Ask HN: What do you love about your office? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking at starting an office for my startup in South Africa. Since I haven't seen how its done in the US does anyone have any suggestions of things that work well?<p>Productivity systems / white-boards / game consoles / nap couches (and dark rooms) / ... <comment><USER3> I disagree with many replies thus far.

Take advantage of stuff that already exists outside your building. Don't try to make the office "fun" prematurely, there are lots of places your team can walk to in 5 minutes. Similarly, fancy conference rooms are a waste when nice hotel cafes are way slicker and you can eat/drink like a king at every meeting for years compared to the cost of setting up your own conf room.

For chairs, I like the Ikea Markus for about $100, which I find just as good as an Aeron.

You need whiteboards, but NEVER buy them new. I buy the huge ones for about $20 a piece from office furniture repo stores. You'll also get desks, cabinets, etc there for 10% of their normal price.

Give good people the ability to work in comfort with enough space to themselves under relatively quiet conditions, and you'll get good results. Buy second hand and don't try to build everything into your little home -- take advantage of the city around you.

Edit: and lots of blank wall space, which allows people to brainstorm and create their own productivity systems with post-its and masking tape.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nothing. I hate it.

If I may, a case study of how to make a shitty office:

* Find space based mainly on price. Who cares if it's nearly a different city from where your whole team lives?

* Don't worry about natural light (or even worse, due to whatever circumstances ensure that only some people get natural light)

* Take whatever furniture is lying around.

* Everyone gets the cheapest refurbed machine you can find. If it was good enough for some office worker in 2002, it's good enough for your dev team now!

* Don't get anymore space than you need. When a new hire arrives, they can set up their 'office' in the storage/server room.

* Some cheap-o phones and Skype over a residential-grade DSL line is all you need. It doesn't look bad at all if you start every conversation with "H-hello? Can you hear me? I'm using Skype and-- oh there you are"

EDIT: formatting

</comment><comment><USER5> People have talked about the obvious things so I'd like to toss in:

* The reason I go into the office, rather than work from home, is the people there.

* I feel a thousand times better at the end of the day if I can see natural light.

* Running the OS/editor I want to is important.

</comment><comment><USER6> That it's awesome:

<http://mashable.com/2010/10/13/etsy-office-pics/>

I'm an applied mathematician and data scientist at Etsy, and the office is really, really cool. My cousin, who's an architect from Sweden came to visit with his wife and son recently, and described it as a cross between design/art school, playground for grownups, and a computer lab. That's about right. His kid didn't want to leave :-)

We don't have much in the way of silence though—there's a lot of chaos and the place is a (very entertaining) circus much of the time. But if you want peace and quiet, it's pretty much always cool to work from home.

</comment><comment><USER7> Natural sunlight. Parking 6ft from the entrance. FIOS internet. Walkable, safe, upbeat neighborhood. High resolution monitor. Excellent keyboard. Good chair. Quiet and secure building.

If I had two requests: private bathroom and private kitchen area.

<comment><USER8> I have to agree... the one thing I desperately want is natural sunlight. I work on the bottom floor of a complex that faces an atrium, so it's like living on the bottom of the rainforest. I get very little light and have no view. It's kind of depressing without a view. I was at a friend's place in Berkeley yesterday and they had a great setup with natural light coming through on all sides of the house: <http://picplz.com/user/stammy/pic/hxzl/>

The first thing that came to mind is how much better (not sure if that is the right word) I would feel if working in a naturally lit place like that (with a nice view to boot).

The second big thing would be a hi-res monitor, ex 27-inch ACD. That combined with virtual desktops makes a world of difference, even compared to 1920x1200 res.

Third, I would want a decent kitchen area. I don't want to have to go out and eat all the time, because most places workplaces go to eat out at isn't healthy or doesn't have the option of healthy food. I'd much rather have a fridge full of stuff I can cook a quick 10 minute meal with. Working on a startup and eating healthy are not mutually exclusive. And on that note, office space near a gym for the walk back would be nice.

<comment><USER9> If you find this place, please, please let me know. I'd take a 20k pay cut to get out of my cube that opens on a fairly busy hallway, no natural light, uncomfortable imitation "mesh back chair" and mini-fridge with a k-cup machine for a 70 person work group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My gym (inside the office). My office is a small room in my rented home and I've divided it into two parts (a work area and a gym area). I have a long bar (with weights, of course), a few dumbbells, yoga mat, jumping rope and a fitball. I could exercise throughout my workday, literally few steps away.

</comment><comment><USER11> Obviously things like the view out the window and the amenities in the neighborhood are not always the easiest to control, and have huge impact on the price and availability of an office. So I'll focus on the little things that make a huge difference for me at work.

\- Coffee, tea, and good water available. I do like taking breaks at times to run out to the coffee shop, but sometimes I just don't have time or energy or money, and being able to step into the kitchen and get what I need is great.

\- Full spectrum "natural" lighting. I'm lucky that my office has tons of windows and a view, but when it gets dark or when I'm working on something detailed at my desk, a good full spectrum light is really important both for accurate color and just to be nice to my eyes.

\- Dual computer monitors. I suppose this is a bit subjective but I go insane if I don't have a second monitor (doesn't have to be anything special, mine's just a small square) to put things like email and music and reference documents on while I work.

\- Refrigerator space. I try to bring lunch most of the week instead of eating out, and more often than not it's leftovers from dinner with other random things thrown in... being able to just toss it in the fridge in the morning is great.

\- A comfortable desk chair. I don't know about the $1200 chair (I certainly couldn't afford one at this point) but make sure it won't hurt your back after sitting for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome! Another South African on HN. Not in the US but I think our guys have gotten a lot of things right (Cape Town software house):

1) The view - I'll be impressed if anyone can better this - the flat side of Table Mountain on the one side, the sea on the other, at night the lights of Long Street stretch out in front of us, and a good view of the stadium if that's your thing. I think that's just luck of the draw though, the company moved here before the CTN foreshore became fashionable.

2) There is no such thing as too many whiteboards, although glass walls with writing on them is also pretty awesome.

3) Great canteen with space to prepare food if you aren't into buying, but on a related note...

4) Close to decent food places, including one favourite that sells sandwich ingredients for a good price

5) A decent number of meeting rooms with whiteboards (the more I work the less I want to use projectors.. but we do have those too)

6) Unlikely that anyone else here would think of this, but you'll know why I bring this up: safety at night... again, luck of the draw but there's a CIDC station positioned half-way between us and the car park, and often a fair number of people around after dark. For me being able to work late (as opposed to early) is A Big Deal.

7) Not my thing but other people like proximity to gym - some cycle to work and shower before coming into the office, others hop in the pool during lunch.

8) There's a TV per floor with one or the other DSTV lite package, basically sports + discovery + Music channels (Mythbusters is most popular lunchtime viewing). The console of some sort that gets close to zero attention

9) (Soft) drinks fridge that is rapidly shortening my lifespan + fruit juice that runs out very quickly

10) A cleaner who brings real character to the office, as well as clean dishes

11) EDIT: forgot, we do have what looks like a decent coffee machine (does foam and stuff) but I'm not a good judge as I'm the only HN reader who doesn't drink the stuff. It is in constant use though.

12) EDIT: forgot some more... WATER COOLER FTW... I like that it is the kind that filters tap water and not the kind that takes those huge bottles of environmentally unsustainable mineral water.

Disclaimer... we're not a huge company but definitely not startup anymore, +-50 in our CTN office.

<comment><USER9> If only you could pop down to muizenberg to catch a few waves during lunch I'd say you have the perfect hook up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Likes:

-Our building is 100 feet from the ocean up on the cliffs. Going outside to get some air and see the Pacific is quite refreshing. It is also a few minutes away from a very nice surf spot.

-We have a nice clean kitchen.

-Plenty of space with large desks, Aeron chairs, and all the pixels you can handle.

-Fresh water. This is big for me since I drink a lot of water.

-Fast network connection. Not blazing fast, but fast enough.

-We have a very nice gym onsite complete with lockers, trainers, massage therapists, pool, track, volleyball, etc.

-Parking right outside building.

-Office is always clean.

-Nice restaurants nearby.

Dislikes:

-Lots of noise/people talking. 90% of it is not work related or interesting which is more the problem than the noise. This quote from PG's quotes page pretty well sums it up: "I'm surrounded by postmodern idiots and blatherers. Your writings give me hope."

-We have quite a bit of wasted space. e.g. a conference area which is rarely used. This space could be used better.

-Restrooms are to small and don't accommodate a full office well. Luckily there are others to use neraby.

</comment><comment><USER14> The most appreciated perks at my office are out table-tennis and foosball games. I think they beat video game consoles / TVs / etc for a few reasons:

\- even the minimal amount of physical activity they provide is a great break from sitting at a desk

\- inter-office rivalry is great fun

Also, healthy food is a must, and like others have said office location is huge.

</comment><comment><USER15> We have nice big desks. The chairs aren't Aerons but we don't buy them (in our last office we bought cheap chairs and they sucked. I promised never to do that again, in our next office if I'm buying the chairs, everyone is getting an awesome chair).

We have natural light but I want a balcony. I think if we had a balcony it would be nicer for smokers (smoking's not permitted in the building) and we'd get a decent view of whatever's around.

We're pretty lucky. You can see the Kennet Canal from our roof, but otherwise it just looks like urban Reading, Berkshire, UK. Lately with the frankly crap weather we have more light from above than from outside.

We have a wide selection of alcoholic drinks and hangover cures - <USER2> of course. It's mostly wacky stuff we'd never drink, although there's an 'Emergency Guinness' and this weird stuff called 'Dr Hangover - with 47 ingredients!'. We have a Nabaztag that tells us when pentests finish, when investigations are over and when we get paid. Unfortunately he's very insecure so we keep him on his own network.

We don't have whiteboards - we used to but not anymore. Instead we have detachable flipchart paper and blu tack. It's like infinite white boards, that is actually awesome. You just take it down when you don't need it.

We have a golden lucky chinese cat from vegas and a book with pictures of Japanese girls in school uniforms. I think there's a reason for both but I still haven't worked it out.

A good coffee machine/water cooler (hooked up to the mains) is essential. It doesn't have to be in your office, just in your building.

We're near a train station so parking isn't important. Being in a city it turns out is important for us. You can go on your lunchbreak and do pretty much anything and get back in time for work. In our last office we couldn't do that, and frankly compared to our own office it sucks.

I'd avoid game consoles, nap couches, dark rooms etc. What's the point? I worked in one office with a fussball table. It was great to play but bad to work around. Focus on what makes people work well and keeps people happy, not what compensates for suck.

</comment><comment><USER16> One thing I've always wished for but never had.

Quiet time: One hour every day where no one can schedule meetings or call their co-workers. One hour of zero interruptions. Most tech people I know work after hours or from home, just to get this.

I'll spend 30mins in the morning carefully writing an email to detail the current status of my project. Then I'll get four or five 5-15min drivebys interspersed throughout the day to ask about updates, estimates, timelines, changes, or other projects. Part of the frustration is not even knowing if I can start a complicated task before someone comes in to derail it.

<comment><USER17> Try talking to your team members and manager. One of my senior colleague who mas mentoring others was in similar situation. He worked out a deal with the manager - no interruption from 10am to 12 noon. He even got a board saying 'Quiet Hour 10 to 12' outside his cubicle. It took us a week to realize he was serious when our manager told us. We respected his quiet hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A lot depends on your space and budget, but whether you're working with 400 sq. ft. and a $1000 budget, or your own building and a seven-figure budget, it usually helps to look through pictures for inspiration.

Just for example, I'm a big fan of the new 37signals office: [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2593-official-pictures-of- our...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2593-official-pictures-of-our-new- office)

I've worked in and designed several offices and regardless of the company size or budget, it's important to get a few key things right:

1\. Quality lighting - The more windows you can get, the better, and artificial lighting is just as important. Lighting is personal - some people like tons of light and others prefer to work in the dark. Make sure that you have some control over light variations and some adjustability in the different areas of the space (dimmers on lamps, curtains on windows, etc.)

2\. A large table with plenty of seating - great for group projects, team lunches, company meetings, etc.

3\. Comfortable seating - almost all companies skimp on seating. Considering a lot of people spend 10+ hours sitting down each day, $10 folding chairs are a joke. Quality seating doesn't have to be expensive, just comfy. Maybe provide each employee with $100-500 to choose his or her own chair. Great deals can be found at Ikea, Costco, or Craigslist.

4\. Privacy - This doesn't necessarily mean individual offices or huge cubicles. Very few people want someone looking over their shoulder or eavesdropping on private conversations. Have enough space and spread people out so that they're not working on top of one another if at all possible.

5\. Fun - It's different for every office, but fun stuff is important. A game room, a stocked fridge, a beer pong table, a TV, a gaming system, some board games, a pinball machine, a nap room, etc. Every company does it differently, but it's nice to have something that people can bond over and can provide a few minutes away from work.

6\. Location - The location is important because if your employees have to commute two hours to get to your super awesome office, they're still not going to be happy. Pick a location that provides an easy commute for as many people as possible and if the budget allows, choose a nice area. Walkability to restaurants and coffee shoppes is always good.

</comment><comment><USER19> A lake, forrest and 25 kms road. Perfect for lots sports to clear your head.

Free drinks, fruits and lunch. One worry less to think about.

Office doors. Silence to get something done.

</comment><comment><USER20> You can never have too many white boards round the office. Always having a surface to draw on within reach encourages people to communicate.

</comment><comment><USER21> All our walls are covered in white boards. It lends a nice, brainstormy feel. We actually have a whole floor, and we sublet to a few other early-stage startups (one pretty normal web startup, one small trading firm, one consulting firm, and a couple others) so there are lots of different people around. We also have a nice view of the Empire State Building. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> One thing not many people have mentioned, is avoid open plan. I currently have the misfortune to work in an open plan office and basically get far less productive work done than when I worked in one with cubicles where you at least could get some work done without being distracted by other people (I'm not saying that cube farms are ideal either .... )

</comment><comment><USER23> Definitely include a napping area. It can mean the difference between a wasted afternoon and a productive one.

</comment><comment><USER24> I like the Nord Stage 88 that is sitting under the windows. It's a great productivity and well-being enhancer!

</comment><comment><USER25> White boards are excellent. So is an espresso machine and/or Chemex.

As others have also said, nice chairs and monitors are really, really cheap relative to the cost of employees and office space. Get Aerons or Embodies (I'm now using an Embody), which go for about $900 and $1200, respectively. Read this: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html) . Note this excerpt, which is long but posted for good reason:

 _Let me, for a moment, talk about the famous Aeron chair, made by Herman Miller. They cost about $900. This is about $800 more than a cheap office chair from OfficeDepot or Staples.

They are much more comfortable than cheap chairs. If you get the right size and adjust it properly, most people can sit in them all day long without feeling uncomfortable. The back and seat are made out of a kind of mesh that lets air flow so you don't get sweaty. The ergonomics, especially of the newer models with lumbar support, are excellent.

They last longer than cheap chairs. We've been in business for six years and every Aeron is literally in mint condition: I challenge anyone to see the difference between the chairs we bought in 2000 and the chairs we bought three months ago. They easily last for ten years. The cheap chairs literally start falling apart after a matter of months. You'll need at least four $100 chairs to last as long as an Aeron.

So the bottom line is that an Aeron only really costs $500 more over ten years, or $50 a year. One dollar per week per programmer.

A nice roll of toilet paper runs about a buck. Your programmers are probably using about one roll a week, each.

So upgrading them to an Aeron chair literally costs the same amount as you're spending on their toilet paper, and I assure you that if you tried to bring up toilet paper in the budget committee you would be sternly told not to mess around, there were important things to discuss.

The Aeron chair has, sadly, been tarnished with a reputation of being extravagant, especially for startups. It somehow came to stand for the symbol of all the VC money that was wasted in the dotcom boom, which is a shame, because it's not very expensive when you consider how long it lasts; indeed when you think of the eight hours a day you spend sitting in it, even the top of the line model, with the lumbar support and the friggin' tailfins is so dang cheap you practically make money by buying them._

If you don't need standing desks, get Maxxon Series 1000 desks: <http://www.maxonfurniture.com/products/series1000.aspx>. They're very durable, sturdy, and don't wiggle. Get Humanscale keyboard trays and dual 24" monitors.

All this stuff will together cost about $3k - $4K per person. But it will last a very long time and make for a substantially better experience, which will a) make it easier to recruit and retain good people and b) make those people like working for you better. In addition, the people you're hiring will probably make _at least_ 30K / year, probably more, and that's not counting benefits and office space. As a percentage of the cost of an employee, the stuff is actually pretty small, but it's visible, so a lot of people think they should skimp on it. You know who doesn't? Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so forth, because they've realized it's possible to penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Don't get caught up in the stuff -- you don't _need_ the stuff to succeed, and neither does any startup. But if you're thinking about it, do it right.

My family's consulting business operates out of a house, and we use the equipment described here: [http://blog.seliger.com/2008/06/15/tools-of-the- trade%E2%80%...](http://blog.seliger.com/2008/06/15/tools-of-the- trade%E2%80%94what-a-grant-writer-should-have) , and I usually work at a desk at my place: <http://jseliger.com/2010/05/02/writing-space-2010> (picture taken via HN request, too!).

<comment><USER26> I'd love to hear PG chime in about the chairs. He's been negative on them in an article or two. I think I agree with Joel here. I'm a frugal bootstrapper - I always turn off the heat before I leave my apartment. But cheap chairs can be bad for your back in the long-run. Long-term back problems are a pretty bad trade-off for a thousand bucks. And from looking at the market, it seems like a bit of an either/or scenario: you either get something super cheap, which is bad for your back, you get something mid-range, which falls apart quickly (what Joel was talking about), or you go with something expensive, which lasts for a long time. Either you go all out, or you get a bad solution. I think the pricey option is a pretty sane purchase here.

<comment><USER25> One other observation: if you don't have the money to buy new, buy used. There's a place called Anderson's Office Liquidators in Tucson that sells Aerons for $500. Aerons last a really long time -- which can be useful in the resale market.

I think you have to be "a frugal bootstrapper," but there's a key difference between "frugal" and "stingy" or "foolish." Good chairs are an obvious place where that difference plays out.

<comment><USER27> Two years ago my employer threw out the 12-month old decent chairs my IT department bought for ourselves, and replaced them with spectacularly uncomfortable new cheap ones.

So I bought a 6-year old Aeron on eBay for my own use at work and have been very happy with it. Apart from a couple of small scratches on the feet it is still like new today. As an investment in my own comfort at work it has already paid for itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Private movie theater / coffee house / fun environment

At the end it's about finding the balance point between the culture you want to develop, and how much you can afford to spend on your workers and still be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER29> -Possibility for Quiet without headphones, we share offices. -Table converts to standing. Good for easing the stress. -Coffee, Snacks, Fruits are useful. -View with nice Green Trees outside.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fresh fruits every morning. Nice view outside the windows. Close to subway trains so I can get lunch from anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER31> Good: whiteboard, open, natural light, proximity to great food and coffee

Bad: across the street from bus stop and court house

<comment><USER32> This just about sums up my office and what everyone likes about it. Snacks and coffee and a fridge filled with beverages is a huge plus that everyone seems to like. And definitely lots of natural light.

And to add to the bad, how about being next to a military airport with jets flying past all day (yes, I speak from experience).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Keyboard trays. You can't beat a good keyboard tray.

</comment><comment><USER34> access 24/7, big shop next door, casino across the road, best bar in town 5 minutes walk, a hacker atmosphere

</comment><comment><USER35> +1 for natural light.

</comment><comment><USER36> free food. every.day.

</comment><comment><USER37> What I love most about my office is that it is mine. Meaning I rent it directly. Not provided by an employer. Since it's mine I have a lot of freedom as to what to put in it, what activities occur in it, and when to go there and how long to stay. No more corporate bullshit or bureaucracy. The commute time is 10 minutes. If the weather is bad or I just don't feel like going there, I don't. I have a door I can close and lock, with windows and blinds closed. It's quiet. I can go many hours without interruptions or watercooler chitchat and get zero drive-by management. My utilities are free. I have a huge LEGO TIE Fighter in it. A comfy leather chair and footrest I can veg or take naps in, as needed. Lots of table space and potential whiteboard space. Since it's not tied to a single external business I can use it for multiple different projects or businesses, as desired, or even personal projects not officially related to "work". In fact it allows me to blur the lines between work and non-work as much as I want. Well, within reasonable limits. It ain't perfect but it's closer to it than anything I've had previously.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is going to sound strange to those of us who lived through the dot com boom of the late 1990s: Aeron Chairs.

Yes, they're expensive. Yes, they are emblematic of startup excess. But the productivity improvements from having your entire workforce far more comfortable than they would be in 99$ Office Depot chairs will likely astound you.

Also, they don't depreciate much. And your ass/back will thank you.

<comment><USER39> I am all for this. In our office, we have horrible Plastic Ikea chairs. When we ask to upgrade our Co Founders seem to think it is no big deal, but the amount of adjusting, back pain, neck pain and unenjoyable work really adds up.

I would take nice chairs over any other perk.

<comment><USER23> Or get a standing desk.</comment></comment></comment>


Hot zones - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/579412944

<comment><USER2> I find a similar trend with some websites where there's little dead-space for a mouse-click to switch the focus off of a control, hyperlink, or widget towards the document window itself.

This is also particularly irksome on sites which implement full-background ads. The only "non-hot-zones" end up being small parcels of the titlebar or footer.

I recall this concept of "dead/neutral" space mentioned in one Don Norman's books (<http://jnd.org>).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is my biggest gripe with my iphone (and other fully touchscreen phones/devices). I have to hold it by its four thinnest edges on the sides.

Re-aligning the phone in my hand usually requires use of the other hand since it is hard to "crawl" my fingers around the edges. At least with my previous Treo or blackberry I could rest my thumb or finger across the keyboard to "grip" the phone when picking it up or moving it.

It's funny how the front touch-screen, when on, renders the entire back almost untouchable as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> For folks who don't deal with non-technical folks often: "Something unexpected happen, I assumed it was broken, and I immediately stopped using it to prevent the brokenness from spreading" is an absurdly common reaction.

</comment><comment><USER5> I must say that I disagree with the author. I think humans get used to the experience and adapt. I remember when I used to drive a bicycle as a kid, I was scared when dogs ran across me because I thought I would run into them. Then I realized they are intelligent and they will evade me on their own.

I think when you are designing, one should not consider the user to be dumb.

<comment><USER6> Your argument would seem to work for even the world's worst user experiences. Thus all user experiences become equally (not) frustrating with time. This is a contradiction with real-world experiences.

Edit: It's a popular, but dangerous, misconception among programmers that making something easy, usable, or intuitive means assuming the user is "dumb." Understanding that this isn't true is very important for the success of one's product.

Marco makes Instapaper and he has spent a lot of time thinking about & adjusting the placement of buttons in Instapaper for iPad's UI. His article is insightful and his opinion carries a lot of weight, for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _You hand it to them, the screen auto-rotates, and they freak out for a second and think they broke something._

That hasn't been my experience when passing the iPad around at family events. It's usually "Ooh, that's a useful idea." I _hate_ the rotating myself but the orientation lock fixes that. The iPhone is worse because it doesn't have one.

 _You can pick up a TV remote, twirl it around, and run your finger over some buttons without triggering anything._

Humans are smart. You can't pick up a glass of lemonade, a mug of coffee, a donut, a cat or a vase without understanding how they respond. People are quick to learn how to handle items without being "stressed," though almost any novel item will cause a little initially. There are plenty of folks throwing 2 ton boxes of metal with incredibly delicate controls down roads at 70mph right now without incident.

That the iPad has a different usage profile to the Kindle has little to say on how "peaceful" or "low stress" it is for someone who is realistically going to use it. This 99 year old woman doesn't seem to be having any problems - [http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/22/99-year-old-loves-her- first-c...](http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/22/99-year-old-loves-her-first- computer-an-ipad/). People are more concerned about things like it being next to useless in sunlight, how delicate it feels, or how the screen is made of glass.

</comment><comment><USER8> Similarly, on Macbooks the Disc Eject button is really close to the Delete key. If you just tap the eject button, like you'd tap Delete, nothing happens. You really have to hold it down for 0.5s or so for the Eject to register.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, I never thought about the reason why it did that. It's pretty clever: ejecting a CD/DVD is uncommon enough to warrant the delay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also: buttons at the bottom of touchpads, vs. tap-to-click, vs. Apple's "the touchpad is a button" design.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. (When using a laptop with tap-to-click enabled, I accidentally tap far too much. Quite frustrating.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find the auto-rotate awkward as well, and mostly keep the orientation locked. The "peaceful" description nails it perfectly.

BTW, this reminds me again why having the same interface as iphone/ipod touch is a good thing. Anyone who has used those devices would likely not be too surprised.</comment>


Scroll: Console game that is also a Unix file pager - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/code/scroll/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to see a .deb or Ubuntu repo packages. Don't really want to install half a gig of Haskell Platform just to build this. 16GB Chromebook SSD here :-)

<comment><USER3> The telnet version works pretty well. And the two hour limit is actually a good thing for me as otherwise I might get sucked in all day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Best curses game I've ever played. I'd love to have this in the official debian repos.

<comment><USER5> You can now fall under a curse, while cursing your head off at the damn man page, while playing a curses-based game.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Kickstarter take software projects? Isn't software creative? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> They do take them: [http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/open%20softwa...](http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/open%20software)

</comment><comment><USER3> Diaspora is a recent example of a very successful software Kickstarter project.

</comment><comment><USER4> They do?</comment>


Microsoft restores transfer rights for retail Office 2013 copies - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-restores-transfer-rights-for-retail-office-2013-copies-7000012200/ <comment><USER2> The words in the license don't matter, everyone had the right to transfer their software from one computer to another the whole time.

See: <http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html>

<comment><USER3> That's not true in the 7th Circuit in the US [1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD_v._Zeidenberg>

<comment><USER2> Zoidberg probably would not hold up if challenged, because the opportunity to decline the license and return the software does not materially exist. But I realize that until someone tries it in court, it's just a theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This restriction had me looking back to office 2010 for my upcoming PC purchase. Glad to see it was lifted.

According to the old license, you get office for the life of your PC. If I drop my PC in the sink 1 week after purchase, I need to fork over another fistful of $$$ to use office again. Pretty lame.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sadly, there's not much recourse for those who bought 2010 because 2013 was hobbled by the policy. This came up at work this week, and a friend ended up getting 2010.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suspect they realized that they were just encouraging a switch to google docs and friends. So yes, it was a dumbass move but I'll give them points for having the organizational intelligence to recognize what a dumbass move they made.

Now about that Win8 fiasco....

<comment><USER7> Have you tried it? I've been using it for months and I find it to be simply fantastic. I love the new direction, all except for the store lock-in on the Metro side of things (thanks Apple!)

What's the fiasco?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is welcome news. At least they are listening to people these days.

<comment><USER9> Nope, I think this is just a legal compliance issue.</comment></comment>


Download A Copy of The Pirate Bay Before It's Gone - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/download-a-copy-of-the-pirate-bay-before-its-gone-090816/

<comment><USER2> Just found - The $675,000 Mixtape - while reading the background to this thread.

There is something definitely amusing about their 'two fingers up' to authority attitude.

[http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090814/the-pirate-bay- stil...](http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090814/the-pirate-bay-still-hasnt- gone-legit-still-enjoys-poking-big-media-in-the-eye-how-to- get-a-675000-mixtape-for-free/)

Having lived through the 70's punk scene, (although it must be agreed that on the whole it was a pretty contrived marketing plan) and appreciated the youthful, anarchic energy of it, I sort of wonder why most young people (here in the UK) seem so incredibly conservative. Are they really Thatchers children, more concerned about brand identity and affiliation that turning the world on it's head?

The Pirate Bay team seem to be 21st c. punks to me, even though I'm sure they see the $$$ at the end of the tunnel.

<comment><USER3> For the 21st century punks go to London or Berlin, the punk scene is alive and well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't all of the torrents be more-or-less useless without the tracker?

And by "more-or-less", I mean "completely".

<comment><AUTHOR> From the description on TPB: "Remember that all torrents from TPB now have the new tracker openbittorrent.com included, so they will continue to track even after the TPB tracker shuts down."

<comment><USER5> Even without that, DHT would help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was hoping to see the _code_ not the torrents. sigh

<comment><USER7> The tracker is open-source beerware: <http://erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 21.3 gb... pfft, I download that in an hour

EDIT: JK, please don't sue me

<comment><USER9> Well, as long as there aren't any "Harry Potter" torrents in there, I think you will be fine.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't that be JKR? ;)

<comment><USER8> Actually I think he is right, JK implies two proper nouns. I should have put "jk" or "just kidding."

<comment><USER7> The ladder, not everyone knows your favourite abbreviations. AIWJPTTPAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> heh... I was hoping for a dump of their database. This is just a crawl containing basic info about each torrents.

<comment><USER11> What info is in their database besides these torrents that would be valuable? They don't touch the actual files being shared. I doubt they log anything interesting; if they do, no one's ever going to see it. It would be a huge mistake for them to hand over visitor stats.

<comment><USER12> Well, you'd have to hit the trackers to pull all the current seed/leech ratio data yourself, if you want to find the living torrents amongst the muck. Things such as number of .torrent downloads, the "PirateBay-verified release" flag, and the comments (yes, there are comments) would also be useful in filtering through them. However, all this stuff would probably be invalidated by the time someone actually wanted to _use_ the backup...</comment></comment></comment>


Guys, here's what it's actually like to be a woman - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2015/10/guys-heres-what-its-actually-like-to-be-a-woman/ <comment><USER2> Gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the author of "The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines" and "Belligerence and Debauchery: The Tucker Max Stories," champion of the first amendment primarily by being such a jerk that he keeps getting sued and picketed by feminist groups, is maybe not the best source of information on what it's actually like to be a woman

<comment><USER3> That's hilarious!

I know Tucker Max has popularized "fratire"[0]. I see all of his works as satire. But is OP's post serious? Or maybe the post is satire and the rest of his work is serious.

I think the truth is that both are satire. And I have to admit it makes a lot more confortable with OP's post.

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

<comment><USER2> What do you see Tucker Max as satirizing? Himself? As far as I can tell he's pure PUA sleazebag and always has been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > [Y]ou could be Jack Ryan, Jack Sparrow, or Jack the Ripper. Any one of those > is equally likely.

What kind of paranoid or hell world is this supposed woman living in where 1 in 3 men is a violent slasher?

<comment><USER5> To be far, this is a world where 1 in 3 men is a secret agent, and the rest are insouciant pirates.

Jack World sounds like a pretty interesting place.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Jack-Susanne- Gervay/dp/1582462860](http://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Jack-Susanne- Gervay/dp/1582462860)

Poor Jack can't catch a break!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Of all the "men should do X" articles on the internet, this sucks the least. To those concerned about women seeing them as violent, I give you a text between a woman I dated and myself, a year or so after. This is the context of another woman saying she is scared of me.

[http://imgur.com/BmbrRMc](http://imgur.com/BmbrRMc)

It's frustrating as fuck, believe me. But it is what it is.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know what world the authors of this piece live in, but I'm glad I'm not a part of it.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps you live in it but you just don't notice.</comment></comment>


New RescueTime Goals and Alerts Helps Rescue Your News.YC Time - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rescuetime.com/2008/01/23/new-rescuetime-goals-and-alerts-actually-helps-rescue-your-time/ "RescueTime users have spent: 38 days on news.ycombinator.com" <comment><AUTHOR> Any requests for hours spent on certain sites? A bonus one: 56 hours on paulgraham.com.

<comment><USER2> rescuetime.com ?

This REALLY needs to be indexed by the number of users who have touched those sites. Scatter plot time!

<comment><AUTHOR> 3.87 months - but to be fair, the rescuetime founders use rescuetime all day and have since last summer... otherwise I'd be upset that people were wasting all their time on RT. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If I didn't waste any time on ycnews, I wouldn't know about RescueTime! How can you call that wasted time?... a paradox.

<comment><AUTHOR> "sometimes you have to waste time to save time" -Joe, RescueTime

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great product guys.

You guys are doing great things, keep going hard and making great features.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have no idea that I spend so much time instant-messaging. Locked that sucker down now!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm at 2hrs 48mins so far this week...

<comment><USER5> I'm at 6 hours 2 minutes! :(</comment></comment></comment>


War in the Womb (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-between-mother-and-baby <comment><USER2> "When scientists tried to gestate mice outside the womb, they expected the embryos to wither, deprived of the surface that had evolved to nurture them. To their shock they found instead that – implanted in the brain, testis or eye of a mouse – the embryo went wild. Placental cells rampaged through surrounding tissues, slaughtering everything in their path as they hunted for arteries to sate their thirst for nutrients. It's no accident that many of the same genes active in embryonic development have been implicated in cancer. Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit."

I found this paragraph particularly interesting. Squared with the claim later on that increased access to blood and nutrients might be responsible for our large brains, I wonder if it might be possible to create ultra intelligent mammals by allowing unfettered access to nutrients.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the same author of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16463069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16463069)

</comment><comment><USER4> Needs (2014) tag.

Kinda important because some people like me read it when it was first published and it would be nice to know whether it's a new article or a different one adding new information.

Previous discussion can be found through the 'past' link.</comment>


3D Genome - <AUTHOR> https://axial.substack.com/p/axial-matrix-3-3d-genome <comment><USER3> Im glad that epigenetics is being discussed, but I'm a but confused by this article. Not sure what this has to do with the central dogma, and last I heard the role of TADs is still not properly understood. There was also some talk about studies showing the number of differences on average from the human genome, and how that worked played a role in developing epigenetic drugs - <USER2> the differences int he genome are genetic, not epigenetic. And DNA methylation/histone acetylation are all probably involved with 3D structure, but the development of epigenetic drugs isn't really focused on 3d genome modification AFAIK, since it's still very poorly understood. Overall, I'm a bit confused by the point the article is trying to make - it seems like the author is cutting and pasting things from different sources without understanding the fundamentals behind it leading to a lot of confusing/irrelevant/wrong statements- but maybe I'm missing something. I do appreciate that there is interest in epigenetics- it's a fascinating and important field.</comment>


Valuo - <AUTHOR> http://www.valuo.io <comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate any comments on our startup valuo.io we have a pretty talented team working on the backend. We are currently looking for some awesome people to join us to help with our UI/UX as we move to beta. Our mission is to help business and professionals grow their business and provide them the tools to do that. From marketing calculators to BI, basic accounts are always free. Let us know your thoughts on valuo.io . Mark</comment>


Ask HN: Urgent – (how) can I access US PhD theses online for free? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Email the author, generally people are nice and will give it to you. If the paper is popular, you can google the title with 'pdf' on the end of the query and you'll be shown links to the pdf.

</comment><comment><USER3> Email the author.</comment>


Show HN: Solana – A permissionless clock for blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 <comment><USER2> Solana indeed looks interesting.

It's sad that there are so many blockchains and whatever out there, because that makes us lose track of the handful of ideas that may be worth looking to.

I'll read the whitepaper and give feedback later, if I have anything important to comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Is this somehow comparable with [https://chronologic.network/](https://chronologic.network/)? (I don't understand how either works, nor its practical use cases.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, not related at all

<comment><USER2> Not what I asked.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I can tell they are just using ethereum blocks as a way to keep track of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I designed Solana! I would love some feedback, especially from anyone working on VDFs.</comment>


Request HN: Boycott Apple until it increases worker audit compliance by 11% - <AUTHOR> http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-apple-you-wont-contribute-to-increased-human-suffering

<comment><AUTHOR> I started this petition/boycott even though I really need to update my iPod touch as soon as the next one comes out--that's how important I think the situation is.

The way I see it, workers will continue to work under worse and worse conditions until people say "Stop--there's no justification for doing that, not even for profit!" If not now, will we still be buying products when a worker dies for every 10 units (of whatever) made? Every 5?

I remember a short story by the great Cordwainer Smith (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith>) about galactic diplomats being outraged by the torture of innocent beings on some planet. These beings were tortured because their sweat (under torture) produced the most potent aphrodesiac in the galaxy. The story ends with the two diplomats drinking this liqueur, saying something like "Yes, this is an outrage, but what are you going to do? This stuff is magnificent!"

Please consider signing this pledge. You may say that it's futile in the face of the total number of iPhones sold in 2011 (something like 73 million), but however many signatures _this_ petition gets, the next one will get more, and someday the lost sales will convince Apple (or whatever company is being targeted) that it _must_ change its business practices in order to make more money. It may take five or ten years for this to happen, but there's already a movement talking in this direction.

Please visit the petition ([http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-apple-you- wont-contribu...](http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-apple-you-wont- contribute-to-increased-human-suffering)) and click the tab labeled "About this Petition" for more details.

Thank you for your consideration.

Gregg Williams petition organizer former senior editor at BYTE magazine, 1979-1988 Apple Direct/Apple Directions editor at Apple Computer, 1988-1998</comment>


Ask HN: Do you know of any encrypted journal programs? - <AUTHOR> This year I'm going to try to keep a journal sporadically. It will at its basic form be text based content similar to a blog, but more personal.
I'd like to use a program that will at the very least encrypt, decrypt and collate my journal entries given some password. I'd like it to be self contained such that I can effectively hold everything I need on a USB key (I'd rather not depend on internet connectivity and "the cloud").
Bonus points for things that can search by tags, are OS agnostic and support multiple kinds of media (text files, images etc).
Does anyone know of any existing programs? Do you use any yourselves? <comment><USER2> Truecrypt Portable gives you secure enough encryption (in other words, if the NSA is after you, encryption is futile without much more thorough preparations; for most uses, this is quite enough).

Notepad.exe gives you text editing. (Or anything else that could edit text, really - notepad is Everywhere and is so stupid simple that it has no obvious flaws; its 54 kB character limit is essentialy a non-issue in hand-typed journals)

So, what I do with sensitive data: (create a Truecrypt encrypted container file the first time) - when unlocked, that container will appear as a new disk when unlocked - create a file in that disk - work on that file - lock the container again, done. This has the added bonus that the container is a file you can take with you (sync to Dropbox, put on a USB disk, whatever) and the content is secure.

Usual caveats apply: choose a LONG passphrase and don't forget it (there's _no_ "password recovery"!!!), don't unlock the container on untrusted computers (malware snooping in is the biggest worry here), don't copy the sensitive file(s) outside the container.

(A single program that does both of these things is unlikely to do both of them _well_ \- and encryption is really easy to botch in many non-obvious ways. Therefore, I use one program for encryption, another for text editing. It's slightly less convenient, but much more flexible: e.g. if I decide that I want to use DarkRoom for text editing, I don't need to make changes to the encryption part. I could even store non-text data: images, GPS traces, sound clips, mindmaps; all that without worrying how it would fit with a text editor)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really helpful, thank you! Is Truecrypt only for Windows machines though? A quick search hasn't turned up anything about Mac/Linux support, but I could be missing something.

<comment><USER2> It's cross-platform. Hm, apparently TC is now abandoned, but there are forks that have continued the work: [http://veracrypt.codeplex.com/](http://veracrypt.codeplex.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Veracrypt seems to be perfect for me! Thanks for your help

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why encryption at the journal level instead of encrypting the storage media or via the file system?

I'd be less confident in an app that claims encryption than an operating system.

For what it's worth, I find writing on paper to outweigh more technology dependent approaches to journalling. And over time I've realized that writing stuff I'm worried about someone else reading is a sign that I'm just ruminating.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to be able to encrypt at the journal level so the encrypted "book" could have the potential to be synced to Dropbox or the like. I don't really need anti-NSA level encryption, more just a measure to (for example) stop guests from reading the content if I leave my machine on at home.

That's an interesting point about pen and paper!</comment></comment>


Startups in the Business of APIs - <AUTHOR> http://betakit.com/2012/04/28/startups-in-the-business-of-apis Instead of starting from bare bones and building everything involved in an app, including news feeds, notification systems and more, application programming interfaces (APIs) allow companies to focus on what makes their product unique. <comment><USER2> I'm very curious to know what APIs people are paying to use these days. Would anyone care to share a few that you are using for your own startup or place of employment?</comment>


Verizon's Mobile 'Supercookies' Seen as Threat to Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/technology/verizons-mobile-supercookies-seen-as-threat-to-privacy.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> We had a big discussion of this not too long ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8890170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8890170)

But that was based on something on the EFF website. The good news here is that the NY Times has picked it up, not just on the web but also in their print edition.

I pay Verizon over $200 per month for cellphones for me and my family. Verizon shouldn't be allowed to double dip. If they want to make money tracking me, then they can give me the phones for free. I'd probably accept that deal.

I agree with those in the article who say we should reclassify broadband providers as common carriers. Otherwise it's never ending "whack a mole" as these greedy oligopolists try to think of new ways of monetizing us.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Verizon is in use in Europe, does this then violate EU law?</comment>


Online Pirates Have No Constitutional Right to Internet Access, BMG Says - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/online-pirates-have-no-constitutional-right-to-internet-access-bmg-says-170708/ <comment><USER2> This is the same BMG that thought installing a rootkit on everyone's computers was a good idea.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)

<comment><USER3> Ah the good old days, when phoning home about your users' listening habits was considered faux pas.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't just telemetry. It was a software installation unauthorized by the user. I shouldn't have to explain this on HN.

<comment><USER5> Its moment like this you notice how far we have fallen

<comment><USER6> Or how far we've bent over. Apologies if this isn't appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When you think of this in terms of the internet being a utility, it highlights how ridiculous this actually is:

"We want you to disconnect the pirates' electricity, because they used that to power the computers they used to download the content!"

</comment><comment><USER8> BMG has no constitutional right to stay in business, either.

<comment><USER9> And there you've hit the nail on the head. Too many people running currently powerful/profitable businesses think they have a right to have their business model be profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once you decide to pick and choose who gets which constitutional rights, it makes it a lot easier to strip them away completely.

<comment><USER11> This is what blows my mind. If someone can strip you of a "right", then it's not a right it's a privilege. We have RIGHTS in this country not privileges.

<comment><USER12> It seems to me we are confusing words....rights and privileges are being confused with entitlements. The Code of Federal Regulations has very few entitlements, Medicare at the age of 65 and a Free Appropriate Public Education are two entitlements and there are a few select others. All others "rights or privileges" as discussed here require meeting specific criteria.....voting is a privilege afforded to those who register and the federal law allows states to prohibit Convicted felons or the mentally incompetent the right to vote. Most states have placed these restrictions on voting in their state constitution. Life is a privilege that a jury and the courts can remove in many states just as freedom is a privilege not a right.

An entitlement cannot be taken from you but suffice it to say entitlements are few in number in the US. As a reformed public servant who spent many many hours in the CFR, I assure you that you can count on one hand those entitlements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> BMG is right of course. The Founding Fathers foresaw exactly this sort of situation and made sure the constitution was worded to exclude such pirates from diminishing the profits of BMG.

Further, I'm pretty sure the constitution goes further and is quite explicit that such pirates really should have their citizenship stripped or be sent to the electric chair.

Those Founding Fathers - they knew what was what.

<comment><USER14> See there is an underlying issue here that seems to be neglected.

When you transform your work into a mathematical equation and then tell people they cant solve the equation without giving you money... well...

Your business model is fundamentally broken.

<comment><USER15> No. When you transform your work into physical objects and leave them on the side of the street then tell people they can't take them without giving you money ... Both cases depend on property rights and law enforcement to function at all. Property rights, both physical and IP are arbitrary human inventions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a good excuse to exclusively pirate BMG content in protest. Some really popular labels do recording under them.

[http://www.bmg.com/us/recording.html](http://www.bmg.com/us/recording.html) \- labels [http://www.bmg.com/us/music.html](http://www.bmg.com/us/music.html) \- artists

<comment><USER17> Or just give up on them or the entire music industry. That's what I've done. Pretty much did the same for movies. I don't want to pay their prices with their rules. Rather than steal, I just don't consume. Most of the music I listen to is either through a legal streaming service like Amazon or Pandora (which is probably 10 songs a month total) or legal video playback on Youtube through Vevo even from smaller labels like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxLA1NX9gxY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxLA1NX9gxY).

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, some of us consider listening to music to be a big part of who we are, and 10 songs a month is akin to suicide.

With newer labels, it's much easier to stream from bandcamp, etc. but with older music it can be hard to find what you want, in the quality and quantity you desire, while staying above piracy.

I find it very hard to tell a poor person that they do not get to listen to as much music as me, or of the same quality (streaming is still sub-320kbps) because they were not born into a richer family.

<comment><USER18> Where does that end? Do you expect them to have a right to the same high end speakers/headphones that you have? To the same sound-treated room?

I understand piracy more when it's literally impossible to make a legal purchase of something; I get it. When it's merely a matter of spending less money, I have a lot less sympathy for the copyright infringers.

<comment><USER19> >I understand piracy more when it's literally impossible to make a legal purchase of something; I get it. When it's merely a matter of spending less money, I have a lot less sympathy for the copyright infringers.

What if the work is old? Do you think it's wrong to make an unauthorized copy of Shakespeare's works, or Beowulf? So why should I have to pay someone for a copy of, say, a Hitchcock movie like "The Birds"? That movie is over a half- century old now, and if the copyright laws hadn't been changed, it'd have been in the public domain for the last 30 years. So why should I feel guilty if I download a copy of it? Why should I be obligated to spend money to some rights-holder who bought out the rights to a work where everyone involved in its production is now dead?

<comment><USER18> I view copyright as a means to permit society to have more creative works produced. Would Hollywood make a $100MM movie if they couldn't charge for it or could only charge the first person for it? Would drug companies invest billions in research to create effective new drugs for society if they knew they couldn't reap any financial reward for success?

I don't love all the corner cases that result from IP law and in particular hate software patents, but I also think that society and individuals therein benefit from there being a commercial payoff for investing in making creative works. I'm periodically surprised at how little value is placed on that by a some software engineers, given that most of what we create is more valuable (or made commercially possible) by virtue of copyright protections.

I understand that other people may feel differently.

<comment><USER19> You're not answering the question. How does it benefit society for the works of Shakespeare to be protected by copyright now, after hundreds of years?

<comment><USER18> The reason you think I'm not answering the question is that I believe you have a faulty premise (that the works of Shakespeare are under copyright protection today).

I believe they are not.

<comment><USER19> Now you're either missing the point, or being intentionally obtuse.

No, the works of Shakespeare are not, but works that are 50 or 75 years old still are, even though everyone who wrote or created them are now dead. How is this useful to society? It's no different than if Shakespeare's works were still protected by copyright. And since we have now enacted perpetual copyright, nothing new will ever fall into the public domain from this point forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "The First Amendment does not guarantee Cox's subscribers the right to use Cox's internet service to steal music any more than it prevents Cox from terminating subscribers who violate Cox's policies or fail to pay their bills"

Okay, so where does it guarantee copyright holders the right to dictate my ability to use a utility that is now widely regarded as a basic human right by the international community? [0]

[0] [http://gizmodo.com/internet-access-is-now-a-basic-human- righ...](http://gizmodo.com/internet-access-is-now-a-basic-human- right-1783081865)

<comment><USER20> Right here:

[https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?cycle=ALL](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?cycle=ALL)

I think you'll find that's what has been used instead of the Constitution in the US for some time.

<comment><USER21> Renaissance Technologies? That's not a list I would have expected them to be on...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great. I was hoping there was some other class of minor crime we could cut people off from society for committing and it looks like this one fits the bill.

</comment><comment><USER23> And next we ban fare dogers from acessing traffic infrastructure like rails, roads and sidewalks. And can we ban thiefs from buying or otherwise accessing food?

Oh and repeated offenders for that music piracy, can we cut off their ears?</comment>


Live Coding in CoffeeScript - <AUTHOR> http://bryanenglish.com/2013/02/18/live-coding-in-coffeescript.html <comment><USER2> I love this! It would be cool to see this integrated with something like share.js so people could collaborate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hadn't seen share.js before. I'll have to look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd recommend using Timbre.js <http://mohayonao.github.com/timbre.js/> As much as I love audiolet, Timbre.js knocks the socks off of it. It's very much based off of supercollider, which is really THE language to live-code in.

Also, it's way more fully developed than audiolet, and seems to work way faster.

</comment><comment><USER4> In case anyone is having this problem: Press ESC to run the scripts.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great stuff!

See also "livecodelab" and "gibber": <http://www.sketchpatch.net/livecodelab/index.html> <http://www.charlie- roberts.com/gibber/>

Gibber is multi-user live coding in the browser.

There are many more live coding systems here: <http://toplap.org/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't mean to criticize, I'd simply like to clarify something.

What exactly makes this "live" coding? As far as I can see, you have to press Esc to run the code. If this is considered live, what would be a non-live equivalent?

My understanding of live was that you see/hear changes as soon as you change the code, but I didn't find that to be the case here.

<comment><USER7> As far as I can tell, live coding is not about programming with "live" feedback, it is about programming "live" in front of an audience, or otherwise using programming as a musical instrument. Think performance and not development.

Very confusing, I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle since live coding sounds so similar to live programming, but the terms mean completely different things and arose in different contexts (live programming arose in a pedagogic context, live coding arose in a performance context) at about roughly the same time.

<comment><USER5> Sean, I wish you'd take a closer look at live coding before saying this kind of thing, you've very much got the wrong idea about live coding. I'm just off to work but I'll send you some references later.

Live coding is _absolutely everything about_ live feedback. This gives you access to performing in front of a live audience, but that is only part of it. It also allows new styles of collaborative programming, and exploring of ideas in composition.

Live coding is about using programming languages to manipulate running code, maintaining state (if there is any).

Check out the code in the "hacking perl in nightclubs" article that this one links to. The software it discusses takes on live updates without restarts or losing state (in fact, the code in the editor is part of the state). It also has an option to take on edits every keypress, but it's off by default, because it's impractical. Sometimes you just don't want 1 and 10 to be interpreted on the way to 100.

Live coding arose in an interdisciplinary context of music performance, pedagogy, media theory, psychology and computer science.

The thesis you link to is really excellent, but has shared roots with live coding and is referenced in the live coding literature.

<comment><USER7> Alex, I've ready up on as much on live coding as I could, I've even read parts of your thesis. I really like the work, but the intention of the work is completely different.

> Live coding is absolutely everything about live feedback. This gives you > access to performing in front of a live audience, but that is only part of > it. It also allows new styles of collaborative programming, and exploring of > ideas in composition.

This really isn't the point. The "live feedback" is not about performance, its not about new styles of collaborative programming, its not about composition of time-based media. It is simply a better way to debug your program, it is simply better feedback to the programmer while they are writing their program.

> Live coding is about using programming languages to manipulate running code, > maintaining state (if there is any).

You've stated this differently before:

> For me, live coding is about live, end-user programming of time-based media. > Live coders write software for themselves, and the timeline of software > development is often shared with the end result. This brings both social and > creative aspects of programming to the fore.

Now, imagine my frustration when I'm trying to promote a new way of debugging a program, and people say "we've heard about this before, but we aren't very interested in music." Do you understand why I'm frustrated? Live programming aims to change programming in general, you should be able to live program a web app, a map reduce program, an operating system, a compiler, anything! This is not the goal of live coding as I understand it.

> Check out the code in the "hacking perl in nightclubs" article that this one > links to. The software it discusses takes on live updates without restarts > or losing state (in fact, the code in the editor is part of the state).

But you see, that's where our disconnect is: LP is not just about updating code without losing state, its about changing the entire program's state as if the new code HAD ALWAYS existed. Simply preserving state is not good enough. Now in a dataflow language (like quartz composer), there is no state and you simply re-execute the new wiring; very easy. But if there is state involved, the problem becomes much harder. The live coding crowd hasn't done anything to solve that problem yet, and in fact, they don't really need to; it seems like preserving state is sufficient for your use cases.

> It also has an option to take on edits every keypress, but it's off by > default, because it's impractical. Sometimes you just don't want 1 and 10 to > be interpreted on the way to 100.

Did you ever watch the quicktime videos embedded in my 2007 paper? I did just that ('1', '10', '100') and the effect was quite nice; I got applause right there when I gave the talk at Onward. It is definitely a UX challenge, and Chris's discussion about steady frames, I think, is the key to a decent live programming experience. Also, Bret Victor's demos have no delay in them whatsoever; continuous feedback can be nice and exciting. Of course, we need to do a lot of UX and implementation work before it is actually practical. The live coding community has working systems today, you guys already have what you need; we don't, we just have a bunch of prototypes and demos (unless we count visual languages where liveness is easy).

> Live coding arose in an interdisciplinary context of music performance, > pedagogy, media theory, psychology and computer science.

Sounds like a nice focused story to me :)

> The thesis you link to is really excellent, but has shared roots with live > coding and is referenced in the live coding literature.

The important point to make about Chris's thesis is that it is very close to Bret Victor's demos and goals as stated in his learneable programming work. That this is a new way to understand code while we are writing code, the story is very narrow, nice, and easy to understand; there is no reason to expand it in other ways.

<comment><USER5> Hi Sean, yes there may well be different intentions at play, the but also huge overlaps on the technical level. We are all concerned with liveness, and your debugging is my (and I think Bret Victors) exploratory programming.

I can understand your frustrations, lets talk by email about establishing a clearer distinction between performance and more general contexts, if you don't mind. But I think not on the basis that they are completely unrelated, to me it makes sense to think of live coding in social situations (including lectures, dojos,conference talks as well as a/v performances and group music making) is an application for live programming languages.

I can agree reinterpretation per key press is useful in some very particular circumstances, but not others. The difference is not in delay, but in what constitutes an edit.

<comment><USER7> I mostly agree with you, but I think their will be some confusion until we work this out. I'm not sure what Bret Victors refers to his work, but I found the similarities between his work and Chris's thesis to be very striking even though I'm sure they are independent. Perhaps we can harmonize or at least figure out what the key messages are to avoid confusion.

I think you want to provide feedback for each discrete or continuous action by the user. This is quite easy if we are relying on structured editing, but much harder for free form text. My current policy is to re-execute memoization units after each keystroke, though certain syntax and type errors can prevent the executed expression tree from changing (but then the feedback is a syntax/type error!). Getting live feedback also requires toleration to transient syntax/semantic/and execution errors, and to be fairly efficient. In this case, we should tolerate and react to '1' and '10', even if they lead to a program in a weird state (e.g., x - N, where N should be > 100), but you still want to show some kind of change. And this is where live programming is very different: the steady frame that we are viewing while editing should always CHANGE when we edit, meaning it should be focused on some execution result of the code being editing. Doing something without immediate feedback is being a sad panda.

<comment><USER5> Yes great, lets try to work this out - you should have an overlong email in your inbox from me as a starter :)

I think I disagree with your definition of "edit". Perhaps this comes down to "chunking" in human perception and action. When I type 100, I don't consciously instruct my fingers to type each character, what I enact and perceive is the number "100". From this perspective, it seems natural for the programmer to control what an edit is.

I've heard VI users talk about edits in terms of breathing. You hit 'w' (or whatever it is they do), type in your edit, then hit escape when you're done. They describe this as natural in terms of breathing rhythm.

Of course in a performance context there is a more concrete requirement that edits need to be timed to happen in a certain way, and everything that happens it part of the output, so you want complete control over what gets interpreted when.. The temporal relationship between programming and output is different from the debugging case which you are more interested in. Both cases are concerned with liveness, but the constraints are different.

<comment><USER7> I program with an IBM Model M keyboard so I can here every keystroke. If you type fast enough, the programmer won't notice intermediate feedback going through 1 10 100. You could even put in a delay but I would hope its not necessary.

As for liveness, I think we disagree on what should be live. I only really care about the feedback loop between the executing program and the programmer editing that program. I don't expect anything else to be live, and actually, it might not even be useful in some cases (e.g., if the program is executing in real-time and is interactive or animated, I have nothing steady to shoot at).

<comment><USER5> Nice point about your keyboard, but I'd still contend that a series of fast keystrokes is perceived as a thrum, not necessarily a series of clicks.

If you're programming DSP, then the haptic upper limits of typing is much slower than the limits of aural perception. But I understand more about what you mean by "steady frame" now.

Yes I think you're right in our point of disagreement. In Chris Nash's terms, you're interested in liveness solely in terms of manipulation-driven feedback loop, and I'm interested in it predominantly in terms of performance-driven feedback loop, and only secondarily in manipulation-driven feedback.

The diagrams at the end of this paper might clarify: [http://www.eecs.umich.edu/nime2012/Proceedings/papers/217_Fi...](http://www.eecs.umich.edu/nime2012/Proceedings/papers/217_Final_Manuscript.pdf)

(I've seen a more detailed version of this somewhere, maybe his PhD thesis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty awesome. I went to a workshop by ixi lang creator thor magnusson. It is pretty amazing the level of abstraction you get with ixi lang but supercollider has a steep learning curve.

I love that live coding music is making its way to javascript / coffeescript. I can't wait to see what people create with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a great idea – a convenient environment for writing music-generating code. It needs far more helper functions and documentation before it's generally usable, though.

I've written some GitHub Issues: <https://github.com/bengl/beatsio/issues>

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool! I threw together something similar a few weekends ago:

<http://roadtolarissa.com/synth-scales/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Have you ever played with Overtone? It's pretty awesome <http://vimeo.com/22798433>

</comment><comment><USER12> See also 'bytebeat':

<http://canonical.org/~kragen/bytebeat/>

</comment><comment><USER13> Great stuff! If only I could find a way of doing this the other way around... (audio to sheet music)

<comment><USER14> There's plenty of libraries for this, provided you can export your audio to MIDI. Here's one:

midisheetmusic.sourceforge.net

Hell, just upload your MIDI to hamie.net and they'll do it for you (albeit horrendously).

<comment><USER13> Ah, I should have been clearer. MIDI to sheet music conversion is trivial. What I want to do is take real audio as input and convert that, which is according to my readings really hard because MIDI and audio formats (FLAC/WAV/MP3 etc) are very different.

There are some tools that I could find but so far none has come up with good conversion from FLAC or MP3.

I'm mainly interested in classical music and that kind of complicates things. As the number of voices in your audio increase, it gets that much harder to export it to MIDI. I've been thinking about emphasising the melody line and exporting that to MIDI but so far nothing :P

Perhaps a different approach would work better.

But thanks a lot for the help :)

<comment><USER5> The research field trying to tackle this is called "music information retrieval", that may help with your search.. I think they have made some headway but it involves quite a few challenges - auditory scene analysis, source separation, pitch labelling etc.

<comment><USER13> That is extremely helpful, thanks a million for the pointer! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome! Someone edit the title though because I had no idea this was live coding "beats".

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome stuff Bryan!</comment>


Show HN: AppSling - Effective App Store Links - <AUTHOR>

Problem: App Store links suck, you click them and end up no closer to having the app on your device.
Opening up the app store, searching for the app etc etc is a pain. How many app downloads are lost to users who can't be bothered?
Solution: Have the app store link quickly sent to your device via SMS, tap the link and download.
http://appsling.io/ <comment><USER2> I may be alone here, but running latest chrome on osx, I am taken to the app store and google play market when clicking the links.

<comment><USER3> Apple links usually open up in a webpage, and then open iTunes, which can be annoying if it takes a while to load.On the other hand, once you do it iCloud syncs it to your phone/iPad, so there is no problem there.

<comment><USER2> ... I thought that was what your script solved. If not, then you have some serious copy issues.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I'm not the OP. Just commenting that Apple already puts it on your device through iCloud, so half the problem has been solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://appsling.io/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback would be brilliant!</comment>


YC got a record number of applications this cycle - <AUTHOR>

One bit of good news about the economy: would-be startup founders don't seem to have been deterred by it, yet at least.  YC got more applications this time than ever, and by a large margin: 10%.  The number usually goes up, but rarely so sharply.
It wasn't due to the essay I just wrote about starting a startup in a bad economy.  We were already on track for a record before that.
We don't quote actual numbers, lest it tempt competitors into a competition on that account (which could easily be won by encouraging instead of discouraging single founders and undergrads).  But we have a long week ahead of us. <comment><USER2> Wouldn't the next cycle be a better indicator? I am guessing it took a while for folks to get co-founders, work on idea towards a prototype, etc. -- all of which took longer than the past few weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably. But you'd be surprised how many people decide to apply in the last week, or even on the last day.

<comment><USER3> We spent a few weeks before the deadline editing and re-editing our application. We only submitted it a day before it was due.

Perhaps there were many groups like us who had thought about applying a while and spent time editing their application before sending in the last few days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't just mean that people submit the application on the last day. That is certainly common. But from talking to founders I've learned that a lot only decide to apply on the last day.

<comment><USER4> When you already run a startup like we do, you do not have much time to submit, you code, so the deadline sneaks up on you. I would say you can not read much into the submission date.

<comment><USER5> I don't think you understand his point. He's not just looking at the submission time of the application. He _talks_ to the applicants, and some of them say they didn't decide to apply until the last day. This is different from deciding to apply weeks before the deadline, but not doing it until the last day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could be that YC is being treated like Grad School. Something you do when it's not a great time to get a job.

<comment><USER7> I doubt it. I think by the time you're about 21, 3 months and ten or fifteen grand no longer seems like a long time or a lot of money to play with.

<comment><USER6> Are you saying that YC is not attractive to anyone over 21? Then the numbers seem to be against you. I assume they get a good number of over 21 applicants.

Either way that does not have much to do with it being treated similar to Grad School. There was a thread on here a few days ago on how people got to grad school when jobs get hard to get. It is an alternative to going out & getting a job that becomes more attractive as going out & looking for a job becomes less attractive.

<comment><USER7> No, not at all. I'm saying that no one over that would think of it as a "kill time before I get a real job" solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At this point, I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to require a demo along with the application? As I recall, virtually all of the summer interviewees had demos, which gave them a significant advantage over other applicants. If YC only continues to get more competitive, I assume there will be no practical downside to requiring a demo, as the few applicants without a demo that are competitive with the top applicants with a demo are presumably not worth wading through all of the other no-demo apps.

Or there might be some other way of capturing them.

(Disclosure: I'm a no-demo applicant.)

<comment><USER9> As an attempt to defend my no-demo application, i think requiring a demo is a poor route to take. I just found out about YCombinator ten days before the deadline. i can see merit to reducing the number of applicants to sift through, but i think erecting such a significant barrier-to-entry isn't the way to accomplish it.

<comment><USER8> Fwiw, I'm also a no-demo applicant. But odds are odds, and if last summer's less competitive round tilted almost exclusively in favor of applicants with demos, in virtue of the fact that they _had_ demos, then we're de facto excluded from the process anyway.

<comment><USER9> it's okay though. i have faith that really great ideas backed by great people <cough> will persevere despite the tilted odds.

i'm sure you feel the same way, if we weren't dreamers we wouldn't be here. may fortune smile upon the applicants who aren't selected, i hope you don't ever give up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Will YC fund a reconrd number as well this year?:-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Could the bump be due to the large number of recent graduates who (presumably) can't get jobs right now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't look like it. The age distribution is about what it always is.

<comment><USER12> What about people that got laid off due to the state of the economy?

<comment><USER13> I don't know. Are most of the people that gets laid off prime material for startups? I don't _think_ so, but I might be wrong.

I think you should look at a more technical factor. Right now, it is looking better for startups than ever. You have programmable mobile phones, clouds at Amazon and Google, fast Javascript in browsers, computers so fast that interpreted languages can compete and so on. Combine this with the webs ability to reach a massive userbase in a short amount of time. In short: The toolset for startups has never looked better than this. The idea-space on which startup ideas thrives is just getting wider and wider.

Also note that most companies do not get it. The work they want people to do is horribly boring. People have, via the buzz, realized that taking the chance with a startup might be more interesting. Even if they don't succeed they have tried. And here is the killer: they might have failed, but they have learned more compared to a "common" job.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if they're prime material, but that wouldn't stop the supply of people who are willing to apply. It's just a hypothesis, anyways -- if there are more people than jobs, the number of people looking for work will go up. being a YCombinator startup is still some sort of job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You sound very, very excited. Congrats on reaching so many people, and I hope the quality of the applications is as strong or better than ever.

</comment><comment><USER15> It feels weird not applying to YC since I have applied for all the cycles in the last 2 years. Good luck to everyone I know how nervous I would get waiting after applying.

I guess the good news is that I am not applying because we are doing well with out startup and moving forward with customers.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations on moving forward. Are you bootstrapping your operations?

<comment><USER15> We got some small funding, and have been working to raise a larger round.

We also are hoping we ca start making break even revenue pretty soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best of luck to all the applicants and to you PG on reading them! =)

<comment><USER17> Indeed -- having applied I've got to say there is benefit in even just applying. So well done even if you got that far.

This is even aside from the individual questions on the application (which are good questions to ask none-the-less). Going through the process lets you look at your idea and your proposition in a bit more of a structured way. Our ideas didn't change, but certainly our focus and outlook did.

<comment><USER18> Also, one thing that's interesting about ycombinator's application, compared to a competitor such as alphalab.org is how much their application focuses on you, the founder, and your relationship to other founders.

The advice my friend Jeremy has given me, through his own start up venture, is that you really have to be solid on the founders. It certainly let us 'narrow our focus' in terms of who we'd want to be working with for our start up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Obviously- YC is a perfect place to learn (and practice) efficiency + frugality, both key success factors for any company, start up or grown up.

Add to that the fact that this is an excellent time to be doing a start- up(especially if you can offer a distinct cost advantage, and complement it w/ a business model that works at an empirical level).

So we ought to see some sensible wonders coming out of YC soon enough. Cheers, and good luck to all YC applicants..!

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd say for a young company like YC which seems to be getting plenty of attention from blogs and the overall startup community, 10% doesn't sound very impressive.

In comparison, YC news readership must have grown a lot more then 10% in the last year.

</comment><comment><USER21> Good luck to all the entrants and may the force be with PG in looking through them all! Perhaps my group will be lucky enough to be a finalist invited to the meeting, despite not having an active demo that they have access to.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's awesome. I thought people would be more risk averse in this economy.

<comment><USER23> Although risky in terms of the likelihood of failure of a business, I think at this point in time funded start-ups are actually significantly less risky careers than regular jobs.

It's good to know exactly where your money is coming from for the next X months, and to know for sure that no one can arbitrarily fire you so long as you do your job (your job being to ensure there's enough money to cover your salary, whether by fund-raising or, better, making sales).

<comment><USER22> I agree - and man I can't tell you how glad I am I left a finance job to do a startup - even if we end up failing.

<comment><USER23> Funny story, I almost took a job at Lehman. I had an offer, but I hesitated to take it because I knew it would seriously decrease the chances that I could launch my start-up successfully... I told this to my girlfriend, and she pointed out that starting my own business was many people's life dream, and it was within my reach, and might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

On the other hand, the Lehman job would still be there in a year if my business failed.

Well, she was wrong in one of those statements!

<comment><USER22> Sounds like a keeper :).

<comment><USER23> Oh yes :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Best of luck to all applicants! I think the financial situation in the world only helps separate the wheat from the chaff, i.e. those true entrepreneurs wishing to work hard through the bad (now a bit longer) and good times to build a real business from those with a "strike-it-rich-fast" attitude, typical of economic bubbles. I also believe YC is expected to see an improvement in the quality of the applications.

</comment><comment><USER25> You are growing as a company, so one would think that with extra press and more success stories, your applications will continue to go up regardless of the economy, because your audience is larger.

It's more likely that you've reached the "tipping point" than any other macro variable out there.

Regardless, your message is getting through to more and more people. Given that I like your message, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER26> All the best to all the applicants ....

I wanted to apply but this model suit me ... as I am a single founder ... and I am not a hacker...

</comment><comment><USER27> I would suspect that the number would continue to increase as the reader base here, and the YC effect continues to propagate. However, what I'd be interested in knowing is if the _type_ of start up ideas has changed due to the economic climate; possibly fewer that are CPM based (and I don't mean the one with PIP).

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if, during the next application cycle, you'll receive a bonus uptick in applications due to people having been made redundant, as our friends across the pond say. Being jobless can turn even the most mild mannered programmer into a super entrepreneur.

</comment><comment><USER17> I guess the applications vary significantly by nature - but it would be interesting to see if the economic climate had caused the general flavour of the applications to change... or at the very least caused the founders to put a different lens on their idea.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ah - I think its because of the success of companies like reddit and posterous. As they get popular, so does ycombinator...

</comment><comment><USER30> All the best to all the applicants...and to YC for the tough week ahead! :P

</comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean YC is "recession proof?"

</comment><comment><USER31> best of luck to everyone!

</comment><comment><USER32> competitors at last

</comment><comment><USER33> Best of luck to the other teams, we'll see you in January</comment>


Ask HN: Users should go jogging before trying a new software product - <AUTHOR> My question is simple: why doesn't anyone, who have released a software product, suggest that a user should take a walk or preferably go jogging before trying to get familiar with it? After jogging mind is more ready to take in even boring information like 2-page introduction documents. It also opens up the possibility that a software product can be more complex as a user is able to comprehend better. Including few short bursts of running would prepare user's mind in a way that he/she is able to reach more of his/her thoughts, because such really wakes up the whole body (1). This also boils down to question "is it ok to say that it will be user's own fault, if he fails to grasp the idea of a product or how it can be utilized?".<p>(1) I think it is mostly about exercise being aerobically efficient - and what kind of reactions happens in the body because of that. <comment><USER2> You should have gone jogging before submitting this to HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered telling your customers to go take a hike? Vigorous hiking can have the same mental benefits as jogging, with less impact on the knees.

</comment><comment><USER4> Where is the flag functionality when you need it :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I tried that, but my keyboard got all sweaty and shorted out.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mr. persij, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.</comment>


Snapchat API - <AUTHOR> Anyone know about any Snapchat API that still works today? All that I found was already to old to communicate with the Snapchat servers. <comment><USER2> The Casper API is the only one that works with the latest Snapchat API changes, but it is a paid service. [https://developers.casper.io](https://developers.casper.io)

<comment><USER3> Says they're not taking new registrations at this time

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does [http://api.snapchat.com/](http://api.snapchat.com/) show a google error page?

<comment><USER5> Snapchat is hosted on GCP [0], and api.snapchat.com subdomain points to nonexistent App Engine instance [1] so I guess it's GCP's 404

[0] as shown on homepage: [https://cloud.google.com/](https://cloud.google.com/) \+ more info here: [https://gigaom.com/2013/05/07/snapchats-act-of-faith-in- buil...](https://gigaom.com/2013/05/07/snapchats-act-of-faith-in-building-on- google-compute-engine/)

[1] simply check CNAME record of api.snapchat.com</comment></comment>


Smoothening complex polygons - Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramer-Douglas-Peucker_algorithm <comment><USER2> Another interesting discussion on it - [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1849928/how-to- intelligen...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1849928/how-to- intelligently-degrade-or-smooth-gis-data-simplifying-polygons)

<comment><USER3> Not sure that's better than the Wiki article, but the PostGIS mention is really handy if you're generalizing data for maps or to make paths from GPS data.

Protip: If you set the epsilon low enough, the PostGIS implementation has a good chance of repairing invalid geometries, even when ArcInfo can't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure they exist, so can anyone point to extensions of the concept to piecewise-Bézier curves (as opposed to piecewise linear).

<comment><USER5> This isn't directly Bezier related, but you may find some inspiration here. Talks about piecewise linear, bilinear, double linear, biquadratic, cubic, bicubic, piecewise cubic and biquintic.

This is a great link and helped me conceptualize and workout bicubic interpolation. Have fun :)

<comment><USER6> Wait, where's the link?

<comment><USER5> Doh! Don't know how that didn't paste in: <http://www.geocomputation.org/1999/082/gc_082.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was happy to see this come across HN. I had bookmarked several notes and a PHP implementation of this. I am planning on using this to simplify the number of points defining a particular path on a google map, for a small preview map. Some of my data is > 1 meg for a long route, so trimming is important.

Check out a live PHP demo: <http://www.fonant.com/demos/douglas_peucker/algorithm>

</comment><comment><USER7> This would be interesting/useful for smoothing geospatial polygons (eg, KML).

<comment><USER8> At a previous job I implemented a tool to smooth map areas and at the same time preserve the topology between the areas (e.g. there would be no gaps between Texas and Louisiana after the smoothing). I had a lot of fun writing it.

<comment><USER9> That sounds very useful. How did you do it? Could you share it?

Did you create an algorithm that would smooth polygons the same way going clockwise or counter-clockwise so that the shared boundaries would be simplified the same way? Or did your algorithm take into account the entire topology?

<comment><USER8> It was indeed very useful :). Unfortunately I cannot share too much due to NDA (not that I consider what I did cutting edge...). But I will say that I couldn't take the entire topology into account due to limitations with the host SDK (I was working on a plug-in for a _leading_ vector graphics application).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Friend Rank - Friend Ranking as a Service (FRaaS) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mikejarema/facebook-friend-rank/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in the process of building out a simple Facebook app and had trouble finding a way to "rank" friends, namely who was closest to the logged-in user.

So, I just built my own web service to do so: Facebook Friend Rank.

I bundled the whole thing as a web service rather than a gem or stand-alone library because I'm sure most people would want something they can just plug- in (or make a call to) without worrying about the complexities of running background jobs, setting up another service on their boxes, etc.

I think Goliath serves as a solid underpinning as this project evolves. The evented nature of the web service should scale well as the ranking algorithm evolves to process multiple API calls in parallel.

All told, I'm happy to launch the project to HN, if only for some initial feedback.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Give this project a quick shot & see who your "best" friends are here in the demo app (bundled with the project):

<http://facebook-friend-rank.herokuapp.com/demo/index.html>

It asks for & requires the read_stream permission to scan your activity log and see who you most frequently interact with.

The click "Apply Friend Rank" to start the ranking process.</comment>