RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS - <AUTHOR> https://rssbox.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> > FYI: If you enable JavaScript then you be able to access additional options > in the dropdown menus. The website should still be somewhat usable, but > recent versions of Firefox will try to download the RSS feeds.

This is how you communicate with people with JavaScript disabled! Kudos. Most sites either present you with a blank page with no information, a blank page asking to enable JavaScript (even when the content is just text), or silently break some features.

That kind of respectful messaging alone is making me want to take a closer look. Though it should be "then you will be able".

> Important: Please do not overload this service. Do not make more requests > than you need.

What if we don't have control over the frequency of requests (e.g. using a service like Feedly)? Do those happen often enough that we'd need to host the app ourselves?

<comment><USER3> Feed aggregation services tend to minimize the frequency of requests especially for unpopular feeds since more requests = higher load for them as well. The incentives on the publishing and consuming sides align. Many services only offer to increase crawling frequencies for premium users, and even then only for a limited number of feeds. Not to mention they only need to crawl once for however many subscribers.

It's really people who don't use aggregation services and set their clients to update very frequently (say every minute) that pose a problem.

<comment><USER4> An aggregator most likely would prioritize feeds by popularity and then run most of their crawlers 24/7\. Telling some users that a popular feed has new entries and not telling the free tier sounds complicated. Unless the free tier is getting a read replica of the database, in which case it's throttled only by how far behind the read replicas get.

Prioritizing lower subscribership feeds if a smaller number of premium customers add them makes some sense though.

<comment><USER3> Of course popular feeds are crawled constantly, and no, there's no "telling some users that a popular feed has new entries and not telling the free tier". But you bet services don't want to crawl those one-subscriber feeds (e.g. some websites have personal feeds for paid subscribers) constantly for free. And RSS Box feeds apparently tend to fall in the latter category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried to tackle this issue in a more general way, so i wrote rss proxy [0], that analyzes the dom structure and derives feed candidates from it. Feel free to try the demo [1]

[0] [https://github.com/damoeb/rss-proxy/](https://github.com/damoeb/rss- proxy/) [1] [https://rssproxy.migor.org/](https://rssproxy.migor.org/)

<comment><USER6> This is amazing. I've been looking for this exact solution. Thanks for your work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can actually get RSS feeds for YouTube: emacs users like myself who consume YouTube via elfeed have been doing it like so:

[https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<THE_ID...](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<THE_ID>)

Or

[https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<THE_ID>](https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<THE_ID>)

More info here: [https://joshrollinswrites.com/help-desk-head- desk/20200611/](https://joshrollinswrites.com/help-desk-head-desk/20200611/)

It really helps to break away from the addictive properties of YouTube's "Up Next" algorithm

<comment><USER8> Wow... I wrote my own WebSub receiver and put it on an always-on server to get around the fact that I assumed YouTube doesn't have RSS from the fact that I couldn't find this information anywhere.

<comment><USER9> It's crazy how rare it's become to see an RSS link on websites that actually have it if you add /feed or /feed.xml to the url.

I have to wonder how much more dead RSS would be if Wordpress (like, 90% of blogs/news sites) didn't create a /feed by default.

<comment><USER10> Check this out: Puts an RSS/Atom subscribe button back in URL bar. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome- rss/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/)

Helps discover rss feeds for sites.

<comment><USER9> That is great, thanks. Got back into RSS lately and doing the ol "look for RSS link in footer and then guess at /feed" rigmarole every time gets old fast.

The screenshot of the RSS icon in the url bar brings back a memory I don't know if I had. Didn't Firefox used to do this by default or am I misremembering?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone remember Yahoo Pipes? That was awesome, I mostly used it (around 2008-2010) to make RSS for sites where it wasn't available [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Pipes)

<comment><USER12> If you dig around, you can find some alternatives to YP

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=yahoo%20pipes%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

<comment><USER13> I run one of those, [https://pipes.digital](https://pipes.digital). It supports scraping of sites that don't have RSS, creating a feed via xpath or css selectors. From the sites this cool project supports it has integrated support for Youtube and Twitter. But I think it would be a great extension to embed rssbox and offer blocks for all those services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off topic but since we are talking about RSS feeds: Is there a web service to replay feeds?

Use case are old blog archive one wants to (re-) read sequentially from the start but not in binge mode. So maybe one post per day or week. I'm thinking about the old posts of Aaron Swartz or Steve Yegge.

Just adding the feed to a feed reader is often not sufficient because the feed only contains the last 20 entries or so.

<comment><USER15> Well if the feed doesn't contain older entries, it's impossible without something like the Wayback machine (and I doubt they store rss feeds)

<comment><USER14> Some feeds are just paginated. Following "next" links would work. Feeds readers don't do this though as they assume people are usually interested in the new posts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's an open source service that does something similar, does anyone remember its name?

 _edit_ : Both rssbox in the OP, and RSS-bridge[1] are open source. I was thinking of the latter. There's also RSSHub[2].

[1] [https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge](https://github.com/RSS- Bridge/rss-bridge)

[2] [https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub](https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub)

<comment><USER9> There's [https://easylist.to/easylist/easylist.txt](https://easylist.to/easylist/easylist.txt) for universal content-blocking rules, youtube-dl for universal video extraction methods.

While building a feed reader of my own, I had a recent idea for a project for universal content crawling rules: how is the content hierarchy organized on each site and how do you extract it from each content page. A single community project that any other project could use to crawl websites for their content.

Looks like rss-bridge comes close to that.

<comment><USER17> To help extract article content, you might be interested in this collection I help maintain: [https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site- config/](https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config/)

It's used, in addition to an automatic article extractor, in Full-Text RSS: [http://ftr.fivefilters.org](http://ftr.fivefilters.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The service [https://feed43.com](https://feed43.com) will enable you you to build a RSS feed out of pretty much anything with a URL. I use it to build RSS out of sha256 release files, vendor client download release pages, changelogs, etc.

<comment><USER19> Similar service: [https://politepol.com/en/](https://politepol.com/en/)

<comment><USER18> I would say this is a simpler service overall and not an even competitor, it appears to be using HTML elements as keys and creating entries based on that but stops there. I would not consider this on par with Feed43 based on the few samples I tried, it lacks in depth parsing required to handle the expected result formatting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone ever did something like this for Facebook?

I know it'd have to be subjective per user (security ACLs ⇒ different accounts seeing differing subsets of other accounts' posts); but I'd be fine with just getting my own account's subjective view, by logging into such a service using Facebook OAuth (or, if that isn't enough, then I'd be fine with handing over my Facebook creds themselves, ala XAuth, provided the service is a FOSS one I'm running a copy of myself in e.g. an ownCloud instance.)

I also know that it'd likely require heavyweight scraping using e.g. Puppeteer, to fool Facebook into thinking it's real traffic. But that's not really _that_ much of an impediment, as long as you don't need to scale it to more than a dozen-or-so scrapes per second. (Which you'd automatically be safe from if it was a host-it-yourself solution, since there'd only be one concurrent user of your instance.)

Anyone done this?

<comment><USER21> RSSBox used to have Facebook support (but only for public pages, no personal content), but when Facebook started cordoning off their API two years ago, I had to turn it off since I was unable to get my application approved. The code is still there, but I am doubtful it would work even if you manage to get an API key that works. I think the best option may be to scrape the web content now, unfortunately.

<comment><USER22> I have assumed for a while the only way to convert FB -> RSS would be to scrape the home page, but from what I recall the HTML & DOM is all kinds of messed up - intentionally obfuscated to prevent adblocking. From a quick look just now it does seem like it would be a nightmare to try to parse it as-is - and I would guess FB changes a lot of the output regularly anyway to defeat adblockers, making efforts to keep up pretty challenging.

<comment><USER20> It almost sounds like a problem best solved with OCR, rather than scraping per se. Build a simple model to recognize "posts" from screenshots, and output the rectangular viewport regions of their inner content; then build some GIS-like layered 2D interval tree of all the DOM regions, such that you could ask Puppeteer et al to filter for every DOM node with visibility overlap with that viewport region; extract every single Unicode grapheme-cluster within those nodes separately, annotated with its viewport XY position; and finally, use the same kind of model that lets PDF readers you highlight "text" (i.e. arbitrary bags of absolute-positioned graphemes) in PDFs, to "un-render" the DOM nodes' bag of positioned graphemes back into a stream of space/line/paragraph-segmented text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A somewhat unconventional UI for following content, which incidentally works with RSS Box, is Fraidycat[0]. It groups recent posts under "individuals" with a visualization of how much recent activity there is in a given feed, and allows to choose "follow intensity" which works in a nice and transparent way.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545878)

<comment><USER24> Hey thanks for this lovely pitch, goblin89. <3 all my goblin friends out there

<comment><USER9> I learned of Fraidycat in an RSS related HN comment yesterday and have been trying it out. Love some of the homemade quirkiness that I forgot software used to have -- the video is great too.

Only question I have: do you really have to assign every Github issue to yourself, the sole developer? Something about it cracks me up: [https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues](https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues)

> "Thanks for the bug report. Fortunately for you, our best man is on the > job!"

> _kickscondor has assigned the issue to kickscondor_

Anyways, just playing. Great product and great shepherding of the Github project.

<comment><USER24> Oh I feel such a sense of progress just assigning bugs to myself. When I get around to writing a blog post about it, I certainly hope you will be there to upvote it, hombre f.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Related (maybe) but tangential, does anyone know of a good web to text converter? Back in the day you used to just use Lynx, is that still the way or has it been surpassed?

<comment><USER26> I personally use postlight/mercury-parser[0] to convert articles to Markdown files, a small script to add extracted metadata (like author, featured image, original link, date it was scraped) to the top of a Markdown file, and put those Markdown files within Hugo for a DYI Pocket alternative.

You can use the --format flag to pick between Markdown/text/HTML output, so it should serve your purpose.

If anyone here has looked for a reader view on Chrome, odds are you've probably stumbled upon Mercury Reader[1]. This is what powers it.

[0] [https://github.com/postlight/mercury- parser/](https://github.com/postlight/mercury-parser/)

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mercury- reader/okn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mercury- reader/oknpjjbmpnndlpmnhmekjpocelpnlfdi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The are also RSSHub, which supports more site, but many of them are Chinese websites.

[https://docs.rsshub.app/en/](https://docs.rsshub.app/en/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Soundcloud actually does have RSS feeds. I'm not sure how they're exposed to users (I forgot how I got this URL) but they exist:

[https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:16977412...](https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:169774121/sounds.rss)

</comment><comment><USER12> I worry about this being swarmed by traffic and hugged to death. Since it's popular on HN, I imagine the particular Heroku instance is overwhelmed. I was surprised that it worked when I used it. I guess I'm gonna have to pony up and donate then...

<comment><USER21> You are correct in that it is somewhat starved of resources. The free Heroku instance that I host is running on the free Heroku dyno (512 MB RAM). I do not have a good caching solution currently, which is why Twitter and Instagram are almost always returning errors now. I suspect a single person is responsible for most of the issues (see GitHub issue #38). It's actually amazing how well it runs considering how much traffic is thrown at it.

At some point I hope to get enough time to implement a caching solution, which should hopefully resolve most of these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In the same vein : RSS-Bridge

[https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge](https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss- bridge)

(you can find multiple instances on the web)

<comment><USER30> Nice one. As much as I approve of services I'd rather self-host. Tired of people pulling the rug out under my feet

<comment><USER2> You can self-host this one as well. They mention it on the page and link to the GitHub repo: [https://github.com/stefansundin/rssbox](https://github.com/stefansundin/rssbox)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't know if anyone will particularly care, but both Substack and MailChimp newsletters have RSS feeds, in case you prefer those over mail. With Substack, you merely append "feed/" to the end.

With Mailchimp, well, you look for a "view in browser" or "share this issue with friends" link in the newsletter. On the archive page it takes you to, an RSS link is on the righthand corner.

</comment><comment><USER17> RSS Box is great - perfect for the kind of sites where scraping from the HTML is problematic because the HTML changes so much.

I work on a somewhat similar project called Feed Creator which can be used for less popular pages where you can select elements for the feed using CSS selectors: [https://createfeed.fivefilters.org](https://createfeed.fivefilters.org)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wrote a similar tool (but not as polished) that requires you to write custom plugins. This works well if you have websites that are hard to scrape in an automated way. Maybe it's useful to someone else: [https://github.com/dewey/feedbridge](https://github.com/dewey/feedbridge)

<comment> johnx123-up Is it necessary to write a plugin for each website?

<comment><USER32> You could in theory combine some, but it was just a very specific use case I built it for. Just a fun project, and on Github in case anyone else has a similar niche problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My own problem with services like this is that I don't want to tell their owners what blogs I read. It's a privacy concern.

I'd feel much more comfortable using a standalone tool that I could run on my own laptop (ideally one that didn't require running a web server or even a web browser).

<comment><USER34> I wanted to check out the service in the OP's post, and realized I didn't have an iOS based RSS reader app on my tablet. In line with your privacy concerns, I wanted an app that didn't require creating an account. I couldn't find one in the first several I loaded. Any tips?

<comment><USER9> None of the first few apps that show up for me in the iOS store need accounts. I've used Reeder in the past. But now I use NetNewsReader which is free and available on github.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/netnewswire-rss- reader/id14806...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/netnewswire-rss- reader/id1480640210)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> All I want is something that lets me get an RSS feed of Instagram accounts I follow, by giving nothing except the URL or username. I've tried 4 separate services that all work at first, then -- a week, a month, an indefinite time in the future -- stop working and never resume again.

<comment><USER36> [https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge](https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss- bridge) provides this and works for me. It sometimes throws an error but recovers after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there any way to turn a twitter feed (i.e., multiple users) into a single RSS feed?

<comment><USER38> If you use NewsBlur, it has an inbuilt twitter client and allows subscribing to twitter lists, which could accomplish this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> How would you guys use it? What're the use cases for this website?

<comment><USER32> If you want to subscribe to a website / blog that doesn't offer an RSS feed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> [https://feed43.com/](https://feed43.com/) does it for almost any website provided you fiddle with a bit of "code"

</comment><comment><USER41> I selfhost this: [https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss- bridge](https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge)

I highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER42> If you want to process an RSS feed programmatically, you have to run code to poll the feed and keep track of items already processed. This isn't hard to write, but it's often not core to your app's logic.

You probably just want to run code on each new item in the feed.

Pipedream lets you treat an RSS feed as an event source. Pipedream runs the code to poll the feed, emitting new items as the feed produces them.

RSS for Hackers - [https://rss.pipedream.com](https://rss.pipedream.com)

</comment><comment><USER43> "There was a problem talking to Instagram. Please try again in a moment." blocked by Instagram?

<comment><USER21> Instagram used to have an open API, but that is closed down now. The app is currently using some private-ish endpoints, but they are ratelimited. I need to add caching. More people have started using my app recently, and I have not had time to add caching yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> this is really cool. Twitter didn't work, though.

<comment><USER45> For twitter I use the perl backend scripts ([https://github.com/ciderpunx/twitrssme/tree/master/fcgi](https://github.com/ciderpunx/twitrssme/tree/master/fcgi)) from [http://twitrss.me/](http://twitrss.me/) by itself. It's pretty easy to scrape twitter users/searches and generate RSS feeds on disk for my native reader.

# in a bash script called by cron every handful of hours there are many, many lines like this:

        perl twitter_user_to_rss.pl gnuradio > ~/limbo/www/rss/gnuradio.xml

        perl twitter_search_to_rss_wtf.pl "rtlsdr" > ~/limbo/www/rss/rtlsdr.xml

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> serious question: does anybody use RSS nowadays?

<comment><USER47> Nope! That's why someone made that service, because neither they nor anyone else needs it.</comment></comment>


Cloning the MakerBot Is Legal, But Does That Make It Right? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2012/08/tangibot-makerbot-clone/

<comment><USER3> _"The decision to manufacture in China has also raised eyebrows. Will TangiBots be produced in a Foxconn-like factory..."_

My impression is that Foxconn is a much nicer place to work in China than most other places, so... for the sake of the employees I hope so?

Anyway, if Makerbot feels threatened by this they should probably take a good look at how Redhat operates. A piece of hardware should not be their only product. The fact that these new guys are catching flak from the community at all suggests Makerbot already has at least part of this figured out though.

<comment><USER4> More to the point, anything that can be trivially and legally copied should not be their only product, be it hardware or software. Open source is great -- I love it, write it, and have contributed -- but on it's own, it's not a viable business model in the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "I'm disappointed that you've chose to knock off/copy a respected industry > leader, and undercutting them, therefore starting a race to the bottom."

I sincerely hope we do get a "race to the bottom" on 3d printer prices, the same way we've had one for microprocessors and bandwidth.

We all benefit immensely from that kind of competition.

<comment><USER6> Only if that type of competition results in better products. If it's just cheaper products, there's no real gain.

And that's where I have a problem with this. Sure, it's completely legal. But it doesn't seem ethical to just take someone else's work wholesale and profit from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points, but the MakerBot is completely open source - so it is ethical, as long as he releases any improvements.

Also, isn't equal quality for a lower price, better?

<comment><USER7> the makerbot name is not open-source and kickstarter is not allowed to be used to fund a business, see their rule #1 - tangibot changed the entire kickstarter, and kickstart had them make it clear that tangibot was the deliverable -- not a business to make tangibots.

it's not fair to say a tangibot is equal quality (yet).

lower prices are good, everyone agrees with that though!

<comment><USER8> According to the license, "You must attribute The MakerBot Replicator to makerbot (with link)."

So it's ok (and actually required) for him to mention MakerBot at least once, "(but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)"

I don't think Matt suggested that MakerBot endorsed it in anyway, he just attributed the design ALOT!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of course it is both legal and right. Don't make things open source then expect them to not be cloned. The benefits of open source are that it is not only makerbot that is contributing to the design it is the community. The downside? The community owns it.

<comment><USER10> It is legal and right to clone it, manufacture it and sell it. However, I do see a moral issue in asking MakerBot community to donate a lot of money for this.

<comment><USER11> Why? He is offering the same product for 500 dollars less, making it more affordable and accessible to a larger audience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> An unspoken issue here, and one often facing the industry I'm in presently (I'm not going to mention what it is, as I don't want to attract any flak down the road, given I run an OSHW company at the moment) - is that it's easy to take a design that's been proven, and sell it for less.

It's easy to attract a large segment of the market over to your, near clone, of that product for less. You don't even have to make it in China - you're one guy with some outsourcers that'll do everything for you - you can just lower your margins. The problem now becomes that you need to sustain that business. You're not making enough margin to hire a handful of additional engineers to design the next generation products while you sell today's. You're making a comfortable living for you - while driving the innovator you just copied to lower their margins and lay off staff. (Or, exit the market entirely.)

Copycats of OSHW at cheaper prices who don't innovate new capabilities harm the market in the long run, but make today's customer happy. It drives OSHW vendors out of the market, and forces new players to make a choice between open-sourcing and facing massive margin pressure, or come out closed-source and ensure they have enough breathing room. Of course, it's a false dichotomy: we've been copied several times, but focus on extreme customer service, and way out of our way warranties to differentiate ourselves, while also continuing to invest in new products. But, we're also in a much smaller niche.

That being said: I haven't followed Makerbot in a while - how much new R&D do they do? That is, have they been coming out with systems with newer capabilities and competing aggressively, or have they largely been resting on their laurels?

<comment><USER13> They've been doing quite a bit. In the year and a half since I purchased my Thing-o-Matic, they've come out with three new hot ends, the Replicator, and dual-strusion. The Replicator is supposed to be easier to calibrate and easier to use. It also uses accelerated printing by default, which is a nice improvement.

From what I've seen, they are definitely continuing to work hard. They probably could have kept the Thing-o-Matic as their top machine, or just done a much more minor upgrade, and been safe for an additional 6-12 months. It's only now, 6+ months after the Replicator came out, that I'm starting to see posts about other commercial 3D printers (i.e. not DIY kit like a RepRap or Printbot).

Good luck with your business. Makerbot's customer service has been excellent the few times I've had a question. If you were to buy a Tangibot, I wonder how much support they will offer directly vs. having to ask the community. Of course in that case, you're really no worse off than if you sourced & built a printer yourself like a RepRap.

<comment><USER12> That's good to hear - there's always the risk that someone is going to come along and say "Well, but they hadn't done anything in a while!" As long as they keep investing and pushing the envelope, the copycats shouldn't drag them down too far - 3D printing, especially, is a huge market right now.

Not in the market for one myself, still prefer subtractive machining, but I imagine, like most new and small companies, support will be hard for Tangibot at first. They'll either get it and move ahead, or struggle under the weight of success (should they succeed). An interesting experiment will be to see whether they meet their goal, now that they're making the news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Knocking the price from $1800 to $1200 looks pretty innovative to me. I would like to buy a makerbot, but the price has been too steep for me to indulge my curiosity - I'm not a whiz at 3d modeling and there are other things I like to spend money on.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Torrone's primary frustration was the over-reliance on the MakerBot trademark — the one way open source projects can protect their brand — and the good will that is associated with it. [Editor's note: Strong has since removed much of the "MakerBot" language from the Kickstarter page.]_

I wish Kickstarter had an easy way to see the changes that project owners had made after the project had begun. Looking at the project's comments, it seems that Strong was opposed to removing the mentions of MakerBot (claiming that he was simply "comparing" his product to it), but changed his mind earlier this week.

<comment><USER8> As I noted above:

 _According to the license, "You must attribute The MakerBot Replicator to makerbot (with link)."

"So it's ok (and actually required) for him to mention MakerBot at least once, "(but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)"

I don't think Matt suggested that MakerBot endorsed it in anyway, he just attributed the design ALOT!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ripping off Makerbot? Please. Makerbot uses plenty of Reprap-derived technology, and how much money did Bri pay for that?

$0, since it was all open source.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Phill Torrone hits the nail on the head: The problem isn't that the's copying a device, it's that he's relying on the trademark of the original developer to sell his "new" version, without substantially describing how he's going to improve the device, while maintaining the high quality and solid support of MakerBot.

<comment><AUTHOR> My reply to Phil is that MakerBot says "It uses the same plastic as Legos" in all of their videos. This is true only in the most technical sense. Both use a type of plastic called ABS, but the formulations are very different and more importantly neither the strength of the parts or the surface finish are of equal quality. Still they leverage all the good will Lego has built.

<comment><USER7> makerbot has never said "LEGO clone" or "LEGO knock-off". the tangibot _did_ say "same quality as makerbot because it's a clone", "makerbot clone" and "makerbot knock-off". stating a fact like it's the same plastic is different than saying a complex machine is the _same quality_ because it's a clone, the tangibot did not demonstrate that.

keep in mind, this was before the tangibot creator updated the kickstarter and also was asked by kickstarter to make it clear it's not violating rule # of kickstarter:

"A project is not open-ended. Starting a business, for example, does not qualify as a project." (they also say "No "fund my life" projects.).

just to be clear, open-source hardware makers, at least every single one of them i know and work with don't have any issues with someone making their design and making it more low-cost.

if kickstarter had viewable revision changes i think this conversation would not be about people saying open-source doesn't want to be open-source.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we're just going to end up disagreeing on that one :) From the experiences I've had in TM lawsuits I think the MB/Lego examples is more misleading that TB/MB. My lawyer friends say the point of trademarks are to "Prevent confusion in the marketplace".

"MakerBot Clone" is "arguably descriptive" and seems unlikely to cause confusion in the market _because_ it's so descriptive. It's like generic pharma companies that say they use the same active ingredient that the name brands use. They even copy the packaging styles of the national brands and say "Compare to ________ brand". Big drug companies have had to deal with this for decades, but have still been able to thrive.

Contrast that with MB. Even though MB has never said the words "Lego Clone" A person unfamiliar with the technology could be misled, thinking that this $2,000 machine can product parts on par with Lego's finest, which is not even close to true.

That said, I'm a MakerBot owner and hope they continue to push the state of the art!

<comment><USER7> @replicatorblog - i don't think you're going to find a lawyer that will go on record saying "uses the same plastic as LEGO" is _the same_ as "TangiBot is a MakerBot clone" "TangiBot is a MakerBot knock-off" "TangiBot is the same quality because it's a MakerBot clone"... if you had someone look at a LEGO and a makerbot, they're clearly different called different things, marketed different.

LEGO is very good about their trademark, if there was any issue with makerbot saying "same plastic used for LEGOs" they would have been told not to ever say that. if you're really interested to know for sure, email me and we'll both email LEGO.

if you could show makerbot's usage of LEGO with a specific link that would be helpful too.

please keep in mind the company that the creator of the tangibot promoted as his previous job and current group of experts he's working with _did_ sue people for using the name "Cricut"..

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricut#Third_party_software> "Provo Craft has been active to resist the use of third-party software programs that could enable Cricut owners to cut out designs and to use the machine without depending on its proprietary cartridges.... Provo Craft also asserted that Craft Edge were violating its trademark in the word "Cricut" by saying that its software could work with Cricut machines. Provo Craft asserted that this was likely "to cause confusion, mistake or deception as to the source or origin of Defendant's goods or services, and [was] likely to falsely suggest a sponsorship, connection, license, or association of Defendant's goods and services with Provo Craft"

if anyone saw the tangibot anywhere they'd assume it was a makerbot... and lastly, i don't think tangibot could even get their name trademarked for what they're doing, but a lawyer could weigh in on that perhaps.

i'm not a makerbot owner, but i did back the tangibot.

<comment><USER18> "back the tangibot"? Pledging the minimum to a project that you hoped would fail(and thus owe nothing) is the same kind of backing that the Senate gave Caeser.

<comment><USER7> @SiCarbide - i made suggestions to make it better (not use makerbot's name / go against kickstarters #1 rule, etc) the creator has not only updated the kickstarter, tangibot specially said thanks for helping out, tangibot changed the kickstarter as per kickstarter's request too. it's now getting more backers than before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> hey folks - this really was not about open-source or open-source hardware, but did start some great conversations. it was about a self described "clone" and "knock-off" fund-my-business asking for $500k on kickstarter. there was some open source hardware discussion shrapnel, it's good that it's being talked about regardless.

everyone who does open-source knows a copy of your design/code is going to happen, and it's encouraged.

1) the tangibot kickstarter __when launched __used the makerbot name dozens and dozens of times and said specifically it was the same quality because it was clone. you can say it's like-something, but not lean that hard on someone's trademarked name and brand for a $500k kickstarter. open-source hardware is great, copy it! just don't use someone's trademarked name as a way to assure quality and support. at least ship or show something and prove you're comparable.

2) the tangibot kickstarter at first said it was to fund a business, that's against rule #1 of kickstarter: <http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines>

rule #1 on kickstarter: "A project is not open-ended. Starting a business, for example, does not qualify as a project." (they also say "No "fund my life" projects.).

tangibot has since completely changed the kickstarter and it's $500k better than it was when it was launched.

if kickstarter had viewable revision changes that would be helpful right about now.

</comment><comment><USER19> $1200 is pretty sweet compared to $1800, but I am already concerned that someone making copies is already behind the curve compared to the original inventor in terms of the innovation I appreciate.

Cf. cheap PCs to the ones you specify in your business.

Consider which manufacturer is likely to come out with the next best model, and will upgrades be easily available or supported for your model? I already wonder if a MakerBot will destroy itself soon after I build it, they all look a bit on the flimsy side.

I would probably be persuaded by better customer service, better support forums, and the knowledge that one provides jobs in the US would all work to overcome that price differential.

But it is a hell of a differential.

<comment><USER3> Additionally, the more Makerbots/Makerbot-clones consumers have, the larger your potential market for future versions. Even if the Tangibots are equal to the Makerbots in terms of build quality, the Makerbot people presumably have a leg up when it comes to inventing the successor to both. If more people out there are using these style 3d printers than before, then the number of people who might buy the next should be larger.

<comment><USER19> That's an excellent point. While it will definitely take some sales away from the original Makerbot, it will also definitely increase the size of the entire market, all of whom will now have Makerbot knowledge and be eager to see what Makerbot's next product is.

In certain circumstances, if Makerbot is constrained by cash or production volume, they might even see this as a good thing that lets them redirect their flow into a newer, better product. (I hope!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How is this different from cloning (for example) open source licensed software?

There is plenty of OS philosophy that says that even people who clone and close-source the technology bring ancillary benefits to the project - <USER2> example by driving market adoption of a similar platform (and thereby attracting users looking for the similar-but-free option).

Presumably MakerBot chose their license with eyes wide open. That the project has been successful enough to spawn TangiBot is purely a sign of MarkerBot's success, not of dirty dealings on Matt Strong's part.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm all for driving the price down on 3d printing hardware and getting it into more hands but the way he keeps saying trust is ringing my scam alarm.

$500k is enough to retire on for some.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty annoyed with it, even though it's fully within their rights.

I have a Makerbot Thing-o-Matic. I would love a Replicator, but it is very expensive. There are cheaper printers out there (especially as a kit), but Makerbot makes a good quality product.

The thing that annoys me more than anything else is the laziness. Makerbot's stuff is open source, but do you have to build a perfect clone? All they did was replace the two laser etched Makerbot logos with their own. They didn't change the dimensions, they didn't go with a different extruder, they didn't round off corners, they didn't use a different color of plywood.

It just seems so lazy to me, like they're not even trying. It's neat they offer an acrylic case, but that's not the one they're showing. They're showing the perfect clone.

I completely agree with the quote in the article that says they're over reliant on the Makerbot name. The announcements I saw didn't say it was a new 3D printer based on a Makerbot, they said it was a Makerbot made by a 3rd party.

Just one obvious enhancement would have made me so much more comfortable with the idea. The Kickstarter page lists a few simple ones (FCC certification, replacing a few plywood bits with plastic bits), but you can't tell that from looking at it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was quite surprised the Makerbot is that expensive these days, until Is saw it was the price for the heavily upgraded ready-to-print machine.

Together with some friends I built a 1st generation CupCake Makerbot about 3 years ago, the cost was less than $1000[1], only $750 for the most basic kit [2]. It took a while to assemble, but it was worth actually building it with your own hands and seeing for the first time to finally print something. Yet there were setbacks in the process, but the makerbot staff was always helpful in finishing the project. I assume the just can't provide that level of support for kits at the scale they are now.

If makerbot would offer an unassembled kit again they could beat that symbolic price again any time and show what the extra work is actually worth.

[1] <http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2010-06/making-makerbot>

[2] [http://web.archive.org/web/20100110133658/http://store.maker...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100110133658/http://store.makerbot.com/cupcake- cnc.html)

<comment><USER13> They stopped offering kits when they stopped making the Thing-o-Matic. Tons of people complained, but on the Google group they explained the real reason: price.

At this point, they can build the machines much faster, and that makes them cheaper. Instead of having to measure out that each kit get 4 of these bearings, 2 belts, 78 screws, 107 nuts, etc, they can just keep them all around the shop and save all the time from that portioning.

I learned quite a bit assembling my ToM. If you consider that the Replicator has a larger build envelope, a better extruder, improved ease-of-use, and the LCD interface... the $1750 price isn't too bad. The dual extruders is pretty good at $2000.

That said, it's not cheap. If I was starting out again today, I'd probably try making some sort of RepRap Mendel. I still love Makerbot, but the ability to save around $750-$1000 would be too compelling for me.

They've moved up in the market some. They seem to be targeting professionals that could use a basic 3D printer more than they used to, and DIY hobbyists less.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget the cost of supporting people when they make a mistake putting it together, or having to send out another package to someone half way across the world because you left one bolt out, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The decision to manufacture in China has also raised eyebrows

I bet that pretty much everyone who has done so publicly has done so via a computer or other electronic device that is substantially or completely manufactured in China or at least is full of parts that were so manufactured.

<comment><USER24> I'm always amazed by the way people think of things manufactured in China, especially people who still consider it to mean cheap and inferior. It's true China makes a lot of poor quality crap cheap, but they also make really high quality products if you're willing to pay for it instead of going to the cheapest bid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you buy a Makerbot what do you get other than the device itself? There needs to be some sort of value-add when you sell opensource products otherwise anyone with a better production infrastructure can undercut you.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wait, so open-source isn't all sunshine and rainbows and intellectual property laws have a purpose? That's crazy talk, lets go back to discussing how corporations are evil and selling things for more than they cost to make is greedy.</comment>


Human Ancestors Made Deadly Stone-Tipped Spears 500,000 Years Ago - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/11/15/human-ancestors-made-deadly-stone-tipped-spears-500000-years-ago/

<comment><USER2> I find it hard to believe that _500.000_ years ago humans were intelligent enough to craft a weapon and only about 6000 years ago things really took off for our civilization.

What happened to humans recently that changed things?

<comment><AUTHOR> _What happened to humans recently that changed things?_

The submitted article was interesting to me for showing the inventive capacity of an ancestral hominin lineage, which was unknown until the studies reported in the article. Species Homo sapiens, according to the current view reported in the article, goes back the better part of 100,000 years. Most of your genes and mine have been fixed in the human lineage for at least that long.

With "recently" defined as about 6,000 years ago, by then there were several regions of the world with agriculture (different crops in different places) and there was about to be a place (Mesopotamia, specifically Sumer) with actual writing rather than just proto-writing. Both of those innovations made "civilization" (living in cities) much more feasible than before. And it does appear that living in cities prompts many other kinds of social changes. Human beings over the last several thousand years have progressed by acculturation and by writing down knowledge acquired by other individuals much more rapidly than any human lineage has ever progressed by shuffling genes.

<comment><USER2> I still get the sense that this explanation goes backwards. It's like saying we got more intelligent because we were intelligent enough to develop writing, or proto-writing.

Sounds like something that grows out of itself. Neuro-electrical reaction to light, thermic or mechanical stimuli is not intelligence. Writing, sending messages, interpreting messages is intelligence. Heck, walking in random directions is intelligence.

Obviously, since we haven't yet explained consciousness in "the brain is the mind" fashion, we're still in reverse engineering mode. Thus the explanations will sound 'just so'-ish. Nevertheless, the questions is still there: why the sudden jump in progress.

Disclaimer: I'm a creationist, but always happy to hear alternative views.

<comment><USER3> Similar behavior is witnessed in animals often. An animal will learn a novel behavior -- generally some basic tool use, and then its relatives or packmates will quickly adopt the technique. It spreads like wildfire.

They clearly already contained the capacity to perform that behavior, they just needed to be shown that they could do it in the right context. Once they were shown once, they adopted the behavior quickly -- and even pass it on to their young.

I believe early humans developing new skills and learning was similar.

It was not that humans began speaking or writing as soon as it was biologically feasible -- rather some (long) time after feasibility was evolved, the skill was developed and then had to "go viral" and infect other humans.

How many times did it start and stop before it hit critical mass? How many tribes of humans were available for this kind of development to even take place?

Fascinating stuff, there's an enormous amount out there on this subject, and I only have a BS in Biology, so I'm no expert!

EDIT: "Why the sudden jump in progress" You may mean, "Why did human brains rapidly get larger over an evolutionarily short amount of time" -- and the answer is that there was no sudden jump, only slow increase over time (as measured in fossils).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or is HN turning into Reddit?

<comment><USER5> I saw no cats, politics, or memes in the article. What are you talking about?</comment></comment>


Costly Mistakes Made by Startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@CraigUXHour/the-top-10-mistakes-made-by-startups-and-how-to-fix-them-5dcf3365068e#.seqgt8lf3 <comment><USER3> This analogy isn't making a lot of sense:

 _" It's like they put a sign on a door that said "Free Lemonade" and a bunch of people came inside… only not that many people are drinking the lemonade… What's wrong?? How do we fix it? They ask._

 _" If anyone had bothered to mingle about the room and strike up some conversations, they might have realized that the majority of people in the room were diabetics… So they couldn't drink the lemonade._

 _" They came in the room hoping there would be other drinks… like water… but left after they couldn't find any. Had someone learned this information and grabbed a case of water, the room probably would have stayed full and more people would have showed up… even without changing the lemonade sign (word of mouth travels fast)."_

So the diabetics came because of the lemonade sign even though they can't drink it? And while they're in the room, word of mouth about free water is spreading outside the room? I'm having a hard time picturing this scene.

I'm not trying to pick on you, just suggesting that this section might be improved by replacing this confusing story with something more related to the real world :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's muddled. I appreciate the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Only one Mistake. Reading too much about startups and not actually doing anything of value.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very true. I actually wouldn't mind adding this to the article.

<comment><USER5> First, welcome to the community. Second, adding to the gentleman's comment at the bottom of this thread, I'm curious what your intentions are with this community after the pageviews stop. I noticed your account is brand new. Will you become a new member of the community outside of posting your own content?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The other one is being busy "startupping" and not, you know, actually building your business.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every single point he made is crucial for a startup to succeed. I know - <USER2> spent 14 years bootstrapping my software company (exited last year). I think this article is excellent.

While ALL his points are valid, I want to differentiate between two specific points he made.

1\. _" If you're not talking to your users, then you're simply guessing at what they need and want from your business. This is slow suicide."_

2\. The section called "8 — Building Too Much Stuff"

When you talk to your users, you WILL get that feature list one-mile long. If build that list, you'll end up with a product that doesn't have an opinion. Your product won't be targeted at anyone specific. Why should a customer pick you over competitor X?

So, to know what to build, you must talk to your customers and know them. But you must know yourself as a company - why do you exist? What kind of customers do you want (size - small/med/enterprise, industry, location if applicable).

For example, define your company as "Performance review software for medium sized US cities, counties and law enforcement" versus simply saying "We make performance review software". This helps you determine a focus and know which customers to target and which features help them.

Further to the "building too much" section, you only need so much to close a sale. After a while, the new features are great for reducing support or customer retention (both of which you should be measuring), but build too many and you risk having a complex product with training costs that are too high and even more importantly, investing in features that don't help you sell the next customer. At some point, move on to the next product.

Also a tip, we stopped building lesser-used admin features that required a UI. UI is hard to maintain and train people (and hard to kill that feature). Sometimes it's possible to simply have a script you can run that will make changes to the data model that customers would like to have. When customer call asking for something, you can offer that solution and have your dev team run the script.

</comment><comment><USER8> On visual design, if you don't have a visual designer you are simply asking someone who is not a designer to do it instead. You're fooling yourself if you think you are somehow not doing it.

Having a designer on board from day one in no way means that you can't experiment. In fact, a good designer would have told you about many of your other recommendations such as "user research is important."

I'd replace 9 with "Not taking design seriously."

<comment><AUTHOR> I do think design is important. And not just based on opinion, it's documented well by the nngroup here:([https://www.nngroup.com/articles/halo- effect](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/halo-effect))

My point was there is a time to dedicate towards visual design and taking advantage of the positive effect it has, but it's not in an early stage.

But I'm 100% talking about visual design. Polish. Not User Experience design. I put them in two different categories.

Maybe I should include that if you're resources are limited, get a UX Designer as opposed to a Visual Designer/Branding person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The fire soon fire often ideology is stupid advice for anything but a small startup. The reason it's stupid advice is that you already have a bunch of people that over time will develop their own politics in the organization, and they will then exercise power in the organization using that politics. For instance the developers will figure out ways of working less by overestimating everything or forcing project managers to do additional work to delay things, and any new developer that does not get the games that they are playing will be denied enough information by the lead developer to do his job properly and will be promptly fired for that. Any new comer that does not adhere to their politics will be fired. All that this sort of advice does is it maintains cultures, whether they are positive or negative. Good team players can get kicked out to maintain the rotten apples or vice verse and often upper management is clueless to what's actually going on.</comment>


How "junior" developers can become regex wizards - <AUTHOR> http://joshuakemp.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-junior-developers-can-become-regex.html <comment><USER2> A couple things:

1\. Be careful what you use regex's for. Email addresses are very difficult[0]. HTML is impossible[1].

2\. There are a number of tools that make it easier to understand, including [2].

[0] [http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html](http://www.ex- parrot.com/pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html)

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/2363](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/2363)

[2] [http://ivanzuzak.info/noam/webapps/fsm_simulator/](http://ivanzuzak.info/noam/webapps/fsm_simulator/)

<comment><USER3> > HTML is impossible.

This comes up a lot. Most languages' "regular expressions" aren't, in fact, regular. A true regular expression wouldn't be able to match HTML, but Perl regular expressions (the de facto standard) can because of backreferences.

Edit: I'm not saying this is a good idea; it most certainly isn't. I'm just saying its possible.

<comment><USER4> Perl's regex support can match HTML because of recursive matching, not only because of backreferences (the latter of which is widely implemented, the former not quite so).

That being said, there surely are some fun languages that can be matched by what's commonly called regular expressions. Notepad++ was notable (before switching to PCRE) that its "regular expressions" could not even match every regular (or even finite) language ([http://stackoverflow.com/a/4815422/73070](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4815422/73070)). Many regex engines allow matching languages that are context-sensitive, while at the same time not accepting all context-free languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This might be overkill but I found I never "got" regular expressions until a class made me think about them as state machines. The additional bashing over the head of having to implement a parser/matcher made it really stick. The quirks and syntax make much more sense when you know why and how a regex engine works.

That said, anything involving extended/perl regex I wind up googling.

<comment><USER6> Huh, to me I "got" regexp the first time I used it (although it took a while to learn the details). To me if you understand the idea of wildcards, you understand regexp.

<comment><USER7> I began to understand Regex after reading the awk chapter in Masterminds of Programming. After that I understood how "the machine" inside might work. I really understood how to apply Regex to single strings after I started to see a regex as a "mask", so very similar to your wildcard approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How to become a regular expression wizard:

1\. Write a bunch of regular expressions.

2\. Fix them when they break.

Anybody can do this, however junior they may be. (And yes, it does grant you a superpower.)

<comment><USER9> 3\. Write tests.

Don't change your existing regular expressions without tests, or Bad Stuff happens.

<comment><USER10> I don't usually write regular expressions that are complex enough to need maintenance. If you are writing one that is enough effort that it isn't disposable, then you might want to reconsider whether you're using the right tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html](http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html) should be required reading before _any_ developer tries to become a "regex wizard".

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it worth mastering? No. Worth understanding? Yes.

Regex is used in so many applications and commands, it would be silly not to learn it.

You don't need to be a wizard, but do understand the basics and it will get you far.

<comment><USER6> Somewhere in between "the basics" and "wizard" is probably best. Regexp is _powerful_ , extremely valuable in the right places, and knowing more than the basics will be useful. On the other hand wizard-level expertise is not necessary to net 99% of the value of regexp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also, check for your language's options for white space and comments within regular expressions [0]. Regexps don't have to be blobs of characters -- you can use white space to make them more readable and use comments embedded within a multi-line regexp to describe what/why you are doing.

Bonus: it makes them easier to diff, too!

We don't write our code on one line with no comments, writing regexps should be no different.

[0] Python example: [http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#re.VERBOSE](http://docs.python.org/2/library/re.html#re.VERBOSE)

</comment><comment><USER14> Making "junior" developers solve problems with regex sounds like a recipe for terrible maintainability, unless it is necessary

<comment><USER15> I do actually somewhat agree here. If one doesn't know what they are doing, it is very easy to do regular expressions incorrectly.

That said, regex is sometimes necessary, so it is important for developers to be competent in this realm. In my opinion, ideally, junior developers would start with using them in non-production environments to become familiar, then go from there. It is also important to be able to distinguish which problems should be solved by regular expressions, and which shouldn't. A good mentor here can be great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you really want to master Regular Expressions in a way you are not likely to forget do what I did in the '80s. Write a regex interpreter and then a compiler. I was doing a contract for an embedded controller and found a great use for compiled regular expressions within it (I remember every nuance of regular expressions but can't for the life of me remember what my use case was.)

Debugging it was the really fun part but my earlier career with IBM had taught me how to test software effectively and some embedded work with PAL's (an early form of programmable logic) taught me how to really use state machines. I was surprised how little time it took to write and debug. I don't think you can really appreciate the elegant logic of the regular expression language without implementing it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I found [http://www.regular-expressions.info/](http://www.regular- expressions.info/) to be an invaluable resource when learning or understanding regular expressions. Basically every page that explains a feature in the reference _also_ explains what's going on within the engine, how it works, when it backtracks, etc. Those things are sometimes hard to see in applications that just give you the matches from a text (as rubular.com seems to do).

</comment><comment><USER17> You don't need to be a developer _or_ a wizard to be proficient in writing regular expressions. Regular expressions are used by all kinds of professions; that's why regular expression capability is included in almost every text editor.

The best way to learn to love regular expressions is to use them outside of a programming context, where you can get real-time feedback with actual test data. Some text editors will even highlight matches as you type the expression out.

</comment><comment><USER18> During University one of the projects we were given was to write a regular expression parser and evaluator. From the moment that project was complete I have never had trouble understanding regular expressions. I thought it was an excellent way to learn them.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm torn a little on my opinion of this post. On the one side I applaud anyone who's willing to self-learn and isn't a "I'll just Google it" developer. On the flip side I tire of hearing people tell me that they've written a CMS of their own, in some cases piggy backing on someone who's solved the an identical problem pays dividends and will be more mature than your solution.

Perhaps for a self-learner a nice approach is to write it yourself and then go searching for a solution. That way you'll likely: validate what you did, figure out that you missed a detail or perhaps learn some new regexp foo or different way of writing the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love these types of things. Kudos to the author.

This one in particular reminds me of a tool I've always found useful. It's an interactive Regex builder just like the one linked in the OP. I would say it's got some additional compelling features: like mouse-over breakdowns of each expression as you build it, a handy reference list as well, but also a community concept and saved expressions. Really, I've never found anything better. My only complaint is that it's flash-based, but it's an amazing tool, so can't really complain too much.

[http://gskinner.com/RegExr/](http://gskinner.com/RegExr/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Regular expressions were simple and straightforward tools until Perl. They were originally intended to be equivalent to finite state machines, but, thanks to Perl, you can write regexes that may or may not halt, and no one can can ever prove one way or the other. If you want to take the best parts of regexes and leave the rest, don't bother with all of the Perl extensions and just study the basics.

</comment><comment><USER21> Go read Mastering Regular Expressions.

<comment><USER22> This is the bible of regex. Its explanation of "unrolling the loop" will change how you write regular expressions if you don't already use that technique. Its discussion of the operation of NFA and DFA engines is great too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can't remember the last time I had to actually hand craft a regex.

Any serious developer these days will be using standardised libraries for this sort of validation and not reinventing the wheel with some half baked do-it- yourself regex.

</comment><comment><USER24> ugh.

do they really need to be good at regex? we don't all work on the internet you know... regex is basically pointless for most application development. most programmers i consider to be exceptionally talented can not write a regex without reference (although they will do it when necessary by using reference - and very well too).

on the other hand the general approach to problem solving advocated here is quite sound. "find good tools" "don't rush pointlessly" "measure don't guess" "google is good, copy-paste blindly is bad"

<comment> UK-AL RegEx probably has most use in data validation, which has nothing to do with internet.

<comment><USER24> i generally backlash against this. i've seen articles where people are stupid enough to say "if you don't know regex, you aren't good" my experience tells me the converse is true. good programmers are so good they end up working in environments where regex is an irrelevant curiosity and almost never a tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> also:

[http://www.rexv.org](http://www.rexv.org)

[http://www.debuggex.com](http://www.debuggex.com)

[http://refiddle.com](http://refiddle.com)

<comment><USER26> I like [http://gskinner.com/RegExr/](http://gskinner.com/RegExr/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You don't need to be a developer to understand or use regex. I use regex on a daily basis as I have to deal with a lot of text manipulation.

\--edit

I am not a developer.

</comment><comment><USER28> Please don't use regexes.

<comment><USER29> Ever? For any purpose whatsoever? That seems overly prescriptive.

<comment><USER28> Sure, for scripts, adhoc analysis, command line hacking and whatnot, go ahead.

Regexes should be seen more like a last resort than a good software engineering choice. They're a code smell. I have seen so many incorrect, slow regexes from people who don't know what they are doing that I have to recommend as a best practice that you don't use them unless you are going to study automata, read Friedl's book, the Dragon book, and study with Tibetan regex monks for years, and mentor everyone who has to maintain your code until you die.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> a regex tester online?!??!? what "hacker news"!!! This has never been done!</comment>


Do I need to learn to Code? - <AUTHOR> https://themagneticmethod.com/2019/05/24/do-i-need-to-learn-to-code/ <comment><USER2> I think of it like inventing. It's not completely analogous but do you want to learn to invent something? No, right? Because you think of something to invent first and then get to learning how to create it. I've heard it's easier to get into coding if going this route, otherwise it can seem unmotivating if you're just doing it on your own.</comment>


Learn, But Not Necessarily Through Books - <AUTHOR> http://ifacethoughts.net/2008/02/10/learn-but-not-necessarily-through-books/ <comment><USER2> There's much to be said for a well-written book. I have enjoyed reading through Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp," for example, because reading through an entire well-written book, you can pick up on much more insight than you can simply browsing small chunks of information in weblogs. I can tap into the mind of Paul, so to speak, and see Lisp from his point of view, rather than just get little nuggets here and there.

Similarly, Philip Greenspun's books on web applications... SICP... The Little Schemer series... alas, most books don't provide great insight into a better way of thinking -- but that's a failing of authors, not of books. The book format, used well, is outstanding. So is the blog format. And so are non-blog web pages. They all have their place, but each should be used differently, to make best use of the medium.</comment>


Would you rather "Listen" to paul graham's Essays? - <AUTHOR> Hi Guys. I have been an avid reader of Paul Graham's essays where he shares his perspective. But, many a times I hope that somehow I could "feel" what would it be like to have him communicate his essays to me, as opposed to me just reading them. We are building a voice cloning company, and it's very much possible to clone PG's voice and make his essays very interactive. Think about being in a room with him as he shares what's on his mind through his essays. Ofcourse, this requires his consent and his permission. Posting this in hacker news because I believe he must really be active here. Anyways, would love to know what you guys think! <comment><USER2> _and make his essays very interactive_

The essays have some hyperlinks in them, how could audio be as 'interactive' as that already is? It seems you mean something other than 'interactive'.

Anyway, I don't see what's "just" about reading someone's essays - it's my favourite thing in life. People like Hazlitt, Stevenson, Chesterton, Santayana, Russell, Emerson - and, yes, pg - I think he's a great essayist, my favourite from recent decades.

I've never been into audiobooks. I tried a few years ago - but all bad, terrible pronunciation of names, usually inappropriate US accent, etc. I hear there are good ones, although that was just novels. Also, when reading, I like being able to stop, think about what I read. (Not like a read-aloud story where the storyteller's pace is usually fine) Being able to stop at the end of a sentence, and repeat it, or repeat paragraph, or page, would be good.

I used to have tapes with hours of famous poets reading their own poetry - Yeats, Eliot, Plath etc - they were _so_ awesome. Then when you read their other stuff, you can hear it in their voice. It's like that e.g. reading Rorty after watching a lot of video of him speaking, I can't imagine not having heard/seen him.

</comment><comment><USER3> He is officially retired as the moderator/owner here. (There is a moderator team now.) His account has no post in the last three years [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg) .

IIRC he is active on Twitter. Also, try sending an email.

(Perhaps sending him a one minute demo of one paragraph may convince him that your product is good (, or he may get a lawyer and send a CD letter).)

(If your product is good, this is a scary word.)

(Note: I read the emails from my friends with their voice. The difficult part for an automated version are the intonation of each sentence, the pauses, and which parts to stress.)</comment>


Strange hex digit to integer trick; where do these constants come from? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gknowles/dimapp/blob/master/libs/core/util.h#L50,L54 <comment><USER2> Considering ASCII 'C', 'c', and '3', they have the binary expansions

      001000011
      001100011
      000110011

Notably, that third bit is what shows whether it's nibble value 8+3=11 or just plain nibble value 3. The binary 11 that gives us the 3 is way over at the right.

The way I would think of doing this in terms of bit operations is

(c & 7) | ((c&64)>>3)

However, they're apparently doing the (c&64)>>3 part with the multiplication somehow and I haven't quite understood how that happens.</comment>


Bangladesh Govt. denies CORVID-19 spread, arresting those who disagree - <AUTHOR> https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/31/bangladesh-end-wave-covid-19-rumor-arrests <comment><USER2>
      1. "There is no such thing as Covid-19"
      2. "Covid-19 is foreign flu that won't affect any of us. Anyone spreading panic will be punished"
      3. "Covid-19 just got here, but it's just a flu. Anyone spreading panic will still be punished"
      4. "Covid-19 is a bad flu, be damned those foreign agents who brought it here. Still a flu, though"
      5. "Things are under control, don't panic and keep up with normal life"
      6. "Everyone stay home, let's close everything. Anyone breaking these rules will be punished"
      7. "People is still gathering; we're forced to turn off civil liberties in the name of security (blame again other countries to direct public anger to the outside)"
      8. Profit.

Looks like they're at point 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> People have been worried sick since the end of January, after infectious disease experts briefed the health ministry. The ruling party prohibited everyone to talk about it prior to March 17th. Because they thought if social distancing would be in effect, no one will gather in their celebration that has been in preparation for months. Yes! you heard that right. They they censored all media/news platforms in the country, so more people would show up in a birthday celebration.

There are only 300 ICU units (in the government hospitals which are permitted to treat infectious diseases) in the country of 165.6 million, roughly 1 for every 600k on a good day. alarming number of people are dying from pneumonia of "unknown cause" everyday, while the government is insisting that there is nothing going on in the country, against 900k phone calls to the helplines, approximately 1100 CORVID19 tests were conducted in total. I am not sure how this will lead to profit when people can't get treatment even with all the money they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I mean they could've taken inspiration from India's 21 day lockdown. Indian PM was very clear, despite the almost impossible nature of the task he clearly mentioned in his first speech that 'Jaan hai to Jahaan hai' roughly translates to you can only enjoy the world if you live first, so first save yourself.

Bangladesh is even more densely populated than India but hopefully the summer heat reduces the spread. Although i do empathize with how difficult and nearly impossible it is for them to make people stay inside. Also difficult to convince religious people who feel it is a rumor or something else. Unless someone they know dies.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To summarize the article - Bangladesh government initially denied the outbreak, now denying the seriousness of the spread; silencing (mostly arrests) those who express concern over the government's handling of the epidemic.

Meanwhile, a leaked interagency United Nations memo on Bangladesh's Country Preparedness and Response Plan for COVID-19 estimates that up to two million people could die from the disease in Bangladesh if immediate steps are not taken to contain the spread of the virus.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty sure crows don't cause worldwide chaos. Anyone able to fix the typo in the title?

</comment><comment><USER5> Many people don't know this but Bangladesh is a rather large country by population: 160 million people. 2x the size of Germany or France, with nowhere near the level of medical infrastructure. If they don't get smart about this very, very quickly, they're completely screwed.

<comment><USER3> Not only that it is an Islamic country which means thousands of people do gather for Friday prayers at every mosque which adherents take seriously. Not trying to criticize the practice just saying that it is not easy to stop people from attending, this has been happening across India too.

The biggest super spreaders in India was an international religious gathering of Tableeghi Jamaat which took place despite a ban.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Right now it seems like the entire world is competing for a Darwin Award.

Scary how common this approach is right now. I'm starting to lose faith in humanity's ability to evolve beyond the ape.

<comment><USER5> Actually, no, not for a Darwin award, seeing that the vast majority of those dying are well past reproductive age. Some other kind of award, I just don't know which.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe they confused it with some crow pathogen</comment>


Ask HN: As a software engineer, how can I help with Coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> Are there any open source projects, nonprofit organizations, or other special situations that need extra software engineering firepower during this time of crisis?<p>Being stuck at home is an environment where most of us can still be incredibly productive in and I feel shitty sitting here without being able to help (beyond being socially responsible and not going out into the world). <comment><USER2> Please try to find other high-impact projects or community efforts which best utilize your time before considering this, but:

I've been working on [https://www.reciperadar.com](https://www.reciperadar.com) which is an open source recipe search engine and meal planner. The idea is that people can use it to find meals with the ingredients they have available at home and from their nearby shops - which may be highly variable at the moment.

I'd appreciate any input, whether it's your feedback about the user experience, reports of bugs / data quality issues, translation fixes, feature requests or code contributions.

Good luck finding impactful projects to work on!

</comment><comment><USER3> "Covid-19 projects looking for volunteers" [https://helpwithcovid.com/](https://helpwithcovid.com/) (yesterday's HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22615453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22615453))

</comment><comment><USER4> The same way as anytime else: Make donations to charities and individuals in your community. Your money is almost always worth more than your programming at times like these.

</comment><comment><USER5> Since there are a lot of children on an extended vacation, it is a very good time to arrange a mega online course teaching programming (not a youtube tutorial)

The other thing which is critical is creating a COVID-19 home testing kit or any sort of testing automation / automatic testing pipeline.

The only way out of this situation is extensive testing, but from reading around, the current testing time (from mouth to result) is around 4 days.

I think that testing will be an integral part of daily life until we have the vaccine.

I can also envision that verifying that you are not a carrier, will be part of a day to day procedure.</comment>


Show HN: Simple Group Email Discussion Lists - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.email <comment><USER2> Nice! I like the idea of using existing protocols to build something more usable for large groups. How does this compare to TopicBox? [https://www.topicbox.com/](https://www.topicbox.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look and pointing me to TopicBox! There are some overlaps (team collaboration based on email), but I think that's ok. There is plenty of room for improvement in this area. My focus has been on simplicity. I don't think we need to re-invent the listserv concept necessarily - but I do see a huge opportunity to make group email discussion lists (mailing lists) much more streamlined, simple, and intuitive.

Making group collaboration easier seems like a win no matter what.</comment></comment>


Why don't Emacs and Java get along? - <AUTHOR>

I realize that may be a bit baiting, but I think it's generally true.  Java dev in Emacs just isn't ideal.  JDEE is stagnant and eclim works but isn't exactly top-shelf.<p>So my question is, why don't they mesh?  Is there a technical reason that Java dev just can't be as smooth in emacs as IDEA/Eclipse/Netbeans? <comment><USER2> Eclipse is an IDE and has a couple full Java compilers inside. Emacs is a text editor and mostly uses regexes for highlighting text, and unix tools for generating tags to navigate the code.

There isn't enough people using Emacs for Java - it will probably never achieve the level of quality of well funded projects.</comment>


Scheme as a new portable assembler - <AUTHOR> http://uucode.com/blog/2010/09/28/r5rs-scheme-as-a-virtual-machine-i/

<comment><USER2> The GCC family of compilers already use an intermediate form that's awfully Lisp-like.</comment>


T-Mobile: streaming music no longer counts against data cap - <AUTHOR> http://www.t-mobile.com/musicfreedom

<comment><USER2> This is a major breach of net neutrality. T-Mobile wants to give customers free bandwidth to one type of service, while charging for bandwidth going eleswhere. The network costs are identical: it's not the place of a neutral ISP to discriminate on the contents of the bytes!

(edit to correct error -- it's _not_ restricted to T-Mobile's own music service. Mea culpa)

(full disclosure: I'm a T-Mobile customer)

<comment><USER3> Until t-mobile says that other services will cost more, I see no problem with letting music be free.

<comment><USER4> Try building a small indie label web streaming music startup.

And asking your customers to pay more because you don't have a T-Mobile partnership.

"Letting music be free", as long as it participates in a corporate subsidy, no thanks.

<comment><USER5> I honestly don't understand your position. This was data that was being charged for before, now as a service to their customers they aren't charging for it. This is an attempt to gain more customers, it's not charging extra for other services, you have everything you had before, now if you choose to use these services you don't get the data billed to your account. It's not charging more for a fast lane, it's giving something away for advertising purposes. I am a web developer, net neutrality is very important to me, I just don't see how this is a major offense to that. Can you explain your position some more?

<comment><USER6> This position seeks to establish the concept that bits have a color, and that different colors have different costs. The tactic is to create market segmentation out of whole cloth. The next step is to report data usage as different buckets -- "Web Site-colored bits", "Popular Web Site-colored bits", "Music-colored bits", and "Video-colored bits". Eventually, they _will_ charge different rates for different colors of bits.

Now, today, yeah, sure, it looks like a Too Good To Be True giveaway. My advice? Look twice.

<comment><USER7> They already color bits; tethering bits cost more than non-tethering bits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's funny that in Australia the carriers realised that offering free data on facebook, twitter etc would increase the number of people that would move to the service, and from my POV seemed like a good deal for all involved.

The state of the US carrier system has messed itself up so badly that a carrier trying to offer something for FREE is now being attacked by the customers it's trying to serve.

What a joke

<comment><USER9> The people sharing concerns with what T-Mobile are doing aren't looking at it through a short sighted consumer lens.

It's a great move for consumers right now who stream music. However it is encouraging a tighter coupling between content producers and service providers - which dismantles the neutrality of the Internet. In the long run, consumers are said to loose out because only the biggest businesses will be able to afford to maintain their tight coupling. Smaller players will lose out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure there is a net neutrality issue here. Let me pose a hypothetical to try to bring into focus what I'm having trouble understanding.

HYPOTHETICAL:

You have internet through an ISP that charges for data. I am a provider of paid content (movies, music, ebooks...whatever) and you are a customer of mine. Your ISP provides detailed billing that breaks down your bill by IP address.

I allow you to send me a copy of your ISP bill each month, and I figure out from the detail billing break down how much of your data costs were due to downloading or streaming content you purchased from me. I reimburse you for that.

QUESTIONS:

1\. Is there a net neutrality violation here?

2\. If you say that there is, can anything be done to stop it?

3\. If there is NOT a violation of net neutrality here...does that change if the ISP makes it easier for me to pay part of your bill? For instance, suppose the ISP offers to save me the hassle of getting and reading a copy of your bill and instead they track your usage of my data and they bill me, and deduct those costs from you bill?

(The situation in #3 is essentially, I believe, what AT&T called "Sponsored Data", and was pretty widely frowned upon by net neutrality advocates).

4\. If you say that the original hypothetical was OK, but the ISP getting involved as described in question 3 is not, what is it about ISP involvement that makes a difference? I am assuming that the ISP offers the "pay for your customers' data" service to anyone, for any kind of data.

<comment><USER11> It's one of those nebulous things. For example.

Is it illegal for me to pay you a commission to sell products for me?

Is it illegal for you to subcontract selling these products?

Is it illegal for the subcontractors to subcontract?

Is it illegal for me to give a signing bonus if you recruit your friends to work for me?

Is it illegal for you to get a bonus based on your direct and indirect contribution to how well the company is doing?

Of course none of these are illegal on their face but if you add them all up into a pyramid scheme you can bet that it's objectionable to many and that in many countries it's illegal.

It's a shade of gray. Many people here believe that the importance of keeping the net neutral is huge (even while giving a wink and a nod to QOS and other realistic compromises). You can even tell by the mixed reactions throughout the comment thread that people believe this to be a very slippery slope, they want this but are worried about even precedents like this one. As your comment highlighted net neutrality can be nebulous so when you push a boundry it is quite possible that there is very little to stop you continuing to push.

Having said that I don't necessarily disagree with your reasoning, it's one of the reasons I support Aero being legal. Possibly a little hypocritically.

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I'm not sure why everyone is freaking out about this. Remember when you got so many minutes of talk time a month? Now we get unlimited talk. Remember when you had to pay for texts? Now we all get unlimited texts. Remember when streaming music ate your data limit? Now we all get unlimited music streaming. Not sure what the issue is.

<comment><USER12> If it were unlimited music streaming, that'd be pretty much fine. However, it's not -- it's free music stream for _a particular six services_.

<comment><USER13> > If it were unlimited music streaming, that'd be pretty much fine.

To be fair, it's unclear how you'd actually implement this.

Would you suggest a special bit on the TCP packet saying "this is for music streaming" (cf RFC 3514)?

Or, more seriously, would T-Mobile have some form where anybody could enter a Bro filter to identify traffic coming from "their" "music streaming" service? Setting aside the fact that writing and running an arbitrary number of arbitrarily-complex DPI filters is hard, how would T-Mobile filter out people abusing the system ("my music streaming service also lets you stream one of ten songs, or you can torrent; the traffic is designed to be indistinguishable") without appearing to be biased towards big incumbents?

<comment><USER14> You don't implement it, as it is unethical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unless you use Rdio. And then it still does.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are taking a vote to add other services to the data-free list. They have just about every major one listed including Amazon Music, Beats, TuneIn, SoundCloud, and Xbox Music. Google Music is currently taking a huge lead over the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We should consider the possibility that non-neutral arrangements will take the form of discounts, not price increases.

This is analogous to the fact that Amazon, WalMart et al can negotiate better shipping rates with Fedex, USPS et al, and can in turn offer free or cheap shipping to the end user.

This is also cheap for T-Mobile. Streaming music is not a zero impact on bandwidth, but (say) a 256K stream is small on (say) a 5mb/s connection. And like most consumer bandwidth, it assumes that most people won't use it, most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER14> How do they know the customer is listening to music? Deep packet inspection?

<comment><USER17> Probably just by checking if the origin of certain requests is a server belonging to one of their partner sites?

<comment><USER14> Partner sites serve more than just music bits.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, but it doesn't make sense that T-Mobile would charge you for the album art or the banner ad and not the music file.

<comment> jack-r-abbit Seems like they think it makes sense to do that. From the fine print at the bottom of the page:

> _Licensed music streaming from included services does not count toward > Simple Choice high speed data allotment on T-Mobile's network; song > downloads, video content, and non-audio content excluded._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looking into this a little, I don't understand it _at all_.

The plans already include unlimited data. They say "no overages. Ever."

They do have one limit, which is 1GB on LTE (per month, I assume). After that, your speeds are reduced to 3G.

What makes this hard to understand is that 3G is _perfectly_ adequate for music streaming. You really only need about 100kbps to stream high-quality music, and even half-assed 3G is adequate for that. Hell, I've managed to stream music over EDGE before, with the only problem being the injection of lots of annoying GSM buzz into my stereo system.

So I guess what it comes down to is, they're making it so that a certain class of slow-and-steady LTE usage, which doesn't need anything close to LTE speeds, will no longer affect your ability to get LTE speeds when you actually need it. Or something like that. Which is nice, but nowhere near the big deal they make it out to be.

<comment><USER19> It's a huge deal. I use iTunes Radio and similar when I'm driving to listen to music. I get 5GB per month of LTE-speed, after which they crank me down to sad-town speeds.

Previously, on months where I drove more often, I hit the cap. This means I'll not have to care about keeping an eye on my usage.

You're correct about the actual change they made: letting me do something that's comparatively low-bandwidth without it counting against my high- bandwidth concerns. But for me at least, you've underestimated the benefit: I'm unlikely to need to look at my usage again or do math to decide if it's time to stop streaming. I'll just rock on.

<comment><USER18> Could you not just turn off LTE while streaming music and get most of the same benefit? Or do they give you 1GB of _all_ traffic, after which you get throttled?

<comment><USER19> The latter. I get 5GB of data at any speed, then Edge after that.

<comment><USER18> OK, now it all makes good sense. From reading T-Mobile's info, I came away thinking it was 1GB on actual LTE, with non-LTE not counting at all. Thanks for explaining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, every ounce of goodwill I had for T-Mobile just went way out the window.

<comment><USER19> Sorry they decided to adjust their formula so people can use their connections better? As was pointed out elsewhere, streaming music is comparatively low- bandwidth. T-Mobile already offers unlimited plans where the first $X amount is at LTE speeds, so what they're doing here is saying "for things we tag as streaming music, we'll just go ahead and count that from the other side of unlimited, since the effect on you/us is nil, and you won't burn LTE time on things that can't utilize LTE speeds anyways"</comment></comment>