Ask HN: What web hosting do you use for your personal sites/blogs? - <AUTHOR> Just looking for a simple host, with really great performance. As the title implies, it's for a simple static site/blog (likely using Jekyll).<p>I'm sceptical of the much hyped Media Temple offering, and definitely don't want to hand over cash to GoDaddy. <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: It's my startup.

<http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/compare>

We track what people are saying about web hosting companies on Twitter to see who people are happiest with. It's not a perfect system but what we're trying to do is create an objective and transparent way to compare these companies which I felt this industry truly lacked. Maybe it will help you compare some of your options, we track Media Temple (<http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/23/mediatemple/>) and GoDaddy (<http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/34/godaddy/>) as well as many other big companies mentioned in the comments (Linode, Heroku, RackSpace, ASO, etc).

<comment><USER3> Cool site. I remember you from WebHostingTalk :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are using Wordpress or another PHP based CMS then NearlyFreeSpeech.Net can't be beat.

<comment><USER5> Seconded. NearlyFreeSpeech is dirt cheap for hosting PHP-based products.

And they'll stand up to censorious governments: [http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2012/10/06/official-uk- gove...](http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2012/10/06/official-uk-government- attempt-at-censorship/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No need to spend a whole load of cash if it's only personal.

Check out <http://www.lowendbox.com/> for some dirt cheap VPS deals and guides on how to configure a limited resource server if you're new to it.

I currently use two providers I found from there, 3 containers in total. Having more that one allows me to simply switch if a host goes down.

(For a static site, it can be quite fun to see how much you can squeeze out of 64MB of ram.)

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to be with Media Temple and I never really had an issues using them, it was their Grid Server offering and pretty decent for the price. After a while I yearned for more control and power, so I moved to a 512mb Linode VPS plan which including their excellent backup plan costs me $25 per month. I host around 12 sites (mostly Wordpress sites) and it can handle everything that has been thrown at it thus far.

Keep in kind a managed VPS plan from Linode means no Cpanel or fancy control panel so everything needs to be done via the command line. Perfect if you want to better understand Linux and learn command line commands. The backup service is a separate offering that's $5 per month and I highly recommend it as you'll most likely destroy a few VM instances before you get the hang of how to configure things like server requests and email.

From my experience Linode is definitely one of the best and cheap. It's perfect bridging hosting between shared hosting and expensive cloud based dedicated VM hosting like EC2. Rackspace is also pretty good, I have friends who swear by them but can't say anything about them really as I've never used them.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any tips for setting up a new VPS? I just got one recently. I know my way around Apache, but I've never run a mail server before, so I'm reluctant to move my domain until I know that I won't miss any emails in the process. (I'm using Ubuntu Server 12.04)

<comment><USER7> My knowledge of command line Linux was pretty limited to changing ownership of files, using wget and configuring Apache but like yourself my knowledge of setting up email and whatnot was flaky.

Fortunately, you're in luck. I learned everything about managing a VPS from Linode's own excellent documentation. This is the guide I used for setting up mail: [http://library.linode.com/email/postfix/gateway- ubuntu-10.10...](http://library.linode.com/email/postfix/gateway- ubuntu-10.10-maverick) — bit out of date, but still relevant I am pretty sure and worked for me when I needed it.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that will be very helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mine is on Heroku, but that's because i've written my own blogging software and that's not what you are asking for.

I'd go with a VPS, then it will be a learning experience as well (if that's what you want) and you can use it for other things and play around with new stuff. Prgmr, Linode, EC2 (A reserved micro instance is dirt cheap). If you just want to host a site, I've also had a great experience with Hostgator, although YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER10> I use S3 directly (+ Route53) for my static sites, with EC2 micro instances for things that need a CPU. Previously I used Linode and was happy, but when I decided to cut administrative overhead, and go with just one vendor I went with amazon.

</comment><comment><USER11> If it's static HTML, you can use Github Pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a great idea. I hadn't looked into this as I have no need for code hosting/project management — but using Pages makes a lot of sense. And of course, Jekyll & Markdown support. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Rackspace Cloud Servers[1] (formerly Slicehost) with a basic Ubuntu install and nginx. I also use it for a simple static site and blog (still running Blosxom!). Has been rock solid for years.

EDIT: I second the NearlyFreeSpeech.Net recommendation if shared hosting is OK (as opposed to a VPS with static IP, etc). NFS has been very dependable in my experience.

[1] <http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/servers/>

</comment><comment><USER13> These days I'm mostly building one-page style sites (usually with AngularJS) paired with an API server (usually in node.js) so I tend to host these separately. I've got apps running on Heroku and I'm also keen to see if I can get better performance from AppFog so I might try that out soon. For static files I've been using Amazon S3 with either Cloudfront or Cloudflare.

</comment><comment><USER14> AppFog. This is free till 2GM RAM limit. I am running my Django site www.mistrics.com on it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use a dirt cheap $15/month OVH dedicated server running Nginx, Unicorn and Postgres.

Software wise I use Rails deployed with Capistrano for most projects and Octopress for my blog as there's no need for blogs to be dynamic in my case.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have a Jekyll blog that I host on S3 and CloudFront, with DNS hosted on Route 53. Anything more than that is overkill (and possibly a waste of money). Heck, even the CloudFront bit is not necessary.

</comment><comment><USER17> All my static and newLisp based sites are hosted on a Raspberry Pi. The Pi has enough power to handle blogs or small traffic sites. I use no-ip.org to get a static address for the Pi at home.

<comment><USER9> Unless I'm missing something, no-ip gives you a DNS name mapped to your dynamic IP address, it doesn't give you a static address.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you are using Jekyll, Github Pages is a no-brainer. Free, fast, and Jekyll works out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm using Heroku free plan.

</comment><comment><USER20> I use ASO, their customer support has been great in my experience

</comment><comment><USER21> Blogger. It's always up and does everything I need it to.

</comment><comment><USER22> You can use Azure Websites. It's free and works awesome.

</comment><comment><USER23> NearlyFreeSpeech. Costs me ~ $2 a month.

</comment><comment><USER24> RamNode.</comment>


What we know so far about the Windows CryptoAPI spoofing vulnerability - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lessonslearned.org/chain-of-fools/ <comment><USER2> Several people have POC'd the vulnerability at this point, including Saleem Rashid, who rickrolled GITHUB.COM in IE with it, so I think it's pretty safe to say we have a grip on what the vulnerability actually is.

A fun additional note: this post references Cas Cremers tweet-sized recitation of the vulnerability, but he followed it up with an even better, even tweetier variant attack, which I'll paraphrase:

1\. Find an ECC root cert.

2\. Let Q be its ECC-point public key.

3\. Let G be the P-256 generator; set it to Q.

4\. Let k be the corresponding secret key; set it to 1.

5\. Profit.

</comment><comment><USER3> TBH, vulnerability is sad, but probably not worth the attention it gets. It is not an RCE, was not actively exploited ASAWK, and even if it would be, you would still need to fish the victim, or actively intercept communication to a legitimate server.

</comment><comment><USER4> handful of people have POC now [https://twitter.com/layle_ctf/status/1217390040441147393](https://twitter.com/layle_ctf/status/1217390040441147393)

<comment><USER4> another this time showing SSL [https://twitter.com/saleemrash1d/status/1217495681230954506](https://twitter.com/saleemrash1d/status/1217495681230954506)

edit: in reply >

Firefox is safe: NSS doesn't accept the certificate.

Chrome is fooled by the certificate, but it throws NET::ERR_CERTIFICATE_TRANSPARENCY_REQUIRED. will need to investigate.

<comment><USER5> Bypassing CT on Chrome in this context should be trivial: [https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/certificate_...](https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/components/certificate_transparency/chrome_require_ct_delegate.cc?rcl=ae2f49f1fce4cacac5232782d9133239ff60821a&l=182)

Set your notBefore to a date earlier than 2018-05-01 and you're golden.

<comment><USER6> Probably not _too_ much earlier

[https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/net/cert/cert_verify_pr...](https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/net/cert/cert_verify_proc.cc)

Method HasTooLongValidity splits certs into four categories

First, really old certs with notBefore prior to 2012-07-01. This is before the Baseline Requirements, and so Chrome gives them the benefit of the doubt and presumes they might honestly have been issued with up to 10 years to expire BUT fortunately this grandfathering of old garbage was designed to end in July 2019 so all these certs are now distrusted. Any real ones were probably long gone by then anyway.

Second, those from 2012-07-01 but before 2015-04-01 get up to 60 months = 5 years. So a cert issued 2015-03-31 must expire within about ten weeks from now, a workable demo but not a long-lived attack tool.

Third, from 2015-04-01 but before 2018-03-01 it was 39 months. So any cert from 2015-04-01 is long expired, but one claiming it was issued 2018-02-28 expires in May 2021, that's a nice long time to exploit this bug.

Finally from 2018-03-01 it was shortened to 825 days. A cert from 2018-04-30 would thus expire in August 2020.

So the sweet spot is claiming issuance in February 2018.

Edited: I can't count to four apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "According to NSA, the bug was introduced in July 2015" great

</comment><comment><USER8> Will the patch include any kind of auditing mechanism to determine if your system already has files w/spoofed signatures? Or is there a recommended procedure to execute this audit?

<comment><USER5> I would expect the signatures to start failing after you update and restart.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I'm not familiar with basic details: signature verification happens each time the program is started? Or only when it's installed? If it fails the signature check, what is the default policy? Not to install/execute the binary? Or just log/warn?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm guessing the most serious impact will be non-browser certificate-based authentication, such as RDP or line-of-business apps that use standard Windows APIs. Local files (ex. fake codesigning) can be detected using anti-virus and third-party browsers are not quite common in the workplace and for home users.

</comment><comment><USER10> >Part of the confusion is that this particular software library, crypt32.dll has in fact been a core component of Windows going back all the way to NT.

If the vulnerability is specific to ECC, that didn't exist until around 2004.

<comment><USER11> The vulnerability is specific to the API accepting different parameters for the curve. That wasn't in any versions of the crypto32 api pre Win10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, as we were discussing Monday, would formal methods have addressed this vulnerability?

</comment><comment><USER5> We're branding this Chain of Fools now?

My vote was for, "Whose Curve is it Anyway? Where the points don't matter and the generators are made up." or WhoseCurve for short.

<comment><USER13> Curve Your Enthusiasm

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for changing the title, I was hardly expecting a surprise HN profile so soon, my blockchain project pitch deck is still a single slide with the word HODL and clip art of the ATHF mooninites</comment>


Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.darrinhenein.com/prototyping-side-tabs/ <comment><USER2> I've been using Tree Style Tabs[0] with Firefox for a long time. Being able to nest tabs and then collapse them is awesome. It is hard to live without it when using Chrome (I know there is a similar addon for Chrome[1], but it doesn't have the same feel since it just adds a new window off to the side and still has the tabs across the top).

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/) [1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree- styl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style- tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo?hl=en)

<comment><USER3> +1 for Tree Style Tabs. This seems in the right direction, but it's not nearly as feature packed as TST. One thing with TST though, pinned tabs is broken :(

<comment><USER4> I just installed TST and it lost all my 4 pinned tabs but could pin them again with no issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice to see FF designers discovering the joy of vertical tabs, but it seems pretty strange to not have the article mention the traditional solutions to that, like Tree Style Tabs. Are the designers living in a bobble when it comes to extensions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out, I should have made mention in my post :) I've have seen tree style tabs – which does a great job for more advanced organization of tabs. For my experiments (and Firefox features in general), we try and focus on simplicity and the more general audience.

<comment><USER6> TST is pretty simple to use and extensible if you want more. What you did was... not really practical. Have you tried using TST for a few days? I promise you won't be able to go back to any other way of browsing.

<comment><USER7> For developers and other tech guys maybe. But the average, non tech savy users have a very hard time understanding hierarchies and therefore tree controls. It's to such a degree that UX specialists like Alan Cooper strongly suggests never using tree views unless the data is naturally thought of as a hierarchy, such as a family tree etc.

<comment><USER8> >But the average, non tech savy users have a very hard time understanding hierarchies and therefore tree controls

Oh, that sounds very much like BS. "non tech saavy" users have been using hierarchies in computers since before Windows 95 (considering people that used MS-DOS as 'tech saavy' users). DOS/Windows folders were presented in a structure; File Explorer presented stuff in a structure manner. Hell, the "my documents" folder was structured... and even Gnome (the epithome of doing simple interfaces) presents folders in a structure manner.

<comment><USER7> Because a UI control exists before Windows 95 doesn't mean it's understood by the majority of users. Also, there is a larger amount of users with minimal software exposure now than ever before, due to tablets and smartphones.

If your computing experience is limited to iOS for example, chances are you'll never even have seen a nested tree view control, much less understand the hierarchy behind it.

At least just read a minimum on usability and UX, before being so rude as to "call bullshit" based on your own personal opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> OmniWeb did this over a decade ago: [http://i.imgur.com/U4Q5siY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/U4Q5siY.jpg)

I'm glad it's getting more popular but surprised it's taken this long. It makes more sense to use horizontal space on a widescreen monitor.

<comment><USER10> Yup. They also had a list view that's similar to what's being shown here.

Omniweb was great back in the day, it's too bad it's no longer around.

<comment><USER11> Or is it? [http://omnistaging.omnigroup.com/omniweb/](http://omnistaging.omnigroup.com/omniweb/)

Now with OS X 10.9 support!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to try this out, download release.xpi from the repo and drag it into Firefox.

Link: [https://github.com/darrinhenein/VerticalTabs/raw/master/rele...](https://github.com/darrinhenein/VerticalTabs/raw/master/release.xpi)

<comment><USER13> Is there a reason this isn't on the firefox addons site? I think it's bad practice to recommend people run arbitrary code from the internet when there's a simple alternative.

<comment> rational-future TIL: putting code on the firefox addons site makes it secure by pure magic.

<comment><USER14> Where "magic" is a review: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/developers/docs/policies/re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/developers/docs/policies/reviews)

<comment><USER13> ...and reviews by others, and a process by which known bad extensions get taken down.

It's not watertight (as the recent abuses in the chrome web store illustrate), but it's better than nothing.

<comment><USER15> AFAIK, Chrome extensions don't go through a review process. SmoothGestures was just one extension that got a new developer and then started submitting every visited url to their servers.

<comment><USER13> Well, there's certainly some central control even if it's not formal review. Of course, review wouldn't catch everything anyway (I think the ability to identify and block bad actors is more important than the a priori review).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have never understood why this has not been done far sooner and why the big browsers don't at least support the option.

It makes absolutely no sense to use up vertical space on wide-screens (which everyone now has) on tabs that then have to collapse, stack, or shrink when we could take advantage of all that white space left and right of the content to list all the tabs including labels and even add a few more pixels of vertical space.

It's so baffling to me. I don't understand it.

<comment><USER17> Opera (as usual) had this ability for years, although I have not used recent versions of their browser, so dunno if it's still there. They also added a nice "tab group" feature, which was/is much better than firefox's half-assed tab group feature (which isn't even "visible" by default because it sucks).

EDIT: Can find older versions to check it out here (Appears as 12.17 is the last version which had this): [http://www.opera.com/download/guide/?os=windows&list=all](http://www.opera.com/download/guide/?os=windows&list=all). You simply right click the tab bar and it has place> top/left/right/bottom.

I use Firefox now, and couldn't survive without Tree style tabs, although I still miss a significant number of features from Opera, although from what I gather, they basically thrown away most of it and now have not much more than a clone of Chrome. This is baffling to me too - current Opera is a clear regression from what they had 5 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the idea of the windows task bar on the left side, but instead of showing thumbnails if it showed document titles we could just use that instead of side-tabs. Start a new browser window instead of a tab and let the desktop environment handle that. Of course there's persistence issues, but those could be resolved. I guess I don't like duplicating functionality between application and the desktop, and all the apps getting tabs is just that. Perhaps the desktop implementation needs to be better rather than having apps do it themselves?

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish this existed for Chrome, they used to have a command line flag (–enable-vertical-tabs) but they turned it off. Which made me really sad.

Does anyone know of a nice looking version of this for Chrome?

<comment><USER20> Chrome doesn't really allow you to modify the interface enough to do this, but there's an extension called Tab Outliner, that works similarly, and has some extra features as well.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This post attempts to walk a fine line between hyping up the work the author has done and recognizing the contributions of... largely the wrong people.

\- There is a pretty popular Firefox extension called Tree Style Tabs, by "Piro". It is awesome, it is actively maintained, it works great. It has around 100k active users.

\- Some time later, "philiKON" (Philipp von Weitershausen) made a smaller extension that just shows tabs vertically. "It is heavily inspired by and borrows ideas from the excellent Tree Style Tab add-on", its page says. I used it for a while, but it fell into disrepair and I switched back to TST. Vertical Tabs has around 5k users.

\- Finally, "Vlad" made a fork of Vertical Tabs to fix it up a little, since philiKON had abandoned it.

So who does Mr. Henein credit? Mainly himself and his colleague Vlad. Vlad is credited as the author of Vertical Tabs at the beginning of the post, although what he was not "something [Henein]'d be willing to trial" (ouch). It needed Henein's touch to "bring this add-on to a level where users would find it delightful and usable enough to at least give it a fair shot."

But still, he does credit his pal Vlad for doing most of the work, and even throws in a mention of von Weitershausen in the middle of the post, without explaining what he has to do with Vertical Tabs.

No mention at all of Piro or Tree Style Tabs, even though it was the inspiration of Vertical Tabs, and to this day is used by orders of magnitude more people. In fact, its existence seems to be intentionally removed. "The hypothesis I was hoping to validate was that there was a subset of the Firefox user base that would find value in the layout that Side Tabs enabled. I wanted to bring this add-on to a level where users would find it delightful and usable enough to at least give it a fair shot." I would say that TST, its over 2 million downloads over at least 7 years, and its 100k active users validate that hypothesis pretty well.

I think this is a pretty shoddy way for Mozilla to treat a member of its community. There is an add-on that introduced all of these ideas to Firefox, is well-known and appreciated by Firefox power-users, and has been tirelessly maintained for seven years, yet they go and act as if "side tabs" (he even slipped his own new name for it in there) were some amazing new area of cutting-edge experimentation, while giving a hat tip to a derivative of a derivative of the original extension.

And then all the flowery rhetoric: "This is how great things are built; rarely from scratch, but more commonly on the shoulders and brilliance of those who came before you." "I've had great response on Twitter from developers and users who love the add-on and who can't wait to share their ideas and thoughts. It's awesome to see ideas take shape and grow so organically like this. This is collaboration."

Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way.

<comment><USER22> Presumably he wasn't necessarily aware of TST? I wasn't.

I don't see anything wrong with crediting where he found his inspiration. There's always a chain to these things, presumably TST wouldn't exist without Firefox, which wouldn't exist without IE or Netscape, which... which wouldn't exist without the wheel... fire...

<comment><USER21> Plausible deniability is extremely thin here. TST's inspiration is credited in the first paragraph of Vertical Tabs's Readme on GitHub (even in Vlad's fork), and in Vertical Tabs's description on addons.mozilla.org. In fact, if you google "Vertical Tabs" the first result comes with the snippet "This Firefox add-on arranges tabs in a vertical rather than horizontal fashion. It is heavily inspired by and borrows ideas from the excellent Tree [...]".

On top of that, Mr. Henein is a Mozilla employee and has several colleagues who are also working on vertical tabs (he mentions Vlad, but also Stephen Horlander, one Hayden, and there are others who are not mentioned by name). Basically, there is a group of people at Mozilla who is (finally, after seven years) looking into officially supporting vertical tabs. How likely it is that _none_ of them has ever heard of TST, or found out about it while researching this feature? I'd say it defies belief.

It takes active, deliberate effort for Mozilla to ignore the community's efforts in this field. It is certainly more satisfying to a designer's narcissism to pretend that he (with some help from his pals) is bringing forth a bold new creation, but it is an especially egregious attitude to take for a community-based organization like Mozilla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would like to know why it disappeared from Firefox mobile. The early version had it where you swiped to get the tabs on the left.

[http://dknite.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/firefox-fennec- mob...](http://dknite.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/firefox-fennec-mobile- android.jpg)

I am going to try an add an auto hide. Right now I have the tab bar at 50px. When I hover over it with a delay I would be nice to expand.

</comment><comment><USER24> I quite like vertical tabs, but then we build a product based around publishing content in this format :

[http://wayfinder.co/pathways/53998ffd774fd817001977ef/falseh...](http://wayfinder.co/pathways/53998ffd774fd817001977ef/falsehoods- programmers-believe)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd like to see the same dark theme on Linux otherwise I'll stick to tree style tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be coming, keep an eye on [https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs](https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs) (he's putting a lot of time into it in the next few weeks!)

<comment><USER15> Issues can't be opened on that project. Is this by choice or simply an oversight?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Where I really want side tabs is on my Android Nexus 7 tablet.

On it in Chrome I normally browse the web in portrait mode and I can see the titles of about three tabs, but only a few words of each. With a slide out side panel on the left (activated by dragging left to right from off the screen onto the screen) I would be able to see the titles for 15 or so tabs, with larger press areas and close buttons.

I realize for every tab switch this would require a swipe and a click, but as it is now the tab is often not one of the three visible and so I already have to swipe multiple times across the tab bar to see the tab before clicking it.

<comment><USER27> Chrome had side tabs for a long time. It was a 'hidden feature' you had to enable in the about:config screen. But Google knows how you're supposed to surf, and vertical side tabs are not it. So they tore it out. Many issues were opened on their bug tracker asking for it to be replaced, but the final word came down - 'we don't like vertical tabs, and therefore no one can have them. Stop opening new issues.'

<comment><USER28> Sheez. Why not enable users to drag any tab to anywhere along any edge of any window?

Tabbed window manager with pie menus for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0, from 1991: [http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov)

NeWS PostScript source code: [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps.txt](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps.txt)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am enjoying this on OSX. I tried Tree Style Tabs in the past, but was not a fan of how it looked. This looks much better and is working nicely so far. In the future it would be nice to see collapse-able tab groups.

Pinned tabs should have a visual distinction, rather than only being pinned to the top. An icon, badge, or subtle change in background shade would work.

Looking good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Really appreciate it. My colleague's fork is tackling pinned tabs and some other cool ideas, check it out! [https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs](https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs)

<comment><USER30> One idea I'd just thought of adding might be to use the empty space below the tabs with a top-list of frequently used URLs, excluding those already open. And maybe the most recently closed tabs. Also when mentioning productivity, I immediately thought of putting check boxes or labels on the tabs. Or swipe actions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Side tabs are great, because text is wider than it is tall, so you can fit a lot more of them on the screen, to manage more windows.

But why restrict yourself to the top edge, the bottom edge, one side or the other, when you can allow the user to drag the tabs around to any place along any edge that they want? I am perplexed that all tabbed user window frames don't allow this useful and obvious feature, after all these years.

Also, tabbed windows work very nicely with pie menus, and tabbed frames plus pie menus are an excellent combination for window managers and web browsers.

I implemented side tabs in a commercial product in 1988, for UniPress (Gosling) Emacs 2.20 running on the Sun NeWS and SGI 4Sight window systems, and I used them for the HyperTIES hypermedia browser and authoring tool that I developed with Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab.

HyperTIES Hypermedia Browser and Emacs Authoring Tool for NeWS HyperTIES is an early hypermedia browser developed under the direction of Dr. Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab. [http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/101](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/101)

Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation Browser By Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Rodrigo Botafogo, Don Hopkins, William Weiland. [http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/102](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/102)

Here's some stuff about it from Wikipedia:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(GUI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_\(GUI\))

The NeWS version of UniPress's Gosling Emacs text editor was the first commercially available product to pioneer the use of multiple tabbed windows in 1988. It was used to develop an authoring tool for the Ben Shneiderman's HyperTIES browser (the NeWS workstation version of The Interactive Encyclopedia System), in 1988.[2][3] HyperTIES also supported pie menus for managing windows and browsing hypermedia documents with PostScript applets. Don Hopkins developed and released several versions of tabbed window frames for the NeWS window system as free software, which the window manager applied to all NeWS applications, and enabled users to drag the tabs around to any edge of the window.[4] HyperTIES was a "hypermedia" browser, a term first used by Ted Nelson in 1965. The first "web" browser came out later in 1990,[5] and the term "World Wide Web" was not invented until 1990.[6]

HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU)

Here's another different application of tabs that I developed on NeWS, a visual PostScript programming interface.

The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication Routines Written by Don Hopkins, October 1989. University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab Computer Science Department College Park, Maryland 20742 [http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97)

Also, here's a video of an even more general implemented of tabbed window frames with a pie menus based window manager, that I implemented at Sun Microsystems for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0:

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov)

Here is the source code in PostScript for a few different implementations that I gave away for free back in the 80's and 90's:

This is the original version for NeWS 1.1 that shipped with UniPress Emacs, and that I used for the HyperTIES hypermedia browser and authoring environment, which is demonstrated in the video at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU) :

% Tab window class [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tabwin.ps.txt](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tabwin.ps.txt)

This is the PSIBER Space Deck for NeWS 1.1, which uses its own form of tabbed sub-windows whose tabs you can drag around to any edge, described in this paper [http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97) : [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/psiber/cyber/litecyber.ps...](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/psiber/cyber/litecyber.ps.txt)

This is the first version I implemented for NDE 1.0 on X11/NeWS while at the University of Maryland:

% NDE Tab Frames % Copyright (C) 1989 % By Don Hopkins, University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab % May 13 1989 [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-1.ps.txt](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-1.ps.txt)

This is the second version I implemented for NDE 1.0 on X11/NeWS while at the University of Maryland:

% tNt Tab Frames, release 1.0 % Copyright (C) 1990 % By Don Hopkins, University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab % Started, May 13 1989. % Reimplemented mostly from scratch for X11/NeWS FCS. [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tabframe-1.ps.txt](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tabframe-1.ps.txt)

This is the final version I implemented for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0 while at Sun Microsystems, which is demonstrated in the video at [http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov) :

% Tab Windows for the NeWS toolkit % Version 3.0.2 % This file implements a pie menu tab window manager for the NeWS toolkit. % It should work with TNT2.0fcs on OW2.0fcs and TNT3.0beta on OW3.0beta. % This code and the ideas behind it were developed over time by Don Hopkins % at the University of Maryland, UniPress Software, and Sun Microsystems. % Pie menus and tab windows and NOT patented or restricted, and the % interface and algorithms may be freely copied and improved upon. [http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps.txt](http://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps.txt)

I also implemented a tabbed window manager for X11 based on "uwm", which I can't find a link to right now.

And at Sun we developed but never released a really nice extensible window manager with tabs, pie menus, rooms, virtual desktop, and other cool features, that managed both NeWS windows and X11 windows:

[http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix- haters/x-windows/i39l.h...](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix- haters/x-windows/i39l.html)

Some notes about OWM

OWM is the "Open Window Manager" we prototyped in NeWS. We enhanced the NeWS window frames so they sported indexing tabs, pie menus, rooms, and a scrolling virtual desktop. Many of our enhancements were separatly developed, and plugged together orthogonally like legos. All NeWS applications could use these fancy frames, and the Open Window Manager wrapped X clients in the same frames that NeWS windows got!

This way, factoring the window frames out as a part of the toolkit, and implementing the X window manager separately, NeWS applications don't have to know a thing about X window management, and X clients can go on doing the same nasty things they've always done, and everybody get the benefits of dynamic extensibility, and a consistent user interface, by using the default window class!

I39L window management complicates pinned menus enormously. TNT menus pin correctly, so that when you push the pin in, the menu window simply stays up on the screen, just like you'd expect. This is not the case with XView or even OLWM. Under an I39L window manager, the Open Look pinned menu metaphor completely breaks down. When you pin an X menu, it dissappears from the screen for an instant, then comes back at a different place, at a different size, with a different look and feel. If you're not running just the right window manager, pinned menus don't even have pins! There is no need for such "ICCCM compliant" behavior with TNT menus. When they're pinned, they can just stay there and manage themselves. But were TNT windows managed by an external I39L window manager, they would have to degenerate to the level of X menus.

Under the OWM solution, pinned TNT menus work correctly, and they inherit their pinned window behavior from ClassPopupWindow, the same class managing pinned X menus. The look and feel is high quality, consistant, maintainable, and intentionally extensible.

If I39L window management has such a negative impact on pinned menus, how else will it impact other parts of the toolkit and applications?

Will it effect popup notices? Since they need keyboard input for the buttons, will they have to play the I39L window management game? How do we get the notice tail (a separate canvas) to line up, if the window manager decides to wrap a frame around the notice window?

It is impossible to know how it will effect TNT applications, because the toolkit was specifically designed to be subclassed and extended in areas that overlap with I39L window management. NeWSRoom and the TNT virtual window manager are examples of simple, interesting extensions to the window class that are in direct conflict with I39L window management. We would be giving up a lot of actual and potential functionality, that we designed the toolkit to support in the first place. We need to redesign the window class for greater flexbility and easier subclassability, but those goals are at odds with I39L window management. The result of a cross of these two opposing goals would be massivly complex and would sacrifice most of the important advantages of the TNT approach. However, the OWM approach to window management, wrapping X windows in instances of the TNT window class, synergizes with extensions to the window classes. As an extreme example, you can make OWM wrap window frames with title tabs that pop up pie menus full of handy window management functions around all your X windows.

There are several other technological advantages of managing X windows internally with NeWS, over managing them externally with X. By an external window manager, I mean one that is in a separate address space as the windows. Relative to the server, all windows are internal, all X "Xlib" and NeWS "wire service" clients are external, and NeWS canvas objects and light weight processes are internal. But an external X window manager is in a different address space must try to manage many shared resources at a distance, an intrinsicly difficult task, imposing limitations on the whole system and unavoidably restricting the user interface possibilities.

The management of arbitrarily shaped windows becomes very complicated under an I39L window manager. In contrast, PizzaTool has a popup pizza preview window, whose shape is a rectangular frame around a round (or semi-circular, depending on your appetite) pizza window, with the space between the inside of the frame and the pizza cut out. It was very easy to implement, by subclassing ClassPopupWindow and overriding the /path method to cut out the inside of the frame and ask the center pizza client to add its shape to the path. When you move or stretch the window, you see a rubber-band preview of the actual shape the window will take when you release the button. The pizza path procedure knows to maintain a 1:1 aspect ratio (no oval pizzas), that centers the round pizza in the frame as you drag the resize corner around. The shape of a TNT window is not simply defined by curves or bitmaps -- it is defined by a method of the window object, which can apply constraints and may depend on the state of other objects in the system, like the size or number of slices of the pizza inside the frame. All this nice interactive feedback is totally trivial to implement with TNT, and is completely impossible with an I39L window manager. And even if an I39L window manager could be programmed to perform such custom feedback, it would still have to grab the server and lock out all other animation in the process, instead of using nondestructive overlays like TNT.

X11 window managers must grab the server in order to animate rubber-band feedback over the screen when resizing and moving windows. This grabbing causes many problems with NeWS synchronous interests, that can be demonstrated by pressing the "Help" key while dragging out a rectangle on the root background. NeWS can do a much better job at managing global resources in the server because it is in the same address space and it has facilities like the overlay plane specifically designed to implement such window management functions, without even grabbing the server. This antisocial server grabbing behavior is just one symptom of a general class of problems with external X window management, including other important issues such as keyboard and colomap focus.

If NeWS alone manages the input focus, it can manage it perfectly. An X window manager alone cannot, because it runs in a foreign address space, and is not in a position to synchronously block the input queue and directly effect the distribution of events the way NeWS is. But even worse is when an X window manager _and_ NeWS both try to manage the input focus at once, which is the situation we are in today. The input focus problem could be solved in several ways: OWM solves the problem elegantly, as PSWM did in the past; OLWM could be made NeWS aware, so that when our own customers run our own external X window manager on our own server that we ship preinstalled on the disks of our own computers, OLWM could download some PostScript and let NeWS handle the focus management the way it was designed.

It's criminally negligent to ship a product that is incapable of keeping the input focus up to date with the cursor position, when you have the technology to do so. Your xtrek has paged the window manager out of core, and the console beeps and you suddenly need to move the cursor into the terminal emulator and type the command to keep the reactor from melting down, but the input focus stays in the xtrek for three seconds while the window manager pages in, but you keep on typing, and the keys slip right through to xtrek, and you accidentally fire off your last photon torpedoe and beam twelve red shirt engineers into deep space!

Oh yeah, and here is a picture of pizzatool:

[http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/images/pizzatool.gif](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/images/pizzatool.gif)

</comment><comment><USER31> Any chance of this being published via Mozilla Add-Ons, or do you want to keep it as a prototype?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now it works (best) on OSX, I'd love to get some help to make it work better across platforms. My colleague Hayden's work will probably progress faster than mine (this was just a side project for me!) [https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs](https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Looks ugly in windows. And show to on the right is not working. Waiting for a better version. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed! My work was done on OSX, as a proof of concept. My colleague Hayden is doing some great work to carry it forward, including Windows support ([https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs](https://github.com/dhdemerson/VerticalTabs))

<comment><USER32> Why it needs Windows support? Isn't it just an xul, js and css using xulrunner on every platform? Sorry, I ask because I never code in xul before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Slick. I've tried the popular tree style tab extensions a few times over the years, but this one feels the most natural. The others were always too complicated.

One nit: the target area to trigger the resize is super tiny. 1 pixel, I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, glad to hear you like it :) Good call on the resize target, I'll look at that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've tried many vertical tabs add-ons for Firefox, but, sadly, none are at the point where I can use them consistently. Some issues that I had:

      - interface buttons disappeared: new tab, tab groups
      - bugs when reordering tabs
      - looked out of place/ugly even with the default theme

That said, this is a sufficient hindrance for me daily that I'm considering learning add-on development to be able to fix these issues in those add-ons or create my own.

One thing that I'd love to have is the ability to reverse the order of the tabs and place the buttons at the top of the vertical tab bar instead of the bottom. I'm surprised that it isn't an option in any of the ones I tried: having the new tab button near the menu button would be a big usability improvement for me (I use the vertical tab bar on the right).

<comment><USER34> Then I guess you haven't tried a recent version of: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

I've been using it for, I think, 2-3 years. And it's come a long way since the early days when it was buggy. I suggest you give it another go with a more recent version. And don't be put off by the ugly screenshots on the add on page as it's not quite what it looks like anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> More generally, but in the same vein, I miss the side panel from Opera -- it's both easy and satisfying to 'throw' the mouse into the side of the screen to get access to extra control real estate.

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare to Tree Style Tab? I've been using TST for years and I don't want to downgrade.

<comment><USER36> It looks nicer (in my opinion at least, and I've only test it on Linux), more minimalist style. But it doesn't have the collapsable tree groups that TST has, just a standard list of tabs.

<comment><USER6> It looks pretty bad on windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why should the tabs be at the top. side looks better. Because it is easier read than the top.

</comment><comment><USER38> This causes the address bar to climb up and disappear halfway on my OS X Nightly. :(

</comment><comment><USER39> Looks like it doesn't work very well on Windows Machine.

</comment><comment><USER40> i have fvwm configured to have decorations on the left side, since most monitors have more X than Y pixels...</comment>


Curl -F "file=myfile" https://file.io - <AUTHOR> https://file.io <comment><USER2> Except that there's a missing '@', i.e.:

        curl -F "firstname.lastname@example.com" https://file.io

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! I think HN strips '@' from the title</comment></comment>


The Cinema of Nuclear Annihilation - <AUTHOR> https://bostonreview.net/war-security/stephen-phelan-watching-end-world <comment><USER2> Oh God, _Threads._ The article is right, that really is one of the bleakest movies ever made, right up there with _Grave of the Fireflies_ and _Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer._ I didn't even encounter it until long after the Cold War had ended, and it still made a huge impression on me; I can only imagine how people viewing it in Britain in 1984, at the height of Reagan-era confrontationalism, must have felt.</comment>


Ask HN: To "Cloud" or not to "Cloud"? (Webapp Hosting) - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I know this topic has come up a million or so times on this site, but I couldn't think of a better place for advice on a web application that is in need of hosting soon.
I've used Liquidweb's dedicated servers for most of my previous applications. They're powerful, come configured ready to go (apache, php, mysql, mail, panel, etc), and the support is by far the best. My main concern now, is scaling, server power, reliability, etc (who's isn't, right?). The webapp is built on Drupal. When clients sign up, they automatically get a private copy of the application, available via a subdomain (single codebase, separate DB). Because of that sort of system, and my desire for a massive amount of clients, scaling and server resources are a big issue (having a hundred or so subsites operating together, big cron jobs, indexing, etc). I first considered getting two dedicated, one for DB, and one for everything else. But Amazon's, GoGrids, and Rackspaces cloud offerings seem worthy of a try.
I have no experience using any cloud-like services so I don't really know what to expect. What worries me a bit, is that I don't want to have to install and configure everything needed by the servers (mail, web, db, panel, etc). I'm pretty sure none of these services come preconfigured like that, and I don't know how well any of their support is (and monitoring is probably non-existent). They also seem a little expensive to be running 24/7/365. Most of the wording on the site place emphasis on the service being for temporary server power, computation, etc.
I greatly appreciate any feedback, thoughts, advice, etc..
Thanks as always <comment><USER2> I think you should stick to dedicated servers for now.

1\. Don't do premature scaling (or optimization). You might be wasting time that could be spent working on the actual service or app. I feel that even with a dedicated solution, the scaling thing is a non issue until you reach a certain critical usage.

2\. The cloud solutions(Amazon for example) are not cheap at all, even a small instance is 10 cents an hour and multiply that by 24x7. On the other hand even a VPS from say slicehost for the same config would be around 20 bucks a month.

3\. The datastore based cloud options like AppEngine etc, are too restrictive for some kinds of applications.</comment>


Netflix's new plan: save a buck with SD-only streaming - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/netflixs-new-plan-save-a-buck-with-sd-only-streaming/ <comment><USER2> I got Netflix this December 1st and it's been amazing! My wife enjoys it a lot, she sees lots of romantic comedies. My kids watch Lazy Town and I get to see a lot of shows I never heard of such as Archer.

The service is now indispensable for me. I think a lot of people will get this plan, not to save money, but to be able to watch videos faster with less choppyness.

I don't know why but Netflix on my PS3 is lag free, and looks DVD-like. But on my PC or Mac or phone or ipad it's very laggy and takes a long time to buffer and pauses to buffer during the video.

<comment><USER3> Different devices can get different streams from Netflix (to support different encoding/decoding and bitrates/capabilities, I expect).

The implementations behave differently, that's for sure. For example I know my Apple TV buffers at the top resolution it can before playing video so it starts in HD. My older TiVo (and my PS3?) start playing instantly but you can notice when it switches over to the higher bitrate streams.

For fun, on the PS3 you can press a button (select?) which will display the current video and audio data rates from Netflix in the corner in a small font. You can watch it adjust as network conditions change.

<comment><USER4> That's weird, my Apple TV (latest model) starts in a lower res and you notice the HD stream "pop in".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fully on board with this. I would much rather have SD resolution that's quick and responsive than HD that continually pauses to rebuffer, or freezes up for no apparent reason, pixelates, and generally makes itself insufferable.

Negroponte nailed it 20 years ago. HD pictures are not the issue. Content on demand is.

[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/negroponte_pr.html](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/negroponte_pr.html)

<comment><USER6> It also maybe a win for tablets streaming over capped mobile plans where an SD stream may suffice and incur less bandwidth overall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm torn. I want 1080p content from Netflix, but they seem reluctant to deliver that to the Windows 7 box I use in my living room. Apparently if you have Windows 8, or any number of devices, you're fine.

[https://support.netflix.com/en/node/8731](https://support.netflix.com/en/node/8731)

<comment><USER8> Just pay $30 for a Chromecast. It's a much nicer experience than trying to wrangle a Windows machine, to boot.

<comment><USER7> > Just pay $30 for a Chromecast.

I already own an HDMI cable. The "wrangling" involved plugging that in, along with a dongle for a wireless mouse and keyboard, then turning on High DPI mode.

I get general purpose computing from my couch. None of the living room solutions I've seen so far come anywhere near my experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It occurred to me that maybe this is just a marketing hack. Some people out there are just cheapskates, and need to feel they are getting a deal. I am related to several such people.

This is a way to make those people feel happy.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like a market test or elasticity check to me as opposed to a full blown plan. Though I guess selling SD for ~80% of the price probably represents much better margins on the bandwidth.

<comment><USER11> I don't know, with the recent slowdown in cellular data speeds as the networks have gotten overloaded, there might not be much point in streaming HD video to your mobile device when you don't have wifi. For someone who's on the road a lot, I can definitely see value in an SD only plan.

<comment><USER3> Huh. Maybe this is designed for people with data caps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Speaking of SD on Netflix. I just got an Apple TV and the only way I could get iTunes to sell me SD movies was to change the settings to tell it my tv is SD. But now Netflix will only stream in SD. Total bummer.

<comment><USER13> You should be able to go into Settings -> iTunes Store -> Video Resolution and set it to SD - then your purchases are in SD but you can still view in 1080p (at least I believe so).

<comment><USER12> That's actually exactly what I did. But it seems like everything in Netflix is in SD now.

(But perhaps I'm only watching things that come in SD anyway?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article seems a bit sarcastic, but let's not forget that the discount is a full 12.5% discount.

You guys have it pretty damn good, $7-8 for unlimited streaming would be amazing. Here in Australia we have nothing comparable to Netflix. The closest thing is Quickflix - it's twice the price and doesn't have anything you actually want to watch.

<comment><USER15> You should get a VPN. Sure, it will cost you a bit extra, but Netflix has absolutely no qualms accepting your non-American credit card and you'll be able to watch other region-locked content. The VPN I use has absolutely no problems delivering HD content from Netflix and Hulu.

<comment><USER14> The legalities of this are still a grey area however. Some have suggested that bypassing geo-licensing restrictions is as bad as straight out torrenting: [http://www.smh.com.au/digital- life/computers/blogs/gadgets-o...](http://www.smh.com.au/digital- life/computers/blogs/gadgets-on-the-go/is-paying-netflix-the-same-as- stealing-20130717-2q3e2.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> that shows a total lack of touch to their own product, or the more probable answer, they are bleeding thanks to content owners boycoting them and so they are scrapping the bottom end.

see how this thread is full of joyfull clients on their first months? everyone loves it... until they ve seen all of it, which is very limited to begin with. and they only add things like sharknado...

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not meaning to gripe, and netflix is still worth the few bucks a month... but it seems like the service is declining. From content losses to constant buffering issues it often leaves me wondering if i should continue to subscribe or just use other means of getting content.

</comment><comment><USER18> sounds like more of a setup to eventually charge $1 more for 4k

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone have a wget one liner for getting all of the videos?

<comment><USER19> Oopps..meant to post this on the Computer Chaos club videos.</comment></comment>


Harvey, an operating system with Plan 9's shadow - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/this-is-not-a-monad-tutorial/harvey-an-operating-system-with-plan-9-s-shadow-3081414e5f0b

<comment><USER2> It'd be nice if the article had a link to the harvey website.

<comment><USER3> It would. [http://harvey-os.org/](http://harvey-os.org/)</comment></comment>


The True Story of LD50 - barry-cotter https://medium.com/@dctvbot/no-platform-for-aristotle-867a04c5da50 <comment><AUTHOR> > one of the directors of the LD50 gallery in Hackney.

Well, not a historical text about the Lethal Dose 50 used to verify how poisonous something is.</comment>


McDouble is 'cheapest and most nutritious food in human history' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10210327/McDouble-is-cheapest-and-most-nutritious-food-in-human-history.html <comment><USER2> The assertion in the post title is absolutely untrue. You can get foods like beans, chicken, eggs, milk, oatmeal, and pasta in bulk and for very little money. There isn't some false dichotomy between "esoteric, lefty food" and McDonald's cheeseburgers.

If you really want to save money on food for a family, get a slow cooker and make large quantities of food at once. The article is correct when it states that food is more plentiful for the poor now than ever.

<comment><USER3> I think it was a missed opportunity, most people who are that poor that calories matter are usually not the ones who do smart planning with their financial resources.

<comment><USER4> As someone who is currently _almost_ that poor, having the _luxury_ to plan ahead can costs money and time. It is really hard to justify any of the more nutritious foods when you're trying to spend no more than $10/day, total, on all meals. (less than $5/day is very common - or less - for many people). If you want to blame someone, I suggest pointing the finger at those that have kept the minimum wage from rising to sane levels instead of pre-judging those that have to live off those wages.

It is easy to suggest that this is merely a matter of proper planning if you haven't been in this kind of a situation. How much _nutritious_ food would you be able to acquire with a budget of $6.47/day[1] ($5.41/day/person for a family of four)? This gets worse when you consider the long hours (and _cost_ in both cash and time[2]) of blue-collar jobs (sometimes below minimum wage).

It can get even more complicated when you factor in stuff like the gas or buss fare it takes to get to a decent store that sells food that is better than fast food or 7/11-style junk; investors usually don't open new grocery stores near the residential areas with most poverty.

The point that this article is trying (badly) to express is _not_ that the McDouble is a shining example of great nutrition, (it also makes no claims about the taste...); they are (correctly) pointing out that it is a shockingly good _value_ compared to what else would be available to someone that only has $2 to spend on a meal. Rice may be cheap, but it doesn't provide the protein, and almost everything else at the $2 limit is also going to lack the fiber and vitamins. The McDouble may not have a lot, but it probably has a much wider variety than you will find in rice[3] due to the bugger including a bit of dairy, both meat and starch, and almost-but-not-quite vegetables in the ketchup and pickle. While the fat content is on the high side, it's not terrible. The worst part of the cheeseburger is really the sodium.

The McDouble is certainly a better choice, nutritionally speaking, than the traditional cheap food: $0.20 fried ramen noodles with shocking amounts of salt.

From a pure engineering perspective, this is an impressive achievement a lot of supply chain tricks and product optimization went into making a prepared food cheap enough to be profitably sold for only $1-$2.

[1] [http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/how-much-could-i- receive](http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/how-much-could-i-receive)

[2] (I highly recommend this article, which contains far more detail) [https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker- st...](https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker-strikes-back- fa4c36eb306b)

[3] cheap white rice, not "golden rice", which might be a better choice when available.

<comment><USER5> > Rice may be cheap, but it doesn't provide the protein, and almost everything > else at the $2 limit is also going to lack the fiber and vitamins.

How about Feijoada? Mostly black beans and rice, which are both ridiculously cheap when bought in bulk. Years ago (don't know about currently) it was good enough to be the basic staple of Brazilian army conscripts. And one thing we know for sure is that soldiers burn a lot of calories.

Wikipedia claims[1]:

       Rice is rich in starch, an excellent source of
       energy. Rice also has iron, vitamin B and protein.
       Beans also contain a good amount of iron and an
       even greater amount of protein than rice. Together
       they make up a complete protein, which provides
       each of the amino acids the body cannot make for
       itself.

To supplement that, wouldn't cheap vitamin pills be good enough to keep you alive?

I know it doesn't sound appetizing, but "beggars can't be choosers". It sounds a lot more appealing to me than trying to live on ramen. And it sounds a lot healthier to me than most of what McDonald's sells.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've often thought that it would be a good thing to have a "standard pantry" that was a set of basic ingredients and foods with a range of recipes that can be made from this pantry all for a set price.

the culinary training provided to every school child. Treat basic nutrition like a utility service supported by society/the government.

<comment><USER4> That could be a great product, if it was done right.

An even better idea would be to hand out that "standard pantry" to people for free when they first sign up for food stamps. Having that initial supply would help a _lot_ with the problem of not having enough money and time to do anything besides "maintaining"[1]. It is a lot easier to justify buying the bulk package of something that is better in the long run when you don't have add "skipping the next two (or more) dinners" to the cost.

[1] a term used in the medium.com url I referenced in my previous comment

<comment><USER5> > An even better idea would be to hand out that "standard pantry" to people > for free

I agree. But it's probably very hard to get most poor people to accept that. They could survive (for the most part) on a bag of rice and a bag of beans every month. But instead they use the food stamps to buy 10 ounces of potato chips for $3. You need to solve that problem first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I missing something? How does something being calorically dense make it nutritious?

<comment><USER8> McDoubles were popular with skinny guys who had a hard time putting on weight. One would stuff their faces with calories and hit the weights in order to do get bigger and it would be very hard if a guy didn't get in enough calories. So that's why a calorie dense item like a McDouble would help. However, that's changed with McDonald's increasing prices such that you aren't getting protein bang for your buck. Now, as one poster had already stated, you get a better deal (monetary and nutritional) with chicken, milk, lentils, beans, whole wheat pasta and eggs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoy an occasional McDonald's burger. But my biggest concern is what's in it. E.g up until 2011 their hamburgers had "pink slime"[1] in them.[2] Yummy!

That fact alone leads me to be concerned that McDonald's approach to my health could be akin to "whack a mole". They dropped the slime after everyone made a big stink about it. What else is still in there that I don't know about?

Contrast to Chipotle, which McDonald's used to own a major stake in. I can actually _see_ Chipotle cut the steak they use into little pieces, I can actually _see_ them carry that steak out to the serving line.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime) [2] [http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/have-...](http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/your_questions/our_food/have- you-ever-used-pink-slime-in-your-burgers.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> The premise of this article is incredibly short sighted: it doesn't factor in the long-term health effects of eating such food, or the sustainability of those ingredients, or the environmental impact of all those to-go food packages on landfills. In short, the article has set the bar very low when it comes to describing the impact of the McDouble and associated foods.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wait for Soylent being mass produced, that would be an interesting baseline for this question.

I mean there is a point of McDonalds not being 'bad' in general, it's a cheap way to get a full belly if you are living on the street.

Maybe there should be a way to get Soylent for less easily on the street so it can replace the McDouble.

<comment><USER10> No, it is not cheap. At least in Europe. That is why I don't understand how they have so many customers.

<comment><USER3> Well it's already popular exactly for that reason, independent of the price. It's a simple and easy way to get the required nutrition.

I think that says a lot about the future of the product.</comment></comment></comment>


Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Reflections on the Color of My Skin - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/reflections-on-the-color-of-my-skin/10158481422496613/ <comment><USER2> Direct link to Neil's web: [https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2020-06-0...](https://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/commentary/2020-06-03-reflections- on-color-of-my-skin.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for posting this.

Here is a facebook free link [https://outline.com/gY2JRt](https://outline.com/gY2JRt)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link! It's a very thoughtful piece on his part.</comment></comment>


New JAMA paper links mitochondrial dysfunction with Autism - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html

<comment><USER2> Impossible, it's got to be the vaccines! Are you telling me Jenny McCarthy was WRONG?</comment>


iPhone 7 has an FPGA chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/10/17/iphone-7-fpga-chip-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> bullshit. Thee fpga inside is a small fpga, just for adding a bit of flexibility around interfaces and glue logic.

FPGA that do compute are a whole different beast.</comment>


The Evils of URL Shorteners - <AUTHOR> http://visitmix.com/Opinions/The-Evils-of-URL-Shorteners <comment><USER2> Some of these issues are solved by using rel-shortlink and following other best practices. (I wrote about this here: <http://alanhogan.com/tips/rel- shortlink-for-short-urls>)</comment>


Startups: TechCrunch (probably) isn't right for you - <AUTHOR> https://www.themediagraph.com/blog/2012/startups-techcrunch-probably-isn-t-right-for-you

<comment><USER2> So many people strive to get coverage on the Techcrunchs and Mashable's of this world and then when it happens, all hell breaks loose! Careful what you wish for!

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely true - I skipped some of the non-PR reasons to be careful, but I liked Jason Roberts' post on that: [http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/forget- the-techcrunch-lau...](http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/forget-the- techcrunch-launch)</comment></comment>


Would the Internet Be Healthier Without 'Like' Counts? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/internet-healthier-without-like-counts/ <comment><USER2> No, people were perfectly capable of being vile to each other back in the days of usenet and many private fora have no scoring mechanism as such. Trolls and bad actors are rewarded by engagement more than clicks, hence the predilection for blatantly counterfactual or nasty comments whose purpose is to antagonize.</comment>


The decade's biggest scam - Terrorism - Salon.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/news/terrorism/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/08/29/terrorism <comment><USER2> The stats are just proof of how successful the war on terrorism has been! Now stand in line and let the high-school dropout security contractor cup your balls like a good American.

<comment><USER3> I have this policy of refusing to go through backscatter machines... while I'm not particularly convinced that the radiation is harmful (although it might be), it's on principle that I don't think I should have to give away naked pictures of myself to get on a plane.

Anyway, this inevitably leads to an extremely invasive patdown by an annoyed TSA agent. I also have a policy to have as much fun as possible during patdowns, so I grin ear to ear, whistle loudly, and try to imagine that I'm getting a free massage.

The look on the uncomfortable TSA agent's face as he goes about his search is all the victory I need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Should we be trying to dismiss terrorism by suggesting it is as equally threatening as bath tubs?

Lets pretend I'm a terrorist who is trying to make a point. You're telling me I should be ignored because I haven't killed enough people. Logically (or as logically as one who has justified terrorism can be), I need to kill more.

Is this the goal we're trying to achieve?

I'm not suggesting that billions haven't been misspent, but if this argument catches fire, it will be added to the wiki entry for Pyrrhic victory.

<comment><USER2> Even assuming that the message to terrorists is the only basis for our policy decisions, you can slice and dice this anyway you want. Consider the converse argument:

By spending millions of dollars and wasting thousands of man-hours of the citizenry for every single American ever killed by terrorism, aren't we sending the message that all it will take to completely cripple the US is to kill 25,000 of its citizens?

<comment><USER5> > aren't we sending the message that all it will take to completely cripple > the US is to kill 25,000 of its citizens?

We peace-minded Westerners are an incredibly naive bunch. The world is a brutal "eye-for-an-eye" place -- has been and will always be.

Terrorism has impact not only in the number of people killed, but also (1) probably much larger economic impact (people minimizing travel or any other activities that involve risk, even if they are not conscious they are doing so because of terrorism), (2) acts of terror that go unpunished will usually raise the position/status of the terrorist who committed or organized those acts in the internal power hierarchy he's embedded in (that's how fame, or rather "infamy" works), which in turn could lead to an extremely precarious and expensive situation of having to deal not just with a lone terrorist group but with an entire terrorist government, (3) if there is one thing most people want from their governments, it is protection against external threats, and failure to act can be perceived as failure to protect, which in turn will increase risk-avoidance and thereby have an economic impact (see first point).

Saying that nothing should be done when terrorists strike is like telling a kid who is being bullied to simply ignore bullies and expect bullying to stop -- it's something that's never said by someone in the position of being bullied, but always by someone who is not impacted by it. In addition, such a statement rests on the false premises that (1) bullying is mostly harmless (it isn't), and (2) that bullies are primarily interested in seeing a response from the bullied kid -- and that they are not bullying him/her for some other purpose (such as scapegoating, or deriving pleasure from the act of bullying itself).

<comment><USER2> My post was only meant to illustrate the ease with which you can formulate the completely opposite argument from the same premise.

If you want to know my core belief on the subject it's that doing nothing, and spending trillions on security theater are both equally stupid options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The people (administrations and congress) foisting this on us do not have our interests in mind.

</comment><comment><USER7> I will say one thing about industrialists; you only have to show them something once.</comment>


Show HN: Compact Conflict, a 13kB (gzipped) strategy game in HTML5+JS - <AUTHOR> http://wasyl.eu/games/compact-conflict/play.html

<comment> SPD-13 Really addicting!

However, the attack/defend mechanism seems pretty weighted toward slaughtering the fuck out of all my soldiers no matter what the odds are.

</comment><comment><USER2> Simple but good strategic game! I enjoy this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty awesome! I like it.</comment>


Writing an Interpreter in Go - <AUTHOR> https://interpreterbook.com <comment><AUTHOR> This podcast goes through some of the highlights of the book, [https://changelog.com/gotime/28](https://changelog.com/gotime/28)

I'm reading this now. Less dense than other interpreter/compiler books & All about the code.</comment>


Decrappification, DeOldification, and Super Resolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.fast.ai/2019/05/03/decrappify/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello- Jason here (one of the authors). I'll answer questions! I might not get to them right away as I'm about to go to bed.</comment>


How Not to Do It: Liquid Nitrogen Tanks - <AUTHOR> http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2006/03/08/how_not_to_do_it_liquid_nitrogen_tanks.php

<comment><USER2> If you liked this blog entry, go check out [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/-) which is a subselection of his blog entries about chemicals that he won't work with. For entertainingly good reason.

<comment><USER3> That URL needs to lose a trailing hyphen:

[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/)

<comment><USER2> I can't edit it any more. :-(

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean to seem pedantic. :-) More just for those who get a blank page (the response I was receiving -- no visible indication of 404, at least with Flash, etc. blocked) and assume the site's timing out.

<comment><USER2> It is not pedantic. It is important and I am kicking myself for not having checked that the link was working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two stories about stuff like this:

1)

A plumber in the town of Hilversum near Utrecht here once had an oxy-acetylene rig like this one [http://static.werktuigen.nl/afbeeldingen/advertentie/8577/1/...](http://static.werktuigen.nl/afbeeldingen/advertentie/8577/1/flessenwagen ---acetyleen-zuurstof.jpg) in the back of his trailer, hit a pretty heavy bump in the road, the whole assembly fell out the back of the trailer.

Because of the force of the impact the reduction valve broke off from one of the cylinders and the whole thing went rocketing up and into the roof of a church a few hundred meters away.

2)

A company that I free-lanced for had inherited an extravagant espresso machine from a bar that went out of business in Amsterdam. The thing was ancient and had been repaired many times, and not exactly by experts.

Over Christmas 1985 it remained plugged in and when we returned to the office on the 26th bits and pieces of the pressure tank were found embedded in the plaster walls.

We were very lucky, if someone had been operating the thing when it blew it would have been a 'closed casket' burial for sure.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some time before, I attended a short course on handling the small/medium propane tanks. It's like with the nitrogen tank - it's relatively small, some people don't expect it to cause problems really -- but now I flinch every time I see someone kicking/rolling the bottle (way too common thing). In reality it could easily destroy a thick wall and cause a collapse, never mind tearing the people nearby into pieces. Unfortunately many people handling those bottles never learned much about them...

</comment><comment><USER6> Dave Arnold at www.cookingissues.com posted about this recently. Their protocol for transferring the dewars includes letting the tank take the elevator alone. One particular time a student had set the dewar down a little hard, and the pressure had caused the tank to vent a minute later in the elevator, and blow a hole in the ceiling of the elevator. Had anyone ridden with it, they likely would have asphyxiated

edit: Link: [http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/03/12/ka-boom-liquid- nitro...](http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/03/12/ka-boom-liquid-nitrogen- safety-rules-are-there-for-a-reason/)

</comment><comment><USER7> When I was an undergraduate, a friend of mine worked for a physics prof who was researching something with superconductors. He cooled his experiments with liquid nitrogen. So we had a ready source.

We started by chilling our soft drinks with liquid nitrogen, then someone came up with the idea of sealing nitrogen into a 2-liter coke bottle. A coke bottle swells up to about double its original size before it pops, and it makes a most satisfying noise when it does. We'd use 1/2 liter of LN and wait about 10 minutes.

From there, we went to aerial explosions. Fill six trash bags with helium, tie them to a coke bottle of nitrogen, and let them float away. Ten minutes later, _boom_ from somewhere high up and down wind.

I would like to take credit for all this, but in truth most of it was other guys' ideas. I was an enthusiastic implementor, though.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel a lot better about the big liquid nitrogen tank I had to sit next to while at a internship last summer. That thing was hissing all the time.

</comment><comment><USER9> These stories are always turning up. If this isn't an excellent argument for requiring physics be taught in high school I don't know what is.</comment>


The Coming Food Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/22/the-coming-food-bubble/ <comment><USER2> >Money is flowing into the food sector; VCs raised $48 billion for food startups in 2014, the highest amount since 2000.

This is just amateurish, or intentionally completely misleading. that 48bil is for ALL startups, not food. That number would be absurd otherwise. The words "food" and "agriculture" and "delivery" do not appear once in the referenced source @ [http://nvca.org/pressreleases/annual-venture-capital- investm...](http://nvca.org/pressreleases/annual-venture-capital-investment- tops-48-billion-2014-reaching-highest-level-decade-according-moneytree- report/)

That said, yeah instacart seems kind of over valued. Its a thing i do when I don't feel like leaving the house once every couple of months - not a weekly thing. Then again, $10 * 100,000,000 adults * 2x / quarter is approximately a ton of money.

<comment><USER3> I suspect that link is only available to members of some sort or another. Or it's been removed. In any case, it doesn't work.

<comment><USER2> Interesting...It appears to work when clicking from the article itself, but linking doesn't work... I wonder if they have referrer based permissioning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Investment at 200x MRR for such a low margin business is extremely overvalued IMO. The only case for that type of multiple is if instacart grew more than 100% YoY (which they probably did).

Also of note and let's not forget -- $100M 2014 revenues are the "groupon- esque" pass through revenues -- Whole Foods, Safeway, etc... are also booking these as revenue.

Remember when Groupon, on the eve an IPO, cut it's reported revenue in half? Yeah, only a $300,000,000 difference.

> "On Friday, Groupon said it would change what it books as revenue after > discussions with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It will now only > count as revenue its commission on sales, rather than the total value of an > online coupon."

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240531119037915045765892...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903791504576589211214409214)

</comment><comment><USER5> There might be a "food related start-up" bubble but I don't think there is actually a "food" bubble. If anything, its the reverse. More mouths to feed. Less water and land and pristine ocean to do it with.

Providing sufficient food efficiently has been a primary challenge since day 1 of human history and probably will be right up until they invent those titanium bodies.

<comment><USER6> >Providing sufficient food efficiently has been a primary challenge since day 1 of human history and probably will be right up until they invent those titanium bodies.

It might be the most important challenge, but it's certainly one of the challenges we seem to be rising to. People have been predicting mass starvation with population growth forever; From the seventeen hundreds to the seventies, Malthus has been a huge influence on the hippies, and he's been wrong for most of that time, too. Our ability to grow food is growing faster than the population; apparently arable land isn't the limit people thought it was.

At this point in history, famine is generally a political problem, not a resources problem.

<comment><USER7> We can produce enough now, but at a cost to future production. We're increasingly cutting down forests, draining non-renewable water supplies, and reducing the quality of arable land.

In other words, at the current usage levels places like California will not be arable forever.

<comment><USER6> Eh, perhaps sometimes?

I think we are vastly more conscious of this sort of thing than we were, say, in the '20s and the '30s, and that consciousness is going to help us screw up less.

Which isn't to say we aren't screwing up some things now; I'm just saying that we're getting better at this sort of thing, in the two steps forward, one step back kind of way that humans as a whole seem to get better at things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps we are in a bubble-bubble, where the idea of being in a bubble is so popular that many investors are betting on being in a bubble even when there isn't one.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Entrepreneurs are the foundation of a growing economy and goodness knows, we need growth."

Well that's certainly an opinion. I know it's TC, so a certain agenda is assumed, but facts not in evidence and all that.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, San Francisco is doomed revamp its grocery shopping?

</comment><comment><USER11> ...is it me, or did I miss the argument here?

<comment><USER12> The argument was money -> bubble It's not very good</comment></comment>


Kurzgesagt Information Design - <AUTHOR> http://kurzgesagt.org <comment><USER2> The infographics are really nice, but what's with the looming globe? This has to be the most invasive and annoying piece of useless UX I've ever seen... (note that two links in the fixed menu on the left send you to the same target you'd reach by clicking the globe!).

Other than that, this is really cool...

<comment><USER3> Er, the visual design is cool, but there are a lot of little things wrong with the info graphics. E.g. Showing Neanderthal to recorded history time range with a satellite above the middle of such time range is artistically valid, but misleading in information design and visualization.

Sometimes, the infographics are completely wrong. The "weird no time zone" before the Big Bang is complete bullocks -- the whole page has built the expectation of meaning in the relation of how much time has passed between marks -- implying that the universe has existed for longer "with time" than "without time", which is scientifically meaningless.

I'd like to like this site, but it makes strong data statements without citing any sources and the visual design potentially misleads as much as it informs.

<comment><USER4> You should probably watch that video,[0] the narrator explains pretty decently what is going on.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Their Youtube channel [0] is excellent, they really grab the attention of someone young about a large variety of topics, and they really make you want to keep watching their videos.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt](https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt)

<comment><USER6> Also, in contrast to their website, their Youtube channel only contains educational videos and no promotional material. They also have a German channel [1], which unfortunately is not up to date with the English one, though.

If you like this kind of dense educational videos I can recommend C.G.P. Grey's [2], Crashcourse's [3] and Henry Reich's [4] channels.

I'm fascinated by this new avenue of educational material as it can provide the best parts of both books and tv if done well: You can pause and play back any parts you have difficulties to understand or want to think through more thoroughly and you have the benefit of both visual and auditive information channels in parallel. For example of the latter, take a look at this video [5] - describing the same concept (expansion of the universe does not have a center) in book would have been much more awkward. Also, the pure speed of the videos makes them more entertaining than any TV show could, because TV has to aim for the lowest common recognition speed at every time. E.g. [6] would never be possible on a streaming media.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/KurzgesagtDE](https://www.youtube.com/user/KurzgesagtDE)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey](https://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse](https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics](https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics) and [https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth](https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth)

[5] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q)

[6] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg)

<comment><USER7> Same people that are making crashcourse: Sci Show (www.youtube.com/user/scishow)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Edit: I was looking at the pictures rather than watching the video. The audio explanation does give a fair treatment of the subject matter.

\---

It's a nice idea, but the pictures about ISIS are a bit disturbing. I think it might be a good idea to stick with science and topics that aren't controversial, because otherwise it seems a bit like propaganda. Maybe I'm not used to viewing such media, but it feels like if you gave me a piece of text, I could read it and decide for myself whether or not it makes valid arguments.

However if you give me a piece of art, you are basically telling me a story whose validity I have no way of discerning (within the framework i.e. without having to do extra research). Having (what I presume to be) the ISIS emblem and a bunch of skulls around it seems like it's telling me "these guys bad", "those guys good", which is a bit authoritative for my taste and feels like it's from a dystopian classroom where we are told what to think. Everything is black or white. You're either with us or against us. There is no room in such a worldview for nuance. Perhaps this is a consequence of the medium, in which case established science (as opposed to politics) would be the topic of choice.

<comment><USER9> "There is no room in such a worldview for nuance."

Not everything needs room nuance. It seems to be a theme is some places, HN being one, where there is a need to not assign morality as fact. But at the extremes, we are allowed to collectively decide something is good or bad as an absolute, and agree that anyone that disagrees is disturbed in some way.

Slavery was wrong, all throughout history.

Hitler was evil.

I know the arguments for allowing space for nuance or the dangers of assigning morality absolutely. Normally I agree. But sometimes, something is so close to absolute that we can discard any margin of error, because it doesn't change the conclusion.

We should almost always be careful to challenge or leave room for challenging our preconceived notions. But sometimes, just sometimes, there really isn't a need.

Edit: at least that's my opinion.

<comment><USER10> > _Hitler was evil._

Evil is a religious idea. Hitler was a man, not some devil.

Those kind of after-the-fact statements are just cargo-cult that tend to obscure real historical understanding. Even if one means it well ("if we all repugned by such evil, we will avoid it") it doesn't work that way in actual life, for it tends to stick to some people and events and ignore others.

One has to understand "evil" (historically) not just loath it, in order to avoid it. And he has to place it in it's context and consider whether his side was just as "evil".

Fact 1: Before there was an official war Hitler was quite beloved in the West (including the USA), both as an ally against the communists and as an example of a strong "man of the state" against the "enemy within" (leftists, unions, liberals, etc). And they did know how he got in power and what his beliefs were.

Fact 2: Hitler wasn't some lone evil guy who brainwashed a nation. Similar ideas about the historical role of Germany, of the German people, etc, including anti-semitism were held by many German people even before Hitler became known, including prominent philosophers like Heidegger and Carl Smitt, artists and so on.

Fact 3: Anti-semitism was ripe in the US too, as was tons of other kinds of racism (not just against blacks. KKK was also against Hispanic, balkan, etc immigrants). Hitler himself wrote that he took the idea of the concentration camps from the US confinement of Native Americans ( [http://www.issuesandalibis.org/campsa.html](http://www.issuesandalibis.org/campsa.html) \-- random reference to the first link I found, there are tons of works on those camps you can look up).

Fact 4: Focusing just on some historical events (the Holocaust) misses the bigger picture, of western powers holding BILLION of people as slaves in their colonies, including millions of deaths, lynchings, official executions, maimings and the like. The US didn't have colonies at the time, but they had millions of blacks they brought to serve them.

Fact 5: People who consider Hitler evil (and why not!), leave the people who dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities -- on men, women, chidren, babies, elderly etc -- scot free. They even ignore that the Japanese were already destitute and surrendering, and revert to their BS patriotically edited "history" to justify something which was merely a live test for the weapon and a "message" for the post-war times. Just an example -- one can find equally horrible acts by the English, Belgian, French, etc, including the Japanese themselves in China and Korea.

<comment><USER11> Leopold II of Belgium killed more people than Hitler. Somehow few people seem to know this, maybe because it was ok to kill black people back then?

<comment><USER10> > _Leopold II of Belgium killed more people than Hitler. Somehow few people > seem to know this, maybe because it was ok to kill black people back then?_

Yeah, that's the kind of thing I was alluding too. And tons of other colonial crimes besides.

For example, they very day that the WWII ended, the French killed 20.000+ Algerians who demanded their freedom ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9tif_and_Guelma_massacre) ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The most astonishing part for me, is that those videos are made using Adobe After Effects, the amount of effort and patience it takes to work with a clusterfuck of shape layers and compositions is simply amazing! Kudos!

<comment><USER13> Are there any svg based animation tools that you can recommend please? I crank out SVG but I'd like to be animate it easily for little things like the gifs on the Atom site.

[https://atom.io/](https://atom.io/)

<comment><USER12> Animatron[0] jumps to mind immediately, I hope it does the job.

0.[http://animatron.com/](http://animatron.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I originally came across was the Ebola video [1], but now I see they have more things in their excellent YouTube channel, as others pointed out.

I was mostly interested in was the presentation style, more than the somewhat odd collection of topics (or their bias or lack of it).

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv19gkZ4E0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv19gkZ4E0)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish the website pages would load a bit faster.</comment>


Samsung S20 Mobile Phone to Have 16GB RAM - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MaxWinebach/status/1216770527634718732 <comment><USER2> Rootable with an unlocked bootloader?</comment>


Cargo pivots to car-top advertising, does layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/scoop-cargo-pivots-to-car-top-advertising-does-layoffs-06de8d44-d32d-4a16-a03b-ea9e65711d85.html <comment><USER2> Why have a real business selling things people want when you can just stalk people and pollute the visual landscape?

I hope this trash company dies completely. It's just a waste of resources and oxygen.</comment>


60,000 Antelope Died in Four Days and No One Knows Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/60-000-antelope-died-four-days-no-one-knows-why-n421056 <comment><USER2> I know why. From the advertisement in this article it is clear that antelopes did not washed their hands.</comment>