Ask HN: How do you pay your remote team? - <AUTHOR> What tools/services do you use your remote team? What does the process look like? Do the employees invoice you first and you make the payment? <comment><USER2> Employees don't invoice you, you pay them a salary. Contractors invoice you. If your team is contractors (or you're paying them as contractors for tax/liability/whatever reason), they invoice you and, if you're in the US, you should also ask for a tax form (usually a W8 or W9) based on where their tax residency is.

There's many apps/services to handle your payroll out there. Gusto comes to mind but I've never used it so I don't know what they're like. Some accountants / CFO firms also may handle payroll for you for a fee.

But really, I don't know your situation so ask that question to an accountant. There may be critical details you're not immediately aware of; your accountant will be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! How do most companies hire? Employees or contractors? As far as I researched - most companies hire from outside the US as contractors. And they file invoices, and you pay the amount for it. Do you know of companies that hire people from outside the US as employees and keep them on the same payroll?

<comment><USER3> Hiring non U.S.employees on your U.S. payroll is a bad idea. The employee will have a dual tax nightmare having to reconcile the tax and social security against their home country regime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please don't send checks.. I can't think of a more annoying way to get paid! Regardless of the accounting particulars which have been discussed here, there's bound to be a much better way of actually paying folks.

<comment><USER5> This seems like a silly thing to be annoyed about. Checks don't have fees like most other types of electronic payment, and money is money. Why would you be OK with giving up a certain percentage of your hard-earned money just because you have to go through the "hassle" of dealing with a piece of paper? Many banks even accept the check deposit via app now - you don't even need to go to the ATM.

Edit: I'm talking about paying/being paid as a contractor/vendor, not as an employee.

<comment><USER6> Checks are a holdover from the 1800s. They don't have a place in modern banking.

If the US were willing to put tighter rules around bank transfer fees, it would be possible to create a European style system where bank to bank transfers are free, regardless of which bank you're with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this a US only question? Are you mixing up employees/contractors with onsite local? Employees don't invoice you; contractors do.

UK employer here. For payment, I can't think of any way of paying any employees other than via direct bank transfer. I haven't used a cheque (check in the US) for _years_ , and certainly never for paying employees in the last 20 years.

Regular international contractors are paid via Transferwise; irregular contractors are usually paid through PayPal.

<comment><USER8> I love the ease of Transferwise but I've run tests and a bank wire is cheaper (we get free wire fees with our business banking service so I'm not including what might be an extra $30 from your bank).

<comment> _-___________-_ A friend recently needed to move EUR sitting in one of her HSBC accounts to GBP in another of her HSBC accounts. To get HSBC to do it would have taken "up to three days", and the exchange rate was abysmal. On my recommendation, she used TransferWise instead, saved almost £300 on the exchange rate and it moved within an hour. YMMV, but in UK I've literally never seen big banks be cheaper than TW.

<comment><USER9> Had a friend with a similar problem, simply moved the funds via Revolut which gives you a bank account of the local currency at either side.

<comment><USER10> this is essentially what transferwise does imho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If your team consist of contractors etc... then they'll likely have their own invoice and payment process. I use Freshbooks.

One of my clients pays me via wire transfer, another does checks, and finally I have one project via moonlightwork.com (awesome service) where they actually handle payments (weekly!) which is pretty cool.

If these are actual W2 full-time employees, I would suggest something like gusto.com to give them direct deposit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Might be a silly question. But do you leave the burden ( may be not really ) of the whole invoice management process on the contractor - how good/bad is it?

<comment><USER12> Would you compensate them either with time or money for it? I think think if you know it'll take 'employees' that are contractors a certain amount of time and expenses each month then offering something small in exchange for (covering accounting fees etc) is a great way to go about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We have just over twenty remote workers internally and we use a mix. Full disclosure we are a service provider in this space, so I am just taking about what we do internally and freely admit I am biased because of the nature of our business. 1) For short term we engage some folks as independent contractors. They sign a freelance contract, they invoice us each month for their gross earnings and we pay them via international wire transfer. Tax and social security is their responsibility under the contract. We have some contractors who have been on this arrangement more than twelve months and we will try to move them onto employee status this year because of the risk of misclassification. For many tax and labor authorities the contract doesn't matter if they view it as an employment relationship. 2) If we have our own entity incorporated in the country where the worker is (UK, Australia) they sign an employment contract and we pay them through the payroll with full tax and social security contributions & deductions. 3) Where we haven't got our own entity or don't want to run our own payroll yet (USA, Spain, etc) we use a GEO/Employer of record service. The employee signs an employment contract with the GEO, the GEO invoices us each month for salary + employer costs + their fees, we pay them and they pay the employee. If you are small or just starting, begin with the first option. It's by far the easiest to administer. Eventually as you get bigger and more stable then you will come to a point contracting alone doesn't work anymore. Then the blended approach has worked very well for us.

</comment><comment><USER13> Gusto is great - they have handled all our payroll and contractor payments for our remote team extremely well.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a contractor I've been paid by cheque, PayPal, and (my favorite) wire transfer. Always this was after sending them an invoice. I found PayPal to be the least friction about invoicing and reminding about due payments, though I lost between 2-3% of my invoice to fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I work remotely from Europe for a US company. Even though the company considers me an "employee" with all the perks (vacation, health insurance, etc.) I found that the easiest and best way is for me to form my own LLC, employ myself in it and invoice the US company for the gross amount. Mostly because of lower taxes, easier handling of our national health care and retirement fund, expensing equipment and operational costs.

<comment><USER16> Great, you're a contractor.

The "easiest" way for you would be if the company setup a presence there and you worked for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We use cryptocurrencies, works super well. Typically ETH and BTC.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've worked from home (if that qualifies as remote) and was on a salary, paid directly to my back account with health, pension benefits, etc, handled by the company. Worked as a contractor for a couple of companies and have been paid using wire transfer and PayPal. My personal preference is wire transfer as it's much easier to handle taxes and usually has the least amount of fees and better exchange rates.

</comment><comment><USER19> Deel came out of the last YC batch. [https://www.letsdeel.com/](https://www.letsdeel.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I already came across deal - isn't this exclusively for contractors? If I want to keep a "company culture" \- but the employees are hired as contractors - does this work well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I work for a remote-only company. We use payworks.ca in Canada, and I believe ADP in the USA, for direct deposits.

</comment><comment><USER21> For the US-based folks on this thread, I think the don't-pay-me-with-checks is mostly a non-starter.

4 of the last 5 banks I dealt with now let you do mobile deposit, where you can endorse the check and deposit it into your bank account by taking pictures of the check with your smartphone.

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER16> The extent the US will go to, to avoid just moving on and adopting electronic transfers like ever other developed nation is astounding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Used to use [https://www.bitwage.com/](https://www.bitwage.com/) but fees were too high so switched to [https://husky.io/](https://husky.io/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm confused by the question because your processes should be in place to pay your people no matter where they are.

That means you need to have registered as a foreign corporation wherever they are working, filed the W9s, W2s and 1099s so that they pay taxes correctly.

If you don't have a payroll processing company or an accountant (don't use ADP) to make sure you're perfectly covered then you should get one ASAP. There aren't too many faster ways to get shut down than to have a state or federal tax agency come hunting you down.

</comment><comment><USER24> Then startup I worked for used Gusto and then later Sequoia One for payroll.

I'd be interested to know what the big remote companies like Elastic do.

<comment><AUTHOR> But Gusto only works inside the US right? What if the company is located in US and contractors are outside the US?

<comment><USER25> One way it works is by contracting a company that employs your people outside.

In Mexico there are several companies that do that, beware that they usually charge a % of _everything_ you do: Not only salaries, but refunds or any other money movement you want to make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To pay contractors I use Square payroll. Pays out to ACH bank accounts (US only) and handles sending 1099's. $5 per contractor per month.

For full time employees look at using Gusto ([https://gusto.com/r/MqwBf/?utm_source=reflink](https://gusto.com/r/MqwBf/?utm_source=reflink)). Note: That's a promo link, we each get $100 Amazon gift card when you sign up and run a payroll.

</comment><comment><USER27> We've been very happy with Gusto for payroll + benefits for our salaried remote team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Outside US too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Transferwise, just regular payments twice a month, no need for an invoice every time

<comment><USER16> If you're sending money offshore without an invoice how exactly do you account for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We hire a number of folks both as traditional contractors as well as freelancers. Here's some thoughts based on my experience:

1) Are they an employee or a contractor? You mention "employees" but talk about them invoicing you. If they are requesting payment via invoice then it sounds like a contractor. It's very important that you define this relationship early on. There are different rules for both (health insurance, paid time off, taxes owed and by who) that are handled very differently. You might have seen a lot in the press about Uber / Lyft etc handling their drivers as contractors and a lot of these reasons are the reason why. So if you're deeming them as contractors (1099s) then make sure you have a contract that makes this explicit. You can find good templates from places like Upcounsel[1], but make sure you have a lawyer take a look.

2) I spoke with the founders of Deel[2] (YC W19) just last week. Their value proposition is that they'll handle the contracts, paperwork and payments (according to your payment schedule) for a small fee (I think $10/m/contractor). This seems like a very good value prop if you hire more than 1 or 2, and one I'm looking into.

3) If you have only a few contractors, then creating a standard contract and making payments to them on submission of their invoice and time sheet (if hourly) is pretty simple. I request our contractors only send invoices monthly to limit the admin for me, and then I pay them via Transferwise (they have a USD-USD beta program that I'm not sure is open to all), because it has cheaper fees than our bank.

4) Assuming you're using a fully fledged accounting/ payroll service or otherwise, then lots of these do have a contractor payment part. The payment part isn't the difficult part, the real benefit of these systems is handling the paperwork with the government for you. We use a full PEO called JustWorks[3] which is awesome - you tell them you have a contractor, you're paying them outside JustWorks and they'll handle all the year end 1099 forms etc.

5) Freelancers. We hire many freelancers to do work for us via Upwork. It's a great tool to get things done, and will do all payments/contracts/compliance for you, for cheap. The downside is the freelancer pays pretty hefty fees, which go down over time [4]. We pay $25/m for all our freelancers paid through the system (30+ freelancers), so it works really well for us.

Happy to answer any other questions you may have!

[1] [https://www.upcounsel.com/free-legal- documents](https://www.upcounsel.com/free-legal-documents) [2] [https://www.letsdeel.com/](https://www.letsdeel.com/) [3] [https://justworks.com/features](https://justworks.com/features) [4] [https://www.upwork.com/i/how-it- works/freelancer/](https://www.upwork.com/i/how-it-works/freelancer/)

<comment><USER30> CurrencyFair.com does USD to USD transfers and I've found them to be very good for the nearly ten years I've used them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Check out Veem.com

<comment><USER32> What a poor choice in naming a tech company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Check, envelope, and stamp is the simplest thing that might work.

<comment><USER30> checks don't cross international borders cheaply. If I remember correctly from the last time I tried Barclays in the UK charged about £50 to deposit a USD check from a US bank.

<comment><USER33> _£50_ a month is £600/year. Rounding error on a going concern. Rounding error on a developer's rate. And worth less than the time an entrepreneur would probably spend trying to save half of it. Moving money internationally will always cost something. Exchange rates might eat more of a developer's salary.

<comment><USER30> It's £50 a month in addition to getting ripped off on the exchange by the bank. Using a service like CurrencyFair or Transferwise would save someone thousands a year. There is also the hassle of having to physically deposit the check.

Also checks in general have gone the way of the fax here. I've seen only one in the last fifteen years. I would be surprised if people in their 20's have never seen one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> gitcoin

</comment><comment><USER35> Most remote workers are independent contractors, and they generally invoice you.

<comment><AUTHOR> And what tools are used to pay the invoices?

<comment><USER33> Checks or electronic equivalent.

There's a scale at which more complex tools may make sense. That scale varies with the variation in the details of a company's operation. For a few contractors the overhead of learning and integrating a tool may outweigh the actual (not perceived) benefits.

Most of the work is reviewing invoices, not writing checks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> We use cryptocurrencies. Fast. Free. Immutable and provable.

This is 2019 guys. Get with the program.

<comment><USER37> How does your accounting work? Is your accountant also up to date with the 2019 program?

Are there any caveats to this that you didn't mention? Are they all contract 1099? What about healthcare and retirement contributions and considerations?

<comment><USER34> I never understand why people bring up accountants or taxes when talking about cryptocurrencies. Seriously, you negotiate with your employer an hourly rate, you get paid that hourly rate and is what you should report.

The way you receive your salary at the end of the day (bank transfer or crypto) is completely decoupled from this. In the same way you don't need to tell the taxman what bank did you use to receive your wage, you don't need to tell what cryptocurrency you used (if you don't convert instantly to fiat when receiving it, that will mean you will have more taxable events later, but this is another subject).

<comment><USER38> How is converting it to fiat a different subject when most people need to be paid in something that can then be used for rent/food/literally everything else?

This entire thread is insane.

The second a job tries to pay me in crypto is the second I'm looking for another job.

<comment><USER39> Depends on the amount of money involved, doesn't it? I don't care how you pay me, as long as the amounts involved make it worth my time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android Market Client Update - <AUTHOR> http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/12/android-market-client-update.html

<comment><USER2> "To make it easier for developers to distribute and manage their products, we will introduce support for device targeting based on screen sizes and densities"

This is MUSIC TO MY EARS.

So many of my 1-star ratings are from users who have very specific device related issues, particularly with tablet devices with 480x800 screens and 160dip densities. My games look terrible because the graphics don't scale up under these conditions, and it's not realistic to create hundreds of graphics at different sizes for games as simple as mine.

<comment><USER3> Please keep in mind that non-tablet devices have 800x480 screens, too. (Mine phone, too at 3.5").

<comment><USER2> Yes, but most phones with this resolution report a density of 240dpi and auto sale images to fit the full screen.

Tablets on the other hand have 800x480 screens but report a density of 160dpi and images don't scale up and look like little images in the top left corner of the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Since most users who request a refund do so within minutes of purchase, we will reduce the refund window on Market to 15 minutes"

I'm concerned that's gone too far the other way. Twenty four hours was too long for a utility/short game but at fifteen minutes, you're cutting it fine if you have installation problems or need to properly evaluate the app.

<comment><USER5> I think this is fair. If you end up using the app for more than 15 minutes, I think you have to pay for it.

This is still generous compared to the App Store which doesn't give you an easy way to refund your app purchase.

<comment><USER2> I completely agree. Too many users will purchase an app to play for the evening somewhere (while on a trip, for example) and just refund the next morning. It's unfair to the developers. 15 minutes is ample time to determine if the app is something you want to keep or not. As a developer, I still think this is better than the App Store, as buyers deserve the opportunity to return a purchase that is defective or not what they were expecting.

EDIT: I just thought about this another way....

With only 15 minutes, we're asking users to make pretty short snap decisions as to whether or not they want to keep the app. Just as purchasing an app is usually a spur of the moment decision, now canceling may work under the same conditions - causing MORE cancels.

<comment><USER6> With only 15 minutes, I'm a lot less likely to buy an app. For instance, I recently purchased Alchemy Premium only because of the 24 hour return policy; I'm not willing to use the ad-supported version, so I tried out the pay version. It wasn't interesting enough to me that I would have kept it on my own, but my girlfriend got enough of a kick out of it when I showed it to her an hour or two later that I did decide to keep it. Had there been a 15 minute return policy, I would have returned it and never again gone back to it.

Another example would be 8pen. Interesting idea, so I decided to try it out. But it's something that takes enough learning you need more than 15 minutes to decide if it will be worth it and you'll be dedicated enough to learn it. Turns out that it didn't really click with me, so I returned it; but had it been a little more appealing, I might have kept it. Without just a 15 minute return window, I wouldn't have enough time to make an effective decision and would most likely not buy in the first place or just return it because of that.

I, for one, will be much less likely to buy apps with only a 15 minute window.

<comment><USER7> For every time you do that, there are users who download apps trying to accomplish one task. I've had several friends do exactly that. They'll download the app, use it do whatever they want, and refund it. This way at least you have to do whatever your doing quickly.

<comment><USER6> What apps are there that are particularly useful for a single task? Most apps that I download I do so because they'll be useful in the future, not just once.

<comment><USER5> How about backing up your text messages, call history, etc so you transfer it to another phone?

This is a one-time task. If it's 24 hours, I can easily finish the backup and get refund.

If it's only 15 minutes, I won't have enough time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _We are also increasing the maximum size for .apk files on Market to 50MB, to better support richer games._

They should increase this. There are some amazing games on the iPhone that are _well_ above 50 MB. RAGE HD is 743.6 MB (but its an iPad app too) and Myst is 533.4 MB.

<comment><USER9> The Gameloft game Dragon Hunter(Which isn't on the Android Market) comes with a 5mb .apk. Then once the app installs it connects to the internet to download the rest of the 240mb of files. That seems like the best way to work around the limit.

<comment><USER10> That work-around comes at a cost of the server bandwidth tho. You'll have to maintain a server with the game resources. It's one time cost (or probably 2-3 times if the user uninstalls and re-installs again a few times).

But your idea is actually cool if your app needs a lot of screen specific resources. They can be downloaded later after checking the device screen specs.

<comment><USER11> On the bright side, its a bit easier on the device itself, as the package manager needs to copy the APK from the download location when installing, so by storing application resources outside of the APK, installs will be faster and less likely to fail.

<comment><USER12> It is also much more flexible. Aura (GPS navigation) downloads maps only of those states or countries, that you are interested in. You don't have to store all maps.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Drive – a tiny program to pull or push Google Drive files - odeke-em https://github.com/odeke-em/drive

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're running into this:

google.golang.org/cloud/compute/metadata/metadata.go:54: unknown net.Dialer field 'KeepAlive' in struct literal

then it's supposed to be fixed per [https://github.com/odeke- em/drive/issues/223](https://github.com/odeke-em/drive/issues/223), but it's not working for me and neither do the workarounds. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be an issue with Go 1.2.2, upgrading to 1.4.2 fixes it.

<comment><USER2> If you don't want to use Go, try this [http://syncdocs.com](http://syncdocs.com) which does the same thing, syncing to Google Drive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _If you have less than 1GB memory on your device see Precautions for building on devices with less than 1GB RAM_

Combined with "a tiny program" in the title, this makes me curious as to what exactly needs so much memory.

<comment> odeke-em So before the usage of golang.org/x/text/collate this was causing this problem. However, I got rid of it with PR [https://github.com/odeke- em/drive/pull/331](https://github.com/odeke-em/drive/pull/331). That comment is a legacy one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the same idea : [https://github.com/google/skicka](https://github.com/google/skicka)

<comment><USER5> It's exciting seeing these types of tools generally being written in Go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice, but what we really want is a way to do it automatically, like Dropbox.

I know Burcu Dogan was against automatic sync because it isn't 100% reliable in every case, but frankly she's wrong. That isn't a sufficiently bad con not to use it compared to the pro - it's automatic.

<comment><USER7> > I know Burcu Dogan was against automatic sync because it isn't 100% reliable > in every case, but frankly she's wrong. That isn't a sufficiently bad con > not to use it compared to the pro - it's automatic.

With a bit of bad luck, automatic sync easily turns into a mess (see the trainwreck that is Apple Music; even the most devoted fanboys loathe it).

<comment><USER8> With big enough amount of bad luck, anything can turns into a mess. OTOH sync (two-way sync) if done right can work pretty well and is quite useful in the real world. I am saying it as the developer of Autosync for Google Drive android app ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.dr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.drivesync))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also [https://github.com/Grive/grive](https://github.com/Grive/grive)

<comment><USER10> I tried and couldn't make it work couple months ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As one of the users (js-ojus) of `drive`, I can say that it is shaping up nicely! Keep the good work up, odeke-em!

<comment> odeke-em Thank you js-ojus, I appreciate your contributions and ideas. Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know of a program like this for Box?</comment>


Suing California for Throwing Out 45k Ballots Over Handwriting 'Mismatches' - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression/were-suing-california-because-it-threw-out-more-45000 <comment><USER2> As handwriting and cursive skills decline, how useful are signatures going to be? I know no two of my signatures ever look the same.

In Japan instead of signatures they use personal stamps. Stamps used for your government business or banking get registered, and they can match stamps from the slight imperfections. If your stamp is stolen you register it as such so they know not to accept it.

A lot of expats here complain about the stamp system, but when they get their bank to use their signature instead, they complain that the bank actually verifies the signature, and I've heard stories of people refilling out the same form 3 times just to get their signature to match the one on file!

<comment><USER3> > A lot of expats here complain about the stamp system, but when they get > their bank to use their signature instead, they complain that the bank > actually verifies the signature, and I've heard stories of people refilling > out the same form 3 times just to get their signature to match the one on > file!

This happened to me several times. That's because they use a machine to verify differences in signatures and as long as the machines do not OK the operation you have to retry. It's retarded, because that verification is made for stamps and not signatures and therefore it probably is not trained properly for the subtles differences in signatures from one to the next.

And the stamp system in Japan is retarded anyway, because it's super easy to reproduce one's stamp if you have a paper with that imprint lying around. It's not like the stamp is precise at the nanometer level or something.

> how useful are signatures going to be?

I dont even know why we need signatures honestly - at the bank you should be able to present your national ID or passport and that should be sufficient. And nobody writes checks anymore anyway.

<comment><USER4> >It's retarded >is retarded

It's 2017. This type of ableist language should not be socially acceptable anymore, anymore than calling something the n-word as an adjective. Differing abilities should not be an insult.

<comment><USER5> It's 2017, you should be mature enough to shrug off language like this, and distinguish between slang and formal meaning. Differing ability always becomes an insult, and if you knew anything about the march of language, you'd know that this is a treadmill you cannot catch up with.

It's not language I use or agree with, but my opinion isn't going to change something that turns out to be fundamental to how people communicate. You need to learn how to live and let live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad they are doing this. Had my vote returned to me in Washington for the same dumb signature mismatch reason. Lucky enough it was in due time for me to update the signature and re-submit (I think). It's 2017 and our elections are still done using a paper signature matched by a human eye. Kind of mind- blowing how archaic it is, isn't it?

<comment><USER7> Signature mismatch? You have to sign your ballot? Doesn't that identify that it was your ballot?

It's been a couple of years since I last voted in NZ (election in 3 weeks, and it's every 3 years) but I definitely don't think you're allowed to put any identifying mark on your ballot here..

<comment><USER8> Washington does all vote-by-mail (except for people who need assistance or who don't have a permanent address). For the vast majority of voters, you get a ballot, a big fat book with statements from all of the candidates, and your return envelope in the mail a few weeks before the election.

After you fill out your ballot (with no identifying marks), you slip it into an inner envelope (with no identifying marks) and put that in the outer envelope (which includes your name and you have to sign).

When a ballot is received, elections officials check the signature on the outer envelope. If the signature matches, the inner envelope containing the ballot is removed from the outer envelope and dumped into a pile so no one can match the submitted ballot with the original envelope, and then the whole pile is taken in to be counted. There's an observation deck in the facility and cameras running the entire time the elections officials are counting ballots to make sure no one is cheating and checking who voted for who.

<comment><USER9> We don't have inner envelopes on mail-in ballots in California, though.

<comment><USER10> The inner envelope is essentially a safety mechanism to ensure that the person who might have read the name on the outer envelope does not accidentally see one of the voter's choices on the ballot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Question for someone who knows... Is the ACLU primarily an inbound or outbound organization?

I mean there must be multiple transgressions occurring all the time, so it must be very difficult to keep track of everything yourself, but at the same time being inbound will mean you only hear from the "loudest" voices. So how do they strike a balance?

<comment><USER12> I've always been under the impression that you have to 'invoke' them, meaning you have to know they exist and the kind of circumstances and cases they cater to, but I'd be very interested to know if they are proactive and try to represent people that might not realize they need them.

<comment><USER13> Both. If there is publicity, and they notice, and it is in their domain, and they have the budget, etc. they will reach out to you. At the same time, you can reach out to them and they may be able to offer some assistance.

They lack funding and personnel to act on everything. I'm not a lawyer but I've donated both time and money.

Note: Not all donations to them are tax deductible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So now I understand why my wife and 4 other people I know had their registration type changed from in-person to mail-in without their request or knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wait- handwriting is actually used for something? IIRC, handwriting analysis is not allowed in US courts of law because of its supposed inaccuracies. Why are we using it for any other legal uses?

I mean, using a signature as a legal, "I was there and I approved this document" is all fine and dandy, but for authentication? There are much better methods

</comment><comment><USER16> We need some form of bitcoin movement for identity it's such a broken system. No one trust voting electronically for fear of hacking but small valunteer run events aren't much safer.

<comment><USER17> I'm not convinced mail-in ballots need strong identity verification in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a great smoke screen for the ACLU to blow. While the real problem of MASSIVE illegal alien voter fraud continues in California. How does a state go from voting for proposition 187 to halt illegal immigration and having a conservative governor like Pete Wilson to the far leftist government presently in place? Massive voter fraud is the answer. I'm so glad the Trump administration is investigating :)

<comment><USER19> I am not American so I don't understand this so please somebody explain. Is this guy being downvoted because it's thought to be racist to complain about illegals voting without them being citizens, or is this guy being downvoted because this fraud is thought to not happen?

<comment><USER20> He's being downvoted because voter fraud, if on the scale that Trump believes it is (millions of people), would be readily visible and provable.

Instead it's a mechanism for enabling voter ID laws, which prevent demographics that trend Democrat from voting.

<comment><USER19> How do voter ID laws prevent democrats from voting? We have to be fully identified in Europe to vote and parties from the left win elections just fine.

<comment><USER21> ID laws are most likely to exclude young, black, low income and (legal) immigrant voters who are less likely to have drivers licenses than others and are more likely to vote for democrats. (here is one study [https://apnews.com/1dba56c5f8f7430f859748aff4405b10/study- vo...](https://apnews.com/1dba56c5f8f7430f859748aff4405b10/study-voter-id- laws-cut-turnout-blacks-young))

Some of the laws are explicitly designed to favor demographics that skew conservative and exclude others - for example Texas accepts gun licenses as valid IDs but excludes student IDs.

<comment><USER22> Is it possible to have national ID laws and not let states like Texas mess with those.

Maybe that's not what you meant it seems a bit racist assuming that young black youth who want to vote are too incompetent to get an ID. But presumably poor white or asian ones are smarter and more resourceful. Having lived in poor neighborhoods with various races I'd say that not true based on my experience.

<comment><USER23> You're the one bringing up incompetence. It's hard to get a driver's license or state ID when you have no car, work a full time job or two, the legislature closed your "local" DMV and the closest one is an hour away by bus.

<comment><USER22> I was trying to figure out what OP meant by the fact that black young won't be able to get IDs to vote. So presumption of incompetence was a guess there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Towards continuous movement in a city captured by 360° panoramas - <AUTHOR> http://www.agostbiro.com/demo.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello,

I've been working on a project to figure out a way to achieve continuous movement in an urban environment captured by immersive panoramas. I came up with something that I call perspective scaling where frames between pairs of panoramas are recovered by applying transformations to them based on their depth maps.

The method runs entirely on the GPU and will yield a steady 60 FPS in web browsers on modern PCs. Behind the link is a demonstration of this method on a synthetic scene. The code is available on GitHub.

There are several issues that need to be worked out such as the disocclusion of static objects, the presence of moving objects in the scene, and transitions between panoramas need to be smoothed. I believe that a satisfactory solution can be found to all of these issues. Also, the current implementation of the algorithm is very wasteful which might be a problem on higher resolutions and mobile devices. I haven't tested those cases.

All feedback is appreciated.

<comment><USER2> Cloudflare is blocking tor exit nodes on your behalf. If that's intentional, what security issue is at stake? This is a serious question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out. Blocking tor exit nodes was unintentional. I set up Cloudflare to save bandwidth as the panoramas in the demo make up close to a 100 MBs. A quick search did not yield a solution. Do you know how to fix this?</comment></comment></comment>


Thomas Paine: spendthrift, scrounger and polemicist of genius - <AUTHOR> https://usa.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/thomas-paine-spendthrift-scrounger-and-polemicist-of-genius-2/ <comment><USER2> I feel like I suddenly understand Steve Bannon a lot better.

</comment><comment><USER3> If anyone wants a collection of his works, I can't think of a better book than Library of America's Thomas Paine: Collected Works - [https://www.loa.org/books/95-collected- writings](https://www.loa.org/books/95-collected-writings)

</comment><comment><USER4> There was a short lived Broadway play on the life of Thomas Paine. It was filmed but I'm not sure it was ever released.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pz3WlFPAWQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pz3WlFPAWQ)</comment>


Autoresponder for Slack, for those looking to unplug this MDW and summer - <AUTHOR> https://treehoppr.com/autoresponder-slack <comment><AUTHOR> What else do you think Slack is missing?</comment>


Ask PG: have you seen a change in the cumulative comment karma? - <AUTHOR>

I was curious, when you look at the statistics of total comment karma before and after the karma points were removed from comments, is there a big change?  Are users upvoting / downvoting at the same frequency? <comment><USER2> Comments with high scores seem to have slightly higher scores than they would have, but comments with low scores seem to have about the same. Probably because the -4 limit on displayed comment scores was already concealing the actual score.

<comment><USER3> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them.

<comment><USER4> I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was worthwhile.

<comment><USER5> However, it also eliminate the ability for me to reference a comment with a high score with the understanding it's probably _more_ correct. After all, once I read a comment, I want to know if what others think. Comment scores help that. Granted, it's not the only solution. Having some other visual indicator that suggests a comment is of high quality would be good without needing to resort to simply displaying points.

<comment><USER6> Replies to comments solve the "I want to know what others think" problem. I agree with the previous commenter: having the comment ratings hidden was unusual at first but I definitely do acknowledge that I used to mentally pre- judge a comment based purely on others' responses to it, despite having dealt multiple times with comments that I disagreed with which had higher upvote counts than the ones I felt were better answers.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. First, disconnect the actual score with something that indicates a high quality comment. You can display something as high quality without showing a score.

Next, a high quality comment need not have comments. Some of the best comments do not need followup. We should also discourage comments that merely parrot the parent and offer no content of their own. This is probably the biggest argument I have against not having any soft of indicator. If a comment is good, it deserves an up vote to indicate quality.

Next, replies still do not solve the scanning problem. For me to deduce the quality comments using replies requires I read through all the comments. Sometimes this is not an issue, but posts with a larger number of comments, this becomes problematic.

Finally, the above also means that replies of comments, and replies of replies, suddenly makes it really difficult what others deem quality content.

At the end of the day, up voting comments is meant to distinguish good, high quality comments from the normal run of the mill comments. If it's not being used for that, then up votes are merely being used as a way to obtain karma. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that by removing karma from showing which posts are of higher quality, it serves no real purpose other than to obtain more karma. I'm more interested in reading quality comments than obtaining karma, something the current system doesn't assist with. It only makes karma something to "brag" about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My guesses:

Voting was used to set a comment to the "correct" level. Now no one can see where they're at, so good comments probably get more than they used to (depth).

Overall people don't think about points as much, so overall commenting is down (breadth).

<comment><USER8> _Voting was used to set a comment to the "correct" level. Now no one can see where they're at, so good comments probably get more than they used to (depth)._

That sums up my behavior. While I might up or down vote a comment simply based on its intrinsic value I tended to also consider "correcting" vote tallies. For example, if it looks like a comment is getting high up votes simply because of "me-too-ism" rather than because it is offering a striking observation I might down-vote (since I want to discourage generally trite but popular opinion comments).

The lack of feedback, the inability to see the results of my voting, and the inability to see how others are appraising comments detracts from the site and make me less inclined to vote at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The more important question is: are populist comments getting fewer upvotes? The reason they might is that voting has become for many voters more the individual task of judging the worth of the comment and less the group task of deciding what is popular.

Looking at the distribution of comment karma before and after the change might give some clue as to that. Analysing two popular threads might be better, if we get the methodology right.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm finding that I miss the comment points, but I didn't think I would.

PG should do another experiment where he hides the submitter and commenter _names_ while showing the comment points for N hours (N tbd) after the comment goes live.

<comment><USER11> The only thing I miss is an indicator that I actually _did_ hit the upvote button and didn't accidentally downvote someone.

I use HN from an iPad about half the time, and I don't really trust my ability to accurately hit the correct arrow.</comment></comment>


YouTube will experiment with ways to prevent dislike button 'mobs' - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/03/youtube-experiments-could-prevent-dislike-abuse/ <comment> who-knows95 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- disliked_YouTube_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most- disliked_YouTube_videos)

1\. "YouTube Rewind 2018: Everyone Controls Rewind"[17] 2\. "Baby"[18] Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris

</comment><comment><USER2> Is there a difference between like and dislike button 'mobs'?</comment>


Coronavirus declared global health emergency by WHO - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51318246 <comment><USER2> Posted one minute earlier and has more comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22194798)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes this is called getting ahead of the curve. It's very good</comment>


Things that Irritate me About Android OS - 4 weeks in - <AUTHOR> http://gallamine.com/post/3876525929/things-that-irritate-me-about-android-os

<comment><USER2> I say something similar every time someone reviews Ubuntu, but if these are the "problems" (on a $100 dollar no-contract phone!) then Ubuntu/Android has arrived.

I think about half of the issues are valid problems, and some are fixed in later devices e.g.

* Google's moving away from mountable USB storage to MTP system, the Nexus S has no removable storage,

* the newer Android versions have a recently installed tab in the ELOP though Google would probably prefer you to use search

* moving things to the home pages is much smoother in Honeycomb

* menu actions are more obvious in Honeycomb

but some are just stuff you have to, and will, get used to like not closing apps.

Coincidentally I just blanked an old iPhone for my son to use and the number one annoyance for me was installing an app and being dumped out of the app store each time rather than them installing in the background in parallel. I can see how this might help people who have never installed an app before, but it was certainly an "annoyance" for me as I tried to fill the phone with apps. In general after a few days I found the Android experience better, but certainly at first coming from an iPhone it was like using a mouse with my left hand.

</comment><comment><USER3> > 1\. Phone storage vs. SD card storage.

Why? Because power users like to be able to move their data around as they wish. For the typical "mother," they aren't filling up the 8GB internal that's included. The 16GB SD card (or larger) is just gravy.

> 2\. The epic list of applications (ELOP)

Not sure what you mean... all apps are installed and available in the app locker? In the market place app list, they are organized by install/update date (I believe that is default).

> 3\. I have to manually move apps from the ELOP to the home pane where I want > them.

I think I get it... you don't like customization.

> 4\. Inconsistent interaction

Huh?

> 5\. If I have the power to run multiple apps, then give me the power to > close them.

The apps aren't really "running" in the background. This isn't a pc like you're used to. It actually degrades performance and battery life to use task killers. The Android Developer site has a good article on this.

<comment><USER4> > For the typical "mother," they aren't filling up the 8GB internal that's > included.

My mother (why the quotation marks?) loves recording videos and wouldn't dream of removing them from her phone/SD, even if she imported them to her computer. Filling 8GB is very doable. She'd be thoroughly confused once she did so.

Giving power users the option of moving things around is OK, but the phone shouldn't report that it's out of space unless all the storage mechanisms (internal and SD and anything else) are actually full, as opposed to;

> Today my phone said I was out of space, but it turns out I have plenty of > space, but just not in the right place.

<comment><USER5> The 8GB in his example is internal memory, used only by the phone to store the Android system image and application packages. All user data, including videos, are stored on the SD card, external memory. The vast majority of users will never install enough applications to fill internal memory, hence the OP's point is relatively moot.

I assume the author probably bought a dirt cheap Android device that doesn't actually have a decent amount of internal memory; my original G1 for instance only had 512M of internal memory, and installing some big apps or games could quickly fill that up. Modern, powerful Android phones can have 4G or more of internal memory for installed programs, which most users will never have a problem with.

Granted, I'm not saying this still isn't confusing, but for most people it should be a non-issue because the only thing they'll care about is filling the SD card.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for clarifying for me!

Correct. All of the more recent "power" Android phones even tend to have 8GB internal.

I wonder what phone OP was using... I just checked my Droid X: 1 GB (of 16 GB) used on SD card, 2 GB (of 8G B) used on the internal.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I got the Optimus V - dirt cheap and only has 256 mb of internal memory. So, obviously this isn't representative of "modern" phones, but I'm not convinced that better hardware is a good solution to a potential design flaw.

Case in point, this phone recently went on sale at Best Buy and Target and has been sold out in _every_ store in my city. There's a lot of new Android users that will be dealing with this problem.

<comment><USER2> What version of Android does it run? I have a similar budget phone (ZTE Blade) and this was an issue under 2.1 (I would get warnings about being low on space) but I haven't even thought about it since I went to 2.2 a while ago. I believe most larger apps install themselves automatically to the SD card now? Enough do it that it doesn't bother me anyway.

I actually have no idea how much internal space my phone has, which I take as evidence that it's not an issue for me. Google tells me it's got a shockingly small sounding 150MB of internal of memory.

<comment><USER6> Blade has 512 MB of internal memory, but it is partitioned into /system, /data and /cache. Both system and data are somewhere around 235 MB each and cache is the rest.

Android doesn't help that it warns you when you are below 10% of free /data. On Blade, it is still 23 MB.

Just out of curiosity, what are you using for 2.2 on Blade? AFAIK, the official version is still 2.1.

<comment><USER2> I'm very happily using MoDaCo custom Froyo rom:

[http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blade-roms-rom- customi...](http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blade-roms-rom- customisation/324786/oled-tft-09-feb-r12-modaco-custom-froyo-rom-download- online-kitchen/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, I will have a look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The SD card issue might be confusing, but it would be even more confusing if it installed apps on the SD card by default. Switching SD cards and having apps die and/or disappear would he quite confusing. I don't know if there is a feasible way to unify removable and non-removable storage. It kind of explains why the iOS devices don't have removable storage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I hadn't considered that. For my use though, I'm not convinced that having removable storage is all that useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The OP raises some valid points (agree with them or not).

> 1\. Phone storage vs. SD card storage

As much as people much like expandable storage it is, by definition, more complicated. There are currently two simple models:

1\. All internal (the Apple model); and

2\. All external (the digital camera model, even though some do have up to 1-2GB of internal storage).

Having a mix is like having two hard drives. You're suddenly asking your users to make decisions about things they probably don't care about or that they do care about in ways you can't predict. Will they want this app on internal or external storage? What about this music?

All external works for digital cameras because the OS (firmware, etc) is in the camera. The photos and videos go on the card. You don't lose functionality when you take out the card (apart from edge cases like saving profiles on certain high end DSLRs).

This is why I believe iDevices will _never_ have an SD card slot. Or, if they do, it will only be for very limited use, much like the Camera Connection Kit on the iPad.

> 2\. The epic list of applications (ELOP)

I find this a little strange too. If someone installs something, it appears at the top level in iOS. On Android, mainly due to manufacturer customization, you have less "home pages" for your apps (and they're generally filled with crud you need to remove). Making your newly downloaded app harder to find is a little odd.

> 4\. Inconsistent interaction

This is like the one/two button mouse argument. iDevices have one button, the home button (as well as volume and, on the iPad, a mute/orientation lock switch). In part for this reason, iOS apps are extremely consistent.

Android has 4 buttons: back, home, menu, search. IMHO at least 2 of them are unnecessary. App developers use them in completely inconsistent ways, which tends to frustrate the user.

The way I describe iOS (and Apple in general) is that they make the right choices for most users most of the time. Nothing will ever make everyone happy. The uncomfortable truth is that this is really the best thing to do for the market as a whole.

Many tech-savvy people chafe against what they see as choices being taken away from them (which they are) but they're also under the illusion that a) they need these choices and b) having these choices, by definition, is better. Neither is true. You may like these extra choices but that doesn't mean that they're good or that you _need_ them.

Again, we can make a Windows/Mac comparison. Windows apps are horribly inconsistent. Mac apps are almost completely consistent. That makes learning new Mac apps much, much faster for experienced Mac users. By the same token, put a Mac user in front of Windows or a Windows user in front of a Mac and both will flounder (I don't buy the argument that Macs are _inherently_ easier; it still comes down to what you're used to). The learning curve is definitely gentler on Macs however. Same for iOS (vs Android).

<comment><USER5> > Having a mix is like having two hard drives. You're suddenly asking your > users to make decisions about things they probably don't care about or that > they do care about in ways you can't predict. Will they want this app on > internal or external storage? What about this music?

Except it's not. Android doesn't give the user any options, with one exception that almost nobody ever needs to worry about. See my comment at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2327424>

>> 2\. The epic list of applications (ELOP) >I find this a little strange too. If someone installs something, it appears at the top level in iOS. On Android, mainly due to manufacturer customization, you have less "home pages" for your apps (and they're generally filled with crud you need to remove). Making your newly downloaded app harder to find is a little odd.

This boggles my mind. What is so hard about pressing a button on home screen and then finding the application in a _sorted_ list of icons? If it's something you'll be using often, you can put it directly on a homescreen, but otherwise, how is it hard to find? Just because it's different from iOS doesn't mean it's hard; it just isn't what you're used to.

Edit: Further on this note, iOS allows you to group app icons into subfolders on your home screen. How is that any easier than having a single sorted list for finding everything installed on your phone, other than the fact that you were the one to define those folders? How is that any different than being the one to define what's on your home screens?

<comment><AUTHOR> " ... finding the application in a sorted list of icons?"

1\. The list can be _very_ long. As far as I can tell, there's no scroll bar indicator or even a alphabet marker.

2\. It's sorted by alphabet, not by install time, so it requires you remember the name of the application. If the name is different than in the market, you're really in trouble.

<comment><USER5> > 1\. The list can be very long. As far as I can tell, there's no scroll bar > indicator or even a alphabet marker.

That is a completely valid insight. Either solution would definitely make it easier to scroll to the correct area of the list.

> 2\. It's sorted by alphabet, not by install time, so it requires you > remember the name of the application. If the name is different than in the > market, you're really in trouble.

I would imagine that for anything not just-installed, having the list sorted by install time would be a nightmare. I have no idea what the relative order of installation would be for any of my apps. As for the name, I would hope that application authors wouldn't be so daft as to have the package's name be different that the actual launcher's title, although I wouldn't put it past somebody to do that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple: Jobs' "Retire, Relax, Enjoy your family" exchange is fake - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2010/07/01/apple-jobs-conversation-with-customer-is-a-fake/

<comment><USER2> Boy Genius Report updated the post with full (email) headers. For now it looks like they're sticking with the story:

[http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/01/exclusive- conversa...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/01/exclusive-conversation- with-steve-jobs-on-the-iphone-4-antenna-problems/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Except that they posted the headers of an e-mail from "Tom" _to_ Jobs, so they necessarily show absolutely no Apple-related mail servers. (And that's, of course, on top of the fact that headers are incredibly easily faked.)

<comment><USER2> Yep. Plus the fact that Apple went out of their way to deny the exchange (something they've never done before with I-emailed-Steve stories), suggests that this is fake.

But BGR is sticking with it for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The original blog and the information in the e-mail headers show that the customer said the quote, not Steve Jobs. The original article was incorrect.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additionally, Daniel Eran Dilger* claims the purported recipient of the e-mail tried to sell him the e-mail exchange two days prior, raising the question of whether BGR money changed hands.

*I take everything he writes under his own name and any and all pseudonyms with a large grain of salt, but it's worth noting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Since Steve Jobs is known for replying to emails, people can potentially try to manipulate Apple's image like that guy did. It could hurt the reputation of the company; I wonder why Jobs does that (and his emails usually don't have much content anyway).

</comment><comment><USER5> I smelled a rat because the emails "to" Jobs were borderline psycho, with all those misspellings and bad sentences. I wrote it off as possibly someone whose first language wasn't English. Actually, we were all being laughed at by a prankster.

</comment><comment><USER6> Such is the danger of letting the CEO respond to email, especially given his tendency for off-the-cuff remarks

</comment><comment><USER7> Where is the source for THIS claim?

<comment> saint-loup "Well, now Fortune is reporting that they've been told by a "a top Apple spokesman" that the emails are fake, and the exchange never happened. Of course, emails are notoriously easy to fake, and Apple has not been in the habit of commenting on its CEO's online wanderings, so our ears pricked up when we saw this article. We've reached out to Apple and they have independently confirmed to us that the conversation is indeed a hoax."

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/apple-pr-says-recent- stev...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/01/apple-pr-says-recent-steve-jobs- emails-are-fake/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's hard to imagine anybody having the gumption to talk to Steve Jobs like that.</comment>


Show HN: My_FreeBSD – A Script to Configure a FreeBSD Openbox DE - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/HiMyNameIsIlNano/my_freebsd <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys.

All over these years I managed to write a set of shell scripts that allow me to bootstrap a minimal but working Openbox environment on my Freebsd boxes. The need for this script stems from the fact that I frequently format my install and start from scratch. With the help of this script I managed to have a fully working "desktop" environment in less than an hour.

I worked on this project for a long time now and I always wondered what other people might think of it, if they could find it useful and basically collect ideas on how to improve it.

I am looking forward to receiving your feedback.

Cheers, HiIamIlNano</comment>


Ask HN:  What do you think of my new iPhone/iPod touch game? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1UmtgZtQnw

<comment><USER2> Really hard to understand.

You need some kind of natural progression in the demo so people can understand it more. Maybe start with only a few shapes. This could go for the game as well.

This game is not as easy to understand as like bejeweled or Tetris but I can see where you are coming from. The real thrill in those games are being able to set up a large chain.

What makes a game like this fun (and actually most games) are upgrades and level ups. Try having things you can put points into. First thing that comes to mind is special "attacks" or cubes. Maybe a cube that affects two levels of cubes instead of just the same size.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not a game about shapes. See the description on the video page or at <http://www.dropzap.com>.

<comment><USER2> >Smallest square disappears when shrunk.

I meant shape as in size! Clearly it's not about shapes as they are all square. My English gets poor right around time for food.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is to shrink the squares until they disappear. There are seven sizes. The smallest size disappears when shrunk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's an cool concept but I'm afraid I don't understand how it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's description on the video page. Also see <http://www.dropzap.com>.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any fun to program retro game engines? - <AUTHOR> I wonder if there's any game engines like pico-8, but which allow you to code in assembly.
Practically a portable VM with graphics and sound capabilities, which also emulates the hardware limitations of, say the NES.
I'm searching for such a thing because restriction breeds creativity and I'd like to learn an assembly language of some kind along the way. <comment><USER2> Also check out WasmBoy / VaporBoy projects for Nintendo GameBoy emulation on the web. The goal here is not just preservation of retro culture. But wholesale extending the platform for a new generation. New demos, speedruns, multiplayer, etc.

[https://github.com/torch2424/wasmboy](https://github.com/torch2424/wasmboy)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's amazing - I've now decided to learn some 6502 assembly by writing NES roms, so I'm even more stoked about this :D

Edit: This[1] is a pretty good tutorial, and the compiler being used is available for linux too.

[1][http://nintendoage.com/pub/faq/NA/index.html?load=nerdy_nigh...](http://nintendoage.com/pub/faq/NA/index.html?load=nerdy_nights_out.html#)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Alright, so I've asked this question on Reddit as well and got recommended the pixelvision-8[1] which looks like a neat project, but I'm very happy to hear about similar projects :)

[1][https://pixelvision8.itch.io/make](https://pixelvision8.itch.io/make)

<comment><USER3> here another [https://github.com/kitao/pyxel](https://github.com/kitao/pyxel)</comment></comment>


1 million is so 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2012/01/1-million-is-so-2011/ <comment><USER2> here is the video from erlang-factory 2012 which kind of goes in more depth (and width) : <http://vimeo.com/44312354>. the pdf for the talk is available here: [http://www.erlang- factory.com/upload/presentations/558/efsf2...](http://www.erlang- factory.com/upload/presentations/558/efsf2012-whatsapp-scaling.pdf)</comment>


Pannellum, a Lightweight Panorama Viewer for the Web - <AUTHOR> https://pannellum.org/?hn <comment><USER2> That is so cool. Cool enough in fact that I think I may get off my arse and move the 35k panoramas on clevr.com over to use it instead of my flash viewer that hasn't been updated in six years.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is really cool. Congrats! Would this work with panoramas and or photospheres taken using Google Camera on Android? I've taken a few cool photospheres inside churches, mosques, on top of mountains, etc, but it's really impossible to view them without posting them on Google+ or using the Photos application on Android.

Side note: it's a bit annoying that the link to the article is using a '?hn' query in the URL.

<comment><USER4> Pannellum supports Google Photo Sphere XMP data, so it should work with any photo sphere without any extra configuration.

Note: I'm the author of Pannellum.

<comment><USER5> I don't often see projects by Hopkins alums on HN, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the Peabody show up as the first image on Panellum.

Thanks for taking the time to build this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I helped with this: [https://github.com/digicademy/virtualTour](https://github.com/digicademy/virtualTour), for an example look here: [http://www.inschriften.net/hildesheim/rundgang/index.html](http://www.inschriften.net/hildesheim/rundgang/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> This seems like an interesting project, with interlinking, information icons etc. - nice for interactive walkthroughs. In a non-full screen mode it worked alright, but once in full screen, i experienced random jumps, like if mouse was misinterpreted...

</comment><comment><USER8> I recently searched for something like this, without success. Mighty impressed.</comment>


Sneaking Ruby Through Google App Engine (and Other Strictly Python Places) - <AUTHOR> http://hackety.org/2008/05/05/sneakingRubyThroughGoogleAppEngine.html <comment><USER2> This is neat. A complete Ruby-to-pyc compiler might be a faster implementation of Ruby than the original one.

</comment><comment><USER3> That _why_the_lucky_ guy sure is a bright one.

</comment><comment><USER4> why_ is really one of those dudes who needs to be funded by the community to work full-time on his awesome, wild projects. He is le-git.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this what Parrot (<http://www.parrotcode.org/>) set out to do? Any idea how that project is coming along?

<comment><USER6> He's resting.

<comment><USER7> Uh, no. It's actively developed (100s of commits per week) and is quite close to a 1.0 release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Python and Ruby are not so different that I really see the purpose of this. Compiling Python and/or Ruby to the Java or .NET runtime has clear benefits, but what is the benefit of this?

<comment><USER9> The main benefit, aside from that it's sort of cool, is that you would be able to write for Google App Engine in Ruby. Personally, I think that the similarities between Python and Ruby (particularly their bytecode similarities) makes Ruby the most obvious language to be added to GAE next; but there isn't anything quite as easy as GAE for getting your Ruby app off the ground right now.

<comment><USER10> Heroku is pretty close <http://heroku.com/>. I think it is funded by YC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a fan!</comment>


Beautiful Tools - <AUTHOR> http://www.mahdiyusuf.com/post/24784023641/beautiful-tools <comment><USER2> I've been talking about this a lot recently.

It doesn't surprise me at all that so many beautiful iOS apps are created in XCode, which is certainly the most beautiful IDE I've ever used. With Android, on the other hand, it's hardly a surprise when you look at Eclipse that the apps produced are... uninspired.

It's also echoed by Linus Torvalds when he evangelized the MacBook Air a few months ago. That article led directly to me buying an Air (which had been on my mind anyway) in favor of lugging around the bigger Macbook Pro supplied by my employer. The Air is completely silent, has stunningly beautiful lines, and a screaming fast SSD. I could use a couple more gigs of ram but 4GB is workable and the trade-off is one I'm happy with.

Outside my craft, I have a real passion for high quality tools that are made to last a lifetime. Truly good knives in the kitchen, a good set of enameled cast iron and stainless cookware, beautiful and simple appliances like the Vitamix and Moccamaster. In the bathroom a high quality badger hair shaving brush and a classical safety razor. In the garage high-quality tools that feel good in your hand and won't break when you're using them.

I could go on for another 5 paragraphs. Suffice to say, +2 from me.

<comment><USER3> Apple's great achievement has been the cultivation of this intense variety of brand tribalism.

The purchase is not merely an exchange of money for a product that gives pleasure or does what it's expected to. It certainly isn't the guilty pleasure of someone who recognizes that they are consuming more than they really need to. No, it has a kind of ceremonial importance. It is a badge of social honor and distinction, a proof of discerning taste which sets the buyer apart from the grubby masses and puts them in the company of Personalities even as they enjoy the new-box smell and savor the kinds of product claims that we are jaded to in most advertising.

So it is that a post about configuring free tools for productivity results in a paean to Linus Torvalds, MacBook Air, Vitamix, Moccamaster, and your real passion for beautiful, most beautiful, stunningly beautiful, truly good, beautiful, simple, high quality, high-quality, feel good. The 99 names of Apple.

<comment><USER4> The children here are potentially misinterpreting this. I don't see this comment as being judgmental. The fact that Apple has accomplished this does NOT mean that the poster is saying Apple adherents are mindless drones or fanboys.

What's inherently wrong with "brand tribalism" or "proof of discerning taste"?

I read this is a tribute to Apple, nothing more.

<comment><USER3> You are right. I am saying Apple's branding is masterful. I'm not saying that Apple products are bad or that the people who buy them are stupid. I'm not saying anything about those because I don't think there is anything interesting to say; I only see computers and people buying computers. Brand tribalism is a great thing if you can get it for your product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who don't tweak their toolchains spending one chunk of time and forgetting about them is obviously better than doing nothing else, but personally I recommend continuously evaluating what you do on the shell (well, obviously this can be generalized, but I won't go there) and tweaking away your pain points and repetitive tasks.

Some specific recommendations --

\- Keep a version controlled `dotfiles` folder, link important files to it and share it across dev envs.

\- Add shortcuts to modify your vimrc (<leader>v) and apply it (<leader>V) to help you tweak fast and get instant feedback.

\- Using an approximation of REPL for any work I do has been the single largest productivity boost I have: minimize keystrokes between (Write Code) <> (Build/Compile/Run/Whatever/Get feedback) <> (Write code). I started using vimux recently (lets you run commands in a split pane without actually leaving the pane with vim installed) and have never been happier.

\- While speaking of nice fonts to write code in, <http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/PT+Mono> is a new favourite of mine. Of course, your mileage will vary.

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER6> _> Using an approximation of REPL for any work_

Surprisingly often, this can be accomplished by simply running "watch" in a separate terminal window. (see also <http://www.profv.de/vim-watch-wmii>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fonts he mentions aren't bad; I think though, that Monaco is quite possibly the finest font ever made. I've yet to see a font that beats its cleanliness and legibility.

</comment><comment><USER8> May I also recommend DejaVu Sans Mono as a great terminal font (I have it at 14pt). Pulled the idea from here: <http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178>

<comment><USER9> DejaVu Sans Mono is a must have (or a must try at least). It has 10x more Unicode glyphs than any other monospaced font out there, and is easy on the eyes (close call with Monaco on readability I'd say). Menlo is just an Apple- botched version of DejaVu (saying this as an Apple fan btw), without the extra glyphs.

With DejaVu, you can easily get awesome things like: ▷ λ ⇒ ≤ ⊥ ⧺ ∈ ∆ ⤜ ∅ ∑ ≡ ∘ √ (all in true monospace that plays nicely with Vim!). I have to admit this may not be for everyone :), but fun to hack Haskell with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know any good references for transitioning from bash to zsh? Particularly thinking about converting .bash_aliases, .bash_profile, and .bashrc. What are the ZSH equivalents?

Also I get the impression the poster uses ZSH, Tmux, and Vim. I use Vim and Tmux too, but unfortunately not at the same time if I can help it. There are one or two Vim commands that don't work in Tmux because of a key mapping conflict. Been so long since I've tried that I can't remember exactly what the conflict is, but does anyone know what I'm talking about and know of a solution?

Edit: Thanks everyone, very helpful. Also, in case anyone else wondering, after a little research, it appears the syntax for aliases are the same for .bashrc/.bash_aliases, .profile, and .zshrc.

So I moved all my aliases to .aliases and sourced that file .bash_aliases, .zshrc, (and .profile but I don't think it's needed here. also didn't seem to work when I sourced it in .profile only and not the other two).

<comment><USER11> I'm an emacs user, not vim, but I have some idea. My tmux.conf reads like this:

      unbind C-b
      set -g prefix `
      bind-key ` send-prefix

This removes Ctrl-b as the tmux prefix, sets it to ` (backquote) instead, and makes pressing ` twice insert an actual `.

It really doesn't take very long to get used to typing `` when you mean `.

<comment><USER10> Good call, been using it tonight, dig it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had a git-customized bash prompt for a while and never had he urge to try zsh until the embedded video showed the following: arrow keys and tab moves a selection between tab-completed results.

That alone is worth me trying it out, particularly when browsing DB dumps and Apache logs which are all time stamped. (It's easier to identify the correct one than retype a timestamp)

<comment><USER13> Same here. Here's the script for a git-aware bash prompt if anyone else is interested.

function parse_git_dirty {

      [[ $(git status 2> /dev/null | tail -n1) != "nothing to commit (working directory clean)" ]] && echo "*"

}

function parse_git_branch {

      git branch --no-color 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e "s/* \(.*\)/ \1$(parse_git_dirty)/"

}

PS1='[\w$(parse_git_branch)] '

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was agreeing with the article until the conclusion. I don't see how any of the stuff he had in the article even refers, much less supports, the conclusion of 'Colors are extremely important'. How do you conclude that from "customizability is good", which seemed like the main thesis of tfa?

<comment><USER15> Well, maybe because they are outstanding visual cues, and they can easily be used to discriminate information that otherwise you would have to _manually_ detect, look for and/or parse to extract some piece of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Life is too short to use bad tools. His point about "love your tools" is very close to what the relationship should be.

I /love/ my editor, I've been using it for 20 years. There's a great visual merge tool I've been using every day for over a decade. And a handful of others. Some of these I purchased (and keep up to date) with my own money. I don't mind, it's worthwhile investment.

Then I see people who regularly write code in Notepad or the moral equivalent, and I want to cry. They have no idea what they are missing.

I happen to disagree on colors; I'm red-green colorblind. Colors may be great for providing hints, but conveying /meaning/ with colors is fraught with peril.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would have liked to go into vim stuff too; but blog post would have become a book.

<comment><USER18> You might be interested in vim janus. <https://github.com/carlhuda/janus>

<comment><USER19> Or in my vimrc: <https://bitbucket.org/cheater/vimrc>

It's just a single file, so the checkout is easier, and it downloads all the plugins on its own.

Read the vimrc before you use it, otherwise you might find yourself a bit surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Using VIM delights me everyday. However, I also work with Java codebases, and there Java IDEs are still relevant.

I've tried a VIM plugin on IntelliJ IDEA, but it doesn't work well. I'd like to use the VIM keybindings with IDEA for the sake of speed and enjoyment, but it seems that I should first contribute quite a lot of code for the IDEA VIM plugin to get it working properly.

How do you VIM lovers work with Java code bases?

<comment><USER21> You can give <http://eclim.org/> a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just wanted to say thank you a million times. As a web developer, I totally agree that the tools we use day in and day out should be a delight to interact with. With that said, I'm almost ashamed to say that I had no idea Zsh existed. After reading your post and downloading it, I am forever grateful.

<comment><USER17> my pleasure. :) let me know if you have any questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ProFontX is the monospace font I have been using for the past few years. It has served me well, although I also do love the default Monaco.

<http://faisal.com/software/profontx/>

</comment><comment><USER24> I use some of these tools, thanks for the post. I think that there are a lot of people who are unaware that they can have an attractive and (sometimes profoundly useful, depending on what you do) shell experience.

</comment><comment><USER25> A relevant site for anyone trying to improve their *nix command line skills:

<http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse>

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone knows if and how I can install zsh on windows with git bash?

<comment><USER27> Try installing Cygwin with the zsh and git packages. From there, you can install oh-my-zsh etc very easily.

Cygwin is effectively a UNIX environment on your Windows machine, with support for many programs. A big draw is that it uses a UNIX folder structure /usr/, /etc/ and so on.

Git Bash, as I understand it, is just a bash prompt and basic tools (cd, ls and the like). You will probably have a hard time installing other programs. Don't take my word for it though!

<http://www.cygwin.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yawn.

Here's a better list in 5 minutes.

Vim + pathogen + NERDTree + CtrlP + CTags + surround.vim + whatever shortcuts you're comfortable with mapped to <leader>

Git + "git config --global --add color.ui true" + Tig

XMonad

Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard

Trackball mouse

Arch Linux

Grep + find

Ditz to track bugs for small projects

Sphinx for documentation

Jenkins for CI

Konsole

Ofcourse, Oh-My-Zsh + Zsh's vi mode + a good font too.

<comment><USER28> Good job, Reddit-moonlighters, downvote the one comment full of useful information in this thread because you're butt-hurt over the tone of 8 words.

To add to my argument for when you downvote this, Fish is nicer to use and easier to setup than Zsh.

Seriously, someone blogs about three well known "tools", which has been done to death by now - one of which is about fucking fonts (seriously?) and that's considered a useful contribution?

I mean, with gems like these, how can you possibly go wrong?

>So the prompt here is a current directory surrounded with square braces.

Wow, thank you for explaining that. To contribute back, did you know that the sky looks blue in the day time?

>No one loves a slow terminal. No one.

Aha! But I love me a slow terminal!

>What makes a good programming font? > > mono-spaced > readable > you can tell the difference between O and 0.

Someone give this man a publishing contract, this is blowing my mind!

The level of brain damage here is mind bending. Even more so given that so many of you are sufficiently brain damaged that you are professional developers who can't dig up the 500 articles which have already covered this.

To add insult to injury, the highest rated comment is praising XCode. Because it's pretty. Jesus H Christ. From my experience with using Mac OS X, which I have no comprehension of how anyone can stand from up close - I mean come on, you JUST got the ability to full screen an app? You can't change the window manager to something usable? Want to customize something? Fuck you, customize that! Oh wait, you can't! - it's clear that Apple products are shiny on the outside and polished turds on the inside. The only good thing about OS X is what Apple didn't write - that is to say, the Mach 3 microkernel and BSD userland apps. Apple wrote iTunes in whole and it's an insult software applications.

<http://devcodehack.com/xcode-sucks-and-heres-why/> <http://amplicate.com/hate/xcode>

So really? We have a group of developers for who having pretty buttons is more important than, you know, solving the fucking problem? I sincerely hope that I never have to work with anyone who fits into that category. You'll probably spend half the day plucking your eyebrows while the rest of us get shit done. Oh wait, I have, and they were just as idiotic as some of the people here. They were idiotic because style won over substance. If you care about style, go paint, design UI's or make music and get out of my industry.

Frankly, I'm sick of you hipster "developers". Bring back the four inch thick specs, uncombed hair and social anxiety ridden social rejects as I'd rather deal with them than this crap any day of the week. Someone here even hinted that them using Mac OS X when it was version 10.2 was a badge of honor. Yes, mentioning that you were there "at the start" then saying that you don't care about badges is implying that you see it as a badge. Moronic. Using Linux when it was in it's 0.x evolutions is a badge of honor. Writing kernel drivers is a badge of honor. Working on exotic systems like Solaris or QNX is a badge of honor. Get some perspective and show some respect for the roots of this culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> my dotfiles <https://github.com/myusuf3/dotfiles>

<comment><USER29> Have you considered using vundle? That removes some of the submodule requirements. <https://github.com/gmarik/vundle>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This goes hand-in-hand with the article a while back about having a codebase that is easy to ramp up and use. I don't mean the actual code itself, I mean the project and the build tools. For example, it's absurd that I have to build in 4 different places, in different black-box terminals to get my code to run. Or that the unit tests for the project I was placed on only run in environments that are perfect replicas of production. Or that I'm using source control that was cludgy 8 years ago.</comment>