Ask HN: Smaller(ish) Project Idea's - <AUTHOR>

What are some smaller project's that you could execute in a day to a week or so?
I'm think along the lines of setting up a personal email server, basic portfolio site, etc. Things that could broaden your knowledge of different services.
edit: Another example of what I was thinking about is setting up a basic dropbox clone for personal use running on your own server. <comment><USER2> Do you know these useful MS Excel templates that you can find throughout the interwebs? Calculate the needs of a BBQ for X people; lifetime savings calculator; freelancer budget calculator, etc. (for some examples: [http://www.spreadsheetzone.com/category.aspx?c=159](http://www.spreadsheetzone.com/category.aspx?c=159))

Find one that is useful for you and transform it on a cloud-based software. A spreadsheet as a service, if you will.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here you go:

[http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/78802-martyr2s-mega-...](http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/78802-martyr2s-mega- project-ideas-list/)

He also wrote this:

[http://www.coderslexicon.com/downloads/the-programmers- idea-...](http://www.coderslexicon.com/downloads/the-programmers-idea-book/)</comment>


Reservoirs speed up Earth's spin (1996) - <AUTHOR> http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n7_v149/ai_18051356/

<comment><AUTHOR> Also:

\+ <http://www.theenergylibrary.com/node/11435>

\+ [http://www.google.com/search?q=reservoirs+change+rotation+Ea...](http://www.google.com/search?q=reservoirs+change+rotation+Earth)

</comment><comment><USER2> ... by 0.000000125 seconds over the last 40 years.

<comment><USER3> _"Due to the reservoir effect, the day 40 years ago was longer than today by about 8 millionths of a second," says Chao_</comment></comment>


With 5000 apps, Pebble is winning the smartwatch developer war, at least for now - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3040235/app-economy/pebble-passes-5000-smartwatch-apps-how-it-got-there-and-what-comes-next <comment><USER2> >(The split is 1,100 native apps, 4,300 watch faces, and 100 apps that rely on a companion iOS or Android app, CEO Eric Migicovsky tells Fast Company.)

Read: about 100 apps that actually do anything useful.

I say that as someone that owns and rather likes their Pebble.

<comment><USER3> I really enjoyed the next paragraph comparing Pebble's "5,500" apps to Samsung's 1,000 apps when the truth was just given. Not that it's bad to have 1,000 apps, just that it shows some of the hyperbole that smart watches have behind them right now.

<comment><USER4> I'm glad someone brought this up. (I'm the author of the FastCo piece.)

I wasn't sure if Samsung's claim of 1,000 apps included watchfaces, so I went through the Galaxy store and counted them by hand. The results (sections may be off by a few numbers as I was counting kind of quickly):

108 clocks 11 health 21 finance 211 lifestyle 17 social networking 129 entertainment 171 utilities TOTAL = 668 Note that the actual number is lower, since several apps were repeated across multiple sections and I didn't subtract them from the total.

So, Samsung does include watch faces, but the ratio of apps:faces is much greater. As for the actual number not being 1,000 apps, I'm guessing Samsung is counting apps for different languages that wouldn't appear in the US store. I wasn't sure whether to get into this level of hair-splitting in the piece, but ultimately figured I could get into it more if someone brought it up.

Anyway, I wouldn't really discount the importance of watch faces, especially on Pebble since they're key to customizing the look of your device. And I think they'll get more useful with time; Jawbone's app is technically a watch face, for instance, and some faces can display the weather, battery and calendars.

I agree that bragging about app count stops being instructive at some point, but in this case I think they show Pebble has done a fine job of establishing itself.

Thanks for reading!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Number of apps is not a measure of usefulness or enough for a buy decision. I have with my Moto 360 a, let say, small number of apps, but quite useful ( Google Now extension, navigation, remote photo trigger, fitness tools, to name a few). I know that more and more developers will add their wear-enabled apps and this will increase the functionality. The battery point is a good one, but while I sleep I have to take any watch off my hand so the point in my case is kind of moot.

Besides that, who would wear a kids like looking watch? Ok maybe some of us, but with some good leather straps, the Moto 360 looks really good and somehow unnoticed, like a normal watch. This gives me some real value, but also I am not a very young person too ;).

<comment><USER6> Fellow 360 owner. The way this is tied to google services is really the value here. I don't need nor want to launch a dozen apps like some mini-smartphone. I want pushed updates, voice commands that actually do stuff, etc. I don't think people yet appreciate how clever AW is. It really is more of an unobtrusive yet helpful accessory for all the things on my phone than anything else. Which is exactly what a smartwatch should be.

All this talk about how Tizen on watches will beat AW and how watches will have their own 4G connection is really off the mark. Its just more mindless 'featuritis.' People want a good experience, not a checklist of features that suck to use in the real world.

The pebble reminds me of the Treo smartphones before the iphone came out. Sure it could do stuff, but it wasn't very pleasant and you had to be something of a techie expert to really make use of it. I'm surprised the pebble people haven't made an AW watch yet. They have the branding and the know-how. AW is going to steamroll them if they don't contemporize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting thing to note about Pebble apps is they made JavaScript framework. So if you are good with JS, you can get used to PebbleJS quite fast and make yourself a basic app in few hours! Quite useful if you need something specific which doesn't exist yet.

[http://developer.getpebble.com/guides/js-apps/pebblekit- js/](http://developer.getpebble.com/guides/js-apps/pebblekit-js/)

<comment><USER8> That's not entirely correct - you also must write C code. You can write JS that runs on the phone and can do stuff like call web services, store data, and communicate with the watch. But it's old fashioned C code that you need to have running on the watch in order to render stuff, get sensor data, or exchange messages with the JS running on the phone.

<comment><USER9> That's not true, you can write a basic app with a UI entirely in JS. I have done this to have control over some home automation bits and bobs.

<comment><USER10> Can we get some links to resources?

<comment><USER9> There should be plenty on the pebble dev site, but here's the start to a tutorial that'll build a weather app entirely in js [http://developer.getpebble.com/getting-started/pebble-js- tut...](http://developer.getpebble.com/getting-started/pebble-js- tutorial/part1/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't care how many apps it has. I can ask my android wear device what my calendar is like, or send a text, or ask to see the weather. I think a lot of people see more functionality out of android wear.

<comment><USER12> Maybe functionality is in the eyes of the beholder... but Pebble can most definitely do all of those things with the proper app: view calendars/agendas, send canned SMS responses, and view upcoming weather. You don't have to "ask" your device to do it, just press the right buttons. Despite the "coolness" factor, I find it preferable and more discreet to press buttons, rather than using a microphone or swiping a touchscreen. Depending on the app, you can literally cycle through the three things you've mentioned in three button clicks. [1] Also, if Pebble has a killer feature, it's that its battery life crushes anything else I've seen thus far, regularly lasting through 5 to 7 days of 24/7 wear and bluetooth connectivity...I don't think any Android Wear device can do that yet, but I would be really interested in looking at them if they could.

[1] [http://www.finebyte.co.uk/?page_id=9](http://www.finebyte.co.uk/?page_id=9)

EDIT: FWIW, I don't use Google Now on my phone itself, so I admit that some of the novelty or utility of what it can do from your Android Wear device might be lost on me.

<comment><USER13> I have a Pebble Smartwatch and it definitely does not have 5-7 days of battery life. More like 1.5 days (2 if your lucky). Also, I do think the fact that Android wear makes so much functionality so easily accessible is a huge deal for smartwatches. You just say "Ok Google". The whole point of a smartwatch is to seamlessly integrate technology in your life. That means our interactions on them need to be quick. You can't get that if you have to poke around the Pebble watch UI for 15 seconds before getting to your app and THEN sending out the text, or checking your calendar etc.

<comment><USER12> Unlike the sibling posts, I have automatic backlight turned off and it regularly lasts a minimum of 5 days. On the fifth or sixth night, I charge it over night and I'm back at it.

With respect to "OK Google," more often than not, I find myself in places where talking to my watch would strike me as obnoxious: the office, outdoors, the subway, an elevator. Sure it's quick, but again, a button press or two strikes me as being more effective in those situations. I really would only think of using voice commands in my own home, or in the car. I guess it's all a matter of personal preference... I know exactly how the UI of the Pebble app works, and exactly what it's going to do in a certain amount of time when I press a particular button, which feels pretty seamless to me.

Lest I only say good things about Pebble, I have to mention that in a little over a year of ownership I'm on my 4th one: 3 RMAs due to persistent screen defects. This 4th one should be sent back, too, but I've yet to get around to the RMA process again. Two of the RMAs were within 1 year of purchase, and one was beyond, so my credit goes to their customer service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So far the Moto 360 is the only smart watch for sale that I think I'd want on my wrist. It looks like a cool watch. I don't think I'd use the apps or anything a whole lot, but I think that it'd be a nice enough looking watch to wear around.

I think that tech people are overestimating the potential of wearables as useful tech. There isn't much a smart watch does for you that you couldn't pull out your phone and do.

However, the whole reason smart watches exist is to increase the LTV of a customer. When you are selling a $200-600 phone, selling a $200+ watch is a nice bump in LTV.

Apple's interchangeable bands is not just to make the manufacturing process cheaper and more efficient, it's also to make it so you can buy multiple bands to match different outfits. I know some people who own tons of Chuck Taylor shoes of different colors to match every outfit they own. Same kind of deal.

In many ways, wearable tech is less about tech and more about fashion businesses. Fashion is a great business because it's disposable. Disposable things get repurchased.

Phones are disposable, laptops are disposable, all of it is disposable and that is almost like a form of recurring revenue. Devices as a service in a way. The push for all of this is driven by profit, not by much else.

</comment><comment><USER15> The pebble team have done a great job, but I think increasing the 8 apps limit would really help.

It would also make things very interesting if they could release a color version that achieved similar battery life.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yeah. I really like Pebble. YMMV but for my needs its perfect. I want important notifications 'on my wrist'; so I can put the phone away during family time (when daughter is around). And the basic screen (no bright colors or touch sensitive) works great as daughter lost interest in it after 2 mins!

I just wish they develop true wireless/cordless charging using something like ambient light, hand motion or whatever so I don't have to charge it every few days!

</comment><comment><USER17> Eric showed off their mobile-based "app store" before it was released. The cool part is it could download a new watch personality over BT _without internet access_. So it could operate with cached watch apps if you're out of cell reception.

(I still have my Alerta that was hand-delivered.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Well if "Pebble" is a platform and iOS is a platform, my bet is that Apple already won this.

<comment><USER19> Apple Watch does not run iOS apps (at the moment). [https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/General/Conceptual/WatchKitProgrammingGuide/index.html):

 _" Apple Watch requires the presence of an iPhone to run third-party apps. Creation of a third-party app requires two separate bundles: a WatchKit app that runs on Apple Watch and a WatchKit extension that runs on the user's iPhone. The WatchKit app contains only the storyboards and resource files associated with your app's user interface. The WatchKit extension contains the code for managing the WatchKit app's user interface and for responding to user interactions."_

On the other hand, the 5000 is a bit inflated. It is more like 1000 apps and 4000 watch faces.

And of course, the race is still very much on. I would think sales numbers will be more important than app counts because they will drive app counts up. In that sense, the "over 400.000 sold" ([http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/pebble- sold-400000-smartwatche...](http://fortune.com/2014/03/20/pebble- sold-400000-smartwatches-last-year-on-track-to-double-revenues-in-2014/)) from last march is better news for Pebble than that 1000 apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does HN think they will release a new version soon, or is it safe to order one now?

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be great if it had a heartrate monitor built-in

</comment><comment><USER22> The title gave me a good chuckle - thanks.</comment>


Show HN: ccc (Conventional Commit Cheatsheet) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kubejm/ccc <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! I've always enjoyed the Conventional Commits specification, but found myself often going back to online documentation to refresh myself on it. So, I wrote a small script to serve as a cheatsheet for a quick reminder in my terminal to help me write clean commit messages and keep clean histories. It has worked well for me thus far and has been very handy. I hope others find it helpful.</comment>


Getting Funded: Step 3, The Partner Meeting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thansys.com/2011/07/14/getting-funded-step-3-the-partner-meeting/ Part 4 of the "Getting Funded" series <comment><USER2> like passed it through myself. good article</comment>


Python is Better than Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://en.arguman.org/python-is-better-than-ruby <comment><USER2> As of now there is a 67.2 % objection rate to the "Python is better than Ruby" argument so according to this Python is _not_ better than Ruby.</comment>


Duplicates existing functionality (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2010/02/01/duplicates-existing-functionality

<comment><USER2> Why is this story on the first page? What did i miss in news? I mean the only reason to post such old articles would be that the content is suddenly very relevant _today_. What is it?

<comment><USER3> Did it stop being relevant? It's just a reminder of the risks you run when running a and developing for a closed garden. It's a good point, always worth underlining it I guess.

<comment><USER4> _Did it stop being relevant?_

It did, since Apple now allows competitors to their apps in their store. I usually use Google Maps/Mail on my iPhone in leu of the Apple-provided apps.

<comment><USER3> Mozilla aren't able to ship a full Firefox on iOS though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mailbox, Google Maps, iCatcher (podcasts).

Apple has changed, and it has changed for the better.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about Static Site Generators? - <AUTHOR> I've trying different static site generators these days, from Gatsby to Eleventy. What do you think about these tools and JAM stack? <comment><USER2> There are a lot of them to play with - [https://github.com/pinceladasdaweb/Static-Site- Generators](https://github.com/pinceladasdaweb/Static-Site-Generators). I'm not sure which ones you've tried but one of the pitfalls of switching to a static site generator is that there's no easy way (other than trying them) to compare features. I'd still advise picking one that's based on a language you know (or want to learn). I'm using Hugo and find that I can make it do what I want ... it's also blazing fast.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, I use a static site generator for my blog ([https://mcherm.com](https://mcherm.com)). It gives me confidence it can scale well and for a blog site static content (with simple dynamic content being rendered in the browser) is just fine.</comment>


How to Make Your Offline Business Stronger During Coronavirus Quarantine - <AUTHOR> https://huspi.com/blog-open/doing-business-during-coronavirus-quarantine <comment><AUTHOR> Offline-first businesses bear the biggest grunt of the quarantine. What can be done for them in terms of digital solutions? Let's talk about this.</comment>


Security Bulletin: Vulnerabilities in OpenSSL Affect IBM System X UEFI - <AUTHOR> https://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=migr-5099214 <comment><AUTHOR> UEFI 2.6 has the TLS protocol in the spec.</comment>


The New Guilded Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-new-guilded-age?intcid=mod-latest <comment><USER2> I was recently in Tunisia, and got to see into a co-working summit ([http://www.coworkingsummit.org/](http://www.coworkingsummit.org/)), which feels like a very related trend. I was surprised at how each of the co-working space managers really focused on building communities and encouraging inter customer/team communication (shared meals, workout spaces, etc).

They are very much like little incubators, and there is a great efficiency there. Tech doesn't quite have Guilds, per se, but I think that we're closer than we think we are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do people always think the past will solve today's problems?

<comment><USER4> Didn't Mark Twain say: History never repeats itself, but sometimes it rhymes?</comment></comment>


Meslo Font – great monospaced font for development work - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andreberg/Meslo-Font

<comment><USER2>
      > The LG in Meslo LG stands for Line Gap. The idea behind it is to allow
      > the user to have some control over vertical spacing by choosing one
      > of three line gap variants

OS X provides for user-specified leading in the font selection panel.

Many X11 terminals have a '--lsp' or similar option for that purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> No screenshots in the readme is a bit of a bummer for adoption, at least for this particular picky individual :)</comment>


A life spent gaming while black - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/13/5995139/a-life-spent-gaming-while-black

<comment><USER2> Another interesting perspective on diversity.

> I remember perhaps more than anything customizing the characters for some of > the first 3D online games available and editing my skin color down to ... > down ... to ... tan? Light tan? > You have the technology to edit the hue > and tone of the skin texture, I know you do because I can make it as dark as > tan or as pale as snow, but you can't give me just one shade deeper? It's > not technologically possible? Why can't you give this to me?

Why indeed.</comment>


An Introduction to Virtual Memory - <AUTHOR> http://deathbytape.com/post/110371790629/intro-virtual-memory

<comment><USER3> This is a nice write-up. A couple of minor corrections:

First, in several places it talks what a physical RAM "chip" looks like in terms of its memory layout. It would be better to simply think of an address space instead of a physical chip. Even without virtual memory, you don't know - and don't care - how the hardware addresses an actual chip. It may not even be a chip! The same principles would apply with old-fashioned magnetic core memory or any other kind of memory.

Also, this is completely wrong:

> Swapping at the granularity of 4KB chunks mitigates the issues caused by > fragmentation (since they are small).

If you're comparing segmentation with paging, then paging doesn't just "mitigate" fragmentation. Fragmentation simply doesn't exist when you always allocate the same size memory blocks. It's not because the 4KB pages are "small" \- segmented memory often used much smaller allocations than that. You could have any size page and it would be the same thing: there's no such thing as fragmentation in this situation.

Consider the difference between a heap allocator that manages blocks of any requested size vs. one where all blocks are the same size. In the latter case, your allocator can simply consist of a list of free blocks. To allocate a block, you take one from the list. To free a block, you add it to the list. It's that simple, and there is no opportunity for fragmentation to happen here. And this is completely independent of the block size, as long as all blocks are the _same_ size.

Of course you could sub-allocate memory _within_ or overlapping your pages, using some other kind of memory allocator like malloc(), and those memory allocations would suffer fragmentation just as segmented memory does. But again that fragmentation is due to the fact that you're allocating different sized blocks, and it's a separate question from whether the paging mechanism itself can become fragmented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point, thanks for pointing this out! I have updated the write up to address this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great write-up

More detailed resources -

[http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/under-the-hood- dotne...](http://www.red-gate.com/community/books/under-the-hood-dotnet- memory-management) \- Contrary to title, it is not dotnet specific

[http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2160852?wa=wsignin1.0](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2160852?wa=wsignin1.0)

[http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtual...](http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm)

<comment><USER5> I'll add a link to the 80386 manual's section on page translation, which describes in more detail the multi-level page table structures that the article mentions.

[http://www.logix.cz/michal/doc/i386/chp05-02.htm](http://www.logix.cz/michal/doc/i386/chp05-02.htm)

Multi-level page tables were definitely a necessity in the early days of 32-bit computing, when a 4MB linear page table (required to map all of the 32-bit address space) was quite a lot of memory to ask for!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember the first time I realized, with the help of _Computer Systems - <USER2> Programmers Perspective_ that virtual memory was not some extra storage locker of fake RAM on your hard drive, but instead an abstraction as important as the process or the file. I unlocked a new level that day.

<comment><USER7> +1 @ Computer Systems - A Programmers Perspective. This book is hotfire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For further details, see [http://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf](http://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/articles/cpumemory.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you plan to retire from a long-term career in technology? - <AUTHOR>

I don't really plan to ever stop programming, but I have been wondering how one would eventually retire from this field. I haven't heard of a company offering pensions to its technology workers and relying on the government doesn't seem feasible. So the question on my mind lately has been how are other programmers and tech workers planning on retiring from the field? <comment><USER2> Been there, done that ...

I was laid off by an AI research company in 2006 at age 55, where I was a programmer - I have been a programmer or project manager since 1976.

My wife and I have been frugal our entire lives and are very aggressive savers. When I was laid off, I persuaded my wife that if I accepted one of several job offers it would just put more money in our retirement accounts and investment real estate. Furthermore, our financial advisor said that we already had enough saved.

I have been researching and developing my own AI software since 2006 at home and without pay - I have published a few workshop/conference papers. I work 8-5, happily self-directed, on stuff that I really enjoy and which - maybe - might eventually make a big difference in our world. I use the latest technology. At age 60 I became an Android programmer and soon I will be setting up cloud infrastructure using Amazon Web Services - and so forth.

Programmers and software developers make good salaries. Here is my advice to follow in my footsteps ...

1\. Aggressively save from your family income.

2\. Get the advice of a financial advisor. I am too much of a risk taker for my own good and would have wasted my savings gambling in the options and futures market. Better to simply buy and hold index ETF or mutual funds. I average an 11% annual return on investment residential real estate that I manage and about 8% annual return over several decades on a mixed stock / bond diversified mutual fund portfolio.

3\. Avoid non-investment debt. I.e. mortgage on investment property is OK, credit card debt is not OK.

4\. Marry well! E.g. Be sure your mate is an aggressive saver.

5\. Live substantially below your means. The greatest benefit of being comparatively wealthy is simply not having to worry about money. E.g. avoid university debt, do not buy too big a house, do not take expensive vacations, do not have an expensive wedding or throw an expensive bar/bat mitzvah, buy used cars, etc.

<comment><USER3> Your advice sounds very good. I'm looking at the situation from the other end of the tunnel. One point I would add is that you have to be very careful in finding a financial adviser. A large portion of people that work under that title are actually just commission based "whole life" insurance salesman. It took me and my wife quite a while to find a person we felt comfortable with and that was 100% fee based.

<comment><USER4> I would like to second the need for avoiding insurance salesmen as investment advisers. Beware anyone trying to sell you "Cash Value Life Insurance" (Also known under other names, such as "whole life". These are all broadly in the Permanent Life Insurance camp[1][2]). They are only masquerading as a financial adviser in that role. There's no good reason to combine insurance and investment.

Stick with "Term" [2] life insurance (good coverage, cheap, but only for a fixed number of years), invest the difference, and plan to self insure after the term is up. Good financial planning makes this approach much more cost effective.

I've recently had the experience of a friend going into the life insurance business, and it's been painful to observe how sleazy the life insurance "products" that they try to sell you are. We sat down to discuss my savings/insurance plans, and when it became clear that I was not interested in starting his "Cash Value Life Insurance" plan, he resorted to pitching the product to me with the desperation of a Quickstar/Amway[4] representative. It was a very off-putting experience, but it makes sense now that I know his only compensation comes from commission.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_life_insurance>

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_insurance#Permanent_life_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_insurance#Permanent_life_insurance)

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_life_insurance>

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By saving wisely and living well below my material means. I don't plan to retire lavishly after selling a hot start up for hundreds of millions of dollars. Sure, that might happen but I am planning on retiring from a average paying job after working for many years while saving and going without luxury items like fancy cars, giant TVs, having kids and real estate I can't afford.

</comment><comment><USER6> Save money. Invest it well. That's it.

Most people in technology are earning significantly more than the median income in their region. If you can learn to keep your spending near median, you end up with a sizable cushion.

If you can save 1/3 of your income and earn a 4% real rate of return on your savings, in about 8 years you have 5 years worth of living expenses in the bank. That gives you a lot of flexibility for taking risks that can earn big payouts.

Or if you keep doing it for 30 years, you end up with enough savings to live off the investment income alone. This is the slow, reliable way to get rich.

</comment><comment><USER7> Max out the 401k and IRAs every year. Save more on top of that. Hope we don't get hyperinflation to wipe out all those savings. If necessary, keep working (maybe part-time, maybe telecommuting, whatever) into old age.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most people (self incl.) have 401(k) or Roth IRA. My long term goal is to build a very profitable business that is itself my retirement plan.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd imagine that many HN readers intend to use money from an exit to fund their life after "retirement".

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you mean how to manage the retirement from a financial perspective or in general, how to spend one's retirement?

<comment><AUTHOR> From a financial perspective, in general.

I've come to realize in researching the issue that there are several options and in asking this question I am hoping to get a sense for popular strategies.

I am uncertain how it is possible to retire at all at this point (even though I've still got a few decades if I'm lucky).

<comment><USER3> I think the shortest answer is: live below your means.</comment></comment></comment>


Stanford study finds walking improves creativity (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/walking-vs-sitting-042414.html <comment><USER2> This made me think that perhaps part of the reason adults seem to often be less creative than young children is due to how little movement adults often do during the day at their jobs. Maybe we've been impeding ourselves by how much more of a sedentary lifestyle we live from sitting at a desk all day, to sitting in a car, to sitting to eat, to sitting to watch tv, etc.. If you could prove that the increased creativity leads to increased productivity, you might start seeing startups pushing for people to take walks whenever they hit a snag.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and while we're being creative, perhaps we can think of a way to solve the problem of increasing productivity while never seeing the benefit of any of it.

/rant

<comment><USER4> Not to be too flip, but that problem has been solved for centuries. Negotiate better.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't help when the issue is benefit to society rather than personal benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-guest John Medina's Brain Rules: Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. [http://www.brainrules.net/exercise](http://www.brainrules.net/exercise)

And he also notes that two of the worst environments for the brain are: (1) the office (2) the classroom

<comment><USER6> This is actually a great book and I highly recommend anyone that lives a sedentary lifestyle that today's work environments promote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Frédéric Gros' _Philosophy of Walking_ is a great ramble on the subject. There's a little preview in this Guardian interview from 2014: [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/20/frederic- gros-w...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/20/frederic-gros-walk- nietzsche-kant)

<comment><USER8> > It's an examination of the philosophy of various thinkers for whom walking > was central to their work – Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Kant, Rousseau, Thoreau > (they're all men; it's unclear if women don't walk or don't think)

This little line came out nowhere, hah! Well done. Thank you for sharing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is remarkable how a _really_ high percentage of the biographies I've read (of famous/"great" people) mention walking as a critical routine - Jobs, Beethoven, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt spring to mind.

<comment><USER10> Add Friedrich Nietzsche.

<comment><USER11> Kant and Marx too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My most productive day of coding ever was the day I took a day off work and went for a 10 mile walk through London. Whenever I got stuck I would shut the laptop and walk. Eventually, the answer would come to me while walking and I'd carry on coding. I think I spent about 2.5 hours coding and the rest of the day walking.

It's just a shame it was a) closed source and b) I didn't get paid for it!

<comment><USER13> What circumstances caused you to be writing closed source code without being paid for it?

<comment><USER12> It was for my job - a tool that I really wanted to implement to save time debugging live issues.

Strangely enough I saw a similar tool that Facebook built being demoed at a meetup this week. Theirs was much nicer-looking (mine was text only).

I enjoy writing time-saving tools, but now I try and profit from it myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I'm wrestling with a problem I'll sometimes go outside and pace back and forth in my yard. Pacing has been a habit of mine since I was a kid, I remember doing it one time my mom told me "stop pacing, you're making me nervous."

As an adult I love walking, I feel that it's when I can think the clearest. And as an adult I still pace, especially at the gym when I'm resting before my next set.

Now I'm starting to wonder about myself. Anyways, go on walks!

</comment><comment><USER15> What if I also eat chocolate?

</comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps walking in California, but not walking in -40 with wind chill shearing your face off.

<comment><USER17> Novosibirsk in January has an average low temperature of -21C/-6F: [https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Novosibirsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Novosibirsk) Winnipeg is about the same: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg#Climate) In fact, 'Temperatures do occasionally drop below −40.0 °C (−40 °F) but this has become quite rare in the last few decades and has in fact not occurred since February 2007.'

Which suggests that -40 with windchill is a relatively uncommon condition.

A half-hour walk in 20F weather is perfectly comfortable with decent clothing (an insulated jacket, wool socks, long johns under one's pants, a scarf), and that's about as cold as it gets in most of the inhabited world.

On the other hand, a walk in California can be pretty uncomfortable due to the beating sun & high-speed traffic situation in many areas.

<comment><USER18> > Which suggests that -40 with windchill is a relatively uncommon condition

-40 is uncommon, but "-40 with windchill" can mean something different. In Canada it's common to report the temperature along with a lower number that takes wind chill into account. Thus a weather reporter might say, "-25 (Celsius), -40 with wind chill", meaning it's windy enough that if you go out walking it'll feel like -40 and the creativity won't exactly flow.

This became standard about a generation ago. I believe they started doing it to alert people to the risk of frostbite. But every time I hear it I can't help thinking that previous generations of Canadians would look down their possibly frostbitten noses at us for weakness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's time to install a treadmill in front of my standing desk.

<comment><USER20> > researchers at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, recruited 75 healthy > young men and women and randomly assigned them to workspaces outfitted with > a computer and either a chair or a treadmill desk....Then the volunteers > were asked to complete a series of tests of their manual and mental > dexterity...The manual task was simple enough, consisting of using the > keyboard to type words that flashed onto the computer screen as quickly and > accurately as possible while the volunteer either sat or slowly walked.

> The cognitive tests were more demanding, designed to measure practical > aspects of cognition, such as working memory and delayed recall, and the > ability to concentrate, all of which are important in performing office > work. In one of these tests, volunteers had to learn and later recall lists > of words; in another, they were asked to juggle lists of numbers and add > them up in their heads even as new numbers were added to the list...

> The results, when the researchers compared the treadmill walkers with the > people sitting at their desks, substantially favored sitting. The people who > had walked during the testing performed worse on almost all aspects of > thinking, including the ability to concentrate and remember, compared with > those who had been seated.

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/the-downside-of- tre...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/10/the-downside-of-treadmill- desks/)

<comment><USER21> Yeah, but:

> None of the participants had used a treadmill desk before, so they received > a few minutes of instruction and practice

A few minutes? Jeez, I'd expect that getting acclimated to a completely different way to work would take at least several weeks or months.

<comment><USER20> Fair enough, I guess. This still lowers my expectation that there is a significant positive improvement in the long term, and is strong evidence against the sort of anecdotal claims that "you immediately feel better and more alert" that I hear all the time.

<comment><USER22> I think something else that could have impacted their results is that for some people, the knowledge that they are being tested changes the way they think/perform quite drastically. When I sit at a desk and do menial work, I get restless and my productivity plummets. But if you tell me that I'm being assessed, and you give me a straightforward task, I will have no trouble focusing on it for at least an hour. Maybe treadmill desks help you stay on task, but at the same time inhibit your cognitive performance slightly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it the act of just moving? I'm assuming this also goes for cycling? I cycle to work (5 miles each way) and the 25 minutes each way have sections where I can mentally focus on other things and just let my body ride.

I can pretty much set myself up for the work that day in the morning thinking through issues very deeply. In the evening, I find it clears my head and lets me think around any issues I've had during the day or just get myself prepped for any side projects I'm working on that evening.

I like the idea of a walking meeting however the dynamics of having 5 people walk together and be able to have good conversations might not work. I'm guessing 2-3 people maximum would work.

How does this relate to standing desks? Standing desks with treadmills underneath them? ;)

<comment><USER24> Sometimes, I get the best ideas while in the shower, so I'm not sure it is even the act of "moving" that does it.

<comment><USER25> For solving problems showers are faster, but walking is better for higher level problems requiring greater thought. A shower is great for knocking out a block quickly, while if I have a really hard problem a long walk is better.

<comment><USER21> I wonder if there's a patent on a treadmill shower desk.

<comment><USER26> Now just add a fridge and a microwave and you'll almost never have to get off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Perhaps a boost in creativity isn't solely restricted to walking but other activities which don't involve the task at hand (as others have mentioned)? For example, even doing a simple crossword puzzle to distract yourself may boost your creativity vs concentrating solely on trying to do something 'creative'. I highly recommend Professor Richard Wiseman's book: '59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot' which references some studies involving topics similar to this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Intuitively I do this all the time. Whenever I have pressing life questions I go on a walk and from time to time think about the options I can take. I find for myself that it's easier to see the bigger picture than when I'm sitting. Perhaps it's also that the analogy of moving forward in life and moving forward in real-time helps.

In the case of this study, I'd guess that walking excites the supplementary, pre-motor and the motor cortex, as well as some attentional processes devoted to it from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to just sitting. If this is the case, then I have two hypotheses why this works. (1) Because the motor cortices are involved, the PFC are easier excited as well. (2) Since some attentional processes are devoted to walking it's easier to think in a divergent manner, because there's less conscious and sub-conscious room for convergent thinking.

I don't know how to test hypothesis 1, but hypothesis 2 has probably already been tested in cognitive science (I just didn't look it up). Reports where people get distractor tasks in the experimental group and a similar task as the main task in the control group probably exists.

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER29> I hate how everyone references Steve Jobs like the only one who walked to be creative.

<comment><USER30> I hate how when people hate that Steve Jobs walked to be creative they don't mention others as counter-points.

<comment><USER31> I hate how people implicitly demand counter-points when others express their hatred regarding Steve Jobs being commonly referenced as an example of walking to be creative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This was known for centuries if not millennia.

<comment><USER33> It's still worth studying formally.

In the 19th century everyone knew that you could determine if someone was a criminal by studying the shape of their skull.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> On a related note; I really enjoyed this[1] podcast. It's an interview with Olivia Fox Cabane - the author of a book that explores the science behind creative thinking.

[1][http://theartofcharm.com/podcast-episodes/olivia-fox- cabane-...](http://theartofcharm.com/podcast-episodes/olivia-fox-cabane-the- science-of-creativity-and-genius-episode-395/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been a remote worker for the past ten years. If I'm on the phone, I'm up walking around the neighborhood because it helps me to think clearly while talking but also it gives me an excuse to get out of my chair. Unfortunately, more and more groups want to video conference which is annoying because I can't really do that while on the move.

</comment><comment><USER36> I usually work at home, which is in the mountains in Central Arizona. A big part of my daily routine is a combination of short and long walks on the trails starting behind our house (forest service land).

Even when I had my office in La Jolla California, I favored business conversations during walks along the ocean.

Absolutely being outside and getting light exercise helps creativity.

</comment><comment><USER37> "Thoughts that come on doves' feet guide the world." - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

</comment><comment><USER38> I agree. I walk all of the time back and forth between home and the office and it's great to have time to reflect and reconnect using an idle mind.

</comment><comment><USER39> it might be pop sci, but the explanation I heard long time ago is: creativity is boosted by beta brain waves, (associated with daydreaming) Physical activities that don't fully engage your brain (walking, exercising, taking a shower, etc..) increment beta waves. On the other hand, increased focus and alertness, is associated with alpha waves, coffee produces that effect thus reduces your creativity

</comment><comment><USER40> We need a follow up study comparing the effect size to that of showering..

</comment><comment><USER41> "Trust no thought while sitting" (Thoreau)

</comment><comment><USER42> duh, pacing!

</comment><comment><USER43> Stanford study finds eating reduces hunger (2016)

<comment><USER31> I don't know. There are some things, like veggie "burgers", that just leave me more hungry after I've eaten it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Arguably a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7669818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7669818), but creativity through walking is such a great thing we'll give it a pass.

But why was this posted 3 times today?

<comment><AUTHOR> > But why was this posted 3 times today?

Completely a co-incidence for me. Yesterday, I had a discussion with some friends about creative process and how I like long walks. Today, I saw this 2014 article on my Twitter TL. Hence, the share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Do we really need study like this...this is like eating well is good for your health.

<comment><USER45> Yes we do.

These studies put "that which we already know" on a testable basis and also allow us to look at the underlying mechanisms, often we find that the underlying mechanism is counter-intuitive to our assumptions (this is often the case, the universe rarely works the way we'd expect) so dismissing it with "Of course, we knew that" is frequently wrong.

You say "eating well is good for your health" but of course eating well is predicated on knowing which things to eat for health and how do we know that via studies on human nutrition of course!.</comment></comment>


Craigslist, Ebay Face Off in Closely Watched Trial - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202436147493&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Law.com&pt=LAWCOM%20Newswire&cn=NW_20091208&kw=Craigslist%2C%20eBay%20Face%20Off%20in%20Closely%20Watched%20Trial

<comment><USER2> _lawyers for Craigslist set out in their cross-examinations Monday to show that it was eBay that had engaged in deceptive acts by hiding its intention to launch a competing classified site, Kijiji, and misusing confidential information it had gleaned through its dealings with Craigslist._

Don't they have to show actual damages? I mean, who uses Kijiji?

<comment><USER3> Business relationships can have various kinds of fiduciary duties even if breach of those duties results in minimal economic harms. The gravity of the harms might influence the damages awarded in the judgment of the case, but one party (or the other) acting contrary to a fiduciary duty would still influence what judgment results (who wins or loses).

The well written news article submitted here reports "a judge on the Delaware Chancery Court began hearing testimony Monday in a corporate governance battle between eBay, the popular online auction site, and Craigslist, the online classified advertising site." So the governing law is the corporations law of the state of Delaware, and there must be a large body of precedents in that jurisdiction (which is the favored state of the United States for forming business corporations) about what the duties are of various parties to business transactions under contract theories in situations that might lead to corporate mergers. This should be an interesting case.

And, yes, I am a lawyer, although most of the incorporation law I practice is nonprofit incorporation in my own state, not for-profit incorporation in Delaware.</comment></comment>


Creator of cURL wins Polhem Prize 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2017/10/16/polhemspriset-2017/ <comment><USER2> Seeing how this prize, named after the "Father of Swedish engineering", dates back to the 1800's, and is thus older than the Nobel prize, it has typically rewarded engineers from the classical engineering fields.

As such, it's _very_ nice to see a feat almost exclusively carried out in the digital world of software get rewarded, and put right next to accomplishments in construction, metallurgy, etc.

Among notable earlier recipients with a tech connection (technnection?) stands Håkan Lans:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A5kan_Lans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A5kan_Lans)

<comment><USER3> > tech connection (technnection?)

I'd call that a portman-nooo. But thanks for that bit of context to the award. Made me appreciate it more coming from the the industry that created "the webbys" (sorry webbys.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the last quote of the interview which roughly translates to:

"But this prize might contribute to my family understanding that I do something of value while they sleep."[0]

Spoken by a person who has created something that has probably been used by hundreds of millions of people. Obviously the quote is very tounge in cheek, but still.

[0] [http://www.polhemspriset.se/aktuellt/arets-polhemspris- till-...](http://www.polhemspriset.se/aktuellt/arets-polhemspris-till-daniel- stenberg/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Daniel has contributed valuable time and energy to ensuring that the requirements of the Core Infrastructure Initiative Best Practices Badge [0] were realistic and meaningful.

To get an idea what it's like developing software that is used by more than a billion people, look at this classic blog post from Daniel [1].

[0] [http://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/](http://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/) [1] [https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent- warnin...](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warning/)

</comment><comment><USER6> If I remember correctly, Daniel has been working on curl for at least 2 hours a day for ~20 years. I hope he and his family have a well deserved vacation. Thanks Daniel for your hard work.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. The prize money is 250k SEK ($30k). That should buy a pretty sleek vacation. Even if the prize money is taxed (I'm unsure of that. My thinking is it counts sort of as a scholarship or grant, tax-wise, and should thus be exempt of taxation in this case.).

<comment><USER4> It seems prizes where the winner is awarded without competing or without giving a presentation are tax exempt [0].

[0] [http://www.privataaffarer.se/fragor/ar-nobelpriset- skattepli...](http://www.privataaffarer.se/fragor/ar-nobelpriset- skattepliktigt-59870)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curl is in everything. And you can tell, if you find the license. In my 2014 Chevy Cruze, if you look in the owner's manual, there is the curl license, in all its glory. I've used it many times myself, and it's always proven itself to be a great piece of software.

<comment><USER8> I've never actively used it beyond the occasional `curl` commandline thing; have I subconsciously been using libcurl? Whenever I do a http request from idk, Java or Go, is libcurl involved?

<comment><USER9> Depends, it can be a http connection over tcp without curl being involved or it can be a curl request wrapped in underneath the hood, like in guzzle, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if the media attention due to him getting banned from traveling to the USA contributed to him being known to a wider audience, and thus on the radar of whoever picks the award winner.

<comment><USER11> That story went by me. Was there a rationale for banning him?

<comment><USER12> [https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2017/06/28/denied- entry/](https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2017/06/28/denied-entry/)

I can't see any follow-up on _why_ he was denied entry though.

<comment><USER13> We were never able to get any answers as to why I was denied - in spite of some real efforts in finding out. It will remain an unanswered mystery.

I will make a renewed attempt to travel to the US at a later time. Hopefully it was just some mess-up, a human error or whatever.

/ Daniel

<comment><USER14> My guess is that it's similar to the reason curl (and wget) sometimes get identified as malware by virus checkers.

Someone in US Immigration Googled 'curl' with your name and found a bunch of malware hits.

<comment><USER15> Certainly curl is used by lots of malware, and many a hacker probably use curl in their software.

I guess it's possible he was flagged by someone reviewing malware. Would malware creators give any credits?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Implementing a HTTP client might seem trivial, but it's actually hard, and it's getting more and more difficult.

<comment><USER8> And cURL isn't just a HTTP client, it does loads more.

"[curl] is a free client-side URL transfer library, supporting cookies, DICT, FTP, FTPS, Gopher, HTTP (with HTTP/2 support), HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, HTTP proxy tunneling, HTTPS, IMAP, Kerberos, LDAP, POP3, RTSP, SCP, and SMTP. The library supports the file URI scheme, SFTP, Telnet, TFTP, file transfer resume, FTP uploading, HTTP form-based upload, HTTPS certificates, LDAPS, proxies, and user-plus-password authentication."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations Daniel, well deserved!

Thank you for creating and maintaining curl. I'm sure it was not always easy to stay motivated and dedicated at working on this magnificent tool.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wrote a tiny (< busybox) curl, and found some needed http features (like redirection) required a different architecture than the naive one I started (and stayed) with. I wonder how many such details have informed the architecture of curl...

<comment><USER19> Yup, building a tiny subset of a HTTP client is easy...and then you start running into the quirks of the protocol, of the servers, even of the network stack. Building a mostly-functional HTTP client is much harder.

I am deeply grateful for curl - most of the pain of speaking HTTP has been abstracted away from me, thank you @bagder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did not know much about curl until I saw this. I have seen a few curl something.sh | sh instructions online that I always skip and wget the script for inspection. I guess it took a prestigious swedish award to the author to add it to my afternoon reading :-)

Judging from the respect in all the comments, it looks like a very well deserved honour. Congratulations and thanks for your work! I will appreciate even more after my reading.

<comment><USER21> From my experience both wget and curl deserve respect. Both are fantastic tools, similar in some ways but covering much ground in other directions. I find wget ideal as a spider (checking broken linnks, making local backups of webpages and similar) while curl is much easier to use for quick inspection of web pages (including headers and https certificates).

Congratulations to author for the prize! And NZ is a great destination, hope they enjoy it. :)

<comment><USER22> And i think that is exactly how they differ.

Wget is first and foremost aimed at being a file downloader/spider. If used with no switches it will grab the first file behind the url and save it locally.

Curl on the other hand it more of a HTTP client lib with a cli interface. Unless fed a specific switch, it will send the file behind the url to stdout. Meaning that it is more at home at one end of a pipe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Curl (as well as many other tools) are crucial to me everyday. Thanks to Daniel (and all the other contributors of all the projects and libraries)! Enjoy your holiday. Aotearoa (Maori name for NZ) is a beautiful place.

Full disclosure: I'm kiwi, so might be somewhat biased ;-)

</comment><comment><USER9> My most sincere congratulations. Good job Daniel.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thank you Daniel!

Let's also not forget the anonymous authors of Wget - a venerable tool that eventually lost the battle with curl

<comment><USER25> lolwut?

I've downloaded hundreds of billions of things with wget.

<comment><USER26> Not to mention the two aren't even in competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Kerberos support in curl: a godsend

</comment><comment><USER28> I use curl hundreds of times every day. It is an amazing tool!

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a beautiful thing.</comment>


Ask HN: How to author animation like today's Google Doodle? - <AUTHOR>

Today's (2011-05-11) Google Doodle is an elegant animation in honor of Martha Graham.
The source of the animation is some JavaScript and a large .png sprite: http://www.google.com/logos/2011/graham11-hp-sprite.png
What kinds of tools are used to create animations like this?
(I assume this was made by a tool or framework, but I guess there's always a chance that this was lovingly constructed by hand.) <comment><USER3> One could use animation software like TVPaint (<http://www.tvpaint.com/v2/content/article/home/>), or any number of other high-end packages.

Then there's the legendary, zephr-like LivingCels, a revolutionary vector animation package that was briefly available as a free beta download - <USER2> Microsoft bought the company (Creature House) and it vanished forever...

</comment><comment><USER4> Here's code to re-animate the _exact_ dancing Google doodle: <http://www.acumenholdings.com/blog/?p=64>

However, I've been looking for software to do the same thing, and I haven't seen anything that takes all the pain out of mapping all the image coordinates.

</comment><comment><USER5> My guess is that this was done mostly by hand during Google 20% time. That said, I know there are a number of javascript/jQuery animation frameworks (<http://bit.ly/FpVAM>)

</comment><comment><USER6> it might be some swfsheet (<http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=2948>) type of software. Having that sprite (what a design!!!), you can animate it with jquery easily...</comment>


A Hacker News for Software Development Managers - <AUTHOR> http://answers.tenXer.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone,

We just launched answers.tenXer.com.

answers.tenXer.com is a place where software development managers can ask questions about problems or tips on how to better manage developers and teams of developers. We have assembled a panel of "experts" (software development managers with years of experience and thought leaders on software dev management) who will also be participating by answering some of the questions.

Would love any thoughts, feedback, suggestions on how we can improve it.

Thanks, JP</comment>


Ask HN: How many comments do you read on HN? Is it worth it? - <AUTHOR> Top posts get lots of comments ("Ask HN" especially). Do you read them all? Scan them all? Read only the top few? Is it worth the time? <comment><USER2> Many times, I will just read the comments. Since the commenters on some of these articles can be subject matter experts, sometimes reading the comments are more informative than the actual article itself. A particular example: if the article espouses a single viewpoint, the comments will shine the spotlight on alternative ways of seeing. The more esoteric the subject matter (e.g. Higgs boson), the more interesting the comments. I think my all-time favorite commenter is grellas [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas)

<comment><USER3> At this point I read the comments more than the articles, too.

I wish there were a "favorite" feature for comments, because I'd certainly make use of it.

<comment><USER4> There is. Click the time above the comment, then click 'favorite' :-)

<comment><USER5> Favorited comments and stories are available from your user profile.

Note: Favorited comments and links are publicly visible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Comments are what make HN/Reddit (on certain subreddits) so valuable. It provides a means for well-educated communities to discuss topics freely and casually, and to aggregate a number of diverse opinions that would be impossible/orders of magnitude slower and more limited prior to the Internet. And the format is much more appealing than IRC channels or typical forums.

The links are only half of the equation (perhaps less, to me).

</comment><comment><USER7> I usually read the top comment and a few branches, then I scroll down and start reading from the bottom and upvote stuff that might have missed the cut.

I scan most comments but I usually don't read discussions that have become too long (more than 2 or 3 back and forth replies) unless they're really relevant.

<comment><USER8> Same as you, but I also aggressively use the [-] button to prune back side branches, allowing me to browse "wider" :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I usually read the comments before the posts.

And I save time using this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)

<comment><USER10> Holy ... I did not know those features existed. That is awesome.

Is there a canonical list of all the hidden little urls and features?

<comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)

Missing from that list:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/classic](https://news.ycombinator.com/classic) Front page with votes from older accounts

[https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100](https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100) Front page with posts over n points

<comment><USER11> Also missing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors](https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, it seems that that link is the list of users's preferences for the HN top bar color (the topcolor value from our user page). And the list seems to me ordered by the number of users with that color selected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More often than not I read _only_ the comments and don't even bother to click the link unless one of the comments raises my curiosity.

The comments are what make HN good.

<comment><USER13> I will read the comments to see if people recommend it or tear it apart. If it passes muster, I click the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The thing I like most about HN is the comments. Upvotes (and therefore discussion ranking) tend to be awarded to comments which add new knowledge and expertise to the discussion.

The format isn't the special sauce, which is very similar to Reddit. I think the special sauce is the audience doing the commenting and voting, who seem to me to be experts who enhance the content in the links.

Like several others, I confess to mostly just reading the comments here, and mostly not the articles (the headline is usually enough).

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll check the comments if I'm interested in the topic, but aside from that I tend to avoid HN comments. The comments as a whole seem to be overly negative and contrarian...to the point where often there isn't a whole lot of value to be derived.

<comment><USER16> Isn't this comment negative and contrarian?

And this one really.

<comment><USER15> Touché

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I come here for the comments. The "news" I can/do get elsewhere. I tend to read the first two comments and their children and then pop to the bottom and scroll up. Not every discussion contained under a posting is gold, but there are some really good points made frequently enough that its "worth it" to me. And, now, I flip through comments on a couple of posts when I previously would have gone to smoke a cigarette, so I'm not really wasting any more time than I already was. (I do miss the stand, stretch, walk and breathe deeply part of smoking, and would make a point of doing it more often if it didn't still make me want to smoke so badly!)

</comment><comment><USER18> I probably scan at least 50% of the comments of the stories that reach the front page. (I.e. all of the comments on the 50% of the stories that I'm reasonably interested in.)

I'm relatively good at scanning large volumes of text but it's a bit of a chore. So far I feel it's worth the effort though. The comments are usually more interesting than the linked articles.

One note: While I do think HN is reasonably effective at ranking interesting stories, the ranking of the comments do leave something to be desired. I do feel like I need to scan all of the comments - something interesting/valuable is almost about as likely to appear towards the bottom of the comments page as towards the top.

<comment><USER19> I wonder if the quality difference in ranking stories vs comments is because the former can't be downvoted (only flagged), while the latter can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The discussion is a big part of HN for me. Like early reddit, you often get experts in their field, or constructive, thoughtful criticism of an article.

Jokes and other low-effort replies are thoroughly discouraged.

<comment><USER21> > you often get experts in their field

It's difficult to tell who is an expert in their field since it often appears that someone is an expert simply because a) nobody is able to refute them (and who knows the qualifications, at any given time, of anyone reading comments at that moment and b) they appear at least to know more than you do.

I am often amazed at the well written comments here at HN. But then again I have often no clue how correct those comments are.

<comment><USER22> That's just generally the problem when reading sufficiently advanced expert commentary outside ones field though, isn't it? Many times deep experts in the same field are themselves the only ones capable of calling bs.

I remember a thread on rocketry when spacex was going through it that was pretty much Greek to me, but folks were chatting away with one another and arguing all kinds of things I had never heard of. Great hn thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I come here for the comments. The links you can find elsewhere. A calm community able to discuss topics? Now that's gold.

</comment><comment><USER24> I like Ask HN, but I am selective about which other threads I get too deep into the comments on. Many of the discussions on here break down into quibbles over wording or minor points. Or pointless, showboating pedantry.

When I do go comment diving, I'm looking for substance. Not grammar, spelling, or minor wording or terminology back-and-forth.

<comment><USER25> Show HN is often just as insightful in my experience. Both the quality of the criticism/feedback from the HN community and the opportunity to hear directly from team members involved in the project are often exceptional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I usually write a comment, read other people's comments and then read the article. In that order ;)

Jokes aside, I actually do tend to value the content of HN comments more than the actual links. Very often, only the comments are read-worthy and not the linked articles. Sometimes, neither are read-worthy. After browsing HN for years, things tend to repeat. Yes, we know C++ templates are turing-complete. Yes, we know IoT often has terrible security. Yes, we know depression and burnout are bad. Yes, we know functional programming is super awesome. It repeats over and over.

I only skim the top comments though (and maybe their direct answers) and I only visit HN when I'm bored. Hackernews makes me restless and unproductive.

<comment><USER27> I agree with you about the perennial repetition, though of course these things are always new to somebody. What are some articles you've seen on HN recently that _don 't_ make you restless and unproductive (if there are any)?

<comment><USER26> Good question. The ones that are in my favourites, that'd be the quick answer ;)

I value posts with very high raw information content and some humour to go along with it. With information content, I mean stuff like "in C++, use virtual destructors on objects that inherit if you make use of polymorphism" but NOT stuff like "Stop Checking Email So Often" which is an actual example that is on the frontpage right now. Without having looked at the article, I can already tell that it was written by someone who is required to churn out articles even if they don't have anything to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I focus on the top say 50% OF high level comments. I find that the more nested a chain gets in general it becomes more off topic and more like an argument of people trying to one-up each other.

I scan the top 25% of the initial high level comments and if I don't see anything interesting I move on. I know that sometimes newer comments show up at the very top so I push through those to make sure I get to the higher upvoted ones.

<comment><USER27> Maybe we should add a way to show/hide degrees of nesting in a thread. In state 0, show only top-level comments, state 1, show top-level plus replies, etc.

<comment><USER29> Yes, please.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Echoing GFischer and scott_karana that my own browsing habits tend to mirror theirs. It's definitely worth it, there's not really a better general tech discussion forum anywhere on the web right now.

</comment><comment><USER31> I read the comments a lot. Compared to most news sites this be a utopia of brilliant discourse. Most comment sections on other websites make me want to die.

</comment><comment><USER32> I read the comments quite a lot, particularly now that you can hide whole threads and really focus on threads you are interested in. I think its been great for keeping a view on the lower rated threads that are more relevant to you interest. There are often some real gems at the bottom of the page.

There are commenters I like and ones I dread, I've experimented with extensions to allow notes and highlight colors / imagery to make it easier to find comments and prompt my poor memory for some information about the poster. If I ever get something I like, I'll release it, but the first efforts have been ick.

</comment><comment><USER33> Definitely, specifically concerning subjects that are high level such as crypto, compilers, language design etc.. There are subject matter experts here who give a trove of information for free on HN that I would easily pay money to hear at a conference or lecture. I particularly enjoyed the recent "Rust vs. GO" thread where local folks broke down the advantages/disadvantages of both languages without dissolving in a flame war. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13430108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13430108)

</comment><comment><USER34> I read all comments unless the page has grown out of control. It's the _articles_ in question that I don't bother to read - I depend on HNers to reveal what the article said. I have dead posts turned on too.

</comment><comment><USER35> While I also find the comments more compelling than the links themselves, sometimes a thread degenerates and gets marooned on Pointless Island. It helps to be able to identify PI from a distance and hence stay away.

<comment><USER27> When that happens, you (and everyone!) are welcome to email us at firstname.lastname@example.com. We mark such subthreads off topic, which ranks them much lower—but we don't always see them. I hate showing up to a thread a day late and finding pointlessness at the top!

This is a tragedy-of-the-commons dynamic. Individuals can be well-intentioned and even mostly rational and we still end up with these suboptima. That's why it's necessary for someone like us to come through and do the vacuuming. Point us there and we'll do it, and send you a nice reply as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Whether or not I read the comments is strongly correlated with how technical the subject is. My general process goes:

\- View an interesting-sounding title in my RSS reader

\- Click on the link to the HN comments

\- Scan the top comments to see if the article is clickbait/insubstantial

\- If it is not, read the article

\- Either return to HN and read most/all of the comments or close both tabs, depending on the subject

I rarely find the comments on political links here particularly useful or informative, but I've derived a tremendous amount of value from the conversation on technical links.

</comment><comment><USER37> If it's an article I'm interested in, I'll generally read all the comments. If I want to bring up a particular point, I'll skim them to see if it's been brought up already and then read that tree of comments and post there if I still want/need to. I pay close attention to grayed out comments when I'm reading in order to make sure they are justified and up-vote them if I don't agree with the down-votes.

</comment><comment><USER38> I usually read the entire comments section on HN. There's a high signal-to- noise ratio and a "big" discussion is only maybe 300-400 comments.

</comment><comment><USER39> I personally come to HN more for the comments than anything else. It's much more focused and positive than other communities like Reddit

</comment><comment><USER40> I scan all the comment sin a thread I'm interested in, and usually read them, including the dead/flagged ones. Obviously I think it's worth it or I wouldn't keep doing it, but sometimes I get sucked into conversations I didn't really want to participate in. I delete unfinished comments and leave the thread about as often as I post.

</comment><comment><USER41> HN has an awesome community so I generally read more. I start of with the top ones (and their branches) and agressively use the (-), and then follow down.

If it's something I'm really interested about, I check back in ~12 hours to see if something new has shown up - at which point it's a scan to see the new comments.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really like the comments section, and conversations overall are constructive.

There are however not so constructive conversations once in a while, but it's usually people that must have the last word, rather than irrational discussions.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have started using the favorite so I can read them later, it helps. I have about a thousand saved links that I'll never read, but I like knowing I can go find something I've seen if need be.

</comment><comment><USER44> It varies from topic to topic so I usually check the threads. Sometimes you find great stuff. Other times you just find the prevailing groupthink. I think it's at least useful to look.

</comment><comment><USER45> I read HN by going to a set of commenters threads and seeing what is driving their interesting discussions. The articles that drive those threads tend to have the most value to me.

<comment><USER46> Same! I have no idea how people would, like, start at the top of the front page and read their way down. I sometimes skim for security stories, but otherwise I start from a list of commenters.

<comment><USER47>
      >> otherwise I start from a list of commenters.

Perhaps ironically, that is how I found this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Comments like this one, you're reading now, are really worth it.

</comment><comment><USER49> If the topic interests me I quickly browse through the comments. Quite often I find them interesting / added value. Sometimes they are also just rather white noise of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER50> Some discussions around technical solutions people deployed are interesting. I was recently reading an old thread about challanges with replication of postgres-xl nodes (!) :-)

</comment><comment><USER51> I usually have a Comments first approach. Read the top 3-4 comments and if I find the subject interesting I read the post. Sometimes the comments are so interesting though that I have to read them all before clicking the post. Sometimes I skip the post.

Most of the value is in the comments, specially during these times where a lot of content on the web has a commercial purpose.

</comment><comment><USER52> Absolutely worth it !!! Sometimes comments are better than original content..so many beautiful minds here

</comment><comment><USER53> I really appreciate the quality and intelligence of most HN comments. I think that is one thing that sets it apart from Reddit/FB/etc. For topics I'm interested in, I do generally scan them and not necessarily read all comments every time.

</comment><comment><USER54> Some articles are essentially one big comment, a single person's point of view. At least with comment threads you can get some idea if a comment is controversial or well accepted. You don't get that you only read the articles.

</comment><comment><USER55> I always read the comments, though sometimes I dread it. For certain subjects I'll know well in advance what most of the comments will be, and they can be surprisingly ignorant and negative.

</comment><comment><USER56> I read top comments and keep reading comment threads until they get boring.

If discussion is interesting - I read more comments.

I may even decide to read the original article is discussion is good.

</comment><comment><USER57> HN is one of the few sites I even bother with the comments.

</comment><comment><USER58> About ten per day.

Yes, it's definitely worth it, if you are selective.

"read not to contradict and confute, but to weigh and consider" ~ sir francis bacon.

</comment><comment><USER59> The comments are HN are often well worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER60> The consensus here is the inverse of the old Playboy joke: "I only read it for the articles."

</comment><comment><USER61> I have found a lot of gems in the HN comments Way better than most of the stories themselves

</comment><comment><USER62> I read some. worth the time? it's just entertainment for me :)

</comment><comment><USER63> I only read the comments.

</comment><comment><USER64> Comments is why I come.

</comment><comment><USER65> I hardly visit HN anymore, much less read comments.

</comment><comment><USER66> Hundreds. No.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'll just leave this here...

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

<comment><USER68> Seems like a textbook case.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is PDF generation a real pain for developers? - <AUTHOR>

Recently we launched a PDF generation service on cloud by the name of Pagify http://pagify.io for developers. Our main assumptions were:
1) It is tedious to code the layout and design of the PDF using code libraries such as FPDF, Prawn etc.
2) When it came to generating large no of PDFs it is difficult to scale.
3) Developer wants to focus on the core offering of their web product rather that spending their time on stuff like PDF generation, email, image processing, payments etc.
4) In cloud development model off-the-shelf components are preferred in the form of cloud services or cloud API over code packages or software. So PDF generation offered as a service instead of code library is better.
Targeting these assumptions Pagify offers a designer within the browser where users can design their PDF template and use an API to generate PDFs.
But after launching on HN and betalist we received mixed feedback on Pagify. Do you think our assumptions are correct? And does Pagify solve this problem?
Thanks, Kush. <comment><USER2> I work in the DOCCM (Document Output for Customer Communications Management) space, which in a certain light is just generating PDFs (well, perhaps a bit more complex than that...). Enterprise deals in this space will have 6 or 7 zeros, so yes, there is a market for generating PDFs. There are already some cloud providers out there (like exari - it's been a while but I remember their stuff being pretty cool.)

That's a bit different from vanilla PDF generation, but perhaps a good portion of that is down to marketing. How you position this could be important. You've got your salesforce version - nice :-) That should mean you're selling direct to a business user, so have you worked out what their pain point is? Do they think of it as "generating PDFs" (you've branded it as "Great Reports", so obviously you think they don't!) I don't know anything about report generation on SF, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't already some competition - have you looked in to that? What's your point of difference?

Down to your assumptions: 1) I've only ever used FOP & yes it is tedious, but it gives you a lot of power, and that power is going to be hard to replicate.

2) Generating large no of PDFs is hard to scale. For a cloud service, though, you need to work out how you're going to deliver a large number of PDFs over the wire. (You'll easily be able to generate more bytes of PDF per $ of CPU than you'll be able to transfer per $ of bandwidth.)

3) That sounds like a safe assumption (almost a tautology).

4) I'm not so sold on this. If I can get equivalent functionality from a library, I'll use the library. I don't want to add a dependency on an external service (making my own service more fragile) unless it offers a significant benefit. Stripe saves me SO MUCH TROUBLE it's a no brainer. There's is no way I would even think of trying to replicate what they've got. The barriers are significant. What are the barriers to me using a library instead of Pagify? Not nearly as great.

Gut feeling, the SF report generation product is much more compelling, but check out the competition in that space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. We are going after the SF market, but there is already competition. As far as pricing model is concerned we would do that on the no of pages one generates. Do you think developers are not the right market? Can we offer it to developers in some form?

<comment><USER2> PDF generation is a complex business... you're not going to be all things to all people, you need to choose a particular niche (at least to start with) and make that work. I can see the value prop in report generation on SF. "PDF Generation for developers" is too broad: I don't think you can do it (because there are so many different types of of PDFs to generate) and I can't see the value prop (because it's going to cost you more to provide a generic PDF generation service than it will cost me to use an existing library.)

That said, there might be a market there for developers, but you'll need to identify a very particular challenge that devs have and provide a much better solution than what they can achieve with a library in a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is tedious to layout a PDF but actual pain points are handling variable sized images and amounts of text, try formatting recipes to a PDF... Your demo video explains the features but not how it can solve anything that is a major problem to me.

The concept here in designing a template to be filled later is a brilliant idea, but I think its the delivery of the product that may pose the biggest problem. PDF generation doesn't have the same level of complexity as video encoding or payments so when it is used, its expected to just work as the environment doesn't change.

This introduces what I think is the main issue, if I build a website for a client, as a developer I never want to see it come back with problems, so its not worth introducing the risk of a third party service for the sake of a few hours of tedious work. At the other end of the industry any company producing a webapp may have problems with this simply due to how fundamental the feature can be, PDF generation doesn't require the same infrastructure as video encoding or payments, so they will have very different tradeoffs. Your main problem here is that you have no competition so I have nowhere to go if you close and the design online feature is essentially a vendor lockin.

Your assumptions are right but they are what a developer wants, the decisions are mostly made by management where future risk is more important than short term convenience.

Personally I think this product in particular would be much more suited to being a standalone package.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Do you think by using an HTML template that can be filled in later is a better idea than visual designer?

<comment><USER3> The visual designer is great, it adds back in the ability for the designer to alter the template without the developer having to change any code. If this was a standalone product the template format would most likely need to be a proprietary format anyway for some basic piracy protection.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks we will start looking for its uses as a stand alone product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ive used FPDF/FPDI most of the time I used it to generate preformatted mailing labels (the best output method that is compatible with any printer, just format it with scaling "off" in mind.) Maybe a letter or report or two...

But the main thing that drew me to PDF utilities was to programmatically fill out pre-existing PDF forms. With FPDI i would load in the form and then overlay the data on top of it. Not as easy as charts and tables, as some data exists as one line per row and other might have several lines per row of data. different positions, etc. (here's a fun form I had worked with: [http://www.cdss.ca.gov/cdssweb/entres/forms/English/CD9600.P...](http://www.cdss.ca.gov/cdssweb/entres/forms/English/CD9600.PDF) depending of family size or care situation could be multiple pages...) If you can crack stuff like that in an easy-ish to use API, I think you would catch more developers interest.

</comment><comment><USER5>
        It is tedious to code the layout and design of the
        PDF using code libraries such as FPDF, Prawn etc.

I recently used Prince[1] to generate a PDF version of a web-based book. The PDF needed to be suitable for professional printing (crop marks, bleed, trim, etc.). Prince was the only solution I could find that came even close to being adequate for the job, and it exceeded my expectations. Creating the HTML for Prince wasn't tedious at all. It was almost a pleasure because Prince includes better support for print-related CSS3 properties than any rendering engine I've encountered. There's a web-based service named DocRaptor[2] that is powered by Prince.

[1] <http://www.princexml.com/>

[2] <http://docraptor.com/>

<comment><USER6> PrinceXML doesn't support a lot of the Html5 and CSS3. Canvas support doesnt exist, so I cant print charts.

<comment><USER7> I havent tried charts with princexml, but flying-saucer has capability to do custom rendering. So if you want, you can use a service to get image of your chart and then render that in the pdf as image.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our service has built in charts support. Check out Pagify and let me if it is something you will use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The target market that will pay for PDF generation is probably not developers.

A competent developer can generate PDF's with the mentioned libraries rather quickly. We deal with a lot of PDF generation where I work, and it is not something that enters our minds to outsource because it's pretty fast and easy to do. For us, the generated PDF's do not need great design or layout, they just need the info in a printable format.

That said, you may find a better audience with less tech savvy users that have a lot of reporting needs. I can't really think of a target audience off the top of my head. Good luck to you.

<comment><USER6> I disagree, If we are dealing with simple invoices and stuff. Once you start dealing with reports containing charts, it all goes haywire

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its a terribly painful. I have tried every single one of the options. I am still finding it extremely difficult to get it working. Once I managed to get it to print to pdf, then started the bigger problem 'Paging'.

Paging is quite painful. I am writing my own code to split tables to fit into pages.

If you can solve this problem. I would gladly pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are looking into dynamic layout where tables can be split. It would be great to work along side you. Can I have your contact?

<comment><USER6> Oh man, if you can solve it for me, I will be eternally grateful. You can email me at ashok (at) reportgarden (dot) com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I rolled up my own solution for rails here.

[http://ror-snippets.tumblr.com/post/40142053834/converting-h...](http://ror- snippets.tumblr.com/post/40142053834/converting-html-to-pdf)

Imo only a subset of people have pdf generation needs (mainly devs)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's super easy here, I'm generating nice multi-page PDFs with colours and images and all that - from HTML5 based content. I have a similar API available at <http://edoceo.io#pdf>

</comment><comment><USER11> Not amongst the kind of people who read HN. You might get some traction with semi-skilled PHP developers, but they rarely have much of a budget to work with and will generally use whatever is the cheapest acceptable solution.

<comment><USER12> This comment is wrong. PHP is a total mess when it comes to pdf generation, even skilled developers have to resort to things like TCPDF.

This service would provide a good alternative, and regardless of what the developer is making, the price of the service would be far lower than paying the dev for the amount of time they spent futzing around with PDFs in PHP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can I send a URL to the API and it will return a PDF? That is something I would use for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it will. Can we talk more about it?

<comment><USER12> So I could send it www.google.com and it would return a .pdf of google.com, exactly as it would look in the browser?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I must have misunderstood. That is what HTML2PDF engines do. We generate PDFs using our own templates.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm looking for a service that will do HTML2PDF from an API call.

HTML2PDFAAS, as I like to call it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Browsers let you print a page as PDF. Which use-cases does Pagify solve?

<comment><AUTHOR> It does print the web page. But when it comes to print-friendly reports and quotes you need some library or print ready web page. So we allow developers to create a template that is print ready. And then using an API call they can merge data and generate PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Help us understand PDF generation and its problems.</comment>


Robots,Aging Population and Pets - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/robots-aging-population-and-pets-c84cdd5214cb?source=friends_link&sk=4d0e249b232659a4d5c1c8e8fa1db67b <comment><AUTHOR> Do you think robots will replace pets anytime soon?</comment>