Facebook Login still missing this killer feature - <AUTHOR> Facebook should offer a product/API that integrates both login and payments so that I can run a subscription business on their platform. <comment><USER2> That would be an interesting feature... given that FB has more users than anyone except google, it could work. Then again, google/apple pay aren't exactly sweeping the nation either.

</comment><comment><USER3> That would be awesome. Hundreds of service that directly exclude non facebook users. What a great thing.</comment>


Amazon packaging feedback cross-site scripting vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://bitquark.co.uk/blog/2013/07/03/amazon_packaging_feedback_xss

<comment><USER2> I've sometimes wondered if code I've worked on will ever make it onto HN.

This was not the preferred way ;)

Though in my defense, this code was written before I got there... But I'm pretty sure I've been through this exact code afterwards and never found the vulnerability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice to meet you! There's always one that slips through the net ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I reported a different vulnerability to Amazon a few days ago. I've gotten a case number, but haven't heard anything beyond that. It's nice to see their timeline and know that they are responding and fixing stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why Amazon doesn't offer a bounty, even one that is a token amount.

<comment><USER5> People often whine more about a "token amount" more than they do a "thank you" in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would be curious if the author would have investigated further if he knew for certain no monetary benefit would have been given by Amazon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! I did know for certain there was no monetary benefit. A t-shirt would have been nice, but I investigated for the fun of it.</comment></comment>


New Horizons Sees Pluto and Charon - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/new-horizons-sees-pluto-and-charon

<comment><USER2> Given the ideas that Star Trek and other SciFi planted into our minds, it is sobering - to say the least - how much patience actual space exploration requires.

Having said that, it is, of course, totally awesome to see something like that, even if it looks like the graphics of a 1980s computer game. No plane, no ship, no car in use on earth has ever traveled even remote as far as New Horizons has. You could spend a lifetime zipping around the globe and still come nowhere near the distance this spacecraft has traveled...</comment>


UI Workers - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.platform/NCRdw4eYOrc/0LZH73t-0hwJ

<comment><USER2> I found this thread kind of hard to follow because I'm not familiar with the details of how a page renders but it seems that everything suggested its kind of complicated and a pain to work with.

What if we had an API that could just provide us with the contents of a div as a bitmap, and we replace the complex dom with a single canvas and do our own rendering while doing these smooth 60fps animations. When done we hide the canvas and show the real DOM again.

Err, I guess thats what those other guys are doing that we read about last week.

<comment><USER3> > What if we had an API that could just provide us with the contents of a div > as a bitmap

Can't do that for security reasons: it would open the CSS :visited info leak. Pages could determine which other pages you've visited by inspecting the colors of visited links.

<comment><USER2> woah, crazy edge case. I guess you could render the page without the :visited style.

Thinking about it more though since I posted. I don't think anybody would use it the way I described, I think people would simply end up rendering everything to bitmaps, and manage their own layout and animation in the canvas.

I might try that for my next game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Animations that use scroll positions is a great idea - I'd like to see that in CSS regardless of whether the other three suggestions go any further.

</comment><comment><USER5> let's repeat css expression!</comment>


Anxieties of development: emerging voices in Chinese social media - <AUTHOR> https://chublicopinion.com/2019/02/09/anxieties-of-development-emerging-voices-in-chinese-social-media/ <comment><USER2> > Collectively they depict a picture of a merciless ladder called > "development" on which nations laboriously climb. At the top of the ladder > sit countries with the highest per capita GDP, enjoying comfortable > privileges, while other lower income countries fight to occupy favorable > positions underneath. "Overall, the white world, Europe+North > America+Australia/New Zealand+Israel, still makes up the top echelon of > nations," writes SN in a post responding to an IMF data release, "when per > capita GDP goes above 40,000USD, only very few non-white nations can enter > that area… Japan and a few ethnic Chinese economies, Hong Kong, Macau and > Singapore managed to achieve that. We should have confidence in ourselves."

Well, correlation does not imply causation (those countries being "white" isn't necessarily the reason they're rich). But they're not wrong either. At this moment only Europe + European off-shoots and Japan/Hong Kong/Macau/Singapore/South Korea are developed.

The rest of the world is still lagging.

Of course, their racist argument kind of falls flat considering there's also poor "white" countries :)

<comment><USER3> The racial lens also falls apart a bit when you consider the fact that the most dynamic regions of the American economy are extremely ethnically diverse (e.g., California, already a majority-minority state).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's fascinating to read stuff like this and try meta-analyze the sentiments behind it.

One huge irony that strikes me is the idea of these 'middle class bloggers' raging against Western oppression whilst living lives that are basically upper-middle class EU/US: high income, property owners, international holidays, white collar jobs, $1000 smartphones from which they blog about progressive political issues.

China's success and rise since the 1980s has been as much about wholesale adoption of Western business/science/cultural norms as anything else. And yet bloggers still see China's situation in us & them terms?

</comment><comment><USER5> The apparent expectation that China will eventually supplant the USA as an economic power has a long way to go. One obstacle is will democracies want to settle their trades in the currency of a de facto dictatorship? Ostensibly, not yet.

According to SWIFT, when looking at domestic and cross-border payments the RMB share as an international payments currency is 1.61% percent. The activity share is lower, (0.98%) if looking at cross-border payments only. The Yen is used almost four times more.

file:///Users/tonyaustin/Downloads/swift_rmb_tracker_special_edition_january2018.pdf

</comment><comment><USER6> > Again using back-of-the-envelope calculations, he asserted in one of his > posts that 1.4 billion newcomers to the industrialized club would > "completely change the face of "developed economies", which currently cover > just 800-900 million people.

But can the limited resources of the planet accomodate 1,400 million more people consuming that way?

more than their apparent racism, I am worried about their seeming lack of environmentalism

<comment><AUTHOR> Malthus is wrong and "more people" = "lack of environmentalism" is zero-sum thinking.

Instead consider the positive-sum "We need more people to solve bigger problems" that follows from Esther Boserup's theory. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester_Boserup#Work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester_Boserup#Work)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This blogger SN is a bit delusional, like most of the nationalistic bloggers anywhere. China was merely a cheap labor source in the routine life of input/output process for a company seeking to produce commmodity products. Like many nations before and after, it will be merely a blip in the long history of factories moving to cheaper and cheaper labor.

SN believes that China can somehow end up like South Korea or Taiwan in terms of prosperity. But there are many factors why it cannot. 1.) authoritarian government skimming most of the profits and giving them to inefficient state owned operations. 2.) population is too large and most are uneducated. 3.) China will be old before it becomes rich. 4.) the culture of stealing and copying prevent it from developing a healthy middle class 5.) China have incurred debts too massive, and choose to invest in poor investment. 6.) it had angered its investors, namely japan, South Korea, Taiwan, US, Europe, with many of its belligerent actions 7.) it has angered many other developing countries. In short, most countries in the world do not want China to succeed

And so we have the reality today: China is way too indebted and a wave of defaults has commenced. Factories and firms have moved out of China. Luxury sales have crashed 50%. Home sales in 2019 have crashed 60%. account deficit will be negative for the year. Import and export are all down. And the hike in tariff is yet to come. This is all happening in the background of declining fertility, population contraction in 2030, and middle income trap, where most Chinese earn less than $1000/month.

<comment><USER6> > In short, most countries in the world do not want China to succeed

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I suppose most * developed * countries do not want China to succeed.

But what about African countries? or Latin American countries?

<comment><USER7> African countries with large Muslim population certainly hate China. As with most other developing Muslim countries.

<comment><USER8> Pakistan and China have been the strongest of allies since 1970s, Iran and the Middle East heavily trades with China, I've lived in the Middle East for 10+ years, money doesn't lie. More and more "dragon malls" from China are being opened up and local Muslims sometimes go to Chinese universities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing. I've been looking for "news" sources from present day China. Very helpful.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your "I wish I did it sooner" moment? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think I've said this before but its 3 things that all end up having the same effect.

1) Meditation to get my mind in check

2) Fitness/Diet, making sure I'm at an appropriate weight and fitness level

3) Sleep, shouldn't require any explanation.

Having these 3 things in check is the equivalent of 10+ IQ points. The last two items shouldn't require any explanation but Meditation is one that people often have issues seeing the value of.

For me meditation does 2 things,

1) it allows you to master the art of "staying in the zone". Lots of meditation is just accepting that you mind has many thoughts at once, acknowledging them and continuing on with what you are doing.

Once you can master the art of acknowledging your thoughts but not letting them disturb you, it lets you maintain a flow state in the real world.

I can now get interrupted and almost without fail immediately get back into a productive work state.

2) I've noticed that as I get older that most of what makes a person look smart in a conversation is that they've already had the same conversation and thought through their opinions.

When mediating on an idea, its very similar to having these conversations about ideas. You get to flesh out your ideas by having this conversation with yourself. It's an invaluable took to have.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any advice on how to build the meditation habit? I tried reading and following Search Inside Yourself, but it didn't stick.

<comment><USER2> Nothing that I'm sure would "Just work" for everyone. For me a few things I do when I'm trying to build a habit, this is general to building habits and not specific to meditation.

1) Like going to the gym you need to do it on a schedule. Even if you don't feel like going to the gym just go for 5 minutes, if you don't feel it then leave.

Meditation is the same. Just do it for 5 minutes, if you aren't feeling it then stop.

2) do it every day, even if its not the same time each day, even if you get interrupted, even if you aren't feeling it, just do it. 5 minutes each day is better than not trying because you believe you are too busy. I do it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

3) Track it to make sure you are making progress. Something about what gets measured gets done. Truer words have never been spoken.

4) Give it time, again using the gym analogy, expect it to be a good month before you start to see results. I mean you might see results earlier, but doing it for a week and getting frustrated that you aren't seeing any results is, well, silly. But I think alot of people actually make this very mistake.

You wouldn't expect to run 3 times and then run a marathon on your next outing. Meditation follows the "before you are good, you'll be very bad at it" law that most things follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish I had known when I was younger that a lot of the people who shoot down ideas, minimize your creativity, and say "that's impossible" aren't smarter than you. They're just more insecure.

It's easier to say no to everything and look like a genius, then to say "I wonder...", and try, and fail, and try some more -- and perhaps (who knows?) actually _be_ a genius. With all of the concomitant messiness and failures and actual real life kept in the mix.

<comment><USER5> >Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

― Steve Jobs

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Realizing that other people aren't way more intelligent than me and i'm stupid. It's just a perception based on nothing more then them acting more confidently, because they had an upbringing that gave them more self esteem. When the time came to perform I always exceeded the expectations of those around me because I always beat myself up and told myself I was stupid and not good enough. The insecurity pushed me to always try harder but in the end I was better than I realized. I just one day had to let it go and realize those thoughts of not being good enough weren't real.

Another thing is stopping relationships with people that would belittle, insult or use me. I instead paid close attention to who was there for me and built me up. I gave those people 5x the attention and built a stronger relationship with them because thats who you want in your life. Quality friends > Quantity. If someone keeps blowing you off you aren't a priority in their life, and you should treat them the same.

Oo last one.

Ask that cute girl out, if you're reading this, I know you are more than good enough.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fucking bitcoin. I should have invested when I first learned about it, it was $4 per btc

<comment><USER8> Wanted to put in $7k, at $7, so 1,000 coins. But I didn't want to send a copy of my passport to some shady (Magic the Gathering) exchange in Japan. And it would take 3+ weeks before I could get my coins. What an idiot I was.

<comment><USER9> I could have bought 10000 btc for 50usd. I'm still crying myself to sleep some nights.

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92.0)

The reason I didn't was because back then that was like half iirc of all btc and I was suspicious.

<comment><USER8> Horrible thing to say, but at least I feel a bit better now! Too bad I didn't hear about Bitcoin in 2010. I hadn't heard about it until like 2012.

<comment><USER10> I mined and threw away ~400 btc around 2010-2011 :(( ... twice

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i3wm. I thought it couldn't be that much better, it just a window manager. Now it's hard to imagine using anything else.

If you want to get started the long exhaustive way, start here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1I63wGcvU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1I63wGcvU4).

<comment><USER12> Definitely a technical thing... but I agree using a tiling windows manager has brought new and improved changes to my work flow as a developer. The thing no one ever talks about is you must also have a standard (gnome, kde, etc) windows manager handy to use at a moments notice because there are things that will be hidden in a tiling manager and you won't know they are gone if it is the first time running a program. Setting up a VPN, doing heavy duty network config, and system administration I would advocate are better suited trying for the first time without a tiling manager. After the steps have been mastered and the command are known is when i3wm really shines. I'm sure there are many counterpoints speaking to how easy it is to use i3wm to configure XYZ but after years of using it I am drawn to launching new programs without it to get a feel for them until I learn the requisite commands and switch over to i3wm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Stopped believing authority figures.

Listened to myself and my own intuition -- both informed and "gut reactions". _Acted_ on same.

Learned to defend myself. Mentally, physically, emotionally.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stop eating processed sugar(s), white flower and meat.

Learn to let go of opinions I am attached to and become open to alternatives faster (it is actually a body trick).

Embrace myself fully _with_ all my "defects".

<comment><USER15> For the last week I've been making a conscious effort to only eat foods with no sugar.

It turns out, this is way easier said than done. It seems like this limits your diet only to vegetables and meats (or meat substitutes).

Things I would've never expected with sugar nutritional facts. Things like whole wheat loaf bread, plain unflavored yogurt, and cottage cheese. One would think they would have sugar-free options if you look hard enough, I can't seem to find any.

<comment><USER16> Sugar is in bread and yogurt and cheese naturally.

It's required for the fermentation process to happen. The real concern IMO is sugar added. This should be pretty easy to find for cheese and yogurt, for bread you might have to get into homemade / high quality sourdough (real sourdough) to not have sugar added.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For me it's been to stop trying to learn software development just because it's hip and there are a lot of jobs in it. I just really could not care less about it. It's let me spend more time on things I do care about like hardware development and industrial design. If I can't physically touch something I don't care about working on it.

Oh, and meditation, L-Theanine, and taking walks outside during work breaks.

</comment><comment><USER18> Joined an ultimate frisbee rec league, a year ago. And I'd never played a team sport before, unless you count middle school basketball.

It's turned out to be a great community. Plus it's great exercise, of course. And it encouraged me to improve my cardiovascular system, so I wouldn't poop out so quickly on the field. The community is the big thing though.

</comment><comment><USER19> I (at least partially) wish I didn't spend so much time looking for my "true calling" (which I didn't find), and just ground my way to early retirement in high paying jobs. The search made me a more interesting person, but without it, I could be retired already.

<comment><USER20> I decided quite early to separate calling and job, but tried to keep a balance between both. A part-time career is difficult too :)

I'm currently grinding an a 40h-week. My plan is to do it for a year for money and reputation and than find something part time, which sadly is quite difficult as a product owner/project manager. Maaaybe some start-up that doesn't want to pay full price :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The day after I figure out how to navigate modern life without a smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just ship and iterate

</comment><comment><USER23> This isn't happening for a month or two yet, but I hope moving out of an expensive city to work remotely will be my moment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wish I bought bitcoin when it was $12.

<comment><USER25> I bought BTC around that price. But I lost my wallet key. :(

<comment><USER26> Give hashcat a shot

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Stopped explaining myself

</comment><comment><USER27> Hmm... I don't really have one. Oh, I've made lots of mistakes and done lots of things at the wrong times, but that is what has made me who I am. I kind of like who I am, so I wouldn't want to change that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Work on what's interesting to me regardless of what's cool or perceived as valuable

</comment><comment><USER28> For our company ([http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro)) it was productisation. We used to operate like any other UI design agency, prospecting, talking to potential clients, going to networking events etc. But by productising our service, building a sales funnel and treating the entire flow as that of a SaaS. It enabled us to:

* Lower prices (Since we didn't have to spend time networking, prospecting etc.)

* Create predictable sales funnels

* Spend more time working on the stuff we love, instead of wasting time with prospects that weren't interested in the first place.</comment>


What is bit rot, and how is your favourite file system dealing with it? - <AUTHOR> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-bit-rot-and-how-can-i-detect-it-rhel <comment><USER2> Can confirm that bitrot is real, especially with cheaper devices. And as far as I know, only ZFS in RAID configuration can detect and fix it today.

It's a real pity that there is no competitors in this space. Every time I read about btrfs, I am sad that they don't seem to consider it an important feature at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, besides simply supporting recovery from bit rot, one would also want to have confidence in the implementation. I think the vendors which provide production support for btrfs do so just for a few features.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> \- XFS: can use checksummed metadata, changed data (bit rot) will not be noticed, unless extra layers like dm-integrity are used

\- ext4: same as XFS

\- btrfs: can with checksums detect bit rot, not heal it by itself it seems

\- ceph: can detect bit rot, not repair. Ceph is for networked systems, no local file system like xfs/ext4/btrfs.

</comment><comment><USER3> That was a fun read and I was a bit shocked that they didn't have any suggestions on remediations. Not saying they should have as the topic was bit rot not how to fix it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know someone who did setup ceph just for it's healing capabilities.. but of course one has to familiarize with all of it's administration aspects for that.

Setups with RAID1 could help fixing bit rot, but I think these setups are not full stack tested, so one would have to play and test by oneself (and after soft ware updates verify the whole stack again..).

Maybe easiest remedy is to keep all files in a second directory, and hope that when bit rot invalidates one version of the file the second one is ok. rsync could in cycles sync the 2 directory trees.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are curated email newsletters a good idea? - <AUTHOR>

I am exploring the concept of adding user-curated sections to my fledgling site, Talentopoly.com. In a nutshell the site is a place for programmers, designers & IT folk to share links to what they're discovering online. Yes, it's similar to HN. But that's a different discussion. By far the most popular feature of the site is the weekly "best of" email. The top ten most popular links get emailed out each week. I'm thinking of expanding on this concept and allowing users to curate tags. For instance, 1 or more users could sign up to curate the PHP tag. They would be able to add links that were posted to the site under that tag to a curated list that they could then send out as a newsletter. Those users who have subscribed to that tag would receive the newsletter.
I really value the feedback ideas get here on HN so here are some of the things I'm questioning. I'd love to get some critique of these ideas going in the thread below.
1) Should I limit the curation of a tag to 1 user or allow many? 2) Should the newsletter list the curators, thus giving exposure to those doing the work. 3) Should I mandate a max or min frequency to the newsletters? For instance, should the curators be poked if they haven't sent out a newsletter in over a week? 4) Is this something you'd find interesting and would sign up for? 5) Should I allow curators to enter their own descriptions for the newsletter or just include the link and title in it?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Should I limit the curation of a tag to 1 user or allow many?

I guess having more than one tag would be better simply because one article can actually fall in multiple category. Also you can do some good on user to tags to get a sense of users interests.

Should the newsletter list the curators, thus giving exposure to those doing the work.

Better even, but with small well knit community to start with, who can sustain with you.

Should I mandate a max or min frequency to the newsletters? For instance, should the curators be poked if they haven't sent out a newsletter in over a week? I think that depends upon how your relationship is with Cratory.

I'd not sign up as its not perfect interest to me but if you start product management i'd do that.

Should I allow curators to enter their own descriptions for the newsletter or just include the link and title in it?

I'd suggest against doing it at start, but later on, with a good set of rules, you should do it.But better part is probably measuring all the emails using the google analytics campaign tagging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the valuable input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Curated newsletters are only as good as the curator. If you are going to crowd source the curation, even allowing multiple curators per topic, you should allow the readers to also rank the curators. You could do this passively in the email through analytics or more directly with a direct response, such as HN's up arrow.

You should most certainly give credit to the curators! I would also include a digital nanny to remind them periodically to prepare a newsletter. It's easy to forget those sorts of commitments if there isn't a direct reward attached to it.</comment>


The Workings of an Ancient Nuclear Reactor (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-nuclear-reactor/ <comment><USER2> In geology, there is a general tendency to think that, given sufficient time (which we have had), anything that _could_ possibly happen _has already happened_ at least once. This is a prime example of that.

<comment><USER3> Are there any more similar stories like this? It's really fascinating.

<comment><USER4> Maybe.

There is apparently some evidence and viable theories for ongoing fission reactions in localized regions deep in the Earth. Commentary [1] on a report in Nature [2]. Neither of these seems to be paywalled.

[1] [http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080515/full/news.2008.822.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080515/full/news.2008.822.html)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/articles/srep37740](http://www.nature.com/articles/srep37740)

<comment><USER5> Thank you for these links. I had recently read on wikipedia [1] about how plate tectonics may have started on the young earth, and I was fascinated by the idea. In a way, tectonic theory is relatively new, and already we are exploring the mantle mechanisms by which it may be driven. Your links help explain where that mantle heat comes from.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_Billion#Tectonic_constr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boring_Billion#Tectonic_constraints)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TL'DR - some Uranium deposits have unnaturally low concentrations of Uranium U-235. There is proof in the footprint of the occurrence of fission products that this must be due to natural fission having taken place way in the past.

<comment><USER5> That was what was reported in the 1970's. This article covers new analysis that provides evidence that water was the mediator, and also carried away the reaction products. When they went looking for those reaction products, they found them in nearby compounds that might prove valuable to us in sequestering our radioactive waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is my take away quote: _In this regard, it was extremely effective, allowing not a single meltdown or explosion during hundreds of thousands of years._

And runner up: _The more important lessons may be about how to handle nuclear waste._

<comment><USER8> re: 'allowing not a single meltdown or explosion'

..and I'm wondering now, will we one day find evidence of an actual 'natural' nuclear explosion somewhere else?

<comment><USER9> Every single day for the past 6.4 billions years in our sun.

<comment><USER10> Our sun can't come close to the temperature reached in advanced fusion weapons, and it exhibits the power density of a compost pile.

8/10</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Was Lacking to Vimium: the 'm' command - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/louischatriot/M-command

<comment><USER2> This is nice. I might give Vimium another shot. Vimperator / Pentadactyl for Firefox implemented M as bookmarks if I remember correctly.

I see that lots of people are mentioning Pentadactyl. Vimium is a lightweight set of vim-like bindings for navigation in Chrome. Pentadactyl is a fairly major UI re-implementation of Firefox. You have a message window, and a : command area at the bottom of the screen url bar off by default). I think that Pentadactyl does a pretty good job of implementing the vim idiom for firefox, but unfortunately there are lots of places where the vim idiom gets in the way of people who have different navigation idioms for their websites. I found the escape keys to be cumbersome. Vimium implements a lot less of the vim idiom but it is very nice if only to get j/k C-d/C-b navigation. Overall I didn't find Vimium to be useful enough to be worth the work arounds I had to use. Pentadactyl, was useful enough to use full time.

At various points in my computer usage, I've dedicated Firefox to Pentadactyl, and left my Chromium unadorned. Now that you mention it, I'll probably set that up again.

</comment><comment><USER3> i read the description and it mentions a vim M command. i did not know this one. it is pretty boring. then i figured maybe it's about marks, i.e. the 'm' command. now that is nice. i use firefox though...

<comment><USER4> Then lucky you! You get to use the titannically more powerful pentadactyl: <http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/>.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tag a Cat App Gets Over 10,000 Cats Shared - <AUTHOR>

It's been awhile since I first posted on here and I just wanted to let you guys know my App Tag A Cat has now passed well over 10,000 photos shared on the network. This is an awesome milestone for me and the app so I thought id share.<p>If you missed the old news. Tag A Cat is a social image sharing app where cat owners and cat lovers can post/view photos of cats. You can tag photos by location and even browse a world map of cats. Check it out at http://www.TagACat.net and forward the link any cat lovers you might know. <comment><USER2> clickable -> [http://www.TagACat.net](http://www.TagACat.net)</comment>


Ask HN: What Do You Really Think About Clickhole.com? - <AUTHOR>

Brilliant beef jerky ad? Brilliant satire? A brilliant new source for breaking news? All opinions welcome... <comment><USER2> Honestly I've never got the news as a satire business. A solid 50% of reporting now-a-days can be read verbatim with a smirk and be comedy. I mean this is Stewart, Colbert, and Oliver have practically made a career out of doing. The extra step of making up stupid stories just seems like its trying _to hard_.</comment>


Shopping for college textbooks: 2010 vs. 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitegloveapps.com/2010/07/25/shopping-college-textbooks-2010-vs-1995/

<comment><USER2> I can't help but be jealous of the ease which which today's students can find not only good deals on books, but just about any information they might need online. Everything was so much more manual and time-consuming when I was in college.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very true. For any fact you needed for a report, you used to have to go to the library, look for a relevant book, try to find what you were looking for... Now, you can just do a search online and have the answer in seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ahhhh c'est koi ?</comment>


Inside the Bitcoin economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/04/exchange-rates <comment><USER2> This one is more interesting than the link posted earlier today. The comments are interesting too.

So, what of the thought that the only value in bitcoin is its lack of serious competitors? It seems that as soon as another decentralized currency comes along that clearly improves on bitcoin in some way, you could see an ever quickening flight away from bitcoin. There's nothing intrinsic about bitcoin that keeps the value sticky. The value is the idea more than the implementation. What if something like Freicoin or Litecoin or something clearly better starts to get serious traction?

<comment><USER3> I vote for PPCoin - the eco-friendly coin that promises to get rid with the $4.5 million per month power consumption.

<comment><USER4> Could you explain why would I ever want to use a centralized currency like that ? It can't be trusted.

<comment><USER3> It is not centralized - have a look at the whitepaper: <http://www.ppcoin.org/static/ppcoin-paper.pdf>

<comment><USER4> It is, look at the implementation.

<https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101954.0>

<comment><USER3> Interesting - I have to admit I did not get into these details before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One further clarification, you don't need to wait for 6 confirmations (~1hr) if you don't want to.

A typical bitcoin client will receive the transaction within 5-60 seconds, with 0 confirmations. Even 1 confirmation (~10min) is probably safe enough for small or low-risk transactions.

If it's someone you trust not to double-spend, then you can get by with just seeing the transaction on your end with 0 confirmations.

<comment><USER6> Except you can't convert it into USD that quickly. If the price tanks well you are waiting for Magic the Gathering exchange (yes, Mt.Gox, the main place people do bitcoin conversion started out as a place to trade magic cards), you get screwed. This wouldn't be a problem if there was large economy denominated in bitcoin since they'd still have value there. But there isn't.

<comment><USER7> In the meantime, you're free to use one of several merchant services (BitPay, Coinbase, MtGox) that automatically convert BTC to USD immediately (and take on the exchange risk, for a small percentage)

<comment><USER6> That fixes an individual's volatility problem but it doesn't fix the problem: there is some limit to how much volatility those places can absorb for some small percentage.

<comment><USER7> They said they were fine last week, and I'm not sure it gets much more volatile than that: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ccbet/ama_request_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ccbet/ama_request_the_bitpay_team/c9f6dva)

<comment><USER6> That say's the handled Mt. Gox going down, but not that they handled the volatility . I'd imagine they took some large loss moving as the price fell. Now thats the risk with that service and I'd imagine they have enough cash on hand to cover it. But if it happens too many times, i'd imagine they are screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What troubles me personally is that all the talk around Bitcoin at the moment is of Bitcoin as an investment opportunity. I'm personally more excited by Bitcoins value as a currency. I think the most salient point in this article is this

> Almost every good one can purchase with Bitcoins is actually priced in > dollars and sold at a Bitcoin price reflecting the prevailing exchange rate. > So there is almost no Bitcoin frame of reference independent of the Bitcoin- > dollar exchange rate.

For me this is Bitcoins biggest weakness, the notion that it's true value can only be unlocked when converted back into "real" currency. I'm not sure what the solution is to this problem, or if there can ever be one. I am reminded though of Brazil's unconventional solution to their hyper-inflation problems, and it feels like there's a parallel in there somewhere...

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how- fake...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money- saved-brazil)</comment>


Milton Friedman Was Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/article/596545/ <comment><USER2> I have been waiting for this change for years. Shareholders are only 1 of many stakeholders, an important one, but there should be a better balance. No, money is not everything.

>>While the statement is a welcome repudiation of a highly influential but spurious theory of corporate responsibility, this new philosophy will not likely change the way corporations behave.

While I think that many of the old established companies will not change their ways, new companies will be looking at the new definition and be influenced by it. We should all welcome the change! It's a big change going forward.

>>The only way to force corporations to act in the public interest is to subject them to legal regulation.

Yes, that's one way but public pressure and new thinking in the education system is the best way to proceed. Pressuring companies thru the legal system is just one way to enact change but not always the best. Companies that are forced into something they don't want to do will find ways to hack the system so they don't have to do anything. By enacting change organically we get better outcomes long term.</comment>


How automation is even coming for accounting jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.teampay.co/blog/innovation/automating-accounting/ <comment><USER2> A great automation tool would be eg. [https://www.buchhaltungsbutler.de](https://www.buchhaltungsbutler.de)</comment>


Pandas extension arrays - <AUTHOR> https://pandas-dev.github.io/pandas-blog/pandas-extension-arrays.html <comment><USER2> Innnnteresting! We've been using Pandas as our slow CPU fallback in the GPU Arrow world b/c of issues like this.

Today, we default to using pydata gpu arrow tools like BlazingSQL or Nvidia RAPIDS directly. They ~guarantee perf, and subtle yet critical for maintaining our < 100ms SLA, the Arrow format stays clean. (Ex: don't want a column schema to get coerced to something less structured.) We'll use Pandas as a fallback for when they lack features or are hard to use.

The ideal would be to use Pandas directly. Today it is a bit of a crapshoot on whether schemas will break across calls, and the above libraries are really replacements, rather than integrated accelerator extensions. So thinking like this project get us closer to predictable (and GPU-level) performance within pandas, vs fully replacing it. So cool!

<comment><USER3> I have no idea what any of this means!

<comment><USER4> Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

If you don't understand and want to understand, you can always politely ask for an explanation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't say this is going to make a big difference in how I use pandas but I've ran into the bizarre "can't have nans in an int Series" annoyance in almost every pandas project I've worked on, so good on them for fixing that.

<comment><USER6> It might be annoying, but it's certainly not bizarre. In the floating point standard (IEEE 754) there are reserved bit values (with hardware support) to represent NaNs. For integers no such thing exists, so you're left with a bunch of different implementation choices all with different tradeoffs. A long time ago NumPy devs choose not to support NaN in integer arrays at all (for maximum performance), and Pandas (starting as a wrapper around numpy arrays) inherited that.

For a more technical discussion of the performance implications of one possible implementation, see [http://wesmckinney.com/blog/bitmaps-vs-sentinel- values/](http://wesmckinney.com/blog/bitmaps-vs-sentinel-values/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone done any perf analysis between this and previous versions?

<comment><USER8> I just did one using fletcher ([https://github.com/xhochy/fletcher](https://github.com/xhochy/fletcher)), a library that extends pandas arrays with arrow arrays:

        n = 2**25
        data = np.random.choice(list(string.ascii_letters), n)
        df = pd.DataFrame({
            'string': data,
            'arrow': fl.FletcherArray(data),
            'categorical': pd.Categorical(data),
            'ints': np.arange(n)
        })

for a groupby operation on string/arrow/categorical and sum the ints the results are:

      - String: 1.58 s
      - Arrow: 886 ms
      - Categorical: 406 ms

The base type of this string FletcherArray array is <pyarrow.lib.ChunkedArray, so maybe there is another more convenient arrow array type or the bottleneck is in upper layer around the groupby operation (since it only is twice as fast). Any way, for this kind of operation the Categorical is the winner and double speed is quite a notable improvement.

<comment><USER9> Nice!</comment></comment></comment>


Merry Christmas? Not for app devs: That gold rush is officially OVER - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/03/christmas_app_downloads/

<comment><USER2> Instagram? Snapchat? Tinder? Candy Crush? Mobile apps gold rush is over? Really? Ps : 25% growth on a bigger number is sometime more than 90% growth on smaller numbers. Think absolute numbers, not relative.</comment>


Chinese clones attack STM32 microcontrollers - <AUTHOR> https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/chinese-clones-attack-stm32-microcontrollers/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's very likely someone with access to ST R&D office lifted the entire IP here... I know for a fact re-implementing a MCU as complex as a STM32 would be an insane amount of work -- especially to make it IP compatible...

So if I were ST I'd have a closer look at which student were left in alone in the server room, and when!</comment>


Ask HN: I'm 23, and I dislike my job as a software engineer - <AUTHOR> I graduated last June, and joined a major UK bank at their technological center in India. I switched from this first job after 8 months into it - the work excited me, since I was working on building a web based dashboard from scratch as the only developer, but that was also the drawback - I was the only developer. I figured this was more like another college project of mine since most of the things I did to build this dashboard - hacking around; googling for answers; building, failing and rebuilding - were similar to what I did as a college student anyway. Hence, I switched for an internationak supposedly better opportunity - at another finance related firm in Japan.
However, despite learning from being in a team of developers, the work here is frankly uninspiring. We work on Java EE for the web with JSF, and most of my day-to-day work simply involves mere bug fixing in the existing system. I don't see any good projects that will help me learn good tech and good coding practices.
The only reason that I feel like sticking to this job is the money. I come from India, where people in the IT profession are hired for peanuts. So the money that Japan gives me seems relatively very good, even if it is nothing compared to what the US provides for software engineers. I have contemplated a lot of times about pursuing an MS - just like my fellow Indians do - as a gateway to US and the jobs in the US.
But more often than not, I realize that maybe almost all software jobs tend to be mundane in the end. Am I wrong?
I know that in the future, I would to stick around in the tech industry, but not as a developer, but as someone who is more involved in the wholesome outlook of the product - like a product manager, perhaps.
What should I do? Am I being too pessimistic? Is it okay to feel this way? After all, it's just been a year since I started working. <comment><USER2> How you feel right now it's completely normal and expected because you are young and you want to learn and gain knowledge. I have changed 4 companies because I was searching for the job where everyone is writing clean code and where best practices, code review, and learning are on the high level. You can forget about that because managers don't care how your code looks like, or if you are using best practices to achieve your goal. Now what I'm doing, I'm trying to get as much as possible time on estimates, that's how you can have time to write clean code, and to learn something. If you are estimating the task, add also the time you need to review what you did and do not be scared of refactoring, if you see that something is written in a wrong way, rewrite it, don't blame around :).

Also, work and learn at home. That's your time and you can learn and do whatever you want.

Keep in mind that there is no job where everything is perfect, so collect all negative things you have at the current position and try to change them. If that's not working then leave :)

What managers love is the example and real POC. So if you think that something is wrong or old, create a POC, make a demo. That way you can get some time and resources to do something new and interesting. Don't think someone will give you such project just like that :)

<comment><USER3> Such a fantastic answer! Kudos, I share similar views.

To add to what you say, I also believe that while we easily start hating our jobs most of the times, we often fail to realize we were never excelling at them.

When I come to realize that I am currently not enjoying my current role, I think of only two possibilities. I either put in my time and efforts to make myself better at what I am doing or simply do something better that would make me enjoy my job.

P.S. grass is always greener on the other side.

<comment><USER2> Thanks :)

Your saying at the end of the comment described everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just my two cents, but you asked for it. I give all young engineers the same basic advice "Follow your gut". If you are religious, pray about it. If not, meditate about it. Either way, the answer will probably be screaming at you in the first minute. Now having said that, I have two more pieces of advice.

First, is to see the value in every job along the way. I started out as a hardware engineer, but had this nagging voice telling me I wasn't in the right job. It took a while to realize that my heart was in software. At first I felt like I had wasted career time as a hardware engineer, but then I realized I was much better at certain software problems because of my hardware background than others. If I take inventory of all of my jobs, even from high school, I realize that I have skills to this day that can be traced back to them. Even the ones I absolutely hated.

Second, while finding your niche is important, also find the right boss. Bosses have almost as much to do with liking your job than the work itself. I actually think it is harder to find a boss worth working for than finding work I want to do.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe you haven't been reading [http://thedailywtf.com](http://thedailywtf.com). Most programming jobs are as you have experienced. Maybe 1% of 1% work for startups on exciting projects. The rest just do maintenance on Java EE or worse COBOL.

<comment><USER6> COBOL is actually very good money nowadays. There are more legacy systems than programmers left. Learn COBOL and #StayAflotForAWhile

<comment><USER7> Yep. I'm working as a COBOL developer now and the language itself is fairly simple to read and write. The hard part is learning the systems in place and how everything talks to each other, since the systems have been in place since before I was born and have just been growing ever since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IMO in software industry there are only two kinds of jobs that are interesting - ones where you create non trivial user applications using complex high level technologies and one where you create those underlying technologies. It seems you are doing boring CRUD applications, and that at a very high level too, so it is natural to feel bored. If you can't find the former kind of jobs, I would suggest that you learn/improve hardcore CS stuff and apply for a job where you would be building things at lower levels.

</comment><comment><USER6> It really sucks when the reality doesn't match the expectation. This is the reality of being a "developers" in 99% of the cases. I'm surprised you got this far and no one told you.

<comment><USER9> He's only 23, so he's probably single. Just wait until he discovers the harsh reality of marriage. No one ever seems to tell single people about that either.

There's a reason people have called college "the best years of your life". They really are; everything goes straight down the toilet after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I understand your problem the truth is that you are being paid to fulfill someone else's dream. You're giving up your dream for money.

Work is not about you. It's bigger than you. It's a way to get society's needs met.

Your job is to find your dream, define it and balance both work and your goals. Understand that you'll work for someone but it's only temporary until you get your dream going.

Do this or you'll be changing jobs and careers without much fulfillment. It's only going to be a drag.

If you're lucky you'll fall into a job with an inspiring leader. Where his/her dream will be comes yours but don't count on that.

There's the sentiment that says, "Do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life."

The question is, "What do I love?" What I think it really means is "Define your current job in a way that fills your needs and you'll never work another day in your life."

Good luck, finding your needs.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi, I too went into Java EE, and started thinking I hated programming.

Luckily for me the IT crash of 2001 happened and I was out of a job. After a while I did data entry and automated that ... which I enjoyed.

It turned out that it was Java EE I hated (and the horrible codebase we used). Since then I switched to Python and it reminded me that programming can be fun.

Sure, there are a lot of web apps that aren't the most exciting, but I'm always moving forward and learning new things. Try some other languages and see if you like them - when I started with Python, I learned by building a simple breakout game with pygame.

In every job it helps to find an element you can enjoy ... for me I am never touching J2EE again, it was just so horrible.

Also - you NEED to work in teams with other people, hopefully there will be someone smart in the team you can get to mentor you + there will be good code you can learn from.

S

</comment><comment><USER12> wow there are a lot of people here being doom and gloom.

Look, you're the equivilent of a fry cook. You want a good job, be a chef. How do you get to be a chef, you ask? You stick around, and get on burger duty, and eventually, someone has you cook a steak.

The point is: you're super new to this. Eventually, you will have enough experience that you can CHOOSE your jobs. Sure, 99% of the programming jobs may be boring tedium, but if you are good, you'll be able to choose the 1% that aren't.

But when you're starting out you just have to be a sponge and keep an open mind. Either find a niche or be great at everything, but dont just get by, because that's how the 99% does it.

Source: 17 years in SW - I'm an enterprise architect.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm 31, and I dislike my job as a software engineer.

I had many jobs on my 10-year long career. I disliked all of them. I settled into a job that doesn't make me work that much, so I can just do other stuff and be less sad.

<comment><USER14> I'm 53 and trained in a lot of other professions.

I worked as an architect, which I didn't like too much, esp. the low pay. even if I was highly successful, been on national TV and press, exhibitions, ... Then I got into more technical jobs, like surveying, civil engineering, stage design, movies and also a lot more SW jobs. They were much more interesting and I got paid double.

Then I settled as SW developer in a big internet company, which was nice for a few years, but then I took a big risc with a B2B SW project which failed. Then I worked in knowledge engineering and mechanical engineering (support Formula 1 teams with their engine testing, I was basically a virtual Formula 1 "test driver"), which was nice I guess.

But in the end getting back from mixed engineering jobs to sole SW engineering made most fun. Now I'm writing compilers.

For the Formula 1 e.g. I wrote a C++ cross-compiler for an unknown platform, for which we only guessed what it was in reality (it was a blackbox with custom PCI boards), but it was successful and eventually helped this team win a couple of championships. (the unknown platform was 10x faster than the others). But technically it was as simple as stripping g++ from all virtual RTTI calls and IO.

Writing my own compilers and now also improving the libraries and VM's around makes a lot of fun, and has a lot of impact. E.g. planning a JIT. It's not as dangerous and has not a high budget as high speed controllers for high speed cars, with 10-20 PC's and a lot of custom real-time HW involved. (For which I also planned a JIT for a Visual Basic like real-time scripting language, but would have never been allowed to actually do it). But you are much more independent, have much less stress and much higher pay. SW engineer is _the_ top job. Esp. in the USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I realized is not that I dislike Sofware Engineering, it's that I can't adapt to the 8-5 culture. It's impossible to manage family, friends, health and personnal projects while working 8hours in a office (when in reality it's more about 10-11hours a day because of commute, lunch preparation, lunch break, sleep dept, etc.).

In fact, I LOVE Sofware Engineering. I realized that when I left my previous job to get back to school. Every time I had some free time I was programming on personnal projects.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'll just say that getting a MS will not change your situation at all. MS is just a couple of years of working experience, and a stamp of validation if you get it from one of the top 5 institutions. Talk to product managers and see if their daily tasks are any more interesting than your daily tasks.

I'd say what you are going through is pretty similar to a lot of software engineers. It also contributes to why a lot of engineers end up starting companies.

</comment><comment><USER17> Age 27. Had same problems.

School is one of the most addictive drugs you can take. Dedicated learning is completely different from on-job training (which mostly doesn't exist) and experience through work.

The pace of job-learning is significantly slower, additionally the things you learn are not what you were hoping to. This means that it will be harder to identify what you gained. Be sure to update your resume monthly until you get better at recognizing these things.

As 'Hellwd' said, you will greatly benefit from learning how to grow on your own time. It will also give you the opportunity to choose your own career path instead of taking whatever path closest fits your company.

Remember : If you plan to return to school within the next 5 years, then there is little risk in what you do for the next few years. Now is a good time to experiment on your employment needs.

I know several people who have left the industry, happily, for jobs that keep them outside.

There are cool jobs, they are just harder to get, and its difficult to appreciate the forest through the trees. Every job has crap parts.

</comment><comment><USER18> You can try smaller companies. From my experience, they're awesome because they care about teaching you stuff, and also what you do really does make a difference for the product you're building.

Bigger companies will always be less flexible, and especially banks love rules. The bigger the company, the more process (aka. bullshit) can get in the way.

<comment><USER19> Agreed.

For example, Microsoft is now swell, really. I mean, do you think it was really that difficult for them to improve Winphone ASAP? Of course not. But it took them so many years, they failed Windows Mobile, bought Nokia, destroyed Nokia, stopped releasing updates to older phones, and now they're dumping Lumia. After all these years, they still don't have a solid user-friendly OS. I know, people always complain about the lack of apps, but I believe Winphone has a bigger problem: it is not designed with the users' happiness in mind. Microsoft is too big that transforming ideas into products is so slow due to all the bureaucracy.

This is not the case with startups. They mostly use scripting languages with fast development time such as ruby. While ruby fits well for prototyping purposes of startups, banks and huge companies use enterprise solutions like Java, which has slower dev time, but instead comes with many rules. It's "business best practice".

<comment><USER18> This is all true, but a small company isn't necessarily a start-up. They might have an equally established stack, which can be a blessing in disguise. I made a lot of money before university rewriting VB6 apps into C#, and making the UI better. Some of the most gratifying work I've done, because they gave me pretty much complete freedom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> At the young age of 22 you have time to change your mind and explore and not get stuck in something that's not enjoyable. Your background will serve you well even if you move into another role.

One thing to consider is the particular context. I've seen software shops where there's a great deal of creativity and fun, so it's possible that the problem is that the bank's core business isn't software it's money. Sure, all businesses are out to make money but what they value beyond that is radically different between industries and even between companies in the same industry.

I bet the people at your bank who get the most respect dress very well, concerning themselves with finance. You might find an environment that's better or a role that's better. Or both.

Hell, you have time to make a bunch of mistakes, too.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.devrant.io/](https://www.devrant.io/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Become a gardener.

<comment><USER23> Lots of bugs and you need to be an expert on trees, but plenty of green field projects. You get to use rake now and then too.

<comment><USER19> No bugs, actually they're features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some development jobs are more interesting, I've worked in a startup which was very fast pace and plenty of tech to learn and challenging projects, but the renumeration wasn't great so switched to an enterprise style company. Pace is slower which is fine because it allows a lot of time for enjoyable side projects and self directed learning. If your day to day tasks aren't challenging enough you can carve out some time to create your own projects.

<comment><USER25> Same situation led me contributing to open source projects.

<comment><USER19> Ironically, [some of] those people working on open-source projects work for proprietary software companies...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Frontend dev here, I feel the same about my place of work. we are an agency with ~150 clients, all working on the same opensource system (that we extend). Day to day you keep doing the same things, install module X, style item Y, but it feels all mundane. Part of that is that the most we do is support, which is usually 2-4 hour tasks.

Also we have to log hours meticulously (down to 15mins). Even after a year that is a pain in the ass and actively makes me dislike my job.

<comment><USER27> > Even after a year

I think you're starting to think like _them_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Try to work for a startup. There you might encounter more challenges, both in diversity of work you will have to do (in smaller startups), and in the technology and sophistication of the programming required.

Another alternative would be to switch to being smartphone developper, eventually to an independent smartphone developper, where you'll be able to find more interesting and technically-challenging projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Money? [https://80000hours.org/2015/10/startup-salaries-and- equity-c...](https://80000hours.org/2015/10/startup-salaries-and-equity- compensation/)

<comment><USER12> Startups are a great way to "passionately work in a fast paced environment that's going to change the world"

Translation: "Passionately" \- we will underpay you "Fast paced" \- 7 days a week "Change the world" \- we won't ipo but sell out to a company for a few hundred million which you won't see a dime of.

GL!

(Source: too much time interviewing in silicon valley)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > almost all software jobs tend to be mundane in the end. Am I wrong?

No, you're not wrong. Almost all jobs of any kind are mundane. You can either accept this and deal with it like most people or work to find a job that isn't mundane to you.

</comment><comment><USER30> I graduated college, went away to teach English in another country for a year, and came back to the United States with a nice amount of student loans knocking at my door. I applied to all jobs across the board pertaining to my degree and no one replied. I decided to go into another realm: programming, which I had taught myself at a young age (12). I applied and managed to get the job. I had some training to do in order to catch up, but I was paid starting at $10/hr. After my training was complete, my pay was bumped up to $12/hr.

At that rate, you know how long a $40,000 student loan was going to pay off? I needed to do additional work to catch up. Basically, I designed and developed Auto-Collision software, from adding new things to mostly fixing up old bugs & errors, etc. Severely underpaid. I loved the job but my boss made my time there hell. He was a micromanager. He taught me a bit of logic, but really didn't do me any favors.

During my time there, after work, I'd go home and search Craigslist for people looking for web designers and managed to make some good money that way. About a year and a half later, I had already gotten deep into web design and development, which I loved. It wasn't enough to quit my day job, but it was enough to give me the confidence to start looking for other jobs in that area.

To make a longer story short, I ended up leaving, but before I left, my boss had offered me double my salary. So I would've been making $24/hr. I turned it down because with that offer.. everything came with a catch. If I made any errors or anything like that, he would've thrown it up in my face: "What am I paying you this amount for?" etc. So I couldn't deal with it and ended up settling for less. More than what I was making, but far less than the double salary. I didn't care because I managed to accumulate a lot of experience within the next 5 years.

I ended up getting 2 web design jobs at the same time (one from 8 AM to 5 PM and another from 6 PM to 2 AM) and did that for 2 years before getting laid off by the former, and now I currently work the latter. About 2 years later, I would end up making the salary he offered me, plus benefits and a ton of vacation time and the freedom to not have a "micro-manager" constantly hovering over me.

You can read more about it here: [http://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the- opportunity](http://confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity)

Anyways, the point is: Sometimes you do have to stick it out for a time, but take it all as a learning experience until you can quit the job and get one you love. If you aren't happy doing something, than find something that makes you happy. It makes your life totally worth living.

I not only still work at my day job, but I run a freelance business, a software company, and several side projects, and although I find myself working 15+ hour days sometimes, I love it and I don't think I'd have it any other way. If you take everything you learned and you apply it, you can make an excellent living, but turn that living into something you want to be doing everyday.

Also: The more you know, the more valuable you are. If you've gone 6 months to a year and the company has grown and yet you've seen no "returns on your investment", than start looking for another job, but don't be afraid to ask them to consider "better benefits" for you or at least a raise.

</comment><comment><USER31> Any way to contact you? :-)</comment>


T.js - A tiny templating framework in ~400 bytes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jasonmoo/t.js

<comment><USER2> The one thing that sucks about projects with one-char names is finding them weeks after you first discover them, when you really want to experiment with using them in a real project.

<comment><USER3> Browser bookmarks are a way unrated feature. A descriptive title and you're good to go. Who cares what the name is when your bookmark title has "t.js A tiny javascript templating framework".

I already can't remember the name of half the libraries I see even when they are clever and appropriate.

<comment><USER4> _Browser bookmarks are a way unrated feature._

Or Catch.com or pinboard.in or similar.

I also tend to print Web pages to PDF and stash them in a Dropbox folder for later review.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use this little helper in my underground lab:

        function template(str,data){
            for(var i in data){
                str=str.replace(new RegExp("{("+i+")}","g"),data[i])
            }
            return str
        }

It can be used with arrays and object literals as well:

        txt = template('hello {name}!',{name:'Jen'})

        txt = template('days: {0}, {1} and {2}',['mon','tue','wed'])

GPL and WTFPL just in case.

* Looks coincidentally similar to Fuchs'

<comment><USER6> Watch out for

        for (var prop in obj) {}

It may iterate over attributes defined in the objects prototype. The right way to iterate over an object is

        for(var prop in obj) {
            if(obj.hasOwnProperty(prop))
                doSomethingWith(obj[prop]);
        }

(see <http://stackoverflow.com/a/588276>)

<comment><USER7> While true, 'data' should always just be an object-literal. If template() is ever passed an instance of an object, there's something else seriously wrong elsewhere in your script.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And a few less-featureful templating-frameworks in 140 bytes or less: <http://www.140byt.es/keywords/template>

Notably, the examples found at <https://gist.github.com/964762#file_test.js> has the closest parity.

Edit: On second thought, I think the previous gist can reach parity with just a helper function for iterating and escaping:

      function engine(a,b){return function(c,d){return a.replace(/#{([^}]*)}/g,function(a,e){return Function("x","with(x)return "+e).call(c,d||b||{})})}}

      function iterator(o, k, f){
        var i, v = [];
        for(i in o[k]){
          v = v.concat(f(o, k, i));
        }
        return v.join('');
      }

      function print_kv(o, k, i){
        return [" ", i, ":", o[k][i]];
      }

      hello = engine("Hello,#{iterator(this, 'users', print_user)}!")
      // We don't have to pass iterator, on the next line, but it should demonstrate
      // how we context can be overwritten
      hello({users: {a: 1, b: 2, c:3}}, {iterator: iterator, print_user: print_kv})

      // Or don't pass print_user
      print_user = print_kv
      hello({users: {a: 1, b: 2, c:3}})
      // "Hello, a:1 b:2 c:3!"

      // Overload it!
      hello({users: {a: 1, b: 2, c:3}}, {print_user: function(o, k, i){return " "+i}})
      // "Hello, a b c!"

<comment><USER9> I had to zoom in like 3 times on my phone to vote this up. I know it may be bad form and all to comment on such, but guhdamn if as newb this doesn't wrinkle my britches.

<comment><USER8> Couldn't update my original post, but I was in a rush earlier and couldn't make the proper complete-parity examples: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379417>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure anyone's ever said "this templating framework is too big"

<comment><USER11> Maybe when talking about PHP?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The 80% case:

        var render = function(src, data) {
            return src.replace(/{{(.*?)}}/g, function(w, p) {
                return data[p];
            });
        };

<comment><USER13> This is the 0% case. No escaping and therefore not safe w.r.t. XSS attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if it would be possible to fit an entire webserver and web framework runtime into L2 cache? (I'm thinking Lua VM or something like that.)

EDIT Xeon 3050 has 2MB of L2 cache, so the answer is probably yes!

<comment><USER15> Out of curiosity, do you get to directly place code on the L2 cache through the Lua VM ? Is that a module ? If so, what is this voodoo and where can I find it...

<comment><USER14> No, I'm just thinking that one could minimize cache misses a whole lot.

<comment><USER16> You don't need to store the framework you are sending to clients in the CPU cache - a good network card can read the data directly from disk, or main memory and send it off, bypassing the cpu.

<comment><USER14> That's useful. I was thinking mainly of the actual server-side app server and not what would count as its payload.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I promised myself I'd show parity with <https://gist.github.com/3346253#file_t_js_parity.js> at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4378847>, but comments eventually go non- editable.

I haven't properly updated the gist fork yet, but as follows are the semi- minified additions [of `safe` and `map` (iter)] and parity tests.

      function t(a,b){
        return function(c,d){
          return a.replace(/#{([^}]*)}/g, function(a,e){
              function safe(v){return new Option(v).innerHTML;}
              function map(o, f){
                var k, v = [];
                for(k in o) v.push(f(k, o[k]));
                return v;
              }
              return Function("x",safe+map+"with(x)return "+e).call(c,d||b||{})
          })
        }
      }
      function l(v){
        console.log(v);
      }

      // Simple interpolation: {{=value}}
      l(t("Hello, #{this.name}!")({name: "Mike"}));

      // Scrubbed interpolation: {{%unsafe_value}}
      l(t("Saved from #{safe(this.xss)}!")({xss: "


Return Of Startup Schwag - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/03/return-of-the-schwag/

<comment><USER2> Wow, someone posted that here? Wild. So that's me/my project - if any startups want to talk about licensing schwag (I would love to include some YC companies), let me know (roddy at startupschwag dot com). If anyone wants to discuss the model I'd be happy to - it seems simple enough, but I'm always open to devil's advocate perspectives / refinements / flames.

<comment><USER3> Great idea. You're making money off of temporary hype, but the pricing structure has to reflect the variable costs. At some point, you can't make one t-shirt with Twitter on it and make any money, right?

<comment><USER2> Of course. There's a per-screen (per color) setup charge of $x, so it wouldn't work to have a very small number of subscribers. Fortunately variable costs decrease on a per-unit basis (at volume thresholds) and the relative impact of the fixed costs decreases with each additional unit.</comment></comment></comment>


What I learned from writing 750 words a day for 365 days - <AUTHOR> http://bennesvig.com/lessons-writing-750-words-day-365-days/ <comment><USER2> My biggest motivation, now nearing three years without missing a day writing usually 500 to 2,000 words daily, which applies to exercise and a million other habits you don't want to lose, is

 _If you miss one day you can miss two, if you miss two it 's all over._

(which I wrote up here -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/a-model-for- consistency](http://joshuaspodek.com/a-model-for-consistency))

Words to live by if you want consistency and discipline in your life.

I'm also coming up on two years without missing a single day of exercising, for which the same philosophy motivates me -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/burpees-the-one-year- review](http://joshuaspodek.com/burpees-the-one-year-review)

EDIT: Another lesson I learned: That the route to quality generally comes from quantity -- [http://joshuaspodek.com/route-quality- quantity](http://joshuaspodek.com/route-quality-quantity).

<comment><USER3> Consistency isn't everything. If you're consistently doing ineffective things it can be as bad as inconsistently doing very effective things. Doing nothing but burpees twice a day a year might make you feel like you've accomplished something, but it's not going to be nearly as effective as a varied, intense workout regiment with specific goals.

<comment><USER4> Doing burpees twice a day a year is better than not doing any exercise at all. True, it's best to have a goal, and to push yourself, but sometimes just building the habit is the first and hardest step.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. The best exercise schedule/diet/anything is the one you will actually do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple of observations:

 _You can only get better with experience._

But remember that _improving_ requires _both_ practice _and_ feedback. Practicing something that's developing the wrong habits will just reinforce those bad habits through neural pathway strengthening. This is a key principle in many skill activities (music, sports, gymnastics, strength training). It's one of the nuances to Gladwell's "10,000 hours" premise.

 _Go Full Screen / Eliminate distractions_

I'd have to heartily agree. Full screen might not be entirely necessary (I often have reference or other materials present while composing), but removing distracting elements from my environment is hugely useful. It's also ironic to note Ben's use of animated gifs to highlight his blog post (I ended up removing both with the Chrome element blocker plugin). In general I either modify the CSS for sites I visit frequently, or use tools such as Readability (or Pocket or Instapaper) to provide simplified, streamlined, uniform, text- dominant presentations of online material (curating and tagging the content is an added bonus).

 _good writing is mostly good editing_

Absolutely. I've long considered it a bit like sculpting in clay. First you gob a bunch of stuff up there, then you start carving away at what shouldn't be there, occasionally moving bits around.

<comment><USER7> I mostly agree with you. The only point I'm hesitant about is the idea that feedback is absolutely necessary. I think feedback can be both good _and_ bad; bad in the sense that things like originality, uniqueness, and novelty might be averaged out into blandness.

I think I would say "reflection" instead of "feedback", which can encompass both internal and external reflection, without which no change (or improvement) can take place. Your subsequent actions should derive from and be influenced by your previous actions and alter their course based on your reflections. Balance is important. And balance swings both ways: don't get caught up inside your own head and completely disconnect from reality, but also don't let others dictate who you are and what your experience really is.

Art is tricky that way: it is essentially social, involving others, from the outside, but is also inherently selfish, expressing your (the artist's) feelings and sharing them. I think it's important to be mindful of this dichotomy, but not get too wrapped up in it.

<comment><USER4> Feedback may not be _absolutely_ necessary in all disciplines (endeavors? arts? crafts?), but for some things it can be vital. I recently found out that discs in my lower back are closer together than they should be, and my spine is slightly out of alignment in two planes, probably because of bad posture (the day job) and incorrect form during high intensity workouts (which I need to even break a sweat). I'm thinking that getting a physical trainer or other specialist to critique my form would probably be a good idea, especially if I want to continue my workouts.

<comment><USER7> I was simply trying to say that feedback is sufficient, but not necessary for the creation of art.

<comment><USER4> In some fields, and at some levels of mastery, yes, feedback may not be necessary. If someone is truly at the top of their craft, pushing the bounds, with no superiors or peers, feedback could be destructive. I posit that most people aren't at this level, and those who think they are probably aren't. Even so, contemplation would probably be a good idea, but that's probably already happening in those cases anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _good writing is mostly good editing_

Absolutely. What the internet needs is some collaborative site where people can trade editing for article submissions. That way everybody can get better at their editing skills, which is where the real impact can be made.

<comment><USER9> >good writing is mostly good editing

My wife (who is an author and copywriter) often says "It's easier to fix crap than air."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in the early stage of something similar: I'm going for 1000 sessions of 1000 words each. I'm currently in the 0110s.

The main thing I'm learning is: If I keep going without looking back, if I churn out lots and lots of material with minimal pre-selecting, I WILL surprise myself.

I think pg wrote something along the lines of- the best ideas that haven't already been acted upon are the good ideas that NECESSARILY look like bad ideas.

Similarly, a lot of the good writing I get is what "feels" like meaningless drivel (at the beginning), but on hindsight turns out to be revealing, compelling, interesting. (This is all subjective, of course, but the response from others can be telling.)

So that's what I'm going for, by chasing real scale. I've written about 110,000 words of stream-of-consciousness drivel so far. I'm betting that I unearth some interesting gems when I'm at around 500,000.

As long as there is SOME degree of reflection, you will learn and grow as you go. I do this by writing summaries of my earlier drafts that interest me. Another cool thing that happens when you write in large quantities is that you get more detached from your writing, and you don't feel like you're "killing your babies"\- you can approach it with the cold, calculative and impersonal editor's pen because the sheer volume desensitizes you, in a good way.

A pottery metaphor. If you spend all your time trying to perfect the first pot you make, it'll probably still look like crap. If you try to make 1,000 pots as quickly as you can, some of those pots will surprise you with how they turn out, and you'll learn a lot more about the nuances of pottery in the process.

Same with writing. For me, at least.

<comment><USER11> What type of organization do use for everything? Is it just a daily log or do you have some sort of structure. And are you writing article and blog type pieces or is it creative writing?

I am always curious how people structure their disciplined writing.

<comment><USER10> I used to write blogposts with a clear headline, stuff like "how to X" or "why X is wrong", etc. My main blogging was social commentary, about local political affairs and news. But I got tired of that and now do a "start writing in pure stream of consciousness" thing. So you could say it's creative writing. But I think I have a lot of source material in there which can be further edited and refined into essays or blogposts. My goal is just to hit 1000 words per session. I typically do this on my commutes to and from work- I write on my smartphone into evernote, then publish on wordpress. I number the posts when publishing. The goal is to hit 1000 such posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I lived abroad for 365 days. Each day I wrote a "recap", and posted it to Facebook. Many recaps were over 1,000 words long. I received tons of feedback, often in real life. It was a brilliant experience. I agree with many of the points in the OP. I would like to add that there was no such thing as oversharing. Honest, gut-wrenchingly intimate details (with some anonymizing and filtering), framed in a well-composed piece of writing, somehow stand on their own. They become more personal to the reader than to me, the writer. They contrast to the whitewashed self-portraits of most people on social networks. One point I disagree on is the importance of editing. I think the key to good writing is a solid first draft. If you are editing content, rather than grammar, ordering, syntax or structure... then throw it out and start over. Before writing, give your thoughts some time to bake. Then write them down, and edit minimally. If you want to edit more, put it away and edit the next day. I never did that, starting and finishing most pieces on the same day. But, I have had regrets on every piece of writing I have ever produced. Lastly, I explored every last idea that I had. You should have an idea queue. Get to all of them.

</comment><comment><USER13> I learned something different from writing 750 words for a year.

I grew to despise the need to do this exercise daily as I slowly realized that I would not get any meaningful improvement in my writing. I would not be Hemingway. My brain was too set in its ways.

One night as I was working on my masters I forgot to log in 750words before midnight. At first I felt sadness, but in the following days and ever since all I've felt has been relief.

I guess some people are just better readers than writers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Am I allowed to be a bit disappointed? Writing so many words in one year and when reporting about it the carefully chosen title is "10 Things I Learned From Writing 750 Words a Day For 365 Days"?

If I had a spare domain name and 5 mn I would create a randomly generated Title Cap string on this template at xthingsilearnedfromdoingyforzday.com and the page content would be
Nothing
 in random size and random background and text color.

<comment><USER10> hah, that's awesome. I'd suggest even coming up with a trite, cliche, cheesy list of vacant "lessons" rather than "nothing". "The journey is more important than the destination", etc

<comment><USER14> Hm, but these clichés could accidentally carry some tiny usefulness for a few people, which would defeat the purpose of xthingsilearnedfromdoingyforzday.com.

Maybe using random translations of the word "nothing" could be nice: Nada, Rien, Nichts, 没有, 无, ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Definitely not as impressive as some of the other commenters here, but I'm 6 days into a 'Write 1,000 words for 100 days' challenge and find this inspiring. I've noticed after day 3 that the writing is coming easier, and I look forward to the feeling of getting it done.

I moved from Wordpress to Medium after a day, as Medium took focus off of themes, widgets, and everything else besides the writing and allowed me to just write. It's pretty exciting seeing the read stats and realizing that something you're writing (as off the cuff as it may be) is being read by hundreds of other people. Thanks for writing this, and I hope to get as far as you do in improving my writing and making it a habit.

</comment><comment><USER16> I used 750Words for a long time. After NSA scandal, I have had a hard time divulging my guts out to an online data center. I am thinking about setting up a client side encrypted Emacs/Org-mode journal system. Although I have to say that little strip on top of 750Words that tells you how many days has one written consistently and the analysis were very helpful in keeping up with the daily writing. Ultimately, I grew tired of writing 750 words daily about myself.

</comment><comment><USER17> Applies also to startups:

"If you want to save yourself time and sanity, get the horrible first draft out of the way so you can start making your writing great."

</comment><comment><USER18> Funny how people recommend writing X number of words per day, but no one ever recommends saying to program Y amount of lines each day, as it supposedly builds bad habits.

Why wouldn't writing X number of words per day build bad habits as well? Honest question.

<comment><USER19> > Why wouldn't writing X number of words per day build bad habits as well? > Honest question.

It would do if they were the same words. The trick is to write X number of words each day, on different subjects, and reflect on what went right and what went wrong. It's variety combined with reflection that makes it work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > It's much easier to edit something to become great than to slowly write a > perfect first draft, which I don't think is even possible.

It is even possible. Isn't slowly writing a first draft exactly what you are doing by revising?

<comment><USER21> Do you have examples of how it's possible?

For me, I believe it's not possible, because I can't sufficiently model a reader's reactions while writing. If I want something to be good, I have to let it sit and come back to it _as a reader_. Only then can I see the imperfections. Or rather, some of the imperfections. It takes me 3 or 4 passes before a piece really settles down, and showing it to others often yields new avenues for improvement.

<comment><USER20> I actually agree with you, and I'm just complaining about how edit and draft seem imprecise.

I was thinking of how Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mocking Bird. Also, Philip Roth said something about taking the right first steps instead of the wrong ones and that's how he could tell he had material for a book.

It's possible if you redefine or throw out the words draft and edit. Sure they mean something to you now, but for me you might as well say the secret to writing is writing. The advice to draft then edit till it's good, leaves out how hard you try on the first draft. It makes it sound like editing and drafting are different things when they aren't so different. Do you punctuate on the first draft? In American Pastoral the whole story happens parenthetically between dashes, how would you think to do that on a second pass? I'm worried the first draft has a way of keeping the subsequent drafts down--like writing about socks; on the third draft you still have socks.

Seems to me you are taking time to think, but you could just as easily (to my way of thinking obviously) call it all one draft spread out over a few days.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I definitely agree the notion of "draft" is an artifact of write-only or write-mostly media. For me it's much more about the number of passes over the work, so I use "draft" more to mean "a pass, separated by time, over a significant segment of the work".

The concern about early drafts anchoring later drafts is interesting. I'll have to think more about that as I write. Thanks for mentioning it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for sharing this, I find building new habits and skills is an exercise of building discipline, the realizations you've shared can apply to many things.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm 30 days away from finishing my second attempt at a 365 day photo project[1] (where you take a photo every day for an entire year). Interestingly, everything[2] Ben writes about writing 750 words a day holds true for my project. I suppose I'll have to do a writeup on January 1st after I finish this one and kick off the next one.

1\. Process over product

Totally agree. Being absolutely comfortable with the technical fundamentals is far easier if you're not concerned with the quality of your output on a day- to-day basis and—instead—concern yourself with the quality of your output over time. The quality of my output, in general, has increased over time as I've spent more time immersed in the craft.

2\. Know why you're [shooting]

I'm shooting because I want to become a better photographer, get better at capturing my artistic vision, and, eventually, get published or shown.

3\. Planning always helps

It sure does. There are days (or even weeks) where I realize that it's 11PM and I haven't shot anything for the day. Having a shot list to draw from, along with the occasional planned shoot, helps a lot.

4\. There are no good first drafts

To produce my one published photo every day, I'll shoot somewhere between 2 and 800 photos, with the average being about 35. Yesterday, for instance, I had a photo shoot where I shot 813 photos. I'll probably winnow that down to about 30 'selects.'

6\. Jerry Seinfeld is Smart

"objects in motion tend to stay in motion"

7\. Mix up your [photography]

Yesterday was a self-portrait triptych. The day before that was a dog on a table (always bring your camera!). Shooting different things helps me get better at different types of photography (studio, street, still life, macro, etc etc), but they'll inevitably inform each other in ways I couldn't even imagine until after.

8\. Get it done early

Having my daily photo out of the way earlier in the day inevitably makes me feel lighter and more relaxed. It is a strain, even though it's just for fun.

9\. The ultimate practice for…

I love shooting studio self portraits. They give me a chance to practice different lighting setups, and (in a lot of cases) fail miserably at it. But, by failing miserably on my own and alone, I have the chance to perfect or totally write off that setup before I try using it on a subject.

10\. Prime Yourself

Flickr, 500px, even Instagram. Plus photo blogs, photo books, art galleries, and so on. I spend a significant amount of time looking at others' photography.

[1] In case you're curious: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronbrethorst/sets/72157632426...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronbrethorst/sets/72157632426455084/)

[2] #5 is the only 'lesson' that doesn't hold for my project for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER24> Your photos are amazing.

<comment><USER23> thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What kind of stuff do people who do this write?

<comment><USER26> I am at a very early stage in this process, and my initial goal is quite modest - my real aim is to cultivate the habit of writing 500 words every day, breaking through the laziness barrier. So any crap will do. And does. Sometimes it's complete stream of consciousness babble, sometimes it's a bit better than that. I don't care. The point - for me - at this stage - is just to build the habit. No more.</comment></comment>


RetroArch 1.8.2 – Accessibility features for blind people - <AUTHOR> https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-coming-soon-accessibility-features-for-blind-people/ <comment><USER2> Better link about the accessibility features: [https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-coming- so...](https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-coming-soon- accessibility-features-for-blind-people/)

<comment><USER3> Ok, we've changed to that from [https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-released/](https://www.libretro.com/index.php/retroarch-1-8-2-released/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Serious question - do blind people play video games? How does it work?

<comment><USER5> Generally speaking, yes, they do. But the answer is, as always, more complex than that. Firstly, some types of games (text adventures, MUDs etc.) are more favorable for enjoynment by visually impaired people. When it comes to the traditional genres, it usually ends up being an issue, e. g. the mainstream games more often than not are not playable, but there's an entire genre of games which do not rely on visual information and instead use audio (usually stereo + might be some HRTF tricks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's interesting, Sender is spoken as "Transmitter".

What would cause that?</comment>


Take Fedora (Linux) with you on your USB - <AUTHOR> http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/05/15/video-fedora-project-leader-on-fedora-9/

<comment><AUTHOR> maybe i misunderstood this but did he say that you could take your Fedora-OS with you on a small USB-memory and install into any other computer? and that it would conatin all your latest saves etc?</comment>


Value of Startup Events - <AUTHOR> http://bootstraplive.com/ I recently agreed to help a friend out with an event he is hosting which I'm posting here. I've received some surprising comments from some on promoting an event like this<p>I'm curious of others thoughts on the value of such events, especially given there are so many of them in the Bay Area. Do you find any of them of value? How do you decide which ones to go to? What's the most value you've gotten at an event if any? <comment><AUTHOR> So apparently I don't know what I'm doing when posting to HackerNews. I had done a write up that posed a question about the event that this post links to, but it doesn't look like anyone else sees it.

My question is around events in general, especially in the Bay Area, using the one I've posted as an example. What are others thoughts on the value of such events. Are we now over saturated with them? Is there room for more? If you're trying to make it, is it really worth your time attending?</comment>


Nokia announces return to mobile phones and tablets - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/05/18/microsoft-offloads-feature-phone-business-to-foxconn-subsidiary-for-350-million/ <comment><USER2> Nokia wants to _return_ to tablets market? A market at which they never were present?</comment>


Extension Beta: Contextual Info on Local Elections. Any Interest for Your State? - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/setgov-fl-beta/hgjkmmcljmpkiabcegdeaklhkgccmofc <comment><USER2> Where are you pulling all the data from ?</comment>