Cursive, an IDE for Clojure and ClojureScript, has reached 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://cursive-ide.com/articles/cursive-1.0.html <comment><USER2> After Emacs/Cider/whatever crashed/locked up on me for the 20th time I finally gave up and moved to Cursive over a year ago. I've never looked back, it's fast, does what I need it to, and I still discover features all the time (like the clojure.test integration!). It's also a fantastic way to get new programmers into Clojure. No need to download lein, or dozens of packages or learn a text based editor. Just install InteliJ and install a single plugin.

Great work.

<comment><USER3> And the debugging support. Good. Debugging. Support!

<comment><USER4> This really cannot be repeated enough times.

<comment><USER3> After 2 years without it you go back in and it's so seductive you almost want to stop writing unit tests.

Ignore this feeling even as you bask in it! :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I usually use vim for everything, but really checked out Light Table more recently. I wasn't able to tell from any of the demos, but does Cursive offer something like the Instarepl feature of Light Table? I see you can send commands from the cursor to the repl, but there's something magical about the Instarepl that I think is hard to beat.

<comment><USER6> do people actually use LT instarepl for anything but teaching? Side effects in our code are killer, and real world clojure code is, you know, pretty close to referentially transparent but not quite...

<comment><USER7> I use it instead of a repl, to be frank it used to be a pain but it's quite transparent now.

Ctrl+enter your ns declaration gives you an instarepl in your project/file

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cursive is an excellent way to write Clojure and has improved my workflow tremendously. Highly recommended; I bought a license. Congratulations to Colin on a 1.0 release.

</comment><comment><USER9> Colin has done an incredible job on Cursive. It takes full advantage of the infrastructure provided by IntelliJ to do things like where used, and refactoring. I've been a happy Cursive user for 18 months and now I'm a happy Cursive customer.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great REPL, actual debugger, and all the nice IDEA features available to other languages. This is definitely my favorite way of writing Clojure by far.

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently tried cursive... it just didn't work right. Breakpoints didn't actually stop, no stepping. It was supposed to do that, it just didn't work.

I gave up, upgraded my copy of cider, and noticed it supports breakpoints and whatnot now. Since I'm used to emacs anyway, that works for me.

I'd have been happy to give cursive a whirl for a while but I couldn't make even the most basic debugging work right, and that was the only reason I even considered trying it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty unusual, debugging for the most part just works. If you want help investigating that let me know, but if you're happy with Emacs that's cool too - lots of good options for Clojure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a bit surprised that 1.0 came before macro-awareness (i.e., knowing that symbols emanating from macros aren't "undefined").

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is the biggest hole in Cursive's functionality right now. It doesn't affect most people much but it's still painful for some, depending on which libraries you're using. Fixing this is my #1 priority in terms of large features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using this awhile and will definitely buy a license. Congratulations on the release!

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice work! I'm a long-time emacs user who thought that emacs was the best way to write clojure code. I was really happy with emacs as a clojure dev environment but after trying cursive recently it's now my preferred environment for writing clojure.

<comment><USER15> What made you switch? I mean, _if_ you are already familiar with Emacs, I don't see any reason to switch. CIDER and clj-refactor offer a lot more functionality, and the debugger is fantastic.

<comment><USER9> When I was using emacs, I would spend a good chunk of time maintaining my editor, not coding. Cursive Just Works, and as a consultant it means I can put my full time into client work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome! This means a lot for Clojure traction. The reality is that a lot of Clojure new arrivals are going to be still doing straight Java and this provides a nice blended experience. Hence, this is a profound contribution to adoption.

</comment><comment><USER17> I somehow missed the pre-order offer here but I've been using Cursive for the odd project here and there and it fits perfectly. Love the product and look forward to buying it soon. Thoroughly worth it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Congratulations! I've found Cursive to be very easy and pleasant to use throughout its development and look forward to now contributing to its development through a license purchase.

</comment><comment><USER19> We finally have an IDE for Clojure... my god. I remember seeing Colin demo Cursive at the Conj last year; my emacs got sad.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just tried vim-fireplace and its working good for evaluating things. Anyone has more experience using it?. I'm gonna check Cursive although I really like vim so I don't know if I'll get used to it.

<comment><USER21> IdeaVIM provides reasonably good vim emulation. You'll probably get annoyed by something (I have yet to find a vim emulator I think is as good as Vim itself) but I only had to make a few minor changes in my vim patterns to get it working.

<comment><USER22> evil is the best vim outside of vim.

<comment><USER21> It's about the same but everybody uses vim a bit differently so YMMV. I switched from emacs+evil to cursive+ideavim. My annoyance with evil is that `xp` doesn't work, my annoyance with ideavim is that the `{` text object is scope based instead of text based. I've had Esc not work correctly under some circumstances in both (I use c-[ instead) and neither supports iskeyword so * doesn't search for identifier in skewer-case languages.

<comment><USER23> If by `xp` you transposing chars, it does work in evil.

<comment><USER24> I find it hard to see how anything could claim to be vi/vim-like and not have "xp" cut-letter-paste-letter-after (ie: transpose letters)? I suppose some might work for "dlp", but not "xp" \-- but it sounds like a strange omission?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been using cursive for the better part of 18 months. It's fantastic. My .emacs file's creation date is 2/10/1999, but I wouldn't imagine using anything but lein+idea+cursive.

</comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations! Hope too see Cursive mature and grow with clojure language

</comment><comment><USER26> This might be answered somewhere in their blog but why build an IDE on top of IntelliJ instead of just making a plugin for it? Is this so they can charge licensing?

<comment><USER27> It _is_ a plugin.

<comment><USER26> Ah, my mistake. I read their home page and thought they took an Android Studio approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's currently just a plugin. I am planning to make a standalone PyCharm- style IDE so it's easier to install for people unfamiliar with Java, but that didn't make it in time for the 1.0, sadly. It's quite a bit of work but still less than something like Android Studio - it's pretty much the community edition of IntelliJ shipped with Cursive installed and sane defaults for Clojure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What ClojureScript-specific features does Cursive offer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since Cursive works by analysing source code, for the most part everything that works for Clojure just works for CLJS too - navigation, refactorings etc. I'm planning to add very soon native support for CLJS REPLs, since getting them running can be pretty fiddly. And mid-term I'm planning a CLJS debugger with integrated REPL. That would also allow debugging CLJS in Electron shells or on devices when using React Native.

<comment><USER28> Can a browser REPL-connected Cursive auto-complete based on the browser environment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not based on the live browser environment over the connection, no. Currently the completion for CLJS REPLs comes from the current project, and Cursive uses the Tern static files to autocomplete basic things that are normally present. I'm planning to improve this, but that's the state of play right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The amazing progress of LEDs - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2014/10/7/6936361/the-amazing-progress-of-leds-in-one-chart <comment><USER2> One interesting application for super-bright LED's is home theatre projectors. Until very recently such projectors used lamp modules (usually metal-halide) that typically have an operating lifespan of a few thousand hours at most. That's a very rough estimate. Failures can happen sooner and they occasionally implode. Also, brightness usually drops off gradually as lamps age. New lamp modules usually cost a few hundred dollars. These lamps also produce a large ammount of heat and require active cooling, which makes projectors noisy unless carefully designed for quiet operation. For these reasons, home theatre projectors probably remain more of a niche product than they might otherwise be.

LED based lamps are starting to show up in this market sector. Current LED- based projectors are mostly portable projectors that offer low brightness and poor image quality, but some home theatre models of decent quality are starting to appear. At present, they're expensive, less bright than most projectors based on traditional lamps, and still require fans for active cooling. However, as LED's become more power efficient and economical, these projectors will hopefully become brighter, passively cooled, and significantly cheaper.

Projectors are not appropriate in many environments, especially those with high ambient light levels, but LED's may help them make major inroads into the big-screen market.

<comment><USER3> Another interesting application: growing vegetables very efficiently (potentially in urban areas).

" _Plants mainly need blue and red light for photosynthesis and far-red, a colour not even visible to the human eye but visible to the plant….._ "

This makes LEDs very interesting for this purpose - the ideal light spectrum can be achieved with LEDs. This will make more and more sense over time as the world urbanises further and LEDs get ever cheaper.

[http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/02/plantlab- nether...](http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/02/plantlab-netherlands- engineers-have.html)

<comment><USER4> I can think of a large market for lighting suitable for growing vegetables in your home that doesn't produce a lot of waste heat...

<comment><USER3> It's already been done (LEDs for growing weed, impossible for cops to spot growhouses using FLIR helicopters and much lower power usage so spikes in energy consumption are far less dramatic).

I think in terms of impact, growing vegetables in a sustainable manner that uses little water will be critical for the long term sustainability of cities where water is scarce, such as Dubai or other cities in desert regions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related: "Drowning in Light" from a few weeks ago: [http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/drowning-in- light](http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/drowning-in-light) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8344769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8344769)

It makes the compelling argument that people are addicted to light. "Tsao calculates that, as a result, light represents a constant fraction of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) over time; the world has been spending 0.72 percent of its GDP for light for 300 years now. If there are other energy markets that show a constant percentage of GDP expenditure over time, Tsao doesn't know of them."

</comment><comment><USER6> Certain things are cheap in the rich world that are expensive in the 3rd world. Sewage, electricity, and water are so cheap in the 1st world, that we don't think about the cost.

The first time I saw 100% adoption of compact fluorescents was in Cambodia. They pay $.40/KWhr. That is insanely expensive (unless you live in Germany).

Lighting technology disproportionally benefits the poor rather than than the rich. Anyone that works on it is my hero. My family bought power for $.04 KW/hr, so I could study at night.

<comment><USER7> While Bangalore is not representative of India as a whole, the electricity prices are similar to global figures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm genuinely curious whether new homes will start wiring lighting for DC to accommodate all these new LED bulbs? I just don't have a good sense whether its more efficient to transform AC to DC at a central hub in the home to distribute to all rooms, or more efficient to do it at the bulb itself.

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, I'm looking to do exactly this in a new home (new to me, not newly constructed).

I'll soon be moving to a park home (a relatively-permanent mobile home) that is in need of a fair amount of renovation.

I'll be running all lighting, computers and the TV off 12v DV circuits powered by bank of vehicle batteries and where the batteries are charged from 12v solar panels.

<comment><USER4> Converting voltages is trivial with AC, how do you handle devices that require something other than 12v (lots of phones want 5, lots of laptops want 18) with a DC system?

<comment><USER9> I'll be fitting some 12v-based USB wall sockets, much like the type you can fit in a car. These can then provide power for phones.

Regarding computers, I've so far only considered my desktop. You can get ready made DC to DC ATX power supplies quite easily [1].

[1] [http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC](http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One problem with current popular LED bulbs:

They emit more blue light than incandescent bulbs [1]. If people light their households with LED lights at night, it might shift their circadian rhythms [2]. Screwed up circadian rhythms can have all sorts of negative health/productivity effects.

[1] [http://www.designingwithleds.com/measuring-light-quality- phi...](http://www.designingwithleds.com/measuring-light-quality-philips-cree- led-bulbs-spectrometer/) [2] [https://justgetflux.com/research.html](https://justgetflux.com/research.html)

<comment><USER11> I'll be trying my hand at some LED strip / arduino programming to build a dawn alarm that goes from dim red to bright white progressively. I have a Philips halogen dawn alarm which naturally goes from orange -> red as it ramps up, but unfortunately doesn't get quite as bright as I would like for that "wake up at the cabin" experience.

I'd love to see more applications of LEDs providing the right color temperature and intensity for the time of day, as well as more applications that avoid the bulb form factor. I'd love for my ceiling to emit light like the sky...

<comment><USER10> The best thing I've found so far are these lights meant for growing coral:

[http://www.maxspect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar...](http://www.maxspect.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20&Itemid=21&lang=en)

One of the models puts out UV, so be careful.

Message me (email in profile) if you want to chat!

<comment><USER11> Those look like a very polished product! In my case, I'm looking to take advantage of the availability of $15 for a 300 RGB LED strip, as well as for the challenge writing my own control logic with an arduino. The SAD wake-up alarm is more of a side-benefit.

<comment><USER10> I don't have any SAD issues, but I find that getting proper light in the morning helps stop me from going to bed too late.

I like your project! How many watts is the LED strip?

<comment><USER11> At full intensity, it draws 6a @ 12v, so 72 watts if my mental arithmetic is correct. With luck that will throw enough light to be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Exponential growth is awesome! However, I was curious about the maximum theoretical lumens per watt to determine when the growth will fall flat. A current LED bulb gives about 60 lumens per watt. While an ideal monochromatic light source could give 683.[1] So it looks like there is _only_ one order of magnitude left in efficiency gains.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy)

<comment><USER13> That 683 lumens per watt number is, as you say, for a monochromatic light. This is not useful for humans to see with[1]; the actual limit for human vision is about 300 lumens per watt[2]. That's an upper bound even ignoring losses, and some LEDs are around 70 now, so the remaining efficiency gains we can make seem limited to about 3x.

[1] [http://www.cool.conservation-us.org/byorg/us- doe/color_quali...](http://www.cool.conservation-us.org/byorg/us- doe/color_quality_of_white_leds.pdf)

[2] [http://phys.org/news202453100.html](http://phys.org/news202453100.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> He makes some dubious efficiency claims. It's true the colored LEDs have always been pretty efficient, but that's no use lighting your home. White LEDs have surpassed incandescent bulbs but still have a way to go to reach flourescent tubes and the grand-daddy of efficiency - gas discharge lamps.

One (the?) reason for low power levels is they generate so much heat and are difficult to cool. LEDs are still primarily heaters - useful in the winter.

<comment><USER15> I think you need to update your figures. High-end consumer luminaires have been coming in above 100 lm/watt _total_ system efficiency for at least a year or so now, and with CRI superior to fluorescents.

<comment><USER14> Great news. I guess efficiency is following a similar rapid growth to power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Several years ago I designed 1,500 W LED-based light source using extremely tightly packed LED's. Thermal management was a huge challenge. It took over three months of constantly running FEA thermal tests as well as physical tests to zero-in on an innovative approach to cooling the array. Crazy project. The surface of the emitter was measured at over 60,000 candelas per square meter. You simply could not look at the thing directly, it was really dangerous, almost like working with lasers.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit disappointed they didn't include a legend on the giant chart they put in the middle of the page.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why do I have to enable "whatsappsharing.com" in my NoScript filter to see the graph?

<comment><USER19> Because you're using a browser extension that breaks the web.</comment></comment>


How to name your Servers - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/1l5utg

<comment><USER2> The Python script used to generate a relevant MotD is nice, but I wonder how it compares to this Go implementation: [https://github.com/jhchen/ansize](https://github.com/jhchen/ansize)</comment>


Warren Buffett says Berkshire sold all its airline stocks due to the coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/warren-buffett-says-berkshire-sold-its-entire-position-in-airlines-because-of-the-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> Is this being greedy when others are fearful or fearful when others are greedy?

Seems like being fearful when others are fearful. Surely the market swing has already corrected for the over-valuation. Is this long term thinking on Berkshire's part? Do they think they know something the market doesn't?

<comment><USER3> You can't "correct" and price in a future where there is no certainty whatsoever.

There is no current model, no ability to predict or reason about to a sufficient degree of certainty, about the situation in the airline industry. You can't even talk about risk when the only thing you have here is essentially a gamble.

This is being reasonable when looking at long-term investments; there is no useful information to work with.

<comment><USER2> Then why isn't the price already zero for all stocks on the market?

Surely the same uncertainty applies to many or most of the companies Berkshire owns. Why haven't they fully divested their entire portfolio?

Restaurants are closed, why haven't they fully sold off Dairy Queen?

<comment><USER3> Selling off an asset also means that you're assuming its value will go down, which assumes some level of certainty over your position. This is not necessarily a safe assumption.

<comment><USER2> Right. Which leads us back to my original assertion, which was that it seems rash to be selling off all of your airline stock considering we know so little right now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free US ZIP Code Database as CSV - <AUTHOR> http://coolthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/04/free-us-zip-code-database-as-csv.html <comment><USER2> I have a better and more recent one, courtesy of yours truly (don't spread it around):

<http://therobert.org/stuff/misc/5-digit%20Commercial.csv>

7.7MB | February 2008

I need a database that shows the population in each zip code, too. If any good Samaritan can share, that would be great.

<comment><USER3> > don't spread it around Why not? Is it not public domain, or are you worried > about the load on your server, or what?

<comment><USER2> The latter. You're free to upload it elsewhere and spread it, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The google maps API also has pretty good geocoding, for free. You can give it a location, and it will tell you not just lat/lng, but also how specific that location is. (Is it a zip code? A city name? An intersection? A precise address?)

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know a good resource for searching within an X mile radius given a zipcode?

<comment><USER2> Download the database I posted in my other comment here, and try this SQL statement:

       SELECT z.ZIPcode, (sqrt((z.latitude-z2.latitude)*(z.latitude-z2.latitude)+(z.longtitude-z2.longtitude)*(z.longtitude-z2.longtitude)))) AS dist
       FROM `zip` AS `z`, `zip` AS `z2`
       WHERE `z2`.`ZIPcode = 'YOURZIPCODE'
       ORDER BY dist LIMIT 10

Might be faster if you do a query to get the lat and long for the ZIP code you need first, though. Hell, it would probably be fastest to skip the database all together and just import the data and loop the distance formula, recording the smallest distances as you go.</comment></comment>


Google Wing Launching US Drone Deliveries with FedEx, Walgreens - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1712200/google-wing-launching-us-drone-deliveries-with-fedex-walgreens/ <comment><USER2> Seeing the specs of Google Wing (backed by much more capital), I'm yet more impressed with Zipline drone.

Wing has about 10km round-trip (unclear if that's radius or total distance traveled), while Zipline has about 80km radius or 160km round-trip range. Wing has a speed of about 60mph (then slows to a hover for extending the package) while Zipline travels at 80mph.

And not just serving a small city of 20,000 but Rwanda, a nation of 12 million (and now much of Ghana, population of 28 million, and soon the state of Maharashtra in India with a population of over 100 million).

I really think the catapult and parachute approach is significantly more effective than the hover-and-deploy one is. There are some marginal advantages to hovering, but the drawbacks in range, efficiency, time, and annoyance to the neighbors outweigh them.

The advantages to hovering may be relevant in dense cities, but these are exactly the places which would not want lots of drones flying around everywhere (certainly not hovering like that).

Still, much safer than delivery vans and I hope Wing is successful.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't packages end up on your roof with a catapult and parachute approach?

<comment><USER4> You can pull certain tricks with ballistic delivery methods. A depressed trajectory (flatter profile, lower apogee) would give you the option of coming in through a window, with an additional benefit in that it would be harder to intercept the payload.

You would also need to limit this strategy to payloads that can withstand shock loads of multiple hundreds of G (soups and hard cheese, maybe even bread adequately packaged. may need a different method for floral deliveries).

Proof of concept shouldn't be too difficult, most of the tech already exists (Raytheon and Northop-Grumman have had a handle on it for decades). DHS might not be too amused, however.

<comment> King-Aaron > would give you the option of coming in through a window

You're thinking too small. I want my uber eats delivery to land directly on the plate in my cupboard before I even set it on the table. Please provide appropriate ballistic modelling for this thankyou

<comment><USER5> I'd pay for additional convenience of food flying directly into my mouth.

<comment><USER6> Move fast, break teeth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every drone is going to record everything using multiple cameras and send them to their backend. That is quiet disconcerting. There are no legally set paths for the drones so they are free to go everywhere and see everything. Amazon and Google are probably salivating more at the prospects of getting these videos than the actual delivery itself. I am concerned about startups in the bay and even more so about companies from China and elsewhere that create these drones. At least with Google and Amazon we can cry foul and pressure them into not doing somethings. With the rest of the ecosystem its a free for all.

<comment><USER8> You are aware aerial photography is legal and common?

<comment><USER9> Right but what happens when you have coverage that is refreshed every hour or even less? You then have another surveillance network, one which is very hard to opt out of

<comment><USER10> I think we're way past that point already. Everyone with a phone already has their location tracked at least by their phone company. You might've even given it away to other companies willingly: [https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline).

I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. We got better traffic jam maps. And maybe a handful of criminals who forgot to leave their phone at home got caught.

I think this is one of those things that people growing up with the tech won't think anything of it (mom wants to always know your location) but old geezers will reminisce of a time where we still had to call a landline and talk a friend's parents first to see if they are home.

<comment><USER11> > I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech.

Honestly the last time I saw a drone, the most annoying thing about it was its noise. I can't imagine them buzzing around all the time simply because of that.

<comment><USER12> You get at least as much noise from living in a city.

<comment><USER13> Have you heard a drone? even tiny ones are loud as shit. some guy in my neighborhood flies his drone occasionally and it's super annoying. I can't imagine how annoying these giant drones delivering packages will be.

<comment><USER12> Have you heard a siren? They're intended to be loud.

<comment><USER11> > Have you heard a siren? They're intended to be loud.

They're also intended to do things like saving people's lives, not delivering their Amazon orders.

<comment><USER12> Ambulance and fire engine sirens; police not so much. But that really has no bearing on how loud they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My one prediction for the future: drone delivery mini platforms next to windows (with 2d "barcodes" printed on top) will be the most visible sign of the 20s -- comparable to satellite dishes in the 90s

<comment><USER15> It's more likely you'll have centralized drone delivery hubs - i.e. one place in your apartment building - rather than every window or patio having a delivery spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If drone delivery takes off, I'm curious how weather will impact the sector. E.g. One week drones deliver 60% of goods in a city, but the next one rains all week with wind and storms - suddenly demand for human deliverypeople spikes.

<comment><USER17> Currently they will be sticking to daylight hours and calm enough weather. Also due to the valley here, they will have to worry about days with low clouds due to temperature inversions.

I see drones as one of the potential solutions to last mile delivery, co- existing with other technologies.

<comment><USER16> So they'll need a bunch of on-demand, part-time delivery partners willing to take up the slack when drones can't fly? Sounds like they'll still need to employ (if indirectly) enough humans to meet peak demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So in the pic it carries one package?

So the sky is going to be littered with drones delivering packages in ten to 20 years? Present day that seems ridiculous and unattractive!

<comment><USER19> I'm sure they said the same things about planes and cars some 100 years ago.

<comment><USER20> They may not have been wrong about cars. Probably not planes either for people living near takeoff/landing flight paths...

<comment><USER21> I lived under the flight paths near LAX for awhile. It was incessant and obvious, all the time. Aircraft engines are hard to ignore and they would rattle the windows (which were sound resistant). One of my goals in life is to never live somewhere like that again. It isn't bad until you live under a major one, then you realize it can be a constantly present annoyance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _Walgreens said in a release that 78% of the US population lives within 5 > miles of one of its stores_

Perhaps, but I imagine a decent chunk of these folks are in places like NYC, which probably won't see drone delivery from retail Walgreens stores. I wonder what percent of the population lives within 5 miles of a suburban Walgreens, which might conceivably be able to offer drone-based delivery.

</comment><comment><USER23> I hate the idea of polluting the open air with the noise and visual pollution of drones, though I guess we're killing off the birds so we need something to replace them so why not a drone delivering an impulse purchase of chapstick.

How utterly depressing.

</comment><comment><USER24> Multiroters seem like such an inefficient way to do this, why is everyone doing that rather than a fixed wing aircraft? I know in the mid 20th century some mail was delivered this way using manually piloted aircraft and very little ground crew (none had to be active when the package was picked up or dropped off.)

<comment><USER25> The drone needs to land to deliver the package. Most consumers don't have airstrips in their front yard.

<comment><USER26> according to the link the Wing drone doesn't land. It hovers and lowers the package by winch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The system is pretty neat - here's a video of it in action in Canberra (Australia) earlier this year:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKErmCN78S8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKErmCN78S8)

<comment><USER28> "Google-affiliated drone delivery service found to be exceeding noise limits"

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/canberra-delivery- dro...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/canberra-delivery-drone-noise- levels-revealed/11503262)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> heh heh 'pilot program'

<comment><USER30> as an investor I bet Wing will "soar"

<comment><USER31> This service is really gonna take off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mmm... probably cancelled in two years.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is anyone selling an anti-drone drone yet?

</comment><comment><USER34> Why aren't they using ducted fans? I thought they're more efficient than naked props and they certainly look more safe.

<comment><USER17> Ducted fans pointed downward are not particularly good for forward flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The connotations of "drone" are not great. (The next word in the bi-gram would be "strike"...) Maybe we can go back to "UAV" or pick another term for non- militarized, commercial delivery.

<comment><USER36> > The connotations of "drone" are not great. (The next word in the bi-gram > would be "strike"...) Maybe we can go back to "UAV" or pick another term for > non-militarized, commercial delivery.

You have your connotations backwards. You'll see no consumer drones marketed as UAVs, but plenty of military drones are called that.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I can see that. Too bad because "drone" also has the connotation of "dumb" or "slave", which is the opposite of what you want an autonomous vehicle to be that's sharing your airspace. (It makes more sense in the remotely-piloted case, as in the military versions.) But words take on their own lives, and I guess there are now "drones".

<comment><USER2> Drones must fly below 400 feet and thus are not sharing the airspace with crewed vehicles (which fly above 500 feet).

<comment><USER37> Depends:

> Maximum altitude of 400 feet above ground level (AGL) or, if higher than 400 > feet AGL, remain within 400 feet of a structure.

You can also apply for a waiver.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Coronavirus is spreading fast in US states that may reopen soon, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-spread-states-reopening/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=87288486 <comment><USER2> It's kind of mind blowing to me that these states are wanting to reopen so soon.

The USA currently has 158 deaths per million population and no national lockdown. Britain has 299 - it started lockdown on the 29th March and is still locked down. Spain has 490 and Italy has 430 deaths per million, they entered lockdown on the 14th and 9th of march respectively.

Given this information why should we believe that large parts of the USA are not still on the upward curve?

All data from: [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#news](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#news)

Last updated: April 25, 2020, 14:58 GMT</comment>


Ask HN: Is accepting bitcoins as payment putting a target on your back? - <AUTHOR>

If I wanted to start using bitcoins as a currency I could either take profits from my SaaS and use them to purchase bitcoins or start taking bitcoins as payment for my SaaS. The later sounds preferable as it would take out exchange costs (assuming I still get some people paying cash to cover my vendors that don't accept bitcoins).
My hesitation is that it seems that accepting bitcoins for payments is going to lead to additional (negative) attention from hackers. And if the people whose business it is to protect bitcoins can't do it then what chance do the rest of us have?
Basically, is accepting bitcoins for payment more trouble than it is worth? <comment><USER2> Yes. If it's not a valuable USP for your business then it's not worth getting into bitcoins at this stage; no-one's going to avoid a site because it doesn't take bitcoins, and they're (naturally) more difficult to get right than more mature forms of payment.</comment>


Foxconn Plans American Expansion as Clients Seek Made in U.S.A. - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-06/foxconn-plans-american-expansion-as-clients-seek-made-in-u-dot-s-dot-a-dot <comment><USER2> Are they bringing back health care, pensions, and a 40 hour work week with them?

<comment><USER3> This is to the point. To me its interesting as an outsider (Australian/European) to see arguments over social welfare and working conditions happening between America (which generally prides itself on being 'not like those socialists in Europe/Canada/etc.') and China (still officially Communist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That would be an interesting twist: made in U.S.A. by a Chinese company.

<comment><USER5> Technically speaking (and not trying to nitpick), it would be a Taiwanese company (the ROC as distinct from the PRC), but yes, I definitely do see the irony.

<comment><USER4> Point taken; I was thinking of it as a Chinese company because of their high- profile plants in China but it is actually Taiwanese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry if I'm missing something but... how do you scroll down that page? The scroll bar seems to have been disabled for goodness-knows-what-reason. I'm having to just scroll down by scrolling all the text and maneuvering my way down... but that hardly seems like an elegant and proper way to scroll down.

<comment><USER7> In what browser. There's scroll bar in Safari 6/Mac. And Safari's "Reader" feature also seems to scroll it properly.

<comment><USER6> In Chrome.

But I seem to have gotten it now by messing around with the page. Here, a screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/DirT2.jpg> (yes, I do browse the web with pages enlarged -- 1080p on a 15" laptop results in text being too small for my eyes to comfortably read)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everyone was happy with 'Made in China' or 'Assembled in China' This is nothing but moving out from China.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sure the Waltons would appreciate no longer being the poster children for employee mistreatment.</comment>


Will Amazon have 1M employees at the end of 2020? - <AUTHOR> Amazon had 150,000 employees at the end of 2014.
It had 341,000 people at the end of 2016.
It had 647,500 people at the end of 2018.
Will it have 1,000,000 employees at the end of 2020? Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> Depends on how many they PIP by February 1 2020 - especially if they have a bad quarter and decide to PIP in order to recapture RSU's</comment>


Ask HN: How did you incorporate your company? - <AUTHOR> How did you incorporate your company?
Was it stressful?
In which state did you incorporate?
I'm thinking about incorporating in 2019 (why I ask). <comment><USER2> I did two recently with Stripe/Atlas. All the ones before that with a local lawyer. Stripe was awesome and highly recommend. We spent another chunk to get a really nice operating agreement to our needs on other, but the lawyers said their default one wasn't bad.

No stress at all. Why would it be stressful?

Deleware for the recent two. Colorado and Arkansas for others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for this</comment></comment>


Octazen: What The Heck Did Facebook Just Buy Exactly, And Why? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/19/octazen-what-the-heck-did-facebook-just-buy-exactly-and-why/ <comment><USER2> Given the cloak-and-dagger and "redeployment" line, my guess would be that Octazen is going to be part of an anti-scraping team at Facebook to avoid Facebook getting "Octazen'd" as much as possible.

<comment><USER3> Hah, that, or they just scraped a ton of fb data and threatned to start selling it.

<comment><USER4> Rapleaf already does that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I perma-deleted my Facebook account last week.

Whatever the motivation of this acquisition, Facebook simply doesn't appear to do enough to look after my privacy, especially given the personal and sometimes sensitive nature of the data they are handling.

The notion that they want to expand into online payments and banking is laughable without a dramatic rethink of their approach to data.

For a company which built their reputation on protecting their users' privacy to follow the path it has is tantamount to business suicide.

<comment><USER6> You think facebook actually deleted your information?

<comment><USER7> When you cancel the account, they just mark it as cancelled. Your login still works, and if you _do_ log back in, it reactivates everything.

<comment><USER8> There's also a perma-delete a couple of levels deep in the help system that will deactivate your account forever. (Like deactivation, it probably doesn't delete anything, though.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I once set my facebook email as a super old hotmail address all the way back from high school. I wanted all the notification spam sent to an email I would never check. I later get a "suggestion" to friend a very random person with a vaguely familiar name who I have 0 mutual friends with.

The name was an alumini of a college I didn't go to, who I once emailed to setup an admissions interview with.

Facebook clearly has already been scraping email headers (or at least had an agreement with microsoft to do so).

<comment><USER10> More likely, _that_ person just kept _your_ old email around around in their address book, and then mass imported it into facebook when they joined.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I can confirm Facebook does this. When you import your email address book, Facebook stores it forever.

I don't know if they keep your credentials around, too, and periodically refresh their data. That'd be doubly invasive, but it wouldn't surprise me. :)

<comment><USER9> that would make sense. because the timing happened when I switched it to the ancient hotmail address, it could have his imported data still stored and rechecked to find my old email where it hadnt before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Facebook only supported 3 or 4 import formats, but Octazen supports at least 21 different services. Maybe they wanted the technology as well as the people who know how to use the technology? Likely cheaper and faster than getting 3 to 4 engineers on the task and then waiting 6 months.

<comment><USER4> I doubt Facebook cares about importing address book from N additional email services -- they're growing at a rate of like 300-500k new users per day, and accelerating.

So it seems unlikely that was the driving rationale behind the acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just to point others, facebook is preparing for Project Titan. [http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/facebooks-project-titan- a-f...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/05/facebooks-project-titan-a-full- featured-webmail-product/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Octazen is (was?) essentially a Facebook Connect competitor and since they were acquired several of their core services have been disconnected.

This reads to me as a strategy about whittling the market to one option, Facebook's, and not much else.

<comment><USER14> I don't think thats it, Octazen wasn't really a facebook connect competitor at all. They sold scraping scripts that let you login and grab data.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080619054335/http://www.octazen...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080619054335/http://www.octazen.com/)

<comment><USER4> The technical specs are significantly different, but they solve a large, overlapping set of distribution problems.

If you want to build a viral app/game/whatever you have to pick your platform. Traditionally, if you did it on the web, you'd use something like Octazen to download address books and send invites.

That's how almost every non-FB viral startup bootstrapped itself, including Facebook!

So Facebook just made it a LOT harder to build something viral without using Platform or Connect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've used Octazen's products in the past, and they make some solid libraries that are easy to incorporate, particular for things like address importation.

<comment><USER16> Does their software violate terms of services for the services they scrape? I don't particular care if they do, just that it would seem like a really sketchy acquisition for a company like Facebook which already drawn privacy- related criticism

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to see a review and comparison of contact importer services, nothing the white hats, black hats, and gray hats.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occams_razor>

</comment><comment><USER19> Can anyone suggest an alternative high-quality contact importer?

<comment><USER20> <http://www.improsys.com> <http://www.cloudsponge.com> <http://openinviter.com></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you guys use to check browser compatibility - <AUTHOR>

What do you guys use to check browser comp? Is there any software/plug-ins out there that work? Do you guys just do it the old fashion way? We're struggling with it (www.hangtrend.com)Advice? Thanks Val <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, I just have a few different virtual machines with Windows XP (1 unpatched (IE6) and 1 patched (IE7)). I run Windows 7 with IE9 (if it works in IE7 and IE9, its a safe bet that it works in IE8). I also have Firefox and Chrome installed. If it works in Chrome, it (should) work in Safari since they both use Webkit. Lastly, I have 1 older version of firefox installed on one of my VMs (Firefox 3) because that is what my job still uses.

Anyway, it sucks. That's one of the reasons why being a web developer is grueling work, especially when working with older versions of IE. At this point, I pretty much just do a check to see if they are using a browser that has been released in the last 5 years. If they aren't, I display a warning (not an error) and say that the website might not function properly.

This can be a useful website though, if you are purely looking for visual compatibility: <http://browsershots.org/>

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Raikia,

Thanks for the comment; It's so time consuming to have to have so many different builds/specs to check out the compatibility. Sounds like a start-up in the making. The browsershots.org site is really cool; great for a quick visual spot check. Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I recently started using <http://www.browserstack.com/> , after finding out that my web app did not work properly with touch devices (e.g. the iPad). They let you your any browser and OS you can think of (including iPad Safari), and surprisingly, the latency is actually not that bad (they're basically giving you a remote desktop by streaming video).

If you want to Do It Right™, and have the time to set it up, I think the best thing to do is to set up a Selenium (<http://seleniumhq.org/>) grid that has either VMs are standalone machines running all the browsers that you want to support. Then you can write tests that automatically verify that important features work everywhere. This doesn't _completely_ obviate manual QA testing, but it can help a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Browserstack seems really cool, we'll check it out; thanks humbledrone

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This script will setup vm's for ie 6-9 under virtualbox. <https://github.com/xdissent/ievms>

Very handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks roto; surely speeds up the process

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm using ABetterBrowser on CloudFlare.

Code here : <https://github.com/xPaw/CF-ABetterBrowser>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up vhf, we'll look into it</comment></comment>


PIA Private Internet Access VPN Executives Give Their Side of the Story [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va9vbM4EXbM <comment><USER2> Direct link to the unlisted interview video rather than the post-discussion: [https://discordapp.com/invite/010JCPblJTh3d6CXe](https://discordapp.com/invite/010JCPblJTh3d6CXe)</comment>


2014 Warmest Year on Record, NOAA - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/2014/12

<comment><USER2> Vegas odds on 2015 topping it are still pretty good, and now with a Republican majority in both House and Senate, a party built on a platform of flat-out denial, we're pretty screwed.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I add a Q&A section to my blog? [Poll] - <AUTHOR> http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=54846fa1e4b05fb4165d9e94

<comment><USER2> i didn't bother to vote cuz i had no idea -- looking at that little box in the middle of the screen -- cuz i was too distracted by the lousy user interface and the lack of context.

however, i did cut and paste the url to look at your site and to answer your question, it depends. this is a corporate blog. it has to serve some purpose other than a cool place for ios-aficionados to hang out. and you have to consider, do you want genuine feedback from your users; do you want them to engage; and are you prepared to listen to and act on opinions you (as a company) may not share or want to hear. cuz it not, don't go there. you'll be opening up a big can of worms.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I as a layman get involved with speech recognition? - <AUTHOR>

It seems apparent that speech recognition will be pretty pervasive in a lot of future technologies. How do I get involved? <comment><USER2> [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22open+source+speech+recogn...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22open+source+speech+recognition%22)

[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search- alias%3D...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search- alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=speech+recognition)

<http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/>

<http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/>

<http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/wiki/research/>

[http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+speech+recognition/0/1/...](http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all:+AND+speech+recognition/0/1/0/all/0/1)

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/search?q=speech+recognition&...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/search?q=speech+recognition&submit=Search&sort=rlv&t=doc)

I'd start by playing with Sphinx. It's a pre-made library that will let you get started with speech reco at an application level. If you just want to build apps that use speech recognition, it might be all you need. If you want to do research into cutting edge speech recognition technologies, dig into the papers and stuff on arxiv and citeseer, and follow that "research" link from the Sphinx wiki.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to get up and running in a SaaS kind-of-way, check out Tropo.com. Great developer support.</comment>


Byte Magazine Volume 20 Number 09: 20 Years - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1995-09 <comment><USER2> And to think that issue is almost 20 years old...and I remember it, almost every article and ad.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just checked, and Jerry Pournelle is still around:

[http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/](http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/)

All those columns about him messing around to get his machines to work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is this posted?

Here's PC Magazine from 1980s to 2000s.

[http://books.google.com/books/about/PC_Mag.html?id=w_OhaFDeP...](http://books.google.com/books/about/PC_Mag.html?id=w_OhaFDePS4C)

<comment><USER5> Maybe something related to Windows 95?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I miss you Byte Magazine. You were great.</comment>


Ask: iOS question - border that rotates with view but doesn't scale with it? - <AUTHOR>

I am a long time web developer. Started developing for ios. I've created a view. The user can rotate, scale and move it. My question is, how do I attach a border to it in such a way that the border will rotate with the view, but won't scale with it?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> Consider using StackOverflow for questions like this...there's a substantial number of iOS devs who hang around there (myself included!) - plus it's far more likely somebody else with the same problem will stumble upon your question and spread the knowledge.

With regards to your specific question, if you use the various border properties of the underlying `CALayer` (`borderColor`, `borderWidth`, etc) and scale the view by changing its bounds the border will retain the same width as before. You can also scale a view by transforming it, but that's slightly different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for your response. Specifically it seems as though using the transformations will cause my border to scale as well. And since I am using UIPinchGestureRecognizers, manipulating the CALayer's width and height properties seems somewhat conter productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd probably use 2 different views, one for the view you are manipulating and 1 for the border. You can apply the same rotation transforms to both views but only apply the scale transforms to the main view.</comment>


Gym Selfies a Sign of Tough Times for the Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-15/gym-selfies-a-sign-of-tough-times-for-the-economy <comment><USER2> _The research suggests that since 2008, there has been "an empirically observable rise in young men sharing images of their worked-out bodies on social media platforms."_

Because social media was still relatively new -- and image sharing barely a thing, back then?

 _He also interviewed a handful of young gym-going subjects and scoured the use of fitness-related hashtags on popular social media site Instagram, finding that a "large [proportion] of these are images of men displaying their muscular bodies."_

That sounds really rigorous. Where can I get a job doing "research" like this?

<comment><USER3> This is actually pretty rigorous for the social sciences. When I was an academic (I was in the School of Pharmacy) I used to see these "qualitative" studies all the time by our students collaborating with the social scientists in other departments. These studies all consisted of unstructured interviews of a half dozen people with no clear hypothesis.

The first time I was asked to mark a thesis writing up one of these studies I failed it. The other two markers both gave it an A. I was overruled and never invited to mark a similar thesis again. I at least tried to stop this rot :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The reason, according to study author and University of East Anglia lecturer > Jamie Hakim, is an erosion of "traditional routes to success and power" > typically supplied through rewarding employment.

...or smartphones got cheaper, or going to the gym became more common, or people just discovered instagram, or...

jumping to conclusions are we?</comment>


Lunch and dinner with Julian Assange, in prison - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.edu.au/lunch-and-dinner-with-julian-assange-in-prison-12234

<comment><USER2> FTA:

"I'd been told he might be heavy weather. Fame is a terrible burden, and understandably the famous must find ways of dealing with sycophants, detractors and intruders."

Well he certainly had to deal with a sycophant that day.

"Julian Assange could be described as the Tom Paine of the early 21st century."

Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER3> He is not in prison. He is not "the most wanted man in the world". I stopped reading at that point.

<comment><USER4> Right. The comments on the page are pretty much tearing the article apart.

<comment><USER5> Actually, no. Comments are all over the place, some are in favor of him, some are against him.

And those defending him have some valid points - If he did agree to go to Sweden for interrogation/trial (of a crime committed in Sweden) under the condition for Sweden to not extradite him to US, why haven't they accepted that deal? This is a local matter, right? Unless they want to ship him over overseas.

<comment><USER2> To be fair to the Swedish government, they can't offer a guarantee like this. Assange and his lawyers are taking advantage of this fact.

According to Swedish law, any application that comes in in the future has to be dealt with in court.

The government can't give guarantees that it will ignore the law in some hypothetical future situation. After all, the US hasn't asked for his extradition (yet).

<comment><USER5> Hm, perhaps, but what about other options? What about interviewing him in embassy in person or via Skype? Is there a reason that would be impossible for Swedish government?

<comment><USER2> No, I absolutely agree that would be a sensible and possible option, and I've read that the Swedish police have done it before in other recent cases.

I've not heard any compelling explanations why this hasn't been attempted, though IMO, Assange would be a fool to agree to it -- guilty or innocent.

On the other hand, there's little doubt that the attempted extradition procedure has correctly followed current UK law: it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and he was represented by absolutely top-class lawyers. So Sweden has the right to do what they're doing.

People have been extradited from the UK on 'European Arrest Warrants' for crimes such as drink-driving and theft of a piglet, with no prima facie evidence required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article does feel a little over done, but both sides of Australian politics seem to care only about the polls. It would be nice if they actually got something constructive done. Assange would be a nice change.</comment>


Reveal: Manage Your Facebook and Instagram Ad Campaigns from Slack - <AUTHOR> First ads management chatbot for Slack, Facebook, Instagram that warns marketers when they lose money on ads. Featured on ProductHunt!
For instance, you advertize a mobile app and you don't want to spend more than $3 on each install – RevealBot alerts you immediately, saying "Cost Per Install is greater than $3" when your CPI exceeds your maximum limit and will offer to pause an inefficient campaign right within that alert message. RevealBot can also provide instant access to key metrics like CTR, Impressions, Costs for each campaign, advert set or ad. You can just ask the bot "show Black Friday campaign" or "show Fall Sale ad sets from last week" to pull that data immediately and take necessary action using in-message buttons.
The plan is also to integrate with Google AdWords, Bing, LinkedIn and Twitter Ads and have the bot in Skype, HipChat, Facebook's Workplace and the upcoming corporate messenger by Microsoft. Reveal bot will compare ad efficiency for each platform and give a personal suggestion of the most efficient marketing channel to invest in. The upcoming machine learning algorithm will also allow Reveal bot to automatically identify inefficient ads, alert users about them and recommend actions one needs to take. By using NLP, Machine Learning and conversational interface RevealBot can provide the most accurate, relevant and personalized data for marketers. And the combination of data from different ad platforms allows RevealBot to analyze all marketing channels and show the full picture of a company's marketing efficiency by just asking a single question. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://revealbot.com](https://revealbot.com)</comment>


Show HN: I made an extension to redact wrongthink words to censor your internet. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago-corp/redacted <comment><AUTHOR> There's issue about with newlines being replaced with spaces. This is an issue in areas that use white space pre style.</comment>


Fossil find suggests humans spread to Asia long before they got to Europe - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/our-fossil-find-suggests-humans-spread-to-asia-way-before-they-got-to-europe-49163 <comment><USER2> The key part seems to be that Homo S. avoided Europe during the better part of the last ice age, while the Neanderthals lived there (but the Neanderthals didn't live in Asia).

</comment><comment><USER3> Url changed from [http://gizmodo.com/the-first-humans-moved-from-africa-to- chi...](http://gizmodo.com/the-first-humans-moved-from-africa-to-china-not- europ-1736666383), which points to this.</comment>


Fair Redistricting.  - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/fair_redistrict.html <comment><AUTHOR> This talk was really good. I think O'Reilly is right on this point:"it's fairly naive to think that our representatives want the process to be fair"

Other interesting tech developments in government I'd like to see:

1) Constant & open surveillance of government employees, to the extent that it doesn't violate privacy. Justin.tv goes to Washington.

2) Direct democracy with online voting. Security is paramount.

3) Receipts for my tax bill. I want a big list of what I paid for. Put it online and allow users to up & down mod things they want more/less of.</comment>


Ask HN: Ufuwbcquasdwyyctawdw - <AUTHOR> Miles & More, Lufthansa's frequent flyer program, will often render the text "ufuwbcquasdwyyctawdw" in various places on their site and in different markup. Does anybody know why they might be doing that?<p>https://www.google.com/search?q=ufuwbcquasdwyyctawdw <comment><USER2> Could be useful in catching copy/paste phishing attacks.

Perhaps relevant: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you</comment></comment>


Facebook Adds Contextual Sharing via New groups feature  - <AUTHOR> http://facebook.com/groups

<comment><AUTHOR> was just talking about this on HN the other day: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1691492>

it's clear that contextual sharing is the feature of social networking, but I underestimated facebook's ability to implement such a drastic feature so elegantly (and quickly)

<comment><USER2> Quickly? As in _"it only took 6 years to get around to it"?_

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. Well, even though this mimics real social groups much more closely than social networking v1.0, I don't think the issue had become readily apparent until recently (as evidenced by the number of products that have appeared in the past 3-6 months including Groupme (betaworks), CollegeOnly (funded by Peter Thiel), Google Me, Frid.ge (YC '10), Diaspora, etc.)</comment></comment></comment>


How T-Mobile wanted to change itself but ended up changing the wireless industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/12/how-bellevues-t-mobile-changed-the-industry.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bizj_seattle+%28Seattle+-+Puget+Sound+Business+Journal%29 <comment><USER2> The real trump card, out of T-Mobile's many offerings, is the free international roaming for texting and data usage. No other U.S. carrier offers anything nearly as good on that front. To compare:

T-Mobile: [http://www.t-mobile.com/optional- services/roaming.html](http://www.t-mobile.com/optional-services/roaming.html) (Free texting, free 2G data in 140 countries, calls 20 cents per minute, 3G data available for a fee; covers every continent except Antartica.)

Sprint: [http://www.sprint.com/landings/international-value- roaming/](http://www.sprint.com/landings/international-value-roaming/) (Gets closest; free roaming in 64 countries and similar price plan, but there are significant gaps: it does not cover most of Europe or Asia, and Africa and the Middle East are notable dead zones)

Verizon: [http://www.verizonwireless.com/landingpages/international- tr...](http://www.verizonwireless.com/landingpages/international-travel/) ($10 day passes, $25 monthly plan that does not include free texting, calls $1.79 a minute, only 100 megs of data)

AT&T: [https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/international/roaming.html](https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/international/roaming.html) (Cheapest plan $30, only includes 120 megs of data, calls still $1 per minute)

The company took its biggest advantage over every other U.S. carrier—its affiliation with a large international mobile conglomerate—and leveraged that into something no other carrier could pull off to the same level of coverage. A brilliant move on their part.

I now make a point of recommending people switch to T-Mobile before making a big international trip.

<comment><USER3> Google Fi offers basically the same thing as T-Mobile – free texting, data at the same rate you pay in the US, voice for 20 cents per minute.

[https://fi.google.com/about/rates/](https://fi.google.com/about/rates/)

<comment><USER2> Good to know. I imagine that might be due to the fact it works on T-Mobile and Sprint networks is probably one reason for that. I looked into Google Fi and found that I got a better deal through TMo for the amount of data I use, but I think that's definitely a case of YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked for TMo in the pre-Legere era. About 8 years ago.

The climate was toxic. IT was just a cost center. We had multi year waterfall death march projects.

I eventually resigned after most of the work was pushed to offshore contractors, the onshore teams gutted, and those that remain responsible for rewriting the crap the offshore teams produced.

I ran into a old friend who is still there recently, and I was surprised to find out that despite the huge public changes under Legere, IT was still a huge mess with the same leaders pushing most of the work offshore.

<comment><USER5> You have my sympathies, but having worked at several, I'd be surprised to find an American phone company where IT _didn 't_ display those pathologies. The environment is so dominated by regulation and has been for so long that executives can't _imagine_ IT being other than a cost center, and honestly I don't think they're wrong. Telecom profits are pursued through investment, marketing, and lobbying. Look at all the work Google has done to route around this industry -- if there were a functioning market in which numerous providers had to appeal to customers, little of that would have been necessary.

There is good engineering in telecom, _inside the switches_ , which are purchased from outside vendors.

<comment><USER6> All mobile phone providers in the us are more-or-less managed by the US government indirectly through FCC spectrum auction rules (and operating rules) and FTC/SEC monopoly regulation.

<comment><USER5> You've identified one link in the chain. Why not consider the management of the FCC by the Daughters Bell via lobbyists and the revolving door? (The SEC and FTC are captured by different industries.) They all dearly love extant USA spectrum policy, because they know that without it they would cease to exist in a few short years. The way to thrive without pleasing customers, is to write the rules that keep real competition out.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. There's a kind of 'iron polygon' that is composed of the FCC, media corps, content corps, telecom corps, cable corps, satellite corps, lobbyists, Congressional patronage, and federal and state civil servants with agendas. Each node wields power over and/or shares power with other nodes. Promotion is from within. The unifying principle of the polygon is to plan the telecommunications industry in such a fashion that the polygon remains on top.

This 'organization' has no customer service line, and the existing cell-phone companies essentially work as oligopolistic - and profitable - vassals of the polygon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was a loyal T-Mobile customer for 12 years, until I went to the apple store and paid full price for a pair of unlocked iphones. After a few weeks I got a letter from T-Mobile saying that they had taken out a loan in my name to pay for the phone I had just paid for in full. I never got the whole story about how this was even possible, but there are clearly very scammy people somewhere in the management chain at T-Mobile.

I went to Verizon and got more data for less money, and since I had an Iphone 6 it was fully portable to Verizon.

<comment><USER7> I think you were too hasty at assuming malicious intentions. Sounds like it was an honest mistake that the person checking you out made or some sort of glitch. It could even be related to the data breach they've had through Experian lately.

<comment><USER6> And in a related point, they refused to take the loan off of my account until I went to the apple store and had the manager swear to them that I had paid in full (even though it's not possible to buy an iphone on 'loan' though apple/tmobile). When the apple rep who was helping asked the tmobile rep how it was even possible for this to happen, the tmobile guy told him 'we won't tell you how this happened' \- didn't sound like an 'honest mistake' to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Indeed, it almost seems like loathing of the customer is no longer considered a good business plan.

I'm surprised it took this long.

</comment><comment><USER9> I find it amusing how a company that was owned by a state and had a monopoly in one of the biggest consumer markets only 20 years ago, is now treated like an underdog in the US.

In Germany it is the other way around: T-Mobile recently lost the leading position to Telefonica from Spain, which is called O2 in Germany, after several mergers.

<comment><USER10> It's an underdog in the US because it doesn't have the infatructure that at&t and verizon do.

t-mobile is usually the better value but doesn't have the towers and signal strength

mvnos are changing the value part though, you can get verizon's towers and signal strength without paying verizon prices, it's just the average consumer has no clue

<comment><USER11> Pre-paid plans seemed to have started their lives as a huge ripoff, and I think they still have that stigma. But MVNOs have made them an amazing value now, and T-Mobile has helped a ton too. Even buying directly from the other big three providers, the cost has come way down.

I wasn't aware of any Verizon MVNOs though, it seemed like they all went away or got bought up. Mind sharing which are available?

<comment><USER12> i did a survey of low-cost MVNOs over the xmas break, focused on data-centric plans that cost approximately $10 per month (i use google voice). there's also a link to the full list on wikipedia, which you can sort by carrier

[http://blog.nqzero.com/2015/12/at-mvno-pay-as-you-go-data- pl...](http://blog.nqzero.com/2015/12/at-mvno-pay-as-you-go-data-plans.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Customers traditionally purchased phones with big subsidiaries from wireless carriers_

Egregious editing for a news organization.

<comment><USER14> How should it have been phrased?

<comment><USER15> Subsidies, not "subsidiaries." The latter is a business term for an entity owned by another entity (Skype, A.G. is a subsidiary of Microsoft, for example).</comment></comment></comment>


Stop Trying to Protect Your Business Ideas  - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/stop-trying-to-protect-your-business-ideas/?hp

<comment><USER2> The last point is the one it took me the longest to understand. Telling everyone who will listen about your business ideas (not just prospective clients) helps you to anticipate common objections, understand which aspects of it are easiest to explain/understand, which aspects of it are most valuable (focus on those), and iterate towards improvement before even getting a single user. It happens to also be excellent sales practice, but _don't treat these conversations like sales calls_.

(The process requires reading between the lines a bit because people don't always know what they really want or don't know how to explain it.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This could also translate to "Stop Trying to Come Up with New Ideas." As I have heard mentioned before, why try to invent a new market? Instead, find an existing market where you can do a better job than the existing players or carve out a unique niche.</comment>


OCaml Users and Developers Workshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.syslog.cl.cam.ac.uk/2014/09/05/ocaml-2014/

<comment><USER2> Can someone kick the webserver back to life? I hope it's not running MirageOS ...

<comment><USER3> Wordpress, sadly :-)

<comment><USER4> More dogfooding required!</comment></comment></comment>


A remembrance of Aaron Swartz (March 12th) - <AUTHOR> http://www.media.mit.edu/events/2013/03/12/memory-inspiration-remembrance-aaron-swartz

<comment><USER2> This is not an "MIT event". This is an event hosted by the MIT Media Lab. That equates to 40 faculty and senior research staff, 75 "other staff" that support it, and ~140 students. So let us laud them for their efforts and consideration, and properly direct any ire toward the MIT administration where it belongs.

<comment><USER3> The Abelson report is due, let's see if the MIT administration attempts to steal thunder by releasing it that day (or shortly before):

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57565473-38/mit-review- int...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57565473-38/mit-review-into-aaron- swartzs-death-complete-in-a-few-weeks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "From memory to inspiration"? I find this mildly offensive to be an MIT event. How about naming it: "An apology too late: MIT recognizes Aaron Swartz"

<comment><USER5> Since his gf is a keynote speaker, and his father works for the MIT Media Lab, I think they have every right to hold a public memorial. This is not MIT trying to make up for their mistakes after the fact.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The event is free and open to the public.

Some additional information- The Facebook event page: <https://www.facebook.com/events/318892888214473/>

Taren's blog: [http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/44649373978/mit-boston- memori...](http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/44649373978/mit-boston-memorial- event-march-12-4pm)

</comment><comment><USER6> It would be marvelous if someone could figure out a way to stream the event, for those of us who are unable to attend.

<comment><USER7> There will be video of the event posted on youtube afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The timing of this is a little...bizarre. Not in a "there must be a conspiracy" way, but...why two months later (and not even on the second month anniversary, which would be Jan. 11)?

I guess the week-after, month-after, year-after anniversaries are, in the scheme of time, are arbitrary periods of time as well, but this just seems late, although it comes at a time when major retrospectives on Aaron and his life continue to be published (most notably in the New Yorker this week)

<comment><USER9> MIT is going to catch shit no matter their move here. None at all... they're callous. Too soon... they're opportunistic. Too late... they're, well, too late.

Instead, they're just going ahead and doing it, and it needed to be done, and I applaud them for it. I'll probably go, and I won't forget MIT's role in this tragedy, but I'll still be thankful the event is happening.</comment></comment>


Facebook's top news exec has own media outlet - <AUTHOR> https://popular.info/p/facebooks-top-news-executive-has <comment><USER2> It's not surprising, but, so far, it seems like this new Facebook News is going to have a right bias. They've said that they are going to include Breitbart, but they haven't mentioned any leftist news organizations in the list.

Plus, Zuckerberg has been having dinners with far-right media figures, but no leftists, and now we know that the person in charge of FB News runs a right biased news outlet.

<comment><USER3> This article is great for context on how/why this happened:

[https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political- operatives](https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why did this get de-prioritized?

</comment><comment><USER5> does anyone think Mark Zuckerberg is factually wrong that Elizabeth Warren poses an existential threat to his business? If not, why are we supposed to be shocked, shocked! at his comments saying so?

<comment><USER6> It's not really useful to simply tell people they shouldn't be "surprised" about something. Nearly always, what you're interpreting as "surprise" is not some opinion akin to "I thought, pragmatically, that this would not happen, but it did". Usually what you're seeing is an opinion _about_ what happened - i.e. whether it's good or bad (to be reductive).

Also, it's a really common trope for people arguing in bad faith to reframe a reaction as only "surprise" and then attacking people for so stupidly being surprised.

<comment><USER5> my argument is more, Elizabeth Warren is definitely an existential threat to Facebook and it would be wildly imprudent for the CEO to treat her election as anything less.</comment></comment></comment>


My Secret Santa W/E Project for Charity is on ABCNews.com - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/seasons-tweetings-great-twitter-secret-santa/story?id=12406068

<comment><USER2> Link to their site: <http://thegreattwittersecretsanta.com/>

Link to their Facebook version: <http://thegreatsecretsanta.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> And you can wrap your gift in tweets as well! <http://pages.samsung.com/us/tweetwrap/></comment>


BASIC gaming-dev app for iOS - <AUTHOR> http://lowres.inutilis.com/ <comment><USER3> Neat idea, but doesn't it run afoul of Apple's allowed apps? I seem to recall something similar that was taken down for allowing "dynamic programming" to be done. Maybe the limitations imposed by the language limit the scope enough? I could be completely off the mark, maybe I'm remembering wrong.

<comment><USER4> They removed that clause a few years ago :) You can now load code at runtime as long as it's sandboxed. JS inside a UIWebView, for example, is widely accepted.

<comment><USER5> Can you point to where they removed it. AFAICT it's still in full force. Your example of JS inside a UIWebView is true but anything else is not. The only allowed code loaded at runtime has to be either (a) already in the app or (b) executed by a WebView.

In other words you can't execute downloaded code in BASIC unless that BASIC is implemented in JavaScript running in a WebView

Is your app doing that?

From the current (as of 2016/10/16) app guidelines

2.5.2 Apps should be self-contained in their bundles, and may not read or write data outside the designated container area, __nor may they download, install, or execute code __, including other iOS, watchOS, Mac OS X, or tvOS apps.

It's also more explicit in the developer license dated 2016/9/21

3.3.2 Except as set forth in the next paragraph, an Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exceptions to the foregoing are scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework or JavascriptCore, provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to the App Store.

<comment><USER6> > provided that such scripts and code do not change the primary purpose of the > Application by providing features or functionality that are inconsistent > with the intended and advertised purpose of the Application as submitted to > the App Store

But does this part not prevent all coding apps? As any code will change the intended behavior of the app simply because you cannot describe behavior of something Turing complete that can be loaded from the web and be changed by anyone?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really wish this myth of "if it's a beginner language, it must be a dialect of BASIC" would die out already.

Yes, BASIC was designed to be a language for beginners. And yes, it actually delivered - in the age when "serious" stuff was written in Algol, PL/I and FORTRAN. Things have changed a lot since then, though.

And there are so many better choices for a beginner PL these days, there is absolutely no reason to go for BASIC other than nostalgic value - which, to a newbie, means nothing.

<comment><USER8> Right. Even a "slimmed down" version of JS would be suitable for beginners.

<comment><USER7> I was thinking more along the lines of Lua and Python.

JS would need to be significantly reworked to be a _good_ beginner language, IMO. C-style syntax is not the most readable option, and then there's all the weirdness around types and implicit conversions, strange and non-intuitive design of built-in data structures (object vs array similarities and differences, for example), and weird variable scoping rules.

Lua has pretty much everything that JS has that is worthwhile, but done better (e.g. the only data structure is an associative array, but they all behave the same unless and until you start to customize them). Syntax is more natural and easier to explain, too.

Python is nice in that basic programs are as short as they need to be (i.e. you don't need to import packages or define classes to print "Hello, world"), but it does have the concepts that mainstream "grown up" languages have - <USER2> aforementioned packages and classes, for example - and they can be gradually introduced and explored one at a time without distractions. Also, turtle graphics out of the box - still the best way to explain things like recursion, IMO. So, you get a great teaching language, _and_ it doubles as a great general-purpose programming language for serious stuff once the teaching is over.

<comment><USER9> Basic at least has compilers to native code, while being beginner friendly.

<comment><USER7> For beginner tasks, it usually doesn't matter - even a dumb AST interpreter will do.

For more advanced stuff, BASIC compilers usually don't generate particularly impressive code, because the language allows so many inefficiencies. Code generation is better if you're strict about your types and explicit about your conversions, but then you might as well just write in C or Pascal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh god, this is like programming on your TI-83 in math class for a whole new generation. :D

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if OP is the developer of the app but I would be interested in knowing if they wrote their own interpreter. I've done a minimal BASIC interpreter in swift as fun project - [https://github.com/jdmoreira/foobarbas](https://github.com/jdmoreira/foobarbas) it would be cool to discuss specifics and compare the implementation.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not, sorry. Just discovered the app and thought it's a lovely idea

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Similar in spirit to Pico-8 (desktop), or Petit Computer (DS)?

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice. Brings back memories of one my first ever computer books I bought circa 1980 to learn programming. Cut my teeth learning how to build games in BASIC using this book [1]

[1] - [http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/_Books/101_BASIC_Computer_Games_Mar75.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's deja vu of the classic TI99/4a, complete with the wonders of GOTO and GOSUB! What great times. Hunt the Wumpus, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty cool, but how many people are actually going to want to learn BASIC just to build games in this app?

<comment><USER9> I imagine that those of us that still remember it would already be a big customer base. :)</comment></comment>


The case against ORMs - <AUTHOR> http://korban.net/posts/postgres/2017-11-02-the-case-against-orms/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related posts from the past:

What ORMs have taught me: just learn SQL [http://woz.posthaven.com/what-orms- have-taught-me-just-learn...](http://woz.posthaven.com/what-orms-have-taught- me-just-learn-sql)

ORM Is an Offensive Anti-Pattern [http://www.yegor256.com/2014/12/01/orm- offensive-anti-patter...](http://www.yegor256.com/2014/12/01/orm-offensive- anti-pattern.html)</comment>


The DaftPunKonsole - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/kowlor/pen/MYOKRd

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9033104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9033104)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is super fun to play with, but the delay between the key press and audio playback is killing me. Are the sounds loaded into a buffer? Perhaps this is the best latency you can get with Web Audio (on Linux).

Also, the semicolon key is not working for me. A fun toy nonetheless!

<comment><USER4> This will probably be about as responsive as this can get without a low latency audio driver.

At least on Windows, this is similar to the latency when using a MIDI keyboard and a DAW with non-ASIO/WaveRT audio drivers. I think for Linux the analogue would be higher-latency with PulseAudio than with JACK.

<comment><USER3> I use PulseAudio on Linux, so that must be why. Is it possibly to get Firefox on Windows to use ASIO4all?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't and Ctrl-shortcut (i.e. Ctrl+W to close the window) (Firefox 35.0.1 on Windows 7).

Otherwise, a fantastic job :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Sound doesn't seem to be working for me. (Firefox 35.0.1 on Ubuntu 14.10)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome, I really love the execution. Shameless plug, I built an iPhone app some years ago with a similar concept [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daft- touch/id308195972?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daft- touch/id308195972?mt=8)

</comment><comment> vertex-four For whatever reason, on my Firefox (35 on Linux), all the audio files fail to load with a 403 error? For example, [http://s.cdpn.io/190177/Our3.ogg](http://s.cdpn.io/190177/Our3.ogg) returns a 403 Access Denied XML document.

</comment><comment><USER8> There should be a karaoke bar when playing the instrumental. Also, high seems to be low for me?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome, would love to hear recording of what others have put together.

</comment><comment><USER10> Clearly built for nerds, but no DVORAK option? Come on.

<comment><USER11> It's a gap in the web platform that there's no solid cross-browser way to automatically adapt these sorts of control layouts to the user's actual keyboard layout. :( I type Dvorak too, and just have to switch to qwerty for certain games and things like this (both web and native).

<comment><USER12> Isn't that what [http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#keys- codevalues](http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#keys-codevalues) is for?

Hmm, caniuse doesn't seem to have it, I'll have to look for info.

Edit: ah, and looks like Fx38 will be the very first to have it. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126673](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1126673)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cannot wait to play this in the office tomorrow

</comment><comment><USER14> I love the Normal, Low, and High modifiers.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish I could mod this way higher.

</comment><comment><USER16> made an account just to saw how awesome this was

<comment><USER17> I didn't need an account to see this. Odd!

<comment><USER18> He may have meant "say".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> how cool is this?!

</comment><comment><USER20> love it!

</comment><comment><USER21> Your hot-linking cross domain made this impossible to try, as I block this. Please serve your javascript directly, even if it is a third party library.

Additionally, the "Over" button (;) does not work for me for whatever reason. Firefox 30.

<comment><USER22> > Please serve your javascript directly, even if it is a third party library.

CodePen is a frontend playground. You cannot host anything there, so third- party scripts are a requirement.

You can either disable the third-party block or just don't play with it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a news site where you can define sources it must pull from? - <AUTHOR> I don't need something like Google news, that suggests news based on some algorithm, I need something i can manually add sources to and then it consolidates and classifies all the news from those sources. e.g. I add Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN, and it can pull news from all those sources and show them in one website with different classifications like Finance, Politics, Technology etc <comment><AUTHOR> The reason I asked for this is, I have a couple of websites that I read at least everyday, to keep up with current news on different categories, combined they are all north of 15 I sometimes even forget which is which, I keep open tabs at work currently to keep them up, I would like to have one website that has nothing by default and I add URLS to my news sources and it will show me news from these sources all day, some of this sources are just websites with no RSS feeds :( so something that works magically would be good, RSS being the fallback if that can't happen

</comment><comment><USER2> What about an RSS reader like [http://feedly.com](http://feedly.com)?

<comment><AUTHOR> OK, thank you I looked at this and this is exactly what I was looking for, and more

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I run [https://kabonky.com](https://kabonky.com) which does exactly that. It's more of a side project but if you find it useful and want a source it doesn't have just let me know and it's likely I'll be able to add it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is close to what I want, it would be nice if I could add any source, by URL, even if it means I have to go to the origin site and look for the RSS endpoint myself

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dave Winer's "River of News" concept/softwares are probably a good starting point

</comment><comment><USER5> This is what an RSS reader does.

</comment><comment><USER6> What about Apple News? It can do all this with the iOS 19 update.

<comment><AUTHOR> I need something on the web, Also I don't own any kind of IOS device</comment></comment>