exponent. Phrases like "fourteen thousand, seven hundred and twelve" are horribly confusing and wasteful, and do immense damage to fluency with basic arithmetic. Don't even get me started on the way numbers are spoken in French.

<comment><USER15> Can you link to or write more about what other kinds of things need to be fixed? What is wrong with the sign of an electron's charge?

<comment><USER13> I guess it doesn't make all that much difference which sign: it's an arbitrary choice. It's just a bit confusing for students to define the electron charge as -e instead of +e, or draw diagrams with arrows pointing the opposite direction of electron movement. [http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct- current/chpt...](http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct- current/chpt-1/conventional-versus-electron-flow/)

On the other hand this guy seems to appreciate the definition: [http://www.austincc.edu/wkibbe/truth.htm](http://www.austincc.edu/wkibbe/truth.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hence this great tumblr [http://thingsfittingperfectlyintothings.tumblr.com/](http://thingsfittingperfectlyintothings.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER17> [https://www.reddit.com/r/Perfectfit/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Perfectfit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As an applied math person who does design and art off-hours, I found this article very pleasant to read, since it brings the two worlds together. Good find!

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone update the title to convey a little more context?

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting -- thanks for posting!</comment>


Show HN: Whiteborb – Free shared whiteboard built on Fabric.js and Socket.io - <AUTHOR> https://www.whiteborb.com <comment><USER2> Looking good. Google cache shows that it was open source. Are you going to make it open source again?

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M108sV...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:M108sVmpLXwJ:https://github.com/tylerb1+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Yep :)

[https://github.com/tylerb1/whiteborb- public](https://github.com/tylerb1/whiteborb-public)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome work! I have a question about it - how can I get in contact with you?</comment>


Microsoft Sells Feature Phone Business, Including Nokia Brand, to Foxconn - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-sells-feature-phone-business-including-nokia-brand-iphone-maker-foxconn-2370559 <comment><USER2> I am hoping that some decision makers at Foxconn are reading this thread. Or anyone who can help me out.

I would just request that nokia e51 & e71 be reintroduced. 9300i with pure android/cyanogen would be a treat. Do what apple did to SE, which is 5s with old shape but new internals. The only thing I miss in my e51 is its ability to sync contacts with gmail. I have my e51 since its launch back in 2006. It's on its last leg and would love a replacement. Please make it all dual sim.

I do not want a smart device with 100s of apps that will produces soo much heat on usage and I have to carry around like it's a new born(very fragile). Plus I need to carry about a backup battery for a single days use. I realise that now 1 device is doing the work of 5-8 devices. But in this "economy of choice", I just want a mobile I can make calls from, will last at least 3 days on a single charge and I can just throw it on the ground.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel dumb, but what is the difference between a feature phone and smartphone?

Edit: Figured it out, apparently it is just the old phones.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it strange to be hearing murmurs of Nokia has some new thing going on all the while they are being sold off. I hope the employees don't find out they've been sold out on twitter.</comment></comment>


Introduction to A* (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/AStarComparison.html <comment><USER2> Amit's blogs get posted quite a bit, but they're a pleasure to go through every time. My favorites are his posts about noise and map/terrain generation with noise -

[https://www.redblobgames.com/articles/noise/introduction.htm...](https://www.redblobgames.com/articles/noise/introduction.html)

[https://www.redblobgames.com/maps/terrain-from- noise/](https://www.redblobgames.com/maps/terrain-from-noise/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you! I'm working on a new map project using some of those techniques.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me, figuring out how to implement A* on a world was one of those programming milestones along the way of me grokking how software is put together. In fact, I see there's a Stack Overflow question from me still online with an implementation I wrote in Python eight years ago ([https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4159331/python-speed- up-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4159331/python-speed-up-an-a-star- pathfinding-algorithm)), and I have sometimes wondered how many people have then used that old snippet as a reference.

Amit's articles were online then, and definitely helped me think through these problems, and their main strength is just how visual the explanations all are. I'm pleased to see they're still online, being updated, and no doubt benefitting others, I know that personally Amit's effort was one of a number of things that has allowed me to be a full-time indie game developer all these years later.

<comment><USER5> I can relate to that feeling - I cut my teeth on A* in Standard Pascal nearly a quarter of a century ago as a freshman, and the equivalent LISP was so tiny and concise to be a thing of beauty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Depending on your application, if you're interested in A* you may be interested in using Theta* instead. It's not much more difficult to implement but provides much shorter paths if one does not need to remain on the edges in the graph.

Take a look at the explanation and figures here: [http://aigamedev.com/open/tutorials/theta-star-any-angle- pat...](http://aigamedev.com/open/tutorials/theta-star-any-angle-paths/) for more information.

<comment><USER7> The link you provided leads to Page Not Found

<comment><USER8> Working here, perhaps try again?

<comment><USER9> I also saw page not found, but reloading several times led to a lag and then a proper pageload.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My Clojure take on a* was kinda of a journey. I thought I understood the algorithm several times while implementing it. It took me a few passes, now I'm quite happy about the results. Impressive how concise it is compared to the imperative version in other languages. Here if you want to see [https://gist.github.com/reborg/c3372428c6ccd7d93289fb7a3a9ec...](https://gist.github.com/reborg/c3372428c6ccd7d93289fb7a3a9ec393)

<comment><USER11> You should have a look at : [https://github.com/TristeFigure/shuriken/blob/ffbff58b19d555...](https://github.com/TristeFigure/shuriken/blob/ffbff58b19d55581b4ce3e635c1ccfd18ea7e13d/test/shuriken/solver.clj).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amit always produces such great content. I can't even count the number of times I've landed on his site... such a useful resource!

A* was probably one of the most fun projects I did back in school a few years ago. If anyone is interested, last winter I ported an old C#/Unity A* implementation of mine to Rust and compiled it to WebAssembly for a small demo. It was my first time trying out wasm and really getting into Rust.

Repo: [https://github.com/jakedeichert/wasm- astar](https://github.com/jakedeichert/wasm-astar)

Live demo: [https://jakedeichert.github.io/wasm- astar/](https://jakedeichert.github.io/wasm-astar/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I just learned about this recently during the Udacity SDC! They go over an algorithm called A* hybrid which was super neat too. Instead of the discrete decisions of up, down, left ,and right, you define a set of state space equation (e.g. x(t+1) = x(t) + vΔt). This way, your results ends up being continuous and smooth which a car can actually follow. I think this was invented by the Sebastian Thurn's team during DARPA challenge.

</comment><comment><USER14> Check out JPS+ if you need to go "over 100 times faster than A*"

[https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022094/JPS- Over-100x-Faster-t...](https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022094/JPS- Over-100x-Faster-than)

[https://github.com/SteveRabin/JPSPlusWithGoalBounding](https://github.com/SteveRabin/JPSPlusWithGoalBounding)

<comment><USER3> Also check out A* if you want to go 1000 times faster than JPS ;</comment></comment><comment>)

A* does well when it is given a graph of all the decision points that matter. An unweighted grid is full of locations where it doesn't matter — e.g. whether you go N,N,E or E,N,N or N,E,N. JPS searches for better decision points on unweighted grids. There are lots of other A* optimizations for unweighted grids (subgoal graphs, contraction hierarchies, differential heuristics, bucketed priority queues, etc.) — see Table 2 in this paper [1].

JPS is notable for using no precomputation, which is very useful when the map is changing often. If you can afford analyzing the grid ahead of time, you can build a much better graph than using the grid directly — the Tree entry listed in Table 2 takes 30 sec of precomputation to bring A* down to 0.029 ms on average, compared to JPS which takes 62.524 ms on average.

[1] [https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/SOCS/SOCS15/paper/view/11...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/SOCS/SOCS15/paper/view/11290)

</comment><comment><USER15> here is a cool and interactive version: [https://qiao.github.io/PathFinding.js/visual/](https://qiao.github.io/PathFinding.js/visual/)

</comment><comment><USER16> The second image in the post gets me thinking about another possible path finding algorithm which would take into account view distance. Most path finding I've seen either has infinite foresight (to get absolute shortest path) or no foresight, it goes super deep before having to turn around.

But what if instead of having infinite units of sight or 1 unit of sight, the subject could see for example 10 units ahead. This could give a similar path demonstrated in the second photo by the red line.

<comment><USER17> Check out the Reach algorithm, which is related to your idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In college, I took an AI class where one of the MPs was about path planning and one of the implementations we needed to do was A* .

I later took a mechatronics class where we tried to implement A* on the microcontroller, which was a cool opportunity to see something theoretical in a physical way.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TM- WAfE3_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TM-WAfE3_Y)

</comment><comment><USER19> This link should be updated to [https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction...](https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html) which is the updated version of the page which the author links to in the page posted.

</comment><comment><USER20> I had to implement A* at university, with a little application that also showed the status of the algorithm as it found the shortest path on a little ASCII bitmap.

It was probably one of the most fun and satisfying projects I did at university, alongside coding my own implementation of the RIPv2 routing protocol and my embedded systems projects (the last of which was creating a bluetooth controlled car with a webcam on it, which required us to design and build the entire board around a provided microcontroller).

It was just so satisfying to implement something that just a couple of years prior was practically magic.

</comment><comment><USER21> And this helped me when I was building micromouse. One of the best designed competition to actually help learn interdisciplinary technology.

</comment><comment><USER22> Discussed in 2014: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7591119)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wall of text - I liked explanation of searching techniques in book "Artificial Inteligence - Modern Approach".

<comment><USER3> Also check out the interactive diagrams for the graph search chapter of that book [1]. I especially liked the "shoes of a search agent" one, which emphasizes that the algorithm doesn't "see" the whole graph like a human does.

[1]: [http://aimacode.github.io/aima-javascript/3-Solving- Problems...](http://aimacode.github.io/aima-javascript/3-Solving-Problems-By- Searching/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Note that game engines typically use bidirectional A* for efficiency.

[https://github.com/sroycode/tway](https://github.com/sroycode/tway)

<comment><USER3> It wasn't long ago that Game AI Pro said "bidirectional pathfinding for A* is usually a poor choice"[1]. There's been some recent work presented at GDC 2018 about bidirectional search[2] but even there they said it was only useful sometimes. Have things been changing? I'm not in the industry so I only hear bits and pieces.

[1] Chapter 17 [http://www.gameaipro.com/GameAIPro/GameAIPro_Chapter17_Pathf...](http://www.gameaipro.com/GameAIPro/GameAIPro_Chapter17_Pathfinding_Architecture_Optimizations.pdf)

[2] Slides [https://www.movingai.com/GDC18/GDC18Bidir.pdf](https://www.movingai.com/GDC18/GDC18Bidir.pdf) or if you have access to the GDC Vault there's a recording of the talk [https://www.gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-18/play/1025071/Bidirect...](https://www.gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-18/play/1025071/Bidirectional- Search-Is-It-for)</comment></comment>


I just got laid off this morning as a Rails/Ruby Dev. What should I do? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> For at least a few days, don't do anything at all that's job-related.

Getting let go unexpectedly is usually a big shock, and your instinct will probably be to try and get back into a paying job as quickly as possible. But while you're still recovering from the surprise of losing your job, you'll make poor decisions - and poor employment decisions will make you miserable. Take a little time for yourself and decompress before jumping back in with a clear head.

</comment><comment><USER3> File for unemployment.

Review your finances & savings. Look into cutting back on things. Figure out how long you can hold out with just your unemployment before you have to dip into your savings (or retirement, life insurance, whatever).

If you have student loans, now is the time to tell them you lost your job & won't be paying. They're far friendlier about it if you tell them before than after.

Polish up the resume. Start posting it to Dice/Monster/etc.

Go have a beer. Getting laid off sucks. Have another one because beer is good.

Depending on how evaluating your financial situation went earlier, you may want to take a few days to relax & just not give a fuck, if you can afford it. If you can't, time to get started...

Start looking for jobs. Depending on how much experience you have & how much local demand there is for them, you might have to put a lot of work into this & spam out resumes, or you might get bombarded by recruiters. Either way, eventually, you're going to have to start working again.

</comment><comment><USER4> well shit, you got fired, so now of course you should apply to other places, but that's pretty much a no brainer. I think what you really looking for is some advice on how to cope.

When you're unemployed, you find yourself with a lot of freetime, and hence, a lot of time to waste. If you have the financial means and are physically capable start traveling. between now and october is one of the peak seasons for cheap airline tickets to just about anywhere, if you don't know where to go, hover over to <http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn> (SFW btw, not that you have one now, haha, j/ks) and start browsing. Get some friends (or just go by yourself) and just go. My favorite is Zion National Park. I find that under the starlit sky, without lights or cell reception I find it relaxing and then you'll be able to think about why you got laid off, what you liked or didn't like about your previous job and what you could have possibly done in the past to prevent yourself from getting fired.

The most important thing is to just keep moving, rewrite your resume, watch some comedies, reconnect with your family and friends and possibly, make new ones, make a schedule and pack it with so many things to do that you're tired each and every night starting from today. I could go on, but I hope you get it. The second most important thing to do is to not get angry and take it out on your friends and family, what happened to you is truly unfortunate, but getting mad doesn't really help anyone.

So peace out, and I hope to see you in the future at another job kicking ass at what you do best.

btw, unemployment benefits are okay, but b/c the economy is bad, plan for the long-term, like cancelling your monthly bills, aka netflix (you don't got time for that shit anyways), etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your recommendations. I'll do just that. It was my first job out of school, and it's difficult to understand that a little over 8 months ago they paid a head hunter to find me and about 4 months ago kept me on board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you should take this opportunity to learn how to farm bees.

<comment><AUTHOR> The absurdity of your comment made me laugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take a vacation. Use the time to introspect.

I have no idea where you are right now, but I read pretty much that a software developer with Rails/Ruby skills is pretty in hot demand in a lot of start-ups as of the moment.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apply to 42floors? They are hiring Ruby/Rails Devs as of two hours ago.

 _Do I get a referral bonus if he gets hired?_ :D _Cough_ Hire me too, I'm awesome and know BJJ to go with that Boxing ;)

Seriously, you need do the job-search thing now. Save your money like Scrooge, apply to jobs, interview, get hired. The wheel keeps turning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apply to another place? Without much information there isn't much to say. Are you implying you were unfairly laid off, or are you just letting us know and asking for advice? If the latter, then start applying.

How about some freelance work in the mean time?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was fairly laid off. From what they told me, it wasn't anything performance related. It was a good organization/startup, but I'm guessing they were having some financial issues. I'm just going to start applying to new places ASAP. It was just my first job out of college, and it was out of the blue.

I'm definitely considering some freelance work. I've never dealt with odesk or anything right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Work down the list and reach out to some folks.

[https://jobs.github.com/positions?description=ruby+on+rails&...](https://jobs.github.com/positions?description=ruby+on+rails&location=)

</comment><comment><USER10> Learn Python/Django.

EDIT: But don't ever start a sentence with "In Rails, its done this way..." ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Look for job from angel.co</comment>


Judge slaps Lime Wire with permanent injunction - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20020786-261.html

<comment><USER2> Limewire? In 2010? Seriously?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I'm concerned, net neutrality is always relevant. Limewire is merely a client built upon the gnutella network. It did nothing to promote illegal filesharing and actually did about as much to discourage it as it could (through warnings, mandatory checkboxes, popups, etc.) short of monitoring traffic.

This ruling is really only one or two steps away from a court mandating that all ISPs monitor network traffic for unlicensed content and restrict it accordingly (since they are enabling piracy just as much as Limewire was).

I know Limewire has been around for a long time and all the cool kids moved on to other filesharing networks and technologies long ago, but I think this news is significant and troubling.

The fact that the music industry has managed to shut them down is just one more lost battle in the net neutrality war.

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree, I'm just baffled that anyone would still use Limewire.</comment></comment></comment>


Rendering of Rise of the Tomb Raider - <AUTHOR> http://www.elopezr.com/the-rendering-of-rise-of-the-tomb-raider/ <comment><USER2> This reminded me of another guy who does graphics study on how frames are rendered in GTA V, DOOM, etc:

[http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v- graphic...](http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/11/02/gta-v-graphics- study/)

Other games/discussions can be found at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=adriancourreges.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=adriancourreges.com)

<comment><USER3> I'm incredibly excited for his hopefully-inevitable RDR2 investigation.

<comment><USER4> If I read his stuff correctly, this may not be possible before a PC release of the RDR2. Fingers crossed! :)

<comment><USER5> While not as in-depth, this is a fun analysis of Windwaker's graphics techniques done via observation and and emulator. [https://polycount.com/discussion/104415/zelda-wind-waker- tec...](https://polycount.com/discussion/104415/zelda-wind-waker-tech-and- texture-analysis-picture-heavy) If a PC port of RDR2 never happens, an analysis may still be possible. We may just have to wait a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I can safely say without spoilers that in this frame bad guys chase Lara because she's looking for an artifact they're looking for too, a conflict of interest that absolutely must be resolved using weapons."

</comment><comment><USER7> These "how they render these graphics" breakdowns are always like meditation to me. Even tho I don't work in graphics programming there's this vibe in these posts that always puts me in a chill mood. Instead of skimming I'm actually reading and digesting every sentence.

Does anyone feel the same about these kinds of posts? Were you able to pinpoint what specific writing features they employ that might elicit such responses in us?

<comment><USER8> Personally, I like the pretty pictures and as a (regular) software engineer, game engines are so far from my expertise that it's like reading about black magic. I'm completely in awe at the complexity, and multiple passes behind a simple game frame, which are rendered in under 16ms.

Video games are the best showcase of the ludicrous speed and potential of modern computing, while we're complaining because our text editors are sluggish to render a few glyphs :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's interesting about these kinds of articles is that while very sophisticated and complex the process is often easy to understand.

There are a lot of cool tricks used that are also used in VFX compositing and also in image processing in more academic environments.

<comment><USER10> Yes, its a lot of small tricks and techniques that are combined and its easily understood what each step does (even if its hard to implement).

<comment><USER9> And all running at 30–60 frames per second.

I'd be very curious to see how Red Dead 2 or the new Resident Evil 2 remake renders a frame. There are a lot of volumetric effects and heavy post processing going on in both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >An interesting thing I found is a level of detail (LOD) technique called 'fizzle' or 'checkerboard'. It's a common way to fade objects in and out at a distance, either to later replace it with a lower quality mesh or to completely make it disappear.

As a frequent video game player, I find this LOD switch technique to be atrocious. It's ugly as all hell and will ruin any immersion. Things don't checkerboard like that in reality, and it makes modern games look uglier. One of it's biggest problems is that it is often used to cull things too close to the camera, so instead of something softly fading out as the camera passes through it, it turns into Swiss cheese right in your face.

</comment><comment><USER12> I always wondered, how do they get these intermediate renderings from the game? Is this some kind of profiling tool? And no source code required?

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting post, I enjoyed reading it. I'm not exactly wowed by the screenshots they chose to use though, especially the one specifically selected to demonstrate reflections.

<comment><USER14> I'm really glad you enjoyed the article. It's a hard process to select screenshots that properly showcase as many features of the game as possible, while also being visually pleasing and interesting. Often I want to take as few screenshots as possible and showcase as much as possible from that.

I agree that screenshot wasn't the best possible example, however since it included both fog and reflections I decided to go with it in the end. The reflections part was one of the last things I wrote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Should be "(2018)" even though it's December 31st :).

<comment><USER10> I don't see the value of tagging the year onto articles, _unless_ the article is old _and_ the content is time sensitive or not relevant anymore (ie, the year tag helps to warn you that the information is out of date and interesting mainly in a historical context). While you could argue that this information is time sensitive, its still super recent.

I personally do not like when articles are tagged with the year when the above is not true, because it gives the impression that the article is outdated, which makes some people pass over them sometimes, making me miss content I would have otherwise read and also reducing the amount of interesting discussion if people aren't reading the article. Why do I often pass over old articles? Because my time is limited, so I pick and choose what I will read and unless I'm interested in the history of a thing (I often, but not always, am), I'll skip articles that seem historical or out of date for ones that are current.

I'm not a fan of always tagging articles that weren't written in the current year, if the information is just as relevant now as when it was posted.

<comment><USER16> The year also helps with "I've probably already read that one" over "ohh, a new article about $thing!"</comment></comment></comment>


AngularJS 1.3 released, discontinues support for Internet Explorer 8 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.angularjs.org/2013/12/angularjs-13-new-release-approaches.html <comment><USER2> Fine with that. IE8 is EOL next month with the death of XP. Vista+ will take newer browsers.

Vista is stuck on IE9 but after that its IE11 for all.

<comment><USER3> Internet Explorer 8 shipped with Windows 7 too so it should be supported until January 2015 (2020 for the extended support). It can be an issue for corporate applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I missing something? This is a post from Dec 2013. 1.2.14 still looks to be the current version of Angular. There was a commit today on Angular's GH removing IE8 from their test configuration which implies that 1.3 is going to be around really soon, but there doesn't seem to be a release build at this stage.

TL;DR: wrong title?

<comment><USER5> This confused me for a while as well. If this is old news, why is it here? I thought it was new _s_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think I've just been Angularick rolled.</comment>


Hacking 27% of the Web via WordPress Auto-Update – Wordfence - <AUTHOR> https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/11/hacking-27-web-via-wordpress-auto-update/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing that there is so much trust put into WordPress's security.

Reading about how WordPress updates can be used to compromise websites got me thinking; does anyone know how people ensure that Canonical won't push out a signed update that installs a backdoor to their servers?

This seems like it would be very tedious to do (recompiling and checking they're the same), but also more and more important now that major governments have shown their willingness to force companies to betray their customers.

If the open source nature of Canonical stops it from being able to push out poisoned updates (I suppose all mirrors compile stuff themselves and verify against a hash so it would be found out quick), how would one deal with securing non open source software stuff like Windows? Do you just not trust any machine (virtual or not) in your server farm running Windows?

<comment><USER3> Ubuntu mirrors don't compile their own packages, they just pull from Canonical.

<comment><USER4> Debian's reproducible builds would allow allow anyone to grab the source to a package and build it the same way as Debian does, and get matching builds. This would allow a Debian mirror to host self-built but binary matching packages. Not sure if these kind of mirrors exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh boy.</comment>


Revealed: Sound of the 'sonic Attack' on Americans in Cuba - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2017/10/12/revealed-sound-of-the-sonic-attack-on-americans-in-cuba/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found this interesting and posted the article because the accompanying video shows the complex wave form of the sound believed responsible for the injuries to dimplomats.</comment>


ArangoDB Use Case - <AUTHOR> https://brainhub.eu/blog/arangodb-use-case/ <comment><USER2> How old is this article? Neo4j is not "designed especially for Java". Their Bolt protocol[1] allows you to interact with it via binary, and is built into their official Node.js driver[2].

[1] [https://boltprotocol.org](https://boltprotocol.org) [2] [https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j-javascript- driver](https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j-javascript-driver)

</comment><comment><USER3> Regarding "relatively slow writes" mentioned in the article: Can you share a bit more details about this, e.g. storage engine used, type of operations performed etc.? Would really like to see if something can be done about it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how they did the performance benchmarks, maybe I missed that part?</comment>


Twitter adds a warning label fact-checking Trump's false voting claims - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/26/twitter-trump-labels-fact-checking-tweet/ <comment><USER2> Another thread with more discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317286)

</comment><comment><USER3> West Virginia mail carrier charged with attempted absentee ballot application fraud [1]

1\. [https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Pendleton-County-mail- carr...](https://www.whsv.com/content/news/Pendleton-County-mail-carrier- charged-with-altering-absentee-ballot-requests-570777221.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just a note that Hacker News frequently censors, shadow bans and blocks comments that don't follow their agenda. Where is the uproar?

<comment><USER5> Nowhere, because sensible people understand that (given anonymity of participants) active moderation is necessary so low effort slogans don't drown out interesting conversation. And the latter is why I think many of us are here.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23144720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23144720)

</comment><comment><USER6> It seems that somebody started to harass twitter employees in charge of this change and flooding their personal accounts with death menaces.

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/27/21272210/trump-twitter- fa...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/27/21272210/trump-twitter-fact-check- admin-targeting-employee-voter-fraud-controversy)

This strategy could seriously backfire. Eventually Twitter could feel attacked and start thinking that Trump comments don't worth all the mess. The idea of an organisation removing the megaphone and be forced to close the Trump's account suddenly. Even a few months before the elections. Trump needs twitter's megaphone more than Twitter needs Trump.

</comment><comment><USER7> It sounds like twitter is trying to appease the people who want Trump banned from the platform (silenced) with a half measure (information control).

<comment><USER4> No it doesn't.</comment></comment>


Impact – HTML5 Game Engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/phoboslab/impact <comment><USER2> Why was the title changed? The interesting part here is that it has been open sourced and made free. Now it sounds like it's a new engine or active project.

[http://impactjs.com/blog/2018/05/impact-is-now-free-open- sou...](http://impactjs.com/blog/2018/05/impact-is-now-free-open-source)

<comment><USER3> Anything that might provoke interest in an article is considered "clickbait" by the HN community and neutered.

A famous HN headline of 1963 was "JFK returns to Washington after visit to Dallas"

<comment><USER4> Please, lords of HN, preserve this wonderful comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is fantastic! I feel like Impact never got the attention it deserved: at the time of release it was miles above the rest of the 2D pack, and the author was brave/crazy enough to charge money for it (which obviously hindered greater uptake, compared to Phaser - but it showed he was serious about it as a real product). The editor it came with was fantastic - and there still isn't a lot of movement in this area for other game libraries (I think Phaser has a third-party paid effort that is shaping up)

Then he released Ejecta as open source, which was a real game game-changer for me: 60FPS canvas games running on my old iPHone 3G - it was FANTASTIC!

I would have given up on tinkering with HTML5 games along time ago if it wasn't for Dominic, so, if you happen to read this, thank you for all your effort!

<comment><USER6> My procedurally generated huge-universe MMO uses Go on the back end but ImpactJS on the front end. < [https://www.emergencevector.com](https://www.emergencevector.com) > I was meaning to port the game to PixiJS to be able to open source the front end, but now I don't have to!

(Even better, now that I know Ejecta is also open source, I can have OpenGL and iOS distribution!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Neat! By clicking on some links I found the blog of who looks like primary developer of Impact, Dominic Szablewski.

[http://phoboslab.org/log](http://phoboslab.org/log)

It's nice to see a blog with articles from ~10 years ago that aren't broken! I really like his WebGL rendering of WipEout maps:

[http://phoboslab.org/wipeout/](http://phoboslab.org/wipeout/) [http://phoboslab.org/log/2015/04/reverse-engineering- wipeout...](http://phoboslab.org/log/2015/04/reverse-engineering-wipeout-psx)

</comment><comment><USER8> The demo game for Impact was Biolab disaster

[http://playbiolab.com/](http://playbiolab.com/)

It's got retro feel, and shows the power of the engine for making scrolling games. Really neat project and I was surprised that it's 8 years old already.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps the most well-known game is Z-Type.

[http://zty.pe/](http://zty.pe/)

<comment><USER10> That was nice a for a minutes. It's funny how the web, free software allow for so many games these days that are free that I think we can take it for granted. When I was a kid, getting _any_ game at all was amazing.

Kids these days are overwhelmed with free stuff, it's likely the reason an engine like this has a hard time making money.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but the usual "free games" kids get today, they pay with their attention, and or data, and/or later with real money to make progress in the game.

All the games of my childhood I bought(or pirated) .. were 100% about the game.

vut when I see my niece and nephiew playing and accpeting lots of advertisement all the time in their game, like it's normal, I get a bit sad.

So of course, I push other content to them... but I would say the ordinary kid today, gets a lot worse input today, the I did.

And I would like to see much more real free, open source games out there. But apparently very hard to make money with it..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I built a game with Impact a number of years ago and it worked very well. It also comes with this really simple but powerful tile editor [https://github.com/phoboslab/Impact/blob/master/weltmeister....](https://github.com/phoboslab/Impact/blob/master/weltmeister.html). Regardless, it was a great way to learn 2d game development and got me to actually pay for a software library!

<comment><USER13> I was a big fan of Impact back in the day. It's a great general purpose 2d engine, but it's especially great for platformers. I collected all my Impact plugins here: [https://github.com/city41/ImpactPlugins](https://github.com/city41/ImpactPlugins)

<comment><USER14> There used to be a great impact plugin site, pointofimpact I think it was called. Unfortunately, it's all gone now, along with most of the plugins on it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there any active projects using this?

It seems to me this was a big thing back in the day but not really relevant anymore.

<comment><USER16> If I remember right CrossCode[1] is using it. Fun game but another case of near endless beta.

[1]: [http://www.cross-code.com/en/home](http://www.cross-code.com/en/home)

<comment><USER14> It's worth noting that crosscode's version of the engine is HEAVILY rewritten - it's not really a good representation of the base engine's capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know how this compares to Construct 2 & 3? I've only used Construct for simple 2D HTML5 game development, and haven't really heard of any other HTML5 game engines.

<comment><USER18> Construct is a fully visual game editor, no code is required. Impact is an engine, so you have to write your own JS to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Publish your Games into the AppStore with almost native performance".

This had me laughing. Maybe too honest.

<comment><USER2> Ejecta is actually pretty cool. It maps all the ImpactJS render calls to native OpenGL draws plus other stuff like that.

> JavaScript code is executed directly by a JavaScript VM (JavaScriptCore), > the HTML5 Canvas 2D and WebGL API is implemented in native code with OpenGL, > Audio is implemented with OpenAL. Several other APIs (touch, accelerometer, > localStorage, gamepad) behave like those in a real browser.

[http://impactjs.com/ejecta](http://impactjs.com/ejecta)

<comment><USER20> So I solves a lot of pain points and the only problem you are left with is dealing with JavaScript? It's quite neat, but why not simply use a better language and an engine? E.g. Unity3d, MonoGame, Godot?

<comment><USER21> If you're targeting the web, then you're compiling to Javascript anyways, so the indirection + engine complexity isn't always worth it. Unity tends to pay off as you take on more platform targets and/or implementation complexity (like graphics), for example.

It's kinda like using [https://github.com/schteppe/p2.js](https://github.com/schteppe/p2.js) for physics instead of Box2D: if p2 gets the job done, then you get the advantage of working with a much simpler code base than Box2D which is just about impenetrable as an emscripten port.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope someone gets Weltmeister running client side now (without PHP). Then you could hack on Impact using a Chromebook!

<comment><USER14> There are a few node drop-in replacement for the PHP components. The one I've used in the past is:

[https://github.com/drhayes/impact-dev- server](https://github.com/drhayes/impact-dev-server)

<comment><USER22> I have seen those, most of them seem abandoned.

<comment><USER21> Though so is Impact (well, unmaintained) and its plugin ecosystem (the website died and the plugins it hosted are lost), so it's more or less something you have to be comfortable with if you choose to use Impact in 2018.

Excited to see it open source now, of course. Great opportunity for a community to slowly redevelop and rebuild what once was.

I used Impact as recently as two years ago despite these issues and was able to make a networked game. The code is easy to work with and understand. And I used one of the Node wrappers to get the editor working without PHP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does it compare to PhaserJS?

<comment><USER21> Smaller in scope thus simpler. Unmaintained. Far easier to borrow pieces from as needed.

For example I implemented networking on top of my Impact game with relative ease (networked games are never easy) while layering it on top of my Phaser gamer would've taken longer and with more uncertainty because Phaser is far more opinionated and larger in scope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I imagine Impact is from a time when javascript wasn't as performant and far from as portable as today. Is it still relevant given the canvas and sound improvements in a modern browser? What would be the major use cases for something like Impact versus starting from scratch?

<comment><USER21> Well, do you think it's worthwhile to implement your own collision map system, vector math, tile editor, etc. every time you start a new game?

It sure is tempting, but not necessarily healthy to the odds that you will ship a game. Though it's also not obvious how much a game engine will help you (like if you'll run into issues with your specific mechanics) until you credentialize in it, so it's always a bit of a crap shoot because games are so open-ended.

For example, I once migrated away from PhaserJS because I couldn't figure out how to add networking and server-side simulation without having more of the physics code in my git diffs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I absolutely loved playing Xibalba, and was actually thinking about it a few days ago. One of the few HTML shooters that was performant on my mobile device -- actually played through the whole game on mobile. Awesome to see the engine open sourced.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is it maintained? Only commit in over 3 years appears to be the readme and license.

<comment><USER27> Base on their blog post, it looks like its lack of maintenance was the driver for the decision to go open source [http://impactjs.com/blog/2018/05/impact- is-now-free-open-sou...](http://impactjs.com/blog/2018/05/impact-is-now-free- open-source)

</comment></comment><comment> n-gauge I used this years ago - however ended up with construct 2. I've also contributed to the open source scratch 2 apk (runs in a browser) using webRTC for the cloud vars. It's the only scratch emulator with lists support too.

[https://github.com/htmlgames/htmlgames.github.io/tree/master...](https://github.com/htmlgames/htmlgames.github.io/tree/master/htmlgames/differences/UAT/itchy)

</comment><comment><USER28> Another notable site that used Impact (for the client) is the multiplayer universe [http://Manyland.com](http://Manyland.com)

</comment><comment><USER29> I created some games for client in this; I liked it quite a bit. Interesting to see if someone picks it up. We encountered only small issues with it which did not really hamper development at the time.

</comment><comment><USER30> How does it compare with PhaserJS?

<comment><USER31> Phaser is still maintained. Impact got its last update years ago.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hire me in a year? - <AUTHOR>

Would a start up hire me and value me out of college?
Computer Engineering w/ math minor, 1 year left to graduate, 4.0 GPA, worked for a start up for 6 months (during school), Average 20-21 hrs/semester, interned with intel, 3 (soon 4) years of research (protein folding, parallel computing, DSP parallization), Experience with: C/C++, Python( focusing on a lot), PHP/MySQL, Erlang, Assembly, VHDL, and others Take software development seriously
Just off these few things, can I crack the top start ups of Silicon Valley? And I might consider sleeping on the couch :P <comment><USER2> _can I crack the top start ups of Silicon Valley?_

Sure. But, why wait? If you've got a year left, that means you've got this summer to go. Would another internship be possible?

 _And I might consider sleeping on the couch :P_

Working at a startup doesn't (and shouldn't) mean working for charity or for low/no pay. You'll be able to get your own place, with a mattress and everything :P

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, but try to do a few projects over the next year which are strongly relevant to your top five choices. Toss the results up on Github - or better, attempt to monetize the results (i.e. never tell when you can show).

</comment><comment><USER4> I may know of a possible opening. Contact me a hacker @ NoSQL dot com</comment>


Launch HN: Termius (YC W19) – SSH client that works on desktop and mobile - <AUTHOR> We are Roman and Dmitry, co-founders of Termius (https://termius.com). Termius is an SSH client that works on desktop and mobile. The big difference with other SSH clients that Termius syncs data across devices using end-to-end encryption.
DevOps, sysadmins, and network engineers benefit from using Termius because they can keep all the information for managing their servers in one secure place, e.g., snippets, connection strings, history, etc. Our product vision is to rebuild the command line experience around an engineer, not around the mainframe where it all started. For example, Termius will help engineers to safely keep information about their servers, shell commands, and terminal logs. This information will be accessible from any device and used to improve productivity, e.g., autocomplete commands in the terminal.
Dmitry and I met when we both got our first job in a small game development studio in Omsk, Siberia. Actually, at that time, it was an advertising agency with an ambition to become a game development studio. We were students, and it was a perfect place to learn on our own a ton about software development in C++. After four years of hard work, we managed to release a 3D game for PC with real-time physics. We involved kids in testing the gameplay, which allowed us to watch other people using our software. It was a life-changing experience when we saw how software could drive emotion, especially with kids and games. After that, we got hooked on building products that people love.
After the commercial failure of the game studio, we went to work for an outsourcing company. We were working on some enterprise software, which was not a lot of fun.  Therefore we were working after-hours and weekends on many ideas. After two years, we decided to start our own outsourcing company. We planned to use outsourcing company resources to develop our first product.
Roman started Termius as his pet project at our outsourcing company about seven years ago. Roman needed a way to start a C++ project compilation from my iPhone. The project used a lot of Boost::Spirit and a complete rebuild could take around 15 mins. This time was ideal for a cup of coffee with colleagues or a short bout of office-chair fencing. However, some compilation or linking errors could come up, so he needed to keep an eye on it. It was hard to justify paying $10 for iSSH for such a minor use case. Free SSH clients in the App Store were ugly or had ads in the terminal window. Roman thought that a basic SSH client with the terminal must be available on all platforms for free and ad-free. SSH is as universal as email, and most operating systems have at least one basic and free email client. That is how it is all started.
First, we needed to solve a couple of UX challenges. SSH client requires terminal emulator support to render the output. Also, the mobile keyboard doesn't have some necessary keys like Fn, Ctrl, Alt, and Tab. Besides, these keys must support sequences(Ctrl-Alt-x or Ctrl-x Ctrl-f) to support Emacs. That was our first UX challenge. Initially, we developed Ctrl and Alt in the shape of a lollipop pinned to the sides of the terminal window. Those were special buttons with two states: tap for single usage(for Ctrl-C) and drag to the center(locked state) for combinations like Ctrl-Alt-x. We have changed the design of the terminal window three times to make it easier to grasp. We ended up emulating a lot of what native OS does because users are familiar with those patterns already. In the recent versions, all the additional keys are grouped and sit on top of the system keyboard. Ctrl and Alt work a lot like Shift(double tap to lock) which was introduced later by Apple.
Once we released Termius (at that time was called Server Auditor) for iOS and Android, we started to get quite a lot of feedback on the missing features and bugs. Frequently this feedback was in the form of one-star review with a typical comment like "Will switch to 5 stars if you add blah". In some cases, we had no idea why users needed those features and had no way to ask about it. App Store did not provide the response feature at that time. Therefore we integrated the feedback channel and the feature voting straight into the app(UserVoice). After that, we were able to communicate with our users a lot easier. This tight feedback loop kept us engaged and motivated to keep working on the product. We also got to hear stories from users who used Termius in different life situations. Some users fixed a server being on holiday or saved their bacon because they could continue working from their iPhone. One of the fascinating cases was a story from one visually impaired user who was managing a server on his iPad using Termius and VoiceOver.
Initially, we released Termius as a free app for iOS and Android. After a year of continuous work, the apps got to the first places in both app stores when you search for SSH. Organic search traffic combined with good ratings drove pretty good daily downloads numbers. We realized that we are building something that people want.
When we were researching user churn, we realized that we could solve even a bigger problem. Some users stopped using the mobile app because it was daunting to keep the information up to date on the mobile device. They downloaded Termius to use when they are away from their desk. However, when an emergency happened, they didn't have all the things to deal with it, e.g., connection strings, keys, commands to restart a service, you name it. As a result, a standalone mobile SSH client was useless for them, and they had to run to their desk. We realized that if we add a desktop app and secure sync with end-to-end encryption, then all the data would stay fresh on all devices and users would be able to rely on the mobile apps.
Moreover, having sync enabled us to rethink the whole command line user experience. For example, Termius could accumulate all the commands when you work in a shell and use them for auto-complete an all devices. Another example, that engineers encouraged to invest a bit of their time to keep the information in order because it stays with them all the time. Termius supports groups and tags to maintain a list of hundreds of hosts.
What is next? Tens of millions of engineers use the command line to interact with remote computer systems. Many of them maintain infrastructure together. Our next step is to bring more collaboration to sysadmin and DevOps teams based on their interaction with the command line. Things like terminal logs, recently executed commands and lists of currently runnings systems could be shared among all team members with Termius. That would make the whole process more transparent and new member on-boarding a lot easier. The similar transition that Google Docs brought to collective document creation.
HackerNews community probably has the highest concentration of engineers who might use Termius daily. Therefore we would love to hear your feedback! <comment><USER3> Can I just vent on how extremely annoyed I am about normal bits of software, that aren't even genuinely a service, being priced on a subscription basis at ridiculous price levels?

5$ per month is $300 over a five-year time period, which might be the lifetime of, say, a newly bought laptop computer. Now imagine you're at an electronics store, looking at laptops, and there are two identical laptops sitting in front of you. One has a pricetag that says $1000. The other has a price-tag that says $1300. You ask the sales clerk: "What's the difference between those two?" The sales clerk answers: "This one comes with a piece of software that lets you SSH into remote machines." You answer: "But there's free software to do that." The sales clerk goes. "Well... But it's colorful and shit." Seriously?

<comment><USER4> Termius is free if you just want a nice terminal emulator. You only need to pay if you start using the features that securely sync your connection details between devices, and frankly that's a _really_ useful feature.

<comment><USER5> > You only need to pay if you start using the features that securely sync your > connection details between devices

That is its one advantage over regular ssh and e.g. JuiceSSH for Android. I can also sync my connection details over dropbox (host+port) and authenticate each device using public keys. Yes, Termius would be a lot more convenient, but the parent's point stands that "is this convenience worth 60$/yr".

I suspect the answer is yes to a big enough portion of sysadmins, especially if they can get their company to pay for the license. The rest of the poor folk get to learn how to build it themselves, as usual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used it back when it only cost 10€ per year. It was polished, but didn't really do anything special. I considered buying it but as a light user, I couldn't justify the price.

Now its 50€/Year, and are so many other great SSH Apps on iOS that I just don't see why I would ever pay that much for it.

I guess that's the curse of subscriptions. You can only sell it to your most dedicated users, which means that you have to raise the price even more.

If I'm any indication, there are a lot of free Termius users, who would be willing to pay a one time fee just to get the most basic features like sFTP and Tabs.

<comment><USER7> I too find the price too steep, for the use I'd have. I'm not interested in sync, I'm just interested in the advanced ssh features (sftp, background sessions, tabs, hops). 50€/year for just this is way too much.

<comment><USER8> I agree, it would be nice to see an approach that allowed access to just advanced ssh features (if you can call something like sftp an advanced feature) for a slightly less steep price point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've used Termius on my iPhone a few times when I needed to complete a small task and couldn't be at a computer. For that use case, it's been fantastic!

However, Termius on the desktop (Windows, in this case) falls short of the usability threshold for me because of slow performance, especially at high resolutions. When scrolling a large number of characters across the screen, performance is significantly worse than using Linux terminals like gnome- terminal or Terminal.app on macOS.

Every few months I end up installing the latest version of Termius to see if the performance issues have been fixed, but they have not. Instead, I'm using an installation of mate-terminal on Ubuntu for WSL combined with the X410 server. It's much more clunky to set up and use, but performance is great.

I expect that with the introduction of Windows Terminal, Termius will lose ground if it doesn't improve.

<comment><USER10> Maybe an agent that just syncs would be a better option (for desktop), so users can keep using their preferred terminal.

Interesting that it is a YC startup.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use Termius CLI that syncs the data to your machine and enable working with it in the terminal [https://docs.termius.com/termius-cli/termius- cli](https://docs.termius.com/termius-cli/termius-cli)

<comment><USER11> Hm, seems like it stores SSH key passwords in plain text?

[https://github.com/Crystalnix/termius- cli/issues/132](https://github.com/Crystalnix/termius-cli/issues/132)

Any comment on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is user's home directory, e.g., SSH keys in ~/.ssh are also plain text.

<comment><USER11> Not their passwords, tho. I am not trying to be difficult here, just trying to understand the reasoning behind leaving the passwords stored in plain text.

<comment><AUTHOR> We found no way to store password somehow else as Keychains are platform specific, but we plan to add Keychain support in the future.

<comment><USER12> If you used 'platform specific' built-in secrets sync you'd be done... but then how would you justify charging for the built in sync? So I see your conundrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've used Server Auditor/Terminus for years. Saved my butt once when I was on vacation and my docker containers were bouncing one-by-one. I didn't have my laptop but I pulled over to have my wife drive while I sat in the passenger seat with Terminus debugging the issue and deploying a fix from my iPhone. That's pretty empowering. And supporting Mosh for free is a huge plus!

I had no idea Terminus had a desktop app. I'm definitely going to give it a try. Thanks for all you do!

<comment><USER14> That's amazing that you remember using it under the old name Server Auditor. We realised it was not the best name for a product as it has this negative audit flavour. "OK", we thought and iterated on the name resulting in Termius. This time people (and even Google) started to confuse it with Terminus. "Jesus", we thought and worked on making Google understand it right. It worked with Google, but people still seem to like Terminus more. Now we're thinking to either fix people's perception or come up with a new name. How do you like the name, btw?

<comment><USER15> Not GP, but I did misread the submission title as ...Termi _n_ us... Seems more natural, for whatever reason, to me at least.

Is the problem that it's an existing trademark, or just that it's annoying to change again?

It probably doesn't matter if I misread it, search engines will take care of it as if a typo? (Same applies to anyone accurately searching for the name I misleading recommend them, too.)

<comment><USER14> Thanks! Yes, that's a bit annoying to change it again and communicate (and, possibly, confuse users even more). Agree, the search engines suggest Termius as a fix now, so we'll probably leave it as is.

<comment><USER16> I have to say, I don't like the name and confused it just like the other people.

But, perhaps you could do something with the capitalization of the name to make it more obvious:

"termiUS"

You could accentuate that effect with using a larger font for the last two letters.

Seems like one of the benefits is synchronization, so emphasizing US fits. And then you don't lose your hard fought Google ranking.

But, in any case, it's a great product and good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, we have another domain termi.us so we might alter the name just with a dot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> After creating an account and installing the app I am pleasantly surprised by the app insofar as actually using it to access a remote computer however.

\- I have no idea if the premium features listed are inducements to pay for a premium version or if there is no way to use the app at all without paying the monthly fee.

\- I don't want to create a calendar event to remember to pay or cancel. I'd infinitely rather have the app affirm that I wont be charged unless I make an affirmative choice to use your app beyond the trial and click pay the first time. This is especially true on mobile where google already has all the info needed to bill my account.

\- The UI has no cancel option. I am left with the strong impression that I have to call someone on the phone or email to cancel at which point someone may or not bother to cancel the account or hey just keep billing me for no reason. I'm sure your are more conscientious and professional about that but I've seen erroneous behavior from otherwise great people.

In brief I'd like to see clarity as to if the subscription is required to use the app, an affirmative step prior to billing my account, and a way to cancel in app or on the web page. Thanks for sharing your work.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for your feedback.

After the trial ends you won't be charged. We don't use iOS or Android native mechanisms to provide trial functionality. Once your trial is ended you can switch to basic version with a few limitations or you can explicitly buy the subscription - no hidden charges.

We also have a web dashboard where you can manage your account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for the detailed post! I'm usually wary of using close-source programs for sensitive tasks such as connecting to all my remote servers with SSH.

I haven't found any details on the libraries you use, especially for cryptography, nor the steps you have taken to secure your software. Where can we find more info?

<comment><USER14> Totally understand. As Termius turned from a pet project to our main focus we made security transparency our immediate objective. We are working on the detailed documentation on cryptography, SOC2, and periodic security tests done by 3rd party security professionals.

However, we have addressed the most sensitive part of the product -- the approach we use to store and sync hosts, passwords and keys: [https://docs.termius.com/termius- handbook/synchronization#ho...](https://docs.termius.com/termius- handbook/synchronization#how-it-works-under-the-hood). Syncing of keys/passwords can be turned off when your policy does not allow it to be stored elsewhere. We also support 2FA and Yubikey for authentification.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for this, not the OP but security is also my #1 concern with this type of product. I'm probably not in the target market anyways so maybe you don't need to listen to me but I love it when companies release info on the way they keep my data safe.

One example, before I sign up for a critical vendor, I like to ensure I can set up secure 2fa with no sms recovery (because sms recovery is broken by design)

A security whitepaper of sorts will probably go a long way on this type of product

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So this is an Electron app that does what JuiceSSH and X-plore do for me on android for free, but with synced configuration and monthly payment.

Sorry, but I don't value not having to copy my SSH configs over to my phone once every blue moon at $4.99/month.

<comment><USER22> You can use it for free, as I have, and it's quite good. The payment is only for syncing, which is not worth it for me, so I don't pay.

<comment><USER23> According to their Pricing page[1], you require the $5/month subscription to use SFTP. That seems like an odd decision for a company who proudly calls out that they use 'end-to-end encryption' to sync your settings.

[1] [https://termius.com/pricing](https://termius.com/pricing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Folks, I honestly genuinely hate to be "that guy", but neither your description above (too long), nor your website really explains why I need your product. I went to the docs page but it's still not telling me what it does exactly, how it works and why I need this? As a Windows/Linux admin/dev/devops guy what's the selling point?

I think you need some diagrams/videos to explain your stuff a bit more. Show me how it works. Show me the road bumps you're smoothing out.

<comment><USER25> >I went to the docs page but it's still not telling me what it does exactly

First paragraph of their comment:

> Termius is an SSH client that works on desktop and mobile. The big > difference with other SSH clients that Termius syncs data across devices > using end-to-end encryption.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I read that....but how? I can already do that with tooling I already have. What's the benefits for me over a bunch of bash and powershell scripts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I love using Termius on my 12.9" iPad Pro with the keyboard. It's a beautiful full screen terminal with extra features that just happen to pop up right when I need them. I'm delighted to see Termius is with YC now!

Feature request: Unlock the ability to use Termius as a swiss army knife for every iOS app - Using the new Shortcuts features released as part of iOS 13, it seems possible (I have not dug 100%) that support could be built to allow Termius to scp files, in a way that allows collaboration with most every iOS app. A specific example:

I take a photo. I hit the Share button. I tap the Termius icon. A list of hosts I have ssh'd to appears (perhaps with a most recent "current working directory" next to each entry). I tap "webhost (public_html)" and whatever photo I sent to the Share button is uploaded via scp. (Replace photo with "arbitrary file" from the Files app)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent suggestions, I discuss them with the dev team. Would you able to share(roman[at]termius.com) your user stories? What for are you using Termius?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow, this app saved my butt over a year ago when I ran out of laptop battery while out in the field. It was one of those rare cases where my low expectations did a complete 180 in the first few minutes using the tool.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is pretty cool - I've used it as an alternative to building a few web dashboards and admin panels for some of my quick-and-dirty past projects.

The combination of Termiums's saved snippets and a short shell/node scripts let me do a lot of monitoring using simple shell scripts rather than having to run a separate web-server hidden behind some auth. Plus, it's still easier to build an interative shell script than an interactive webpage.

</comment><comment><USER29> I had Termius installed on my phone for years, and uses it very occasionally in emergency situation when I don't have my notebook around or when wifi is not available. I tried several other apps and eventually settled with Termius and keep it on my iPhone and my iPad for years. I do noticed that there are more intense development in the past six months or so, however all the new development are no longer supports older iPhone/iPad where i had Termius installed. I'm not a system admin, and categorised as one of those casual users, personally I never feel the needs to use Terminus Desktop because even for a casual user to switch from what has been setup on the Desktop to a new app is too much of works, but this might be just me...

</comment><comment><USER30> I was very surprised to see this is a YC startup - I thought they only invested where there was the possibility of a huge exit?

While this looks interesting, $5/m is a lot for the functionality on offer - for something as "small" as this, I'd personally prefer to pay on a yearly basis, maybe something like $20/y.

I just can't see this delivering big returns, unless of course there is something much bigger on the road map.

</comment><comment><USER31> I unfortunately have to concur with the posters feeling irritation at what seems a very unreasonable subscription price. The most useful feature enabled by the paid subscription, the syncing of data, is something i anyway do on my bastion host/jump host, which is the only point from which the other systems are accessible. All profiles for reaching the systems are there, all my notes are there (encrypted), and it's set to record all sessions - although not get shipping these logs away to a more protected location. The only thing missing is the key material, which I will gladly manage manually.

</comment><comment> ezequiel-garzon I'm a hobbyist at best, so the subscription is not justified or useful for me (plus I just don't like subscriptions). I wish you guys had some intermediate product that allowed a one-time contribution through the App Store. Anyway, thanks for such a great app!

<comment><AUTHOR> We serve the free version of Termius to hobbyists which is pretty powerful and has no ads. One more benefit that you can rely on it because it is part of a growing startup. Btw, we saw a lot of dead SSH clients in app stores along the way, just because they had no business model, e.g., one-off payment.

<comment><USER32> "no business model" e.g. one off payment

and yet Microsoft (worlds most valuable company btw) built an empire selling software.

<comment><USER33> And yet here we are in 2019 and they're moving to subscription model

<comment><USER12> Because now they can rope-a-dope the market segment who don't need to upgrade every year, usually only with a new computer.

It's rent seeking of a sort. No additional needed value delivered, artificial change to extract more monies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> foreign-inc How is this a billion $ business? I've been rejected by YC a number of times, even though we have lots of docker downloads. So, I am just curious, what worked in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our pitch to Y Combinator: The number of network engineers and sysadmins is around the number of software developers. Sysadmins use SSH all day long while maintaining infrastructure for SMB and enterprise. Termius makes those admins more productive, reduce the amount of errors, and enables collaboration(leads to easier onboarding for new team members). The additional point is that no significant innovation has been done in this space(command line&SSH) for the last twenty years.

<comment><USER12> I liken it to drinking water.

No "significant" innovation has been done to H2O in a while. That hasn't stopped plenty of companies getting built on selling what most people with disposable income can also get in high quality for free.

And much like already paying for iCloud, Google Drive, One Drive, or Dropbox, most companies that "subscribe" extra for water delivery to the water cooler in the break room, already pay a water bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hello, I am a new iPad user and this is one of the first iOS apps I ever downloaded along with iSH on testflight(the alpine linux distrobution for ipad). I have 2 questions if you don't mind:

1) I love iSH because I dont need to be on the internet or connected to any other devices to get a local shell. Is there interest in the project in creating a local shell using busybox or the like built into the app? As awesome as iSH is, unfortunately things like F-keys and general user interface still need a bit of work.

2) Will you folks support mouse integration on iOS 13?

Thanks for the great app. I am rooting for you folks.

<comment><USER35> I was about to recommend iSH too so here is the link [1] for anyone interested. The major advantage of iSH, besides being free, is its ability to function offline. Many other SSH clients where just proxies to a server which wasn't useful on air-gapped or NAT networks.

[1]: [https://ish.app/](https://ish.app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am a network engineer and I had been using Termius in the MAC for about an year now.But whenever if there is a need for log collection, I have to use MAC Terminal. Because I cannot scroll with the mouse and select the text. This is a big disadvantage for me. (I don't want to press cmd+A and do a select-all)

Also it will be better if the list of connections (and folders) are displayed readily accessible always in the left or on the top.

I have not used the app in mobile. Because I am skeptical to store the hostnames and IPs (and definitely passwords) on a third party application.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on session logs at the moment; we know that it's a pain to use Control-A. Is there anything we can do to make you comfortable to use the sync? For example, we already encrypt all the data using AES-256. We are going to get SEC2. Anything else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> 187MB for an installer! What extra do we get instead of Putty/Other SSH Clients to justify this humongous size!? Can't size be slimmed down!

<comment><AUTHOR> Electron apps are pretty fat in general, but the Internet speed in most places got pretty fast anyway.

<comment><USER37> Thank you for the quick response. Also, Is it possible to strip down the memory usage as well? Because for 5 ssh sessions the memory usage along with core app was standing at 300M+. [https://imgur.com/a/muh1zTs](https://imgur.com/a/muh1zTs)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for noticing. Better memory management and performance improvements are definitely the areas we'll be focusing on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've been a longtime user, I love it! Its a must have on all of my devices.

<comment><USER14> Thank you, Tom, really appreciate your support!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Product and website look great. Thanks for sharing. Though, can I point out a small discrepancy on your landing page? You claim over 24,000 engineers use the product, then in the same section you claim over 300,000. It makes me scratch my head and honestly I think you lose a bit of credibility. And on the pricing page you claim 10,000. Which is it?

<comment><USER40> The pricing page seems to be wrong either way, but the main page claims 300,000 total users with 24,000 using it daily.

<comment><USER39> I didn't catch the daily number. It just seems like they should pick the bigger one and stick with it so users don't need to parse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Excited you guys made it into YC! I've been in a Termius subscriber since 2016 (please don't kill early adopter subs!) and it's been worth every penny. Also used ServerAuditor and paid for that too. :)

I have transitioned to using the desktop app almost entirely (altho it's annoying my mosh windows don't just stay connected all the time like they used too) and can't wait for React/WebGL to speed it up.

It would be awesome if there was a CLI app I could run that I could send a push notification that I could click on from my phone and it launches termius with the appropriate host. Currently I'm using pushover, but when I get something I have to flip into termius and manually connect.

I'll post more of my ideas into uservoice. :) Thanks for being prompt on responding to emails too, I can't wait until the new rendering engine (react I assume) doesn't suck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words! I've shared them with the team!

We are designing the push notifications from a server at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Termius is simply amazing! I use it regularly from my iPhone, and it's the only terminal app that feels natural using: you can double tab to have tab completion, swipe to go up and down, etc...

Since I can manage cluster jobs as I was at my desktop, Termius really increased my productivity.

Keep up the good work, guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for kind words! It keeps us going!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Small thing I noticed on the pricing page, 'annualy' is misspelled - <USER2> looks very nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> My main usecase that I use Termius for is that I read mail in mutt on my self hosted mail server. I've been hosting my own mail for many years now. Having access to my mail server from my iPhone is nice.

Thank you for making Termius and for the effort that you have put into it thus far.

</comment><comment><USER45> Monthly payments for an SSH client? Like, seriously ?

</comment><comment><USER46> I do not have very valuable feedback but I've used Termius on the iPad twice when my laptop wasn't available (both emergencies). I haven't found the need to look elsewhere for an iOS SSH client. Great work and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> Is the "Termius Dark" color scheme saved anywhere? I like to use the same color scheme as my terminal when I am using vim.

PS: Love Termius, by the way! We will be sure to switch to the team plan once the sharing feature launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are about to onboard the first team for a closed beta of Group Sharing! Let me know roman[at]termius.com if you want to test the beta as well.

<comment><USER11> Oh, great, will do! Any comment on Vim, though? And on a second note, any plans to support true colours?

<comment><AUTHOR> True Colors now in beta [https://termius.com/beta- program](https://termius.com/beta-program). Could you elaborate a bit more on the idea with VIM? We are planning to add custom themes in the future but I'm not sure if it will help with your request about VIM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I also have been using Terminus from iOS to get to servers I manage. It's been great, thanks. They keyboard will always be difficult but you solved cursor keys and tab. How are you going monetize?

<comment><AUTHOR> We sell a subscription for premium features that are available on all devices and make engineers more productive. Our next step is a plan for teams where we want to enable collaboration, e.g., sysadmins quite often maintain the same infrastructure so they should have one source of truth of the current state(what servers do we have? what are the recent changes?).

<comment><USER48> I wish you guys luck! Engineers may be a hard group to sell this to, given how great free desktop terminal emulators are, and how easy it is for an engineer to engineer tooling to generate ~/.ssh/config files from existing sources of truth.

From the research I've done when I was considering using my iPad as a terminal, Termius seemed like hands down the best iOS terminal app. However on macOS, you're going to have to compete with the likes of iTerm2, Kitty, and Alacritty, all very fine open source programs innovating in the terminal space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I never used Termius but I used similar SSH apps on my iPhone which did the trick for me.

What I'm curious about is, what is Termius monetization strategy? From what I can tell, it's 100% free?

<comment><USER14> Termius uses a freemium model. You can get most of the functionality for free, the premium and teams plans offer some professional features such as cross- platform sync, host sharing, sftp, agent forwarding etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> You want me to pay you more per month than I pay to sync all my mail, files, photos etc, for a worse terminal than comes with my OS for free?

How is there a market for this?

</comment><comment><USER51> Nice read about Termius' background.

I like Termius, it's by far the best ssh client on iOS. I just wonder if this syncing is really a crucial feature.

I have one main remote dev server which is the gateway to all other remote servers. I use most of the time the main server and haven't had the need to sync anything. Installing keys on ssh clients is indeed a bit tedious but you do it only once.

Or do I miss anything?

</comment><comment><USER52> Great app but the ability to remap caps lock to Esc on an external iPad keyboard is why I went with Blink shell instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on Remapping of CapsLock for iOS. Stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Hello, I have a phone with a big screen. I use connectbot and tmux. My single issue is that it is almost unusable when I do not have my bluetooth keyboard with me. Hacker's keyboard is not very pleasant and does not interact well with connectbot (the virtual keyboard hides half of the screen).

I will try Termius.

</comment><comment><USER54> Except for the _requirement_ of a paying monthly subscription to use certain features I truly like Termius.

</comment><comment><USER55> Looks very interesting. Is it possible to install the Linux version without using snap? Thanks.

<comment><USER14> We are now adding .deb package. Currently in beta, but should be released pretty soon. You could try it here [https://www.termius.com/beta- program](https://www.termius.com/beta-program)

<comment><USER55> Thanks! It would be great if you can also release a .rpm for other distros as well. I'm using Fedora 30 and Snap is generating some issues, that's why I rather install it using a package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I've used Termius on my phone. It's phenomenal. Didn't realize there was a desktop version too.

</comment><comment><USER57> Can you enable the SSH client on mobile to supports yubikey for GPG-agent authentication?

</comment><comment><USER58> Not to be confused with the _Terminus_

> a highly configurable terminal emulator for Windows, macOS and Linux

[https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus](https://github.com/Eugeny/terminus)

</comment><comment><USER59> Not sure if I missed something, but I can't add fonts. Is that not possible?

<comment><USER14> We don't support it at the moment. Adding fonts is on the roadmap, but, unfortunately, I cannot give an ETA for this. What fonts would you like to have, we may be able to add those to Termius?

<comment><USER59> This is a bit of an edge case, but I want to be able to use an ANSI friendly font for Telnet BBS'. At the moment, the supported fonts just render garbage. It would be ideal for me to select my own font as I find it unlikely you will add 'unscii 16-full'.

<comment><USER60> Actually, UNSCII is also what I'm looking for in Termius (for drawille).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Blimey, why is the Wozniak quote buried so low!

<comment><AUTHOR> We were psyched to get this quote from Steve, but the product is a bit complex to grasp, so we devoted the whole landing page to communicate the value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I already have a working SSH app on my phone. I use it once in a blue moon because it's all cloud now.

</comment><comment><USER62> Man, its a desperate state of affairs when I have to access my terminal on my phone...

<comment><USER63> It could be worse. I semi-regularly use Microsoft Remote Desktop from my phone because my workplace's security policy doesn't allow ssh from off-network....

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I've used the mobile app, it's simply amazing!!

</comment><comment><USER65> SaaS was a mistake..

</comment><comment><USER66> Thank you for creating one of the essential apps for mobile devices to be able to use ssh.

I'd like to see Termius go beyond SSH. Add in scp / rsync support for file transfers. Add VNC / RDP support for virtual desktops. Or at least X11 forwarding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Termius already has file management capabilities through SFTP and Amazon S3(Android only). We will eventually add X11/RDP/VNC, but now we are focused on the command line UX to a remote system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Using a terminal on a mobile is a horrible experience. Smart phone UI's are the antithesis of CLI</comment>


Show HN: Lego – A Let's Encrypt Library and CLI in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/xenolf/lego <comment><USER2> Are you really, really sure that this is not a trademark violation? Do you like receiving cease & desist letters, or your projects getting DMCA'd? Are you prepared to defend your views in court? If not, I would change the name.

<comment><USER3> As others have said, better change name early, how about LetsGo ? :-)

<comment><USER4> How about use the prefix letsencrypt: letsencrypt-go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the README on this project -- I've noticed a lot of Go libraries tend to have absolutely no "getting started" code and tend to just push people toward the godocs. One of my favourite things about node is how pretty much every module tells you how to use it immediately right in the README.

<comment><USER6> I've seen the same thing in my experience. After hours of work, many Go repo's simply don't help other people to use their software.

<comment><USER7> That's "OSS". Many people believe that dumping stuff on the internet counts as a "contribution" (e.g. [1]). That's how it works: throw stuff out there if you feel like it, ignore feedback, and "Open."

[1] [http://blogs.perl.org/users/sawyer_x/2010/09/please- provide-...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/sawyer_x/2010/09/please-provide-a- change-log.html#comment-4471)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No dependencies, runs everywhere, and easy to use. Great job! Some of those PRs are looking pretty tasty too.

Here's a link to the current release with cross-platform binaries: [https://github.com/xenolf/lego/releases/tag/v0.1.0](https://github.com/xenolf/lego/releases/tag/v0.1.0)

<comment><USER9> I see multiple dependencies.

No runtime dependencies, but the code is still difficult to audit due to depending on external libraries at some unknown versions.

<comment><USER10> Vendoring the libs solves that problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do Let's Encrypt issue multiple valid certs for the same domain at the same time? Something I've been thinking of doing (with a library like this) is building the LE client right into the program so you can set a flag and it'll automatically acquire an certificate for the server it's running on.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is super useful. Thank you kindly!

</comment><comment><USER12> Clever naming!

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for this!</comment>