Tell HN: Stitcher does not encrypt users' passwords - <AUTHOR>

Stitcher (the podcast app) actually stores passwords in plaintext.
They have had millions of dollars and a number of years to fix this, but their leadership refused to prioritize the day or so of work it would take to implement the most basic protections for the users who trust them.
I just want this to be well-enough known that they get the shame they have chosen for themselves, so that future companies think twice before acting so callously.
-- anonymous <comment><USER2> You would be surprise how many services/website store passwords in plaintext. Here is a none exhaustive shame-list: <http://plaintextoffenders.com>

<http://www.scholarvox.com> used by many many schools/universities in France(Europe ?) are also storing plaintext passwords and the worse is that they store the passwords provided by the universities, the exact same one used by the students to connect to their intranet/emails/...

<comment><USER3> A bunch of people on plaintextoffenders.com appear to be confused. They all complain "Oh look they mailed me my password direct after registration, they must store it in plain text". That's wrong.

During registration, I have your password in plain text because you just gave it to me in plain text in order to register your account. Sure, we can discuss about sending the password via email, we can discuss hashing the password client side or server side and so on, but a simple mail "You just registered with this password" doesn't tell anything about password storage.

<comment><USER4> Heya, co-founder of plaintextoffenders.com here.

Just to note - we have talked about it before here: [http://plaintextoffenders.com/post/7006690494/whats-so- wrong...](http://plaintextoffenders.com/post/7006690494/whats-so-wrong-about- sending-a-new-password-in)</comment></comment></comment>


Google's Acquisitions Chief Looking For "Crazy" Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aLj3UFBGGDG8 <comment><USER2> _[Google] had more than $11 billion in cash at the end of the fourth quarter_

Thats a big pile of cash. Makes you wonder why they dont spend a bit of it on seed funding just like they do Summer of Code.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is partly why I can't understand my rejection. Google is looking for Crazy ideas.</comment>


Enforcing users to use a particular pattern for passwords - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/38226/4679

<comment><USER2> This article has been entered as a candidate in the international unlimited functional illiteracy sweepstakes. Starting with the title -- "Enforcing users to use a particular pattern for passwords" -- the word the author wanted, but could not find, was "Forcing".

Moving on to the first sentence in the article -- "Many websites specially government ones enforce users to use a password which is specific to a particular criteria."

"Specially government ones" is a phrase children use below the age of three, before they acquire an instinct for sentence construction. And "a particular criteria" _must be_ "a particular criterion."

Further on, we read: "I have found such password pattern are rather hard to follow and if you do, it becomes extremely difficult to remember." This is a perfect self-referential comment on the topic of "hard to follow".

We wish this candidate the best of luck -- he certainly earned his place in the running for this prestigious award.

<comment><USER3> Editing the question on stack exchange would have provided a lot more benefit than your snarky, unhelpful, comment here.

Maybe English is not the first language of Salman Ali Ehsan?

EDIT: While snarking about someone else's English you've made some errors yourself.

> And "a particular criteria" _must_ be "a particular criterion."

No. In context the author should have said "particular criteria". The password must match a list of elements, not a single element.

> Further on, we read: "I have found such password pattern are rather hard to > follow and if you do, it becomes extremely difficult to remember." This is a > perfect self-referential comment on the topic of "hard to follow".

No. The list of criteria are hard to follow. But if you do follow them you get a password that is hard to remember. Since hard to follow lists provide hard to remember passwords should users be forced to follow the lists of password creation rules?

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on "enforced" either. It's not as if it's a bizarre word choice. It's at least an almost correct word choice.

> _to put or keep in force; compel obedience to: to enforce a rule; "Traffic > laws will be strictly enforced."_

<comment><USER2> > EDIT: While snarking about someone else's English you've made some errors > yourself.

I invite you to locate one.

>> And "a particular criteria" must be "a particular criterion."

> No. In context the author should have said "particular criteria". The > password must match a list of elements, not a single element.

That's not a correction, it's an alternative. Continuing the theme, your second "correction" isn't a correction, it's an editorial comment.

> I'm not sure why you're so hung up on "enforced" either.

Because it's grammatically incorrect in the context? "Forced" is not "enforced." They refer to different things. "The burglar enforced his way into my house."

> It's at least an almost correct word choice.

Ah ... almost correct. Thanks for the clarification. But you prefaced it by claiming I had made some errors.

<comment><USER3> EDIT: You don't appear to understand why I'm pointing this out. It's less about a discussion of English usage. It was to point out that your initial comment made you sound like a dick.

> That's not a correction, it's an alternative.

There is a list of criteria. The password must conform to that list of criteria. It doesn't matter if a password only matches one criterion, because if it doesn't match the other criteria it will fail. Thus, your alternative, ' _must_ be "a particular criterion"' with a highlighted _must_ , is incorrect.

<comment><USER2> > It was to point out that your initial comment made you sound like a dick.

On that basis, you believe yourself to be in a position to criticize my posts based on their tone? Your sense of irony must have been surgically removed.

Your correction is an error masquerading as criticism. A password requirement can possess one or more criteria. A single criterion is that it must be at least eight characters in length. Multiple criteria might be that the password must contain punctuation marks and be at least eight characters in length. That means you are wrong, and you have yet to locate an error in my posts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


To Listen Without Consent – Abusing the HTML5 Speech - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guya.net/2014/04/07/to-listen-without-consent-abusing-the-html5-speech <comment><USER2> Related bug report: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=360448](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=360448)</comment>


Dear Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews - <AUTHOR> http://sajithdilshan.github.com/blog/blog/2012/09/26/dear-muslims/

<comment><USER2> I think all it proves there is a fine line between following a religion and being mentally ill.

</comment><comment><USER3> Welcome to the age of Aquarius.

Think: BioShock.</comment>


Metaparticle: A stdlib for distributed systems from the co-creator of Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://metaparticle.io/posts/welcome-to-metaparticle/ <comment><USER2> To anyone else confused by the title: it's a library to create applications that run on Kubernetes. Not an stdlib for distributed systems. Also, things like distributed locks are anti-patterns in distributed systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks amazing and I can't wait to see where it goes. More generally it seems like we've hit a point in cloud computing where instead of just increasing complexity we're getting tools that help us manage it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The DotNet example looks great.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wowwwww.......</comment>


Biased Reference Counting: Minimizing atomic operations in GC (2018) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://iacoma.cs.uiuc.edu/iacoma-papers/pact18.pdf <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool! As they mention in the paper this is similar to biased locking in java where "synchronized" blocks only ever get promoted to a full mutex when a second thread tries to lock it. It's the same idea here except with a counter.

This made me think of two other approaches I wonder if anyone tried. The first is using something like per-cpu counters. The number of threads is usually large, but maybe the number of cpus is bounded enough to contain the memory pressure? Linux implements restartable sequences [[https://blog.linuxplumbersconf.org/2016/ocw/system/presentat...](https://blog.linuxplumbersconf.org/2016/ocw/system/presentations/3873/original/presentation- rseq-lpc2016.pdf)] for this but I don't know if that's any faster than BRC described here. The other thought was - in a similar light to the static analysis the paper mentions - is there any benefit to somehow marking the objects that are "about to escape" to switch the owner thread id? One of the common patterns is swift is bouncing a sequence of tasks off different dispatch queues to get on/off the UI thread, but its really a sequence of operations on the same object.

Great stuff in either case - I'm a fan of no-effort memory management with minimal performance implications and this is one step closer.

<comment><USER3> I played with per-thread counters. The problem is you don't want them sharing a cache line, so having them inside the object is problematic. Having external per-thread counter arrays involves bookkeeping and indirection I could not make fast enough. YMMV, and maybe someone has done a better job.

A known variant is deferred counting, where a single thread mutates refcounts and you have per-thread lightweight queues from other threads to the mutator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One problem with the type of approach here is that many modern UI programs allocate objects on side threads and then migrate those objects to the main thread (which is the only thread allowed to touch UI state). So truly, one needs to have an approach that allows for that steady state to be recognized (the steady state being when the object has landed in its final destination thread).

Once swift has some sort of concurrency model, it would be interesting to see if we could use per thread local ref counts that manage the lifetime of a single atomic ref count bump. One would be able to convert in between the two types of ref counts upon escape if needed.

This type of approach would eliminate most of the ref counts and allow for all threads to use in hot code these non-atomic thread local ref counts.

<comment><USER5> I only skimmed the paper, but it seems like the proposed method could support handing over ownership from the worker thread to the GUI thread via an explicit statement in the code.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. Event at runtime, it seems possible when the owner thread gives up the ownership (by setting owner_tid = 0) can use an extra flag to let other threads to compete for the ownership. As long as the flag is on the 2nd half- word, (it seems) there is no atomic requirement for the 1st half-word.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a nice result. A similar pattern to generational garbage collection: divide everything into a fast, common path, and slow, fully general path.</comment>


Ghetto Tracker - A rating system to help people avoid the bad parts of town - <AUTHOR> http://ghettotracker.com/

<comment><USER2> Feedback: If your goal was to inspire 100 "what's wrong with tech" articles, you named this perfectly. I would highly recommend changing the name and addressing the problematic aspects of red-lining neighborhoods before you get absolutely hammered by a million bloggers.

<comment><USER3> Judging by the stock photo here [http://ghettotracker.com/about.php](http://ghettotracker.com/about.php) (white familiy, in case it'll change in the future), it's quire clear who needs to be afraid, and from whom.

I see Compton, California just added. They should simply geotag by ethnicity and save people the need to subjectively "rate" certain areas?

<comment><USER4> You should have tried to hit refresh. The image is sometimes a white family, sometimes black, and sometimes biracial. Rating areas where people live will always be sensitive (property values, racial discrimination, etc), we do not need to manufacture drama.

<comment><USER3> Does the name change as well, or is it always "Ghetto Tracker", or sometimes "White Suburban Tracker", "Trailerpark Tracker" etc.?

PS Actually double checked. There was only one photo, and this is why I mentioned that in my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start. All white people on the about page pic?

</comment><comment><USER6> I just thought of the same idea like this the other day. Then I thought maybe Waze/Google would buy it out to make better routes on their maps....

Then since I've lived in both the ghetto-est of ghettos in my lifetime and seen guns drawn at me and etc - it'd be a dream job to drive around and judge the ghetto-ness of a neighborhood. Even make a reality show out of it.

Great minds think alike.

</comment><comment><USER7> So maybe some racist white people might rate any area with black or Hispanic people as unsafe. Hopefully, if the area is actually not bad, some non-racist black or Hispanic people will rate it as such. The positive and negative ratings should cancel each other out in such cases.

The areas that end up with negative ratings would have to be rated such by users of all ethnicities, which more or less rules out too strong a correlation with race here.

The only problem is if somehow only a single ethnic group, like white people, uses this.

So, basically, I don't think this is going to be an accurate source of information here. At the same time, if it were to actually get widespread usage, I don't think it would be as bad as some people are making it out to be.

Ultimately, though, why not use something like city-data? The site is ugly as sin but it has basically all the information you could ever want.

<comment><USER8> Why don't they just use FBI (or local) crime stats?

Not subject to as much subjectivity. Drawback is that it may not be realtime up to date, but should be good enough.

<comment><USER9> Crimes are not always reported, especially when they are seen as relatively minor and commonplace compared to the murders probably also happening that day.

Locals' informal guidelines to stay out of an area where you "don't belong" after dark may be so widely heeded that the number of assaults/robberies is low, but the probability of being mugged or beaten is still high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And really a lot of you are over blowing the issue that there's white people listed on the page. WHO CARES. What did you first look at that in your racist attempts to point fingers at a supposed different racist? Grow up.

I've seen 9 square mile cities of nothing but white trash and 1 sq mile cities that would give even the worst parts Compton or Camden a run for it's money (and actually is recognized by people in the hood of Compton - I lived in a different part of LA, check out central falls, RI or west warwick, RI).

And no crime maps are not population density maps, either.

A lot of you obviously haven't lived that many places.

And I don't know why the heck I'm defending this but wow some ignorant lack of intelligence on the hacker news boards - sorta disappoints me.

<comment><USER6> However, I do not agree with letting the general public rate places...this is more something people who've lived in quite a different number of environments should be doing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went to the about page, which of course featured an all white family.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is so bad.

There's a dot over my neighborhood in Manhattan, just south of Washington Square. It's red, and says "Park Slope."

</comment><comment><USER12> not sure this is the best idea. often people's idea of a bad area doesn't reflect the truth. what about using police data instead?

<comment><USER13> Murders and robberies are usually an indicator something's amiss. The data isn't hard to find. ([http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23191897/oakland- robbery-...](http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23191897/oakland-robbery- capital-america)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this meant to be satire?

</comment><comment><USER15> Someone create a site, TechCracker, where you can identify websites and tech companies staffed and/or run by white bigots.

</comment><comment><USER16> If this is serious, it's disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've always wanted this, the closest thing we had before were the Trulia Crime Maps. Thanks!

Feedback: You should show high-crime areas in NY, SF, or LA rather than Moody, AL

<comment><USER18> Maybe the starting point is random? I reloaded twice and always appear in the middle of the sea...

<comment><USER17> That's probably it - on second try I was landed in the sea as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would be good to seed the map with some police data...

</comment><comment><USER19> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyoJKSPL_I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyoJKSPL_I)

</comment><comment><USER20> haha - they left this line of code in [http://cl.ly/image/060Q0f132222](http://cl.ly/image/060Q0f132222)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the creators are on Twitter @GhettoTracker

</comment><comment><USER21> I rated Compton just in case...

<comment><USER22> You mean you arbitrarily placed a dot in the middle of Compton without regard to what's actually there and whether or not it's actually a dangerous block.

Even if you were to ignore the many problems with the very premise of this site (the racially and historically charged name first and foremost) the lack of granularity or verification in reporting would prevent any useful data from being gathered anyway. As other people have said, if you want to know if an area is high risk for crime, you have crime maps, if you want to know what the property values are, you have zillow, if you want to know what the median income of residents is, there's probably a map for that too.

<comment><USER9> By the crime maps, the Magnificent Mile is the most dangerous area in Chicago. Crime maps are, for the most part, population density maps. See: [http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/). You need to compare crime rates to the number of people in the area to get anything meaningful.

By the crime maps, your probability of being robbed at Garfield-Red in the middle of the night is less than that of being struck by lightning in your lifetime. No Hyde Park resident will tell you it's a good or even reasonable idea to be anywhere near it at 11pm. When challenged on the data, they'll argue that few people are dumb enough to ride it at that hour, and that those who do get mugged are unlikely to bother with a police report for a crime which is seen as their own fault and unlikely to ever be solved (or even cared about) by CPD.</comment></comment></comment>


The World Belongs to Those Who Create - <AUTHOR> https://www.sophiaellis.co/blog/the-world-belongs-to-those-who-create-vs-those-who-consume <comment><USER2> There's truth to this post but overall I think it's pretty naive.

In a capitalist system the world belongs to those who own and have spare capital to invest vs. those who rent.

Being very good at creating things is a potential pathway from renter to owner, but so is being very good at maintaining things, or managing people, etc. Anything which you can be paid a lot of money for will do.

<comment><USER3> I think the author point was about what would bring the greatest self- fullfillment. It's not necessarily money.

You could be an author or an artist or something else, and have far more fulfillment in life than making 10x working at a job that you're good at but that doesn't bring you as much fulfillment.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, but I think it's a simplification of how life really works for most people.

For the average person, the choice to become a successful artist isn't a trade off between more money and more satisfaction. If they fail to become successful they will significantly lose out in terms of life's more basic needs, because they won't have enough money.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I would love to agree with OP. But I don't think human society is there yet.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that a failed artist would lose out on basic needs because of money. The average, economically entrenched observer would see a "successful artist" as one getting paid for their efforts.

I see a successful artist as someone who is creative enough to acquire basic needs, comforts, and actualization with little or no money - be it through bartering or learning to create for themselves.

Success can also come in the form of making statements about society through their medium(s) of choice, and ideally changing the outlook an audience.

In this regard, religion and arts were the first forms of software engineering - by the modification of the observers perspective.

Of course there is also aesthetic art, which is beautiful for us to admire because it is proof of the capacity of another humans attention to detail. These works usually don't seek to comment on the state of culture.

<comment><USER2> > I don't think that a failed artist would lose out on basic needs because of > money.

How many former humanities students do you know?

If success just means being happy with yourself then sure, go for it. However this is a retreat from what OP stated: "The World Belongs to Those Who Create VS Those Who Don't".

If we are restricting ourselves specifically to artists then, for an average person, becoming a materially successful artist requires capital investment and an appetite for risk (or a lack of understanding of the risks). The capital investment will most likely come from parents in the form of education, food, security, etc.

Becoming a successful artist without any of that support sounds like a horrible all-or-nothing proposition with no fall back position. (You have no capital if you fail because you didn't hedge your bets with a steadier/less fulfilling career).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We are strangers in this world, and the body is the tomb of the soul, and yet we must not seek to escape by self-murder; for we are the chattels of God who is our herdsman, and without his command we have no right to make our escape. In this life, there are three kinds of men, just as there are three sorts of people who come to the Olympic Games. The lowest class is made up of those who come to buy and sell, the next above them are those who compete. Best of all, however, are those who come simply to look on. The greatest purification of all is, therefore, disinterested science, and it is the man who devotes himself to that, the true philosopher, who has most effectually released himself from the 'wheel of birth.'" Burnet on the Pythagorean ethic, Early Greek Philosophy

The author of the article is very engrossed in modern values. Don't let her adamance that creators control the world frighten you into churning away at something like knitting block chain encoded socks, or worse writing horror novels. The world is beyond the control of any creator anyway, even Mark Zuckerberg if you'll believe me. I think a lot of people find, after years of creating or struggling to create, it's best (or just good) to consume and contemplate without regret.

<comment><USER6> The latter is a path to doom if followed by a civilisation though. Consumption and contemplation do not bring change and that which does not adapt will perish sooner or later.

<comment><USER7> That which DOES adapt will also perish sooner or later.

<comment><USER6> More likely later than otherwise.

The change and adaptations have to be moderated and applied in diverse amounts. No single strategy or philosophy is perfect, but we shouldn't allow a few that are short term beneficial to someone to overly dominate and quash the rest. It is the reason for freedom of speech and other hard won modern freedoms.

This includes allegedly noxious viewpoints. If anything, they serve as a vaccine and a reminder.

(Until the society can remember and recall them in detail at will. Probably not in our lifetimes.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _We've delegated the larger part of our days on earth to consuming what someone else has created._ [...] _I told him my favorite example of those who "figure it out" are rappers who are criticized for being talentless but still rake in millions. Who cares if they're talentless (by someone's standards)? At least they are still CREATING something! Lil Wayne_ [...] _has released 1,747 songs_

So the idea is make lots of stuff, but avoid consuming all of the stuff that other people create...though should everyone follow this ideology it would be infeasible to make content prolifically because it relies on consumption to drive the next creation.

Is there a middle ground, like practice your creativity prolifically but only publish your best so that the world is inspiring rather than a mire of half thought-out, tepid excrement? Maybe all of this shit clogging up the TV and internet is what leaves the masses drooling on themselves.

<comment><USER9> One of my favorite lessons from Ira Glass's lecture circuit: ideas come from other ideas. The first step to producing high quality content is surrounding yourself with high quality content.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Writers must read 1000s of books, singers must listen to 1000s of songs, and so on. Even for those who don't create additional content, it's impossible to 'consume' culture without creative engagement. Nobody can pour content into his head:

[http://www.jfallen.org/wordpress/2015/04/12/the-bucket-or- th...](http://www.jfallen.org/wordpress/2015/04/12/the-bucket-or-the- searchlight/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This post really resonated with me, deeply. I've been having almost exactly the same thoughts that the author has had, lately.

I think a lot of us underestimate how essential creative self-expression is to our well being. I've come to the realization that I don't want to just live a regular life, working and consuming, but rather I want to contribute something creative, of my own creation, to the world. Deep inside, I think most people will find their greatest joy in building and creating new things (out of love (and not just as a means of survival)).

<comment><USER11> Everyone desires to be [a] god. What does a god have the power to do? Create. Naturally everyone wants to create things. When we can't or aren't allowed to create we return towards the other power gods have: the power to destroy. We all want to feel in control. One way to feel that is to create things the other way is to destroy things.

<comment><USER12> And _destroy_ is one of the synonyms of _consume_.

<comment><USER13> Some things aren't destroyed when they are consumed. A digital recording doesn't disappear when listened to. A book is fine after it's read.

<comment><USER14> Well, depends on how charitably you choose to interpret "destroy". Not all books are worth a second read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's no doubt that incredible amounts of time are "wasted" by all of our quick dopamine hit apps and sites. These are the new opiate of the masses.

It seems to be something we are all aware of, and we talk of unplugging. Some do, here and there. It's a constant struggle. The new cigarette / snack food. Just as hard to quit - but we should all at least try.

<comment><USER16> Haven't most people always been wasting most of their time?

Before it was TV, Radio, gossip magazines, books, you name it.

Do we know?

<comment><USER17> The distractions weren't driven by vast, A/B-tested, AI-assisted, institutional machines with the resources of major nation-states.

In 1817, your primary distractions would mostly have involved _hauling_ : bringing water, food, wood, and materials into a home, and hauling the waste products out. The metaphor was buckets and baskets, not pipes.

There might have been some home-craft production, or farming. But those were not idle pursuits.

Entertainment was something _done_ rather than _consumed_ : people _told stories_ or _read to one another_ (if they could), or _played music_ (or dice or cards -- considered vices).

And the primary information conduit was a weekly sermon or service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> History demonstrates otherwise.

The world belongs to those who can extract, or create rent-extracting systems and networks.

"Creators" probably the _least_ well-served of any labour cateogory, relative to their contribution.

Straight-up wage labour is also under-served, and often below the point of sustenance, but it's the _contribution_ ratio I'm looking at.

In _A Farewell to Alms_ , Gregory Clark (UC Davis) lists the inventors responsible for the first Industrial Revolution. Of eight or so inventors, 3-4 died in poverty, another 3-4 survived only on _other_ activities, or through legislative compensation. Only one or two actually profited by the work they're known for.

[http://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief- econo...](http://www.worldcat.org/title/farewell-to-alms-a-brief-economic- history-of-the-world/oclc/767762001)

Vaclav Smil points out that the diesel engine and gas turbine are the two prime movers most responsible for all modern power production (either motive or electrical). Otto Diesel committed suicide after financial ruin. Parsons, inventor of the gas turbine, did relatively well, but failed to be recognised for the vast bulk of benefit for his work, which was posthumous.

Creativity is fun, it's intellectually rewarding. Don't think for a moment that market economies offer remunerative compensation with anything resembling consistency, rationality, or proportionality.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is spot on. I share this worldview too.

Here are my thoughts I try to live by:

1\. Know the type of person you are:

We are all creatives and contributors at our core. We all measure our self- worth by how much we give instead of how much we take. This is part of our natural human wiring - to want to belong deservingly to a village of individuals who pull their own weight. So, if you are not creating in your natural sphere of strengths, or you don't feel you're contributing to feel worthy of your own esteem you need to sit down and think. Fix this immediately.

2\. Be prolific:

To be good at whatever you're creating or contributing, you have to be prolific. Genuine quality comes only through quantity. A shit ton of it. Keep hacking, keep swimming, keep sucking.

3\. Judge progress, not outcomes:

Judge your own evolution. Have I done better than yesterday? Do I suck less than last year? Yeah? You are golden. The dangers of comparing your own outcomes with someone else's is that you betray and cheapen your own timeline, your own history, your hard struggles and the victories over your own debilitating handicaps. Appreciating your history as the backdrop of every milestone is the essence of healthy self-esteem.

Just keep swimming.

<comment><USER19> Can you give a few examples, other than apps, that one could make and reasonably sell ?

Maybe it's just me but I don't see any real opportunity in this.

<comment><USER20> \- Grow vegetables \- Make tools \- Make cakes \- Build houses \- Build machines \- Create gardens

There are many possibilities, you could earn reasonable money from any of above examples starting from small business and not needing to learn that much before you start.

<comment><USER19> How would you make money from any of those ? I do not have a lot of area available, and a storefront is entirely out of the question.

Especially cupcakes sounds interesting, as I'm quite confident I could automate that.

<comment><USER20>
      - Grow vegetables - sell them on local small markets. As you wrote, this requires some area, but you could try indoor farming in your basement.
      - Make tools - you could sell them online as artisanal tools or just make good quality hand tools and after advertising on some local fairs you WILL have clients.
      - Make cakes - this really requires a storefront but I'm sure you will find some programs to accelerate small business or something. I don't know where you live but in Poland it is rather easy to start such business as unemployed, you just need to write sensible businessplan.
      - Build houses - yep, this one requires some investment in tools and advertising, but some advertisements on craigslist or something like local small ads pages should be enough.
      - Build machines - this requires more investment and technical acumen. I've included this as a possibility.
      - Create gardens - garden designers almost don't require investment, you just need some design skills. Start as employee/apprentice with some near design firm and get experience, then you can open your own business.

This is not tutorial how to create, this is only listing of example venues for making money from creating. You should find some venue usable to you by yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great post. I just disabled my Facebook account. It was my most visited and least enjoyed site. It is really refreshing to not be constantly opening it. This article really helped frame how I'm feeling about it. I think it's time to cut more consumption out of my life to free up time for making things. I have so many ideas. I don't need to be consuming video game content for hours a day.

<comment><USER22> I did this a few weeks ago, and I feel less stressed as a result.

If you're trying to spend more time creating things, I suggest you give The War of Art[1] by Steven Pressfield a read. It put words to a gnawing feeling I've felt since my late teenage years, but never knew how to confront.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Winning-Creative- Battle/dp/15...](https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Winning-Creative- Battle/dp/1501260626)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I agree with the overall point of the author, one thing not pointed out is that she is comparing the greats of the past (or current) to the average person. These people are/were great, not the least because they spent that much time at their work that they produce. To put it another way, there were many more (vast majority even?) people from the past, before technology, who spent their time just as unproductively as the average person nowadays. They may not be consuming content on the internet, but they could just be chatting in person, watching the sceneries, or more likely just doing labor work. Preparing food or doing laundry could be a whole day of work when you don't have technology.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't wonder where all the time went for the modern individual compared to the times before technology. Do spend time more productively and create stuff, which is good.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you enjoy creating things, that's great. But I am not quite convinced of the inherent good of creating, being a "maker", etc. This can often be quite a consumptive activity, actually, depending on what you make.

Edit: on further thought, I feel I should stress that the world belongs to us all.

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky I think the author is wondering why everyone is not a creator or making an effort at becoming one. IMO the world is never meant to be a place exclusively for creators.

> And the smaller part creating for someone else to make money to continue to > consumer what someone else is creating.

So, unbeknownst to yourself, you're saying the world belongs to _someone else_ , not the creators, and this contradicts with the title of your blog post. Moreover, on one's own, one cannot create all things that one wants or needs to consume. It would be supernatural. Since time immemorial, people have been creating things for others to consume and consuming what others have been creating. The world is fueled by mutual reliance.

> _Why is this an issue_?

It's not unusual for people in marketing to create an issue out of nowhere :)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's pretty obvious, isn't it?

The only meaningful thing to do in this world is to create, there is nothing else.

<comment><USER26> I'd like my creations to be consumed...

<comment><USER27> That is something I struggled with: do I like creating or do I like others to consume my creations more? And, if the latter, do I like that more because that is how I make money? I concluded after many years (I am 42) that I like creating. I need consumption of it because I might need money but for me to be happy, only creating would suffice.

<comment><USER26> My point was more that creation can't exist without consumption. It's also damn near impossible to not be a consumer. I agree that it's important to focus on creation, but I disagree with the "consumption is evil" mantra that comes out of these discussions at times.

<comment><USER27> Ah yes, I agree with you. It is needed. And there is not all too much wrong with it either. The evil probably comes from the pointless consumption? Not sure if we can live without that or where useful ends and pointless begins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a false dichotomy. Creating by copying and referencing is quite trivial now. We do it all the time and think nothing of it.

Creating original designs, giving them a lot of thought and attention, responding to feedback, and changing workflow as a result, that's still hard. And there are a lot of ways in which you can come up with an innovative spin on old stuff - presentation, cataloging, filtering, recommending, explaining - that isn't "creative output" in the sense we are romanticizing, but provides the same kinds of effect on knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER29> the problem is the definition of make and create and what has value has changed.

10 thousand years ago people celebrated when a big kill was brought home from the hunt.

5000 years ago people celebrated the seasonal harvests.

100 years ago you put in a good days work at a factory turning a screw but you helped make a car.

today if it's not novel or unique it's not celebrated or valued.

<comment><USER3> Thousands of years ago, people made art, they wrote poems, came up with wonderful stories and mythology. Every culture has some form of human creativity. Whether art, music, or stories and poems passed down through generations. Creativity is a defining characteristic of human beings. To be creative is to be human.

<comment><USER25> Well, that's what I thought about as well until recently. But the recent advancements in AI make me questions if creativity is truly unique to humans.

<comment><USER30> as AI sprung out of humanity it will always have a grain of humanity in itself. AI doing "creative" things is doing it because we like to watch it doing that.

But still I dont think there is so much special and unique to humans

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great write up! I wish I had have known this when I was younger.

If you feel this way start by working on small projects to completion. Everyone starts somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think that any individual, who does some work creating/building a product/feature goes will identify themselves with the ideas presented in this article. However, the world actually belongs those who can get others to create and build. These usually are the people who have access to capital and use it to generate more capital.

</comment><comment><USER33> This could possibly be the most impactful thing many of us, here, have read (consumed) recently. Bookmarked.

</comment><comment><USER34> How about a slight shift in thinking? "Self-fulfilment belongs to those who create"... and perhaps try to think "the world belongs to everyone" instead.

Agree with the overall intention of the post though.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you sleep 6 hours instead of 8, you gain about a day every 2 weeks.

<comment><USER36> You can also achieve the same thing by sleeping less frequently, but that doesn't work well if you care about being awake at the same time as others always. But right now I have a spare week and will gain an extra day of time this week.

<comment><USER35> Do you mean the 28 hour day? [https://xkcd.com/320/](https://xkcd.com/320/)

I tried that for exactly 6 days. And went slightly crazy - days were so long that I was splitting them into an A-part and a B-part, just to keep events separate in memory. I wonder if that's what that's what the MIB feels like, in their 37-hour day. [a]

If you can't get a truly flexible schedule for this, 4x10s will kinda work.

[a] [http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119654/quotes](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0119654/quotes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not a fact.

</comment><comment><USER38> Well, then that's a real shame then for people without creative impulses and or skills.

</comment><comment><USER39> Create more, but responsibly.</comment>


Python ATTRS Library. Kill OOP "boilerplate" - <AUTHOR> https://attrs.readthedocs.org/en/stable/

<comment><AUTHOR> Might seem a bit sketchy at first but it does look interesting. I'm not horrified by the way Python implements OOP or else I wouldn't be using it. It kinda makes me feel weird to include a package to change such a core functionality but not like it hasn't been done before with other languages. But anyway. Check it out. It's interesting. Definitely put a lot of work into it. It's a self fork of the previous library - Characterstic. [https://github.com/hynek/characteristic](https://github.com/hynek/characteristic) I heard these libraries mentioned by a Django Core Dev on the talkpythontome.com podcast.</comment>


Golang helloworld 45% slower than node.js - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/group/golang-nuts/browse_thread/thread/cde2cc6278cefc90

<comment><USER2> benchmarking with a "hello world" program... seriously?!

How many hello world services do you guys run in production?</comment>


To end the affordable housing crisis, Washington needs to legalize Main Street - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/04/to-end-the-affordable-housing-crisis-washington-needs-to-legalize-main-street/ <comment><USER2> The culprit finally revealed:

> Ever since Herbert Hoover's Commerce Department helped promote the spread of > model zoning codes that physically separated people and their community > institutions, the federal government has poured its energy and resources > into encouraging the growth of widely dispersed single-family homes and > large, centralized tower blocks. To this day, FHA standards for loans, which > set the market for the entire private banking sector, prohibit any but the > most minimal commercial property from being included in residential > development. As a groundbreaking report by New York City's Regional Plan > Association found, these standards are "effectively disallowing most > buildings with six stories or less." And depending on the program, a > building could have to reach to 17 stories before it is eligible for > participation in the normal housing markets. Without the FHA's blessing, > projects are granted the "nonconforming" kiss of death unless their > developers can persuade a local bank to write an entirely customized loan > for them, one whose risk the bank would have to keep entirely on its own > books.

<comment><USER3> Why have we done this? It seems to go back very far, at least to the 30s or so. The two leading explanations I've heard are:

(1) It's a jobs program in the form of a subsidy for the construction and automotive industries, both of whom are huge employers.

(2) It's to disperse the cities to make them less attractive bombing targets, especially for nuclear weapons.

The latter seems less likely if it goes back to the 30s but more likely as an explanation for Cold War era efforts to disperse cities.

Anyone have any other potential explanations?

<comment><USER4> The US has a lot of land and not everyone likes to be squeezed into a dense city.

<comment><USER5> Sure, people who don't like cities shouldn't live in cities, but why restrict density within cities?

<comment><USER4> It's not a binary choice of dense-area-of-Manhattan and Smallville. Historically, for better or worse, a lot of people have decided/voted that they want an urban environment that's dense but not "too" dense. You may disagree--especially if you feel you have to live in the area of question--but it's really not irrational from the perspective of current residents.

<comment><USER6> Sure, agreed: I think the point is that "what is the right level of density for which areas?" is probably not something that should come from federal government loan regulations.

<comment><USER4> No argument. It's a matter for local voters--although I suspect many here don't agree with that either.

<comment><USER7> It is a problem; people tend to vote in their own best interests (except in Presidential elections - Zing!), and that generally means voting against new housing nearby.

<comment><USER8> We let other people live in our apartment, is that a problem, too?

<comment><USER6> In places like Boulder, Colorado, it is. There are laws against N unrelated people living together in the same place. NIMBY central.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article more or less explains what I've been saying to people for years. Part of the reason cost of living is cheaper in other countries (developing/3rd world for example) is because most of the cheaper ways are illegal in our country. Repeal the laws and we can live inexpensively and similarly to other less developed nations.

<comment><USER6> There is tons of low-hanging fruit too - it's not like you have to axe safety laws. Stop outlawing taller buildings, parking minimums, let businesses be built near housing, and so on.

<comment><USER10> I saw an article about Portland and how smaller houses and outbuildings are forbidden in the U.S.

Also, people in the U.S. have ridiculously large houses (except in S.F. and New York).

800 square foot is huge, the average 2-bedroom apartment here in Montevideo is about 600 square feet, and serves a family of four more often than not.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/style/portland- affordable-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/style/portland-affordable- housing-solutions-tiny-homes.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER11> you don't even have to go that small.

in Singapore the typical hdb flat for a family is 2-3 br which is between 900 to 1100 sqft (but goes up to 4 brs at 1600 sqft). and on a habitable land basis it is one of the densest cities in the world. so yes you can provide liveable spaces to a lot of people and have them all in the same area at once.

but they also have a state admin that controls a large proportion of residential land supply and is willing to sacrifice property prices as the main method of wealth creation (which imo is a good thing, because firstly one can never fully unlock that kind of equity in his life as long as he needs a place to stay, and second because it pulls capital away from productive sectors)

<comment><USER12> > one can never fully unlock that kind of equity in his life as long as he > needs a place to stay

This is untrue. A reverse-mortgage or HELOC can easily unlock the equity while keeping your ownership stake at a safe level and allowing you to continue residing.

<comment><USER9> Also dont forget selling and then using the money to pay rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Space for housing is a problem for only a few cities in the US - mostly New York, Washington, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and Boston. The rest of the country has lots of space. Most of the Midwest, from west of Philadelphia to Kansas, is available. Those parts of the country are emptying out.

The real problem is over-urbanization. People are moving to a few cities and draining out the rest of the country. The US population isn't increasing by much. The current rate of increase is 0.72%, and most of that is illegal immigration.

The Internet was supposed to make it less important where you lived. What went wrong?

<comment><USER14> The U.S. has terrible terrible rail systems. Lack of transport causes people to cluster, especially if you're disabled or need public transport.

Jenna, Germany. 100k people. 4 trams. 3 intercity stations, one with an ICE line.

Chattanooga, TN. 200k. The Chattanooga choo-choo from the song has no trains. Not even an AmTrak. Even talk of a train to Atlanta got everyone angry because they didn't want Atlanta commuters.

I don't understand why Americans love their cars so much and hate rail.

<comment><USER15> It's not that we like cars, it's just that we don't see why anyone else should benefit from our tax dollars. Rail seems to be a direct subsidy to the poor, even though it removes drivers from the roads. The rail projects where I live all seem to argue that it will make it more convenient for people to commute by public transit, which is the wrong argument. They should actually be arguing that it will remove other drivers from the road, making more room for people who don't have access.

<comment><USER16> Building rail lines is a "subsidy for the poor", but building highways is "investing in infrastructure". We Americans are crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Large new apartment buildings in the Shaw neighborhood in Washington have > priced out longtime residents.

Really, now? Or has more demand priced out longtime residents?

EDIT: That said, the rest of the article is very good. My guess is, the author didn't caption that photo.

<comment><USER18> Large apartments buildings are more of a symptom than an actual problem. Large apartments buildings are very expensive to build per unit, so they are only worth building where housing is very expensive. If you were able to build six story buildings instead, which have a much lower cost per unit, there would at least be a chance of keeping up with the demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Parking requirements repeal? Ask the residents of Portland how that works. What happens is a large apartment goes in without parking and suddenly home owners nearby cannot park their cars anywhere and everyone is angry.

<comment><USER14> America needs an end to car culture. Other countries have massive train systems that allow people to spread out and not dread commutes. Not everyone needs a car. People can share zip cars or flexi cars.

There is an insane amount of rail opposition in the us that had less to us being a massive energy consumer and polluter.

I sold my car 5 years ago.

<comment><USER20> other people like to be able to go places on their own timetable. No one likes having to spend an hour to take a fifteen minute drive.

<comment><USER21> Whereas a subway that runs frequently under a traffic-jam prone area can turn a 50-minute sit-in-traffic to a 25 minute trip. Plus without the subway the traffic would be worse because the subway riders would also be in surface vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Inappropriate parking requirements, in particular, can raise the expected > rent in a new development by as much as 50 percent

Not only this, but why are houses required to keep a 30 foot lawn extending from the sidewalk to their home? Not only does it require considerable irrigation, but that land can be much better suited as increased living space.

</comment><comment><USER23> Recently read an article on Japan's housing market. While land is very precious over there living space (on a much smaller footprint than in the US of course) has remained affordable in Tokyo. The author pointed to the very high flexibility of land use in Japan allowing land rights and property to more flexibly serve demand from the commercial and residential sides.

Over the past two decades from what I observed the office space available to software developers has decreased. Single offices and generous cubicles have been replaced by denser setups. Full time staff has been complemented by contracted staff often working in much more cramped conditions. Some have not a fixed desk and in part working from home offices not alone to save commute time.

On the wholesale side margins are getting compressed as differentiates are missing and wholesale distributors like Amazon or directly distributed branded products are eating away their share and need a lot less prime real estate.

There may be local markets where commercial real estate is tight. But secular trends are not looking good.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Washington" evidently isn't the barrier, since there are many locales in which there is no problem constructing affordable housing (hell, Houston has no zoning whatsoever). Almost all of the problematic regulations are state or local.

<comment><USER25> Local regulations are a big problem, but so are federal ones. In particular, the mortgage market in America is hugely distorted by the implicit subsidies offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises that buy and securitize a large majority of all mortgage loans nationally.

Crucially, loans qualify for purchase by Fannie and Freddie (and therefore have lower interest rates) only if they meet standards set by the Federal Housing Administration. These standards have always been hugely biased towards suburban single-family homes [0], and in some ways have become even more so recently. For example, Dodd-Frank amended the FHA rules to stipulate that at least half of the units in any new multi-family condo building must be sold before any buyers can qualify for an FHA-approved mortgage on any unit in the building. This rule alone has effectively killed the market for new- construction condo buildings in most American cities, since only luxury buildings in the hottest markets can expect to pre-sell half or more of their units to cash buyers or buyers who can get spec mortgages.

0\. E.g., by specific practices such as "redlining", introduced by the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the FHA (see [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining)), but predominantly by lending standards which have always been far more lenient for new single-family homes than for any other form of housing. Federal housing and transportation policy have also promoted suburban over urban development in myriad other ways; for a broad take, I recommend Kenneth Jackson's book _Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States_ (1985), [https://www.amazon.com/Crabgrass-Frontier-Suburbanization- Un...](https://www.amazon.com/Crabgrass-Frontier-Suburbanization-United- States/dp/0195049837/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Herbert Hoover! Did he do _anything_ right?

<comment><USER27> He meant well....

<comment><USER27> Also between austerity and suburban hype---man talk about mistakes we won't stop repeating.</comment></comment></comment>


35 Gorgeous Examples of White Color Usage in Web Design - <AUTHOR> http://smashfreakz.com/2015/08/white-color-web-design/

<comment><USER2> I almost despise the white and flat color design oriented web. I prefer usable lists to one word per page on white space.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I take a job at a startup where I know one of the guys is a jerk - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I have a potential startup job offer and everything is great - doing some Node.js and React stuff and the tech team will be 4 people including the CTO.
The only hitch is that one of the guys is a jerk and I don't enjoy talking to him (I know him from previous events).
My current position is a bit of a dead end doing boring stuff - the startup would have a much higher impact and is financially sound.
Should I go for it despite the potential conflict? <comment><USER2> Hell no. In a decently sized company, you can often avoid certain people. But in such a small company, you have to mesh together. So unless this guy is doing sales, I wouldn't risk it.

Isn't there some other opportunity for you?

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably worth having an open conversation with the CTO/CEO about that.

They may even be interested in your input re: this guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I was considering that as well - I will have to sleep on it, thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That would be a dealbreaker for me. It really only takes one bad person to sour office relations.</comment>


Gilt-ii Takes Top Prize At The TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/22/gilt-ii-takes-top-prize-at-the-techcrunch-disrupt-hackathon/ <comment><USER2> Without a theme of some sort, how do they ensure that the sites are really thought of and built over that 24 hour period?

<comment><USER3> Not all hacks end up getting completed. I participated in this hackathon and was surprised how full the room over into the wee hours of the morning. My personal opinion is that the lack of theme is a good thing as it brings together a wide audience of developers.</comment></comment>


Never, Ever Promote From Within - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/25/never-promote-from-within/ <comment><USER2> Interesting article, but the title does not match the content at all. The article actually endorses "promote from within" but gives some caveats and advice for doing so.</comment>


Ask HN: What HTML5 features have you found most useful? - <AUTHOR>

I've been taking a look at HTML5 today and I want to know what features people are using to make building webapps easier.  So, what features are you using and why does that feature make your life easier? <comment><USER2> This may seem a bit trite what with things like canvas and webgl but I love the form features.

<http://diveintohtml5.org/forms.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> <canvas> doesn't make my life easier, but it makes it more interesting.</comment>


Hacker news VS Reddit - <AUTHOR>

Some days ago I posted on the about a cool documentary on the Arduino board.
Well, this is the result:
Reddit -
318 points (82% like it) -
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/eyj2d/arduino_the_documentary/
Hacker news -
3 points -
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2083349 <comment><USER2> Therefore: HN != /r/programming

Any resemblance is superficial. I find value in both, but I am glad they are not the same. If they were the same then I would _not_ frequent both.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool reply! That's what I was looking for, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually, I bet same kind of people hang at both message boards but the difference is HN favors "experienced users" (with high karma etc) over newcomers, to cut back spam primarily. So if someone with a higher karma had posted the same link, probably it would have stayed on the front page for longer, resulting in more upvotes.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, but just different.

</comment><comment><USER4> Part of the problem is it was posted (at least) twice:

Your link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2083349>

The other link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2083905>

</comment><comment><USER5> Often I see posts from HN eventually going to different categories of Reddit, but it's usually not the other way around. Interesting.</comment>


Google boutiques.com has no robots.txt - <AUTHOR> http://www.boutiques.com/robots.txt

<comment><USER2> Well, you can try it with:

wget -O- <http://www.boutiques.com/robots.txt> -U "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +<http://www.google.com/bot.html)>

and you get the same error.

I tried a couple of other bot user agent strings from <http://www.useragentstring.com/>, same result

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would it?

</comment><comment><USER4> they have NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW robots META tags that tell search engine crawlers to go away.

Maybe it's their way of playing nice with all of the merchants they are listing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could it be user agent filtering?

</comment><comment><USER6> So?...</comment>


A Tiling Desktop Environment - <AUTHOR> https://bitcannon.net/post/pro-desktop/ <comment><USER3> I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial to do this on a Linux distro (i3, awesome, dwm, ratpoison, etc.) but you have to do some tweaking on macOS, why?

[EDIT: best explanation of why I've heard: it's because the macOS design philosophy is that Apple knows best what size a window is supposed to be, while Linux and BSD are aligned with user-centric custom settings]

<comment><USER4> Even Windows has had a basic level of built-in window tiling functionality for a decade now. You can resize windows to half or a quarter of the screen either with keyboard shortcuts or dragging the window to a side or corner. It works pretty well.

<comment><USER5> Tiling and cascading Windows was available in Win 3.0. And it was available to MDI apps all that time as well so a lot longer than a decade.

<comment><USER6> Tiling was all that was available in Win 1.0! Absolute best tiling WM for your 286.

<comment><USER7> Wasn't tiling the only option in Windows 1.x, other than full screen?

<comment><USER8> Well it didn't support overlapping windows so those are the only remaining options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use i3 on a Linux laptop, I really enjoy it.

Too bad nothing exists like that on Windows. Snapping or splitting 2 windows side by side (the Windows 10 snap feature) isn't enough.

On the bright side most of the other features that you would use along side a tiling wm can be used in Windows, and it's very good.

\- AHK to manage global hotkeys and remapping keys

\- Keypirinha to launch apps / folder paths with fuzzy search

\- DexPot to have multiple virtual desktops that supports moving windows across them (same key binds as i3)

I made a video about 6 months ago showing some of these tools in use at: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-linux-dev-environment-on- wi...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/a-linux-dev-environment-on-windows-with- wsl-docker-tmux-and-vscode)

Although I changed a couple of things since then, such as I use Vim instead of VSCode, but I still use the above tools every day. They are really solid.

<comment><USER10> Full disclosure: I am the author of MaxTo.

Have you looked at MaxTo? [https://maxto.net](https://maxto.net)

It does not work in the exact same manner as i3wm does; it lets you decide on a set of regions that windows are maximized into (the regions can be a non- uniform grid). This lets you focus on one task at a time. It has great support for hotkeys. At the moment I believe MaxTo is the closest you'll get to i3 on Windows.

<comment><USER9> Yep. It was one of the first apps I tried in this category. I know a lot of people prefer having pre-defined layouts but I'm not a fan of that. I'm often always moving windows around slightly in size and really lean on the wm or tool auto-adjusting things on the fly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> git-pull Like the author, I've spent years in tiling WM's (xmonad, awesome, dwm, i3). Right now I'm hanging around big DE's like kde, gnome, windows 10, osx + magnet.

Windows 10 snapping keyboard keys are top tier. Not automated tiling, but save so much time. Also the GUI is beautiful on whatever screen you plug it into (including 4k). On Linux DE's right now? Mint or gnome will show options to scale up 200%, 300%, 400%(!) Even 200% is far to much.

Tiling WM+HDPI doesn't quite exist. Most use gtkrc, xresources, and the WM config to play with sizes. But that doesn't translate across different monitors. So it's a flawed system.

Let's assume HDPI+linux and tiling WM's were ironed out: In practice tiling WM's aren't as good because once you get into a terminal window, it's not as easy as it looks to copy from terminals <-> "gui" applications. It's possible, but the time spent ironing it out may not be worth the trade off for some. For instance I can't rely on copying from a vim inside of tmux, I do :!leafpad % to open a file and copy from that.

As for HDPI and tiling WM's, swaywm is an i3 for wayland that appears to support it: [https://swaywm.org/](https://swaywm.org/)

If you're okay with just HDPI and basic snapping: [https://system76.com/pop](https://system76.com/pop) or gnome 3.32 (that'd be ubuntu 19.04 or debian experimental at the moment I believe). Gnome 3.32 has fractional scaling. That'll scale by 125%, 150%, 175% (probably what you want)

Gnome's snapping isn't a smooth as Window 10's. Windows 10 is really good and half-sizing vertically. IMO: It'd be ideal if gnome 3 behaved the same as windows snap did by default. Extensions can help, but if you rely on them, they're limited and often behind of the latest gnome version (or two or three, or become abandoned entirely [1]), and don't wire-in to keybindings as well.

[1] [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel- saver/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-saver/)

<comment><USER11> being able to divvy up a desktop into 4 quarter panel windows on win10 with near zero effort absolutely changed my life, i think of how much time i've wasted clicking back and forth between two windows stacked on eachother, or having to manually move/size windows to be next to eachother... i dunno. i held out as long as i could before caving to a 10 upgrade out of necessity, and it's a shame that windows has built such a stigma like that because (once you go in and rip out all the junk) it's clear microsoft has decided to embrace alot of conventions paved by linux/unix/gnu/whatever - little things like recognizing shift+ins as a 'paste' command - and has really improved desktop management overall.

<comment><USER12> Shift+Insert has been a paste shortcut in Windows since at least Windows 3, maybe earlier. As far as I'm aware this convention was introduced by IBM's Common User Access standard around 1987.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use i3 for battery friendly-ness; it gives me many hours (sometimes double if only doing dev) more on my Ubuntu machine. Vim as IDE (bunch of extensions, like OmniSharp for .NET Core dev) and so on. I have different systems for testing and trying things on like a Macbook, Windows 10 machine with VS etc, but nothing is quite as productive as my Linux setup and that is mostly because of i3/vim. You have to practice the keyboard shortcuts, but that does not take a lot of time.

I give other environments a go once in a while but this wins so far.

One point to make; I do personally not like large and/or external screens. I like small laptops and I move around a lot during the day.

<comment><USER14> Which laptop are you using for Ubuntu? Are you happy with it?

<comment><USER13> X220 with 9-cell battery, ssd from a broken macbook pro and 16 gb from the same macbook pro. Yes, it is the best laptop I have ever owned (and I owned many). I have several (bought for almost nothing from a company sale) for replacement; if I break one, I am up and running in 10 minutes again. I think I paid less than $250 for 5 pristine ones + 2 new 9 cell batteries new in box.

It is surprisingly fast for it's age with i3. Besides ML or iOS compiling (which I just do remotely) stuff I do all my dev on it.

Edit: also, if you hate this screen resolution, you or someone on the webs, can put in a much higher res screen in. There is so much you can replace in these things and the keyboard is such a pleasure compared to modern keyboards. Imho ofcourse.

<comment><USER15> Lenovo X220 was the best laptop ever produced. But after 8 years non-stop use they often need fan and thermal paste replaced.

<comment><USER13> Spare parts and complete replacements are quite easy and cheap to pick up. Luckily many of there were made :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm just here to shamelessly shill for Notion (not-ion), though it is probably the furthest tiling WM from this guy's wants (ease of setting up shiny things). I swear there are still dozens of active users.

It's tiling is like i3 except it uses manual layouts instead of dynamic. So when you create yet another xterm window it does not rearrange all the other tiles on your screen, it just creates a new tab in the current frame. If you want a new horizontal or vertical split, you create it explicitly. I open shells like browser tabs, so if the default was to somehow find screen space for each one, I'd be looking at hundreds of 2x2 sized xterms. Honestly if I could get i3 to behave like this I'd probably switch (and I've tried...I realize you can set a pane into tab mode, but I find it's still too easy to totally mess up your layout if you are not careful in i3. Anyone got tips?).

I also once used Awesome, and the constant reshuffling of the screen layout drove me crazy. Did not really care for the fixed layouts either.

<comment><USER16> One of the dozen users checking in. My favorite feature of ion/notion is the alt-space scratch pad. I always have a bunch of ad-hoc terminals or other programs open that I can easily reach from any desktop. So far I haven't seen any other tiling wm that has something similar. I'm probably wrong though.

<comment><USER17> i did that with xmonad - set up alt-` to either switch to desktop 10, or if i was on desktop 10, to switch back to the previous desktop.

<comment><USER16> That's certainly an interesting idea. Thanks!

<comment><USER18> I have a number of terminals mapped to hyper+[letter] in i3, five are empty with just a shell. Two are Python repls, and the rest are actually various outputs for programs I run where I want to see a log of whats happening

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I feel like a shill with how often I recommend it, but Keyboard Maestro [0] seems like it would handle almost everything, from window management to all sorts of system automation. The kinds of things I can execute with a key command is amazing. Sometimes, I'll just write a quick task, like realigning titles across a set of Keynote slides or very specific text manipulation operations. Seriously, best money I've ever spent on software (if I had to go without any tool, from Sublime Text to Photoshop to Logic Pro X, KM would be the one I couldn't live without, and other than Logic, I actually use the others day to day for work, and I'd still give them up to keep KM).

[0] [http://keyboardmaestro.com](http://keyboardmaestro.com)

</comment><comment><USER20> I started out as a kid with DOS, somehow skipping win 3.11 and then pretty much everything from win 95 to XP. Then I started using Linux in parallel ca. 2003. Before that I only took a couple curious looks.

Started out with kde3, switched to gnome 2, and as those two evolved found myself longing for simpler and snappier solutions. Windows was evolving relatively slowly but even there you'd always lose one or two things every time you upgraded. On Linux this was much more radical. Not just the desktop but also the stuff under the hood.

Today I just prefer the minimal version of most things I use and do daily. i3 does the job for window management. Vim with as little plugins as possible for scripting and coding (as long as it's not Java or c++ with qt). Since eventually my favorite plugin will stop working as it's unmaintained, or the file manager will get an overhaul and look different and have all its keyboard shortcuts changed. The less stuff I depend on the better.

</comment><comment><USER21> My primary dev machine has been running KDE and i3wm for a while. I feel like I get a complete GUI experience while having all the benefits of a tiling window manager.

The author likes Gnome because of it's UI looking like Mac OS, and that's understandable. KDE did look different when I first switched from Macs. But at this point, the only things running in my dev machine is a whole lot of terminals and maybe 1-3 browser instances. So KDE is almost hidden at all tkmes.

<comment><USER22> I primarily just use i3, but I used to be a KDE guy. I used it for a while again just recently and I have to say, it's gotten _really_ good. They've made it clean and tidy, while still being powerful and customizable.

<comment><USER23> The thing that originally got me to switch to i3 was using a serious potato for a few months. 2012 core i3 processor and 8g ram (upgraded) kind of potato. Plenty usable with i3, but had trouble with windows or heavier full desktop environments; i3 was great and snappy and I was able to use the computer just fine.

<comment><USER24> I use KDE on a ThinkPad X220i, so around the same specs as your potato (with an SSD, though). It absolutely flies, no slowdowns or issues at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those who want good sides of tiling DE but won't want to install tiling WM, there is Openbox. If you aren't afraid of editing configuration XML, you can assign hotkeys to place windows in quarters/halves of the display or to jump them between displays. Also Openbox is very fast. It can be used in place of XFCEs or KDEs own WM, so nothing stops you from having benefits of full- fledged DE along with powerful WM. That being said, Openbox lacks shadows or transparency (so separate compositor like xcompmgr or compton is needed) and doesn't render rounded corners. I use XFCE + Openbox combo at my workplace for 5 years now.

</comment><comment><USER26> A tiling window manager is a must for me. But I (like the OP's article mentions) prefer to use a standard desktop environment (Gnome or macOS) but add tiling feature only.

So, on my macOS laptops, it is Amethyst all day [https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst). Love it.

But on my Linux desktops, I am stuck with Gnome and not gone for full VM replacement with XMonad, i3 or Awesome.

I don't want issues with disk mounting, clipboards, multiple monitors, etc just cause I want automated tiling and have to replace my whole desktop environment to achieve it.

<comment><USER27> For what it's worth, I run i3 on my work laptop and I don't have any issues with those things - the only config I've done for multiple monitors is configuring one to be vertical and binding workspaces to particular monitors.

I didn't go for a clean install with no desktop environment, though. I started off with a standard Ubuntu 18.10 install and then installed i3, so I can still start a session with either i3 or gnome. Highly recommend this setup - <USER2> makes everything pretty easy because you still have all of the default apps and settings from Ubuntu. The only real config weirdness I had to deal with was adding keybinds for volume/media keys, and the fact that the display brightness keys on my laptop aren't bound (I always run on 100%, so it doesn't bother me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> FYI Microsoft recently announced a new PowerToys for Win10 and are asking for features people would like to see and there is some support behind tiling. Vote if you are interested in seeing this in Windows.

[https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93...](https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+i3)

</comment><comment><USER29> All you linux veterans may cringe at it, but maybe check out my dotfiles. I have spent years cultivating a complete DE experience around dwm. It shouldn't be too hard to drop in your wm of choice.

I have used it with HiDPI but only briefly, so that may still be imperfect.

[https://github.com/AeliusSaionji/dotfiles](https://github.com/AeliusSaionji/dotfiles)

<comment><USER30> Thanks for sharing! Would be nice if you'd wrap it into some auto-ricing script like LARBS.

<comment><USER29> What is "ricing" in this context?

I do agree I need to come up with a better way to maintain and distribute this, I'll look into LARBS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I installed the [i3 edition of Manjaro]([https://manjaro.org/download/i3/](https://manjaro.org/download/i3/)) last weekend. I was up and running with a beautiful environment providing _most_ of the listed utilities in an hour or so. I have been incredibly happy with the setup.

The edition could still use some more love (e.g., I had to set up auto- mounting and HiDPI compatible configs myself), but it is remarkably cohesive and (relatively) easy to get going.

There is definitely room for improvement, but this is probably a good place to look or inspiration, and contributing to advance this work might be a good use of energy for those interested.

<comment><USER32> How does Manjaro compare to Ubuntu for the "new user seamless install of everything" and "easy update for new users"

<comment><USER33> Kubuntu -> Manjaro KDE was a transition I made when I was still distro- hopping. I used Octopi as a pacman GUI which was super easy to use compared to Kubuntu's. Now that I've learned how to use pacman, I've still never had issues with a -Syu on either my Manjaro i3 or Arch systems, but I don't use Octopi anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've been using Awesome every day since 2009. The only things I change from the default on a new install is the terminal, the default layout and hide title bars.

The author mentions compositors, but if you don't require fancy things like transparent windows or shadows, and you have a a well supported/behaved GPU and monitor, you can probably do without them if all you care about is tearfree video. Drivers like intel, ati, amdgpu and more recently modesetting have a TearFree option that does just that. For some systems switching to a DRI3/glamour setup is enough and as a last resort you can configure X11 and mesa to force vsync.

</comment><comment><USER35> Any more, what I feel I want is XFCE with Xmonad / DWM style tiling that I don't have to hack together.

I'm considering taking another look at KDE with the tiling KWin extension, since KDE seems to be the center of mass for innovation in 90s style WIMP interfaces.

EDIT: I'll add that the GTK software world seems to be driving towards hamburger-ization, which makes me wonder how much software of the future will integrate cleanly with XFCE. I'm not sure that the Mint and XFCE people have enough mass to keep fighting the good fight forever.

KDE is starting to seem like a pragmatic long-term bet.

</comment><comment><USER36> [https://github.com/timbertson/shellshape](https://github.com/timbertson/shellshape) was a good tiling extension for Gnome. Sadly it's no longer under active development & doesn't work on recent GNOME versions.

EDIT: but the author has developed the simpler [https://github.com/timbertson/slinger](https://github.com/timbertson/slinger)

<comment><USER37> How are these vs the gTile linked in the article? ([https://github.com/gTile/gTile](https://github.com/gTile/gTile))

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have been using [https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows- manager](https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager) for several months now. It is a plugin for Hammersppoon on macOS that lets you resize and organize windows using the keyboard.

It's worked really well for my set-up (can make windows fullscreen, take up 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 of vertical or horizontal space of the screen).

<comment><USER39> I use miro-windows-manager and love it. I just wish I could take the scripts I have written for Hammerspoon on MacOS and use them on my Linux workstation - anyone know how this might be done?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> No interest in trying it. As an old-timer I find this funny. Windows 1 had a superb tiling system. I disliked it. Reviewers complained for years. I wanted independent windows and never looked back when they appeared in Windows 3 or so.

As a guy who runs a company I can see a massive in benefit in a world with only tiling window managers, which is that it reduces support and accessibility issues when a window can never be completely hidden.

</comment><comment><USER41> I so agree with this, though I have a slightly different take. As someone who can't part with my GUIs, I'm nevertheless super jealous of all the i3 folks.

As such, what I want is basically i3 in a gnome window. That for me would be the best of both worlds. I can do all my fancy i3 stuff but still have a crisp, efficient UI to get settings/stuff done when it's about ease of use, not speed.

<comment><USER11> i feel like i know where you're coming from here, this isn't exactly what you're describing, but it's pretty dang close. really made the transition to window tiling far less intimidating than i imagined.

[https://regolith-linux.org/](https://regolith-linux.org/)

<comment><USER41> This was pretty close, but ultimately was too i3-ish for me. I'm also realizing that I could never be as productive with i3 as I am with a mouse or trackpoint -- with a trackpoint I never have to change my hands out of root typing position, whereas to hit any of the key combinations involving the super key, I have to move my left hand to a whole different, scrunched position. Don't know how you guys do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I know tiling DE followers have firm principles in my experience so please don't take this the wrong way because everyone is different.

My personal experience is that I used a lot of tiling DE back when I had a laptop with 256M RAM.

Lately my last three laptops have had 8G and more of RAM so I don't see the point.

Mainly because I use vim+tmux as an IDE. So I'm already using keyboard shortcuts extensively to quickly navigate through vim, vim tabs and tmux.

A tiling DE would add a third layer on top, that I don't feel I need.

Sure I'm a Linux veteran who has been using keyboard shortcuts for 20 years but there are limits to how far I want to push this. And I feel that vim+tmux is my limit. My DE is vanilla Gnome Desktop on Fedora and I'm loving it. (obviously with animations disabled it feels as snappy as Sway or Awesome WM)

Edit: Just to expand; after hours of coding my brain can do vim+tmux keyboard shortcuts without thinking. The short breaks within that time where I switch to other windows would only disrupt my flow if I had to switch to a whole new set of shortcuts.

<comment><USER43> In my case I don't need a third layer on top, I simply don't use(aka don't need) tmux most of the time - I just run terminal buffers inside NeoVim tabs/windows and can switch quickly between workspaces and windows via i3 shortcuts.

But if I was forced to use a DE I'd also go for Gnome - it's pretty polished and provides switchable workspaces a bit like i3. It's just not near as configurable as I'd like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This was also my experience. I was using i3 for a year but things still weren't working the way I wanted it. Stumbled upon i3-gnome ([https://github.com/csxr/i3-gnome](https://github.com/csxr/i3-gnome)) and this maybe the current solution for this problem.

</comment><comment><USER45> As a fellow Awesome WM user my "solution" to this is two Git repos - one to set up the system using Puppet, and one with user configuration such as rc.lua. I've got to basically the same list as OP plus

* low power warnings from cbatticon and

* very basic colour management <[https://gitlab.com/victor-engmark/tilde/blob/6a890f649dd4810...](https://gitlab.com/victor-engmark/tilde/blob/6a890f649dd481028ba34ed9ddce75a3d44b5be3/.xprofile#L35-40>).

Building a proper DE around a decent tiling WM (or separating out the quality- of-life parts of KDE/GNOME) would be fantastic.

<comment><USER30> Yes, it would be nice if more tiling window manager power users would make available their configs like Luke Smith is doing with LARBS ([https://larbs.xyz/](https://larbs.xyz/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm working on some sort of tiling wm but for the web. It's still pretty basic in terms of browsers, but already nice if you want to use it to display websites that don't change often. It's based on Electron. You can get it here [https://github.com/Merkoba/Boneless](https://github.com/Merkoba/Boneless) \-- Also there's this video that shows a bit how it looks right now [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg_3_YoVlk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg_3_YoVlk8)

</comment><comment><USER47> check out this project [https://github.com/agzam/spacehammer](https://github.com/agzam/spacehammer). I wish something like Hammerspoon existed for Linux.

</comment><comment><USER48> For me the right balance is installing i3 on a system with GNOME installed as well. I get all the GNOME apps working well together, but my window manager looks and works the way I want it to. The only issue is configuring some of the GNOME apps (GNOME Online Accounts), where I have to convince Control Center that it's running under GNOME. Spawning the polkit agent and some of the other GNOME components works pretty well too. I just wish I could get the nice GNOME toolbar rather than my polybar (which I like, but took far too long to get working the way I wanted).

</comment><comment><USER49> If you're using KDE Plasma with KWin, try out [https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling- Kwin](https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin)

</comment><comment><USER50> One of the features of Spectacle.app that I really like is its ability to overload the same key macro to cycle through multiple variations of splits. Like if you press the left-half macro multiple times, it cycles between left- half, left-two-thirds, left-third. That way I don't need to assign or remember nearly so many key combinations.

Can any of the other macOS window controllers do that? Spectacle hasn't been maintained in years and the bug reports are piling up.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's not mentioned here so I'll add it: gnome-flashback is the thing that you can use to integrate your window manager of choice w/ the gnome shell. I expect there to be integrations for other window managers, but if you're using i3, then this is your bridge: [https://github.com/deuill/i3-gnome- flashback](https://github.com/deuill/i3-gnome-flashback)

</comment><comment><USER52> I really like the Enlightenment desktop environment, but always fall off it because I can't get the tiling working how I like. If the tiling is fixed to be consistent with Awesome/i3/dwm, Enlightentment would certainly be what this article calls for.

</comment><comment><USER53> This echoes my experience. After over a decade of dwm I switched to Gnome a few months ago and can't see myself going back. I love the performance and window management aspects of dwm but I really like the cohesive desktop I get with Gnome.

</comment><comment><USER54> I use Moom on the Mac, Openbox on Linux, and the default Windows 10 tiling keys. Since I don't like auto-tiling and prefer managing workspaces and tiles interactively, this works well for me, with consistent key bindings across platforms.

</comment><comment><USER55> A simple and quick solution to getting most of the items on the checklist working is to install i3-gnome:

[https://github.com/csxr/i3-gnome](https://github.com/csxr/i3-gnome)

</comment><comment><USER56> Regarding the HiDPI issue with dunst: you can try sway, Wayland works way better than xorg with HiDPI displays.

Disclaimer: I'm a sway dev.

</comment><comment><USER57> >I want a desktop environment like GNOME but with more control over window management and more keyboard control.

So... KDE?

<comment><AUTHOR> You read the whole section on KDE right?

<comment><USER3> I don't know for sure, but he may have scrolled down only far enough to see the Comments section and thought that was the end of the post.

<comment><USER58> To be fair, I thought that was the end of the article too. If it wasn't for your comment I wouldn't have read it.

Maybe it's a mobile-only problem, but it was a weird placement choice nonetheless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>