Obsessive Efficiency Disorder - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/obsessive-efficiency-disorder/ <comment><USER3> Someone just posted this quote in the comments on the Amazon Dash, and I thought it fitting for this thread as well.

Harper's Magazine, September 1996:

> From an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in the November 1995 issue of Inc. > Technology. Vonnegut was asked to discuss his feelings about living in an > increasingly computerized world.

>> I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, "Are you still doing typing?" Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, "Okay, I'll send you the pages." Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, "Where are you going?" "Well," I say, "I'm going to buy an envelope." And she says, "You're not a poor man. Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes? They'll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet." And I say, "Hush." So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.

A bit of a reminder that we don't have to be overly efficient about everything we do. Instead we can simply stay mindful and just enjoy whatever it is we are doing, even if it is waiting in line to buy an envelope, or waiting for the coffee to brew.

<comment><USER4> To build on this, there's a growing body of scientific research that shows that an idle mind (to the point of boredom) is necessary for creativity.

There's also obviously a lot of evidence that meditating, which can be considered a form of intentional boredom, is very good for you in a lot of ways.

<comment><USER5> It's good to have a choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It's like OCD, but more efficient.

This implies that OCD is efficient. Like, "Hey guys, don't just be OCD about things, be OED!" I wonder if he has OCD, or he understands what it's like living with OCD. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but it feels like the diminishes those who suffer from OCD. Basically, it's not anything like OCD, and implying such shows a complete lack of understanding of OCD, and he is merely using it as a buzz word.

I half expected a comment like "LOL I'm so autistic in my brilliance sometimes."

<comment><USER7> He doesn't understand OCD, but then again, most people who throw that term around don't. For most people, it comes down to an extreme attention to detail or commitment to some form of perfection, when others would call it good enough.

True OCD is much worse. At a young age, my cousin was diagnosed with OCD in the form of hand washing. He had to wash his hands multiple times per day, whenever he perceived them as dirty. It was crippling to him, as he had a hard leaving the house to do basic things like go to school or play with friends.

It's really annoying when people use medical conditions in "clever" ways like this.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I was diagnosed with OCD a couple years ago. One of my obsessions is the number 5. It's hardly efficient. I remember explaining that to the therapist, and when I mentioned the number 5, their face changed to one of those "I know exactly what that means." That, and a number of other things I do or obsess about...

Well, yeah.

> It's really annoying when people use medical conditions in "clever" ways > like this.

My children have autism, and people seem to throw that term around as well. At this point, it's simply insulting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have desk toys specifically to help me avoid this.

If, like the author, I could return to my task on time, I'd do so. Unfortunately, I just get distracted. So instead of switching desktops while a ~60 second task runs, I find I'm more efficient if I simply sit there and let it run while I play with a little desk toy or something. Sure, it feels like wasted time, but I'm actually more efficient when I don't lose track of what I'm doing and then find it at 6pm when I'm about to leave for the day.. "oh, right, THAT'S what I was planning on doing today!"

</comment><comment><USER9> I've got OED, obsessive Emacs disorder. I can't stop messing with my Emacs configuration to make it "just right". I waste more time programming in Emacs Lisp than I would in just using plain, vanilla Emacs.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I here you. In my day job, I do sysadmin work, not programming, and decided to install org-mode to write docs and notes on my laptop.

I now make a point of not ever opening up the init.el file unless it is Friday. No way in hell will I go down that sinkhole during a nasty work week.

Now I have returned to procrastinating on HN more exclusively again. Everyone wins!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Comparison to a disorder doesn't seem to be going over so well. Well, yeah.

But I look for these little optimizations all over the place; it's entertaining. Oddly enough, I'm more successful when _off_ the computer. Like, I can optimize the #$%^ out of unloading the dishwasher, but trying to come up with a 20-second task while I'm coding doesn't often work out. Besides, if I'm working and I have a > 1 minute break, it's more beneficial for me to close my eyes, lean back and just zoom out to make course adjustments.

It's not actually a positive thing for me to fill in every bit of empty space -- the pauses serve a purpose (though admittedly, our build/deploy/test cycle currently is too long, and this is harmful).

But if I'm making tea, I know the tap takes a bit over 5 seconds to run a mug's worth of water, so I can fill the kettle just enough with my right hand, while the left one chooses what tea I'm going to use from the cabinet overhead.

</comment><comment><USER12> Like many in computing, I also do this. Let's say I want to get a snack, check snail mail, hit the bathroom, and throw on a sweater. Yes, I will solve that miniature Traveling Salesman Problem in my head to figure out the most efficient order, and I'll do it all while my code's compiling. Developers who _don 't_ have OED drive me nuts.

My wife has a related problem - Obsessive Saving Disorder. She always checks the gas prices at every station near our house so she can save a few cents per gallon. If prices are rising or falling rapidly, she'll even try to time when she fills up to get the best price. Maybe she comes out ahead by a buck or two sometimes. This same woman, who I love, also habitually pays bills late - <USER2> not at all, resulting in costs that are orders of magnitude larger than what she saves on gas. The only way to understand this behavior is to realize it's all about _the obsession_ , not really about saving money. Gas prices must be optimized. Bills needn't be. It all makes perfect sense as a manifestation of OSD. I'll bet that's another variant that a lot of people here have encountered.

</comment><comment><USER13> On the other end of the spectrum are the people with OSD (obsessive serialization disorder) where everything goes into a one-lane FIFO queue and the simplest request take a week to get done because so much else is lined up ahead. These sorts of people insist on things like all requests for their time being submitted through a ticket system of some sort.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh how I fool myself like this all day long. In reality this is what happens.

1\. start something that makes you wait for 60 seconds 2\. Do something else in the mean time. 3\. Be distracted by that 'something else' 4\. Continue with the original task after 10 minutes, having to read into what you were doing again.

However, staring at a wall for 60 seconds is also not something that will retain your focus. The only way is to find ways to speed up the tasks, so you can stay in your 'zone' or 'flow' and don't have to switch tasks.

Sometimes it's better to just count to 20 and wait and continue instead of letting yourself get distracted with other tasks.

And in a more broader sense, if it makes you feel good - working like this - fine. It may make you just a more efficient worker, earning your due. It may also result in people just piling more work on your shoulders in exchange (as seen from the perspective of a salary man).

</comment><comment><USER15> A lot of developers have this: [https://xkcd.com/303/](https://xkcd.com/303/)

I think there is a positive and a negative to this. The positive is that you are constantly moving forward, so you have a lot of practice to sustain a higher level of mental productivity. Sometimes you just want make the high- impact decisions and outsource the mundane details to others, provided you can trust them.

The negative is that you constantly feel that you are pulled somewhere. Which means that you are not really the center of your life but something is always missing, there is somewhere you have to be, there is some unfinished business. So you can never really "stop and smell the roses". This also becomes a habit, to the point where you have trouble settling down and enjoying a moment when you need to.

Both muscles need to be exercised.

</comment><comment><USER16> Taken to the extreme with microwave dials, this yields:

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/saving-time-with- yo...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/saving-time-with-your- microwave/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Reminds me of The Man Who Tried to Save Time by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Krasilovsky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Krasilovsky)

</comment><comment> ocd-shepherd OCD sufferer and moderator over at the OCD subreddit ([http://www.reddit.com/r/OCD](http://www.reddit.com/r/OCD)) here.

I just wanted to expand on the point that several have already made about OCD: It is a serious mental health condition, and more people need to become aware of that.

Most people I have met have no clue that OCD can lead to things such as:

\- People losing their jobs and house because they're always late to work from turning around to check the stove or door locks. \- People committing suicide because they can't absolutely prove to themselves that they're not a pedophile. (If you're scared/upset about the idea of being a pedophile, you're most definitely not, please go get help.) \- People washing their hands until they're cracked and bloody because of contamination fears. \- Mothers neglecting their babies because they cannot handle the thoughts they keep having of throwing their baby out the window or stabbing it with a kitchen knife. They're scared they're a monster and that somehow they'll lose control and actually do these horrible things that pop into their mind.

Everybody gets these thoughts from time to time, but OCD sufferers are plagued by them, and the OCD complicates things further by making it very, very, very difficult to accept the fact that these thoughts mean absolutely nothing and that they're most definitely not going to lose control and do something hugely against their morals. They'll ruminate on these thoughts over and over and over again, involuntarily, getting more and more disturbed and upset. Compulsions form as ways to attempt relieving the anxiety from these obsessive and intrusive thoughts. An OCD sufferer will do absolutely anything to try to silence these horrifying thoughts: avoiding children, taking pictures of their stove or door locks on their phone, neglecting their children, etc. Here's the thing: Trying to ignore these thoughts only makes them worse, keeping them in your head, and causing a vicious feedback loop that makes OCD very easy to spiral out of control.

It's true that articles like this and modern media in general unfortunately continue to perpetuate widespread misconceptions. I don't point this out because I'm just some overly-sensitive person with OCD and I don't like my condition trivialized — frankly, I couldn't care less about that. The problem is that there are MANY people out there who are suffering from OCD and have absolutely no clue because their understanding of OCD is so far from reality.

I'm a perfect example of this. I'm a 25 year old (software engineer), and was just diagnosed with OCD at the beginning of this month. Prior to my diagnosis, I had NO CLUE what OCD was. All I knew is that I was disorganized and messy, so there's no way I had that "OCD thing"... Oh, how wrong I was. After learning about the condition, it's crystal clear that I've been suffering from this condition as long as I can remember. I now understand that OCD has played a very major role in my life, being responsible for enormous amounts of depression, anxiety, and even suicide attempts. If I would have known what OCD _really_ was and not just how it's portrayed in media, I could have gotten the help I needed much, much earlier.

In closing, I just want to say that there is no permanent cure for OCD. Even with SUCCESSFUL treatment, the thoughts never actually go away. At best, some of us with OCD can get temporary relief by taking SSRI's and/or practicing Exposure Response Prevention and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. More recently, some mindfulness methods have been gaining credibility in the scientific/academic community.

For more information, book suggestions, or even to join a chatroom and talk to some real, live people with OCD, check out the portal I put together a few days ago: [http://ocd.community/](http://ocd.community/)

Thanks for your understanding.

<comment> ocd-shepherd Sorry about the list formatting, it's not letting me edit my comment, probably because this is a new throwaway. (My real HN account is tied to my identity, and I'm not "out" about my OCD).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Oh, yes yes, I can relate so hard that I actually have to take care of not getting mad after my SO when she breaks in those optimized routine she can't possibly have any clue of.

</comment><comment><USER19> I totally do this - I call it parallelizing (or avoiding blocking). I do it both in programming, when it makes sense, and in everyday (non-programming) things.

</comment><comment><USER20> He lost me at "In fact, many of us who are working at a high pace and functioning at a high level seem to experience this."

</comment><comment><USER21> Don't forget what the "D" stands for. If it's not maladaptive, I don't think you can call it a disorder.

</comment><comment><USER22> No, it's not "like OCD". For some reason people think OCD means "haha I like to have my kitchen pots organized" when it's really an often debilitating, life-changing disorder. Please don't contribute to the trivialization of the term.

</comment><comment><USER23> Oh, it's not just me then?

<comment><USER24> The exact title of the email I just sent my wife, with the url to the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As others on this thread have mentioned, full-blown OCD is considerably more serious than it's commonly portrayed. It's as serious a health condition as other mental illnesses like depression or bipolar disorder.

Cracked.com, of all places, wrote an excellent article on the subject of what actual real-life OCD is like: [http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-no-one- tells-you-about-...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-no-one-tells-you- about-having-ocd/)

 _" Imagine the feeling of having a song stuck in your head. Now imagine that instead of "It's Raining Men," it's the thought of murdering your best friend. In graphic detail. Over and over again. You're not mad at your best friend, and you've never done anything violent, but it won't stop playing.

You probably feel kind of shitty just reading that. But that's what the "obsessive" part of OCD is like: intrusive, unwanted, disturbing thoughts that won't go away. "_

For more information and details of what is or isn't OCD, the OCD subreddit is apparently surprisingly good: [http://www.reddit.com/r/OCD](http://www.reddit.com/r/OCD)

I'm sure that OP didn't mean anything hostile by his/her use of the term. Given it's commonly misunderstood, and that causes genuine suffering, it's worth bringing the nature of OCD up when it's discussed in this fashion!

<comment> aaron-lebo I have OCD. It is almost entirely under control now, but it derailed me for a good five years and put me in a depression so deep that I wanted to die.

Last week I actually wrote a very personal blog post about it if anyone is interested in understanding the disorder and what it means. It also talks about how I've personally tried to find meaning in life after dealing with it. Kind of navel-gazey.

Sometimes my feathers get ruffled when people say stuff like "I'm so OCD" and have no idea what they are talking about, but they really don't know any better and I think it is okay to let it slide. Sometimes we do need to trivialize horrible things (as long as we understand the real pain they cause) in order to cope.

[http://lebo.io/2015/03/26/worth-the-fighting- for.html](http://lebo.io/2015/03/26/worth-the-fighting-for.html)

<comment><USER25> Agreed - I don't think people say "I'm so OCD" or similar out of malice.

A lot of people genuinely don't know what OCD is or why it might be harmful. Hence I do think politely and briefly educating folk is a good thing, if only so that one day if they experience the same symptoms they realise what they are and seek help.

Really glad your OCD is under control, and well done. I'll add that post to my informal list of OCD resources!</comment></comment></comment>


Ang Lee made the most realistic movie ever.  It's unwatchable - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2016/10/billy_lynn_s_long_halftime_walk_looks_fantastic_it_s_also_unwatchable.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru <comment><USER2> Is there a link to a small cut of the footage somewhere? Obviously it may not be represented 100% on our MacBook Pros, but I'm interested in seeing the high frame rate at work in this instance more than the extreme resolution.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Title edited to provide some context without changing style.</comment>


Show HN: Google Maps Geofencing Tool - <AUTHOR> http://kaipi.me

<comment><AUTHOR> Added help popover</comment>


World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice - <AUTHOR> http://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/ <comment><USER2> When it comes to climate science, I wish more people had at least a minimal idea of what is going on. For a simple summary of relevant data, see [https://www.skepticalscience.com/](https://www.skepticalscience.com/) which has good summaries at a layman's level.

The thing that annoys me, and is exemplified even by this article in the title which is "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity", is that media and many scientist themselves use a type of outrageous apocalyptic language when discussing climate change issues.

Taking what we know at its most extreme predictions does not lead to a world- ending i.e. catastrophic event by any stretch of the wildest of imaginations within the next 100 years.

We should use precise unemotional language so we can clearly communicate and effectively solve the problems in the public sphere.

Every time someone who doesn't accept climate change reads an article like this, then waits 25 years (as the article mentions) and see's the world has not ended and everything is continuing seemingly unchanged, they see it as confirmation that the whole field is a joke.

There are/will be real problems over the next century - such as costal cities needing to be evacuated, loss of biodiversity due to species extinction, and irreversible increased global temperatures which will lead to increased natural disasters such as droughts, fires, etc. And these will be greatly exacerbated in the 22nd century if we don't develop solutions now.

Finally, I think if we want to persuade the public and politicians, we need to show parameters that people care about. In this article they show metrics for ozone depletion, deforestation, and co2 emissions. But no one cares about that because it doesn't directly effect them at all, and is thus virtually meaningless to them. We need to show statistics that are relevant to human flourishing such as deaths/sickness due to climate change induced famine and disease. Homeloss due to climate change induced flooding and rising sea levels, lower rates of all types of innovation due to loss of biodiversity, etc.

It could be some organizations/individuals are taking the IMHO correct approach here, but if so, I haven't come across them yet.</comment>


Jolla  Adds Support for Sailfish OS on Sony Mobile's Xperia Devices - <AUTHOR> https://jolla.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Sony_Jolla_press_release_MWC2017_FINAL.pdf?x12599 <comment><AUTHOR> 2 more press releases from the Mobile World Congress 2017

China accouncement: [https://jolla.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/China_announcem...](https://jolla.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/China_announcement_MWC2017_FINAL.pdf?x12599)

Latin America announcement: [https://jolla.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/Jalasoft_press_...](https://jolla.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/Jalasoft_press_release_MWC2017.pdf?x12599)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone ever been involved in the home construction process? Any tips? - <AUTHOR>

We are building a house and would love any advice from this who have done it before. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I grew up in a family contracting business.

It is hard to give any meaningful comment without more information.

Are you actually intending to build the house yourself, or are you contracting it out?

Is the design set?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about the broad question. We are contracting in out, and we are in the design process right now.

I guess I was just looking for very general tips based on others' experiences. As an example, people we know who have had a home built seem to all have little things they love, hate or would do differently about their homes, such as build a bigger laundry room or have a bathroom near an entryway so kids and guests do not have to walk through the entire house to access it.

I thought the HN community may have some interesting insights.

<comment><USER2> If you are looking for design tips that relate to designing a home according to how people actually live, check out <http://www.notsobighouse.com/></comment></comment></comment>


How We Got a Link from CNN and Drove 200K - <AUTHOR> http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2010/08/25/infographic-case-study

<comment><USER2> This is a far better article than the title lets on. A really practical "walkthrough" of what they did and how it panned out. Finding this quite inspiring. I've only made one graphic that "went viral" and I see a lot of similarities to what they're saying.</comment>


Trump Administration Preps Plan for Huge Cuts to Department of Energy - <AUTHOR> https://www.top500.org/news/trump-administration-preps-plan-for-huge-cuts-to-department-of-energy/ <comment><USER2> China is going to be one happy country.</comment>


YouTube is down - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/ <comment><USER2> Just when I uploaded a video that would have gotten many views. FUCK

<comment><USER3> I'm streaming my marriage too. Jesus!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "These are the most common IP addresses for YouTube: 22.214.171.124. 220.127.116.11. 126.96.36.199. 14 May 2018"

These IP addresses do not respond.</comment>


Global Map of the Local #1 Song (playable) - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/2018/01/music-map/ <comment><USER2> looks like went viral or something?

Page displays as today: "SORRY!. This project ran up a bill with Mapbox for a few thousand dollars (which powers the maps). We've taken down the project until we can figure out how to make it financially viable."</comment>


Tumblr founder to get $81 million to remain at Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100951955

<comment><USER2> To me, the most fascinating aspect of the article is the list of Yahoo acquisitions since Mayer joined:

July 17, 2012 Marissa Mayer becomes Yahoo CEO

October 25, 2012 Stamped (Social Recommendation)

December 4, 2012 OnTheAir (Video Conferencing)

January 22, 2013 Snip.it (Social Network)

February 12, 2013 Alike (Social Recommendation)

March 20, 2013 Jybe (Social Recommendation)

March 25, 2013 Summly (News Aggregation, Summarization)

May 1, 2013 Astrid (Productivity)

May 9, 2013 GoPollGo (Real-time Surveys)

May 9, 2013 MileWise (Reward Programs)

May 10, 2013 Loki Studios (Mobile Gaming)

May 17, 2013 Tumblr (Blogging)

May 23, 2013 PlayerScale (Online Gaming)

June 12, 2013 GhostBird Software (Mobile Photography Apps)

June 13, 2013 Rondee (Video Conferencing)

July 2, 2013 Bignoggins (Fantasy Sports)

July 2, 2013 Qwiki (Automated Video Production)

July 3, 2013 Xobni (Address Book Apps/CRM)

July 18, 2013 Ztelic (Social Analytics)

July 31, 2013 Lexity (E-commerce App Platform)

<comment><USER3> It's funny, i just summarized her davos talk last night and looking at these aquisitions, they all fall into her 'vision'. The only one that stands out is tumblr since she said they were looking to do small aquisitions, therefore she is following her vision and the market will decide if it is successful. If she succeeds, the media will be praising her to the moon and if she flops, we will hear ll the scathing blog posts. So far she has raised yahoo's stock price, which has taken some pressure off here especially from some vocal yahoo shareholders.

<comment><USER4> The stock price has been driven by share buybacks, and the appreciation of Alibaba.

It's more accurate to say that financial markets, past acquisitions, and activist investors have driven up the share price.

That said, the share-price uptick has extended her "honeymoon." Hopefully, all of these acquisitions, cultural changes, etc. add up to something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doubt it's about his talent (even though he is very talented). Think it's more of a PR move. It'd look pretty bad for Mayer & Co if he ditched Yahoo in a couple months, and a ton of people would notice / company would get bad press. Keep him & you never have the negative press. Plus the scope of the negative press would dwarf the type of press this blurb is getting.

Question is, is the difference between the $81 million and the amount they would have paid him strictly for talent over the course of the contract justifiable on those PR grounds?

<comment><USER6> Well, at $20 million a year that puts him in the company of the 100 highest compensated CEOs (despite being, well whatever his position is.)

[http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/CEO-Pay-and- You/100-Hi...](http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/CEO-Pay-and- You/100-Highest-Paid-CEOs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have no problem with him getting 81m. The fact that all of the other employees combined get 29m combined while he gets that is pretty lame though.

<comment><USER8> Not really. Karp is worth orders of magnitude more to Yahoo! than the rest of the team.

Yahoo!'s always had engineers who could bring products to market. Their deficiency has long been with executives and the product groups.

<comment><USER9> Unless you know exactly who each person is on the team, that's making a lot of assumptions. I've seen enough companies that have key people who aren't co- founders that don't get a lot of public recognition but significantly make major contributions to the company. Some would even later become CEOs.

<comment><USER8> That's a valid point. I assume if those key players exist then they received a disproportionate % than other team members. Noting close to Karp though I'm sure.

I stand by my generalization though. Yahoo! doesn't need future CEOs. They need founders with the vision to execute on an idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if there is a performance component to this, or if it's based solely on him sticking around for the long haul.

I just finished up an earn out with performance goals on both revenue and margin, and found it to be very challenging. We ended up making product decisions with only the near-term implications in mind, and I feel it actually stunted our growth in both the near and long-term.

Given my experience, I strongly feel companies should base earn outs on length of time, while giving founders the autonomy to try new things while they are there. I heard Google shifted toward that model over time, but can't confirm. Hopefully Tumblr's founder got similar terms...

<comment><USER11> You've just discovered the reason our investment banking system is so screwed up. Earn $20M on your trades this year? Take $500K as a bonus. Those same investments lose $30M the year after? Well, now your bonus is just $30K and maybe you'll do better next year.

<comment><USER12> That is dated; deferreds and clawbacks are pervasive now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It strikes me that the guy in Minnesota walked away with $86M free and clear from buying a Powerball ticket. :-)

Its a pretty nice retention package, always nice to hear when someone 'wins' like this. I hope he continues to innovate going forward.

</comment><comment><USER14> I suppose we're just wired to overestimate the value of individuals. I just hope he spends a lot of that money, whereby it might actually do the world some good (rather than 'investing' it) .

<comment><USER15> I don't think you understand what "investing" is. Investing is giving money to someone (or even just a bank) in exchange for something which might change value. That person is then going to go spend the money somewhere else. There's pretty much no way to prevent money from moving around other than turning it into cash and burying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This move of Mayer and Yahoo to buy a bunch of startups at difficult to justify valuations reeks of desperation. I think it's the continued downfall of Yahoo.

If you compare with Google acquisitions each of them are strategic and the aquihire acquisitions are at more reasonable valuations.

</comment><comment><USER17> How are these contracts usually written with regards to the event of firing?

Disclaimer: I fully realize that's not statistically likely at all, but I want any answers to narrowly focus on the legal language in the contract around that event.

<comment><USER13> In my experience even if the retainee is fired they get the whole thing, the retaining company seems to often end up with a clause that says is parting ways is the retainee's idea they forfeit their retention package.

<comment><USER18> Usually it says "fired without cause" they get the whole thing, but if fired with cause then they don't.

<comment><USER13> My particular package it didn't matter why they fired me but anecdotes aren't data. There was a carve out that if I was convicted of a felony they could evaluate whether or not to pay me. I asked about the firing or not clause to our CEO at the time, and he said, "Oh, they won't fire you, if they want to get out of the obligation they will make you quit."

Which I supposed was probably true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if he'd be allowed to work remotely.

<comment><USER20> The article mentioned that Tumblr would still be run independently from Yahoo in New York (Yahoo is in SV). Fun fact: SV can mean Silicon Vally or Sunnyvale in this case :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> good for him. hope he's worth it - founders rarely work well within a corporate environment where suddenly you have people managing you.

looking forward to him exiting in a few months/years, then doing something new and cool. should have enough fuck you money by then.

</comment><comment><USER22> Good for him to be so driven, I would've retired long ago.

<comment><USER23> What about this article has to do with his drive? It's about Yahoo paying him $81MM to retain him for the next four years.

<comment><USER22> Think about it: you spent years upon years building a blogging platform, which I guess pretty much anyone would agree is not that much captivating, and you finally got an exit. And we're talking about Yahoo, with that scale you can be sure that whatever the future needs of the company might be those will be satisfied. Basically you brought the company/platform where you wanted it to be, so $81MM or not I think anyone would be about done with the whole thing. Retire, find some hobby, move on to better things. Yet he remained, so I guess he must be very driven and passionate about blogging, that's all I'm saying.

<comment><USER24> > so I guess he must be very driven and passionate about blogging

Or he just wants to retire in 4 years $80 million richer

<comment><USER13> Or take it easy for the next 4 years. A couple of acquired CEO's I met at Google when I was there seemed a bit useless if you know what I mean. Great people but basically putting in their time until their retention clause was met, or at least it seemed that way. I don't discount the possibility that I was just envious though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We are all founders now!

</comment><comment><USER26> $81 million sounds kinda low for the value of Tumblr.

<comment><USER27> Err, that's just the money that the founder got IN ADDITION to the sale, in order to stay with Yahoo.

Tumblr was sold for 1.1 billion.

<comment><USER26> still think its low,</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Linking your toys to a virtual character in the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://dwl.twinsprite.com/livedemo/character?form

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a live demo that illustrates the use of Twinsprite, an IoT platform that links a cloud data store to a toy via a unique identifier.</comment>


Software Development as a Collaborative Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000826.html <comment><USER2> the links to Ralph Koster's presentations towards the bottom are especially worthwhile...</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone used Flippa.com for domain sale - <AUTHOR>

I tried to sell ineedquickly.com on Flippa but I didn't get any bids. The only advice from Flippa was to pay them more to have the domain listed on more sites.<p>Does anyone have any suggestions of alternative sites that charge you after the sale of the domain perhaps? <comment><USER2> I've used it a few times, but some of the buyers are less serious and look to rent the domain and so on, which ends up in the ending the contract basically when ur ad expire, ending in you without a sale.</comment>


Archaeal Richmond Mine Acidophilic Nanoorganisms - brian-armstrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeal_Richmond_Mine_acidophilic_nanoorganisms <comment> brian-armstrong This tomography paper about these tiny organisms is also available [https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej200899.pdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/ismej200899.pdf)

According to the paper these are 300-400nm across.

edit: If you assume a radius of 200nm and a carbon spacing of 3 angstroms, you can make a pure carbon perimeter that encloses it out of about 4200 carbon atoms.</comment>


How to Not Get Screwed by App Developers [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/rootstrap-website/assets/docs/RS-How-to-Not-Get-Screwed-by-App-Developers.pdf <comment><USER2> Super funny post.

It's like... do development like we used to do development in 2007... before we learned all those lessons about "corporate agile"</comment>


Why Serenade? - <AUTHOR> http://elabs.se/blog/33-why-serenade

<comment><AUTHOR> Lots of interesting topics in Jonas' post worth discussing ... to pick a few:

        > I tried to follow the Smalltalk-80 style of MVC very closely
        > in Serenade.

Aside from ideological purity, did you notice any other benefits from sticking more closely to the Smalltalk-80 style? Personally, I can't imagine the benefit in "clearly defining the role of the controller as only reacting to user events" in a JavaScript app -- that's pretty much a single line of jQuery to listen for DOM events, and then call the appropriate method on the model. Having the same object responsible for rendering DOM elements also be responsible for listening to events on them seems much more useful.

        > In Ember.js for example, all objects you want to use inherit
        > from Ember.Object. In Serenade you can use any JavaScript
        > object as a controller or a model.

This distinction seems entirely academic, as in the documentation, you show:

        var model = {};
        Serenade.extend(model, Serenade.Properties);

... effectively ignoring the prototype chain by copying properties instead, but achieving the same effect.

        > I came to the conclusion that doing this is only really
        > possible by writing a purpose built template language.

        [...]

        ul#comments
          - collection @comments
            li @title

Do you worry about the constraints that are entailed by tightly coupling a logic-less template language to your framework? Whenever I talk to folks that are trying to use logic-less templates to build big apps, they _always_ seem to run into dead ends where being able to call a little bit of arbitrary code would make their templates so much easier -- whether it's zebra striping a table, checking the length of the array you're rendering, or what have you. To that extent, things like Handlebars provide escape hatches from Mustache's purity, with "registerHelper".

        > Serenade has no dependencies. It achieves everything it
        > does by using normal DOM manipulation.

Take care, as "normal DOM manipulation" is one of the slowest possible ways to build and render a UI. Do you have any benchmarks looking at how a Serenade template performs versus a more traditional innerHTML-based template of the same view, in, say IE7?

        > Let's first clear up that CoffeeScript classes are nothing
        > else than fancy syntax for JavaScript's prototypal inheritance,
        > and the fact that they are called classes, is just calling
        > them what prototypal inheritance is used for in 99% of cases.

[Applause]. Thanks for putting that in your post -- JavaScript's standard prototypal inheritance as practiced with constructor functions is just a longer way to say "class".

<comment><USER2> 1) Smalltalk 80 style design

The advantage is that the controller knows nothing about the DOM, so it is usable and testable without the DOM. And while I agree that it's a single line to add a binding, that quickly becomes a single line for every single event you ever want to listen to. It ends up being a sizable amount of code. Aside from that, it seems clear that binding data is best done in the view, not in the model or controller, why are events different?

2) Using normal JavaScript objects

You don't _have_ to extend the objects with Serenade.Properties. The downside is that data in the view isn't automatically updated. But as in the first examples in the README, it's perfectly acceptable to send in "JSON" directly to the view.

In the example right after the one you posted, I show how to add properties to the prototype. The intent is not to sidestep prototypal inheritance, but since multiple inheritance or mixins aren't available in JavaScript, copying over the functions is as close as we can get.

3) Break out

I just realized that it's not documented in the README, I'll have to fix that, but it's possible to add custom instructions. Any function added to `Serenade.Helpers` is available as an instruction in the view. This is very similar to handlebar's registerHelper. See the spec here: [https://github.com/elabs/serenade.js/blob/master/spec/integr...](https://github.com/elabs/serenade.js/blob/master/spec/integration/custom_helper.spec.coffee)

4) Performance

I have not done any benchmarks, so honestly I can't say how it compares performance wise. I'm not terribly worried about IE7. At the moment, we don't even support it, and it'll be dead soon. We could possible use document fragments to speed up the rendering, but I'm unsure if it actually makes a difference. I would argue that Rails is slow, Ruby is slow, PHP is slow, Java is slow, C is slow, etc..

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Smalltalk 80 style design

Right -- you mentioned testing, but I'd like to hear more about benefits in your actual app. Putting something in a separate object _just_ to make it more "testable", but without any actual benefit to, or effect on your app's behavior, strikes me as the essence of unnecessary abstraction. You can certainly test views that "know something" about the DOM without actually using the DOM as well...

4) View/Template Performance

Ok then, IE8. It has largely the same DOM performance characteristics (ie, _slow_ ) as IE7 -- and it'll be around forever, or as long as Windows XP lasts -- whichever comes first ;)

For the purposes of a web application, Rails/PHP/Python being slow matters far less than your template library being slow. They're in the backend, you can run many instances across many servers, you can cache their output, etc.

If your JS templating / View library is too slow, it means you _can't_ use it to build the most interactive and interesting parts of your UI -- precisely the parts for which using client-side views would be most helpful.

I'm talking about even relatively simple things, like this: <http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2011/10/entity-charts/>

Better to benchmark now and find out, either way.

<comment><USER3> Jonas wrote: > The advantage is that the controller knows nothing about the DOM, so it is usable and testable without the DOM.

Jeremy wrote: > You can certainly test views that "know something" about the DOM without actually using the DOM as well...

I've been wondering for a while how to eliminate the slow and brittle Selenium layer from integration tests (perhaps I'm not the only one?). I'm thinking that if you can do away with the DOM, you might be able to somehow run the integration tests on the server, without launching a browser.

Do you have any concrete ideas how to do this, or are you only talking about unit tests in the text I quoted?

<comment><USER2> If you move most of the application client side, you could use something like jsdom to test it. That's obviously not going to get you the same level of confidence that a full stack test in a real browser would though. Maybe a combination of the two?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sorry not to add value to the discussion, but I wanted to say the back- and-forth has been a very educational look at some of the practical trade-offs that framework designers have to make.

</comment><comment><USER5> Original thread is here: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3529034>

The framework itself is here: <https://github.com/elabs/serenade.js>

</comment><comment><USER6> Excellent post. Loved the framework's ease of use for people already familiar to jQuery.</comment>


Tesla Replacement battery modules for model 3 between 5-7k - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/04/13/tesla-model-3-longevity-claims-elon-musk <comment><AUTHOR> If the 5-7k is current cost, explains why they are having difficulty reaching 35k price point...</comment>


How to write X in both Python 3 and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://sayazamurai.github.io/python-vs-javascript/ <comment><USER3> Sort example doesn't take into account Javascript does lexicographical sorting?

javascript:

      someList = [ 40, 2, 1, 3, 7, 99]
      someList.sort()
      Array(6) [ 1, 2, 3, 40, 7, 99 ]

python:

      someList = [ 40, 2, 1, 3, 7, 99]
      sorted(someList)
      [1, 2, 3, 7, 40, 99]

<comment> 52-6F-62 It depends on whether or not you pass it a basic comparator function, eg:

        someArray.sort((a,b) => a - b);

But yeah the example would have needed this for the less complex example as well to be accurate.

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't that be `a < b`?

<comment><USER5> No, the compare function needs to be able to indicate when two values are equal, not just when one is smaller/larger than the other. Otherwise your sort function will return inconsistent results for compare(a, b) and compare(b, a) when both values are equal.

<comment><USER6> So

        someList.sort((a,b) => a => b)

Would be better, because it produces a stable sort?

`a - b` produces the same results, so equally valid?

<comment><USER7> (I'm assuming you meant "a >= b", not "a => b".)

That's still not a consistent comparison function, so the results are implementation-defined.

To be consistent, it's required, among others, that if cmp(a, b) == 0 then cmp(b, a) == 0. For "a >= b", this is not always true, e.g.:

      » cmp(0, 1) == 0
      true
      » cmp(1, 0) == 0
      false

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who is often switching languages, I find these sorts of cheatsheets useful.

I know all the syntax in them but I'll be damned if I can ever remember which language uses which until I've settled back in to things.

<comment><USER9> My go-to site is usually [https://learnxinyminutes.com/](https://learnxinyminutes.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How to write using X in both languages:

Python: [https://github.com/python-xlib/python- xlib](https://github.com/python-xlib/python-xlib)

Node.js: [https://github.com/sidorares/node-x11](https://github.com/sidorares/node-x11)

<comment><USER11> A couple more native X11 client implementations:

Common Lisp: [https://github.com/sharplispers/clx](https://github.com/sharplispers/clx)

Go: [https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgb](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xgb)

Any others?

(Looking for implementations of the X11 protocol in $LANGUAGE, not bindings to the C Xlib)

<comment><USER11> One more that I use:

Emacs Lisp: [https://github.com/ch11ng/xelb](https://github.com/ch11ng/xelb)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I read the headline I was expecting the X windowing system. When I clicked the article and saw "junior programmer" I thought this is about to be impressive.

Cool site :P

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool! Reminds me of [http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/](http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/)

I particularly enjoyed seeing that you used snake case in Python and camel case in JavaScript. Great attention to detail.

</comment><comment><USER14> Creator here! Let me know if you have any suggestions.

<comment><USER15> Nice list.

Perhabs just personal preference but I'd use

        for(let element of someList){
        	console.log(element);
        }

instead of

        someList.forEach(element => {
          console.log(element)
        })

for...of is easier to read and recognize as a loop construct at first glance, and as far as I recall it's also faster nowadays since the body of the loop is inline, whereas forEach requires the runtime to deal with a function object.

<comment><USER16> Makes me wonder if maybe the syntax for mapping, folding and other collection operations should have a similar syntax to _for_ instead of the current method-style syntax popular in most modern languages.

<comment><USER17> C# has a syntax called Linq Query Syntax that provides keywords in the language to do things like map, filter, and reduce.

Example:

      var queryLondonCustomers = from cust in customers
                                 where cust.City == "London"
                                 select cust;

I'm not a big fan of it honestly, the function style seems more consistent and easier to read to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://hyperpolyglot.org/](http://hyperpolyglot.org/) is a great website with a similar idea.

<comment><USER19> [https://learnxinyminutes.com/](https://learnxinyminutes.com/) is another website with a similar aim.

<comment><USER20> I quite like this as super thin intro. So far I always fonud it motivating enough to jump into deeper articles/books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> No mention of [http://rosettacode.org](http://rosettacode.org), tsk tsk. (specifically: [http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Programming_Tasks](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Programming_Tasks))

<comment><USER22> Hehe, I didn't know that but the page reminded me of of the Arch Linux Rosetta Stone page[1] instantly ;-)

[1]: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> A weird reference imo. Perhaps useful to build as a learning experience but I wouldn't expect who needs if/else included in a cheat sheet to be ready to learn to languages.

<comment><USER13> The value is in finding what is the most idiomatic way to do something in either language. For example if you're coming from Python and you're used to sum() it is useful to check this reference for the most idiomatic way to do it in JavaScript before doing it by hand with anonymous functions and reduce or looping through the list (as is the case unfortunately).

<comment><USER24> Agreed. The value isn't in it being a tutorial, it's in it being a quick overview of a language's idioms as they apply to common tasks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Do people actually use cheat sheets like this? IMO, the first stackoverflow result in google is generally what I'm looking for and quicker - <USER2> for common things and common languages such as the things on this page. Even if you have the page bookmarked, you still need to find/search/scroll for the specific thing you're looking for. Also, with Alfred you can google anything even quicker by not having to cmd+tab to the browser.

<comment><USER26> Maybe not as a reference, but it's certainly helpful to browse if you're going from one language to another (I know python and I'm learning Javascript, this probably saved me a few google searches)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Reminds me of this OneLang HN post from several months ago - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16415051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16415051)

It's an IDE that lets you code simultaneously in several different languages [https://ide.onelang.io/](https://ide.onelang.io/)

</comment><comment> tobiasz-cudnik Reminds me of PLEAC - Perl Cookbook translated to >10 langs [http://pleac.sourceforge.net](http://pleac.sourceforge.net)

</comment><comment><USER28> When I publish code about algorithms and data structures to my web site, I usually offer multiple language versions. Why? Because understanding the computer science theory and math proofs is a big effort. Writing and debugging my first implementation in any language is a big effort. But porting that code to a bunch of languages is comparatively easy and is almost a thoughtless mechanical process.

</comment><comment><USER29> I thought this was going to be a polyglot[1] demonstration of writing code for X Windows. However, I was not disappointed in what I found!

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyglot_\(computing\))

</comment><comment><USER30> I expected a Python/JS polyglot :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Impressive to see almost all JS examples being as short as the python ones. Python is normally valued for being short and concise but modern JS is really catching up here.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had such high hopes when I opened the arsenal. I anticipated it would an article of how to write code that's both JavaScript and Python syntactically correct.

</comment><comment> another-cuppa What's the point of having print or console.log around everything? Just have one box with "print to standard output" and those two at the top.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love it! Reminds me of [https://www.interviewbit.com](https://www.interviewbit.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> Excellent educational tool - will be passing this around to colleagues who need it. Thanks!

<comment><USER35> Same here!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> this is very good. i had it in my head that there was no "extend" function in JS, and didn't realize "push(...array)" was possible. thank you for the super detailed guide

</comment><comment><USER37> FizzBuzz example isn't correct

</comment><comment><USER38> I was expecting to see a leftpad comparison too :D</comment>


Google SearchWiki is Not a Wiki - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_search_wiki_is_not_a_wi.php <comment><USER2> I've been annoyed that people don't know what a wiki is. Some use "wiki" when they mean "widget." Now Google comes and muddies up the language even more. boooo

</comment><comment><USER3> I know a lot of people are pretty upset about this new functionality, but I kinda like it. Now if they'll just let me filter entire domains (I'm looking at you Expert sex change!) from all my searches, I'll be soooo happy.</comment>


Indie artist trying to claim his domain name - <AUTHOR> http://frontalot.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?p=48749#48749

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have any experience attempting to claim a domain through arbitration?

I've been selling TapTyping on the App Store since the iPad came out almost 2 years ago but have been unable to negotiate with the individual who currently owns TapTyping.com. It was only recently that I applied for a trademark on "TapTyping" so it might still be a year before it is awarded.

The current owner has yet to do anything with the domain. It is just Godaddy parked. I've made the argument to him that at this point anything he did with the domain that was typing related would probably infringe on our future trademark but he simply replies that he "is not ready to sell the domain at this time".

I assume I am S.O.L. until my trademark goes through, but even once the trademark clears is this an open and shut low risk case as far as arbitration is concerned? Is it likely to be costly to claim domains in this fashion?

<comment><USER3> I don't know much about copyright but infringing on something that is not yet in existence and being punished for it in retrospect seems just plain wrong to me. Is that even possible?

What should hinder him from getting the trademark himself? He apparently had the domain long before you had the intention to trademark something so he it would seem legitimate to award it to him.

<comment><USER4> To get and defend a trademark you need to actually use the mark in commerce. Trademark exists for a specific purpose -- to avoid confusion as to the source of a product or service -- not just to sell off words and images for registration fees.

<comment><USER3> That makes perfect sense. Does having a domain with a list of links to related pages and ads constitute 'using a mark in commerce'?

<comment><USER5> Depends on the panelists and the actual page. There are udrp cases where a page of links and a search box has shown use so the claim is denied. But I've also seen cases where this hasn't happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this really something worth fighting for at this stage in his music career, especially if he's having to pay lawyers? There would be far more value in him cultivating a social media presence (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm, MySpace, Vimeo, etc) than worrying about getting his coveted dot-com.

Having the perfect domain name just doesn't really matter that much for brand building any more, especially for "personalities". Musicians engage fans through Twitter, Facebook, whatever, and if you're stuck with mcfrontalotmusic.com or officialmcfrontalot.com or mcfrontalot.tv or mcfrontalot.dj... don't worry about it. Be consistent, build the fan base, link to your official site often and let the search engines figure it out. When he gets the big record deal, let the record company lawyers jump after the perfect domain.

<comment><USER7> _> if you're stuck with mcfrontalotmusic.com or officialmcfrontalot.com or mcfrontalot.tv or mcfrontalot.dj... don't worry about it._

It's not even that bad, he has frontalot.com. I don't really know why he's bothering...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 22.214.171.124 is a problem IP.

Registrations like:

fasebook.com dailymtoion.com

Show with <http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/>

over 300.000 domains according to domaintools.com .

When searching for copy on their landing pages:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Try+Searching+the+Interne...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Try+Searching+the+Internet+on+These+Relevant+Key+Words%22)

About 86.600 results for me.

Some pretty nasty spammy stuff in there. For example a result from the Google index that randomly redirects users to another domain, perhaps in violation of the guidelines.

saintrosehospital.com/ (original is strosehospital.org/)

to

medicalinformatoin.biz/ (for me)

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=%22try%20sear...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=%22try%20searching%20the%20internet%20on%20these%20relevant%20key%20words%20%22&source=web&cd=54&ved=0CEAQFjADODI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsaintrosehospital.com%2F&ei=TLART7mGL4fG- Qb65bnXAg&usg=AFQjCNGLa50g530-ID0oy02ag54rNZKCdA&cad=rja)

And various misspellings of schools, universities and "healthcare" websites like these.

Registering a trademarked domain name is stupid, but squatting on hospital websites is extremely low.

</comment><comment><USER9> A guy trying to fight for the right to the domain name equivalent of his artist stage name.

It's just simply a call for help since he doesn't seem to know how to figure things out and he doesn't want to pay anyone to help him.

And it doesn't seem like he's tried to contact the owners of the domain. Which he can do here: <http://rapmusik.net/?tmp=domain_inquiry_form>

<comment><USER10> Classic personal-army request. "Hey guys, I don't want to pay money and don't want to learn / invest the time myself to figure it out". But then of cause he has "fans" making this apparently an appropriate form of communication. They might even like the fact that he is asking them for "help".

<comment><USER11> Come on now. He's asking for help _on his own forums_.

If he posted such a request in some general forum you could shower him with derision for treating hn/reddit/4chan/sa as his 'personal army', since apparently you think insulting people who need help is more fun than ignoring them.

But it makes no sense in this context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm still not sure I believe anyone has a right to a domain name, regardless of who's name it uses.

However, I put myself in his shoes and I can see how it would be frustrating at best. This is a remnant of the 'time before the Internet' and will eventually be solved when it becomes impossible to have created a name before the Internet existed. How can we best serve these cases without harming smart domain entrepreneurs in the future?

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure I don't believe in either a) domain name rights as an extension of trademark protection, or b) the protection-worthiness of "domain entrepreneurs."

It's a race for which the correct moves (as others here have noted) are either to win (by luck or cash) or not to play (by choice).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was interesting to me just because its someone not in a technical field trying to navigate these waters. He is already taking the right steps with a lawyer but obviously didn't realize how hard it was going to be. He's been around for a long time and has finally achieved enough success to feel comfortable enough spending money on the lawyer to take something off his long term wish list.

</comment><comment><USER14> For those who aren't familiar with MC Frontalot, might I suggest you check out "It is Pitch Dark," his rap about Zork.

<http://youtu.be/4nigRT2KmCE>

</comment><comment><USER15> First why would he want a domain that is now linked to spam/scams ?

Second, what is his legal claim, has he trademarked his commercial name?</comment>


Workplace by Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://workplace.fb.com/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12678441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12678441).</comment>


How We Made Our DNS Stack 3x Faster - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-made-our-dns-stack-3x-faster/ <comment><USER2> Funny that the only serialization format that beat MessagePack in their benchmark was FlatBuffs.

I happen to know the maintainer of the Golang FlatBuff project, and he is an absolute master at tuning Golang. It's good to see that vindicated.</comment>


Show HN: Would appreciate your feedback on something I'm working on. - <AUTHOR> Hi I'm Akina from Japan and we develop new SNS named bajji(badge).
bajji will visualize reliable relationships. You can connect only with person actually you've met by using our app. And only those who met in person with you can give your assessment to you.By using blockchain, data could be fair to anyone. It keeps service reliability.
1,000 users in Japan and we are trying to expand this service to worldwide as a next step. bajji will solve digital rights on social web. Could you feedback about service for me?
Here is my invite URL. If you register from this URL, you and I will get some points only use in this service after authorization...
https://bajji.life/en/invite/9WvB-lLkd5M ※web-app(PWA), smartphone only
Thank you.
Akina <comment><USER2> Hi Akina. Sounds like an interesting project, but my concern is that your title sounds rather demanding. In general, length until the request substitutes for politeness in English so I think better alternatives would be "Would appreciate your feedback on something I'm working on." or "Would like feedback on a project of mine." The word "want" is also rather forceful for someone who is soliciting other people's help. Just cultural tips.

I know we encourage a culture of straightforwardness on this site, but in my experience even people who say they want succinctness still get offended and/or take the wrong meaning away from direct statements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi zrkrlc, thank you for your very helpful advice. I learned a lot and I revised the title at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi Akina.

I tried opening [https://bajji.life/en](https://bajji.life/en) but the website doesn't describe what your app does.

I am not inclined to run random apps just to see what they're supposed to do and due to this, it would be even harder to convince other people to do the same.

I advice to add a webpage describing what bajji does, along with screenshots.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hello Akina - When I access bajji.life, I can only read "Welcome to Bajji". But I cannot read anything else because it is in Japanese only. Is there a translation or alternative English site available?</comment>


Getting Things Done, in Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://www.credmp.org/index.php/2007/07/28/getting-things-done-in-emacs/

<comment><USER2> I've been using gnus/muse/bbdb/planner/remember and of course emacs itself for a while now (years). It is a helpful combination of tools and extremely flexible. Not perfect of course, unless you think that living entirely in emacs is perfect.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Install Viper and Vimpulse... :)</comment>


City of Los Angeles Data Portal - <AUTHOR> https://data.lacity.org/browse?limitTo=datasets&utf8=✓

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm a developer at OpenGov.

The city of Los Angeles' financial data is also up on the OpenGov platform. [https://losangeles.opengov.com](https://losangeles.opengov.com)

It's a positive trend for governments to share their data and be more transparent with their citizens.

<comment><USER3> This is amazing; I had no idea this existed. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FINALLY! The only open data they had prior to this was stuff put together by the LA Times' Data Desk and one lonely GIS data site for maps and parcel data. Glad to see Garcetti is following through on opening up this data!

</comment><comment><USER5> On that note, Colorado has something slightly similar implemented, except with a different underlying platform (Socrata): [http://data.colorado.gov](http://data.colorado.gov)

<comment><USER6> This is a Socrata site as well.

<comment><USER5> Oh, for some reason I didn't notice.</comment></comment></comment>


Got fired? Ready to start a startup/new project? - <AUTHOR> With all the layoffs from Uber, Lyft, AirBnB and others, I'm guessing a lot of great people are about to build new projects and startups.
Want to post below what you're working on and ask for the help you need? This is about finding collaborators/cofounders, not jobs/employees.
I'm also starting a list of people who are working on new things & want collaborators/cofounders, or people who are ready to build but are casting about for what to work on. Post your projects and ideas and email/chat/Zoom with the people you find interesting.
I'm putting it behind a form so that recruiters don't jump on and spam message everyone. If you wanna get on the list, sign up here: https://bmac-design.typeform.com/to/RbA4JL <comment><USER3> Snowdrift.coop is a crowdfunding platform specifically for free/libre/open (FLO) public goods -- freely-licensed software, music, journalism, research, etc. It's based on a new funding mechanism we call Crowdmatching, where patrons pledge to support projects with a monthly donation proportional to the number of others making the same pledge ($1 per 1000 patrons).

We operate as a non-profit cooperative. The site itself is free software, written in Haskell (yesod) and we've also tried to stick with FLO tooling whenever possible, although we made an exception for hosting our source code, which is at [https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift](https://gitlab.com/snowdrift/snowdrift)

Of course, as a free software project, we suffer from the same funding issues we're trying to solve. The project is currently a 100% volunteer effort, and we're making slow (but nonzero!) progress towards our initial launch, when we start hosting our first outside projects.

One of our biggest bottlenecks right now is developer bandwidth. We have a handful of updated designs that address UX issues with the live site, and need to get them implemented -- if you know css, haskell, or both, we'd appreciate help!

I'm heading to bed now but will check in with this thread in the morning; you can also reach out on our discourse forum (<[https://community.snowdrift.coop>](https://community.snowdrift.coop>)), irc/matrix (#snowdrift on freenode; #snowdrift:matrix.org), or gitlab.

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn! Sounds super worthy. Wish I could help--rock on!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm building [https://choremate.co](https://choremate.co) with a working tagline of 'The Best Chore Chart in the World.' Living with other people tends to suck and I know it can be better.

I'm also working on Crisp [https://github.com/huumn/crisp](https://github.com/huumn/crisp) which is a cryptocurrency written is Lisp. It's currently a toy meant for exploring, but what I want to do is have the transaction language be designed around spawning subchains. A blockchain for creating blockchains.

For Choremate, I definitely need help around marketing and UX flow. For Crisp, it'd be nice to just have someone to talk about it with, find other maintainers, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yo I'm a UX designer. Hit me up I advise early stage people on flows all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Legit - Twitch for Foodies

Legit helps you find, curate and share your favorite food/restaurant recommendations with friends using your mobile food photos.

Have a map of all the ramen your friends have tried and vouch for (pinned with photos, ratings and captions) when you visit Tokyo.

See all the restaurants your friends' have tried nearby, wherever you are, with a feed of all your friends' food photos, sortable by distance with a tap.

Imagine having a map of all the restaurants Anthony Bourdain has tried around the world.

We believe that when it comes to looking for good food, Friend-sourcing > Crowd-sourcing, because your friends share a similar taste in food with you.

People are already taking too many photos of their food, but those photos usually just sit in your photo album doing nothing. We want you to harness the data (and meta-data) from your food photos, to journal and curate all your favorite culinary experiences, so that you can share them with the people you love.

I'm the IOS dev building this out with some non-technical friends. We are currently in private beta with friends and family. We are potentially looking for someone to help with the Android/Web version, ideally someone who wants to work with Flutter.

We will be launching through several Foodie Facebook groups soon and plan to eventually work with food/travel content producers. We think that foodies and food/travel content producers are currently underserved by Instagram and YouTube.

Please reach out if anyone is interested in downloading the beta app or learning more about Legit. We are super excited to build the new Twitch for Foodies.

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a designer here in SF. I'm VERY EARLY in exploring an idea. The problem: calls where I'm trying to catch up with more than 5 or so friends aren't great. If you think about an actual house party, there's a room with music playing where you hang out and don't talk so much, but there are also other spaces, like talking by the food table or going to get a drink and striking up a conversation. None of those constructs, where the space dictates the interaction, exist in video apps that I'm aware of. Basically I'm interested in making large, remote video events feel intimate and think that the concept of "rooms" that you can move into or out of, while still being part of the main event, are pretty key. Right now just starting with some user research. Any smart designers/engineers/product people--even if you just want to noodle about the problem for 15 min--are most welcome to reach out.

<comment><USER6> Does Sococo do something like this? [https://www.sococo.com/why- sococo/](https://www.sococo.com/why-sococo/)

<comment><USER7> So one of the remote contracts I worked used this tool, when I first saw and used it, I thought it was the dumbest idea ever. After using it for a while, I think it is one of the most brilliant remote collaboration tools out there. My only gripe was when someone leave your room, the app should notify you after a short period of time, that you have left your mic on. I did not like the idea of it being easy to leave a hot mic on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PKG Deploy ([https://www.pkgdeploy.com](https://www.pkgdeploy.com)) - <USER2> than a few times I have wanted to create either RPM or DEB packages but the barrier to entry always seemed rather high.

Then while conducting interviews with what recruiters were calling senior engineers it became quite apparent that many people will still manually deploying code using a bunch of manual commands. Something packages are good for.

So I decided to start creating a way to make Linux packaging easier. I'm not sure if the idea has legs as people move more and more towards containers and serverless architecture but it's been refreshing to build something for myself.

<comment><USER9> It's been a long time since I've used it, but you may be interested in [https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm](https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm) if you haven't seen it before.

<comment><USER10> Also been a long time since I used it, but it was amazing for one project and incredibly frustrating for another. Worth a look for sure, but if you run into issues don't spin your wheels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Converting Plastic Waste into 3d printer filament

Project: [https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at- ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for- cheap-6c908bb09922)

Hopefully, this will reduce the use of virgin plastic for creating art pieces in 3d printing community and you might be able to create beautiful and useful things out of waste plastic while cleaning plastic waste from the environment.

It's a profitable business.

I worked on this in my free time during quarantine.

I want to make the project more accessible so people around the world can develop local recycling unit. There is lots of work which needs to be done including making parts more standardized, demonstrating how parts fight together in a visual way and also have a microcontroller firmware to control diameter of filament.

I need help from someone who can write Arduino code, mostly includes reading diameter from a guage and then change the motor speed of puller roller so that it stretches the filament if filament diameter is more than target and slows down the stretch if filament diameter is less than the target diameter. This needs PID control.

Telegram: alexfromtokyo

<comment><USER12> I'm curious about how you're tackling some of the problems I've seen with prior recycled-plastic-to-filament projects. IIRC printer filament is very sensitive to moisture and impurities, which are hard to control for when using recycled materials (even when mixing with a proportion of virgin plastic)

<comment><USER11> I buy shredded waste plastic.

Which means = they take car dashboard, wash it with water/solvent then shred it into very tiny pieces.

I take it and dry it in oven then I put that in an airtight jar, and let it cool to room temperature over next 24 hours.

I mix it with some virgin plastic (also dried and stored in airtight container)

Then I pour the plastic into hopper and extrude it into filament.

This filament is made from recycled blue ABS: [https://youtu.be/Xirli3qDJlU](https://youtu.be/Xirli3qDJlU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm obsessed with the stock market, so I started writing about stocks last summer: [https://playingfordoubles.substack.com](https://playingfordoubles.substack.com)

+Would love to discuss/co-author interesting investment ideas

+Would love to collab with eng/marketing to help grow readership

+Would love to chat about some data visualization ideas if that's something you're good at

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm planning a launch for a digital marketing agency for funded start-ups with a focus on tech/medical/IT/saas. Along with paying clients, also take on a couple of probono projects; innovative ideas which have intent to change the economy by putting an emphasis on strengthening communities and education. All based on a strategy of positioning which is - New Marketing vs the old (no one wants to be marketed anything right now). I'm located in Israel, but looking for great thinkers in every industry all over, with new ideas - emphasis on new vs old.

If anyone is interested, and is a constant student of analytics, marketing and never assumes they know all there is to know - reach out and let's connect. auramge369@gmail

</comment><comment><USER15> I was not fired, but still like to post it here:

Attempting an opensource non-profit moonshot project to reduce student debt and increase salary of everyone involved in that student's education. It is at a very early stage. Trying to get as much inputs from everyone who matters. Details are here: [https://gitlab.com/bsldld/s/-/blob/master/README.md](https://gitlab.com/bsldld/s/-/blob/master/README.md)

Everyone is welcome to join.

</comment><comment><USER16> Smartlights

A network of connected IoT-type stoplights that use sensors to read traffic patterns and most optimally direct traffic based on math

:)

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds dope! Need help with it? What kind?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unless my interviews go better than I expect them to I'm working on a prober that automatically updates probes for data systems where the read path can be fairly heterogenous like SQL where the result size and the query time can vary fairly widely.

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://github.com/imvetri/ui-editor](https://github.com/imvetri/ui-editor)

Building this to stop frontend from getting overcomplicated

</comment><comment><USER19> Recently laid off, looking for TS/Go projects.

<comment><USER20> hei, hit me up to discuss TS/Go projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm ready to do something.

<comment><AUTHOR> Like what?

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure! Let's discuss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I will sign up for this</comment>


FrogPad, maker of one-handed keyboard pitches iPad oriented business plan - <AUTHOR> http://frogpad.com/FPInfo-SoftFrogPlan.html

<comment><USER2> I can type much faster using my iPad's QWERTY keyboard than that person did on that tablet in the demonstration video... Plus, I'm not sure how useful this sort of app would be. iOS does not have support for custom keyboard as far as I know, so the keyboard would be limited to the actual FrogPad app.</comment>


Ask YC: Review my startup, Atombox - <AUTHOR>

http://atombox.net
Atombox stores small bits of text -- those things that you might write on sticky notes, index cards, or scraps of paper. We use it for Getting Things Done (GTD) (http://amzn.to/bxm1G3). It is full-featured (SSL, backups, keyboard shortcuts) up to 128 atoms and costs $5.00 per month for unlimited atoms.
I'm chatting at http://tinychat.com/atombox as well as on Twitter as @contextlines. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Cut the free atoms to 60. Charge $1 more for Calendar or Google apps integration. Charge $3 more for SMS notification/forwarding, allow them to post from their phones. Add atom sharing and give it away for free. Add a mechanism to allow people to make their atoms public, or invite others into edit/ownership roles.

Anything that adds convenience for 1 user you should charge for. Anything that invites others to use/consume the service, you should give away for free.

Don't forget the footer in atoms to say "Created with Atombox; make your own atoms aye href equals quote <http://atombox.com> quote AtomBox end-aye.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions!

Yeah, we weren't sure about how many atoms to allow for free, so we just picked 128. I have over 1200 atoms that I've accumulated over the years, and so I thought something like 10% of that would be a good "tipping point", so to speak. It's an experiment.

We're also not married to this approach for making revenue. We'll have to see...

<comment><USER3> > _Yeah, we weren't sure about how many atoms to allow for free, so we just > picked 128._

Dropbox's model is good on this. Give away 60, say, but let anyone get 12 more who successfully invites a friend (you could pyramid scheme it!) but have an upper limit for number of free snippets.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are * really * liking the idea of the Dropbox referral model. Definitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Security: The connection between you and Atombox is always secure (SSL).

Backups: All of your data is backed up every hour._

So the actual connection is encrypted, but then everything is backed up every hour. How secure are the backups. Are they encrypted as well? How are they stored? Who has access?

EDIT: Also I didn't realize that GTD and "Getting Things Done" were registered trademarks. That's crazy. You can't say your site helps with GTD without attributing the trademark? It seems like that would almost fall under the ubiquitous vocabulary clause that would invalidate trademark at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> We attribute the "GTD" and "Getting Things Done" trademark at the bottom of the page:

"'GTD' and 'Getting Things Done' are registered trademarks of the David Allen Corporation."

<comment><USER4> Right, that's exactly what I was referring to. I didn't realize you had to attribute the acronym GTD. Your attribution is what surprised me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh. Maybe we don't? I thought both "GTD" and "Getting Things Done" are trademarks...

<comment><USER4> I didn't mean to imply that you don't need to, you very well may. I was just surprised nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a good service! I only have one piece of advice: the CAPTCHA you use on signup is only going to cost you users at this stage. Set up something like Munin to keep an eye on trends in the meantime, and only reintroduce it once - and if - abuse starts :)

<comment><USER6> Here's a fairly good CAPTCHA alternate that doesn't annoy users:

* Add an extra input name="botcheck" type="text" to your form and label it "Leave this field blank". * Use CSS to hide both the field and it's label. * Then, when the form is submitted, if anything is in that box, trash it. There's almost 100% chance that it came from a bot and not a real person.

Caveat: This only works as long as you're small enough to not be target specifically.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that idea. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My eye first went to the screen cap (which could have the white space at the bottom of it cropped off). Then I read the "Sign up for Atombox for Free" link. At this point I am still wondering what is going on. Finally I find the first sentence "Atombox keeps your GTD...". I suggest the first time you mention it, spell out 'Getting Things Done'. I would also like to see more use examples.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we're going to change "GTD" to "Getting Things Done" based on several mentions of that very confusion. It'll be a link to the book, too.

Things I keep in Atombox: wine and beers I like, places I'd like to go, the size of my dress shirts, restaurants I want to try in cities different than my own, affirmations and reminders (quotes), the continual grocery list, ideas for gifts for other people, replacement part numbers, ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Your biggest problem, as someone pointed out, is that nobody understands what AtomBox does.

I land on your page, and the first thing I see is a screenshot of "categories" and "atoms." Most people will leave at this point. Some will read further and see that "AtomBox keeps your GTD lists in one place." Okay, so it's [another] GTD app.

If you're targeting the GTD audience, then realize that they most certainly already have a GTD app. This means you have to convince them to switch over. Unfortunately, none of the 6 bolded features you listed are "killer features." The "full-featured, for free" part is a little enticing, until I read on to see that I have to pay anyways.

Go google "best GTD apps" and figure out what makes your app different. Make a short video or draw a diagram signifying those key points.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> That makes a lot of sense. We are focusing on the GTD crowd and you're right that we need to differentiate with respect to other GTD apps because anyone that does GTD will have some sort of system already.

Thanks, that's very helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Clickable:

<http://atombox.net>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for submitting that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm lost. I've read maybe half of GTD, and spoken with a number of people who , so they say, follow the dictums.

Still, I have on idea why they, or I, would want or need this.

I uses assorted to-d-like things, in particular todoist.com. Stupid easy to store stuf there, pull it out, etc. Mostly I do it from the CLI, or form an Android app I wrote for myself.

Point being, I don't see what problem this solves isn't already solved by several existing apps or services that are set up for easy interaction.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do GTD because keeping the things I have to do external to myself relieves my mind of having to track it all. This extremely enhances my focus and energy. YMMV.

We are focusing on people that do GTD as potential customers because they need an extremely fast (keyboard shortcuts), secure, easy-to-look-at way to track everything they have to do. So it may not solve a problem you have, but it definitely solves a problem I had: all the other list apps are too complicated and slow for my taste -- and there has got to be more people like me.

Thanks for the comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is an atom? Right now I don't even know if that is a stupid question because your site shows and tells me nothing. Is it GTD lingo? Is this for me if I don't know anything about GTD?

<comment><USER12> If I was an average user and saw GTD in the first line like that and didn't know what it meant, I'd probably lose interest in the site. The definition is in the copyright text at the bottom, but some people may not make it down there.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, and so we're going to change "GTD" to "Getting Things Done" as well as make it a link. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. The price is a barrier of entry for me. But that could just be my scrappy upbringing of trying to hunt up free stuff, before spending a dime.

2\. Is there a deeper plan to this? Any potential revenue models besides monthly subscriptions? Any future feature upgrades that would make this a unique value-proposition for users? If not, it would not take much for someone to build a similar service, have it available for free, and kll your product.

<comment><USER2> $5/mo is not a barrier for entry into anything.

Their alternative to make any dime would be to feed your text to a contextual targeting engine and serve you ads. You know how long it takes to make anything from that? No less than 100k users; for that many users, at 10 posts each user, and each post about 100bytes, they're looking at just 1GB of text a month.

A whole text mining engine, developed/integrated by 1-2 developers over 1-6 months, _just_ to handle 1GB/mo :-( How many of those posts are read more than once? How many are shared? How many are publicly visible?

Even if you categorized the posts by a targetable "vertical", you will have about ~50 posts per vertical, and those 50 are viewed by no more than 50 people, a few times.

In other words, not fucking worth it.

For this to be sustainable by advertising they will have to make the posts public, interlinked (i.e. structured in some manner, via a social-graph maybe?) and most importantly viral content that others will seek, share and return to.

I have never seen a TODO list or a shopping list that was either viral, applicable to more than one person, or for that matter publicly shared.

So let them charge $5/mo, and let those who can afford it use the service. Developers don't need to go cheap and price themselves down to homelessness.

<comment><USER13> I understand the impeccable logic behind not building an advertising driven model. I just wonder about the magnitude of the 'problem'[recording ThingsToDo], and the cost of the 'solution'[$5/mo]. I would be very curious to see if this sustains the business [founder salaries and server costs]. Regardless, one wishes success to the project.

<comment><USER2> I am GTD practitioner and use Emacs' org-mode for it. If you can write an Emacs Lisp library that allows me to sync my Orgs with Redmine, I will happily pay $5/mo for it.

If these guys can make a web-based Org-mode, I would pay for it too. Five bucks is nothing, it costs more per month configuring Emacs and org-mode across disparate machines.

<comment><USER13> Hm. So if there are say - 5000 customers like you, the business is sitting on a potential annual revenue of $300k. Sounds good! Are there 5000 such customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right!

Given that the Internet is about 2 billion people large I'm banking on the idea that we can find a few thousand people that Atombox will be very useful for and that they will pay for it straight-up.

Sounds good to us too! ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like you need to better define the purpose of the website, I like the interface but I find myself thinking "why do I need this?" and your website does very little to convince me that this is going to make my life easier.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of it as a personal notebook with as many pages as you need, that takes up no physical space, that you can search, and that you can have with you everywhere. You need it so that you can keep things you need to remember outside of your head so that you can use your brain to think rather than remember a million little tidbits of information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, is it the first 128 atoms are free, and then I pay? (I'll give it a try) or do I pay if I want more than 128 atoms at the same time? (I'm not that busy :)

<comment><AUTHOR> ... and thanks for the comment!

<comment><USER13> You are welcome. I am seeing a potential use for this as a personal to-do list. Can I delete an atom after it is 'done'?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we use it as a to-do list.

To delete an atom: click on the text of the atom to delete and then press E. There's a delete button in the dialog that comes up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Get someone who can do some decent Copy, and Web design; the layout makes my eyes bleed. But looks cool.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am just a bit curious is this made in rails?

<comment><AUTHOR> The server runs Rails, and the interface is jQuery and custom JavaScript (have a look!).

<comment><USER18> and deployed at heroku ?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's running on Slicehost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i guess you're marketing it to GTD fans, because you officially alienated me because i've never read GTD. have you posted it on GTD forums? how is your GTD adwords campaign doing, what's your CoCa? what kind of a dashboard do you have assembled for keeping track of your metrics?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we are focusing on fairly technically adept people that do GTD and tend to use web apps already. We think Atombox is useful even if you don't do GTD, but we're focusing on GTD users.

I'm on the <http://www.davidco.com> forums and we are running a limited AdWords campaign.

We don't track metrics closely yet because we're trying to talk to people directly rather than trying to spark a mass influx.</comment></comment>


Insecure open source software libraries? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2012/04/03/

<comment><USER2> We should always be cautious about the use of "Giblets"

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2008/03/07/the...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2008/03/07/the- trouble-with-giblets.aspx)</comment>


Vultr announced $2.5/m vps - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Vultr/status/836953461694550016 <comment><USER2> Very interesting that this price point is feasible given the high costs of IPv4 addresses alone - I presume each instances get one public ipv4. Add staff, network (in some quite expensive places such as Tokyo & Singapore), servers, marketing, platform development, and a commitment to quality that puts them beyond all the poorly ran low end OpenVZ hosting companies _. Impressive. (_ current customer - found this via HN - no $ affiliation - but I am tough customer to please and I'd say they are near enough on par with Linode)</comment>


Show HN: Conceptually – 52 Concepts to Add to Your Cognitive Toolkit - <AUTHOR> https://conceptually.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, thanks for reading! Jesse and I wrote Conceptually as a free way to discover and learn about important concepts that give us a lens to view a problem, help us make better decisions, or at the very least, sound smart. Last time I wrote something of this nature it took off and got a fair bit of attention (~80,000 uniques), but the problem is that it's not a great way to actually learn something or apply it. So we spent the holiday writing about a bunch of concepts in much more detail, and turning it into a series of emails, 1 per week, where you get more of an opportunity to apply it all (to make use of the spacing effect), though you can also just read the articles on the site if you'd prefer.

Basically, we wanted to do a non-horrible and free version of this: [http://www.thinkmentalmodels.com/](http://www.thinkmentalmodels.com/)

We wanted to show you what we've got so far, and would love to hear any feedback you had.

Jesse used to work for Teespring (YC W13), and we both work for 80,000 Hours (YC S15) now, though this is something we did in our spare time over the holidays.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you liked the last article, I'm particularly interested in what you think of this. I put much more effort into this, but the first article got about 2 orders of magnitude more hits.</comment>


Majority is not Enough: Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable∗ [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ie53/publications/btcProcFC.pdf <comment><USER2> "When the selfish miner pool finds a block, it is in an advantageous position with a single block lead on the public branch on which the honest miners operate. Instead of naively publishing this private block and notifying the rest of the miners of the newly discovered block, selfish miners keep this block private to the pool. There are two outcomes possible at this point: either the honest miners discover a new block on the public branch, nullifying the pool's lead, or else the pool mines a second block and extends its lead on the honest miners."

</comment><comment><USER2> It is from 2013 [https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243](https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243)</comment>


Half of Older Americans Have Nothing in Retirement Savings - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/almost-half-older-americans-zero-210656147.html <comment><USER2> Better headline:

However, 29 percent of older Americans had neither a pension nor any assets in a 401(k) or IRA account

<comment><USER3> The other 19% "did have access to a traditional pension, also known as a defined benefit plan".</comment></comment>


Ithaka - <AUTHOR> http://zenpencils.com/comic/131-c-p-cavafy-ithaka/

<comment><USER2> The poem (in I know not whose translation) is read at every commencement of Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.</comment>


Introducing d3-shape - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mbostock/introducing-d3-shape-73f8367e6d12 <comment><USER2> I've recently been experimenting with how best to leverage the wealth of knowledge which has gone into d3 within the context of React, where the conventional selection-driven APIs become a hinderance rather than a help.

Around that time, I noticed the new modular repos on the d3 Github org[1] coming together, and have since been watching with great anticipation. I'm glad to see d3 evolving for a new world where its excellent, fine-tuned collection of math and drawing functions work in concert with your rendering framework of choice.

[1] [https://github.com/d3](https://github.com/d3)

<comment><USER2> For example, here's something pointless I threw together combining d3-shape, d3-scale and react-motion: [https://jsbin.com/mehata/edit?js,output](https://jsbin.com/mehata/edit?js,output)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Shameless plug: the design of this seems really similar to my own library paths.js. In both cases, the starting point is observing that nowadays people usually already use some framework to manipulate the DOM, so what is actually needed is some way of computing some description of shapes starting from the data (and suitable accessor functions). see [https://andreaferretti.github.io/paths-js- demo](https://andreaferretti.github.io/paths-js-demo)

<comment><USER4> One thing, I was playing with the graph tree demo and it freezes after a few drags, every single time. Is this part of the demo?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the graph chart is buggy, and advertised as such. I have been wanting to improve that for a while, but I did not find the time yet...:-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was literally working on almost the same thing all day, except with dot syntax compat (so you get all the GraphViz/LaTeX/Docbook/Doxygen benefits). Oh well, excellent work, my good man !

</comment><comment><USER7> RIP all other JS charting libraries.

<comment><USER8> Eh I'm not so sure. I used NVD3 as a charting library on a project because I wanted to use d3 after seeing all the amazing work others have done, but found it to be very confusing. I'm not sure how much of that is NVD3 or how much of that was just d3.

I think it helps if you just understand the mental model that d3 is going for. Clearly tons of people are able to do good work with it.

<comment><USER9> I agree d3 is confusing at the start, especially the data join concept and method chaining. But once you put enough effort to understand exactly what each function does (through experimenting with browser inspector), it becomes as easy to use as jQuery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rendering is broken in Firefox on iOS. Known issue? Otherwise it looks great!

<comment><USER11> Would you mind filing a bug with more information? [https://github.com/d3/d3-shape/issues](https://github.com/d3/d3-shape/issues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an isolated demo (JS Bin & co.)? Couldn't find it in the text/repo.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is great. Thanks Mike.</comment>


"Self-regulating" nanoparticles can burn cancer without harming healthy cells - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/30/self-regulating-nanoparticles-can-burn-cancer-without-harming-healthy-cells/ <comment><USER2> This is sloppily written. It says nothing about how the nanoparticles preferentially bind to cancer cells.

It also has some wording issues:

      The particles can raise their temperature between 42°C to 45°C

I'm guessing that should read " _to_ between 42°C to 45°C".

      In magnetic-induced hyperthermia a magnetically active chemical into a tumor.

Um, what?</comment>


Digitize the circuits: Reverse-engineering the human brain - <AUTHOR> https://news.stanford.edu/features/2015/brains/digitize-the-circuits.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Can everyone please share their thoughts on how significant of a breakthrough this is, how do you see this being applied in the world of AI, and what are some use cases in the consumer realm?</comment>