Ask HN: Are there only 2 reverse-CDN (CRN) in the entire world? - <AUTHOR> I could only find CloudFlare (with 100MB-500MB limits) and AWS S3 with Transfer Acceleration (With no-limit [Charge per GB]). Are there any others? <comment><USER2> Can you clarify "crn", whats the use case? From context I think youre looking for "PUT/POST" support and or layer 3/4/5 termination closer to the end user to bisect latency/loss/windowing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Content Retrieval Network. Users would PUT/PATCH/POST to edge locations so it's faster on the upload.

CloudFlare reverse proxy and AWS S3 Transfer Acceleration (using CloudFront edges) do this.

<comment><USER2> Ah. I dont commonly see this use case called out. If a CDN supports verbs like POST PUT this should "just work." I dont know what support for write through vs write back etc looks like.</comment></comment></comment>


Mongo Vs Redis, The Increment Battle - <AUTHOR> http://devdazed.com/post/2737860983/mongo-vs-redis-the-increment-battle

<comment><USER2> I've no clue about MongoDB performances, and which of Redis and MongoDB is faster incrementing integers, but for sure this benchmark is completely useless, as it is actually measuring a mix of client library latency and round trip time, being it single threaded, making no assumptions about the durability requirements, and so forth.

For sure it seems like that MongoDB client library you are using has a smaller latency, perhaps it is a C library? As Redis-rb is instead written in Ruby itself.

Another huge problem of this benchmark is that it should try to increment a random key per every iteration, out of a dataset with a few millions of keys, as this is realistically what you need. You'll see how Redis with 50 clients will increment this counters 100k times per second or more without any performance degradation as the number of keys grows.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say it's completely useless as it shows that Mongo is faster in a single threaded process, using the most popular ruby client of each system.

If I were writing a high-concurrency multi-threaded system to handle millions of keys at a time, Ruby would not be my first choice by far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I agree with antriz's statement. My results are very specific. I will make note and be sure to be very thorough next time around.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for agreeing, however I must point out that since your blog post does not accept comments, nor you rectified the content, this is misleading information that will stay on the internet for virtually many years to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> More accurate title:

(Mongo + Mongo Ruby Gem) Vs (Redis + Redis Ruby Gem), The Increment Battle with No Useful Statistical Analysis Included

</comment><comment><USER4> You could make electricity from the amount of eyerolling this article is going to generate here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think I heard a distant scream of Zed... <http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html> He was so right for cases like this...

<comment><USER6> I'm a programmer, but not very good at statistics (as in I passed the class with flying colors, but I can't really comment on new situations).

When it comes to things like benchmarking, I find it easiest to avoid making absolute conclusions like "X is faster than Y", but to merely present the data, all the data, and nothing but the data.

In this case, I'd have wanted to see the response times per request, and perhaps the memory trend for the client. At the very least, I'd like to know how Mongo and Redis were setup, and if either had begun to swap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Running your benchmark I get 11216 increments per second

Running the redis-benchmark from (<http://redis.googlecode.com/files/redis-2.0.4.tar.gz>) with 50 parallel clients 37800 requests per second

I would like to see the numbers for 50 clients to mongo doing the same.

<comment><USER2> interesting but 37800 is low too, either not Linux or is a Virtual Machine :) That's what I get in my desktop system with Linux (Xeon E5520 2.27 Ghz):

INCR: 126743.98 requests per second

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can you give the mongo and reddis version numbers?

Just curious if you were using reddis 2.0 or possibly 2.2 ? Also what version of the reddis client were you using? There were some performance improvements recently.

Edit: thanks for sharing your experience, even if your test wasn't done with the help of a nobel winning computer team, it can still be useful data.

<comment><USER2> To know the version may be interesting but not really useful, I bet that if you change Redis with a dummy TCP server that is only able to reply +OK, whatever it receives, you'll get the same numbers here.

Basically every kind of networked server with a simple request-response protocol, in a busy loop over loopback, will show performances between 10k and 20k requests per second, mostly up to the speed of the implementation of the client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In his test, it appears the Mongo driver is just putting the message on the wire, not actually waiting on the server reply or verifying that the command was ever actually processed. Using the Redis in pipelined execution mode would be a much closer test.

</comment><comment><USER10> My gut feeling tells me Redis should be faster at this, and as everyone else has pointed out, the methods used to arrive at these conclusions are most certainly questionable.

</comment><comment><USER11> Redis is asynchronous, try doing it with a few more connections.

</comment><comment><USER12> MongoDB is web scale.

<comment><USER13> I think that meme is funny too, but lets keep meme only posts over on reddit.

<comment><USER12> Sorry. I'll remember in the future that Hacker News is no place for humor.

<comment><USER14> Thanks! That's a fine executive summary. The longer version is that original humor is appreciated, particularly if insightful and non-obvious, but regurgitated memes are not welcome here. If you are rushing to make the obvious joke before everyone else does, please don't.

<comment><USER12> Seriously. I did not know that the use of a meme is violates site ethics guidelines. I checked the comment guidelines (<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>) I didn't see any guideline referring to the use of memes. If using a meme is such an egregious offense as this comment thread suggests, maybe this violation should be mentioned in the guidelines.

Generally the popularity of a comment is a good enough indicator of how well a comment is received. If I got 100 upvotes on that comment I may get the impression that people like that. Considering I have < 0 on the comment, I can take the hint. I don't need the proper patrol reprimanding me about a non- stipulated rule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can you post the Redis configuration you are using?

</comment><comment><USER16> of course none of it matters if the machine/vm crashes before the increments are committed to disk. :-)</comment>


Play Git Like A Violin - <AUTHOR> http://www.metacircus.com/hacking/2011/02/18/play-git-like-a-violin.html

<comment><USER2> Swiping that first one - I have _hundreds_ of commits which were just one or two character tweaks after I had hit the commit button. Often, they squash bugs. (Hah, test run completed and now I realize the error of my ways...)

More articles like this, please?

<comment><USER3> Glad you like it. Another weird thing I do is that "g" is not just an alias, it's a function in my ~/.bashrc

So "g" (without any argument) is "g status", with arguments, g is effectively an alias for git. A micro-optimization, true.

Another git feature I use quite a bit is the history rewrite. "git fuss 5" allows me to fiddle with the last 5 commits. I should write another article to explain git fuss. History rewrite sounds like a dirty thing. But my git workflow involves doing a whole bunch of temporary commits, so I can track small incremental steps with git. History rewrite is pretty legit for this usage pattern.

      g() {
          if [[ $# == '0' ]]; then
              git status
          else
              case $1 in
                  fuss)
                      shift
                      git rebase -i HEAD~"$1";;
                  *)
                      git "$@";;
              esac
          fi
      }

<comment><USER4> > History rewrite sounds like a dirty thing

well you're only rewriting local history, so you're a-ok. history re-writing becomes a dirty word when you re-write history that someone else may have already seen. i know you already know this.

<comment><USER5> > history re-writing becomes a dirty word when you re-write history that > someone else may have already seen.

It seems like git (or some friendlier wrapper) could track this for you. For example, if you've pushed changes to a remote repo, then git could mark those changes as "published" in your local repo and warn you when you later try to rewrite that branch's history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I do the same thing, and then I look like a dummy when I go to someone else's computer and keep typing "git st", "git co", "gphm" (git push heroku master), etc.

<comment><USER7> It's a pity that git doesn't also accept unique prefixes for each command like Subversion does. Is that by design?

<comment><USER8> The help.autocorrect git-config variable allows it:

 _Automatically correct and execute mistyped commands after waiting for the given number of deciseconds (0.1 sec). If more than one command can be deduced from the entered text, nothing will be executed. If the value of this option is negative, the corrected command will be executed immediately. If the value is 0 - the command will be just shown but not executed. This is the default._

I think the alias system is better though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use bash aliases for the same thing:

alias gs='git status'

alias gc='git commit -m'

alias gca='git commit -a -m'

alias gd='git diff'

I spend most of my time with gs and gd, then usually gca my changes all at once, or add those I want and use gc.

<comment><USER10> I do the same.

      alias co='git checkout'
      alias gb='git branch'
      alias gd='git diff'
      alias gr='git reset --hard'
      alias gs='git status'
      alias gc='git commit'
      alias ga='git add'

But I'm moving away from using git status as much, since adding the following to my $PS1:

      get_branch () {
      GS=$(git status 2>&1)
      if [ $? -eq 0 ]
      then
        STAR='*'
        echo $GS | grep 'nothing to commit' > /dev/null 2>&1 && STAR=''
        echo -ne "$(echo $GS | grep 'On branch' | cut -d' ' -f4)${STAR}"
      else
        echo -ne '_'
      fi
      }

It's a bit slow some days (up to a second to pop up a prompt when the box is busy), but the constant visual reference to my branch name & uncommitted changes is nice.

<comment><USER11> You may find this useful:

[http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob_plain;f=contrib/...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob_plain;f=contrib/completion/git- completion.bash;hb=HEAD)

It can tell you if your working directory is dirty, if you've got staged changes, what branch/tag you're on, and of course does completion also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised more people don't do this stuff. AFAIK, the only single-letter Unix command or widely installed program is 'w', the rest are up for grabs.

</comment><comment><USER13> I trully believe that no one should use "git reset --hard" unless really know what he is doing (understand for beginer).

This is why, I aliased an "uncommit". You can see the details in this article[1] I had written for my friend who were learning git.

usage:

        git uncommit 3

effect: add another point in the history where it is said you get back 3 commit in time. Which is better in most case than modifying the history when you want to push it.

[1]: [http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/2009-11-12-Git- for-n...](http://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/2009-11-12-Git- for-n00b/conf-et-install/)

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://www.opsb.co.uk/?p=56>

<http://paulbarry.com/articles/2009/01/20/my-git-workflow>

<http://www.viget.com/inspire/terminal-aliases-for-git/>

<http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Aliases>

</comment><comment><USER15> This one is pretty neat: "git commit -a --amend -C HEAD" Happens to me all the time I forgot to stage a certain file or made a small typo.

<comment><USER16> You don't really need '-C HEAD' at all. The default behavior is to just reuse the last commit message, which is, implicitly, HEAD.

<comment><USER17> That doesn't work for me. git commit -a --amend prompts for commit message in $editor git commit -a --amend -C complains about lack of input

Maybe this is a git version specific thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are an Emacs user, use magit. Changed my life.

</comment><comment><USER19> These aliases are truly useful, but watch out for mistakes.

I can still vividly remember the moment I mistakenly typed in "g co src/" instead of "g ci src/". I immediately changed my checkout alias to "cho".

<comment><USER20> That's one of the things I hate about git (I like git a lot, in general). It makes it too easy to make irreversible damage.

"git clean", "git reset --hard", "git checkout" all provide ways to irreversibly trash the working tree.

"git clean" has no other function except doing irreversible deletions, so that's OK, IMO.

"git reset --hard" is a pretty useful way to make a branch jump around between places, so having a _secondary_ feature of trashing the working tree is unacceptable, IMO.

"git checkout" is a useful way to take a file from a specific commit. The fact it may also trash uncommitted changes is also a _secondary_ feature. I think without "--force", "checkout" should refuse to irreversibly lose content.

<comment><USER21> If you take a look at the man pages for all of those commands you'll see they explicitly mention that your working tree will be affected. They are written explicitly to do that. 'git reset' can be called with '--mixed' or '--keep' which might be more along the lines of what you're looking for. If you're ever unsure about the result of a given command make a copy of your current working tree before applying it. I like git because it explicitly doesn't hold your hand through things like this. It expects you to know what you're about to do.

<comment><USER20> > If you take a look at the man pages for all of those commands you'll see > they explicitly mention that your working tree will be affected.

I'm not complaining that these commands mismatch the spec. I'm complaining that the spec for these commands is badly designed.

> They are written explicitly to do that

I agree about git clean, but git reset --hard and git checkout do more than just changing the working tree.

> If you're ever unsure about the result of a given command make a copy of > your current working tree before applying it. I like git because it > explicitly doesn't hold your hand through things like this. It expects you > to know what you're about to do.

You misunderstood my problem. I know exactly what these commands do.

I consider "reverting my changes in the working tree" to be a _separate_ and _irreversible_ thing of whatever "git reset" and "git checkout" do, and want git to ask for approval before accidentally doing irreversible damage.

The main thing protecting me from accidental errors/deletions/etc is my revision control system. But in this case, the irreversible damage is done _BY_ the revision control system.

Here are a few examples of what I mean:

* I jump to the wrong shell. In it, I have an old "git status" that says my working tree is clean, but at the wrong location. I forget that I already moved it, and started working on a feature. I use "git reset --hard <correct-place>" and without warning, I __also __get my working tree changes irreversibly lost without any question.

* I press <up> a few times in my shell, to reach a previous command, hit <return>. OOPS, that command was not the one I intended. Instead it was a "git reset --hard <someplace>" or perhaps a "git checkout"!

* I may execute a command like "git checkout <refspec> <some_path>" during a merge in order to pick some version of that file. If I accidentally press <return> too early, I may lose all of my working tree changes in the directory.

I don't actually lose my working tree changes with git, because I'm aware of these issues, so I am _very_ careful about which commands I replay.

But it would be nice to know that since I have a revision control backup of my files, I don't need to be as careful, as long as I don't use "clean", "rm" and other commands meant to lose information.

P.S: It would be nice if "checkout" stored a stash or such of any overwritten content so it isn't irreversible unless given a flag not to.

tl;dr: Good UI design dictates that user operations should be reversible whenever possible. Irreversible operations should require explicit confirmation (or at least "--force") and ideally should have no other effect except the specific irreversibility.

<comment><USER22> While all of what you say rings true - it's been said before and bears repeating - git isn't a version control system as much as it is a set of version control tools from which you can design a workflow that meets your needs.

<comment><USER23> That's a poor excuse for bad defaults.

The canonical way to use git is by the git syntax. Many (most?) people don't build scripts and aliases around it. It works just fine when used raw.

However, I'm with Peaker in that losing your working copy is enough of a nuisance to deserve an interactive prompt, just like 'rm' prompts by default. Confident users could always disable the prompt with an environment-variable or .gitconfig flag.

<comment><USER24> 'rm' prompts by default? since when?

Btw, which defaults are, in your opinion, "bad"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Love the first one.

Have you considered putting your dotfiles on GitHub? That way other people can fork them for their own use, and you can also browse your Fork Queue to see if others have made interesting additions/changes.

Here's mine (mostly forked from a friend's): <https://github.com/sumeetjain/dotfiles>

As an example, I have one git function (called 'gpa') that shoves everything in the staging area into a single commit and immediately pushes it.

`gpa "the commit message"`

</comment><comment><USER5> I like easygit (eg). It's training wheels wrapper for git. You use "real" git commands, but easygit has safer defaults and extra sanity checks (like forgetting to stage modified files). The help messages are more verbose and use more consistent terminology than git's man pages. For example, easygit always uses the term "staged" instead of "index/staged/add/hard/soft/mixed/cached/HEAD/etc."

<http://people.gnome.org/~newren/eg/>

</comment><comment><USER26> Most git commands I use on a daily basis have 1-3 letter shell aliases:

[https://github.com/samsonjs/config/blob/master/zsh/zshrc#L23...](https://github.com/samsonjs/config/blob/master/zsh/zshrc#L238-291)

Previously on reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b0o6z/short_but...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b0o6z/short_but_sweet_shell_aliases_and_global_aliases/)

</comment><comment><USER4> the point aliases is to make executing the command fast enough that you aren't conscious of actually typing the command, which is one less thing to distract you. if you go to a computer without the alias, you'll probably interrupt your thought flow with every command. so in many work/team situations, the (larger) cost of changing terminals outweighs the (smaller) benefit of aliases.</comment>


Ask HN: First Programming Job? - <AUTHOR>

I just started a new job developing.  I don't feel as if i am learning fast enough.  How long was it until you started to feel comfortable in your job? <comment><USER2> You might consider seeking out a mentor within your own organization. In addition to knowing how complicated your particular processes are, such a person should be able to give your pointers on how to master the material faster, which parts to master first, which bits the company most needs help with, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first full time job was at an electronic trading company that used a distributed system to price and buy options in real time. our system consisted of a visual studio solution with around 300 projects in it. to get a development environment running, you had to start about 10-12 different applications. it took me a full 8 months before i finally felt like i _really_ knew what was going on.

Programming takes time. You're not going to do anything earth-shattering in your first few months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you take much time outside of work to learn/study?

<comment><USER3> yeah, i spent pretty much all my waking hours writing code. i love programming a little too much.</comment></comment></comment>


These Huge Brands' Early Websites From The 1990s Looked Terrible - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/big-brands-90s-websites-look-terrible-2013-4#

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to do a usability critique of a current website for a class I'm taking and I came across this article. Anyone know of any current, major websites that have usability issues (of any kind)?

In regard to the article I'm pretty sure Pepsi's 1996 website beats out their 2013 website, what a mess.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why's the Budweiser site on there? It looks great for a 90's site and pretty good in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, way ahead of its time haha.</comment></comment>


I'm ditching Silicon Valley to go on a Walkabout - <AUTHOR> http://lifeafterliquidity.com/2014/03/27/40-liters/

<comment><USER2> Good choice! I'm looking for funding for my startup, how do i get in touch :)</comment>


Show HN: Use blockchain technology to secure site from web spam - <AUTHOR> https://hashcash.io/

<comment><USER2> This is cute. I'm going to write a Known plugin and test it out on withknown.com.</comment>


Filing states student broke rules and had no expectation of privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20100421_Filing_states_student_broke_rules_and_had_no_expectation_of_privacy.html <comment><USER2> When this whole thing broke, there was some mention of the software product that's actually doing the monitoring and photography. I wonder what's become of that company now?

</comment><comment><USER3> Was the student told that the camera and computer are being monitored? I believe previous stories said that students asked about the cameras and were specifically lied to... thereby creating an expectation of privacy.

Whether this student was authorized to take the laptop home is a separate issue from the students' privacy.</comment>


Vegetarian/Vegan food finder for London - <AUTHOR> http://nopudding.com <comment><USER2> I built this! It uses responsive design to give both desktop & mobile users a good experience, and it degrades gracefully for users without JavaScript. I built it in Rails with the Google Maps & Food Standards Agency APIs, along with a lot of CoffeeScript.

I need to add more reviews of places, and more links, but I've been working on it for too long without it being live so I put it live earlier this week.

<comment><USER3> Congrats on launching! Will take another look when I'll be in London again.

If it's "only" you who submits these reviews, you could make it more personal by adding a paragraph of text with a non-objective description. Would also help to separate your USP compared to Happy Cow.

I know a vegan blogger who wrote posts about the places she visited in towns, and people like those. It's easier to compare/trust the reviews of a single person vs. the reviews on happy cow that are written by many different people.

<comment><USER2> I'm working on adding more reviews. They are rather sparse at the moment, you're right. I like the single-person perspective as well; I've never found the multiple reviews on sites like Happy Cow or Yelp that useful either.

<comment><USER4> Once you know how a reviewer views thinks relative to your own perspective, their reviews become much more relevant to you. I read some critics even though I never agree with them, but because I know how they think and what they like there reviews are much more useful. "Oh, they didn't like it. Perfect! I will like this one."

I guess you're only going for pure vegan/vegetarian places? Because these days, pretty much all restaurants do at least some vegetarian food. Vegan is harder of course.

Vegan drinking holes would be nice too :) [http://www.veggiewines.co.uk/popularbeers.htm](http://www.veggiewines.co.uk/popularbeers.htm)

<comment><USER5> [http://www.barnivore.com](http://www.barnivore.com) is another great resource for checking on the vegan status of beer and liquor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've seen these mini directories fall by the wayside in the past, but I wish the author the best.

As someone that likes to eat vegan food and having worked in a vegan cafe, I think it's important to clearly state if an outlet has a vegetarian/vegan kitchen. That's very appealing to me. To be honest I've gotten lazy at asking in a lot of places about how they prepare their food.

We have something called a chip shop in the UK, where you can buy deep fried chips, sausages, chicken and fish. Some places keep the vat of fat for chips separate to the meat and fish friers, others mix it all up, and some chip shops (especially up norf'), use animal fats to fry in. I've bought countless bags of chips only to discover small bits of fish, or find the chips taste of chicken. Even in some places where I've asked and they've assured me otherwise. To be frank some people are too thick to even answer the question if posed or just don't care. I know for a fact the veggie burgers in Grubbs in Brighton were fried in the meat friers (though that might be past practice). It's also a bit of a turn off for me to watch someone make me a sandwich after they've just prepared someone elses and handled meat.

I'd like a veggie chip shop friendly list (if you can ever call a chip shop that)! I should cobble something together myself.

Where others have ascertained that the kitchen is veggie friendly, that's good information to share.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.happycow.net](http://www.happycow.net) exists already.

<comment><USER8> Happycow is very nice and helped me to find incredibly good places to eat even in meat heavy places like Argentina and Paris. I'm always surprised when I talk to owners of vegetarian restaurants and learn that they never heard about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice to see Rasa there. If you live in London and haven't been, go! Indian veg in angel is one of the best value meals london have to offer, 5.50 all you can eat of a selection of south indian curries. Possibly you could add the woodland restaurant on Panton street.

<comment><USER10> Good lord, its up to £5.50 now? Still a good deal, but it was £2 back in the day.

<comment><USER9> I moved to London in 2006 and it was £3 then which was at that point the price of a pint. Still 5.50 is quite good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are the colours of the map pins universally understood by your target audience? As a non-vegan/vegetarian, the thought behind it made complete sense as soon as I deselected options from the filter panel, but before that I was curious to what they meant. Including use of the same colours in the filter panel would have made me intuitively understand it.

I appreciate that it still has a view presented when loading without JavaScript.

<comment><USER12> Agreed; a key/legend would be good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well done for putting this together. What is disappointing is how few vegetarian restaurants there are! For such a large city you would expect a few more places on the map yet they are so few and far between.

My default option when there is nothing veggie specific is to eat some place Indian. Plenty of Indian restaurants do understand that vegetarianism is the way even if they do have dead animal dishes on the menu for those encultured from an early age to eat 'meat'. It would be helpful if the best Indian restaurants were on the list too.

One thing that does surprise me about the few vegetarian restaurants that are in London is the clientele. Places like Mildreds are packed night after night, and the punters seem that bit more vibrant, healthy, better looking, articulate and youthful than you would normally expect to find when eating out.

More generally, I think that something has to change regarding vegetarianism in London, much like how things have changed regarding cycling in London. As a society we cannot go on eating variants of endangered species on toast for every meal, it is just not on or necessary. Meat eaters need to lighten up a bit and put some variety into their diet.

Why can't the variety of vegetarian cuisine in London be a tourist attraction? Why can't house prices be that bit higher just because they are in an area where there is an excellent choice of vegetarian restaurants? (In the same way that being on a bicycle route adds to the value of a property.) Why can't we have some version of the 'Bake Off' on TV that is about vegetarian food, to celebrate it rather than be all preachy about how evil the meat industry is? Aside from Hitler, why is it that nobody knows of anyone famous for being vegetarian? This is particularly weird when so many celebrities, athletes, respected thinkers and others that people aspire to and respect are actually vegetarian. Where is the 'Boris' or 'Jamie Oliver' of the vegetarian cause?

Going back to the cycling situation we have had a culture shift in cycling and attitudes towards it that has not pissed off motorists. Even if they don't cycle they don't get uppity about those that do. We need something along the same lines for vegetarianism in London.

Anyway, I hope you too have ideas on how attitudes towards vegetarianism could change in London, it would be great if you could say so on your site.

<comment><USER14> This is probably the first time I've actually Godwinned a discussion, but still: Hitler is not primarily "known" for having been a vegetarian. He did some other more notable things, too.

<comment><USER15> That's because he wasn't one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those not familiar, the pudding in the domain name referring to a few kinds of sausage in England/Ireland (e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding) )

<comment><AUTHOR> It might also be a Pink Floyd reference ("you can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat")

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> @creature

What do the coloured markers represent? You are missing some info from your key.

Could you also add some help text to the key? As in how you define vegan/veggie/vegan-friendly.

How about providing a method whereby people can suggest other places? Perhaps for you to go and sample their wares at a later date.

I think you could squeeze in more info into your pop-ups. It's annoying going back and forth.

You are missing some direct links to websites (tibits).

If you hover over markers near the top of the map the popups are lost.

Slow on my 1.4 mb line.

Personally I think it would be better to use a frame like approach, especially for those with the real estate. Click on a marker, get the text in a side column.

My 2p.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice project. Sadly no new places to me (yet!) but glad to see the Loving Hut, this is a must.

Are you going to add functionality for submissions? Or did I just miss it?

<comment><USER18> Loving Hut is pretty creepy. I sincerely appreciate being able to find veg/vegan food in a lot of cities and countries, but the idea of supporting the Supreme Master situation (I hesitate to call it a cult, but I struggle to find a better word) is pretty distasteful. From online stories and friends' personal anecdotes, I'd rather steer clear and go hungry.

Some links I plucked from Google:

\- [http://www.humanewatch.org/the_murky_sea_of_cult_money/](http://www.humanewatch.org/the_murky_sea_of_cult_money/)

\- [http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2011-06-02/news/critics- claim...](http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2011-06-02/news/critics-claim- supreme-master-ching-hai-s-followers-restaurants-front-for-an-exploitive- movement/)

\- [http://thechinghaicult.blogspot.com/](http://thechinghaicult.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER8> I'm not religious at all, but I've eaten in some religious-based restaurants such as Harikrishna, adventist, and buddhist. And to be honest, I don't find it creepier than any other religion/cult.

I used to go all the time to a Loving Hut in Chinatown (San Francisco) and got friendly with the staff. They never mentioned religion or tried to convince me to join their religion/cult. I would be annoyed if they tried to push their religion on me, but instead, they seemed interested in promote vegetarianism and veganism. On a side note, this Chinatown branch has the best vegan Pho I ever had.

<comment><USER6> We have a loving hut nearby (Brighton, UK), and I can't say that I was particularly taken with the menu. I'm not even sure if I'd class it as food and I'm a champion for veganism!

<comment><USER8> The quality of their branches doesn't seem to be consistent. For instance, they have a branch in Palo Alto that is a cafe where they reheat food prepared in advance. The food in this branch is kind of meh. I guess that is one of the reasons I didn't fell compelled (yet) to go to any branch in London (where I leave now). There's good (and cheap) vegetarian food everywhere in London!

<comment><USER19> I ate at their Camden branch once and it was pretty good, but the Holloway Road branch experience was kind of revolting.

<comment><USER8> Good to know, I'll check the Camden branch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I noticed the "Omnivorous" check box, but clicking it doesn't show that many more places - I assumed omnivorous would mean something along the lines of: every pub, restaurant, and shop in London. Apparently not, so, can somebody explain what being an "omnivore" as a lifestyle choice (or whatever) means in this day and age?

<comment><USER2> I'm planning to add more omnivorous places that do an OK job of catering to veggies. Particularly places like East Street, near Oxford Street. It's not a vegetarian restaurant, but it's got vegan options clearly marked on the menu and all the staff seem pretty switched on. My goal is to help people find places where their veggie friends can have a good meal easily, without lots of explanation to the staff about what they do and don't eat.

<comment><USER21> I think almost every restaurant in London would be considered "vegetarian friendly", at least by US standards. No matter where I went, there were multiple options clearly marked on the menu. It's the easiest place I've ever visited food-wise.

Perhaps "vegan friendly" places is harder though, I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [http://VegGuide.org](http://VegGuide.org) provides a REST API that you could combine with this data. See [http://www.vegguide.org/site/api- docs](http://www.vegguide.org/site/api-docs) for details.

</comment><comment><USER23> A friend of mine was looking for this or was thinking of building a site based on this. Very cool idea! awesome I can see a lot of people using it.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's a great start. I'd love to contribute some places (around EC1) that I frequent if you take suggestions?

<comment><USER2> Happy to take suggestions! Let me know what I've missed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Insta spotted bug. Toggling 'Show brands' the number increases every time.

</comment><comment><USER26> Awesome stuff mate, Ill post this on www.fb.com/yumveganrecipes if thats cool?

<comment><USER2> Totally cool! Please spread the word far and wide. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Awesome set up.

Are there any open source solutions that allow me to do this for my city? Simple execution, mobile ready - add locations and reviews along with 'find places nearby' ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice! Very useful, thank you :)</comment>


Whither open source? - <AUTHOR> http://ptribble.blogspot.com/2015/08/whither-open-source.html

<comment><USER2> I find that dependency managers used by those "new" languages make setting up a project for local development a lot easier than the alternative of manually hunting down and compiling a bunch of 3rd party libraries (sometimes specific versions too) with optional configuration flags.</comment>


Uber's autonomous cars drove 20,354 miles and had to be taken over at every mile - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/3/16/14938116/uber-travis-kalanick-self-driving-internal-metrics-slow-progress <comment><USER2> They _averaged_ more than one intervention per mile, but did not "have to be taken over at every mile".

I worked on a Daimler-Benz autonomous vehicle back in 1991 and our bus could drive many highway miles at a stretch without intervention. What Uber is doing is many, many times harder than what we were doing, but I have to imagine that they had many clean, fully autonomous miles (and many others that had multiple interventions per mile to offset).

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but if I were in charge of picking routes for autonomous test vehicles to drive, I'd pick scenarios that the cars have trouble with.

Except for a small amount of regression testing, not much point in sending it out to deal with scenarios I know it can already handle. I'd want to gather data on whether my software improvements have given it the ability to handle scenarios it previously failed on.

Point being, it's probably not a random sample of possible routes. It's probably skewed. So the statistics probably aren't very meaningful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> just last week I saw an uber 'self driving car' in front of me get radically confused about the presence of a bike line to its right. i think it may have been trying to take a turn.

turn signal on, hew over into the bike lane. stop abruptly before it hit the curb. try to back up. slew to the left back into the car lane and stop again. turn signal off. repeat.

as a software person, I can't understand why any corporate lawyer would let these massive liability exposures run around a city with bikes and pedestrians and other erratic drivers.

<comment><USER5> _I can 't understand why any corporate lawyer would let these massive liability exposures run around_

A 'lawyer' isn't something stamped out by a cookie cutter. Just like humans, they're all different. Uber can simply acquire their lawyers straight out of Hollywood villain central casting:

       Job interviewer: What should we do about all these
          pesky laws that regulate taxi services?

       Prospective Uber lawyer: err ...
          move fast and break things?

       Job interviewer: Congratulations, you're just the
          type of employee we're looking for!

Until very recently that's worked out pretty well for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Her "one year ago" piece on tipping culture has literally the same 2 ending paragraphs. I am not going to give her praises for journalism, but I do agree that her anecdotes are true, and have experienced similar things. At least she didn't have to worry about getting canceled on when the driver noticed you're not white.

</comment><comment><USER7> How generically do these bugs get fixed? How do these bugs get fixed?</comment>


Ask HN: Unit testing a ZF MVC application - <AUTHOR>

I have almost finished an application I have been writing in PHP with ZF and now need to give it a full test suite. Does anyone have any advice for fully testing a web app that uses MVC? In particular how to set up different tests for each model, view and controller. <comment><USER2> Question closed as "exact duplicate" by *Ross 56 secs ago

I'm going to be in a similar situation to you soon, but from what I can tell using Zend_Test (<http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.test.html>) looks to be the easiest way to go about this. The only test framework supported is PHPUnit but I've heard good things about it.</comment>


Why Razer Spent $380K Redesigning The USB Port - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027565/the-usb-port-on-razers-new-laptop-cost-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars

<comment><USER2> Summary: they spent $380K to get the color mix right for the plastic nub in the port.

<comment><USER3> I was a bit perplex after reading this article. Would the consumer care? I mean, it is novel that it is a different, but I don't care.

It may be harsh, but I would say that it is almost economically irresponsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I refuse to believe they spent, much less required that much money to make green USB ports. It's a piece of plastic. The tooling is already there, the only thing different required is the color of the plastic.

</comment><comment><USER5> Quite cool, but I can't help thinking a small black plastic USB port cover* would have done the same job a bit cheaper.

* These: [http://www.bestbyte.net/merchant/graphics/00000001/CBUS01CAP...](http://www.bestbyte.net/merchant/graphics/00000001/CBUS01CAPFL.jpg)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The most creepy line in the entire article:

"Their logo, which, Min tells me a few times, has been tattooed on more than 500 Razer fans, is a bright green-and-black three-headed serpent."

</comment><comment><USER6> Very nice laptop, pity they couldn't match the retina MBP screen resolution.</comment>


A Find at Gap: Steady Hours Can Help Workers, and Profits - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/business/economy/gap-schedule-study.html <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr Gap stores in the experimental group gave employees predictable work schedules. These stores saw a 7% increase in sales over control group stores (which continued to schedule hours in unpredictable and short-notice fashion).</comment>


Ruby Gem for the Foodpairing API - <AUTHOR> http://logangingerich.com/portfolio/2foodpairinggem/ <comment><USER2> Some quick feedback on this:

* Consider extracting things like the headers hash to a method.

* For things like "search_ingredients_by_name", you'll want to either properly escape the query parameter before interpolating it or use the HTTParty API that passes query parameters separately.

* Review when to use an instance variable vs. when to use a local variable. Code like that in "get_pairings_for_ingredient" is going to fail in unexpected ways when running in a threaded server - two simultaneous requests could be manipulating "@pairings_array" simultaneously.

* Your mock response for "pairings" contains data that the documentation claims isn't there - in particular, the "name" field. The API docs suggest that all you get in that part of the payload is id & href.

* Related: your mock responses don't specify a "Content-Type" so HTTParty doesn't know to automatically parse the body as JSON. Live responses will set this header.

* Consider returning objects rather than primitives. Magic index values - like "id" and "name" \- are a sign you probably have structured data.

* Not sure if it's a convention or enforced someplace, but the usual convention for naming ENV vars is ALL_CAPS_UNDERSCORED.</comment>


Patent troll who demanded $35k from my game is now accusing me of libel - <AUTHOR> https://www.clickerheroes2.com/patent_libel.php <comment><USER2> You can accuse someone of anything, until they file a suit they're just trying thuggish intimidation tactics, which is no surprise from patent trolls.</comment>


Glenn Greenwald Will Leave Guardian To Create New News Organization - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedBen/status/390209872244928512

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual article is on Buzzfeed, so it was DOA when I posted it. Here's a tweet + link to it. :)

<comment><USER2> Haha I wondered about that. To be fair, I sort of understand why HN won't link Buzzfeed. I kind of wonder why the same policy doesn't exclude Huff'n Post, Salon, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but Buzzfeed does have some great content in places like this: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform](http://www.buzzfeed.com/longform)

Also, they were the ones who scooped this story, but the rewrite of it from The Verge will be the one that hits HN, not Buzzfeed's.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are people so reluctant to pay for software? - <AUTHOR> All of my evidence is anecdotal, but from talking to friends that are not power users/tech people, to me it seems that the average person thinks of paying for software as an outlandish idea.
Meanwhile they are more than willing to spend $5 on coffee yet wouldn't consider spending $5 for software. What makes even less sense to me is that when it comes to subscription based services they seem more willing to spend their money than they are for a one time payment.
Would love to hear your thoughts as to why this is. <comment><USER2> Software is too volatile.

If the software is good to start with, it is loved, but then the developers will decide to change it. Users have very little say in this, especially when the company behind it is beholden to some other kind of power instead of their damned users. People either live with the changes or they move on. I always move on. I am merely one person, so my word doesn't mean anything. Most people live with the changes. Or the company will gain new users who don't know how good things used to be and the old users stop mattering.

Recently, there was a paid app that came out with a new version of their paid app, so they made an update that rendered the previous version useless and they offered users a coupon to buy the new one.

You can miss me with that. I'm not paying for a double cheeseburger that can become two pieces of bread with ketchup on it that's been stepped on at any given time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here are a few thoughts, hope these make sense...

$5 software? Many of such priced programs don't really do all that much, they are kind of like a plug in or widget in older programs and OSs. Unless it is fairly unique I probably wouldn't jump, just because it is usually available without costs or other strings in the open source community.

For more comprehensive programs - I've bought software and will do again. I usually use the heck out of a program I purchased for at LEAST 5 to 10 years - or longer.

I don't rent software - if I bought it I expect it to work as purchased until I decide not to use it anymore. I can understand technically it may no longer work with newer computers/OSs, but I may want to keep using version 1 on some dinosaur PC when version 20 comes out.

The software can be transferred to new machines, I bought it I want to move it from old computer X to newer computer Y, I better have a way to do it.

Don't mess with with program features with free bug-fixes/upgrades. Too many times I had a perfectly good program running when the company does some sort of upgrade or bug fix that just dropped features. Usually its some shady marketing ploy along with "Oh, you can do that along with a bunch of other stuff by buying the pro version now!" (Apple, Adobe, Microsoft) Sometimes you don't know about it until you switch systems and the only download option is the new hobbled version.

I guess the main thing is give me installation media (or a download of a full off-line installer) and product key, and I'm set. The trend to buy stuff dependent on the long-term existence of the company or their activation servers is not comforting.

App store stuff is dependent on the app store still being able to service your device over time as well as you continuing to list the item or keep it available for reinstallation.

Real world example of non techies; most successful authors stick with the same typewriter, computer, or word processor throughout their career because the device has proven it's ability and now never gets in the way of the writer putting their thoughts to paper. Their world can come crashing down when their preferred device breaks, because they have to leave the "Making money by just doing my thing" mode to "OMG I am so lost with this new crap!" mode. People don't just keep buying new versions of the same stuff, especially productive people.

</comment><comment><USER4> Software payments seem to fall under either a periodic subscription model or a one-time purchase model. Both involve inconvenient workflows - setting up an account with each provider, handing over payment details to each provider, tracking payments on provider's website.

My other problem is that software usage is not consistent - I may need something badly this week but never again.

I'd be paying more and for more things if there was a smooth pay-per-use micropayments solution. Load up a wallet at start of the month. Every provider has a standard pay tip button which should be as easy to integrate anywhere as a "share this on twitter" link. Click the button, enter amount, and that's that. Software, news, content websites would all benefit. I think mobile games have solved this in a way through in-app purchases.

</comment><comment><USER5> Skimmed over the responses here to make sure what I want to say wasn't already covered.

I think there are a lot of reasons: \- Many do hobby projects and aren't looking for money. Users use these hobby projects and expect all software to be free. \- Software is non-tangible, so it's hard to make the value connection to it. It's not material, so why do I have to pay? \- The costs are hidden. It's hard to say software is $x because it took 3 months for feature y. Those are internal implementation details that users don't see or don't understand. \- It is hard to justify need. Tool z might also solve your problem, so might as well use that. It's not as straightforward as I'm hungry, I need food. Software can solve a problem in one way, but only if you see it in that way. (Generality)

</comment><comment><USER6> Two main reasons for me:

Probably 80% of the software I've ever tried, I hated and never touched again. That's a bummer when you've just paid for it.

Paid software is usually a pain if you want to use it on more than one device, or when you upgrade a device.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think you would be less hesitant if there was a refund policy similar to that of steam's where a time window is provided for you to try and return if you are not happy with your purchase?

<comment><USER7> Instead of a refund, I'd prefer a free trial period (possibly with limited functionality) so I could evaluate the quality of the software _before_ laying down my money. Knowing I'll need to go through the hassle of getting a refund if it doesn't work out makes me less likely to try the software in the first place. Contacting customer support for a refund is an unpleasant process at too many companies.

Also, as to your original question of why people are reluctant to pay for software, it depends a lot on the software. Much of the software that people sell (e.g., a game for a phone) is less useful to me than a cup of coffee, so I wouldn't bother downloading it even if it was free. And even if your software is useful to me, it has to compete with lots of free alternatives that are very good.

There are also the security/privacy risks that comes with installing software from unknown providers. A widely used open source program would be easier to trust than an app from some random person on HN that I've never heard of.

That said, I do buy software that's useful to me. For example, I buy tax prep software every year, and I pay for e-mail (Fastmail) and a web-based RSS aggregator (Newsblur).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> \- no social signaling value

\- knowing that there is an easily obtainable alternative (piracy) makes buying feel like being cheated/ripped off. people don't like feeling like fools, they like to think they re on top of things

\- copies are free to make, so nobody is being deprived or damaged by them obtaining a copy

\- programmers are generally invisible, so no emotional guilt unless the programmer themselves makes a personal plea/fundraiser

\- probably no emotional value before buying. after buying, perhaps there is a certain emotional commitment to the software/game and so they are willing to spend more .

\- Apple is the exception. It has social signaling value and also emotional affect, so users are primed to and willing to pay no matter what

</comment><comment><USER9> What people will pay for X is not at all rational. The market has been taught that most software is free, and that coffees cost five bucks. That is what people expect, so that is what they pay.

Another reason is that it's tough to compete with free. FOSS edges out paid developer and systems tools everywhere but the high end or specialized niches, and surveillance capitalism provides a model whereby huge SaaS stacks for social media and communication can be not only offered but aggressively pushed for "free." These are not free, but the cost is quite hidden.

Lastly I think the added friction of paying, licensing, and license management is a factor. Anything that adds friction slows adoption a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I definitely agree that FOSS is good enough that makes it paying for software that does the same thing less appealing, the average person that I talked about in my post doesn't use and usually isn't even aware of FOSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most software in my experience is: * Poor quality

* Offers no refunds

* Uses planned obsolescence

* Requires terrible EULAs

* Installs intrusive DRM

* Has a bad reputation for spying on you

* Installs Adware, Malware, Bloatware

I learned a lot about buying software when I was a kid in the 90s. There was no way to know if the stuff you were buying would be any good. Then once you found out it was steaming horse poop you couldn't return it. Then when you went to uninstall, it would fail and leave junk on your computer. Also there would be "Extras" installed like AOL, NetZero, and AdWare.

</comment><comment><USER11> Free software: Over the last 3 years I slowly made the switch to linux and started using more and more open source and free software. Once you have used libre office and google docs it is hard to motivate your self to buy the MS office suit. This same argument can be used for free to play games. So the paid software world has responded by making more and more specific and specialized tools. The Adobe suit is for example a great example of this.

Not Physical: For me personally one of the reasons that I stopped playing for game was that they stopped shipping it on real physical discs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ease of replication makes things like music, movies, and software worthless.

</comment><comment><USER13> The buying software vs a cup of coffee conversation is so old, it even has detractors.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6468783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6468783) (2013)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4393817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4393817) (2012)

</comment><comment><USER14> In the consumer space value propositions are soft. Money for status, convenience, comfort, security, etc. Paid software has marginal advantage at best because nobody sees it, proficiency takes time, risks are long tail, etc. The business market has a simple money for money value proposition.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think part of it may be how easy it is to find alternatives to paid services. Found a notes app that costs $5/mo? Google free note taking app and you'll be able to find one that's truly free, or one at least has a generous free tier.

</comment><comment><USER16> They've been flooded with freeware/freemium (often malware or adware disguised as a gift) so they lost the ability to identify value.

More informed people still pay for software.

</comment><comment><USER17> I buy coffee for $10/kg, it gets me 75 cups of strong black coffee. I will rather pay $5 for software.

</comment><comment><USER18> Selling to consumers is hard mode, try selling to business or at least a professional, it is a lot easier

</comment><comment><USER19> Plenty people pay for software. You should target niche professionals who are underserved, not the plebs.</comment>


Letter from Secretary Steven Chu to Energy Department Employees - <AUTHOR> http://energy.gov/articles/letter-secretary-steven-chu-energy-department-employees-announcing-his-decision-not-serve

<comment><USER2> Chu refocussed DOE efforts heavily into renewable energy, and while the ThinkProgress article [1] pushes the "going public with climate change rhetoric" angle, for me the money quote is:

"The cost of renewable energy is rapidly becoming competitive with other sources of energy"

I am guessing that Chu kept his head down deliberately about climate change to avoid the ire of the deniers, and funded efforts to reduce the cost of emission-free alternative energy. The deniers have nowhere to go, as over the next two decades cheaper electricity generated with zero emissions will steadily replace more expensive gas/coal generation, and petrol/diesel for transport.

A job well done.

[1] [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/01/1529531/chu- resi...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/01/1529531/chu-resigns- writes-of-growing-evidence-were-making-weather-more-extreme-and-moral- responsibility-for-action/)</comment>


Networking like it was 1996: Varese Civic Network website back online - <AUTHOR> http://www.pangea.va.it/indice.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Pangea used to run WorldGroup BBS - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Major_BBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Major_BBS) \- thence the "GUI"; but it was also available as a character-based BBS over ISDN.</comment>


Heroku Production Check - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2013/4/26/introducing_production_check

<comment><USER2> Dyno redundancy and DNS CNAMEs to protect the rest of the platform if YOU get DDOSed looks to me like things their customers have to do to compensate for shortcomings of the platform.

That's of course totally ok. What I dislike is how it's being sold as a feature or simple precaution.

Why should I pay double because they have to restart my vm? Why can't they bring up a new one and then kill my current one? Why are they talking about isolating DDOSed customers instead of protecting them?

Again, I can see these issues, but don't sell the workaround as a feature

<comment><USER3> I'm a PM at Heroku. The dyno redundancy check has nothing to do with protecting the platform. It is a best practice for production apps to have redundancy at the web server level. This protects your app from downtime should underlying servers fail, or if the web server process were to crash. N+1 redundancy for the win.

Also, it does not cost customers double because the first dyno is free with each app.

<comment><USER4> So it actually costs an infinite percentage more to run that second dyno ;-)

But I agree your points on redundancy at the webserver level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Despite all the hate surrounding Heroku lately, they're doing a pretty good job improving their product for users. This is good.

<comment><USER6> I beg to differ. They are definitely releasing a lot of features lately, but I feel that their core product is degrading. There has been a lot of bugs lately with Heroku.

To list a few, right when the whole debacle regarding concurrency started, they had a bug with their scheduler which wouldn't terminate processes. What ended up happening was that customers got billed for processing time they didn't use. Heroku fixed the billing issue after they were told of this issue. There was also a minor security issue where you could grant applications access to heroku via oauth, but you couldn't reject it. Not a huge deal, but it would be nice to revoke apps instead of leaving them out in the limbo. I could probably name off a few more issues I've been having with Heroku, but my point is, I'd rather they spend more time fixing the current issues instead of spinning off new features.

<comment><USER6> For starters, I'd love my support request to actually get responded to. To this day (one month later), the support request is still opened. The issue was fixed, however those who were affected received a canned respond. I'm sure thousands of paying customers would not have been aware they were over charged.

"We discovered that your February invoice # was not calculated correctly beacuse of an issue with our usage data system. We have not charged your credit card while we've been investigating and repairing the issue. We will run automatic transactions within the next two business days to collect on your February charges. You can see your corrected invoice on the dashboard:

      https://dashboard.heroku.com/account

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused."

<comment><USER7> [reposting stolt45's comment that got killed]:

Hey Ricky, we've definitely had some billing related issues recently. We've just finished the initial stages of moving onto a new system which should help clear up the cause of the issues like the one you mention in your last post. Sorry about the delays. If you email me at chris [at] heroku [dot] com and I'll make sure you're taken care of.

<comment><USER6> Thanks ddagradi + bgentry. Jen from Heroku got back to me shortly afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For one of my apps it says that I'm not using a production ready database. I'm using Amazon RDS. How well will the DB add-ons integrate with this check?

<comment><USER9> IIRC you actually have to remove the Heroku postgres DB for it to pass if you're running RDS.

<comment><USER10> This is correct. If there are no Heroku Postgres DBs, the test is skipped. If there are any, the test only passes if there is at least 1 production-tier database.</comment></comment></comment>


Somebody is to Blame for This - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/09/somebody-is-to-blame-for-this.html

<comment><USER2> Tragedy is tragic, indeed. It's an important lesson we all learn and this is a great expression of it.

Why a family decided to take their tragedy to a courtroom to force it upon others makes me upset though. And what this has to do with technology or startups is definitely beyond me. This should be on the fron page of Reddit, but HN? Why?

<comment><USER3> It is likely the family had little choice in the matter. Death is expensive in the United States (and other countries, I'm sure), so sometimes the only way to avoid having your loss compounded with complete bankruptcy is to go to court and find someone to blame.

<comment><USER2> Or settle out of court before it ever reaches trial. Trial means they were offered settlements and rejected them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whew, heartbreaking.

But like that great Indian liberator once quipped: "Life is dhukka". Let us liberate ourselves from the clinginess of existence.

I am not one to advocate open and public emotional outpourings, although I contradict this view when I write poems which I then send to my closest friends ... I'm ok with this contradiction, I'm not neurotic. ;-) However, one can see why it is totally legitimate for Anthony Griffith to do so. He is in his own words a clown. And his entire point was that a clown can sometimes ... should sometimes ... make you cry.

I tip my hat to this brave man. I would have a beer with this man any time!

</comment><comment><USER5> How can you tell that story and not conclude with the result of the trial?

It's so well written, despite all the terror of the words, you can still almost imagine Jeff as one of 12, arguing against 'verdict for the plaintiff'.

<comment><USER6> Because it wasn't the point of the story, even though everybody was expecting it. I imagine Jeff left it out to focus on the message he's trying to send.

<comment><USER7> "The unbearable grief demands that someone must be to blame for this unimaginably terrible thing that is happening to you, this deeply, profoundly unfair tragedy. But there's nobody"

This might be a hint?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People buy into the idea that the world is just, that everything happens for a reason (just-world fallacy). But sometimes bad things happen, for no reason, sometimes asshats win.

</comment><comment><USER9> I watched the Anthony Griffiths movie he referred to a while ago and it is heartbreaking. I'm normally a very reserved person who's partner is convinced my tear ducts dried up from lack of use years ago, but watching Anthony tell his story is like a punch in the guts. I didn't enjoy watching it, but I'm glad I did. It sure puts things in perspective.

<comment><USER10> Please consider yourself lucky you experienced this through a film. Last week I got to experience it in front of my eyes and afterwards again when telling my 6 y/old little girl her grandmother died. Your own grief is hard, your kid's grief is unbearable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The linked video of Anthony Griffith talking about his daughter dying of cancer whilst trying to support his family through the business of making people laugh is quite possibly the most heart wrenching thing I have ever seen in my life.

It reminds of the clown. That disturbing painted fake smile. No wonder they still freak me out.

</comment><comment><USER12> My 7 days of sequestration with 11 other people and a bailiff arguing a difficult case were the worst 7 days of my life, and my case wasn't as heart wrenching as Jeff's. First world problem, but it's not an experience I would wish on any one.

</comment><comment><USER13> I was just stunned by the first comment by Matt

"Only thing I can write is "I should have heeded to your warning"".

How can someone have such bad taste.

</comment><comment><USER14> A slightly strange conclusion. You don't need to blame somebody or something to grieve. I understand the point of blame in the court case, but the author is talking about 'somebody _must_ be to blame [for this loss in the prime of life]'. Blaming someone can make grieving easier, but that doesn't mean that there _has_ to be blame.</comment>


Show HN: Reportr - Your life's personal dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SamyPesse/reportr#2.1.0

<comment><USER2> This is amazing. I've been looking for a customizable personal dashboard[1], and this has a lot already.

[1] I want to get started with Quantified Self-type tools but it's been hard finding where to start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I haven't used it yet, but I love it already! I am going to go ahead, open a pull request and work on connecting a time tracker like SlimTimer (though I wish someone came up with a better interface). Opening a pull request because I'll need all the help I can get since I am still new to web development and nodejs.

Also, Spotify!

</comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to build this exact same thing. I track all kinds of data using: myfitnesspal, fitbit, resucetime, a caffeine tracker, foursquare, etc.

I'd really be interested in contributing to this. I'd be able to hackup something for myfitnesspal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, collaborators are welcome, it's easy to add a new tracker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The text on the Reportr website looks kind of off on Windows.

[http://i.imgur.com/QUL6Pzc.png](http://i.imgur.com/QUL6Pzc.png)

<comment><USER6> All custom fonts look off in Chrome on Windows, because Chrome on Windows uses a different font renderer than every other browser, including Chrome on other platforms. Last I checked the official Chromium bug (which is almost 2 years old now), someone talked about starting work on using DirectWrite in April. Hasn't happened yet.

If you want to see how the site's supposed to look, load up Firefox or Internet Explorer.

<comment><USER7> This font rendering issue is one of the most frustrating things about using Google Fonts. It's actually the reason I've stopped using the service completely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is cool, but I'm going to be a wet blanket here: you are seriously limiting your audience by making people install and host it themselves.

Even the fact it's on github is a big turnoff for a lot of potential users. Developers who want traction for their hard work should keep this in mind.

<comment><USER9> >you are seriously limiting your audience by making people install and host it themselves.

Wordpress would like to have a word with you.

<comment><USER10>
        krapp 4 minutes ago | link
        >you are seriously limiting your audience by making people install and host it themselves.
        Wordpress would like to have a word with you.

They host 72 million blogs [1], and I'm sure that the total number of WordPress blogs wouldn't be so high if they all had to be self-hosted.

[1] [http://en.wordpress.com/stats/](http://en.wordpress.com/stats/)

<comment><USER9> Yes, but I think it would be difficult to argue that Wordpress' popularity wasn't due to its being easier to install than Movable Type, at first. The ecosystem of plugins, themes and shops whose entire purpose is hacking Wordpress suggests that its still primarily used as an installed application, though I wouldn't doubt they get seriously good business from their hosted service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is just too much.</comment>


Show HN: BLITZ – Weekly Fantasy Football with Live Drafts - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
It's my pleasure to introduce to you something I've been working on over the summer - BLITZ.
https://blitz.zone/
It will require an access code when you first download it (this access code has 1000 uses):
Access Code: cPJCeF4F
Looking for feedback on the draft experience.
Thanks!
Known Issues:
Android is not done yet, only iOS can play today.
Anticipate Android completion by Week 2.
If you don't find a match, cancel and re-queue. <comment><USER2> As a totally blind person who uses Voiceover there are a couple of things. First the Music that plays during the draft is annoying since it makes it harder for me to hear Voiceover. It would be nice if there was an option to turn this off. Second there are a bunch of unlabeled buttons. It looked like I was able to pick the player I wanted by tapping there name but swiping from player to player was inefficient since I had to listen to Voiceover announce unlabeled buttons and had no clue what those buttons did.</comment>


Bitcoin Block #210 000 mined - reward halving - <AUTHOR> http://blockchain.info/block-index/322335/000000000000048b95347e83192f69cf0366076336c639f9b7228e9ba171342e <comment><USER2> Bitcoin is looking increasingly less practical. The size of the block chain is becoming massive. Recently I tried downloading the official client, and after 2.8GB of downloading with the progress bar only about half way through I gave up. If Bitcoin becomes more popular in future the block chain really isn't going to scale well, and that's going to result in a more centralized system in which there are fewer block chain "banks".

<comment><USER3> I think that the sustainability issue can be managed with bloom filters etc, but you are correct. Under the current model where the entire block chain must be in the possession of every client, Bitcoin is not remotely close to sustainable. Imagine if, in order to process credit cards, you had to download transaction data for every credit card transaction in the history of credit cards.

What surprises me is that the original creators, who were obviously very intelligent, didn't anticipate this becoming a problem and create the system from the ground up to address it.

<comment><USER4> So, what I don't get is why can't I, as a user, just pick how far back I want to go? Why can't some trusted party, like bitcoin.org post a their best guess for the block chain state 10 days ago. Isn't that sufficient to determine with a high level of certainty that I am on the correct branch and that there has been no funny business in the history?

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is, but the whole point of Bitcoin is to not rely on any central entity. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be entirely possible if we are to make Bitcoin mainstream.

<comment><USER4> I guess I long ago decided that Bitcoin was interesting enough with just the possibility of not having to rely on a central authority/entity.

More to the point, however, is that this isn't really an issue of an authority, but rather an issue of trust. If I for whatever reason decided not to trust Bitcoin.org, someone else could take their place. For instance, I could get my recent state of the block-chain from a pal that I trust to do the actual task of verifying the full chain. I could even pay that person some fee periodically for providing that service. You could probably come up with a distributed, fraud resistant, method of providing recent block chain states where many sources would have to be simultaneously compromised for any attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fireworks and sound were extremely annoying. I'm not used to web pages making noise on my iPhone and was unprepared for it.

<comment><USER6> Nobody is, that's why it's usually pissing everyone. A "Party" button might have done a better job.

<comment><USER7> Some kind of fuse or something to show what was about to happen with a 'stop' button might have been better. I don't think anyone would click a 'party' button.

<comment><USER8> Because nobody opens tabs in the background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 13 bitcoins in transaction fees... lots of people wanted to be in this block.

<comment><USER10> Can you expand on this for a non bitcoin-savvy person?

<comment><USER11> Transaction fees are a 'gift' from the person doing the transaction to the person that's processing the transaction. Processing transactions is done in blocks, and the process is called 'mining' because for every processed block, the person who processes the block gets 25 BTC (before today that was 50 BTC) plus the transaction fees. Obviously 25 BTC is a lot, which is why it's so hard to mine blocks. Mining is often done in groups, and the person who mines a block has to share the profits with the rest of that group.

IIRC the entire Bitcoin community mines 6 blocks per hour, and it's the mining process that keeps Bitcoin going, because without miners there couldn't be any transactions.

<comment><USER12> What happens when nearly all of the 21 million Bitcoins are mined[1]? Will transactions not happen anymore?

[1] - [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projec...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projected_Bitcoins_Long_Term)

<comment><USER13> The reward for mining a block just halved; it'll continue to halve as the supply increases, so that 21 million is not the endpoint so much as it is an asymptote.

<comment><USER14> That's not true.

It will continue to halve, exactly one more time to 12.5, and then the next time after that, it will stop. Once the 12.5 reward is gone, the network will be supported entirely by transaction fees, and no new bitcoins will be created.

So, yes, asymptote, but the rest of your comment seems misleading. It will halve once more, that's not exactly "continue to halve."

<comment><USER9> What are you talking about? Check out the wiki page: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projec...](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply#Projected_Bitcoins_Long_Term)

It's supposed to halve 33 times.

<comment><USER14> I am the one who is misinformed!

I was also wondering how to reconcile this (seemingly very) early first halving with my concept of a 21 year bitcoin generation span. Thanks for clearing that up!

*edit: Turns out I was misinformed about the 21 year thing too. These projections have the halving terminating estimated at 2140. Don't suppose either of us will be around to see it.

<comment><USER15> And, actually, it may continue well beyond 2140. The only reason it would stop there is because the smallest value bitcoin can currently represent is 0.00000001 BTC (1e-8). Many people believe that the rising value of bitcoin will bring about a need to increase the number of decimal places that bitcoin supports. If this change is made to the protocol before 2140, the the mining reward will probably keep on halving to values even less than 1e-8 BTC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it time to haunt eBay for cheap video cards unloaded by miners who no longer find mining worthwhile?

<comment><USER17> I'd say give it another month or two. Many are still able to mine profitably if they have 4x cards per rig (dividing the "fixed (power) costs" of motherboard, psu, etc). Once ASIC mining hardware comes online, GPUs will be completely worthless for Bitcoin mining.

But if you see a deal, by all means grab it.

* Disclosure, I am the community manager for a GPU-centric Bitcoin mining pool

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like the exchange rate didn't fluctuate too much during this time:

[http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgSzbgBzm1g10zm...](http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg5ztgSzbgBzm1g10zm2g25zv)

I wonder what will happen to the difficulty over the next couple days:

<http://bitcoin.sipa.be/>

Considering the exchange rate remained stable, I expect the difficulty to halve.

<comment><USER19> > _I expect the difficulty to halve._

Why would it? Those who have invested in dedicated mining hardware aren't going to switch it off just because the reward has halved. At least not until mining fails to pay for the electricity that goes into it (but I don't expect that will ever happen.)

<comment><USER20> This is what I don't understand about bitcoin. With my extremely small amount of knowledge about it, I thought the idea was to make it so that the rewards for mining were aligned closely with the price of electricity.

But is this the price of electricity in the USA? What about hiring people to do mining in countries with cheaper electricity?

What about if some miners had a solar panel on the roof? Although, as I write this, it occurs to me that at some point, it would be more economical to sell the solar generated electricity back to the grid, rather than use it for mining hardware...

<comment><USER21> I think US has incredibly cheap electricity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> After the bitcoin debacle, it went from $30+ to $3- and I knew if it were to rebound to that same price again, that would be the perfect time to buy.

Three dollars, now I regret it.

<comment><USER23> I bailed out and sold my 100 btc at 5$ and then patted myself on the back when it hit 3$. I didn't buy back in like I should have and now I am kicking myself in the ass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some details for the curious [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/13xd05/idea_for_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/13xd05/idea_for_the_210000th_block_lets_all_make/c78337n)

</comment><comment><USER25> What might this do to the acceptance of bitcoin? In an article yesterday, someone mentioned in the comments that it was no longer financially viable to make money from mining, I would assume that this would make it doubly so. If that is the case, will there be required transaction fees for processing transactions, and how will that effect the price of BTC?

<comment><USER26> This person is misinformed. Mining is still quite profitable to many of us. Eg. each one of my Cairnsmore1 FPGA boards makes about $43/month, after the halving. Before the halving, they made $86/month. I paid $640 for each one. Electrical cost for one of them (40W) is $2.90/month at the worldwide average rate of $0.10/kWh.

<comment><USER27> This sounds like good business. Any links on getting started? I'm especially curious about the legal aspects like how you report mined-Bitcoin income when you do taxes.

<comment><USER28> I don't think that the government could tax it, as it's not money :) I'm not a lawyer or anything even close, but if your income is not money, but something else (e.g. potatoes), would that be taxed?

<comment><USER29> Yes, absolutely. Many countries tax barter exchange. The IRS has a whole section on their site about it: [http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small- Businesses-&-Self-Em...](http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small- Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Bartering-Tax-Center)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Translation to English from Bitcoinese?

<comment><USER31> Bitcoin works by having "blocks" of data, containing transaction history (every Bitcoin transfer someone has made - it is only actually made when incorporated into a block), "mined" by a network. These blocks are mined by incrementing a value in the block of data computing a hash of it, until it falls within a certain range. The fact the hash must be in this range results in Bitcoin miners having to do millions of hash computations until they find the correct one, creating a significant level of difficulty in producing a block. This difficulty means that it is difficult to spend Bitcoins twice, since you would theoretically need to control 50% of the computing power working away at it. Each miner is competing with every other to mine the next block first. Whoever does so can add a "reward" of Bitcoins to the block of transactions, and this is how new Bitcoins are made. Over time, the Bitcoin network increases the difficulty by making the range of valid hashes narrower, so that even as more miners join the network, it will still take roughly 10 minutes until the next block is mined. What's happened in this case is that now the reward, previously 50 BTC, has been halved to 25 BTC. I should note that miners can also deduct transaction fees... anyone who makes a transaction can add a small fee. This adds an additional incentive for miners to mine a block beyond the other reward. It also means, of course, that they prioritise whoever pays the highest fee.

<comment><USER32> I've long wondered about this, how long does it take to process a transaction if you add no fee? The fee is pretty significant (especially for microtransactions), and I'm not in a hurry, so I can wait a few minutes/hour.

TL;DR: What's the wait like if you're stingy?

<comment><USER33> Most transactions don't need a fee and even those that do will be relayed eventually even with no fee (currently).

See this Stack Exchange answer for some more details: <http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/4483/61>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> NoooOOoooOOOooo!

</comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone explain this to me?

Sorry, I never really paid attention to bitcoin. I was sure the government would have killed it by now, labeling you all criminals.

<comment><AUTHOR> <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining#Reward>

<comment><USER35> Thanks. I guess no one else gets the sarcasm in my initial comment.

<comment><USER36> No, we get the sarcasm, we just want it left on Reddit.

Every community has its own quirks. You just encountered one of the more important ones for HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Stock Price Is Crashing And There's No Bottom In Sight - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/apples-stock-price-is-crashing-and-the-bottom-is-not-in-sight/ <comment><USER2> I would personally not buy their stock any time soon.

I keep meaning to write a blog entry on this. To understand my reasoning it helps to be familiar with _The Innovator's Dilemma_ (see [http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies- Ca...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies- Cause/dp/0875845851/ref=sr_1_2) for the book). The basic assumption of that book (backed up with many examples in industries from ship technology to hard drives to backhoes) is that any technology that has a well-established value proposition will tend to show exponential improvement on that value proposition over time. Users needs also follow an exponential curve, but it tends to be slower than the technology improvement curve. (A lot slower.) Therefore if you have 2 technologies competing for that market, eventually the cheap crappy one will be good enough, and after that point hits it wins. The premium technology will always show great revenue curves even once their low- end users start switching, but those curves hide a great oncoming disaster.

In every market that Apple is in, it is the premium product. It has competitors. And its competitors have a pretty good sense of the value proposition that they need to deliver. Therefore every market line for Apple is doomed. They show no signs of having new ones to wow us with, so Apple has a world of hurt coming.

But, you may ask, why did they not have this problem historically? My answer is because Steve Jobs' genius lay in constantly finding and delivering _new_ value propositions. He found and defined markets for pretty computers, light laptops, smartphones, and so on. The whole Innovator's Dilemma argument depends on competing on a known value proposition, and Jobs never sat still long enough for his competitors to do that.

Of course Jobs is now gone, and there is no sign that Apple has anyone who has that talent.

<comment><USER3> Clayton Christensen's theory has never applied all that well to Apple, and he admits this. Rather than say "Oh well, I guess this counterexample proves I was wrong!" his latest articles tend to view Apple as a weird outlier, one that pursues excellence (and gets profit as a side-product of this) rather than pursuing profit.

[http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/08/29/jobs- made-a...](http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/08/29/jobs-made-apple- great-by-ignoring-profit/)

It's true that Apple has occasionally pioneered entire new markets, but it's also done pretty well with many of its existing markets.

<comment><USER2> His attitude makes more sense if you've read the follow-up book, _The Innovator's Solution_ , which describes the dynamics inside of companies facing this dilemma.

However I think that he missed a bigger point. His theory is based on companies competing on a clear value proposition. But I cannot think of a single product where Apple under Jobs ever tried to compete on the same value proposition that its competitors were using. For instance consider the iMac. In theory it was a desktop computer, competing against a plethora of others. However it was the _ONLY_ desktop computer that came in your choice of pretty colors. Competitors laughed, but people bought them.

The Macbook had a very different look, but again was distinguished from competitors by its appearance. (The specs were similar to worse than direct competitors, the price was higher.)

The iPod entered a market with established competitors, but was differentiated by its extreme design simplicity.

The Macbook Air changed things up in a different way. You had another laptop, which was severely underpowered, left out expected features (like a DVD player), but offered extreme lightness before anyone else did.

Whether we're talking about Apple's new product lines, or product lines that were in existing markets, there seems to always have been some unique value proposition which Apple offered that its competitors did not. I think that this fact is integral to its success.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Apple has often competed with better design and superior miniaturization. But how is this different from other firms? For instance, Sony has often tried to make things smaller and cooler-looking than competing products, from the WalkMan to the Vaio to the modern day. Few companies enter a market resolving "I'm going to just try to make _exactly_ what other guys are making." (Well, okay, maybe Samsung does that.)

No, the big difference is that Apple often _succeeds_ when they try ambitious new designs, whereas Sony and HP and Microsoft usually fail when they try to do the same thing.

I've always thought there was a large amount of self-fulfilling prophesy involved in this. Apple, like Tinkerbell, works primarily because we believe in it. If we stopped expecting it to succeed, it would stop succeeding.

Suppose HP releases a product that seems really cool and potentially useful but has a few annoying flaws - the software doesn't work quite right. Few buy it, HP never fixes any of the flaws, HP discontinues production, and you find the abandoned product on the discount shelf at Fry's.

Now suppose Apple does the same thing. Because _it's Apple_ we know they're committed to _fixing_ the initial obvious flaws. Developers and users see the _potential_ in the new product, not just what it is but what it could be. People buy it. A rash of "early adopters" buy it practically sight unseen and then whine in blogs/newspapers/magazines about what Apple needs to do next to make it perfect. Apple takes the revenue they get from those early sales, considers the suggestions, and _fixes the problems_. The original buyers get a software patch; new buyers get version 2.0 that fixes the original problems and more.

The first iPhone didn't have copy-paste and didn't allow third-party apps and didn't have an "app store". People bought it, and within a year or so it did have those features. Apple has a _track record_ of sticking with it and improving their crazy stuff, so we trust them to fix problems, so they find it worthwhile to take bigger risks.

[Minor nit: The first iMac only came in Bondi Blue. The choice of colors period came later, when it was already a hit.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think most sell off is driven by fear of next potentially disappointing quarterly announcement compared to same holiday quarter of last year. Apple's center of success is gigantic subsidy from mobile operators. Investors might have reason to believe that this model is in great danger because of astonishing slew of similarly capable alternatives available to operators. On iPad front they already essentially cut their absolute margins big time by releasing iPad mini. Add introduction of slew of upcoming models running Surface/Win8 in to the mix and you can see that Apple's gigantic revenue streams are in great danger.

The fix for this would have been new products by Apple and that's what Mr Market has been expecting for long time. But instead we have only seen new minor versions of same old. The reason Apple's stock has been able to climb at accelerated pace so far was continuous stream of new products every 3 years and that seems to be gone now. Perhaps that might be the reason for Apple's new employee initiative of 20% time?

</comment><comment><USER5> Apple is trading at under 12 times earnings right now. Still seems like a pretty reasonable buy to me. There is almost always a bottom in sight unless a company just reeks of failure.

</comment><comment><USER6> While Apple stock have definitely been falling for the last few months (and I know, I have stock), let's not forget that so has everything else lately. In particular, in the last week with focus moving away from the presidential election and back towards actual issues rather than trying to get votes, people are remembering that the so-called 'fiscal cliff' is just around the corner. Apple's fallen yes, but LinkedIn has also fallen, so has Google, so has Microsoft; all quite significantly I might add.

Sometimes things aren't as simple as "STEVE JOBS IS DEAD," a new Nexus handset or more lawsuits with Samsung. Sometimes it's just the market overall. Even earlier in the year I noticed it with the Greek bailout issues. Apple stock had been falling for weeks, then suddenly the pro-austerity party in Greece won the election, and stock prices started shooting up again as concerns over Europe collapsing were alleviated.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pundits are posting clickbait containing the word Apple and there's no end in sight :(

</comment><comment><USER8> Now is a good time to use that option knowledge to make a killing! :-) Link baitness aside, tech journalists focusing on stock price rather than companies _was_ one of the less useful parts of the dot com bubble.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The price is still up 30 percent on the year but far from its 74 percent increase a few months back."

</comment><comment><USER10> Let's all chip in here and _not_ click this link. Don't support these pointless articles.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was expressing a similar sentiment just yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4786923>

Nobody cares what I think, but I'm going to go ahead and predict that Apple's descent will be dramatic and historical. Apple is shellshocked with Steve's passing and is completely directionless.

Apple was Steve, Steve was Apple. One cannot exist without the other.

<comment><USER12> Just longer, not faster than its rivals nor lighter with faster internets and better battery life? It's not like the iPhone 5 has been getting rave reviews across the the board or anything.</comment></comment>


Foursquare partners with AmEx, earns $0 from the deal: desperate or genius? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/foursquare-amex-deal-2011-3

<comment><AUTHOR> _The pilot isn't directly generating any revenue for Foursquare, cofounder and CEO Dennis Crowley tells us. But he hopes that it'll be successful, and that it could lead to future deals that could generate revenue for the startup._

If you were Foursquare, would you charge American Express for this luxury, or not?

</comment><comment><USER2> I would think that Mr. Crowley is hoping that, eventually, other credit card companies will want to do the same thing; allowing them to generate income. American Express is in need of an advantage over Visa and other major credit card providers, while Foursquare needs someone with the capitol and resources to begin a new venture.

Good Idea Foursquare! Would it be smart for American Express to build an exclusivity clause with Foursquare for this service?</comment>


OS X 10.7.3 Beta Reveals Active Work on 'Retina' Display Support for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/12/21/os-x-10-7-3-beta-reveals-active-work-on-retina-display-support-for-mac/

<comment><USER2> This can be enabled now by Quartz Debug (and then logging out) and using System Preferences, Displays to set a monitor to HiDPI. The effect is best if you have two monitors because the display you choose will be reduced to 1/4 of the usable space.

A checkbox per application seems a little odd. Right now HiDPI is per window; if you move most of a window onto the HiDPI display it automatically starts rendering everything at double size. This makes UI elements quite nice and it makes text very beautiful.</comment>


Show HN: Plex Alternative with Custom Metadata and Better Search - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kumpelblase2/vima <comment><USER2> > Vima's basic concept is that a video does not get any metadata from the > system itself, but the user has to define everything that one could assign.

I've already done this with my video library! I have a wonderful little program called Meta[1] that lets me easily set the metadata on all my media files (audio + video) in the format built into the file specification.

I would encourage you to look at interfacing with the metadata built into the file, as keeping a separate database feels a bit like re-inventing the wheel. (Mind you, Plex etc do the same thing when they just grab everything from imdb)

[1][https://www.nightbirdsevolve.com/meta/](https://www.nightbirdsevolve.com/meta/)

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal use case does not evolve around the metadata that is usually present in the file itself. I'm aware that this exists and that Plex pulls information from there too (see the footnote[1] in the section about Plex). I don't think it makes sense to try and mirror all the metadata in the file metadata, but in the spirit of being configurable and for portability reasons it would make sense.

I planned for adding a provider that would read certain metadata from the file (just like any other tool) as well as possibly also pushing edits back if wanted. Not sure when I get around to that.

[1]: [https://github.com/kumpelblase2/vima/#what-is-the-problem- wi...](https://github.com/kumpelblase2/vima/#what-is-the-problem-with-plex-- other-media-servers)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN-Community!

I've been working on this project here and there now about 2 1/2 years: Vima. I needed a replacement for Plex as it doesn't serve my needs very well since I wanted to search for more specific data that Plex doesn't allow me to. So in Vima, you can effectively search for any kind of metadata one can assign to a video, automatically creates playlists from these searches and let the system prefill certain metadata for each video. The user is in complete control of what metadata a video can hold and what types they are.

One use case could personal video "asset" management (which is what I am doing) to more easily find certain kinds of videos not by their name, but rather their actual content represented as metadata. This could be for video lectures, youtube channel backups or similar cases where there's a bunch of loosely connected videos. Alternatively it can be used like Plex for movies and shows but it would be lacking the data providers and doesn't have a concept of videos belonging to another.

This is a state that I'd consider V1.0 given the features it has right now are sufficient and it works. There are obviously several additions that can be done (and I hope I can get around doing them) and the design could be polished in many places. But I wanted to get it out there.

Some technical info: I decided to use rails+mongodb for this project because of the dynamic nature of the data. One can add and remove metadata at will, which can be of varying types which makes it ideal for a dynamic language and a document store. I think it worked out pretty well even though I had to leave my familiar lands. I also implemented a stripped down version of the apache lucene query language to allow for proper searching of all the different metadata (internally it gets translated into a mongodb query to execute). I initially didn't want it to be an SPA but over time it is becoming more clear that it would make several aspects easier to use and some workflows faster, but for now I'll just stick to normal templates.</comment>