Show HN: An IDE for poets - <AUTHOR> http://tranquillpoet.com/ <comment><USER3> This is lovely.

I always get a special joy from seeing things like this. This is something I would never have thought of. It fills such an obvious hole in hindsight. It opens up a place where folk can suddenly experiment and play with something that they might have been afraid of previously. It opens things up.

This reminds me of when I helped out with some teacher training in my teens waaaaay back in 1986/87. We were showing some primary school teachers and primary school kids their first computers. Some simple paint programs. Some simple word processors. This is a mouse. Etc.

I remember this one eight or nine year old loving the delete key in the word processor "I can make the mistakes go away" he said.

We left some of the kids messing about with the machines as we talked to the teachers. 30m later that kid came back to drag us over to see this couple of hundred word story that he'd tapped out. The teacher said that, if she hadn't seen it herself, she wouldn't have believed the kid could have produced it. Grammar, spelling, plot, etc. were worlds above his normal standard.

Because he could make the mistakes go away.

The look on that lads face as he took that story away with him (we printed it out for him) still brings tears to the eye of this cynical old bastard.

I've always bit really terrible at poetry. I played with this for 30m.

Bravo.

<comment><USER4> Anecdotes like yours are one of the main reasons I read HN. Thanks for sharing.

Now back to the subject of the thread, kudos to the author. Every time I try conveying an idea into a poem I get stuck on the sounds of the words; it's rather hard to me to find the right rhymes, especially since English is not my native language and I'm used to read far more than to listen to it.

And back to another side note, I stumbled upon this writing by Joe Davis called Telescopic Text [1] a few years ago, and loved it. He also built a tool [2] to aid writing texts on the same format and, though I never managed to finish a text myself, I found the tool rather amusing too.

[1] <http://www.telescopictext.com/>

[2] <http://www.telescopictext.org/>

<comment><USER3> _Anecdotes like yours are one of the main reasons I read HN. Thanks for sharing._

Y'welcome. Have another from the same session of teacher training. It's one I trot out while wearing my UX hat when folk talk about 'intuitive' interfaces.

This was late eighties remember. In the UK too. Mice were not common. Almost _everybody_ we put down in front of one had problems initially. This was often the first time these folk had been in front of a computer - let alone one with a mouse.

In one case I had to take the mouse apart (look here's this ball - it moves against these rollers - they send the x/y changes to the computer, that moves the little arrow on the screen) before the teacher 'got it'.

Intuitive? Ain't no such thing ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        Sweaty palmed, I click submit
        and reeled in fatal terror;
        My MVP, I thought I'd shipped...
        Internal Server Error

Edit: This is a wonderful thing. Thank you. Make a (cheap) mobile app with sharing & I'll buy it!

</comment><comment><USER6>
        What is this I see?
        This I don't understand.
        Near matches, you say?
        I am at your command.
        But the matches don't match!
        The rhymes, they are off!
        What am I to do?
        My brain is too soft.

        Yet now I move boldly
        Into a new verse
        The fucking matches don't work.
        Fuck this bullshit.

        I could try to understand.
        Study like I'm in school.
        The numbers on the left.
        They seem kind of cool.
        But my attention can't hold.
        The wide internet looms.
        If I am your target,
        your product is doomed.

<comment><USER7>
      Let me start of by saying thank you!
      Your feedback is great at any rate
      The near matches are there to guide you through
      Tough words you may face that leave you stuck at the gate

      But alas near matches help give you a clue
      To help keep your poem straight
      This tool is still yet a hack and much too new
      Have a bit of hope and we will help you create
      Great poetry for all to view

      I don't believe we are doomed in fate
      The poem you created was amazing and true
      I see it as a victory that you found time to try and operate
      So please let us try to make your experience less blue
      By letting us know what we can improve to ease your current state

<comment><USER6>
        I do think it's nice
        I poke and I jest
        This mu'fuckin thingy
        It's really the best

        Despite the bad rhymes
        Showing up on the right
        I think this here app
        Is tighter than tight

        Do you not see wrong words?
        Showing up over there?
        Right now it says "bright"
        Which we both know ain't right
        My poem til here
        Was like ABCB?
        A failure perhaps
        To detect that rhyme scheme?

        I'm not a poet
        I think you can tell
        I'm just like a kid
        Just ringing a bell

        So what do I know?
        Maybe it's right.
        I'll stop here for now
        And bid you goodnight.

Edit: Ooohhhh, I'm supposed to enter the Rhyme Scheme manually. I assumed it was supposed to be automatically inferred from the poem. It wasn't obvious to me that the rhyme scheme is an input field.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure you're not a poet. This one and your earlier one have a certain something that is definitely more than what is being added by the tool (compare them with the response by demodesigns, yours are simply better poetry).

I particularly like

        Right now it says "bright"
        Which we both know ain't right"

Because of course as soon as you used it it became right.

By the way, the numbers on the left are the syllable count. Pretty useful if you're doing a limerick or haiku.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're looking for suggestions: If you really want people to use this as a writing tool, make the interface itself more tranquil - the "Tranquillity" title is distracting, and the poem title typeface is awful. Not everyone who writes poetry is into that kind of frilly aesthetic. Find a few well-designed poetry books to use as design examples. A full-screen mode would be easy to implement and super useful.

Similarly, the rhyming tools are interesting, but make them hideable for anyone who is not using them. I would use a thesaurus a thousand times more often than a rhyming dictionary.

I actually like the fixed-width font but suspect many wouldn't. Maybe an option to switch between fixed-width and not. Also, I expect to be able to use the tab key to indent, but it doesn't work here.

Saving and revision control would be great.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is really interesting, and a beautiful little project.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will be of any use to actual poets... Rhyming isn't really in style for modern poetry, and what there is is usually more subtle internal rhymes rather than heavy end-rhymes.

Still, this is a ton of fun to write doggrel with.

(source: my wife has an MFA in poetry)

<comment><USER11> Perhaps your observation indicates a defect of "modern" poetry, a defect that a project such as this might help remedy. I'd wager that Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare would be surprised to learn that non-rhyming poetry was ever "in style"—though I suppose dactylic hexameter, _terza rima_ , and sonnets are a bit end-rhyme-heavy.

<comment><USER10> Considering Shakespeare wrote mostly blank verse (unrhymed) and Homer wrote unrhymed dactylic hexameter... I'd take that wager.

Greek and Latin poetry is actually almost never end-rhymed... because Greek and Latin are heavily inflected with lots of conjugations and declensions, the "endings" of words are often the same and a bit too obvious.

Rhyming poetry actually came _into_ style for a couple centuries in English poetry... it's by no means a universal feature of poetry.

Edit: Also, I _guarantee_ that "finding a rhyme" is not the bottleneck that's keeping modern poets from writing rhyming poetry.

<comment><USER11> On second thought, I agree. I believe I've lost my wager. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is exactly what is wrong.

A poem, or a program or mathematical prove could be written down only after it has been emerged, formed to some extent, in one's mind.

When people sat town to write something but having no idea that was thought over for a long time (consciously and as background processes) with hope that an IDE will help them quickly put together a program, or a poem, they will end up with a mediocre piece of a crap.

It is true for almost every kind of writing, including letters or blog-posts. Matlab alone cannot help you prove anything.

Being a poet (or programmer) is a habit of the mind. A rhythm is not a problem, the meaning is.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't promise to make a poet out of you, it's just a toy. You know, for fun.

People don't _start_ anything correctly; babies don't start life running marathons or breezing through piano suites, we learn through play and toys are the tools of play. This is a toy for poetry, remarkably beautiful in its simplicity and the way in which it invites one to play.

but it seems you have never played before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14>
      There once was a guy from HN
      Who ran out of ink in his pen
      He made a site
      And it's working alright
      But only for then and again

</comment><comment> jay-pinkman nice! it even provoked me to spend some time writing this something instead of going to bed (sorry for the rant, i'm a bad bad sleep-deprived poet:)

      i think duck typing is retarded.
      although sometimes it is regarded
      as an elegant solution
      to your code base evolution
      don't let simplicity of use
      and the surrounding hype confuse
      your inner paranoid coder
      who wants to keep the code in order.
      don't let your laziness corrupt
      your bits and bytes and interrupt
      execution of your program.
      type annotations do no harm,
      but add perfection to the scene.
      without'em source code looks obscene.
      so don't be shy to add some strictness,
      let the compiler check the fitness
      of your fondly written code.
      and to conclude this episode
      i'd like to say it to the masses:
      let compilers save your asses!

</comment><comment><USER15>
      An IDE for poets
      As shown on Hacker News
      I'll venture: it's a nice opus
      But sometimes slow to use

</comment><comment><USER16>
      foo bar baz qux quux
      corge grault garble trucks
      warg fred plugh and xyzzy
      thud clearly i'm not busy

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm sure you've thought of it, but one could actually get this to do scansion too -- the CMU dictionary here <http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict> has stress and syllable breakdowns.

<comment><USER18> I've tried to use CMUdict for computational poetry... it turns out to be more difficult than it seems at first because stress is context-dependant (especially with monosyllables).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19>
       I have a simply query,
       is there a way to replace the dictionary?
       the language I would like to change
       for me, Klingon poetry is too strange

<comment><USER20> Alternate rhyming dictionaries is actually a really interesting problem, as different cultures have different ideas of what the ideal rhyme is.

In English, words where the onset consonant is the same (e.g. 'tend' and 'attend') are considered relatively poor rhymes, whereas in French they're considered to be "rich". In Portugese, even the part of speech is taken into account: a rhyme between a noun and a verb is considered a better rhyme, say, than two nouns that rhyme.

This is obviously a solved problems (I mean, you can buy rhyming dictionaries in France or Portugal), but I wonder if it would have any interesting ramifications on the design of the feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hate to be a naysayer but I'm not sure how helpful this would be to your average poet. Things like rhyme and meter counts are rarely involved in early drafts of poems. If you're shooting for a certain style or form typically you keep that in mind as you produce but I'd wager the vast majority of work being produced today doesn't follow any major scheme.

This seems like a tool made for poets without the input of poets based on a skewed idea of what a poet needs.

EDIT: I've been writing poetry for about 4 years and have taken 5+ university poetry classes. I'm by no means a "poet" or in anyway an expert on poetry but to me, I'm not sure I understand the strength in this.

First, when I'm looking for something to write in I absolutely want a minimalist interface. Anything more than that is an immediate distraction. I use iA Writer on a Macbook Air or on an iPad. I've heard combinations like this described as "typewriter" like in their single-task orientation.

This app has too many distractions. While writing the last thing I would want to break my flow is a barrage of information about bits and pieces of my work that, for the most part, aren't relevant. I do not write with any sort of meter or rhyme in mind (rhyming as a crutch is an amateur device and the biggest red flag of someone with an incomplete knowledge of poetry) but after critiques from peers and layers of revisions sometimes these elements do come out and get accentuated in my work.

In the ballpark of features I would like? Collaboration! Workshopping poems is by far the most satisfying and useful way to improve your poetry. Find ways to share documents with multiple people, get feedback and respond to it. Things like Google Docs/Drive have barriers of entry that if you can remove would make this app excellent for sharing with peers who aren't local.

Right now I use a combination of Google Drive, iCloud and email to share my work, keep track of revisions and send out requests. Its probably the most major hurdle in my workflow and something begging to be addressed for writers.

<comment><USER22>
        I don't think
    	you should
    	take
    	    this
    		    tool
    			    too
    				   seriously.
                                               .
                                              .
                                             .
    						 after all,

it's just poetry, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the idea of rhyme suggestions. It'd be even cooler to add n-gram support for smarter suggestions.... maybe I'll try adding that.

<comment><USER24> Great idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25>
        I quite like your poetry IDE
        But it doesn't count acronyms properly
        Or syllables, "poetry" has three not two
        But small complaints aside, bugs are quite few!

</comment><comment><USER26> This is neat. I was skeptical about the rhyme matching feature, but I ended up using one of its suggestions.

When lines wrap, they stop lining up with the syllable counts. It would also be nice if the continued lines were indented, but I'm not sure if that's possible with CSS2.

</comment><comment><USER27> It thinks "false" is two syllables, which seems to be just a dictionary problem. For something like this, those need to be very diligently squashed if you plan to make something commercial out of it.

The editor is way too small - this is a really simple fix.

Finally, I'm not sure why this is all in PHP - it seems like this would be much easier to use self-hosted or otherwise packaged if it was client-side only PHP and Javascript. It doesn't look like the program does anything which couldn't be done that way trivially - please correct me if I'm wrong.

In other respects, this is pretty basic, but very well-done, particularly for a hackathon project. Nicely done!

<comment><AUTHOR> 1.) Yeah, there're still some bugs that we need to work out. We also need to come up with a more scalable solution of finding rhymes if we go commercial.

2.) Yeah, you're right. We just wanted something that would look good on the projector during our demo. This needs to be tweaked.

3.) You're right for the most part. We didn't really know how we'd be implementing it at the beginning. We thought we'd need to do a lot of heavy server-side processing (which turned out to be a false assumption). We do want to add the ability for users to exist and have poems saved under their account that they can share and stuff though.

4.) Thanks! We decided early on that it'd be better to do a few things well than try to implement a lot of half finished features.

<comment><USER28> Not sure if this would be helpful, but I built <http://nickcammarata.com/haiku/> a while ago, which has some code for calculating syllables. <http://nickcammarata.com/haiku/haiku.coffee> (or .js)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It'd be really cool if

a) you added meter

and

b) you added preset rhyme / meter schemes like "Sonnet"

</comment><comment><USER30> I noticed some metric irregularities when Tranquility was supplied with the masterwork entitled, "The Fortitudes of Ancient Testiclies" (an obscure Greco- Roman poet), written by the equally obscure Roman poet Platitudinus.

      10 For strength I turn to ancient Testiclies!
      10 Few cantos of his Gonadology
       7 survive: he influenced Hippocrates!
      10 Dualities, another work, contrasts
      10 constipation with gastroenteritis.
       9 What would the Poet Testiclies have said?

      10 Science must be pursued for its own sake
       9 And never to impress potential mates!

But it is a great project.

<comment><USER31> Hmm; the one line that doesn't have 10 syllables (constipation..) shows as having 10, and it likely doesn't have a way to show the ones where the stresses don't line up right.

Though to be fair, this is a tricky problem, especially if people throw in invented words and names. This is one of those things that's probably far easier to solve in your head after a bit of practice than programmatically!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32>
        What a pleasure to see!
        Here's my MVP:
        Minimum Viable Poem

</comment><comment><USER33> A while ago, I came across a test posted here on HN by a researcher at Duke.

He was trying to determine if entrepreneurs are more inclined to take risks than other types of people, as part of an ongoing experiment designed to elicit "what it is" that makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs.

Some time after that, in a moment where, I've got to admit, I felt pretty defeated by the difficulties my friends and I were encountering in our startup, I ended up writing a poem.

Not sure how or why it happened, since the words seemed to just 'appear' as if out of thin air, but the end result is something that speaks a great deal - <USER2> me at least - about the "whatness" of entrepreneurs.

It takes passion to create something that lives outside yourself, and courage too. The same two qualities which the ancient Greek poets prized above all others in their works.

Makes me wonder if modern-day founders would've been poets in earlier times lol.

Good luck with your project!

\--The Bouldrèd Night--

The bouldrèd cliff jutting faintly upon far-off lands a' horizon's light Shows but a whisper of might, but 'ere the closing day foreshadows Defiance borne roughly upon the humble spot of soul and bras.

What power's this come thundrèd forth from falling skies? Keen eyes all watch, yet but few allow the self to see and tell. Many lights, born free, bear out their sights in visions Birthed of other men's ambitions - with scarce looks not in Augury of pomp and silver for their avariced jailer's Searching leap upon the newly-minted throne, gilt of old.

How strange is this? That we should bear ourselves Towards despair, and walk, 'ere the gallows, Hooded, our shackled soul wound round the neck in dreams, False-true, abandoned free of vice for Clarity's comforted Embrace of those acquainted, once met, never cared.

</comment><comment> shreyas-satish

      Look at all these hackers,
      Using an app, rhyming their prosaic chapters.

      Are they gone? The times when love and loss,
      Inspired mankind, towards poems and songs?

      Quit bitchin' & give it a spin,
      You silently curse,
      Didn't you see? I already joined; this fucking circus.

Awesome hack OP! Thank you for doing this.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here is mine:

      I did it!
      Did I?
      No, it seems
      This index is a disease
      Why this explain query want me to die?
      Oh, I can see now... I won't cry
      I will try
      Mongodb Covered Index to fly
      But I can't lie
      It has to scan my collection hard
      better a compound one, the docs reply
      my expectations were too high

</comment><comment><USER35>
      It went and went
      Like a sent Pequot;
      For at wit's end
      Lied St. Bernard;
      Clothe me master
      Welcome the foe
      To them that desire
      To supper at the broth;
      Oh majesty, the flock,
      The dismembered joint,
      What captured Lemeaux!

      - Dean Rykicz 1903

</comment><comment><USER36> I also made a Text Statistics javascript class based off of Mr. Child's! Any plans on putting your version on GitHub - I'd love to star it and use it to improve the version below.

[https://github.com/christopherwoodall/Text- Statistics/blob/m...](https://github.com/christopherwoodall/Text- Statistics/blob/master/TextStatistics.js)

as a Chrome addon [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading- level/lgfk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reading- level/lgfkoomolojabhimencanoanmmabfopi)

edit: found it [https://github.com/bilalq/Tranquillity- Editor/blob/master/pu...](https://github.com/bilalq/Tranquillity- Editor/blob/master/public/js/TextStatistics.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome, Chris. Our code base is already on Github: <https://github.com/bilalq/Tranquillity-Editor>

</comment></comment><comment><USER37>
      I thought I'd continue my work
      But HN gets in my way
      And now I found another toy
      To replace my work with play

      Damn you HN, what have you done?
      Always getting in my way
      Someday I'll get you back and more
      Then you will feel dismay

</comment><comment><USER38> This is wonderful!

What API/dataset are you using for the rhymes?

</comment><comment><USER39> What's really missing is a language choice. A switchable dictionary would be great.

</comment><comment><USER40>
      I've got people in the Delaware D.O.C.
      I send 'em 89 bucks, they send me equity!

      Collaborate or compete, 'til HN's header goes sable
      I'll put a cap in your ass
      or put your ass in a cap table.

</comment><comment><USER41>
      a site for a poet
      makes writing haikus easy
      i still suck at it

</comment><comment><USER24> Would be great if you could detect the rhyme scheme, or set it as fixed.

</comment><comment><USER42> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write. Here you go. Hmmm, first time, adult content?

Pimp done forgot

that he was once able to rhyme a lot

He had the time to slip and slide

and if he was lucky, he got to go for a ride.

These days ain't nuttin' but foolin'

Dealin' in tricks and he hopes it's just retoolin'

Fixing himself up with money,

So one day he can taste that sweet sweet honey.

The truth is that he forgot that the street don't

Ain't no convincing the street you'll come out on top, you just won't

Better to play the slots boy

and pray that you don't get a visit from that ol' Rob Roy

Better cut your losses quick

If you see something brown and sticky, likely to be a stick

Be smart boy and get back to rhymin'

Ain't no facin' death if you xxxx up the timin'.

</comment><comment><USER43> Very nice. I noticed an irregularity in the dictionary though – for some reason "farewell" is seen as having 3 syllables when it only has 2. (At least the way I pronounce it...)

</comment><comment><USER44> That is similar to my poetry site -- <http://www.literarycorner.org> except mine has user accounts and publishing.

<comment><USER45> I'm not going to sign up just to check the interface out. Maybe you could implement lazy registration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I had fun with it. This work-in-progress poem came off a little too depressing though. :)

        hello world, I'll finally display
        Those conditions that I might live one day
        and given my arguments local and global
        I cannot say where to be is my focal
        so sure of my halt but not the end of my efforts
        overflowing with input or gridlocked in semaphore?

</comment><comment><USER47> Great job, doesn't work in Opera! And what's more, it fails _silently_ so I just spent 5 minutes wasting my time to see when this app would start different from a plain text area in a bright minimalist layout (that doesn't tell anything about the functionality one is supposed to expect), it wasn't until I read the discussion here that I fired up Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER48>
      your thoughts never reference me
      i should be marked-and-swept
      but there is nobody to collect me
      i am a soul leak

</comment><comment><USER49> This is awesome! I've actually been working on something similar to this for awhile. Definitely a great hackathon project :)

</comment><comment><USER50> Add a big "writers block" button that pushes everything youve written through a markov chain.

</comment><comment><USER51>
      I peddle down the street,
      With a subtle tremble at my feet,
      Gazing at what's ahead,
      My mind tired and eyes red,
      I want to pull away,
      But must push for today,
      Before eyes weave shut,
      And trails leave no trace.

_push_

</comment><comment><USER52>
        All night we hack,
        And sleep we lack.
        We eat junk food,
        The code is crude.
        Nevertheless,
        Friends are impressed,
        When in the morning,
        Our post on HN* is roaring!

</comment><comment><USER53> That's pretty nice, I like it.

The syllable counter throws an error when you type a line with the word "Watch" in it though.

I have some lyrics I need to write at some point soon, bookmarked for when I have time to actually do that.

</comment><comment><USER54> Great job at Hack 'n Jill, Bilal. Looking forward to more cool projects!

<comment><USER55> Yea - great job! Hack 'n Jill was a fun time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys. I agree, it was a blast. Hopefully we'll all be seeing each other at other hackathons in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The syllable count fails on some words. For example "naïve". If you can't trust the program to count syllables at least as reliably as the writer using it, what use is it?

Interesting idea though.

<comment><USER56> Ironically, the diaeresis which it probably ignored is essentially an indication that the two adjacent vowels do not form a digraph and hence form parts of two syllables. (Admittedly, umlauts and diaereses are represented by the same characters on a computer, but their placement with respect to other vowels gives them away most of the time.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> My first thought "whoa: this is an IDE for songwriters"

I'll use the shit out of it!

</comment><comment><USER58> This IDE is here to stay,

I played with it much like clay,

There is a lot more to say,

But they may think I'm an array.

</comment><comment><USER59>
      Delete not this post for fear of shame
      for written here is the poster's name
      And when he's dead his ghost will come and say
      Why did you delete my post anyway?

</comment><comment><USER60> Very nice! Inviting and obvious UI, immediate feedback, this is great stuff. Any plans for this project?

And to top it all off, I can't stop reading that placeholder poem in Yoda's voice.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is cool. I didn't see anyone else asking for spell check, so may I be the first? Also, some sort of completion would be nice - maybe have tab complete the top word?

<comment><USER62> Since most browsers have spell check built-in, I'd figure they wouldn't need to add that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is this just in the air right now? ( I built this over the weekend: <http://dzucconi.github.com/haiku> )

</comment><comment><USER64> This is great. Thanks for posting it. I had some trouble with the syllable counts, but this is really useful for, well, quickly writing rhyming poetry. Good work.

</comment><comment><USER65> Wow! I like it!

Just a note: Make the placeholder look like a placeholder, I was ready to submit a bug because I tought it as real text and I was trying to select and delete it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Sounds like future HN meetups need poetry readings now.

</comment><comment><USER67> At first I thought this was useless, another weekend lame project that people show here in HN. Boy I was wrong, this an awesome tool. Congrats

</comment><comment><USER14>
      There once was a guy from HN

Who ran out of ink in his pen He made a site And it's working alright But only for then and again

</comment><comment><USER68> Great concept! This needs to become an Emacs mode.

</comment><comment><USER69> Interesting idea.. I think what might even be more helpful is something that would count syllables for you, iambic pentameter, etc.

</comment><comment><USER70> As a long self-proclaimed / hacker-poet I'm ashamed / to have never considered / A poem editor wizard!

\---- (luckily I'm a better hacker)

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm an occasional poet and this is something I've always wanted to build/find. Thanks for putting this together!

</comment><comment><USER72> I don't like the conception that a poem should rhyme. I know that the poems I find most brilliant never do.

<comment><USER73> The question, of course, when you liberate the poem from rhyme, is "what is a poem?" What now differentiates a poem from prose?

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Now add support for recurring lines/patterns, not just rhymes. Like, vilanellas, rondels, rondeaus, etc.

</comment><comment><USER75> Kind of fun actually. Here's my poem:

This is a test It does not attest. I want to go to the park But I'm not a patriarch

Do you like it?

<comment><USER75> Darn it put my poem all on one line. You get the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I was just playing with this new web app

That is an IDE for poem writing

My rhymes, I admit, were quite dull and bad

But the experience - exciting!

</comment><comment><USER77> Comments pack a bite, Albeit often trite. An IDE, For poetry? Is really quite alright.

</comment><comment><USER78> I have two English assignments in poetry coming up.

This is just what I was looking for, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER79> for ages I've been pondering if there's a word named yombering untilix dawned on me that flimbonapermee whatever smolteroo has clept axontheru nex clamper withapod troliqui glorkisquad.

</comment><comment><USER80> i think you'd have a pretty great mobile app on your hands here if you added a social/sharing side. A timeline of top poems. Instagram for poetry pretty much.

</comment><comment><USER81> Excellent ! I was looking for a like button on the page :)

</comment><comment><USER82> Poets and rappers

</comment><comment><USER83> How do I save what I wrote?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something we didn't get to at the hackathon. I agree that this is a feature that needs to be there. We plan on implementing a user system where people can save their poems and choose whether they're private or public. We don't really want to add more features than necessary though. Less is more and whatnot.

<comment><USER84> You want to save it into Github with revision I would say - a bit like <http://prose.io/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> this makes me happy :-)

</comment><comment><USER86> This is brilliant :)

</comment><comment><USER87> This..is..awesome.

</comment><comment><USER88> What does this do?

</comment><comment><USER89> Coding life Fucking wife

</comment><comment><USER90> Bilal, what you have created here is really quite wonderful.

Please don't smother it with complexity in adding the endless myriad of features people will undoubtedly try to convince you are necessary.

Playing with this has really inspired me to write something today.

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's sound advice. We don't plan on adding more features than necessary. A user system with sharing and persistence of poems should be sufficient.

<comment><USER91> Meter control would be useful too. And rhyme highlighting.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Netboot diskless Windows machines from a Linux server for LAN parties - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty <comment><USER2> this is kinda cool... would like to see if some sort of user state could be saved... probably redirecting users home directory to a NAS or something... thinking more along the lines of desktops in a house for kids, etc... allow them to do what ever, if they screw it up, reboot and its back... only thing they can break is their home dir, and using snapshots or the like, it can be brought back...

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine the best bet for this would be to use Windows' "Roaming User Profiles". I haven't tried it, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Love the megaman-themed server naming convention!</comment>


Ask HN: Review my website soundkey.com - <AUTHOR>

This is my first website, and it is in alpha version, but functional. It would be great if I could get feedback on (1) The idea behind it and (2) The website itself (layout, etc)<p>Thanks! <comment><USER3> Nice idea, nice web site layout, nice presentation. Now to my questions. How do you ensure that a common word (e.g. 'Bruschetta') is pronounced _right_? Can user obtain a certain trust level (like Translators over at Twitter), so they can approve the correctness of a pronounced word? Or, expressed in a more general way: how do you fight trolls (Yes, I'm quite interested in spam/troll- fighting techniques :)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that barring any obscene sounds, all variations on a word will be allowed. So, Bruschetta might have several entries. However, I'm planning on adding user voting (1-5 stars or thumbs up/down), so if there are many variations on a word pronunciation, we get to see which are the most popular.

Because, after all, it's interesting to see how a word, say, "Nuclear" or "Tomato" is pronounced around the country or around the world. (I may add a geographical location field, so the speaker can identify where they live and/or where they were raised)

For trolls or people who just want to submit obscene or "gag sounds" e.g. the sound "dish" for the entry under the title "tomato", I will be adding a "flag this entry" so people seeing the bad entry can flag it so that I and/or some moderators can review it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not use unique URIs, like: <http://soundkey.com/165pgx> or <http://165pgx.soundkey.com/>

Seems to be easier than having users copy-paste keys around.

<comment><AUTHOR> As of now, the website supports soundkey.com/key/165pgx

I need to figure out how to make soundkey.com/165pgx work, and I will be adding that feature when it's ready (I guess I can use .htaccess to redirect whatever comes after soundkey.com/, but I'm not sure how not to redirect actual pages of the website, e.g. soundkey.com/browse-sounds. Maybe by moving all website content to a subdirectory, e.g. soundkey.com/site/browse-sounds)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea. Simple to understand and well executed. An API would be hugely beneficial. I think that's where it could really take off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I will be adding that.

Can you guys recommend the preferred technology to use? I'm new to this field, and I've heard about different ways to go about this, e.g. JSON. Are any of the options superior to the others?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I love the idea, and you're definitely targeting a problem that faces many people.

My observations:

\- Why is the intro text set as an image? I know you have alt-text there, but it just seems an odd thing to do now-a-days. Also, when I send links to people to recommend they have a look, I often copy-paste the blurb to explain it. I can't do that easily with this.

\- Soundkey is too new a concept to just add it to a design as "soundkey: XXXXX" - not everyone is curious enough to find out what a soundkey is. Encourage users or designers to place it closer to the difficult words. A hint would make it clear that help is available "How to pronounce my name: go to soundkey.com/XXXXX" - in other words, promote the help first, and soundkey second. Over time, I see this has the potential to become a generic (as in hoover)

\- Provide an easy to copy link, much like how URL shorteners present you with the entire link to copy. Currently, I have to see the key, remember or copy it, browse to your site, then enter it (...into the _little_ box at the top right of soundkey) What I'd prefer to do is copy and paste the URI that takes me straight to that soundkey. Every thought, click, key press makes people a step less likely to use Soundkey.

\- I'd swap positions of "Tell it like it is" and "Soundkeys in action" - <USER2> business card image tells me straight away what you do, without having to read the description. In fact, highlight the addition of the soundkey on the 2nd card. Just imagine that users are completely lazy - they don't want to read the text, they don't want to play 'spot the difference' between the two cards.

Honestly, great idea, and keep us posted on your progress.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty cool idea, and the "SoundKeys in Action" slideshow was definitely helpful.

It seems like the ubiquitous use-cases you're aiming for will rely heavily on the trademark as well. Have you successfully trademarked "SoundKey" for the many uses you've illustrated? I'm just curious, because it seems like a very obvious description of what it is (like trying to trademark "WebDesign" for a web design company). If so, then that's amazing and I think this has the potential to really take off.

On a lighter note, the pronunciation of "Waves crashing on the beach" is hilarious: <http://soundkey.com/browse-sounds/58-waves>

</comment><comment><USER8> I often just use Google dictionary which spells the word phonetically or just plays the word to me.

However, I like your idea that you can embed the sound key into something else, and have sounds which are more like audio semiotics. (audiootics?)

They layout could be more compact, specifically on the browse-sounds page. Why not just put the player to the right of the word on the same row. OR hide the player all together and just have a speaker button.

A future idea might be to create a clever algorithm to highlight the syllables as they heard, or the sound being played like a progress bar over the word.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> The thing I appreciate most about the site is the "SoundKeys in Action" slide show. My imagination didn't get me there, but your slide show convinced me this was a necessary service (for somebody) almost immediately.

I think this is a great "outside the box" idea, yet still grounded in that it solves a problem.

I hope it is very successful.

</comment><comment><USER10> clickable: <http://soundkey.com>

I like the idea, you should provide an API so that websites that teach languages can hook up with that.

Bug: your last sample ends too early

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, adding an API is on my To-Do list

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here ya go [http://opinbot.appspot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVy...](http://opinbot.appspot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVyZXZpZXdzX3Jldmlld3JlcXVlc3QYyWUM)</comment>


Job Description: "The Smartest Guy/Gal In The Room" - <AUTHOR> http://jobs.nwsource.com/careers/jobsearch/detail?jobId=5477276

<comment><USER2> geez i really want to know what company that is.</comment>


Why the iPad 3 Retina display changes everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/121447-why-the-ipad-3-retina-display-changes-everything <comment><USER3> Changes everything, eh? No hyperbole here.

Let's get this straight: it will make a fantastic looking device look even better.

I thought Gizmodo's example graphic was particularly telling yesterday, because it's exactly the kind of image that springs to mind when I think of my iPad.

[http://gizmodo.com/5890999/witness-the-amazing-difference- be...](http://gizmodo.com/5890999/witness-the-amazing-difference-between-the- ipad-and-ipad-hds-display)

So the cutesy games my kids play on it will now be even clearer. Wow - <USER2> game changer.

<comment><USER4> 'This changes everything' was the iPhone 4 tagline (the first device that introduced a Retina display).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this really a 'retina' display? I was under the impression that 300 PPI has been the border.

If not, then surely the original Droid (285 ppi) was the first retina display device? I guess it's just hyperbole so I shouldn't be so picky.

<comment><USER4> The whole Retina display thing is a) subjective, and b) down to the distance you hold the device. The '300 PPI = Retina resolution' was for a device held 12 inches away (or something like that). The iPad is held further away, so the resolution required for 'Retina resolution' is lower.

<comment><USER6> It isn't subjective. Apple precisely defined it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FYI, this has now been confirmed at the Apple event. Seems the GPU has been bumped up to a quad-core (from dual) to cope with the extra pixels.

</comment><comment><USER7> > You can find desktop monitors in the 20-inch range that sport resolutions of > 2560×1600

really?

edit: on a related note, does anyone know where and when I could get monitors like this 20" 4k2k monitor [http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelD...](http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=664010&modelNo=Content01092012023841959&surfModel=Content01092012023841959)

<comment><USER8> I've only really seem them sold to equipment vendors as modules (or displays); sometimes to radiology vendors. The monitor I personally want is a Barco 10MP (<http://www.barco.com/en/product/2195/specs>), 30" 4096 x 2560), but I think it's about $12k.

Until then, get the old version of the 4k2k from Amazon?

Viewsonic VP2290B-2 (discontinued) 22" 4k2k TFT. Basically an IBM T221.

[http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-VP2290B-2-22-2-LCD- Monitor/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-VP2290B-2-22-2-LCD- Monitor/dp/B00009016H)

<comment><USER7> Medical displays have one problem: they are in many cases grayscale only. So is that Barco too. And I thought that those T22x displays were almost unusably slow (both refresh rate and response time wise), and needed special purpose hardware to drive them (instead of eg displayport). And there is the problem of being discontinued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> there is also no way this ipad will have great gaming perf at that resolution.

you would have to run games at a less than native resolution then upscale it to fit the screen which looks really bad.

Graphics perfomence on this machine will take a very large nosedive overall if you use fullscreen apps at that native resolution. Mobile Gpus simply arnt up to the task of filling that resolution at a good enough rate for anything other than simple graphics.

<comment><USER10> The solution is to render games at 1024x768, the same resolution as the ipad 2. Scaling it up to 2048x1536 is trivial if you just treat every pixel as four pixels on the display and will look just as good/bad as the ipad 2 does.

Can't believe this article got upvoted, there is no information about anything in it.

TLDR; iPad 3 has a resolution of 2048x1536.

<comment><USER11> Same here, reading the title I was already sure this was some kind of bad mashed up article. I guess extremetech got a lot of "friends".

Give me a break with supercharging photoshop on ipad..

It kind of does not change anything, maybe it makes a big change in games for antialiasing, but that's it. It remains ti be seen if it will really improve reading on the device

Anyway..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It changed everything in a sense that Apple pushed display technology to a new level so the others now could benefit(better notebook panels, displays).

</comment><comment><USER13> >Unless Apple has somehow reinvented backlight or lithium-ion battery tech, there's no way the iPad HD will be comparable to the iPad 2 in terms of weight, cost, or longevity.

Huh? How does increasing the resolution of the LCD increase the demands on the backlight?

<comment><USER14> It needs to produce smaller photons.

<comment><USER13> Very funny. Ha. Ha.</comment></comment></comment>


Church Committee Report on NSA Surveillance Affecting Americans (1975) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_10_NSA.pdf

<comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this, OP. I've run across references to it but never took the time to read it.

This part blows my mind. The NSA has no legal oversight and it claims that the 4th Amendment doesn't apply to it:

NSA does not have a statutory charter; its operational responsibilities are set forth exclusively in executive directives first issued in the 1950s. One of the questions which the Senate asked the Committee to consider was the "need for specific legislative authority to govern the operations of...the National Security Agency."

According to NSA's General Counsel, no existing statutes control, limit, or define the signals intelligence activities of NSA. Further, the General Counsel asserts that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to NSA's interception of Americans' international communications for foreign intelligence purposes.

<comment><USER3> >...international communications for foreign intelligence purposes.

It's because it's international communications. You fourth amendment rights only extend within the borders of the entity that protects those rights.

<comment><USER2> "Next in importance to personal freedom is immunity from suspicions, and jealous observation. Men may be without restraints upon their liberty: they may pass to and fro at pleasure: but if their steps are tracked by spies and informers, their words noted down for crimination, their associates watched as conspirators, who shall say that they are free?

Nothing is more revolting to Englishmen than the espionage which forms part of the administrative system of continental despotisms. It haunts men like an evil genius, chills their gaiety, restrains their wit, casts a shadow over their friendships, and blights their domestic hearth.

The freedom of a country may be measured by its immunity from this baleful agency. Rulers who distrust their own people, must govern in a spirit of absolutism; and suspected subjects will be ever sensible of their bondage."

The Constitutional History Of England Vol II (1863), pg. 288

by T. E. May

<comment><AUTHOR> It really saddens me as someone born in the US, that the ideals that are embodied by our constitution are never abstracted (at least by our supposed leaders) to possibly being able to be applied to people outside of the lines drawn by men in our maps.

And while it may be true that under current legal statutes x amendment does not apply to y citizens of z countries, hearing it used in arguments to justify the treatment of fellow human beings contrary to the ideals we seek to reinforce throughout the world and of ourselves is pretty repulsive.

<comment><USER4> Another perspective is that the rules of war are different from the rules of Main Street, USA. The NSA is on a continual war footing. Its job is to help defend the United States from its enemies. Until war (and terrorism) is abolished, there will always be behaviors which are allowed in war but not in peacetime. For example, warrants are not needed to kill a soldier on the battlefield, nor to search them.

<comment><USER2> > The NSA is on a continual war footing. Its job is to help defend the United > States from its enemies.

The NSA appears to perceive the people it's tasked with the defending - American citizens - as an enemy. It's the natural result of all centralized surveillance states.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why they outsource it in part to wonderful p̶r̶o̶f̶i̶t̶e̶e̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ patriotic corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton and their private equity owners :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Keep in mind that 1975 was before FISA, which wouldn't be passed until 1978. Believe it or not, despite its current reputation (thanks to modifications made in the last 12 years), the original FISA was actually a huge step forward as it actually created judicial and congressional oversight of intelligence operations where there was none before. It was passed in response to the abuses of the Watergate era.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not really sure what the Church committee is. Am I missing something from history? Or is it an actual Church committee.

<comment><USER7> Special committees or commissions in the US Congress are often named after the congressman chairing that committee.

The Church Committee was chaired by Senator Frank Church.</comment></comment>


Weebly hacked, 43M credentials stolen - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/20/weebly-hacked-43-million-credentials-stolen/ <comment><USER2> Obviously, this is a very disappointing situation for us -- we've always taken security very seriously since day 1, it's something that's been core to who we are from the beginning.

That said, how you respond in this situation can be just as important, and so we are making sure to be incredibly proactive in addressing the situation & transparent in how we communicate the details with our customers. Our top and immediate concern has been our users and the safety of their accounts.

A few days ago we became aware that an unauthorized party obtained email addresses/usernames, last login IP addresses and bcrypt hashed passwords for a large number of customers (anyone who signed up prior to March 1 of this year).

At this point we do not have evidence of any customer website/account being improperly accessed. It's also worth noting that we do not store any full credit card numbers on Weebly servers, so any credit card information was not part of this incident.

We immediately starting working on taking steps to notify our customers, and were able to get this out in a matter of a few days. We're initiating password resets as of this morning, and we've also made several improvements to the application including new password complexity requirements and a new dashboard that gives customers an overview of recent log-in history of their Weebly account to track account activity. We also increased our bcrypt work factor from 8 to 10, and all passwords will be automatically upgraded as of the next time a user logs in.

We've hired an incident response firm who is working with our internal team to complete a full investigation. In the meantime, we're examining our stack top to bottom and taking many steps to enhance our network and application security. This is an area we take very seriously and we'll be putting in tremendous effort to ensure this doesn't happen again.

<comment><USER3> Can't blame you for being hacked, but how can security be "core to who we are" if it took 6 months to discover a breach?

<comment><USER4> You're describing basically every breach ever.

<comment><USER5> You wish. I'd wager the majority _never_ gets discovered.

<comment><USER4> Touche.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Responsible disclosure and proper handling of passwords as well as not storing credit cards. Barring no breach at all, this is about as well as something like this can go.

<comment><USER7> Bonus points for mentioning the hashing algo and for not confusing "hashed" with "encrypted".

<comment><USER8> That incident response firm seems to be worth it.

<comment><USER4> Weebly is one of the more clueful startups. They didn't get this from the IR team. They've been doing stuff right for a long time.

<comment><USER8> I don't doubt that they're clueful. That's why I'm confident that they hired an excellent incident response team and wisely chose to have them review and edit any external communication. Anything less would be irresponsible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every time when this happens I ask myself only one question.

What about all those hacked servers that we don't know that are hacked yet?

There are ( and I'm pretty sure ) lots of hackers that do this on a daily basis, but don't try to do anything malicious on a large scale ( like dumping the whole db of customers, DDoS, etc. ). They probably target medium-large or small companies' servers, put a backdoor there and analyze. Either stealing some business secrets or leave it like that for one of the dark days when some political-corporate person will need their help.

Having the whole human knowledge on the palm of my hand made also our own lives public-knowledge.

<comment><USER10> Exactly!

Also in this instance, Weebly, they get an anonymous "hey look, I have all of your data".

So Weebly issues a statement to their customers to reset their passwords (which the hackers knew would be a byproduct) and unbeknownst to them the hackers are now skimming the new passwords off the network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> More details and background: [https://www.leakedsource.com/blog/weebly/](https://www.leakedsource.com/blog/weebly/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I really like Google's Recent Log in Activity and Location. So anyone logging into your account from a Different location, you are automatically notified. But one of the problem with this is that once hacked, it exposed your location as well.

2nd thing is 2FA. I hope 2FA becomes the standard for all login. Even SMS. ( I know SMS is not save in US, but I am not sure if similar can be said in EU or Japan )

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if the hacker really interested in decoding credential or they just want to collect the email addresses which is really valuable for email marketing.

<comment><USER14> You mean "email spamming"? I'd be hesitant to call that "marketing".

<comment><USER15> Spam is as much a form of marketing as assault is a form of touching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have talked to a number of current and former Weebly employees trying to convince them to use things like hardware token based 2FA, hardened servers, hardened workstations, and strong end to end encrypted password management that can't be trivially decrypted from a private key stolen from memory. I had such things written off as being too paranoid when they are too easy -not- to set up.

I was not at all shocked by this headline.

I don't want to just single out Weebly here as I discuss these sorts of things with people at different companies all over the bay out of personal interest and anything harder than using something like lastpass to reach production systems is considered too much work. Honestly Google and Facebook are the only large companies I have seen deploy fairly decent security practices out of the dozens I have exposure to. I credit this to the fact the employ teams people who have the specific job of continually auditing and enforcing all available security tools on their systems and fostering a culture that security is everyone's job.

You will pay for security either way. Either up front paying teams of capable people, or in lost customer trust after the fact.

Security apathy in the valley is a cancer impacting companies of all sizes. Sure you can't make anything perfectly secure, but you can at least force your attacker to burn a 0day. Don't make it as easy as spoofing an email and getting an employee to click a malicious link.

If you have any sort if privileged access to PII data of your customers and are not even doing basics like using hardware tokens to gate your server and db access you are one keykogger or XSS away from a serious breach. If you know how to set such things up and still don't do it, you are additionally a terrible person.

At the very least the data required to readily plaintext the passwords is not public in this case which is a lot better off than companies using only simple hashing like md5. Some credit is due here for sure, but I can't help but strongly suspect the issues here and in now countless other orgs are a result of people having access to PII that don't really care about security or respect the privacy of the user data they are responsible for.

<comment><USER17> How do you know if any employee passwords were stolen? How do you know it wasn't just a basic application exploit?

How do you know Weebly doesn't do the things you mentioned?

Fact is, you don't and that post was just an ad for your "services" in the form of a thinly veiled critique.

<comment><USER16> I have no idea if that was what caused this particular incident, but there was a lot of exposed surface on the table in that area making an attackers job that much easier via those vectors. Employee workstation or credential compromise is one of the most common ways internal assets are stolen. When easy to implement measures are not taken like using hardware tokens to gate access... then I am left to suspect if any of the harder things were done.

As for making an ad for my "services". My company does not provide security services and I am not looking for a job in this space. Pretty happy where I am. I gain nothing from posting this but to promote discussion I feel is important for our industry.

I do however participate in a not-for-profit community I have funded mostly out of pocket for the last 15 years for helping teach better system admin and security practices. If you can even find it, and want to call this an ad for that ... uh, sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> But on the website it says they have 30m users only?

<comment><USER19> I see "Join over 40 million people worldwide" [0]

[0] [https://www.weebly.com](https://www.weebly.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Credentials aren't stolen for sure. I can still log in.

</comment><comment><USER21> And here I am, trying to apply for a Senior position there [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12752642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12752642)

<comment><USER22> Well, the breach was back in February this year, so I hope they have put better security in place since then. I've seen ads for Weebly all over the place, but never realised they had that many users. Good luck with your application... :)

<comment><USER23> accounts doesn't mean the same thing as current or active users. a company very likely doesn't delete accounts right away or at all, even if the service has been cancelled. for example, a few years ago microsoft's live ID system had well over a billion accounts. but MAU was only around 450M. and that is with culling / deleting accounts after a year if they were unused.

<comment><USER24> While I agree the two are different, I also think in weeks case accounts could translate into multiple users. I know for a fact that my wife and her sister both share a weebly account for their business and I believe they have to share a login to do this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: .Net syllabus - <AUTHOR>

I have been trying to study .net but cannot find a structured way of going about studying it. The index of various books is varied, and only scares me with its vastness. Can anybody suggest me a ordered syllabus (course plan) to study.
My background: I have worked a little in c++ and have good understanding of the programming concepts(like OOP etc.)
Essentials: The topics that I essentially need to study are - understanding the technicalities of the framework, c#, asp, ado. <comment><USER2> C# is the lingua franca of .NET so you would be best off studying that first. It's still a simple language, especially if you know C++. I recommend "Pro Visual C++ 2005 for C# Developers" (it maps C# concepts to C++ but you can go the other way), "The C# Programming Language 4th Edition (with annotations)" and "C# in Depth". Then, of course, just solving problems with the language.

Next you want to get the latest edition of "CLR via C#" to get a _very_ in depth look at how the CLR works.

Once you're comfortable with C# and the CLR, you can pretty much figure out how the major frameworks must work. For instance, you can understand about 90% of ASP.NET just by learning two classes and two simple interfaces.

Some other good online resources are:

<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c>

<http://stackoverflow.com/users/88656/eric-lippert>

<http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet>

<https://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/>

<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/>

Oh, if you really want to accelerate your C# learning, try writing code without using `if`, `while`, `for`, `switch` and `goto` (obviously).

<comment><USER3> +1 for "CLR Via C#"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best way I've found to learn a language is to use it for some non-trivial project. A good place to go for varied programming challenges is <http://projecteuler.net/>. The problems are generally math-related, but lend themselves nicely to programmed solutions. These help get you familiar with the syntax, and once you've got that out of the way learning the libraries is only a matter of using them.

I first learned C# at an internship last summer, and I did it by spending a solid week making a 'music database', basically a toy application that was a GUI front end to a SQL database. I learned how C# interfaced with databases, its threading model, the event system, the go-to data structures, etc. With a bit of time, a non-trivial goal directed towards your area of interest, and access to Google and Stack Overflow, there's little reason to effectively take a course in a programming language.

This approach may not be as structured as what you're hoping for, but for me it has been the most practical. I took a course on C++ at my university a year or so ago, programmed some trivial applications for it, passed, and came out with little practical knowledge or understanding of the language. Maybe that has soured me on PL courses though, so your mileage may vary :)

</comment><comment><USER5> TekPub does screencast series for programmers and have some really good microsoft stuff (especially web). <http://tekpub.com/channels/microsoft>.

</comment><comment><USER6> The Essential C# book is very good.

But why do you need structure? Learning by doing is a good approach to begin with, followed up a bit later on with deliberate study of the seemingly important bits you've managed to avoid so far because the payoff of learning them on the fly wasn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is vast. The libraries and frameworks are being added at a dizzying pace by MS. Not all are good. Do you have a particular stack you wish to learn? Choices are web, desktop Winforms, desktop WPF, silverlight, jquery, SOA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. My particular interests are C# for desktop and ASP and javascript for web.

<comment><USER8> I'd start by learning ASP.NET MVC, then start to work outwards from there. You could do a lot worse than reading the examples on Scott Guthrie's blog.</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing The SPACE: monochrome space shooter - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flaminghorsegames.thespace

<comment><AUTHOR> This was the teaser trailer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTfkiTKZr2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTfkiTKZr2w)</comment>


Ecuador offers WikiLeak's founder Assange residency, no questions asked  - <AUTHOR> http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Ecuador+offers+WikiLeak+founder+Assange+residency+questions+asked/3902251/story.html

<comment><USER2> I doubt Assange would really consider it. In my opinion Ecuador is just trying to appear brave against the U.S. without really doing anything. That pays a lot in the internal politics in Latin America.

<comment><USER3> considering that the current president at one time shut down tv stations and radio stations serving the opposition, this is one of those offers you just pass on. [http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,CPJ,,ECU,,48a57540c,0...](http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,CPJ,,ECU,,48a57540c,0.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What happens when he releases information that is sensitive to Ecuador's interests?

<comment><USER5> Ecuador is not known for its law abiding practices, it will not be smart for Mr Asange to live there. It will be easy to the government of Ecuador or anyone with some power to get him in shit trouble down there.

<comment><USER6> _Ecuador is not known for its law abiding practices_

I don't think that's a very accurate characterization. While Ecuador does currently have a volatile government, the country is democratic, with relatively fair elections and reasonably comprehensive civil rights. It's not the US, or even Costa Rica, but Ecuador is also not some corrupt banana republic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. Ecuador's current government is quite leftist, and very friendly with Chavez, despite close ties to the US. There used to be a huge US naval base in Manta, although it was closed when I was there this summer.

While Internet coverage is spotty enough to disuade permanent residence for someone like Assange, I could see him trying to get some support in South American countries. He's helped by two things: The Internet culture there is still very Wild West, 1998-style, and they absolutely _despise_ the US (with good reason). In fact, the one constant in South America is how much they hate the US, although attitudes toward individual Americans varied.

<comment><USER8> > In fact, the one constant in South America is how much they hate the US

I am not sure where you have been or what you have experienced, but I wouldn't call it a constant. I never noticed this widespread hatred towards the US you mention in Brazil, Argentina or Chile. I understand most of the northern Latin America may harbor strong negative feelings towards the US, but I can tell you Brazilians really don't care that much.

Besides that, it's really childish to hate a country.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, you're correct. I was inaccurate with my claim. The antipathy towards the US is much stronger in Central America and the Andean regions (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, etc)

As for being childish, the US has done a whole lot to earn that enmity. I'd recommend reading _Open veins of Latin America_ , by Eduardo Galeano. It's a difficult read, due in no small part to the author's support of the Cuban Revolution and Castro's government. It helps, however, to recognize that the book was written in 1971, long before it became apparent that the Cuban experiment with Communism had some serious humanitarian costs, despite its successes. At the time, Cuba was the only real counterpoint to American economic imperialism in Latin America, so it's easy to see why he would offer such strong support for that regime.

Despite that, the book is meticulously researched and cited, and many of the events it details are frankly despicable. It's also by no means an attack on the US, as it covers 500 years of history since the Spanish invasion of the continent. It really is a good read.

<comment><USER9> > As for being childish, the US has done a whole lot to earn that enmity.

That's quite an understatement.

<comment><USER8> Some people have done a lot, sometimes with government support, but those are a tiny minority when compared to the people they represented.

You shouldn't judge a people by the actions of their leaders.

<comment><USER10> You should judge a people if they fancy themsevles a democracy (especially if they think their democracy is so good it deserves to be "exported" to other countries!)

<comment><USER11> and should you judge the people if they fancy themselves a federal republic?

<comment><USER10> I see what you are saying. Technically we are a federal republic but that doesn't matter in this particular argument. We (US) are boasting at being a democracy to the rest of the world. In the propaganda domain we are a democracy. Our citizens have the potential of affecting the political establishmnt through voting.

This comes in constrast to say North Korea, China or Lybia. If their government does something outrageous, one can blame the people to some extent, but they should also get plenty of slack since standing up and otherthrowing the leadership would take a lot lives, blood, and suffering. It is not just a walk to the voting booth.

In general one can argue that the people of a country should be the responsability for their government's action in proportion to their ability to influence that government's actions.

<comment><USER12> It's only one walk to the voting booth if there's an alternative available to vote for. Significant changes in US politics have cost lives, blood, and suffering.

<comment><USER10> The first step is for the majority to recognize the dysfunction of our democracy. People have to realize that self-censorship and self-imposed oppression is keeping them down.

As long as the large majority are drinking the kool-aid they will just end up being manipulated powerful elites and they will vote against their own interests.

On the other hand, in US most people still have access to the voting booth, and to alternative media channels via the internet.

Aside from being added to various shadow 'watchlists' most American can (still!) join an activist group or can try to contant their elected official without a fear of imprisonment, torture and death.

But in more general terms, I was referring mostly to the propaganda domain, in which we project ourself to be a beacon of democracy. I was offering a potential contra-propaganda point that citizens of such self-professed democracies should be held accountable for the actions of their government. Whether we are an actual functioning democracy is another story (I don't think we are ...).

<comment><USER12> I am not sure why what a government says about its own qualities should determine the level of responsibility its people bear for it's actions.

<comment><USER10> Because unlike other people, most Americans drink their own kool-aid, and most believe the fictitious qualities that the government tells them to believe.

When we grew up in Soviet Union, we knew propaganda when we heard it or saw it. We didn't criticize it in public, but in private we laughed at it.

I am surprised at how uncritical Americans are of their own history, political issues, external relations, and media bias,

Most believe they have the most objective and free press and the most democratic government system (they are even willing to export it!).

So if most feel like they live in a democracy and feel like they can vote and their vote can really count, then they should be held responsible for the result of their vote (or lack of).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On a related note, a big online library of Russian books is managed from Ecuador (used to be hosted there as well).

They used to openly call themselves pirates, but Russian publishers couldn't do much to the site legally due to Ecuador copyright laws. Publishers then tried to bring the site down by DOS attacks, but didn't quite succeed.

</comment><comment><USER14> Probably not the best idea.

Related video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuWpgRQuXU4>

More info [http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21310)

</comment><comment><USER15> Joke all you want, it appears the tables of what constitutes a free country have turned dramatically.

<comment><USER16> Uh, a country does not become "free" by symbolically offering one person the privilege of freely attacking an entity it is at best ambivalent about. That's just falling for the propaganda move hook line and sinker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think Ecuador has the infrastructure to support WikiLeaks. Hosting on a different continent seems scary in this situation where you're pissing off governments.

<comment><USER18> The offer is to Assange, not to wikileaks, so no infrastructure required.

All it takes to manage wikileaks is ssh access to a bunch of servers hosted all over the place.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, that was the second half of my post. It doesn't seem like a normal SSH situation when angering governments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hah, I doubt he'll go, I think he'd rather stay in Switzerland or some other 1st world country, than going to Ecuador where he's at mercy of US' interests.

<comment><USER20> Most developed nations have extradition treaties with the US - and Assange has a good chance of independently pissing them off in the future if he leaks info on them.

Wikileaks has already leaked private bank memos, which the Swiss in particular don't take kindly to.

Ecuador is no fan of the US, and it tends not to be a very interesting nation from a leaking perspective. It'd be a better choice than most developed nations.

<comment><USER19> If push comes to shove, they'll just use him as a bargaining chip for something they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes but he'll need a heck lot of protection.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a trap!

</comment><comment><USER23> ...thus making the job of finding Assange easier for the hired assassins

<comment><USER24> Sarah Palin said today that he should be hunted down like Osama bin laden.

<comment><USER25> Really? You mean with a complete and utter lack of success? Zing!

edit: you know, when someone who is cited as a possible presidential candidate reflexively reaches for an extra-judicial solution to resolve the releasing of state information by a foreign whistleblower then ... what? i don't know, but it's very telling. the road back towards the rule of law is going to be long and difficult one.

<comment><USER26> Last night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a press meeting that Wikileaks should be labeled a terrorist organization. I find it frightening that the government has reached a point that they will label _anyone_ they don't like as a terrorist so that they can bypass the legal system. I didn't realize that exposing information could be an act of terror, but Clinton would like to have you believe so.

Edit: I did a quick Google search to find a news piece about this. The first one I found was this:

[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/gop-rep-wikileaks- deemed-...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/gop-rep-wikileaks-deemed- foreign-terrorist-organization/)

That article tells us who lobbied Clinton to label Wikileaks as terrorists, but it also references the Pentagon Papers case, which I cited from in a comment in another discussion about Wikileaks (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1948911>).

<comment><USER27> So, Clinton _did not_ say in a press meeting that Wikileaks should be labeled a terrorist organization?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yeah, right. Mr Assange is currently having the time of his life, travelling around the world, pretending to be on the run from authorities which don't seem to have much interest in actually pursuing him, talking to the media a lot and having possibly-consensual sex with hot Swedish chicks. You think he wants to go hang out in Quito for the rest of his life?

<comment><USER28> Wow, I sure got downmodded for that. A lot of Quitoans in the audience? I'm sorry, I'm sure your city is a very nice place.</comment></comment>


Apple should add a rule: if App > $2 then No Ads - <AUTHOR>

If Mr. Jobs really cares about the user experience with apps then he should do this. I think he's proven he can do anything when it comes to that Store. <comment><USER2> I think they impose enough "rules" as it is. Maybe a $3 app with adds means it doesn't have to cost $5. That's just an example. There could be all sorts of different reasons that developers will have for both, and I like the idea of letting them worry about their business model on their own. If users hate the ads if they are already paying for the app, I think that will work itself out naturally.

<comment><AUTHOR> two dollars is a little arbitrary but I would like to see something along these lines - or at 24 hour period in which you can 'return' the app perhaps?</comment></comment>


Korean banks sue California retailer Newegg, alleging 'Ponzi scheme' - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-newegg-lawsuit-20171020-story.html <comment><USER2> Hmm interesting ethics in this one.

I care about Newegg, I feel they offer me good prices and service. I bought many things from them over the last decade.

So if this suit succeeds and Newegg takes a massive hit (for seemingly real fraud), a few big dogs will make money and the consumers will get shafted.

Will be interesting to see what happens. Part of me wonders why it's "buyer beware" for the consumer, but if you're a big bank and you get ripped off, it's time to sue everyone you can.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems open and shut... So what's the other side of the story?

<comment><USER4> Showing someone an order from Newegg is not the same as actually having any orders from Newegg… it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ponzi scheme vs WannaCry... which is the biggest evil of the two?</comment>


Techcrunch video project: Elevator Pitches - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/04/introducing-a-new-techcrunch-video-project-elevator-pitches/

<comment><USER2> We like to complain about Techcrunch around here, but every once in a while, a real gem comes along...

This is a great idea! Even if you never produce or distribute your video, imagine the progress you'll make anyway.

<Plans night in front of medicine cabinet with stop watch.></comment>


Will Unix become the next MS-DOS? (1985) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8G1qg99Kl4 <comment><USER2> Everyone is saying "Nope". A couple events happened in the US in 2013/2014 - The number of cell phones surpassed the number of computers, and the number of smartphones surpassed the number of basic phones. Both iOS and Android are Unix derivatives, so I'd say Unix _is_ winning the post-PC era.

<comment><USER3> Except that both lack UNIX userland, aren't POSIX compliant and have a sandbox design.

<comment><USER4> ... and ridiculous hard coded limits like 128 shared objects per process:

[http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#...](http://androidxref.com/4.2_r1/xref/bionic/linker/linker.cpp#SO_MAX)

This hilarious memset(3) bug was shipping for years:

[https://android- review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14...](https://android- review.googlesource.com/#patch,sidebyside,14699,1,libc/memset.c)

Well, that's what you get when you NIH your libc...

<comment><USER5> A similar memset bug happened in glibc too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I always find it interesting to see these Computer Chronicles episodes with Gary Kildall (yay!) hosting. I haven't watched the full episode yet, but it's interesting since at the time his company was writing operating systems and tools that competed with both Unix and Microsoft. I watched an episode where they were comparing the Atari ST and Amiga, and I was impressed with how he never showed bias despite the operating system on the ST having been written by his company.

<comment><USER7> Gary had himself to blame for failing to see the future of PC market. He build his company on selling tens to hundreds (per week) copies of the $700 CP/M OS used to run $700 dBase II on $10K S100 systems. When IBM entered the market with PC/XT he insisted on pricing himself out of it at six times premium over DOS, as if he didnt believe industry would move in just few years from hundreds to almost hundred thousand boxes per week(1986).

As for him being impartial I wouldnt go so far. I also remember that episode and how they showed bouncing ball on Atari with a stupid "see, we can do it too" comment, totally ignoring the fact Atari 520ST was burning >80% CPU just to blit that ball across the screen while Amiga did it all in hardware while CPU was free to run other programs in full preemptive multitasking OS :)

<comment><USER6> Who cares that the ST was burning CPU to do it, in the grand scheme of things at that point in time all the fancy custom circuitry of the Amiga got them... what... 3-4 years ahead of the curve at the cost of massive investment of R&D and a price premium... ? By 1990 stock commodity PC graphics cards on a stock x86 machine could outcompete the Amiga, and Commodore was totally unable to pull another Jay Miner with its next chip set.

And multitasking on an 8mhz 68000 -- and with no memory protection in the slightest -- was not much of a win. We had multitasking extensions for the ST, too, and after fiddling with them for a while, the use cases were... unclear. Without an MMU it was dubious.

In reality the ST was cheap competition for the Macintosh, not the Amiga. And paired with a hi-res monitor and Atari's cheap laser printer and a copy of Calamus it was a cuthroat priced, quality DTP workstation. Or in a studio as a sequencer hooked up to a bank of synthesizers.

The Amiga found its niche in video applications... and games.

Anyways, this is all off topic to Gary Kildall :-)

<comment><USER8> _> Commodore was totally unable to pull another Jay Miner with its next chip set._

Indeed, bearing in mind that Jay Miner had designed his previous chips for Atari 8-bit computers, when he worked there. And that Commodore actually bought the Amiga from Amiga Corp ;-)

<comment><USER6> Just imagine the alternate history where Atari hadn't disappeared up its own ass in the early 80s and all the amazing tech they were sitting on could have shipped. Terrible internal management, amazing engineering. They had dual CPU BSD workstation systems in development, the dual x86/6502 1450XL, the 128 oscillator AMY sound chip, Jay Miner/Amiga on contract for something new... Then they went tits up, Commodore had internal fighting with Tramiel, Tramiel and sons (and some ex-Commodore engineers) took the Atari name and some of its assets, and Commodore mismanaged the Amiga (and the remaining 8-bit stuff) for the next 5 years.

If all that engineering talent could have just gotten their shit together instead of fighting over the table scraps... the PC industry would have been far more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So sad it didnt :( Mostly out of vendor greed, anything with Unix in name was treated as $premium$.

On that note here is venix86, IBM XT/AT Unix variant, ready to run on emulators:

[http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/ventu...](http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/2015/08/14/venturcomm- venix86-on-messmame/)

<comment><USER9> I loved seeing the name "winchester" for hard drives in those screenshots. I've been renaming the HDD on every computer I've owned since the 80's to that for kicks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Along a similar line. Here's a very interesting show from 1978 about the "rise of the microprocessor".

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-197719...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z4rrj/horizon-19771978-now- the-chips-are-down)

 _Edit: Here 's the show on YouTube for those that can't get iPlayer or don't want to install Flash:_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW5Fvk8FNOQ)

</comment><comment> SG- A lot of it's basic ideas did even with OS's that aren't Unix or Unix based. Everything is multiuser, multitasking and network based now.

OSX along with iOS which controls a large part of the mobile/tablet. Android has it's Linux roots too.

Windows NT set MS up to finally switch to a better OS and discard of DOS based Windows.

The server space continues today to be run by Unix based OS's (Linux, BSD, etc).

What's really interesting is that in 1985 when this video was out, Next was just being formed and they were building NextStep.

</comment><comment><USER11> Unix is a user-hostile operating system! [https://youtu.be/L8G1qg99Kl4?t=22m36s](https://youtu.be/L8G1qg99Kl4?t=22m36s)

</comment><comment><USER12> Funnily, as it turned out, VMS became the new MS-DOS (well, kind of: [http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms- re...](http://windowsitpro.com/windows-client/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story) )

<comment><USER13> I like to think Windows actually was intended as a VMS parody. ;-)

<comment><USER14> VMS + 1 = WNT

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I kinda like using a DOS-ish Linux install.

A "minimal" boot system that is highly user maintainable etc.

Gives a feeling of control that i kinda missed during the Windows years, where everything was hidden behind cryptic registry entries and services.

</comment><comment><USER16> It is unfortunate MS turned OS/2 2.0 into an entire fiasco. There is a reason why it is my favorite topic.

<comment><USER17> I believe that the fiasco started with IBM using LOC as a metric to pay MS. It's like telling contractors that the will pay them better the most inefficient they get.

<comment><USER16> I know. I am talking about the ending of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess not.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nope.</comment>


What Is Wireless Charging Good For? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/technology/personaltech/wireless-charging-pros-cons.html <comment><USER2> If you have a waterproof phone and you get it wet (I am an avid jet skier), the charging port will not work for several hours afterward (moisture detected warning). A wireless charging pad is a must for these situations.</comment>


Guess my word - <AUTHOR> http://simbase.org/gmw/gmw.html <comment><AUTHOR> 16 guesses in 4 minutes - surprisingly addictive.</comment>


Morocco to switch on first phase of world's largest solar plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/04/morocco-to-switch-on-first-phase-of-worlds-largest-solar-plant <comment><USER2> $9B for a 580MW plant is _expensive_. For reference, most photovoltaic plants cost less than $3/W. Of course, PV stops working as soon as the sun goes down.

I'm curious how much additional capacity this thing gets by using solar heat instead.

<comment><USER3> Well, the article says it will provide power for 3 hours after sunset. Assuming 12 hours of useful sunlight per day, it seems safe to guess that it provides something on the order of 25% more power.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it likely take three hours to start after sunrise then?

<comment><USER5> No, because you can immediately start creating power when the sun comes up and slowly store heat over the course of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This whole project just seems so insane to me. A medium sized damn in my area was built for a bit less than $10 million back in the 50's and has a capacity hitting around 1,000 Mw.

Obviously dams are highly location dependent, and are somewhat on the shadier side of environmental impact. But 900 times the cost for half the power output is just crazy. Is there really no better way to get power into the country? Or is this just some publicity / money burning stunt?

<comment><USER7> Dams are dependent on a large volume of water flowing over a large drop to spin turbines. Looking at the aerial in the article, it's safe to assume that the water in the dam is a precious strategic resource and cannot be sent downstream in sufficient volume to provide infrastructure scale power.

<comment><USER6> I'm not trying to imply that Morocco's money would be better spent on dams, as Morocco is not in a location suitable for dams. I'm merely drawing attention to the fact that they intend to invest in a facility that will cost 1800x more per Kw than another common source of energy. Perhaps a better comparison would be pure solar, or off shore wind. Though I'm still confident those options would still be _vastly_ cheaper than their current plan

<comment><USER8> Or alternatively, put the money in some investment vehicle, and buy energy (electricity / oil) via long running contracts from the returns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a great project, the only thing that concerns me about it is the very large loan from the IMF denominated in USD they took out in order to build it. Could well have been the work of EHMs

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John- Perkins/...](http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John- Perkins/dp/0452287081)

<comment><USER10> Could you refer me to the IMF loan, I can't find it?

I do know Morocco took our a precautionary loan, iirc with the IMF, in the past few years which was renewed not so long ago. But it was renewed because it was not exercised, it's more of a free loan option they had secured to protect against the very swings in fossil fuel prices that a project like this diminishes due to increased energy independence. Perhaps that's the loan you're referring to? In that case, note that Morocco didn't actually lend the money, it only secured the option to borrow in case shit hits the fan. (oil goes to $100, which is a disaster for Morocco, but no sign of that anytime soon).

<comment><USER9> The article I read that in originally references a mixture of private and "IFI funding"[1] which I took to mean International Financial Institutions (which includes IMF/WorldBank etc. who make loans denominated in USD)[2].

The book I referenced above is by John Perkins who worked as a consultant for a company who would justify huge loans denominated in USD for power infrastructure to developing nations, but a significant majority of the work and materials would come from US companies. So the World Bank or the IMF would loan tonnes of money to someone in USD, much of it being transferred directly to companies in the US anyway, and leaving the nation with a large debt to service in a currency they do not issue (leaving them vulnerable to pressure from the US to export goods, for example, even though people require them locally, to liberalised trade agreements, or even to be allies in conflict etc. all sorts of sordid shit; the John Perkins stuff is well worth reading).

When governments take on large debts denominated in a currency they do not issue, it's always a cause for concern. That's why MMT academics were against the Euro[3], and why so many developing nations are now locked into crippling debt service that they cannot possibly keep up with.

Countries like the US, UK, Australia and Japan who only issue debt (ie. all currency or treasury securities) denominated in their own currency, have no risk of insolvency and no trouble servicing the debt[4] -- they can choose to stop paying interest any time they want and indeed the "debt" people refer to in those economies is really a "buffer stock" rather than a "bond market"[5]

When a nation that does not issue USD (ie. any nation other than the US) takes on USD denominated debt, with interest payments denominated in USD, they're up shit creek without a paddle.

[1] [http://www.worldfinance.com/infrastructure- investment/projec...](http://www.worldfinance.com/infrastructure- investment/project-finance/moatize-ipp-noor-1-csp)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_instit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_institutions)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial- Gr...](http://www.amazon.com/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial- Grand/dp/1784716650)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35uBVeNp6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i35uBVeNp6c)

[5] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo&index=6&list=PLo...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soVyyyXrcwo&index=6&list=PLoGqI16J4bCtzP8aN3sQcZd8xcGrkXmHA)

<comment><USER10> Ah I see, no I wouldn't mean to take it as the IMF although they may have been part of the loan. A big chunk of the money is from climate investment funds (CIFs), which come from IFIs, of which in particular the regional IFI, the African Development Bank, in addition to private loans from Saudi Arabia and Germany. In fact it's co-owned by some of those companies, e.g. the saudi ACWA Power, the Spanish TSK etc.

Anyway, it doesn't matter as indeed all of those could be dollar denominated. I don't know if they are. It's extremely common for, particularly in english/international reporting, numbers to be reported in dollar equivalents. Whether that's the actual denomination of the loan I don't know. I do know Morocco struggles deeply with hard currency scarcity, particularly in the realm of necessary energy imports every year, so they're well aware of the issues surrounding obligations in foreign currency denominations. There's a lot of fluff pieces on this project but sadly little deep insight in how it's all structured.

Thanks for the book reference. I'd not read it but I've been introduced to the issue in college classes many times, it features heavily in international political economy classes for example of which I took a few. I hope to find some time this semester to look into all the resources you linked me, thanks for that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The market cap of all the solar stocks in the industry ($14 billion or so) is about the same as the market cap of Twitter. Pretty baffling to me.

If you're a billionaire and want to be a trillionaire, all you'd have to do is buy every solar company and wait a few decades I bet.

<comment><USER12> There's no barrier to entry on anything solar-related. A wise investor would assume that serious competition will occur prior to reaching a trillion-dollar jackpot.

<comment><USER11> You could buy every solar startup as soon as they get to X size. Also hardware startups do have significant barriers of entry.

<comment><USER13> Then you'd get stuck buying half assed divisions of a bunch of F500 companies who get into the market just to profit off you.

Plus you'd need unlimited capital for this plan. And current solar companies might go bankrupt before solar hits the scale needed to compete with fossil fuels.

And the DOJ would sue you for antitrust violations. Standard Oil did your plan. That sort of thing won't be allowed again.

<comment><USER11> Many solar companies are international.

They have highly optimized technology for reducing $/watt that can't be half- assed by Fortune 500 companies.

Customer acquisition takes a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm surprised to see that this project uses wet cooling. Wikipedia claims it uses at least twice as much water as a coal power plant of similar capacity.

Is water surprisingly abundant in this part of the Sahara?

<comment><USER14> Next to a sizeable lake: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ouarzazate+45000,+Morocco/...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ouarzazate+45000,+email@example.com,-6.9769893,12.89z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0xdbb104077422057:0x26b3cb529b37ab00)

Out of curiosity - what are the options outside of wet cooling?

<comment> _-__--- also, what can be done with the hot water coming out of the system?

<comment> semi-extrinsic By definition this is low grade heat. In cold climates that can be used for stuff like heating nearby homes. In hot climates you're basically limited to running it through a bottoming cycle [1].

But that needs a delta T between the hot water coming out of your cooling system and ambient temperature of probably about 40 K, which probably requires a bigger cooling system than otherwise. So you have the added investment cost of a bigger cooling system plus the bottoming cycle, but you've gained some more energy output. Is it worth it? Impossible to say without crunching the specific numbers. But my first guess is "no" in this case. It is usually worth it for gas fired powerplants though.

[1] Covered in [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle)

<comment> david-given If your ambient temperature is 40 K, I submit that you are not human and are, in fact, living on Pluto.

Did you mean Fahrenheit?

<comment><USER15> He's talking about a difference of 40K between the hot water out of the cooling and the ambient temperature.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Yes, exactly. Thanks for clarifying for me.

<comment> david-given Oh, I see! I hadn't twigged.

...shame; living on Pluto would be cool.

<comment> semi-extrinsic TIL: "twigged".

And yeah, living on Pluto would no doubt be... cool. _puts on sunglasses_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If they only switch in one phase won't that cause imbalances on their power grid? Hyuk.

</comment><comment><USER17> It occurs to me that the Middle East is very well endowed with both petroleum and sunshine, but the latter is far more evenly distributed.

</comment><comment><USER18> a bit OT, but I have about 70m2 south facing roof space (UK) where I'd like to install solar panels at some point. How are panel prices likely to develop over the next 5 years? Should I wait, will panels become ridiculously cheap in the near future?

<comment><USER19> I can't speak to the UK specifically, but I have 4.8kW system on my south- facing roof in similarly-cloud Oregon. Panels will continue to get cheaper, but likely the largest part of the cost will be the installation, and that is not likely to become cheaper nearly as soon (though it should gradually, as it's more and more common).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a rule for calling yourself the "tallest building" that is relevant here. You aren't the tallest building until you have topped out. Before that, you are just a construction site. This is important because it means you cannot be "tallest" while still under construction. The title belongs to the tallest current building until such time as you stop building.

This "worlds biggest" solar plant therefore isn't. It isn't yet biggest. It may never be biggest. It may be passed over by some other plant started tomorrow. Or it could stop expanding before ever reaching its designed size.</comment>