When to Switch to Python 3.8 - <AUTHOR> https://pythonspeed.com/articles/major-python-release/ <comment><USER2> This feels like blogspam where "Python 3.8" can be replaced by literally any new version of anything.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this really didn't state anything novel that anyone who's even aware of Python 3.8 wouldn't have already known...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know this is a tired subject, but as Mercurial is nearing its multi-year effort to upgrade to Python 3, patience wears thin:

[https://twitter.com/indygreg/status/1187069501424062464](https://twitter.com/indygreg/status/1187069501424062464)

Mercurial was in fact one of important reasons for why the Python 2 deprecation was pushed back five years. We met with Guido at Pycon 2014 in Montreal and asked for an extension, which he granted. Back then Python itself was using Mercurial, so maybe that's why our opinion carried some weight.

We weren't the only ones, but we were one of the vocal ones.

<comment><USER5> Could you _precis_ why it's taking multiple years? Surely there's a formal equivalence that could be automatically implemented wrt the code itself?

<comment><USER4> Mercurial treats everything as bytes. Whatever you store in your repo, that's what Mercurial reads -- bytes. There are no encodings, there are no strings. Only bytes. You don't want your VCS to start having opinions about which language you should speak and how you should encode it.

PEP 461 was the bare minimum we needed before porting to Python 3 could happen:

[http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0461/](http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0461/)

We needed a way to put things into bytestrings.

And after that, it's just nothing but work. Lots of it. Little of which could be automated.

I get a little impatient, personally, with people who think that upgrading software is easy. We don't actually _care_ about Python. We care about version control. Python is just some thing in the middle that is helping us produce version control. A multi-year effort to upgrade to Python 3 (or 3.8 or whatever) isn't giving us or our users a net benefit. In fact, until recently, it was a net loss, because Python 3.5 or 3.6 had slower warmup time, which is terrible for a tool like hg that needs to pay that cost every time you run any command.

Instead, Python 3 created busy work. Almost five years of it.

<comment><USER6> I have no background on Mercurial but I'm curious whether it was considered to rewrite the entire thing from scratch in another language?

<comment><USER4> We did. We rewrote it in Python 3.

More seriously, there's also quite a bit of Rust now.

[https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan](https://www.mercurial- scm.org/wiki/OxidationPlan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh come on. You can do useful work without a linter and autoformatter for a couple of weeks. Geez. Especially for Python, of all languages.

</comment><comment><USER8> When a minor-point upgrade happens and it breaks backward-compatibility, there is something very wrong with the versioning or the major name of the software.

Either the major-version number should be changed (Python 31 to Python 32) or the project name should be changed (Python to Boa).

This is also a very common problem with GTK+ and some other major pieces of software.

</comment><comment><USER9> Easy: when I can safely and easily install tensorflow on python 3.8 [1.].

1\. [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/33374#event-...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/issues/33374#event-2714817436)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know anything about Lua?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at developing a Lightroom plugin (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshoplightroom/)
No idea why Adobe chose to use it, but I thought I'd ask if anyone out there has experience with it.
Is it fairly easy to get rolling with?
Is there much of a community of Lua hackers?
Would it be hard to find some one if I wanted to contract out the job? <comment><USER2> I've used Lua for video game scripting - it was pretty quick and easy to learn (I had a C/C++ background).

There is a relatively large community of help - I got a lot of tips from the list-servs.

Not hard at all to find coders with Lua experience - I assume most will have a video game coding background, but should be able to get something coded for you - post it on Odesk, rentacoder, et. al. and you'll have no problems

</comment><comment><USER3> Lua is well-liked because it's runs very close to C and easy to embed against, it's Algol-like, it has no dependencies beyond C itself, and it performs decently. It isn't as widely used as Python or Ruby because being embedded means it has a tiny standard library, and correcting that would go against the strengths of the language. (There's code and libraries out there, but it's all fragmented)

That said, the community is out there, and pretty widespread.

</comment><comment><USER4> Although their syntaxes differ, Lua and Javascript are functionally very similar. Lua is like Javascript without the burden of maintenance-by- committee.

Lua is very small, very portable, very easy to embed and extend in C/C++ based apps and is one of the fastest interpreted languages available. These features taken together are why Lua is the industry standard for runtime scripting in games.

You should be aware, however, that unlike Ruby or Python, Lua's standard library is intentionally minimal and available add-on libraries are relatively sparse. The intention is that you are not inheriting a fat body of functionality when you adopt Lua. Instead you are starting with a slick, flexible core and customizing it into exactly what your app needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thanks.

I'm assuming since Adobe already has an SDK for Lightroom that I wont have to do much customizing ... rather, just interact with their libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We were looking to add scripting to one of our products. The choices ended up getting narrowed to Lua or Python. Microsoft's support for Python (as IronPython) tipped the scales for us (we're a Microsoft shop, so if MS makes/supports it, our boss goes that way).

I thought Lua was a better fit, but I got overruled.

>Is it fairly easy to get rolling with?

Yes. I thought so.

>Is there much of a community of Lua hackers?

I suspect that since it is a Brazilian invention, that they're be a lot more down south.

If you look for books on Lua, there aren't a lot of them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Lua is my favorite language to use when I need to make some systems level code configurable or extensible in simple ways.

Based on the traffic at <http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l> I'd say there is a small but healthy and growing community.</comment>


'Elitist': angry book pirates hit back after author campaign sinks website - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/08/elitist-angry-book-pirates-ocean-of-pdf-author-campaign-website <comment><USER2> Philip Pullman and Ursula leGuin both wrote quite well on the problem. They wished their adoring fans would respect their copyright and not leech.

Real paper print editions of academic books used to have Asia rights versions. A third the price, only for sale in emerging economies.

I respect the law here. I don't leech any more. It would be good if cheaper digital imprint was made available to people in the emerging internet economy.

I do get irritated when books I own on paper are not available as epub. Robert Buderi's work on radar for instance. And I get irritated when dead authors works are offline. Randolph Stow has a back Catalog of books which is only selectively available.</comment>


Ask HN: 2010 CS graduate here, where are the jobs? - <AUTHOR>

I graduated a few months ago from a state university with a degree in CS from their engineering school.  Right now I'm working for a large corporation doing extremely entry-level IT at a low hourly wage, and I feel like my brain is rotting away from lack of challenging work and the opressively dull environment.
When I search for "computer science starting salary" and related, all I see is glowing articles talking about starting at $50-60k a year, the huge demand, etc.
When I read threads on here about jobs, its talking about how plentiful they are, anyone with some personal programming experience is considered job-ready and even offered work! People talk about the great work conditions, enjoyable work, cool coworkers, etc., which for me would be way better than increased pay!
However, when I go on any job sites to reconcile these amazing tales of entry-level jobs to any openings, all I see is Java/.NET development at BigCorp, for people with 3-5 years of experience.  (And I have a feeling they don't mean 3-5 years of experience installing Windows XP and troubleshooting email.)
So help me out here HN, how do I go from my stuck in the 80's corporate IT job to working on a small team of HN calibre developers on something that I could actually be proud of?
--2.6 year member of HN, Recent CS Grad <comment><USER2> There are a lot of different things to touch on here, too many to adequately be digested in this thread, but I will try to get you going in the right direction.

I found myself in a similar situation about 6 months ago. I graduated from the University of Michigan three years ago with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and a 3.5 gpa. After college I got an amazing job opportunity in a rotation program at Intel, the mecca for aspiring computer architects and I had the world at my finger tips.

Fast forward two years: the rotation program had come to an end and I had come to the conclusion that working on hardware wasn't what I thought it was and what I really wanted to do is software. I was working in a post silicon validation group writing C++ on a tool used for Random Instruction Testing, but I felt like I wasn't growing. No one that I worked with was a good coder and I felt like I was getting worse and not better.

On the recommendation from a few friends I read The Passionate Programmer ([http://www.amazon.com/Passionate-Programmer-Remarkable- Devel...](http://www.amazon.com/Passionate-Programmer-Remarkable-Development- Pragmatic/dp/1934356344)) and it changed a lot of how I thought about my career. I highly recommend it.

I started thinking a lot about what I really wanted to do, what kind of place I wanted to work and what kinds of skills were in demand at those places. I spent every spare minute that I could for several months learning Ruby, Rails and everything I could about web development. I've been going to Meetups, meeting other developers, and making as many connections as I can. I am happy to report that I just quit my job last week and am starting at a startup working on Ruby and Rails full time in a couple weeks.

Find interesting new technologies that you are excited about and start building something outside of work. Look at the job postings for places that you want to work and work towards building those skillsets. Keep at and don't get discouraged. Find other like minded people to work with.

Keep a positive attitude and good things will happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. There isn't a shortage of companies including startups looking for programming talent. They are everywhere.

2\. Just because the above fact is true does not mean they will hire just anyone, degree or not. Having a CS degree is great, but that doesn't make you or anyone else a great programmer. People have graduated from CS with a high GPA no less and still can't program worth squat.

3\. Not talking about large companies, startups in particular, look for more than just raw programming skills. They look for culture fit, are you a passionate hacker, fast learner with great potential for more than just writing code, etc... At the end of the day, there are TOO MANY FACTORS to consider beyond just the simple fact that you have a CS degree to determine whether or not you fit the position in which these companies are hiring for.

My best advice here is find out what you may not be seeing and keep trying. You will eventually find that programming position but you first must understand what it is you may not be seeing that's preventing you from landing that job.

Where are you located and what type of position you are looking for?</comment>


Introducing the Computer of 2010 (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0821/087_print.html

<comment><USER2> "Electrons remain, doing everything they do best (switching), while photons do what they do best (traveling very, very fast)." - brilliant, no?

<comment><USER3> This is the way things work now. Electrons move very slowly, but the electric field (photons) travels at the speed of light... and that's what carries the information through a conductor.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Don't forget another movie release. Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.moviecron.com Update: Really appreciating all the feedback I'm receiving and will start right away at implementing all of it. I haven't put a link on the site to follow on twitter yet, but to get updated about new features follow Movie Cron on twitter @MovieCron ( http://www.twitter.com/MovieCron ). <comment><USER2> Cool site, will probably use it. Would be nice if, in the big view of upcoming movies, the posters were more prominent. As is, the big bootstrap buttons draw all the attention, which makes it harder to scan quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Few crits & suggestions:

\- The layout does render correctly at 1024x768 (iPad).

\- Some of the drop downs do not work when tapped.

\- Make the movie detail page URL more SEO friendly (include the title instead of your internal ID).

\- Don't force users to download images & titles from a few dozen other movies when looking at the movie detail page.

\- Focus on being mobile friendly. I can imagine a site like this being most useful when I see a poster or trailer at the local theater and want to remember it. In that situation, I'm on my phone with a slower connection (or one that is capped).

\- You're building a site with lots of utility, not a content site. I'm not sure links to half a dozen social media services will serve your users (along with forcing mobile visitors to download all that JavaScript).

\- Movie release dates vary greatly across countries. Even the US, smaller independent films will have slow roll outs over longer periods of time. Some bigger films will premier in NY and LA weeks or months before being released in a wider market. And not all films will be available in all areas. Your site gives no indication of any of this at all.

<comment><USER4> the layout still needs some work

e.g., the register box is off when not in standard resolution

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea!

I have small kids, so we never go to movies in theaters any more.

I'd happily use this service if it provided Rental/DVD/Netflix/iTunes availability reminders.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to implement that, but couldn't find an API that provides that information. I'd settle on scrapping the information if I could find a site that displays the dvd/netflix release with some consistency. The site is using the tmdb.org API for everything right now.

<comment><USER6> I believe RottenTomatoes provides an api, but I have no idea if it's free or what.

[http://developer.rottentomatoes.com/docs/read/json/v10/New_R...](http://developer.rottentomatoes.com/docs/read/json/v10/New_Release_DVDs)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Missed the dvd release date the last time I looked at it and I can look it up by the IMDB id. I'll start working on DVD releases right now.

<comment><USER6> Netflix also has a new releases RSS feed, which you might be able to incorporate via a listen-and-update-db client:

<http://dvd.netflix.com/NewReleasesRSS>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple of comments have asked for a similar service for Netflix and iTunes. There already is such a service, "Can I Stream.it?" [1]. I have no affiliation with them--I came across them when trying to find out what is available on Netflix so I could decide if I wanted to sign up.

CISI reports on the availability of movies via the following sources, and lets you set up a reminder to tell you when a movie becomes available:

Free or subscription streaming: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus, Crackle, YouTube, Epix, Xfinity Streampix.

Streaming rental: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube, Blockbuster.

Digital Purchase: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, Blockbuster.

DVD/Bluray: Amazon, Netflix, Redbox.

XFINITY subscription: HBO, SHO, Cinemax, Starz, Encore, Xfinity free.

[1] <http://canistream.it/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Clicked on create a reminder and it said "Reminder functionality coming soon". Might have to steal some ideas from their site though :)

Edit: Seems like reminders are available on some movies. Not sure which you can and can not set reminders for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice idea, nice work!

Additionally, people with young kids are always looking for movies near them that are G or PG. Each theater complex usually has zero, one, or two compared to ten or more from PG13 and R. Given a reliable source, you might optionally push a short list to a subscriber on Thursday night via SMS listing -any- local kid-friendly movies, new or not. Now to monetize it all...

<comment><AUTHOR> Really like the kids movies idea.

Right now I'm monetizing by giving the option to add a link to fandango when you create a reminder that is selected by default. The link in the reminder is an affiliate link so I earn a commission based on ticket sales. Looking for other ways to monetize without ads though, so any other suggestions would be welcomed.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciating all the feedback I'm receiving and will start right away at implementing all of it. I haven't put a link on the site to follow on twitter yet, but to get updated about new features as I add them follow Movie Cron on twitter @MovieCron ( <http://www.twitter.com/MovieCron> ).

</comment><comment><USER9> Like it, good idea :) Could be fun to have a bigger view of the movies with a -> to see the next one. The trailer could already be pre-loaded (Showing the first image of the video) and when clicked on it it starts playing. Also, a hype factor (either from your own users or from rotten tomatoes for instance) could be useful.

</comment><comment><USER10> I really want to try this, but I don't see why we are required to register for accounts. My cell phone number is enough of an account name. Just send me a one-time SMS with a random guid that links back. I can enter a password there.

Alternately, why use accounts at all? Just let me enter my number or email and pick movies to be notified about.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, this service doesn't really seem useful to people that live outside the US. E.g. "A Good Day to Die Hard" won't be released until a month later in Australia, but the website indicates that it comes out a month earlier. Aggregating the release dates would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER12> It'd be cool if I could get a bit more non-trailer info by clicking the poster. I kind of expected it would bring up the poster in a lightbox at least, so I could see the stars' names. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon, but I prefer reading to watching a trailer.

</comment><comment><USER13> Generally nice work. I'd use it but I avoid theaters. Loads fast on my crap PC. Only problem I have is the design of Upcoming Movies. Should be a nice grid, with the buttons aligned underneath the JPEG. Rather a confusing mess as-is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear it loads fast. That's been the biggest hurdle.

Definitely agree about the layout of the Upcoming Movies page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You might add a little more definition around movie title / poster / button combinations. Once you scroll away from the top or the bottom it's not immediately apparent which belong to which unless you really look at the poster.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great start. From a UI perspective, I'd try and do a bit more to get away from the default bootstrap look. It's pretty immediately identifiable, and makes your design blend in with so many others these days (in a bad way).

</comment><comment><USER16> Where are you getting the movie data from? Cool site by the way, really like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the tmdb.org API v3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As far as design is concerned, maybe rethink your use of the script font: <http://www.mishes.com/articles/lobster-font-abuse>

</comment><comment><USER18> I use imdb's android app for this. It has a "coming soon" page where you can see upcoming releases, and if you tap the release date, it's added to your calendar.

</comment><comment><USER19> It'd be nice if there were some review scores too. I think rotten tomatoes has an API for this.

The Netflix etc, availability others mentioned is probably helpful too.

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks great! You should consider adding notifications for when a movie comes out on dvd / bluray, since sometimes I'm waiting for that.

</comment><comment><USER21> Registration page seems kind of empty but other than that its a great start.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice, I like the idea.</comment>


Culture matters as much as the product - <AUTHOR> http://bits.usablebytes.com/?p=49

<comment><USER2> Key is to adopt processes that would work for your people rather than they working for the processes.</comment>


Show HN: Search for a domain expert on Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://redditprofile.com/ <comment><USER2> If you want to find mods and bots, try searching for "please". It works on the HN version to pick out dang and sctb and it seems to work on Reddit as well.

There are some false positives, however. E.g. a comment saying "Zuck Fuck" being interpreted as discussing "please" might be due to uncleaned word vectors. [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/85y46f/facebooks...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/85y46f/facebooks_stock_tumbles_again_value_drops_by_more/dw1bxc4/)

<comment><USER3> I tried [https://hnprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=...](https://hnprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=please) to no avail; there's neither dang nor sctb on the first 5 pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> So.. the system learns what the subject of a sentence is over time. It's since learned "please" is not a subject, so I imagine that's what's dropped them in the results.

Still appear first for YCombinator, because that's the links they constantly post

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fortunately I'm not the kind of person people would be searching for, but this just seems impolite. Posting to an internet forum on a topic that interests you is not an opt-in to have random internet people or reach out to you asking for free advice. If I were a domain expert I wouldn't _want_ to be searched for on Reddit using a tool like this because the implicit goal is to then be spammed about it. If I wanted to be reached out to, I'd say so on a web site somewhere

<comment><USER5> Neither is it proof of being an expert.

<comment><USER6> But semi-anonymous posts on social media are?

If so there's a lot more Navy SEALs than I was lead to believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I searched for my own account, it didn't show up. When I searched for a topic, it showed me a user with the same name as the topic. When I did find some users claimed to be experts, I found their mood over the year and the main link was to a HN comment of them.

I am not sure how to use this, what makes a user a domain expert?

It's all kinda confusing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I only show accounts that were active in the past year (in the subreddits it's tracking).

Do you have examples of the errors? I'd love to try and figure out the issue.

Regarding a domain expert it's identified by the terms a person uses and related terms people are interested in. The learn more section might help clear some of that up.

<comment><USER7> Not tracking all subreddits makes sense I guess. But I searched for "Jailbreak". But got a user with that username.

Searching for "ios programming" shows me some guy wyager and the discussion link is to HN, not reddit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up -_-

The full blown system creates what I call "metaprofiles" merging profiles across various domains. Basically, it can identify people based on conversation (regardless of username or domain). One thing I do, is create these "metaprofiles" and will return the first linked account.

Apparently, I forgot to add a "data source" as an input to the function, thus you may get some of the cross profiles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I searched for "suicide". I got a list of people back who had interesting opinions in a thread about suicide, but who are not domain experts.

It's an interesting idea though, and it worked a lot better than I was expecting it to. The limitations are clear from the description on the page ("note we only track a small number of subreddits").

</comment><comment><USER9> A few characters (' ) ( :) (And probably more) lead to an error screen:

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%27)

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%28)

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%29)

[https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=%3A)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for catching the error!

Should be fixed now, for reference the error was because I was estimating the count. Turns out that couldn't handle _only_ special characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The same thing but for HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17942981)

</comment><comment><USER10> I searched for photography and none of the regulars on /r/photography (including myself) came up.

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI the system just looks at a subset of subreddits:

/r/dataisbeautiful

/r/news

/r/worldnews

/r/technology

/r/programming

/r/cars

/r/stock market

/r/cryptocurrency

/r/all

Basically didn't want to build an insanely large database for a simple demo.

<comment><USER11> Well that kills it. The gems of reddit are to be found in small subreddits. For example, awesome bag advice can be found in /r/onebag/ (41k subscribers) /r/ManyBaggers/ (783 only but don't let that fool you, the knowledge in that place is astonishing) and somewhat on /r/BuyItForLife/ (500k). Even that 500k is very small.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting. As someone who has a marketing subreddit dedicated to my content that's about 3k people I wish this was a bit more inclusive outside large subreddits. There's a lot of value in the "longtail" subreddits as it were.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can you just use the name "Reddit" in your Domain like that?

<comment><USER14> Probably Reddit could technically make a trademark enforcement claim, but it seems they are unlikely to, given the long existence of sites like redditlist.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> @lettergram In lettergram.com, when it says "{} opinion ({}) in {} separate discussions" \- are these discussions from Reddit and HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's what ever is fed into the system. So currently it's monitoring 12 or so data sources. I could monitor more, but I figure I'll scale it with interest.

<comment><USER15> Cool! What are they?

Have you considered adding the feature of listing the conversations which contributed to the score?

<comment><AUTHOR> 100% of the conversations on this website come from subreddits (main ones listed in another comment here). Overall I also monitor some forums, hacker news, and others for [https://projectpiglet.com](https://projectpiglet.com) which identifies company insiders then recommends trades. So I don't feel comfortable with sharing exact sources.

Regarding the score - The paid version I'm offering to companies has said feature. It also has a bunch of other items as well, find duplicate accounts, automated related project notification, etc.

<comment><USER15> Thanks! I will consider trying paid version.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The paid version I'm offering to companies has said feature.

Should note! That is not the projectpiglet.com version (that wont show you any user information, don't want you to pay unnecessarily). I'm offering the paid version which can be hosted and deployed by a given company internally. To do that you'll need to contact direct via email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting stuff, how do you calculate a users "mood". Are you willing to explain your algorithm?

</comment><comment><USER17> Everyone I searched for have an unhappy mood...

<comment><USER18> Semantic analysis belongs to the third category in "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

I'm sure it's slightly better for Metacortex's real use case - which is an employee surveillance system - because people won't use strong language, hyperbole, share their real opinions, or talk about certain topics as much in professional communication. But I still find the whole domain to be a fraud with just enough signal in the noise to trick people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This tool is interesting but it is fundamentally an exercise in turd polishing because Reddit is a completely terrible place to get "expert" advice. It's designed to be a place for show and tell with commentary and false appearance of consensus.

If you want expert advice you should be asking for it somewhere that's properly formatted for long form discussion. You should also seek out advice in a specialized community, not a general one like Reddit. For every piece of good advice on Reddit there's ten pieces of terrible advice and ten pieces of mediocre advice you could find yourself on Google offered up by the riff-raff that happen to be passing through that day. Reddit is just polite 4chan. If you want expert advice to somewhere where only people who are interested in the topic you want advice on are (usually forums).

Edit: Also this tool thinks I am an expert in hipsters. I like to think I'm an expert in calling people hipsters.

<comment><USER20> Sigh. Reddit is not a completely terrible place to get expert advice. Yes, there is a great deal of awful advice to be found there. But there are also a fair number of subreddits that are the primary gathering place for that community, and thus the best place to go for advice on that topic.

When I google something non-programming related, the correct answer is very frequently found in a Reddit post.

Reddit isn't usually the absolute best place for advice on a topic, but painting it as "completely terrible" seems like hyperbole to me.

<comment><USER21> Reddit's the best way to get lots of real people's opinions of stuff. Search for "best Windows backup tool" and you get a pile of sponsored pages and fake recommendation sites, and probably some malware. Search for "best Windows backup tool site:reddit.com" and you get people posting in sysadmin communities having real discussion.

<comment><USER22> "site:reddit.com {{tool name}} vs ______" is something I use fairly frequently. Its not perfect by any means due to astroturfing, but its better than nothing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> isn't "domain expert" and "reddit" contradictory?

</comment><comment><USER24> Searched for "trump", site returned PoppinKREAM so this seems pretty accurate!

<comment><USER25> Love his write-ups. Shame the people who don't want to hear his message can just say "fake news" and carry on... :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sea...](https://redditprofile.com/author_profiles?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=HFT)</comment>


Show HN: TAYL 2.0 – Make listening your new reading habit - <AUTHOR> https://www.tayl.app <comment><AUTHOR> Almost six months after the initial release, I'm now happy to officially launch version 2.0 of TAYL.

This release brings not only support for more languages and voices (now totalling 180+ voices in 30+ languages), but also marks TAYL's entry on the smartphone market. With native apps for iOS and Android you can bring your Tales with you at all times, and create new Tales easily right from your phone's share sheet

Now it's easier than ever to integrate TAYL with thousands of other apps and workflows without writing a single line of code. Send tweets straight to your podcast for listening, subscribe to a blog and listen to each new post or send your Tale's audio version to your own website for publishing. The possibilities are endless, and I can't wait to hear about the creative use- cases you come up with!

All of the above is nice, but my primary goal of version 2.0 is to make TAYL accessible to more people worldwide. I try to do this with the introduction of a new plan, called Standard. It's an affordable plan that gives you 5-7 hours of audio per month, using the standard voices, for the low price of a single coffee

I'll be answering any questions about the v2 launch here or on Product Hunt [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tayl-2-0](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tayl-2-0)</comment>


This is what people you know like on the Internet right now - <AUTHOR> http://likebutton.me/ <comment><USER2> Cool and creepy all at once :-)

<comment><USER3> why creepy?

<comment><USER4> What stops me (as the developer of a similar app) from screen scraping the information I gleam from visitors to my web app?

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if that's technically possible... You'd have to get the content that's inside of the iframe, and I think that would break some sort of cross domain rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like that it gives me this reassurance:

> You need to be logged into Facebook to see

> your friends activity

...so that I know I've remembered to stay logged OUT.

Now if only sites iFraming me to FB would post an reminder like:

"Thanks for staying logged in to FB (and providing info about all your activity to our advertisers)."

</comment><comment><USER7> Site crashed Chrome on Mac twice in a row. First time I've had to Force Quit Chrome.

<comment><USER8> Destroys Chrome on Linux also.

<comment><USER9> I didn't have any problem with Chromium 5.0.342.9 on Arch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh :(. I was hoping it was a system where you could "like" a URL or something, and after enough "likes", it'd show other stuff that you may like.

</comment><comment><USER11> Facebook would easily take over commenting if only they added threads, quotes, and other rudimentary commenting features.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm a little bit confused, if I opted out of this program, how does it still know who I am when I go to this site?

<comment><USER13> Each widget is a Facebook iframe. Facebook knows who you are. The site doesn't.

<comment><USER12> Ah. THanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a really cool implementation. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice little hack

</comment><comment><USER16> I was wondering why most of the page was empty and realized I'm blocking Facebook frames. Am I missing much?

<comment><USER6> Please do explain: what's your hack to block just FB frames?

<comment><USER17> I'm using the Firefox add-on LeechBlock to block access to "www.facebook.com/plugins/". (Facebook still works fine. It wasn't immediately apparent that you could use Leechblock to block access to individual folders.)

<http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like the NYT has some work to do.

But the site itself is inevitable and cool at the same time.

<comment><USER19> i was using the wrong nyt url.. works better now

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> weird... in FF I get all of the presets sites, but in IE I'm only getting CNN. What gives?

</comment><comment><USER21> reminds me of <http://itstrending.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> @zachallia is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER23> AllTop For Facebook Likes. Cool

</comment><comment><USER24> People like me haven't (and won't ever have) a f*cking facebook account.

<comment><USER25> Do you want a cookie?</comment></comment>


Switching from Nginx to Caddy - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kixpanganiban.com/switching-from-nginx-to-caddy/ <comment><USER2> > It would be no exaggeration to say that Caddy, an up-and-coming HTTP/2 > server written in Go that's been gaining a lot of traction, is outright > witchcraft. Out of the box, it just works. With HTTPS. With very little > configuration.

It's funny that he goes on to compare the two configuration files, where one is a bit verbose, but very clear and easy to understand, while the "Caddyfile" (seriously? xy.conf not good enough anymore?) is four lines that mean basically nothing without a manual.

Less configuration is not intrinsically better.

<comment><USER3> _> It's funny that he goes on to compare the two configuration files, where one is a bit verbose, but very clear and easy to understand, while the "Caddyfile" [...] is four lines that mean basically nothing without a manual._

I strongly disagree with this one. In general, I observe that too many super- configurable tools are essentially putting manual work onto the administrator that should really be solved in the software itself, where it is solved once and for all, and can be improved for all at once.

For example, the following line in Caddy:

        transparent

It replaces the following lines in nginx:

           proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
           proxy_set_header   Host      $http_host;
           proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
           proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto https;

The nginx config is more transparent, for sure. However, for many scenarios this isn't the full list of additional headers on your reverse proxy. Every admin will stumble sooner or later on strange wrongly generated "internal" links by some applications, and will learn the hard way to add more headers, and will never be sure if they really chaught everything. Sure there is community support, but this still means every admin has to do the same kind of research.

It may be good for your ego, some "secret" knowledge that distiguishes you from beginners. But as soon as you get over it, you realize this is just a waste of time.

If this is the task of the software, however, the whole developer community can collect the list of headers and their exact values. Everyone who updates their webserver will benefit immediately. Everyone who installs their webserver for the first time don't even have to bother with that exact header list.

<comment><USER4> As an ops guy that needs to look after many different configs for many different clients all using many different stacks, your comment surprises me.

Configuration being solved within the software itself? Either I am going to end up with "magic" that may or may not work, and may or may not behave predictably in a given scenario (predictable behaviour is somewhat important for ops), or I am going to end up with every single config scenario enshrined within the software itself, something that I thought was established as a software anti-pattern around the time of Ada Lovelace.

As the OP stated, the "transparent" option is meaningless without a manual. The nginx (or whatever verbose software config option set) syntax is meaningful, and more importantly, predictable. By spelling out those lines I know exactly what I can expect the software to do in some given scenario.

The whole "I don't want to worry about/understand configuration" meme is dangerous. You end up with no real understanding of how your stack functions. You are trading off deep understanding of your stack - a benefit for the lifetime of your product - with reducing 30 minutes configuring stuff to 5, which buys you 25 minutes not having to grok the engine of your app.

I personally don't care about having to spend time to configure. I don't care if it is written in Golang, Python, C++, or Sanskrit. I care about performance, security, footprint, and configurability. Remove any of those, and your fancy new toy service just went from "might be interesting for production" to "useless".

Ops and magic don't mix very well.

I'm surprised this actually needs to be explained. As for it being good for an ego, that kind of statement is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's wrong with this?

      server {
          listen 80;
          server_name blog.kixpanganiban.com;
          return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
      }

      server {
          listen      443 ssl;
          server_name blog.kixpanganiban.com;
          ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/blog.kixpanganiban.com/fullchain.pem;
          ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/blog.kixpanganiban.com/privkey.pem;

          charset     utf-8;

          # max upload size
          client_max_body_size 75M;

          location / {
             proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
             proxy_set_header   Host      $http_host;
             proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
             proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto https;
             proxy_pass   http://localhost:2368/;
          }
      }

Every line is self-explanatory, blocks define clearly where some directive is applied and where not, you just have to read some well-written docs in order to spot the right directive. And this came after Apache configuration mess, when almost nothing did better. Maybe lighttpd, but lighttpd was missing of some essential web server options.

<comment><USER6> I think the point is that the default configuration is too verbose; after all, you don't have to touch most Nginx options for a typical configuration, so why do you still have to configure so much stuff?

I think the point has some merit, though I personally don't really care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _It would be no exaggeration to say that Caddy, an up-and-coming HTTP /2 server written in Go that's been gaining a lot of traction, is outright witchcraft. Out of the box, it just works. With HTTPS. With very little configuration._

And the server is down. Irony.

<comment><USER8> he spoke way too quick

<comment><USER9> not QUIC but HTTP2.0

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Bleh, this is embarassing. Node in my bottom-tier Lightsail instance is unable to handle the traffic (big surprise) and now I'm starting a bigger instance from a snapshot.

In response to some of the comments:

1\. I absolutely agree that knowing exactly what something does line by line is much better than "magic". But that's the thing, if you know Caddy as much as you know Nginx, you'd be able to explain every single one of those 4 lines:

> blog.kixpanganiban.com

Because I didn't bind it specifically to a port (didn't add :80 or :443), I know that Caddy will automatically serve it over HTTPS for me and bind it to both. I could have written `blog.kixpanganiban.com:80` instead if I wanted it to be HTTP-only, or even `[http://blog.kixpanganiban.com/blog/`](http://blog.kixpanganiban.com/blog/`) if I wanted to serve it on the `/blog` path.

> proxy / localhost:2386 {

Pretty self-explanatory, it proxies all requests to `/` to the `localhost:2386` (Ghost) backend. I could attach a list of backends to make it act as a load-balanced reverse proxy similar to nginx, like so: `proxy / localhost:2375 somesite.com:2312 {`.

> transparent

Caddy configs call this a "preset", basically a shorthand for:

header_upstream Host {host}

header_upstream X-Real-IP {remote}

header_upstream X-Forwarded-For {remote}

header_upstream X-Forwarded-Proto {scheme}

2\. I'm not trying to sell snake-oil, I'm trying to introduce a perfectly good alternative which I've been meaning to try for a while. Also, Caddy docs: [https://caddyserver.com/docs/](https://caddyserver.com/docs/)

<comment><USER10> Caddy has plenty of fans here, I like it as well. I think you just got bit by the irony of making the comparison with nginx. Particularly because with nginx, you could have added some caching with a few configuration directives.

With two relatively new options (caddy and ghost), and the traffic spike, you're stuck with the downside of new...no established built-in option to cache.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I realize how shortsighted I was. Perhaps adding a caching middleware along with what I learned fom you guys would be a good exercise (and follow up post).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Site is (currently) down, for what it's worth. Someone blogging too early about their"success?"

<comment><USER10> Next up..."How to configure a caching reverse proxy for Caddy"

<comment> pi-rat ... using nginx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking at the caddy configuration it's unclear what it's actually doing. From the article " _After step 5, Caddy prompted me to enter my email for the LetsEncrypt cert. In the background, it took care of signing me up for LE, verifying my domain ownership, and downloading and attaching my cert files._ " That means I can't ssh on to a server, cat the http server config file(s), and know what's actually happening. That alone is enough for me to not use it.

<comment><USER6> How so? It just has different defaults; as long as you know which those are, you know what's happening, just like with Nginx.

<comment><USER12> nginx doesn't have defaults for most things. If you don't specify a feature then it's not used. Consequently reading a config file makes it very obvious what's happening - to debug a server that's acting up you can look at the config and if you don't see a value then you need to specify one, and if you do then something is clearly broken. In a Caddyfile it appears that wouldn't be the case because it could be using SSL even if the config values are missing.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, SSL is not gonna be served if you didn't specify it in the Caddyfile. I implicitly did, by leaving out the binding port in my server name. I could have done `blog.kixpanganiban.com:80` and configured Caddy NOT to handle HTTPS. I think a lot of people incorrectly think that because something was not written, it was not configured, which isn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Link is down...

Cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MK6zOl...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MK6zOl_SgQoJ:https://blog.kixpanganiban.com/switching- from-nginx-to-caddy/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh, the irony. They website is now down, with an nginx error message.

</comment><comment><USER15> 502 Bad Gateway From Nginx.... I am perplexed...

<comment><AUTHOR> Chill out, I respawned the server and forgot the nginx is still on upstart, which is why it took over before I could start caddy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've opened a link and got 502 Bad Gateway from ginx/1.10.0 (Ubuntu)

=) nice

<comment><USER17> He's working on his "Switching from Caddy to nginx article" right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "502 Bad Gateway

nginx/1.10.0 (Ubuntu)"

<comment><USER19> Maybe they should use Caddy?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Homework you did/didn't do before a startup  - <AUTHOR>

I have been pondering over the last few days:  what homework had you done before you started your last venture.
I was trying to think of everything that can go - WRONG - when you try to start a firm on your own.
If you could add your own experiences along with stuff you wish you had taken care before you jumped in -  this would be AWESOME food for thought for a first timer. <comment><USER2> We make a design platform for engineers, and as both founders have technical backgrounds, we talked with around 30-40 engineers (presumably our target customers) about our product before starting to code.

Turns out, feedback from friends was almost always positive and encouraging("Great ideas! Go for it!"), but we must have neglected to either ask people who aren't friends and family, or we didn't emphasize enough the question, "Will you pay for it and how much?" :)

Luckily, after spending 6 months making a beta, we got in touch with real customer leads, and found that while our product features are still relevant, we must position and market it differently to stand a chance.

So while there's still a long way to go, market validation is one of the things we should have done better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Homework:

1\. Check out the competition. How are they doing? Making money?

2\. Think how long it'd take you to get to a minimal version. Sketch and see what you can leave out.</comment>


Wired Love: a novel from 1880 that could have been written last week  - <AUTHOR> http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_love_a_ta.php <comment><USER2> Better to read the original article: [http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_...](http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2013/07/wired_love_a_ta.php) and not the Boing Boing summary.

<comment><USER3> Yes, especially as you would miss some of the fascinating comments on the original. One linked to a collection of a collection of similar literature from 1877: [http://archive.org/details/lightningflashes00john](http://archive.org/details/lightningflashes00john)

Another described old men tapping out jokes to one another in morse with their pipes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This story sounds pretty believable after reading Tom Standage's _The Victorian Internet_ , especially Chapter 8, "Love over the Wires".

That's one of my favorite books (and finally available in a Kindle edition!). Don't take my word for it, read a few of the reviews:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Victorian- Internet/dp/B002STNBKM/](http://www.amazon.com/The-Victorian- Internet/dp/B002STNBKM/)

More stories of high tech in the 1800's in Neal Stephenson's _Mother Earth Mother Board_ :

[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html)

<comment><USER5> Seconding _The Victorian Internet_. It's a fairly easy and delightful read, and is about an afternoon's worth of chugging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another prescient scifi story is E. M. Forster's _" The Machine Stops"_, written in 1909.[1][2]

[1] - [http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops)

<comment><USER7> Yes. This is an amazing and hair-raising short story, written over a century ago and one that predicted the advent of digital lives so eerily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty much sounds like the plot to _You 've Got Mail._

<comment><USER9> Sweet! I'll probably like it, then. ;) It's amazing how many movies and stories are similar on some level, yet have completely different aspects that make them both enjoyable and interesting (e.g., The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor). If I never saw another romantic comedy again because it was too similar to the Princess Bride (etc), or never looked at a new programming language "because it's pretty much like lisp/python/etc" again, I'd miss out on a lot of good stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this quite interesting as when I was first a ham radio operator, I had many friends that I had not met. In high school, I had a girlfriend who was a Ham who I had not met in person. There is a very famous story about an RCA telegraph operator (very first female employee of RCA) who met someone on the air, and ended up marrying him. He was also a ham radio operator.

The things that many internet users presume are new have actually been going on for some time.

</comment><comment><USER10> The tagline is similarly modern:

 _"The old, old story,"—in a new, new way._

</comment><comment><USER11> Somewhat relevant xkcd, the more things change the more they stay the same: [http://xkcd.com/1227/](http://xkcd.com/1227/)

</comment><comment><USER12> "The wide blue sky was shredded by the dark criss-crossing telegraph lines..."</comment>


Chromium: I just wanted to quickly hack an iframe blocker for personal use - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard <comment><USER2> For Firefox, Request Policy is more or less equivalent. HTTP Switchboard has a better interface, though. Request policy works on a global per domain basis (allow/forbid), this one has better granularity (you can specify the type of content for each (sub)domain).

[https://www.requestpolicy.com/](https://www.requestpolicy.com/)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/)

<comment><USER3> > [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- > US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- > US/firefox/addon/requestpolicy/)

I like and use RequestPolicy on a daily baiss, but unfortunately the version on AMO hasn't been updated for some time now. There are a number of long- standing issues (like clicking links in the view source view,) including one that allows bypassing the whitelist entirely [0].

>this one has better granularity (you can specify the type of content [...]

Mmm, RequestPolicy's meant to allow or deny cross-domain communications full stop. It doesn't care too much about what happens once it's allowed.

The granularity offered in HTTP switchboard is better suited to dealing with cross-domain "annoyances" than RequestPolicy.

>[...]for each (sub)domain).

Not quite the same, but RequestPolicy allows you to use the effective TLD, full domain, or scheme + full domain + port for your rules (it's under preferences.) By default it uses the effective TLD.

[0] [http://blog.saynotolinux.com/2013/11/bypassing- requestpolicy...](http://blog.saynotolinux.com/2013/11/bypassing- requestpolicys-whitelist.html)

<comment><USER2> _> Not quite the same, but RequestPolicy allows you to use the effective TLD, full domain, or scheme + full domain + port for your rules (it's under preferences.) By default it uses the effective TLD._

The trouble is that the setting is global. If you chose "full domain", the UI doesn't allow you to whilelist a TLD anymore, which is annoying for some CDNs (some sites change the subdomain of their CDN for each page load).

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's a design issue in RequestPolicy that I'd like to see fixed. I never use the full domain option because it's such a pain to use on sites with many subdomains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What the title nor the github account are up front about is that this is an ad/privacy blocker that comes with a rather large blacklist[1]. I tried disabling it (because, like the title, I only wanted to block a single thing) but it wouldn't let me work around the blacklist.

Perhaps be more up front that this is an adblocker.

[1]: This is just one of the blacklists: [https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/blob/a325083df02b...](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/blob/a325083df02bd013ff533054415925af77a79fed/assets/httpsb- blacklist.txt)

<comment><USER2> You could fork it, get rid of the black lists and publish it on the Chrome web store.

It is licensed under the GPL, which was created for this very use case.

<comment><USER4> I suppose I could if I wanted to go to that very large amount of effort just to get that small amount of functionality. Methinks a userscript would be a lot easier.

I'd agree with your comment if I'd said "They should take the blacklist out." Instead I wrote that the title and github project are not up front about a core piece of functionality of the plugin.

<comment><USER5> Userscripts wait for the DOM to finish loading, though, no? Thus defeating the purpose of saving bandwidth?

<comment><USER6> They run at either "document-start", "document-end" or "document-idle". "document-start" is as soon as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do you think that there will ever be widespread/mainstream client-side control of the web like this? Where it was the norm that, say, 90% of web users blocked ads and analytics? Would it be good or bad?

<comment><USER8> I think we'd see sites implement some sort of check to see if their ad scripts loaded properly, and ad/analytic providers enabling this through hooks. There would probably be "good" providers that would get whitelisted.

As a web user, I welcome this extension. It's my browser, and I should be able to control its IO.

As a web developer... well, I've never been a fan of advertising-based revenue, but I'd like accurate analytics.

<comment><USER9> I block most tracking services. I wish I didn't have to do that. I'd love if sites could get accurate analytics, as long as the data stays with the website owners (so, nothing from external companies and no pinging Google etc.), isn't shared with third parties (no, not even "trusted" third parties), retention times are not longer than 2 years, it's reasonably anonymized, etc.

Until a trustworthy self-hosted analytics script that's fast and doesn't consume too many resources appears, my browser/OS and other info will remain underrepresented in websites' analytics dashboards.

<comment><USER10> What is your method to block things?

<comment><USER11> NoScript takes care of most tracking systems (those loaded from third-party domains), and has surrogate scripts to prevent it from breaking websites that attempt to depend on the most common tracking scripts, and for this it is the first line of defense. AdBlock I use mostly for most common forms of single- pixel tracking images (and ads, of course), and Cookie Monster to manage cookie permissions, and BetterPrivacy to get rid of flash cookies. RequestPolicy is the nuclear option for when I'm feeling most paranoid. (EDIT: RequestPolicy's 1.0 betas have a default-allow mode, which makes it much easier to leave enabled during everyday use.)

For me, the toughest thing is to figure out which cloudfront subdomains to allow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very nice. I like the effort you've put into making it look great as well.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not something I would use as I haven't got too annoyed with the web yet, but that is one excellent, common-sense interface,

</comment><comment><USER14> Good idea but not great default.

Installed it, none of my sites work because of your addon blocking everything by default.

It needs to allow everything first by default and I can selectively turn off the crap.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for posting this. The code is easy to follow which is always a notable accomplishment. It's also a really good example of github usage including opening of issues, commenting on them, and closing them. And a pretty nice wiki as well.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really like this tool. The panel is just great for seeing what exactly is being blocked and what not (which is not the case in some other addons).

I think it is pretty solid right now, if you keep working on it, it could soon become the new Adblocker.

</comment><comment><USER17> well, this kills feedly..

<comment><AUTHOR> It's working for me if I whitelist `feedly.com`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> add a pause button please

<comment><AUTHOR> It's in the extension's pop-up menu: click the top-right icon, and there is the option "HTTPSB on/off" (recording continues though even if off, so one can still see what is going on in the page).</comment></comment>


Pure javascript resumable file uploads launched at Minus  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.minus.com/2012/02/16/sit-back-and-relax-with-resumable-file-upload/

<comment><AUTHOR> Note: We got resumeable uploads working for Chrome and Firefox only. Internet Explorer and Safari still fall back to flash and non-resumeable uploads (respectively).

If you use Chrome or Firefox, you can now drop a file onto a page on minus.com, unplug your network, reconnect, and your file resumes uploading where you left off.

I love the web and am excited to see the range of possibilities for pure- browser features expand.

<comment><USER2> Can you provide a little more detail on how it's implemented?

Are you using resumable.js[1] or is it a custom implementation?

[1] <https://github.com/23/resumable.js>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, let me give some further implementation detail.

We were inspired by <https://github.com/dmitry-dedukhin/lightweight-uploader>, particularly the js implementation from Dmitry.

It turned out, however, that the simple flow control he implemented was not adaptive enough to simultaneously accommodate both low-latency/low bandwidth and high-latency/high-bandwidth connection.

For resumeable uploads to work efficiently for both cases, we implemented TCP/IP-style congestion control (e.g. slow start window size scaling and exponential back-off retry timeout), but over http POST requests instead of UDP packet sends.</comment></comment></comment>


Another scam shakes trust in Indigogo - <AUTHOR> Crowdfunding giant Indiegogo.com had to close down lately more campaigns due to Violation of their Terms of Use. The latest campaign that was shut down yesterday by Indiegogo's Trust & Safety Department raised funds for a fitness gadget called BioRing. After raising more than 800% of their initial goal ($509,918 in total) the team behind the project simply vanished, leaving 2184 backers behind. Mor information: http://bit.ly/BioRingScam-Igg <comment><USER2> Wow. Just watched the BioRing campaign video. How could anyone think that was real?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do people have to be retarded ? This is cleary only marketing shit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly it is no marketing shit. There is quite an uproar amongst backers, because Indigogo can't refund them... I'm not sayin' people aren't retarded, it was pretty clear that this BioRing stuff can't work. It was totally science-fiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> similar has been happened with kickstater</comment>


Things I Wish I Had Known Before We Got Married - <AUTHOR> http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/3-things-i-wish-i-knew-we-got-married

<comment><USER2> How is a Christian biologist different from a biologist? Is "Christian biologist" code for something?

<comment><USER3> There is a large false dichotomy between science and religion, that 'Christian' biologist does give a large degree of more information.

<comment><USER2> False dichotomy? Science is based on verifiable facts and religion is based on belief and faith. This is the place for a debate and I won't engage in one, but I couldn't let that one go. Adding 'Christian' in front of biologist doesn't extend the science in the least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main problem -- finding it difficult to live with a person -- is largely ameliorated amongst couples for whom Scripture-with-a-capital-S and references to Christian biologists (why does their faith matter?) is not part of the ordinary discussion.

Because they shack up before getting married.

<comment><USER5> What's the difference between "shacking up" and getting married? Other than a piece of paper.

But I agree that getting married as young as possible is a good idea. (And I don't care if you call it marriage, or living together - it's effectively the same thing.)

And Scripture recommends getting married young BTW, so your distinction doesn't exist.

People who get married later in life have a hard time adjusting to having someone else in their life who needs to be their number one priority.

<comment><USER6> Having both lived with people and married one, and being absolutely atheistic, and someone who previously thought "it's just a piece of paper"... it's not, and I was wrong. Being married is different.

There's also some reasons to believe that cohabitating before marriage (to the same person) leads to higher rates of divorce: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the- downsid...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-downside-of- cohabiting-before-marriage.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

What's different about it? I'm not 100% sure. But none of the guys I lived with (for years) caused me the kind of angst that my husband did at first, when I moved in with him and immediately got married a few weeks after. (Prior, we didn't really live together before marriage except for weeks/months at a time at the others' apartment, living in different countries.) I'd never had a terrible "adjustment period" before, but did this time… and believe me, on paper, previous boyfriends were way more annoying than my husband was, even in those first few months. We got through it, obviously. I'm grateful for him every day.

I'd always been a committed and faithful girlfriend to the others but it just isn't the same as being married. Which surprised me as much as anyone.

Intellectual types underrate the importance of ceremony. I now believe that's a mistake.

<comment><USER4> > _There's also some reasons to believe that cohabitating before marriage (to > the same person) leads to higher rates of divorce_

The problem with seeing this as a causal relationship from cohabitation to divorce is that there's no control for religious belief.

The same religious beliefs and social structures that deter pre-marriage cohabitation also create pressure not to divorce.

<comment><USER6> And I quote:

"...however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself."

<comment><USER4> TIL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you put your feelings on a spreadsheet and make charts out of it, you're gonna be a bad husband.

<comment><USER8> Your emotional life will not be somehow better or mere genuine by just letting it roam free without any guidance. Introspection and self criticism is useful to self improvments. I don't see how doing it systematically would be harmful.</comment></comment>


Our startup (Seekler: community-built lists to help you find new stuff) goes beta. Feedback please? - <AUTHOR> http://seekler.com

<comment><USER2> It looks well-implemented... Design is slick. In the "build something people want" vein -- why does anyone want this? If you can answer that question, you should add benefit statements to your home page... Or example use cases.

My gut response is that your most common use case is that a person wants to build a "best of" list that other people can contribute to... The end benefit being that you might discover stuff that you weren't aware of, right?

If I'm passionate enough about a subject area that I want to make a best-of list, is discovery a huge motivation? And if it was, wouldn't I head to a destination site centered around that subject area for that discovery? Or just google for "best sci fi books of 2007" or somesuch? It seems that you'd have a better chance finding great unseen movies on IMDB instead of creating a list on Seekler (given that movie buffs are likely to hang out on movie-centric sites).

This seems like a classic example of trying to appeal to all audiences. I'd suggest creating a 3rd level domain for the most list-centric audience you can find. If it's comics, create "comics.seekler.com" and see if you can make it fly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm pretty passionate about comics, but I'm always having trouble finding the next really great Batman graphic novel. We're trying to appeal to consumers who know something about an area, but are still looking to find new stuff within it.

The scenario we imagine is this: I'm looking for a new Batman comic. I google 'Best Batman Comics' and Seekler appears in the first page of results (we're not there yet, but we on the front page for a few of our lists). I go there, and hopefully quickly find something I hadn't heard of. But, during this process, I find that 'Batman: Year One' is ranked above 'Batman: The Dark Knight Returns'. I think that's obviously wrong, so I create my own list to rank the Batman comics I have read, putting TDKR on top and adding another Batman comic that wasn't even on the list.

So in our mind, the scenario is reversed - most people will come just to find new stuff on lists built by experts (who will be us and outside sources, initially). Eventually a small percentage of them will start contributing back to the site and make the lists even better.

Thanks for the feedback. You're right that we need to clarify the benefit on the home page - and narrowly targeting a list-centric audience is a great idea too, we're planning on doing exactly that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll tell you why it looks spammy.

First, you have the nicely designed part of your site sitting in the background, and your main section enclosed within a box, which separates it from the rest of the site as if it's disconnected content, and making it look like a huge ad placed in the middle of your site.

Second, building off of the first reason, your design is discontinuous. You have nice web 2.0-ish designs with the logo and the pinstripes in the background, but your foreground content is a white box with text of various colors and sizes, versus designed boxes that section the site, text that is styled well (like the seekler logo), and an overall design that promotes unity.

Suggestions: take your content out of that box and mesh it with the background in general. Take the login/create an account/search bar and place it in the upper right. Make the pinstripe background permeate throughout your main content and vice versa. I almost expect an 'X' in the top right of that box that would let me 'Close this box,' like many ads I have seen.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We released our alpha a few months ago and got great feedback from this community. Now we've added some new features, fixed bugs, and most importantly, anyone can create an account.

We'd love to hear any and all feedback. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> Something about it looks sort of... spammy. That's my first impression, no real motivation behind it.

Maybe there's just too much text?

For me, it doesn't have any... "oomph" that would make me interested in coming back.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have heard that during our alpha as well. Do you mean the home page or when looking at one of the lists? Or both?

One of our challenges has been to present a lot of information without, well, looking too spammy. We'll continue to work on it.

<comment><USER4> The whole thing. Which is odd, because the information isn't actually that spammy, it just looks that way for some reason. Sorry I can't give you a real reason.

<comment><USER5> A lot of spam websites I've seen have slightly similar colour schemes. You know the ones with a ton of text, with selected words highlighted with a yellow background.. ok so it's orange, but it's the only thing I can think of. And I do think there is just way too much text on the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. We actually got feedback that we didn't have enough on the front page before (and as result, we weren't getting the main idea of site across).

Do you think the 'too much text on the front page' issue is primarily because of our example lists (the 'popular','recent', and 'featured' lists)?

Thanks for the thoughts.

<comment><USER6> The white square boxes on the two sides reminds me of google ads.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, good to know. We'll definitely try some tweaks to decrease the spamminess of the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alignment is broken. The title does not align with anything else. Similarly for the three boxes (featured lists, etc.) - they don't align with the title, etc. Just put things in a simple (invisible) grid and everything might just look much better.

Also, the list-details page is very crowded. When I go to the list-details page, I am interested in _that_ list, not everything else. The left and right columns could easily have expandable boxes (unopened by default) for Popular, Featured lists, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, we'll continue to try to simplify the page so it's less crowded.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, if you'd like to see an example of a list that's got a number of contributors (and some good information and tags), check out

<http://seekler.com/lists/Anticipated+Movies+of+2008>

Ideally we'd like to have a ton of lists that have this much info.</comment>


Pay your debts off for cents on the dollar. - daniel-cussen http://www.scribd.com/doc/26627/Paying-Off-Your-Debts-For-Cents-On-The-Dollar

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, what's the benefit of Scribd over a simple HTML page for a document like this?</comment>


Bing Flatlines - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/14/comscore_search_engines_google_bing_yahoo/

<comment><USER2> This graph indicates that bing has been flatlining for some time: [http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww- quarterly-200903...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-ww- quarterly-200903-201104)</comment>


When the Software Is the Sportswriter - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=75287F7D0D99BB681733ED2203987C95.w5?a=705197&f=24

<comment><USER2> here is a link to a non-mobile version:

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28digi.html>

Here are some sample stories: [http://buckeyesbeat.com/ohio-state- basketball/game-recap/ohi...](http://buckeyesbeat.com/ohio-state- basketball/game-recap/ohio-state-gets-102-61-monster-win-over-north- carolina-t) [http://bluedevildaily.com/duke-basketball/game-recap/duke- wi...](http://bluedevildaily.com/duke-basketball/game-recap/duke-wins-big- with-blowout-oregon-98-71)

Not bad, but not great either. I think this is more academically interesting than practically being something that will be used by people. Pretty much every div 1 college has a school paper that will have someone to write up about these games that is as good or better than these examples. It would be interesting though to see what the quality is after working out a few grammar bugs and adding to the 5k corpus of phrases.</comment>


Becoming an expert through deliberate practice - <AUTHOR> http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2016/03/expert/ <comment><USER2> Bear in mind that Erickson's original research involved classical musicians. They're competing in a field where high standards were largely defined 150 years ago. Those standards have stayed remarkably similar. If you want to be a great classical pianist, cellist, etc., you need to put in a lot of time to rival the performance levels of prior masters like Heifetz or Rubinstein. And, yes, focusing on the hard stuff (deliberate practice) is crucial.

These insights extrapolate to some current-day fields -- but not everything. Not by a long shot. It doesn't take 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to get great at a lot of newer areas where standards are being defined on the fly. Newcomers with boldness and originality can go a lot further in such situations.

<comment><USER3> I feel like you might be hinting that software is one such field.

IMHO software's problem is not that it doesn't take 10,000 hours of practice - it is that it takes much, much more. It can be months (or years!) before you receive feedback on your decisions. Given this, boldness and originality can go far not because it's easy to be an expert, but rather because almost no-one is an expert.

<comment><USER4> But hardly anybody in software does deliberate practice, everybody learns on the job by just trying to solve the problems they are faced with at the time.

Nobody considers what their weaknesses in programming are, invents a program of exercises to remedy that specific weakness and then does those exercises every day for a year. That's what deliberate practice is.

The book was about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. As long as nobody in software does that, it's simply not applicable to software.

<comment><USER5> When you're young and relatively inexperienced, every day you have to figure something out you don't yet know how to solve. I believe this does the same thing as the deliberate practice of a musician. Five years of 40 hrs a week or ten years of 20 hrs a week comes down to about 10,000 hours.

Now that I'm a veteran, I find that at work I spend most of my time at work solving problems I already know how to solve. I spend some of my spare time on pet projects doing things that are new to me, but unless they find a cure for the need to sleep, I'll never have 20 hours a week to spare for this again.

<comment><USER6> As a programmer and a musician, I feel that deliberate practice is much different than the day to day practice of working.

Sitting down and playing scales / etudes / method books every day is very hard, but it's the only way to get better at a quick pace. You can't really pay attention at that level for more than 4 hours (or, rather, I and most other humans can't).

Similarly, I've made concerted efforts to refactor procedural code into functional code, and while that is very difficult conceptually (for me, maybe not you) it felt very much the same way as doing scales.

Deliberate practice is not the same as just doing work, and just doing work doesn't make you better as quickly or in the same ways as deliberately practicing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ericsson's work is classic, but you have to realize A) it is primarily from the 80s and involved studying things like games or sports or trivial pursuits where expertise is more likely to be measured, and B) the author of the book described in this article is Ericsson himself - it's going to be a bit biased.

Here is some more up to date research and information on his theories:

This recent special issue of Intelligence critiques Ericsson's work: [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/45](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01602896/45)

The 10,000 hour rule has been pretty refuted in my opinion. There are so many exceptions to the rule that it's not really a valid rule.

In fact, one of the articles in that special issue is a meta-analysis that found no evidence for the 10,000 hour rule. Here's a summary: [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule- not...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/10000-hour-rule-not- real-180952410/?no-ist)

</comment><comment><USER8> First "expert" should be defined.

If by expert you mean someone better than 90% of all humanity at some task X, then the time to get to this level could be orders of magnitide smaller than a 95%, which itself is orders of magnitude smaller than 99.9% i.e. (pro/olympic athletes, concert pianists, etc).

If you don't agree please offer a counter example. Besides all sports, lets consider juggling. Here, 1-2 hours can make you better than about 80% of the population, but becoming a passable street juggler will take months, and a proffesional artists who can innovate as a juggler probably many years.

Essentially, my hypothesis is that improvements in a task X decrease exponentially over time.

<comment><USER9> Does it actually make sense to define an expert as skill relative to others? If I define my own programming language and am the only one that knows it, I'm inherently an expert in it by this definition. I'm better than |world population| - 1 people with this language. However, I may not actually _be_ an expert. I could have created something beyond my ability to truly master (or that I haven't mastered to the level of expert yet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This blog has 1058 pages of material. How? Each post has a fairly clickbaity title and seems to summarize someone else's work/research, but is it really all one guy working full time on getting this material together? Is he farming it out to contractors?

<comment><USER11> First post is in 2009, 5 blogs per page, so 2 posts per day, every day, for 7 years. Not impossible, but you've got to be very motivated.

<comment><USER4> He seems to have 1 post per week in recent months though. Slacker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think the best thing to focus on is how much value and happiness you can bring to others. Not something self-centered such as expertise that perhaps nobody else would even notice because it's meta. Expertise should not the end goal, but instead a facilitator to value creation.

For example, if you're making a song, your thinking should be "I can't wait until people hear this song!", not "I can't wait to slightly increase my skill".

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of the phrase "practice makes perfect" and of course, the oft- repeated correction: " __perfect __practice makes perfect. "

I can't say I'm a fan of the domain name, though. There are certain connotations you raise in people's minds when you use incredibly common/trite Japanese phrases within a given subculture for a domain names, especially one that sounds like "I'm retarded dur dur."

<comment><USER14> _Practise doesn 't make perfect ; practise makes permanent._

<comment><USER13> Oh, that's a great rephrasing, too. Is it yours? (Curious about the source, not nitpicking.)

<comment><USER14> I don't remember where I read this the first time ; but no, it's not mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would consider programming contests like Topcoder deliberate practice of some aspects of programming. When writing code at the job I spend maybe 30% writing code that does stuff and half of that is spent on boilerplate (yeah, I work in Java). The rest is spent on writing tests, refactoring, waiting for compilation or code review, etc.

Some people would say "but you write different code at programming contests"! It's somewhat true - I feel that different parts of my brain are engaged when working on a "right" edit to a massive codebase. On the other hand, from time to time there are problems that require writing few hundreds/thousands of quite dense, relatively greenfield code and then I feel that "Topcoder" parts of my brain are engaged.

<comment><USER16> Code reviews, when intentional, are deliberate practice. Both reviewing, and getting reviewed. With deliberate practice, people get caught up in the practice part, and believe that if they are "actually doing something productive, it's not practice." But practice is more than that. It's the intentional application of ideas. The difference between deliberate practice and normal work is that normal work is, in many cases, boilerplate. It's things you know. You are doing things that aren't pushing yourself.

Yes, Topcoder and things like that can be deliberate practice, but deliberate practice is not limited to such things. And those who are successful, really successful, don't limit deliberate practice to such events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome. Just listened to Dean Bokhari's interview with Dan Coyle. [http://www.meaningfulhq.com/daniel- coyle.html](http://www.meaningfulhq.com/daniel-coyle.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> According to the article, a key skill to acquire are proper metal representations of problems in your field: "You want to be able to clearly and specifically visualize the right way to do something in your head. This is what separates the experts from the chumps."

Would anyone like to discuss any particularly effective ways of visualizing programs or data? Approaches you have found effective?

<comment><USER19> In college I got a LOT of mileage from printing out my code (this was in the 90s) and sitting down with a pencil and tracing through statement by statement.

Draw little boxes for each variable, for pointers, for the stack, whatever. Change each value only when the execution gets there. Resist the urge to just skip over -- "this section does such-and-such."

I'm fairly certain it's the only reason I made an A in my assembly language courses.

<comment><USER18> Great point. On a similar note, I've gotten a lot of use out of stepping through Python algorithmic code using PythonTutor [1], which maintains a visual dashboard of stack frames/variables and heap objects. Very useful, was just using it earlier today.

Doing this manually with a pencil and paper is arguably even better for learning purposes, although significantly more arduous. I should try it.

1\. [http://pythontutor.com/](http://pythontutor.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a great article, well written, and I like the recommendations. Especially "Find a Mentor"! But I still think deliberate practice is overrated (in some fiels, especially programming): [http://davidtanzer.net/deliberate_practice](http://davidtanzer.net/deliberate_practice)

<comment><USER21> It sounds like the photographer in your linked article is advocating deliberate practice. He is advocating working on improving specific skills in a realistic setting.

Personally, I find side projects one of the least efficient ways to improve. I already spend 8+ hours a day "doing" at work. In contrast I spend less than 30 minutes a day at work learning and understanding theory, new concepts, and different approaches to a problem.

So I get a lot more value from focusing my "free time" on the latter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1 - some tasks are simple enough that much less than 10000 hours is needed. Consider every day driving. 100 hours should be enough.

2 - some people are order of magnitude more talented better than others at some things. Maths or music come to mind. My personal experience: it took me years of hard working to get decent rhythmic abilities. On the other hand, my sister (who is a professional musician) had a innate sense of rhythm. She doesn't even understand how that could be an issue.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that after 10000 hours, one can get close to its full potential, which varies tremendously among people.

<comment><USER23> Right. I took to drumming very easily. Like you said about your sister, not having rhythm is something I don't understand. I think of that as a head start, but it doesn't disprove 10,000 hours. I do still need all the hours to reach my potential. Someone else without that head start but who practices a lot will catch up to me if I don't practice.

Even if I do practice the same amount as them, I expect the difference between me and someone without the head start would go down significantly over time.

So innate talent is a real thing but it's consistent with 10,000 hours.

<comment><USER24> I recently started drumming in a hobby band and I seem to have a knack for it. I'm curious to hear how you've progressed and what kind of practice you do. I'm just winging it and it's alright.

<comment><USER23> Drumming wasn't important to me, it was just a fun novelty for a short time. I knew what it would cost (both time and money) to bridge the gap from talent to real expertise and it wasn't personally worth it to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The conflict between the article title and the domain name is delicious.

</comment><comment><USER26> Deliberate practice of algorithms, data structures, math, statistics.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is better than the usual fluff, but obviously we had to change the baity title. If anyone can suggest a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.

<comment><USER19> I agree. The article was _much_ better than would have been indicated by the original title. I'm glad you changed it or I might have skipped right over!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone who has spent 10 years writing online with little to nothing to show for it, this does not work. You need connections, good luck, and or genetically endowed talents to succeed. More hours will not cut it. Also, becoming good enough to be an expert requires being better than 99.9% of people, which by virtue of the Bell Curve is unobtainable for most people. The chess example may be measuring something else (some other normally distributed variable) than IQ, with IQ being an important but only secondary factor.

<comment><USER16> > More hours will not cut it

That is not deliberate practice. Merely spending 10 years writing online is not deliberate practice. Doing something every day is not deliberate practice.

> genetically endowed talents to succeed.

No. You are not born with the ability to write. Mozart was not a naturally born musician. Tiger Woods did not one day suddenly become a golf pro.

> As someone who has spent 10 years writing online with little to nothing to > show for it, this does not work.

Spending 10 years writing does not mean you spent 10 years deliberately practicing. It merely means you spent 10 years writing.

<comment><USER28> How does one 'deliberately practice' writing? Using longer words, writing more? It's not like the most successful writers or writings are the most complicated. Maybe it's also about 'pitching' ideas, networking, but this could be seen as a separate skill than just writing. Finding the optimal linear regression of what people want.

<comment><USER29> > How does one 'deliberately practice' writing?

See Venkatesh Rao's Quora answer: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-tips- for-advanced-writer...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-tips-for-advanced- writers/answer/Venkatesh-Rao)

"Writing is a skill like any other, and the famous 10,000 hour rule _should_ apply, and it does, but not in the way you might assume. A prolific writer can usually churn out about 1000 reasonably decent words in an hour, so if you count in words, it might seem like 10 million words would be enough. Or at 4 hours a day, 250 days a year, about 10 years.

The problem is everybody writes. And yes, things like emails count. So any idiot can clock that many words in 10 years even if they only do a lot of casual/work email and texting. ...

What matters is not how much you write, but _how much you rewrite._ ...

The HUGE difference between everyday writing that everybody does and serious writing is the proportion that is re-writing. I'd estimate that for non- writers, rewriting accounts for maybe 10-20% of their writing.

For serious writers, it accounts for anywhere between 50-90% depending on how critical the particular piece is. ..."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have a Japanese friend who speaks/writes fluent English and... - <AUTHOR>

She's interested in doing translation work. Being a tech geek myself, I was curious:
Are there start-ups that are looking for a translator with that skill? Like, would it would be worth getting it touch with people and seeing if they'd like their user interface translated into Japanese?
She has the usual options — translating articles, eBooks, etc — but I'm trying to help her branch out into other options.
Any help/opinions would be appreciated. :) <comment><USER2> Ask her to go to: [http://www.uni-edit.net/usa/employment](http://www.uni- edit.net/usa/employment). We are always looking for talented Japanese to English translators, especially if they work in technical fields like engineering, computer science, medicine, etc...

</comment><comment><USER3> Gengo is a translation startup based in Tokyo.

[http://gengo.com/translators/](http://gengo.com/translators/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If she's interested in doing translation work, one of the best ways is develop a specialty. General translation pays pennies compared to specialty translation, like medical specialties, law specialties (which can pay around 180/hr! for contract checking), even culinary specialties.

Cookpad, for example, has a contract translation position open now.

</comment><comment><USER5> This might be an interesting option for her if she hasn't seen it already: [http://www.verbalizeit.com/](http://www.verbalizeit.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.sococo.com/contact](https://www.sococo.com/contact) may have some contracting work!

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://en.cookpad.com/](http://en.cookpad.com/) is looking for recipe translators.</comment>