Facebook Removing Option To Be Unsearchable By Name - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/10/facebook-search-privacy/ <comment><USER2> I feel like there is something bigger in play. All the various from state access to "private" communications, social networks becoming more public and all the different miscellaneous privacy issues are all different aspects or consequences of the Thing.

The move towards complete availability of all digital information seems to be a force of history. Privacy advocates are beginning to sound like copyright advocates, demanding that the universe continue providing for them in the manner to which they have grown accustomed.

Like copyright/IP, privacy is more about use getting used to (and in some cases legislating) how things happen to be, not predesigned or derived from first principle rules or morality. If 99% of your existence occurs within a community of 150 people, very little is private. When you live in a 20th center city, you get a lot of anonymity. You can keep private life (even several of these) separate from your professional life. etc. Those were just inevitable consequences of how those societies were structured.

The internet was at first an anonymous place. Pre-2000 most people seemed to share the feeling that if their real name found its way to the world wide web, serial killers would come. Then 2000-2005 people started keeping online diaries, online photo libraries, online lots of personal information. Facebook catalyzed this process with a semi private system of friends that matched what people were used to in their normal lives.

The force of history that is 'all your data available to everyone everywhere' feels unstoppable. Data is data. It doesn't care if it's an email, SMS, baby photo or GPS log. It doesn't get deleted.

Maybe "Information wants to be free" was an understatement.

I feel very awkward trying to describe this, a clear sign that I don't understand it. I wish pg Joel Spolsky, Chris Anderson (or ideally, Douglas Adams - I really wish we still had him) or someone else who's good at this sort of abstract thing would write a good piece on it.

<comment><USER3> This is a very interesting take on privacy and the direction of history. Another direction of history I'd like to compare this to is the unification of humanity.

No matter what our opinions on globalization, or diversity of cultures are, the humanity is inevitably moving towards one culturally homogeneous world. This may not seem obvious if we look at history on the scale of a few centuries, but it becomes apparent if we look at our entire history as species. We started with tens of thousands of completely separate "worlds" that had nothing to do with one another, and slowly, through trade and money, religion and imperial expansions we have become a single "world" without a single completely independent culture left on Earth. Slowly we are also all agreeing on moral and political values, such as "democracy", "human rights" or "equal opportunities" (incidentally, values spread across the globe by western imperial expansion). If you want to object that there are still tons of cultures left that are all so different, that's simply not true. Can you imagine Indian cuisine without chili peppers? Or the Russians/Irish without potatoes? Or the Italians without tomatoes? The whole world smokes, no culture openly accepts slavery, and so on, and so forth. And all these things and ideas were introduced just in the past few centuries, an almost negligible amount of time compared to the rest of our history.

Anyways, so the idea of openness of information, free data, etc. definitely seems to be a similar force. Again, if we look at the evolution, for most of our history we lived in small bands where privacy was non-existent, the ability to gossip was what gave us a major evolutionary advantage over other species. Still, even today most of things we spend our time talking about is pure gossip (just think about the proportion of HN articles about the "celebrity" programmers going to this or that company). So this idea of privacy, secrecy, etc. is something very new and I guess only the history can show whether it'll stick or not (as you conjecture).

<comment><USER4> Interesting.

 _No matter what our opinions on globalization, or diversity of cultures are, the humanity is inevitably moving towards one culturally homogeneous world._

In terms of geographically-based culture, which I think you mean, I agree entirely - increasing interconnectivity is causing increasing similarity between different countries. However I think there's a countercurrent to this at play too: an explosion in non-geographically-based _sub_ cultures, caused by the same increasing interconnectivity, which allows communities to maintain critical mass despite their members being geographically disparate.

Take for example, emo subculture, or hipsters, or death metal, or political activists of a thousand different kinds, a huge (and increasing) number of distinct communities: but if you go to San Francisco, or London, or Melbourne, you'll find a very similar mix.

Those cities are all extremely diverse and highly interconnected examples of course, but I think it's hard to disagree that's where things are headed globally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's cute. Guess there's always one other option, for people that don't want to/can't let themselves be searchable by name

 _delete 's Facebook account_

<comment><USER6> But all of your friends still mention you, post pictures of you, and tag you in them. You'll have to delete your friends too.

<comment><USER7> That is one of the things that really, really, really bugs me.

I _want_ to tell my friends "don't ever put up pictures that include me on facebook" but I can't because it's too big of a request at this point, and I'd end up being too much of a dick if I started making that demand. I really struggle with this. Facebook, that evil behemoth, has won big. I really just wish that it would get hacked or something so people stop trusting social networking sites. Come on blackhats, do your thing.

<comment><USER8> I go a step further, I generally ask not to have photos taken. Other than pictures of me as a child, my family and friends actually have no recent photos of me. For the most part, people are quite compliant of that request.

<comment><USER9> I want you to know that I feel the same way, and I've felt that way since long before the Internet. I actually think that it runs in my family a bit - we're very private people.

Honestly, I prefer to live life rather than live the process of creating a record of a life. I also prefer things to be ephemeral, rather then so every- decision-you-make-is-permanent. I think people are less adventurous when they feel like they're performing for posterity.

Of course, I also have a healthy dose of paranoia. The news lately has made me very happy about the choices that I was making before 9/11.

People _are_ generally good about it. If people want to take a picture of you or write about you in their blog or something, it means they _like_ you. They'll probably be amused that you're so private. Of course, you probably will have to give your best friends a picture once every 10-15 years, but they already know you're a weirdo, and won't be posting it anywhere.

<comment><USER8> >I actually think that it runs in my family a bit - we're very private people.

I completely agree. I think a lot of decisions I make are based off cultural reasons. My family has always had respect for privacy, although only "offline". ie. they'll knock before coming in. However, as they don't know much about technology, they all use Facebook and tag every photo. I feel like they seem to believe the privacy they enjoy offline extends online somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I cannot wait until we get founders / decision makers at these social network companies that have to hide from an abusive spouse / ex so that safety of users might be somewhat of a priority.

The "well, don't use it" response is utter crap given how many real life functions are being tied into these social networks.

<comment><USER11> What is a stalker going to do with access to only your public profile data?

Your stalker already had access to that from every tag and mention of you anywhere on Facebook.

<comment><USER12> The moment that you wrongly publish something as public and he his monitoring your account, or when Facebook decides that addresses/events are public too, you are ____ed up

<comment><USER13> I just... What? Do people really consent to share that kind of their information? I'm just surprised that people would use Facebook as such an "everything" platform for all the bits of data in their lives.

I guess I've always kept relatively tight control over my data, at least whether I want aspects of data about me to be public. I say that even though I make a tremendous amount of information about me very accessible (name, age, address, family, phone number, email address, etc). However, for other people who don't have that luxury, I wonder why in the world they're using Facebook?

<comment><USER10> Yes, they do. A lot of people manage their lives via Facebook. It is scary and amazing at the same time.

<comment><USER14> Are those people trying to hide from stalkers? If you're avoiding an abusive spouse, some behavioral modifications are going to be necessary. You can't keep going to the same bar for quizzo night, regardless of whether you post about it on Facebook or not.

<comment><USER10> People's behavior is modeled after their peer group. A person needs to be careful, but total isolation is counter productive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I certainly support the argument that this type of option should be the users' choice, but I'm curious by how many people seem to want to subvert this so that they remain unsearchable.

I use Facebook so that I can connect with people I meet. If I don't exchange contact info with someone I meet, but they know my name, it's great for them to search and find me on Facebook. I don't want my Facebook connections to solely be people I choose to friend.

I guess it boils down to how people use the service.

Real Question: Why do you have an account, but not want people to be able to find you?

EDIT: Thanks for the responses, some of them make a lot of sense that I didn't think of initially.

<comment><USER16> Lots of people need that. Teachers, doctors, social workers, care workers, people who work in/out of prisons, people who have had violent spouses/family members and this is just off the top of my head. The list goes on.

It is frustrating that the largest social media network is darn right hostile to large swathes of people.

Lots of events and groups solely exist on facebook. I think it is kind of awful that we let a company cut people out of their real life social networks just because they have stronger privacy requirements than 'normal' people.

<comment><USER17> Many of my high school teachers' profiles were easily located, but it was pretty easy for them to keep their information protected and simply explain that district policy prevents them from friending students. The only information you leak is the fact that you _have_ a Facebook profile.

If someone has interacted with a public page/event, you don't need to see the person's profile, you just need to see the public/page event (which is indexed by Google).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It seems that GTAV's parody of Facebook as "LifeInvader" was even more spot-on than Rockstar Games realized.

(I wasn't among those that objected to the "Friend Request" mission. After all, who _hasn 't_ wanted to blow Zuck's head off at one time or another? :-) )

<comment><USER19> You've gotta preface this with "spoiler alert"

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I've always defended Facebook and found it really useful. However recently I've noticed how little I use it and that I could (and would like to) delete my account.

There is one thing holding me back though. Photos. When I'm out with friends etc. I don't take photos. There are usually one or two people who do and I can rely on those photos being made available to me through Facebook/tagging. If I delete my Facebook account I lose the opportunity to view/save those photos.

<comment><USER20> I deactivated my Facebook profile for several months. Didn't miss the photos. Came back. Photos start to look silly, pointless, trivial. If I really, really want to see something, I'll ask a friend to show it to me over his/her phone.

<comment> k-mcgrady I personally enjoy looking back on old photos every now and then. It's not really so I can look at them the next day. I know for sure I would miss that every now and then.I guess the solution is just for me to take more pictures instead of relying on other people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not exactly on topic, but related: with all the revelations around the NSA spying, I've started thinking about the internet as basically a non-private space. It's a distributed network, and data passes through myriad corporate and governmental infrastructure. Anything you want to keep a secret, you just can't put it on the internet. On some level, the power of the internet is connected with this non-private nature.

I've never understood what the argument for widespread adoption of encryption on the internet was. To get the same utility, you'd have to have a huge "private" network, which would quickly become non-private again.

In light of this, it is disturbing that more and more systems of society are being moved on to the internet. Health records being particularly omninous. You can choose not to post or have profiles on social networks. It looks going forward we will no longer have the option to keep private medical info private.

</comment><comment><USER22> In case this saves anyone some time... [https://www.facebook.com/help/www/224562897555674](https://www.facebook.com/help/www/224562897555674)

<comment><USER23> I don't think they know what "permanently" means.

<comment><USER24> "Then, if you'd like your account permanently deleted with no option for recovery, log into your account and fill out this form."

So it is possible to delete your account "completely". I did this once and I have never been more happier. I actually spent time being tense when Facebook rolled out a new privacy blunder and would rush to check all settings. Imagine the time wasted.

So to all those who are contemplating deleting the account but can't - do it. It's totally worth it.

<comment><USER23> What I was referring to is the fact that they likely never delete your info, they just set disabled=1, recoverable=0. I have heard anecdotal accounts[1] and read the writing on the wall[2], along with a hunch, that they would rather not delete data unless compelled to. Disk space is probably the cheapest its ever been, and there's a lot that you could learn from one's profile data, and they undoubtedly data-mine (and probably sell) it regardless of your disabled status. A 3rd party might be _more_ interested in your data, say maybe if they determined that their demographic shows a strong inverse correlation with FB activity. Or maybe the 3rd party feels that they've already saturated the FB market, and is looking for leads in new markets. Facebook themselves would stand to gain from crunching numbers to try and determine _why_ people leave, since that is lost revenues for them.

Although, I hear that the EU (or maybe just the UK?) has strict provisions around keeping data, and so those users who choose to delete their account really do have their data wiped. But not the rest of us.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3145987)

2\. [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/08/29/facebook-reminds- user...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/08/29/facebook-reminds-users-all- your-data-is-fair-game/)

<comment><USER25> "When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted from Facebook. It typically takes about one month to delete an account, but some information may remain in backup copies and logs for up to 90 days. You should only delete your account if you are sure you never want to reactivate it. You can delete your account here.

Certain information is needed to provide you with services, so we only delete this information after you delete your account. Some of the things you do on Facebook aren't stored in your account, like posting to a group or sending someone a message (where your friend may still have a message you sent, even after you delete your account). That information remains after you delete your account."[1]

"Maybe that was true in the past, but today when you delete your data it is gone. Trust me, I wrote it myself. The law enforcement guidelines that have been circulating recently corroborate this."[2]

I do wonder what sort of "things you do on Facebook" aren't stored on your account, though.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your- info#deletion](https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/your-info#deletion)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3320240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3320240)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know several people that misspell their own name on Facebook for this purpose. I imagine that if people still want to be unsearchable, this is what they'll do.

<comment><USER27> I know several people that are quite bright in real life but only post cat pics and unfunny quotes on facebook, then like random useless uninteresting crap. They are ruining the "experience of facebook/social networking" for everyone on their friend-list willfully as a slow sabotage.

That is kind of the best thing one could really do to subvert the facebook. It isnt enough to change name, or to misinform or deactivate etc, the best thing is really to offer the lower the quality of everything below crap, to drive others away too. To more fertile and free lands of networking. Whatever that is, it will be somewhere soon enough.

<comment><USER28> I love it. I'd sign up for a service that automatically posts inane crap.

<comment><USER29> How inane are we talking about here?

I'm thinking of a script that grabs a random YouTube comment more than N characters long and posts it someplace else completely out of context.

I'd expect the results to be like _@Horse_ebooks_ , where "horse" refers to heroin.

<comment><USER28> I was thinking more like random sentences from a gutenberg book... and of course cat pictures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Facebook's main advantage over Twitter was the private-amoung-friends thing. I wonder why they are trying to kill the thing that sets them apart.

<comment><USER31> No, facebook's main advantage was that you had enough room to write messages with some content in. And that there was a dedicated events-organizing system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can't wait for the influx of friend invites of people i barely know. The feature was great to keep my profile hidden except to my close friends.

</comment><comment><USER33> For many who have exited an abusive relationship, this represents nothing less than a complete betrayal by Facebook.

I have a family member in such a situation. Fortunately, they have stayed away from Facebook and other social media out of fear of something like this.

Congratulations, guys (and I choose that term somewhat deliberately, with reference to gender bias in domestic violence statistics): You've just branded yourselves as well as your product assholes.

</comment><comment><USER34> a big "fuck you" to anyone with an unusual name.

<comment><USER13> How is this detrimental to those with an unusual name? I ask because I have an unusual name (I've never met another "Leland") and I never set my name to be unsearchable, and I've not had any problems because of this. What bad things are going to happen?

<comment><USER35> If your name is Mike Smith or Chris Wong or Jane Lee, you can murder and rape and pillage with the confidence that once you are out of prison, you'll be "anonymous" on social media - you can hide in plain sight.

On the other hand, if the spelling of your name is unique in the digital world, as mine appears to be, everything you say and do online can be traced to you individually. (By employers, for instance. Who want to know how old you are, or whether you're married, or how you spend your spare time. To pick a bland example from among hundreds.)

<comment><USER36> I find your idea pretty shock. I never thought of that. But then again, if there is a crime, there is certainly an evidence. The thing is that evidence is hard to trace. For example, hair and dead skin. it's just hard to find - you can end up with 10000 individual hair sample on the crime scene.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Looks like a class action lawsuit in the near future for anyone harassed by ex-boy/girl friends, lovers, husband/wife who find such info via FB.

Lawyers can now test market your class action lawsuit with $100 of FB ads.

MVL - Minimal Viable Lawsuit. Like/G+ by Eric Ries. :-)

</comment><comment><USER38> To be honest, I don't think they are going to go through with this. They are feeding news sites with this, people will "outrage" and then facebook will pull back and it'll seem like they actually care about privacy. Nice publicity stunt.

</comment><comment><USER39> So does anyone have an alternative? I've seen various suggestions of upcoming alternatives, but nothing concrete.

</comment><comment><USER40> Many people are suggesting that we delete our profiles. Don't, if you ask me. I will explain.

1) Because, certain information can be considered valuable - For example old comments from friends/family on relevant photos, semi-private get- togethers/events, etc. Because all these can be considered as good memory/archives of your personal life and the stuff that reminds people of their relationship with you. For me I consider, these valuable, so it's a no no to delete my profile as I will end up losing these. I can technically take a back up if I want, but who opens their backed up index.html once a week, if not daily?

However, leaving your profile undeleted means you lose a lot of privacy. So how am I going to hide my profile if it's publicly searchable?

First, understand that your live profile is not only searchable, but also indexable by google.

Facebook ALSO hands over the stuff you 'like' to search engines. So, you now like a famous pornstar's fan page/even her post? Well, good luck getting it removed from Google!

All I need to do to find out what you've liked on facebook is search for your name in quotes:

        "<insert your name here>"

or even:

        site:http://facebook.com "<insert name here>"

While this heavily depends on the uniqueness of your name, it also means that it sucks if you are a professional seeking a job or in a similar situation and all Google returns for querying your name is a list of pornstars you've liked on Facebook. Pornstars are probably an over-rated example, but in many cases it could really be awkward - your views against a particular ideology (feminism/masculism/atheism, for example) and sensitive stuff like that. Because if you like something, it means you "support it". That's how it's perceived, atleast.

2) So, back to my point. Deleting is too extreme. Why? Because deleting also makes you lose control of what's out there. If I am correct, I've observed in the past that even deleted profiles are not actually deleted, but are assigned an empty profile with just your name and the default profile picture and this stuff is still sent to search engines. So, if you delete your profile, you lose control over this.

What I may suggest doing is temporarily deactivate your profile (There's an option for this.). This will actually make your profile totally invisible (from search and indexing) and also from my observations, temporarily un-index you from search engines. This is good because you still have control over your profile, you own your data and search engine visibility.

So, what I technically do is, login into Facebook to check what my friends are upto, say once or twice a month, and then deactivate it. For example, I like to keep additional family and friends separate and hence I maintain multiple additional profiles for them, distinctive from my main profile, instead of using Facebook's unreliably stupid privacy system (circles). Now, I wouldn't want my friends to discover my family profile and vice versa. Then, there's the list of dudes whom I will never want to add me, ever. So, maintaining multiple profiles also, helps me maintain a fake presence on Facebook, while also masking my search engine visibility of my real profile with the fake profiles. This works well for me, ymmv. So, just think twice before deleting your profile.

Cheers.

<comment><USER41> Downloading a backup from your Facebook account before deleting it let's you save all of your valuable information. If you then choose to never open this backup, well I guess the information is not THAT valuable for you.

Deleting my Facebook was very easy and straightforward. 1) downloading the backup. 2) permanently deleted my account, not deactivate . 3) communication to my friends I no longer use Facebook and how they can reach me. I still recieve invitations and photo's via IM and mail, no big deal!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a tool to purge your Facebook profile?</comment>


What happens when you turn up for work and find out you've been evicted - <AUTHOR> http://blog.import.io/post/overcoming-obstacles-what-happens-when-you-turn-up-for-work-and-find-out-youve-been-evicted <comment><USER2> What a crazy story. Good to hear that you were able to secure some office space fairly quickly and get your stuff back. I love WeWork, when I was contracting in Seattle a few months ago the startup I was contracting for had a space at WeWork Seattle. What a great environment, tonnes of networking events, free beer on each level (all different types) that is filled daily, various games like foosball and ping pon you can play against other companies, they have definitely nailed great co-working spaces.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least they let you in to grab your laptops and whatnot.

A bummer your landlord didn't pay the building with your rent money and you both got evicted. Good things people were able to work at home until finding the new office.

<comment><AUTHOR> Btw, I have no association with this company, other than I like to keep track of their blog and events regularly as it ties in quite closely with my line of work. Thought I'd post as it's an article that fits in the startup culture of being able to adapt quickly and dealing with situations you can't prepare for, whilst turning them around into a positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks all for the support. It was a crazy and emotional week. The London team have ended up very happy at WeWork.</comment>


Things I Wish I Were Told About Angular.js - <AUTHOR> http://ruoyusun.com/2013/05/25/things-i-wish-i-were-told-about-angular-js.html

<comment><USER2> This is and will continue to be a challenge for the AngularJS team. While comprehensive, their documentation for complex things like directives seems more contributor-oriented than user-oriented.

Fortunately, the users on the Google group are very active and people like John Lindquist[1] are putting out insightful and approachable tutorials.

I think that one of the major issues faced by AngularJS from an adoption standpoint is that people see the simple examples on the front page and assume that, while powerful, it is best suited for toy apps. I'm not sure how to address this, but I've seen the perception repeated over and over by potential users who have done a 'surface check' and have then based their conclusion on an incomplete picture.

[1]: <http://egghead.io>

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with all the points made in this, and it reflects my experiences with building an angularJS app. However, I left with a very positive view of angular, technologies should have a learning curve (rather than a learning wall) and angular is my favorite SPA framework for this reason.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish I had known about ui-router before I wasted days trying to hack together nested views /w deep urls:

<https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-router>

</comment><comment><USER5> If you know are are comfortable using backbone, was or is there any specific reason why you chose angular instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> TBH, when I started the project, I choose Angular because I want to learn and use it. Now that I have been using it for a while, I can justify why I want to switch to Angular from Backbone. Backbone is small and only provide a "structure" to JS App. You need a lot boilerplate code. While Angular is "full-stack" and eliminate almost all boilerplate.</comment></comment>


Google Glass is about to reach developers, but why not make your own? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itproportal.com/2013/01/03/google-glass-is-about-to-reach-developers-but-why-not-make-your-own/

<comment><AUTHOR> Related link:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/build-your- own-g...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/build-your-own-google- glass)</comment>


Printing Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/printing-money-books-john-cassidy <comment><AUTHOR> A cogent argument on why the Fed, ECB, and BoJ can and should just print money instead of perma-ZIRP with its nasty side effects of asset bubbles and the creation of massive wealth disparities.</comment>


Should I tell my boss I'm leaving because of them? - <AUTHOR> http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/18693/should-i-tell-my-boss-im-leaving-because-of-them

<comment><USER2> Sometimes you have to do what makes you feel good. If you think you'll feel better after telling them you might consider telling them. But... most of the time you have think first what do you want to achieve. Probably you won't get anything from telling them what you feel besides the momentary pleasure. You don't really believe that they can be changed, I guess.</comment>


A Very Brief History of Computing, 1948-2015 [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/a-very-brief-history-of-computing-1948-2015 <comment><USER2> If your in London Gresham College do a wide range of interesting lectures I can recommend having a look at their program.

They go back over 400 years

</comment><comment><USER3> Summary: Capitalism corrupted software engineering, because you get rewarded for getting to market quickly and selling maintenance contracts, not for making quality software, free of defects and security vulnerabilities.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish they would just host the video on YouTube so it would stream quickly. I'm getting pause after pause here.</comment>


WinFsp – FUSE for Windows – faster Than Dokany - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/billziss-gh/winfsp/wiki/WinFsp-Performance-Testing <comment><USER2> Title seems a bit off, per caveat below...why not use the original title, "WinFsp Performance Testing" (?)

"The comparison to NTFS is very important to establish a baseline. It is also very misleading because NTFS is a disk file system and MEMFS (either the WinFsp or Dokany variants) is an in memory file system. The tests will show that MEMFS is faster than NTFS. This should not be taken to mean that we are trying to make the (obvious) claim that an in memory file system is faster than a disk file system, but to show that the approach of writing a file system in user mode is a valid proposition and can be efficient."

<comment><AUTHOR> Please suggest a more appropriate title and I will be happy to change it if it better conveys the results.

Please also note that I want to convey that my solution is faster than Dokany, which is a competitor solution.

<comment><USER3> You should better say that YOUR MEMFS implementation is better on Winfsp that YOUR MEMFS implementation on Dokan. This is even not a far comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Super misleading title and benchmark.

Why did they not use a RAM Drive for the NTFS test like one of these [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RAM_drive_software#Non...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_RAM_drive_software#Non- proprietary)

Are there any on-disk filesystem implementations based on WinFsp so a comparison can be made?

I count this as intentionally misleading, since the submitter is also the Project author and performed the benchmark and should know better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the author of WinFsp and I believe you are missing the point or you did not actually read the article. Early on I say that:

<< This performance testing shows that WinFsp has excellent performance in all tested scenarios. It outperforms NTFS in most scenarios (an unfair comparison as NTFS is a disk file system and WinFsp is tested with an in-memory file system). It also outperforms Dokany in all scenarios, often by an order of magnitude. >>

My intent was to measure performance of WinFsp against NTFS in order to establish a baseline and to show that building file systems in user mode is not as inefficient as people think.

You should also note that a hacker news submission is only 80 characters and it is hard to clearly communicate one's intentions fully.

<comment><USER4> I read the article, and the quoted sentence. This is the reason why I find your HN submission title intentionally misleading.

It's a cool project, and this deception is entirely unnecessary.

Why not claim "FASTER than Dokany".

An interesting comparison would be ntfs-3g on WinFst vs. native NTFS either both on RAM drive or Disk.

You also did not answer any of the questions in my comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will change the title to say "Faster than Dokany" without mentioning NTFS.

The deception is not intentional. For me it was important to verify that my project is _not_ slower than NTFS when using my test file system, which is an in-memory file system. You may notice that Dokany is actually slower or on par with NTFS in many scenarios even _with_ an in memory file system.

Trying NTFS on a RAM disk is a good idea. I simply did not think of it.

There is no on disk implementation of WinFsp that I can share at this moment.

Please let me know if you have other questions.

<comment><USER5> Your comments make a fair point. NTFS __is __in fact effectively an in-memory filesystem when you have caching, and not going out to disk to satisfy various requests.

It's a valid observation that we can have a filesystem that trombones out to user space to (say) fetch a block of data, and (contrary to what some might expect) it doesn't perform worse than an in-kernel one which gets it from a cache.

<comment><AUTHOR> > NTFS is in fact effectively an in-memory filesystem when you have caching, > and not going out to disk to satisfy various requests.

It is interesting to see that NTFS is doing extremely well in a few different tests that are entirely satisfied from the cache: the list directory operation and the cached read/write operations. OTOH it does not do as well in tests that could potentially be satisfied from cache (like file open tests).

In any case I intend to retry the tests using NTFS on a RAM disk when I get some time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You say in your bench that Dokan support does not support memory mapped files but it does as I can see with fsx (memory mapped read/write enabled) running on their CI [https://ci.appveyor.com/project/Maxhy/dokany/build/1.0.1-48/...](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/Maxhy/dokany/build/1.0.1-48/job/axakvm0u2tqqgf6a#L1086) It is your implementation that doesn't support it.

You add lock (that will slow down the result) on Dokan implementation only [https://github.com/billziss-gh/memfs- dokany/commit/03ebaebb1...](https://github.com/billziss-gh/memfs- dokany/commit/03ebaebb1d5f53823fa23709cc9e710ff4f0e540) After that you see that dokan is faster to list files ([https://github.com/billziss- gh/winfsp/commit/595a77bd2e45347...](https://github.com/billziss- gh/winfsp/commit/595a77bd2e45347809ed46ab419a1a0df8e11b2e#diff-499e702a5a0648c27ee9e9e622f71521R109)) You improve YOUR MEMFS winfsp implementation [https://github.com/billziss- gh/winfsp/commit/f7ca9f05221040a...](https://github.com/billziss- gh/winfsp/commit/f7ca9f05221040a5a88df33d8d58b87b21c1e863) but not on dokan ?

You also improve memory allocation on winfsp memfs implementation and again not on dokan [https://github.com/billziss- gh/winfsp/commit/d12234bb01b3620...](https://github.com/billziss- gh/winfsp/commit/d12234bb01b3620b4fc201b9a197ef48cbefe359)

And last point...running it on VirtualBox O_o ? Even running it 5x time and take the best time. You cannot be sure that virtualbox has not corrupt your test. For me a benchmark on a VM is not reliable at any point.

My point is even if Winfsp is fast on your test with an unfair FS, I am pretty sure there is not difference with real applications on a non-virtual machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You say in your bench that Dokan support does not support memory mapped > files but it does as I can see with fsx (memory mapped read/write enabled)

It was me that ported FSX to windows so I am quite familiar with this test.

Here is the code that fails in fsbench:

        Mapping = CreateFileMappingW(Handle, 0, PAGE_READWRITE, 0, FileSize, 0);

I would be happy if you explained to me how Dokany/MEMFS fails this code.

> You add lock (that will slow down the result) on Dokan implementation only > [https://github.com/billziss-gh/memfs- > dokany/commit/03ebaebb1...](https://github.com/billziss-gh/memfs- > dokany/commit/03ebaebb1..).

The lock exists on WinFsp/MEMFS. It is just taken in a different place:

        https://github.com/billziss-gh/winfsp/blob/master/src/dll/fsop.c#L60

> After that you see that dokan is faster to list files > ([https://github.com/billziss- > gh/winfsp/commit/595a77bd2e45347...](https://github.com/billziss- > gh/winfsp/commit/595a77bd2e45347...)) You improve YOUR MEMFS winfsp > implementation [https://github.com/billziss- > gh/winfsp/commit/f7ca9f05221040a...](https://github.com/billziss- > gh/winfsp/commit/f7ca9f05221040a..). but not on dokan ?

The WinFsp/MEMFS had indeed a problem which I fixed, but it was _not_ WinFsp related (it was MEMFS related - aka my test user mode file system). I attempted to apply the same fix to Dokany/MEMFS, but I could not because Dokany does not pass an Offset parameter to its FindFiles operation.

> You also improve memory allocation on winfsp memfs implementation and again > not on dokan [https://github.com/billziss- > gh/winfsp/commit/d12234bb01b3620...](https://github.com/billziss- > gh/winfsp/commit/d12234bb01b3620..).

Actually that is incorrect.

        https://github.com/billziss-gh/memfs-dokany/blob/master/memfs-dokany.cpp#L88

> My point is even if Winfsp is fast on your test with an unfair FS, I am > pretty sure there is not difference with real applications on a non-virtual > machine.

No. WinFsp is faster, because it is faster. Feel free to send me any pull requests that you want for Dokany/MEMFS and I will incorporate them into the project and re-run the tests.

<comment><USER3> >Mapping = CreateFileMappingW(Handle, 0, PAGE_READWRITE, 0, FileSize, 0);

So it is more a "case" not handled by dokan rather that all memory mapped not handled ? Is this made in purpose just to remove dokan from the bench ?

>The lock exists on WinFsp/MEMFS. It is just taken in a different place:

It changes nothing on what I said. You added it on dokan side without reason and not on winfsp memfs.

>send me any pull requests that you want for Dokany/MEMFS

A pull request will not change that a real application on a non-virtual machine will not see the difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> > >Mapping = CreateFileMappingW(Handle, 0, PAGE_READWRITE, 0, FileSize, 0); > > > So it is more a "case" not handled by dokan rather that all memory mapped > not handled ? Is this made in purpose just to remove dokan from the bench ?

I do not understand this.

Are you familiar with how memory mapping works on Windows? CreateFileMappingW is it. If that API fails you do not have memory mapping.

Furthermore I challenge you to show me how Dokany/MEMFS makes this API fail. If you find such an issue I promise to fix it and re-run the tests.

>The lock exists on WinFsp/MEMFS. It is just taken in a different place: It changes nothing on what I said. You added it on dokan side without reason and not on winfsp memfs.

I added it on Dokan side, because I needed to protect the Dokany/MEMFS data structures against corruption. On the WinFsp side this lock is taken automatically as a convenience (although one can remove it if the file system can cope by using a custom "operation guard" (FspFileSystemSetOperationGuard) -- it is not needed for WinFsp operation).

The exact same lock is taken on both sides. There is no unfair advantage to WinFsp. If you design a file system that takes no locks and works on both WinFsp and Dokany, I will be happy to run the tests against that file system.

> A pull request will not change that a real application on a non-virtual > machine will not see the difference.

All the "real application" has to do is to open a file and issues some I/O. Just because Dokany does not cache I/O it will be 9x-10x slower than WinFsp.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The exact same lock is taken on both sides. There is no unfair advantage to > WinFsp. If you design a file system that takes no locks and works on both > WinFsp and Dokany, I will be happy to run the tests against that file > system.

Alternatively you can show me that there is a lock already taken within Dokany for this purpose (protection of the data structures of the user mode file system) and I will be happy to remove the lock and rerun the tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OK since it is the author of Winfsp that has made memfs of dokan and winfsp and also the tools used to bench/compare them, I wanted to be sure to have the same result on my side using this tool. For now, I have been able to make it work on NTFS but when using on winfsp/memfs-dokany it just crash >< I feel very weird about this article and that I am losing my time here.

<comment><AUTHOR> MEMFS limits how many files you can create (up to 1024 by default). Try running it with the parameter -n set to 100000, which will allow you to create up to 100000 files.

Examples command lines:

WinFsp: memfs -t 0 -n 100000 -m Z: # no caching memfs -t 1 -n 100000 -m Z: # enables metadata caching memfs -t -1 -n 100000 -m Z: # enables data and metadata caching

Dokany: memfs-dokany -n 100000 -m Z:

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fantastic to see a FUSE-compatible system for Windows. This has been something I've wanted for a long time as an occasional Windows user.

<comment><USER5> I could use this with SSH, like right now.

<comment><USER3> SSHFS has been on windows since a moment with Dokan [https://github.com/Foreveryone-cz/win-sshfs](https://github.com/Foreveryone- cz/win-sshfs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> winfsp performance numbers look pretty good. if the implementation is stable too, a clear winner here and i will give it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. The implementation is very stable because WinFsp is tested regularly and rigorously.

Please read about the WinFsp Testing Strategy here:

[https://github.com/billziss-gh/winfsp/wiki/WinFsp- Testing](https://github.com/billziss-gh/winfsp/wiki/WinFsp-Testing)</comment></comment>


Google+ Brand Page Concept - <AUTHOR> http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2011/07/04/google-brand-page-concept/

<comment><USER2> I think these brand pages tend to ultimately destroy the simple experience of interacting with other human beings which services like Google+ are built around. To be honest I'm pretty happy that things don't seem to be going that way, something I talked about on my site in a recent article (<http://frog.io/blog/google-plus>).

</comment><comment><USER3> Can somebody explain the purpose behind these "brand pages" on Facebook or Google+?

To me, a stand-alone brand website seems to be much more effective, given the less layout/design constrains.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I roll my eyes every time I see an add telling me to "Like Colgate toothpaste on Facebook!", as if that were something that anyone would want to do.

<comment><USER5> And yet 4.5M people 'like' Pepsi on FB...

<comment><USER6> usually because it's been tied to some incentive.... discount...access to more information/contests..whatever. They're lured in.

A 'like' has become a form of currency in some strange way

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Decent concept, but a very "more of the same" feel to it. There's no need to duplicate brand presence on Google+. My personal interpretation of G+ was that it allows you to filter out the noise and focus on sharing with specific "circles." Seems sort of pointless to try to beat Facebook at their own game considering its fairly rooted at this point. I guess we'll have to wait and see, though.

<comment><USER8> If G+ doesn't add official company pages, people will just create fake accounts for their companies anyway. Happened on MySpace, happened on Facebook, and it will happen on Google+.

<comment><USER9> I tend to agree, and I think that G+ really needs to nail these Brand pages and Events (with Calendar integration) to make the most of it. They're off to a great start though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please make this not happen for the time being. The point at which brands started using Facebook Page vanity URLs in advertising, instead of their own company domains, was the point at which the internet got a little bit more publicly insane.

</comment><comment><USER11> hmmm... Looks exactly the same as a facebook brand page.</comment>


US National Park Service's Unigrid (1985) - <AUTHOR> http://npshistory.com/brochures/unigrid/index.htm <comment><USER2> Here's a 1993 one from Yellowstone (linked through the site): [https://ia601009.us.archive.org/13/items/yellowstonena199330...](https://ia601009.us.archive.org/13/items/yellowstonena1993308unit/yellowstonena1993308unit.pdf)

The article makes a nice point about how they were actual used verse what designers were doing: "Designers too often treat folder panels in the tradition of book production. The process of unfolding is allowed to determine narrative and illustration sequence just as page turning controls book design. Folder users approach them differently, however. They open the folder quickly, ignoring the sequential staging of panels. The two resulting broadsides are fragmented, with parts often upside down and even sideways. All of this is confusing to users, and they wonder why it has happened."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My favorite thing from this (and the reason I shared it) was just seeing how evocative of modern grid based web design is of these design principles, even though they predate the WWW by many years and bootstrap etc. by two decades.

<comment><USER3> You'd be interested in this then (1968):

[https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Graphic-Design- Communica...](https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Graphic-Design- Communication/dp/3721201450)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really love these maps. I collect them and friends and family send them to me. I probably have 50-100. There's a wide variety, e.g. Yosemite, Volcano National Park, New Orleans Jazz Historical Park. The brochures paint vivid pictures of each park, with a central story/theme on one side containing highlights of important features, animals and plants, and a topo map on the other. They are both practical tools when in the park and are great souvenirs when you return home.</comment>


Show HN: Linkwok – Picking up where search engines left off - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkwok.com

<comment><USER4> Okay, I think I've figured it out. This app is a mind-mapping tool, where nodes usually represent web content (but can be text, files, charts, or tables). It also has a somewhat convenient search interface built in which mirrors results from a few popular search engines.

The use-case that sounds most reasonable to me is trying to do some heavy learning on a new topic, and using this tool to organize your findings. They cite some other use cases (such as buying a new car or phone, or planning a trip) but those seem best-served by other tools. I was actually researching cars to buy this weekend, and a simple spreadsheet worked very well (columns were features I wanted/needed, rows were potential candidates). There are also many trip-planning apps that I think would serve that need far better than a general-purpose app like this.

Ultimately, it looks like a lot of time was invested into this app - <USER2> said, I can't see it being terribly useful (at least to me). It's too complex to be helpful for the 90% of tasks that can completed with a piece of paper, or a notes/spreadsheet app, and it's too general to offer a better solution than niche products for the other 10%. If I had invested in this company, I'd be encouraging them to pivot into either a) a Google Keep/Pocket competitor, or b) something much more minimal that actually enhances the search engine experience (as the title implies).

P.S. You're not impressing anyone with your grid-style website. It's not a technical feat, nor does it improve the usability of the site - quite the contrary. Even if it were somehow easier/faster to use than scrolling (hint: it's not), the cost of switching to some new navigation paradigm is far more than what new users will be willing to invest for some new app. You have about 3 seconds to get my attention, don't waste it teaching me how to get around your website. Even if users are willing to put up with it out of curiosity, it'll make the pre-app experience worse, and that determines what lens they'll view the app itself through: "Cool, let's see what this does for me" vs "What other ways has this company devised to annoy me?" This may sound harsh, but I'd like to see you guys get some kind of reward for your hard work and your current website is actively preventing that from happening.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey notduncansmith, thanks for the candid (and detailed) reply. The target is to spend more time creating a canvas that can be used to collaborate and present on than juggling several apps- tabs, Notepad, Word, Excel, Powerpoint.

The end goal, our vision is to become an ecosystem of knowledge canvases (a wikipedia of 'mindmaps'). 6 billion searches are made every day just on Google, out of which 90% have already been repeated within the last 24 hours. How awesome would it be if you did not need to go through the haystack to find the needle that somebody else already found?

That said, the concerns you and others have pointed out are genuine and we do need to address them.

I will be taking down this post in an hour or two to resolve the 500 error that has suddenly crept up. Thank you all for the feedback... :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. I do have a few more questions:

> The target is to spend more time creating a canvas that can be used to > collaborate and present on than juggling several apps- tabs, Notepad, Word, > Excel, Powerpoint.

The example use cases that I saw on the site didn't really convey this - also, I didn't see a "presentation mode" or anything similar in the app, maybe I missed something in the app that would support this?

Also, can you give me an exact use case that would be better fulfilled by LinkWok than any other tool (and why LinkWok is the best tool for that job)? I hope you have a concrete vision of someone solving at least one specific problem in your app - otherwise, you have bigger problems than a 500 error.

> 6 billion searches are made every day just on Google, out of which 90% have > already been repeated within the last 24 hours.

Source? I tried Googling around for it, couldn't find any articles that substantiate that claim.

> How awesome would it be if you did not need to go through the haystack to > find the needle that somebody else already found?

That would be great. Unfortunately, all this app appears to do is create a new haystack - one that I will probably use a search engine to discover and subsequently mine for information.

Also, from your about page:

> until now there has been no way to take advantage of the (almost absolute) > fact that somebody out there has already found what you are looking for.

In fact, there has: search engines. Search engines order the results by what it detects are the best answers to questions you have. In a surprisingly large number of cases, Google can answer the question I type into the Omnibar without me even having to click on a link!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right- we didnt focus on the ability to see maps that others have made. We reckoned that until we get a particular user base, pretending like Linkwok has a network effect would be a waste of time and resources. Right now, there is a very small hook to make this point- one of the search engines listed is Linkwok- where you can search for maps that others have made. We have metatags and other stuff built and kept ready so that the maps can be trawled by Google and other engines too. We expected that this 'ecosystem' would come into its own after we had some solid traction and focusing on that instead of creating traction might be a waste of resources today.

As for use cases, a common one would be planning a holiday with your significant other or friends- more time goes in communicating suggestions and feedback over email, Word files and the like- Linkwok would be an easy platform to send these back and forth. Here's an example: [https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=cWzkjEghEgtqewHuP](https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=cWzkjEghEgtqewHuP)

Another example is creating an at a glance overview of something complicated, namely the mess of kingdoms in George RR MArtin's Game of Thrones series: [https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=cWzkjEghEgtqewHuP](https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=cWzkjEghEgtqewHuP)

Teachers can also use Linkwok to give more information about a topic. Here's an example where a friend wanted to teach his class about the history of Linux: [https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=gNEtYqPbJyacbEfmd](https://app.linkwok.com/map?id=gNEtYqPbJyacbEfmd)

As for the number of searches, [http://www.statisticbrain.com/google- searches/](http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/)

And you're right- search engines do a great job of giving you an answer, as long as the answer is encapsulated within one statistic (weather in NYC, Welsh corgi personality, etc) but anything that requires even a modicum of research, finding the 'right' site is increasingly more difficult...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Use your arrows._

B-but I'm on an iPad. Swiping maybe? Nope. Nothing happens. Just broken layout pieces strewn about, plus some inscrutable green bar (seemingly) loading something.

And then, just when it looks like _something_ is about to happen... the page crashes Safari. Repeatedly.

I wish I could comment on the concept itself, but the UI keeps stubbornly getting in the way.

<comment><USER6> Some more things they can work on:- Even if you navigate right on PC, you get stuck upon navigating down, only way out is to navigate up again. And then you reach the blog, which breaks the arrow key navigation again, and you have to use mouse scroll. UX like this should have been caught on early.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback guys. We put in a temporary fix without the whole grid nav. We thought it was pretty cool. But good UI is always an iterative process and we're working to improve this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please don't over-ride my scroll mechanism and force me to use keys to mystery-navigate - there's no indication that there are panels to scroll to, other than mashing the keyboard and trying.

If you need a pop-up alert to explain to users how to use your UX, it is probably not as good as traditional UX like a nice scroll page.

<comment><USER9> For the first minute I thought that the product was the way you scrolled the content website.

<comment><USER7> Sorry to hear that! And we didn't mean to override the scroll. We just wanted to draw all the focus on what Linkwok is and get users to the app faster. In any case we have put in a temporary fix without the whole grid layout until we do an overhaul. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I went there and immediately received a very nice looking 500 error

<comment><USER4> So did I. Try clicking on Dashboard in the top right, that worked for me.

Edit: False start, it doesn't do anything unless you make an account. Lame.

<comment><USER11> Hey. So were you able to move past this or did it appear again. We're running some tests and it appears that some users behind proxies or firewalls cannot connect correctly to either the ddp client or the server itself and as a result there's a data inconsistency that results in the 500 error. If you're still facing this issue could you help us out by capturing your console logs and emailing it to us on email@example.com ? Part of the reason for the error was that the oplog instance was down but part of it seems to stem from proxies or vpns that we're not able to replicate. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Although I agree with others that the video leaves a bit to be desired, I thought I understood the point well enough and was looking forward to trying it out... Then I attempted to do just that and was instantly greeted with "INTERNAL ERROR

AN INTERNAL ERROR WAS ENCOUNTERED." :/

<comment><USER7> Sorry about that. Do give it another whirl now please.This was an error with our db service provider. Apologies again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't know how much success you will have as a general search tool but I can tell you that with some tweaks here and there it would be an amazing tool for people to help with mapping a literature review, by searching google scholar/ACM/SpringerLink/IEEE/etc., drag&dropping results (which are papers or web pages) and adding some "glue" (edges between papers, "clusters of documents", timelines based on some metadata...).

</comment><comment><USER14> As the other commenters have said, this was incomprehensible to me (I didn't watch the video, unlike the others, but you should be prepared for people not watching introductory videos - I for one hardly ever do).

Does this make more sense in other cultures? I know a wok is a round-bottomed cooking pan - I don't know what that has to do with links or search though. There also seemed sporadically to be some anime characters showing up - <USER3> this have been a clue to something?

This could be something incredible, I just have no idea what.

<comment><USER7> Please refer my answer here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283554)

As for the name - The idea was that it's a wok(cooking pan) for what you find on the web.

And the video - I agree entirely. Any app should be simple enough that when you get there you know what to do. Unfortunately either we need to find a new UI/UX and Interactions guy or more likely it's a process to get a completely intuitive UI and we're working towards that. I'm just glad we hadn't posted the last version on HN - I'll admit it was appalling! As one commentator on Twitter said - it's like Prezi for research so please give it another go. There's a feedback button in the app that you can use. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My recommendation would be to make your video more instructional in nature rather than "edgy". Go through some real examples. I watched the video and ran a couple of searches and had no idea what the value was or what I was supposed to be using your product for. Sharing search results? Annotating them? Why? I searched for "best falafel" and got a popup telling me I had 3 search maps (what are those?) about things like cheap cars and startups in India.

</comment><comment><USER6> I somehow managed to navigate your atrociously laid out grid navigation. I read the blog titled "The Maze of many things", and seems like you pitched it to some VCs and were criticized. You resolved to make your pitch stronger, and after 4 months you still haven't managed to do it, because I did not get what is the benefit, and how I can achieve the said benefit. Please rework your processes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi Guys. I'm with Team Linkwok. We regret the issue that you guys faced. It was because of our MongoDB service provider. Our oplog instance was offline. We have subsequently added a fix for this. The internal server error should not appear anymore. Thanks for your patience. As for the feedback you'll have given us, many thanks, we shall take your points into consideration.

<comment><USER7> Many of you with the app running might face a reload as the page hot-code reloads so that you have the latest version of the App.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just wow. Did you have a competition on how you could tell as little as possible with a video? because that video just won that competition.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To (most) of the comments regarding not knowing what to do, Linkwok is all about DRAGGING AND DROPPING search results, annotations, files from your computer and more to the canvas on the right side.

It has a few similarities to mindmaps, but where those force you to concentrate on creating, with Linkwok, you get to concentrate on organising.

<comment><USER6> Any link to one of the canvas?

<comment><USER7> Two 'searchmaps' about Linux: 1: [https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=QSgnSYDj2rZ5sdxWf](https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=QSgnSYDj2rZ5sdxWf) 2: [https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=eBLZYv5m66y3jTe9k](https://app.linkwok.com/view?id=eBLZYv5m66y3jTe9k)

Check them out. The idea that we seem to be failing to convey is that in most cases of casual research online it ends up taking hours and is not completely optimized. Also content ownership online is near impossible for the lay user - For e.g. Who has the time to author a wiki - but what if you could just drag and drop what's relevant and add some notes here and there, add connections to show a flow of thought and share it with someone. I used to teach engineering undergrads and signed up to work on Linkwok only cause I saw the value - Imagine lecture notes and lesson plans as Linkwok searchmaps! Where teachers and students can interact as well.

We get that search is private so by default everything IS PRIVATE on Linkwok but then content authorship is NOT generally private. So Linkwok caters to that as well.

Consider this: 1\. When users search online and you're distracted or switch to a different task, it takes them a while to get their bearings with all those tabs etc. Or when you bookmark, unless you open the page you often don't know what it was. Here, every page can be stored as a visiting card - edit the name and description to something you remember 2\. Users often don't remember how they got to a particular page - what they searched for when they found it. On Linkwok every page you add gets tagged with the search query. 3\. There are several use cases where people need to collaborate when doing research and Linkwok directly caters to this. 4\. It brings content authorship to the lay user cause it is supposed to be simple - ideally - evidently we need to fix the UI and UX a bit. 5\. People search for similar things - If someone has found and curated the information for that topic why not continue from where they left off?

Finally, to my mind there's three kinds of searches that occur - broadly. 1\. Where the user searches for something, the first link is all he needs and he's done. Linkwok is not for this case. 2\. Where a user needs to iterate queries until he gets what he needs - Linkwok can come in mighty handy here. 3\. Where one answer is not enough -one link is not enough - And here too Linkwok comes in handy

And if Linkwok searchmaps can come in handy for 2 and 3 - won't a searchmap also become a one stop for case 1 as well? That's what we're going for.

We're strangely positioned as an App. I will admit. But we do believe that there's value and hope that we can somehow convey this.

You asked for links, I know I have said more. But I did feel the need to add all that explanation cause we're obviously failing with our communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I watched the video, still dont understand. Clicked Get Started, and greeted with Internal Error :(

</comment><comment><USER18> Like everybody else... I made a search, got results, didn't know what to do, then left.

I guess I can't figure out where(what?) google or bing is leaving off when I search for something

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks like a new kind of research tool, which is great. I love this kind of stuff. Just show step-by-step how to use it and provide several examples.

</comment><comment><USER20> I watched the video and clicked get started, looked at the screen and left. I still don't know what I should do or why.

<comment><USER10> there is a samurai on the site. that's why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The site's completely broken in Opera 12.

</comment><comment><USER22> incomprehensible. Video failed to explain what the thing actually does. Really struggling to see the value.

</comment><comment><USER23> i'm not too sure what service it's suppose to provide.

</comment><comment><USER24> Startup down.</comment>


Fermilab Physicists Have Detected A Possible New Particle or New Force - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/fermilab-physicists-may-have-found-new-particle-or-new-force

<comment><USER2> Flagged: the link is broken.

<comment><USER3> The link works for me.

<comment><USER2> Oh, right. It's another one of those broken geographic domain-switching sites. It automatically redirects people in Australia to www.popsci.com.au, which doesn't have the relevant article.

Apologies for the flag, OP.</comment></comment></comment>


Schäuble's plan for Europe - <AUTHOR> http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/13/dr-schaubles-plan-for-europe-do-europeans-approve-article-to-appear-in-die-zeit-on-thursday-16th-july-2015/ <comment><USER2> This is just an announcement of an article that apparently hasn't come out yet. It would be better to wait for the actual piece.

</comment><comment><USER3> Copy of my reply to his question:

As a German, and a worker in the tech industry, Schäuble has proven only one thing in the past, that he is an ignorant and stubborn man, who completely lacks a broader view of the consequences of the things he tries to put in motion, but insists of pushing horrible things that he thinks help germany. (Previously: Trying to allow German army activities within the borders of Germany, trying to implement and make legal a government-sponsored trojan that he claimed would be able to infiltrate _every_ computer.)

As far as i am concerned he is only continuing his plan of trying to put Germany over everything, regardless what kind of damage he does or even of whether he even does any good in the process.

\--

I don't know if Yanis will be able to effect any positive change anymore at this point, but if even a few people learn that this is a horribly nationalist plan by a horribly nationalist man, then i praise his efforts.

Edit:

Just to make it clear how horrible Schäuble as a human is:

        - committed tax fraud on 100_000 DM by a gun trader
        - tried to make it legal for the german army to operate
          in german borders in case terrorists try to attack
          ports with ships as bombs
        - tried to make it legal for the german army to shoot
          down passenger planes in case of terrorists
        - tried to make legal a government trojan that would
          breach all privacy rights, but is also impossible

Now he's minister of finance and seems to be successfully throwing a country out of the EU.

<comment><USER4> Not just any army activities by the way. Schäuble pushed for shooting down civilian airplanes in case of a 9/11 scenario, something that is in clear violation of the first amendment of Germany's constitution.

Let's not forget his previous financial dealings either, being involved in illegal donations for the CDU and not willing to testify.

Schäuble is an incompetent despicable human being by any reasonable measure.

<comment><USER3> Goddamn, i had completely forgotten about his involvement in the tax fraud issue. Let me update my post a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sticking to your validly formed opinion, no matter what, and never compromising in the slightest is beneficial in academia, because you need grit in convincing all those new students of your theories, and your results probably came from decades of work. Similarly, diplomacy is not too important, at least as soon as you have tenure.

While being a politician and dealing with other countries means lots and lots of (sometimes bad) compromises and a lot of diplomacy.

Varoufakis never cared for that. He constantly insulted the people on the other side, with the simple "excuse" that they are filthy politicians and he's a noble warrior for the common good. He didn't care for established procedures and common courtesy (like recording others without their knowledge or consent), everything was fair game to him.

That's why he was such a terrible representative of Greece. And all his petty attacks after the fact don't serve Greece in the slightest, they only feed his ego and his fans.

I would have expected him to keep silent for a while, in order to help Mr Tsipras reach a solution.

</comment><comment><USER6> "You have to be willing to blow things up in order to be effective in negotiating strategy." Y. Varoufakis on "Behind the news" podcast, 2014.

Varoufakis is using classic populist rhetoric:

\- Simplisitc notion of the cause of the problem by an international cabal of bankers and capitalists.

\- Us-vs-them, good-vs-evil manichean worldview.

\- Simplistic notion of how problems can be solved.

\- Strong and resolute mobilisation against "unnaturally" divisive parties and querulous organised interest groups that want to destroy "us".

\- Varoufakis cast himself as representatives of the comman person, of an betrayed and neglected Greek public.

\- He's effectively capitalising on lingering anti-german sentiment, and personalising it in the figure of Schauble.

<comment><USER7> He was dealing with power hungry career politicians and did everything to piss them off and is now wondering why they act so mad and irrational.

I personally think, that Schäuble is horrible. Aside from the political anecdotes [0] I find the press conference in which he humiliated his spokesman particularly informing about his character [1].

In my mind Varoufakis is partly responsible for how things went, though. He always underestimated how fragile the EU community is and how little interest other leaders had to enrage the people at home by seemingly giving money away to Greek clowns on motorcycles.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi_2.0)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8TzusgYN30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8TzusgYN30)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you get past $10K MRR? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I started a SaaS company 3 years ago with no prior knowledge in sales or marketing. Got first few customers from existing network and facebook. Since then my co-founder and I kept repeating same process for new customers, without focusing on 1 channel.
Now we are at steady $10K MRR with a product people love, healthy margins and low burn rate, but don't have a repeatable customer acquisition process yet. Finding new customers on facebook / cold email / adwords is painfully slow, because current customer base is diverse enough to detect any pattern or build a profile. (Ranging from $10 customers to $1500/mo customers)
Has anyone been in this situation before? How did you pick a segment and kickstart growth? <comment><USER2> 0\. ask for referrals from current customers.

1\. take your three largest companies and make list similar companies and call on them.

2\. Content marketing around the problem your solving. what problem are you solving at a high level.(content funnel)

3\. pivot - find other adjacent problems your current customers are having and create a product around that.</comment>


Jack Dorsey: There's a "middle ground" in encryption - <AUTHOR> http://news.sky.com/story/twitter-boss-jack-dorsey-there-is-a-middle-ground-in-encryption-row-10816229 <comment><USER2> Jack Dorsey, expert mathematician. Because he's done a great job with Twitter's numbers, clearly.</comment>


Fieldbook is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-fieldbook-blog/what-happened-at-fieldbook-d70bf25b3968 <comment><USER2> This is too bad. The world needs a viable MS Access replacement as a place for excel sheets to go (instead of to Access).

Thanks for working on this.

If you consider open-sourcing this it might be a project that gets support as there's nothing in the Google suite or others that comes close to this.

<comment><USER3> I hope they do release the source code under a permissive license... If not, this is a classic example of something valuable that will be completely lost to time. A nice sandcastle built below the high tide mark, if you will.

<comment><USER2> Maybe source code open-sourcing... could be crowdsourced lol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am really sad to see this go. Though I didn't actually use it for more than a few hobby projects, it always struck me as very cool to be able to link things.</comment>


You Really Should Log Client-Side Errors - <AUTHOR> http://openmymind.net/2012/4/4/You-Really-Should-Log-Client-Side-Error/ <comment><USER2> I'm the developer of Errorception (<http://errorception.com/>), and wanted to jump in to talk about some of the points raised on the thread here.

As chrisacky mentioned, making one HTTP post for every error is very wasteful. It's much better to buffer up such errors (Errorception does it in memory, since localStorage can be unavailable and/or full), and post them every once in a while.

As masklinn pointed out, window.onerror _is_ complete shit, so Errorception does a couple of tricks to make this slightly better. Firstly, on IE, the stack isn't lost when window.onerror is called, so it's possible to get the call stack and arguments at each level of the stack. Secondly, it's very easy to get other kind of details (browser, version, page, etc.), which helps a great deal in aiding debugging.

However, masklinn's suggestion about wrapping code in try/catch blocks is probably not a good idea. This is because some interpreters (I know v8 does this) don't compile the code in such code-paths. May cause a performance hit.

As DavidPP mentioned, depending on the nature of your application, it might be a good idea to not record too much sensitive information. For example, Errorception doesn't record function arguments if the page is served over SSL.

troels is right - this does create a massive flood of errors. There are several ways to deal with this. What we do for example, is hide away errors from most third-parties - Facebook, Twitter, GoogleBot, GoogleAnalytics, etc. The rest of the errors can still be huge in number, so we group similar errors together based on several parameters like browsers, browser versions, possible variation in inline code line-numbers because of dynamic content, etc.

Also, as Kartificial pointed out, this is probably something you don't want to do on your own server. You want to move this out of your infrastructure, and distribute it if possible.

There are other concerns - some that come to mind are page load time, ensuring that your error catching code itself doesn't raise errors (or if it does, it doesn't affect your app in any way), and that of managing data-growth on the server. These are fun problems, but it's probably not worth re-inventing the wheel.

</plug>

<comment><USER3> The V8 performance issue with try/catch is widely misunderstood, and it causes people to unnecessarily avoid using it.

try/catch can slow down code _in the same function as the try/catch statements_. But it doesn't slow down any other function called from within there. In other words, it only affects the stack frame at which the try/catch statement actually appears.

So if you have some top level error trapping function like:

        errorCatcher = function(continuation){
          try {
            continuation();
          catch(err){
            reportErrorToServer(err);
          }
        }

and you only call it once at every entry point to your code, the impact will be totally undetectable, because there's only a single function invocation within the unoptimizable area.

I encourage people to performance test the difference caused by try/catch like this. You'll see that it doesn't hurt at all. It's only a problem if you actually write a try statement within some tight inner-loop function.

<comment><USER4> (Rewritten to report results)

I tried the following 4 variations in Node.js 0.6.13, V8 22.214.171.124. (The "global" business is for accessing the functions from a REPL.)

      var lots = 1000000;

      // A: try/catch inside loop
      global.a = function () {
          for (var i=0; i<lots; i++) {
              try { } catch (e) { }
          }
      }

      // B: one try/catch, inlined loop
      global.b = function () {
          try {
              for (var i=0; i<lots; i++) { }
          } catch (e) { }
      }

      // C: one try/catch, loop in local function
      global.c = function () {
          var loop = function () {
              for (var i=0; i<lots; i++) { }
          }
          try { loop(); } catch (e) { }
      }

      // D: one try/catch, loop in top-level function
      function loop () {
          for (var i=0; i<lots; i++) { }
      }
      global.d = function () {
          try { loop(); } catch (e) { }
      }

      // E: no try/catch
      global.e = function () { loop(); }

      global.time = function (times, fn) {
          var start = new Date().getTime();
          for (var i=0; i<times; i += 1) { fn(); }
          return (new Date().getTime() - start) / times;
      };

In the REPL:

      > ({ a : time(100,a), b : time(100,b), c : time(100,c), d : time(100,d), e : time(100,e) });
      { a 7.66 b 5.29 c 5.06 d 1.45 e 1.32 }

So a million try/catches (A) is bad. But hoisting the try outside the loop (B) or putting the loop into a local function (C) doesn't do nearly as well as putting the loop in an outside function (D), which is almost as fast as no try/catch at all (E). I tried a few variations (like making the loop actually do some work) and the outcomes were all comparable.

This clarifies and confirms what ef4 said: don't put cpu-intensive code inside the same function as a try/catch. Put it somewhere else and call it. Also, local functions don't necessarily count as "somewhere else".

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that each time the try is "executed" makes a performance hit.

<comment><USER4> (I've rewritten the GP)

That appears to be wrong, since B, C, and D all execute the same number of try/catches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you do that, don't be surprised when window.onerror seems to be complete shit and not provide a fraction of the information you need: window.onerror _is_ complete shit and _does not_ provide a fraction of the information you need.

If an exception is thrown anywhere, window.onerror will _only_ get you the exception message, file and line (the latter two being utterly useless in minimized code of course).

If you can, wrap all behaviors (meaning all event callback as well) in a try/catch, so you can get the actual error object and hopefully extract useful informations from it (or the environment, this pattern also allows you to log and report the initial state which ultimately lead to the fault).

<comment><USER7> I thought the same thing. I'd expect the developer who is thoughtful to catch client-side errors would also deploy their code minified and that JS errors are infamously unidentifiable by message alone (unexpected reference to undefined, anyone?).

I think this could be helpful given some savvy javascript written expressly to be parsed on error - but the overhead that may bring on doesn't seem worth it. And with enough users you may have a deluge of data to sift through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Theory correct. Implementation wrong.

If I was actually doing this and wanted to run it on a production site, I would certainly not fire off a post on each error. The most likely solution that I would use off the top of my head would be to store the data in localStorage of the current user where supported.

You wouldn't need to collect _every_ _single_ _error_ , but just a sample. You shouldn't really need to be that concerned with the totally extreme edge cases, and if you are triaging correctly then it's the most common errors that you want to look out for.

So I would implement something that would result in a random selection of my visitors from collecting the errors for me and also have a buffer and client side rate limit included into the application so that errors are saved up, and sent in bulk.

As I start collecting errors which I realise are totally beyond my control, I would then start dropping errors generated from particular files and extensions installed and stop logging them.

Logging _everything_ is wrong in my opinion.

Edit:

Yes I would do the _bulk_ of deciding what to log on the server. However, I think I would still have some standard rules that I know I can apply to disregard certain error events. But since I would constantly be working over the logs, the majority would be done server side.

<comment><USER9> Where would the decision to drop an error be made?

I would do it on the server, where an intelligent decision can be made. (Increment a counter if it's a duplicate? Group errors together etc?)

<comment><USER10> I would probably catch errors as you would on server side logging, log them according to severity and have the ability to turn on/off logging of certain types on errors via config (eg. log.debug, log.warning, log.fatal etc).

Although I've never had client errors logged to the server, I have had it logged in a hidden "console" (uses Firebug if available, otherwise custom logger). This gave us enough info to debug the error and we could tell users to open the console and copy paste the trace (was accessible via key combo Ctrl+`).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried something similar recently and got flooded with errors. The problem is that Javascript errors happens for all sorts of reasons outside your control. Affiliate banners, Facebook like buttons, strange browser toolbars, to name a few. And then you have all the errors that happen when someone navigates away from a page, before it has completely loaded.

That is not to say that this isn't useful, but you need to be able to cope with the noise.

</comment><comment><USER12> This can be touchy if you handle sensitive information in JavaScript, but if not, you can also send those errors has events in Google Analytics saving you the trouble to develop a back-end for it.

This way, you get the number of errors, on which page, for which browser, etc.

<comment><USER13> I like this idea a lot. Quick search on the subject returned this article:

[http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/04/improve- the-...](http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/04/improve-the-user- experience-by-tracking-errors/)

Seems like a great way to handle error tracking without creating more overhead.

<comment><USER14> The linked article is more about capturing user errors. In other words, capturing events in your analytics when someone enters an incorrect password. I agree, this could be very insightful information.

However, it wouldn't take much to apply the same logic to what the OP is suggesting. Routing all javascript errors to GA. Would take the load off your servers, and already provide a front end for you to browse.

Thanks for the suggestion, I hadn't thought to use GA, and it seems like something I may implement. Hopefully it will garner some useful insights, and if not, no harm done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rather than using $.ajax, I've used a simple image request with URL parameters for sending back error info. That has the benefit of allowing cross-domain transfers. Be sure to save the user-agent info as well so you can correlate errors with browsers.

<comment><USER6> That can be quite limiting, especially if you're trying to support MSIE as it has a hard cutoff at ~1000 characters for the URL (so you're limiting yourself to below 1k of data, which may not even be enough for a slightly deep stack trace).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Airbrake (formerly known as Hoptoad) has a JavaScript notifier. We use it for server side logging, but this article has inspired me to add it the client side as well.

[http://help.airbrake.io/kb/troubleshooting-2/javascript- noti...](http://help.airbrake.io/kb/troubleshooting-2/javascript-notifier)

Can't believe I wasn't doing this already. Thanks!

<comment><USER17> Airbrake's JS logging is shit. It catches so little data that it becomes an annoyance. You'll see things like "Script Error" at file 0.

The only time it's useful is for typos and things so basic that you'll find them when you do testing.

<comment><USER16> Good to know. I'm running a test right now, so I should have a good idea if I need to pull it in the next hour or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are definitely a lot of issues to overcome when logging errors from a javascript client (as pointed out in the comments to this post). Regardless, the information you can get from it can be really helpful and you should be doing it.

One of the problems we find with js errors is that they don't contain a lot of information by themselves, especially when you're just trapping window.onerror() with minified source. We like to augment the client-side errors with server-side errors/activity as well. If your logging solution supports being able to track errors and activity by a session (username, ip address, etc) you will have a much better time tracking down what caused a specific js error. Putting all the pieces together gives a much better picture.

Try a logging solution that enables you to track more. I run loggr.net, so I am partial to that, but there are other good solutions out there like newrelic.com, loggly.com.

</comment><comment><USER19> Solid approach if you really want to dig in problems occurring client-side in projects that are still in Beta.

I'm not sure whether or not you would want this in a production page.

<comment><USER20> We do this on a product page, but with some modifications. As luck would have it, I recently made a Gist about this :-)

<https://gist.github.com/2210783>

Our approach integrates with a syslog-style logger. The logger preserves a ring buffer of messages, to help with debugging, since minified stack traces aren't super useful.

To mitigate the risk of a run-away infinite loop alert monster, alerts are intelligently rate limited client side. We also do server side filtering, so that known/expected errors are ignored. For example, we don't really care about Chrome extension-related failures, although I guess we might at some threshold for popular extensions.

It's relatively noisy, but so far it has been indispensable for debugging errors in production.

<comment><USER21> We've been doing this for a few years in our GWT app. We also keep a ring buffer of log events.

We don't have much noise, but we're using GWT's "unhandled exception" hook which I believe is driven by try/catch blocks on all entry points into the app. (i.e. event handlers - I think they just wrap callbacks before hooking them up.) So we only get exceptions that occur in our own code.

For us, the stacktraces are actually very useful (on the few browsers that provide traces). We dump a translation table from GWT's minification process and use it on the server side to de-obfuscate the stack traces. It works on all of the function/method names, but not local variable names.

The new javascript "source maps" technology should provide enough information to do this with any minifier or compiler. I'd expect your favorite javascript minifier to start outputting source maps in the next few months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was building a Microsoft Silverlight system and built something like this for it. There you have exceptions that are just like Java exceptions so I'd bottle them up and send them back to the server.

The system also kept track of the context in which async comm was running so I could link up events on the client to events on the server and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER23> We've been logging client-side for a little while now, and while we have tons of log files filled with Facebook like buttons issues, it has been very helpful a number of times.

Of course, some browsers are of course less helpful than others (IE loves "line 0" errors).

<comment><USER15> Every browser has its quirks on errors. At least IE will give you stack info from window.onerror even without a try/catch, although they didn't get the file name right until IE8. The "line 0" errors are often due to eval scripts where there is no source file, it could even be something like a bad JSON string being passed to a JSON.parse shim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We do something similar at Bizo. Here's a quick write up of an Amazon Web Services-centric approach:

[http://dev.bizo.com/2012/04/capturing-client-side-js- errors-...](http://dev.bizo.com/2012/04/capturing-client-side-js-errors-on- aws.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I played around with client-side logging using Google Analytics last night. Definitely has potential...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3802180>

</comment><comment><USER25> You could also use <http://MonitrApp.com>

It has also an integrated task management tool :)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think all those requests might become a problem. It would be relatively easy to buffer such logs, though.

Nice approach.

<comment><USER6> > I think all those requests might become a problem.

Well it depends, the request is "fire and forget" so it's really cheap, you don't care about it coming back (or even about it generating an error — though you definitely need to handle that if you hook into ajaxError[0] or you might get recursive reporting errors). And you could expect those errors to be rare enough that the "buffer" would fill slowly and the odd error push wouldn't be a big strain.

[0] hooking into ajaxError is pretty dangerous really, if the user's connection goes down for instance the user machine is instantly going to loop at high speed.

<comment><USER26> I meant expensive server-side. I would even like to run something like this in production.</comment></comment></comment>


MyHurricane, Stormpulse now has an HTML5 competitor. - <AUTHOR> http://myhurricane.net/

<comment><USER2> Looks nice. 2 things:

I expected the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

The zoom bar on the left doesn't go all the way to the ends. That left me wondering if it was broken, or artificially limiting me to a certain area. Both options bothered me.

<comment><USER3> Fixed the scrollwheel issue, and allowed you to zoom in further.

The reason the zooming out is limited is because of the area which is required to legibly see the markers, labels, etc.

<comment><USER4> I can zoom in if the text is too small. I want to be able to zoom out til I can see it in relation to where I am.

Also would be nice if I could zoom out and see every active storm. I don't see a way to have all storms show up at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone know of a service where you can just stick in your city or zip, and get an email if anything's headed your way?

Don't know if you have that info in MyHurricane, voxxit, but if you do it'd be an awesome feature.

<comment><USER3> I've got it down as a feature request. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the link! I'm very open for any technology questions, concerns, feature/other suggestions you all may have.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is great. During my recent trip to the Outer Banks, I was constantly annoyed that I had to open my laptop to get all the features of Stormpulse.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is great, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER7> like</comment>