Roche Biochemical Pathways charts – navigable and annotated - <AUTHOR> http://www.roche.com/sustainability/for_communities_and_environment/philanthropy/science_education/pathways.htm

<comment><USER2> The Roche Biochemical Pathways charts were the inspiration for the MetaCyc family of pathway/genome databases, all enabled by the Pathway Tools software (itself written with 400,000+ lines of Common Lisp):

Example pathway: Super-Pathway of glycolysis, pyruvate dehydrogenase, TCA, and glyoxylate bypass

[http://www.metacyc.org/META/NEW- IMAGE?type=PATHWAY&object=GL...](http://www.metacyc.org/META/NEW- IMAGE?type=PATHWAY&object=GLYCOLYSIS-TCA-GLYOX-BYPASS&detail-level=4&detail- level=3&detail-level=2&detail-level=1)

MetaCyc has an order of magnitude more information integrated into it than most wall charts. Plus, you can get true interactive metabolic overview maps, where you can click on the enzymes and compounds (example from the E. coli database):

[http://www.ecocyc.org/overviewsWeb/celOv.shtml](http://www.ecocyc.org/overviewsWeb/celOv.shtml) (be sure to zoom in and click on things!)

The Pathway Tools software, and the metabolic networks, are freely available for academic use, and you can use it to construct your own metabolic networks.

Full disclosure: I'm a former full-time bioinformaticist on the project.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been looking for this for years. It used to be from Boeringer Mannheim, you could jsut write a letter and they would send a copy for free (I was a biochem major and kept a copy on my wall). After a year of biochem, I could recognize most the elements and had memorized a significant fraction of the chart. This chart represent a collection of monumental knowledge and achievement in biochemistry over the past 100 years.

<comment><USER4> KEGG is what you're looking for. The Roche charts are beautiful but not really that great in terms of navigability. KEGG annotates organisms over the 'full chart' so you can see which pathways are thought to be active in that organism based on sequencing results. E.G. for humans -

[http://www.kegg.jp/kegg-bin/show_pathway?hsa00360](http://www.kegg.jp/kegg- bin/show_pathway?hsa00360)

If you need the full pathway map, you can see them e.g.:

[http://www.kegg.jp/kegg-bin/show_pathway?hsa01100](http://www.kegg.jp/kegg- bin/show_pathway?hsa01100)

<comment><USER3> No. I mean I've been looking for that poster online, for the nostalgia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love the Roche charts, but I also always wanted a more rational organization to them, perhaps at least regionally organized such that on one axis number of carbons and on another axis net oxidation state of total carbon.

<comment><USER5> One of my professors (in medical school) pointed out that these posters are great for learning the chemistry, but aren't very useful to us students because they don't show you what cells/tissues these processes are happening in.

<comment><USER2> A problem with these wall charts and the KEGG diagrams is that not only do you not know which enzymes or pathways are active in which tissues within a single multi-cellular organism, you don't know which organisms they come from. These pathway charts are actually mosaic pathways, trying to show a summary of metabolism across all domains of life. This can be misleading, in that no one organism contains all parts as displayed.

<comment><USER4> KEGG filters for organism, although it's automated and not 100% correct.

There's also a lot that's not on either map, like specialized secondary metabolite synthesis pathways (although kegg has select secondary pathways).

<comment><USER2> KEGG filters at the MAP or MODULE level, but it merely highlights the enzymes of the mosaic MAP/MODULE that it inferred is present in the organism, rather than display the subset of the network that is actually present.

I agree with you regarding their mutual incompleteness. There's plenty more literature to curate! See my systematic omparison of KEGG and MetaCyc for more details:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3665663/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3665663/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> just use the contact form and they will send you a real poster for free

[http://lifescience.roche.com/shop/en/us/store/contact- us?mes...](http://lifescience.roche.com/shop/en/us/store/contact- us?message=Ordering%20Roche%20Biochemical%20Pathways%20Wall%20Charts%20%28please%20note%20that%20some%20countries%20may%20charge%20shipping%20/%20handling%20fees%29&subject=Product%20Support)

<comment><USER5> Apparently, not for medical students. This is what their service rep responded:

>For life science research only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure how you'd use them for diagnosis. Maybe to check someone's eyesight?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, 49 years of refinement - there's an intellectual legacy to be proud of. I know virtually nothing of biochemistry but resources like this are wonderful for gaining a sense of what there is to learn and how fundamental things relate to each other. It's rare to see such a comprehensive and beautifully curated map.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sure, this chart[1] may look impressive, but trust me, we don't understand nearly enough about human metabolism to create a product like Soylent. /s

1: [http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1](http://biochemical- pathways.com/#/map/1)

<comment><USER10> The size of a chart, and a quantity of the unknown (the knowledge needed to safely produce a dietary replacement) is a pretty silly comparison, ignoring the intended snark.</comment></comment>


JavaScript simulation of an iPad - <AUTHOR> http://alexw.me/ipad/

<comment><USER2> This is extremely impressive! It always surprises me how far people can go with web scripting languages like JavaScript and CSS. In fact, it reminds me of the iPhone icons made purely out of CSS[1]

Anyways, for anyone who is interested, the only two apps that work are _Safari_ and _Maps_.

And for anyone who can't access it, here are the features:

         In the meanwhie, you are welcome to checkout my blog : alexw.me
         You can also fork this at https://github.com/altryne/Ipad-Simulator
         and hack on this and do cool stuff because open souce rulez

         Things that work :

         -Moving Screens left and right with "spring" effect

         -Dock icons have css3 "reflection" ;)

         -All icons have css3 rounded corners and shadow similar to Ipads

         -Search works almost identically to the ios. (using modified jquery live-search)

         -Lock screen effect with returning lock

         -Home button works (exits apps, goes to first page,
          return from sleep mode,exits edit mode)

         -Sleep button puts iPad in sleep mode

         -Edit Mode: click and hold on any app for 2 seconds to enable edit mode

            °Edit mode icons shake in chrome (using css animation)

            °Move apps from place to place in edit mode

            °Move apps to another page

            °Move apps to dock

            °Delete Apps

All he/she needs to add is multitasking and I think the app (or should I say, operating system) is complete!

[1] - <http://graphicpeel.com/cssiosicons>

<comment><USER3>
        This is extremely impressive! It always surprises me how
        far people can go with web scripting languages like
        JavaScript and CSS.

I hate to be the one who pisses on this nice looking project... but you guys do realize that this is not a "simulation of an ipad".

This a couple of jQuery plugins and ~200 LOC of JavaScript to make it look like the iPad interface.

Did anyone actually look at the code?

I'm not even sure I understand what the point of this is.

<comment><USER2> >but you guys do realize that this is not a "simulation of an ipad"

How is it not? Regardless of the code, doesn't it perfectly emulate some key features of iOS? Understanding the point is another argument...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprisingly enough, it does work on the iPad. It is slow as hell of course, with a real problem of adjusting to the screen size, but it works !

<comment><USER5> Yeah i just loaded this in my iPad. Reminds me of browserling.com. We put an iPad in your iPad.

<comment><USER6> So you can touch while you touch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought this was pretty cool at first, then I checked the useragent of the Safari browser on the simulated iPad:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10

Now I'm seriously impressed.

<comment><USER8> thanx, then you would probably like to hear that it tried to remove all flash also, and replace it with the blue lego thingie :)

<comment><USER9> Brilliant touch, I laughed when I noticed it. Shame that drag and drop doesn't scroll the page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's minor, but there is no messaging app on the iPad...

</comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, he did a great job with this! I saw it on forrst a while back ( <http://forrst.com/posts/iPad_simulator_with_jQuery_Css3-CTA> ). I love how the browser works.

</comment><comment><USER12> Slightly similar (framing content inside of images to mimic other environments), I just added a boss key to viewtext.org to view web pages in a window that looks like Visual Studio. I plan on adding other environments soon.

Example:

[http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://weblog.raganwald.com/...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://weblog.raganwald.com/2006/06/my- favourite-interview-question.html&format=visualstudio2010)

</comment><comment><USER13> Font is wrong, app names are in the wrong case, "slide to unlock" bar/text is _way_ wrong, icons are wrong...

Why would you simulate some things (search, SpringBoard animations) with a very high level of detail, but completely neglect others?

</comment><comment><USER14> Nothing other than maps works.

<comment><USER15> Nonsense! The browser running the iPad Simulation works! :)

Well, kinda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> it is impressive but I saw one similar to it a while back here : <http://sachleen.com/iPad/> he also has a few other simulations

<comment><USER2> This seems to be merely a web app that changes a photo when you press different areas of it. It's cool, but no where near as interactive as the alexw.me one IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> alarm clock doesn't work. how ironic.

</comment><comment><USER18> Flash works!

</comment><comment><USER19> iPad simulator inside Safari inside iPad simulator doesn't work :(

<comment><USER20> yes it does :)

<comment><USER19> Doesn't work for me :-/ It shows the unstyled text. Using chrome 9 beta

<comment><USER21> Remove the www.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> oops. Chrome no like.

"Warning: Suspected phishing site!"

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool. But why?

<comment><USER24> Why NOT? This is a very cool CSS/Javascript hack, I love it

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> pretty cool! hope it comes out well

</comment><comment><USER26> No USB port on this one either!

</comment><comment><USER27> good job!

</comment><comment><USER28> very nice

</comment><comment><USER22> cool app of the day!</comment>


Ask HN: Imagine C was the only programming language you had. What would you do? - <AUTHOR> If you had to do your day to day development in C, what would you do to make yourself more productive?
Are there tools, frameworks, libraries that can supercharge modern C development and make it easier, quicker to code, safer and more full featured?
Can modern web applications and REST API's be built in any practical way using C, or is it just too painful? <comment><USER2> Been there, done that.

Some helpful things:

 _Make use of modern standards and libraries_. For example, use <stdint.h> to get sane and guaranteed-width integer types.

 _Use functional programming style wherever possible_. Function pointers combined with void pointers lets you emulate closures with explicit context binding--something that's pretty powerful. Functions that map over collections and filter over collection structs are powerful.

 _Write a solid unit test macro framework_. In less than 200 lines of C you can setup a project that will let you easily add unit tests and make sure your code is working.

 _Hide platform-specific things behind functions and typedefs_. Writing a simple cross-platform binding to OS primitives like mutices and files and whatnot can save you a lot of trouble if you ever need to port, as can any of the libraries out there that provide such things. My friends and I have a pretty well-vetted one we like to use for these projects.

 _Spend time writing safe arithmetic routines_. Writing a routine that lets you do different-sized integer addition and multiplication while catching overflows is _invaluable_ if you are ever parsing or writing binary formats.

 _Abandon your error handling_. C can be made very, very verbose if you continually check for errors. For example, consider how often you can actually recover from a failed malloc()--and then consider that Linux will just plain lie to you. So, don't bother sprinkling all of your code with "well, tell somebody we bombed out" unless it is truly fixable in the context of the caller.

 _Consider macros for a DSL_. The simple macros in C are not amazing, but can be used with a little thinking to build things similar to Flask route annotations or Java Hibernate annotations.

 _Allocate memory all the time_. Don't mess about with buffers which might get overfilled or cause you to chunk things...just accept that you'll allocate frequently and trust in libc until you _know_ you've got a problem.

Those aren't so much libraries as just techniques, but I think that covers a lot of what helps write C code quickly.

<comment><USER3> That's pretty good advice… Can you point to a source that does this pretty well?

<comment><USER2> If I had more sources which had done it well, I'd never had learned in the first place! :)

For some of the safe arithmetic, this page has good tricks:

[http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#CopyInte...](http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#CopyIntegerSign)

(note that _Hacker 's Delight_ is also handy!)

The Half-Life 1 SDK has some interesting examples of macro usage, though it's in C++. In general, a common place for people to use macros is defining state machines for game AI.

The Flipcode archives also have some old tutorials and articles which are handy: [http://www.flipcode.com/archives/](http://www.flipcode.com/archives/)

Go read through the Quake 3 source code to learn about how to structure a large codebase in C for realtime apps (look especially at how the game engine is separated and traps the syscalls made by the game logic: [https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena](https://github.com/id- Software/Quake-III-Arena)

The Linux kernel has some expert-level macro usage and organization as well.

~

I've cited a lot of game code here, because that's what's probably most accessible, and is where I cut my teeth doing stupid things and learning. There are doubtless better places (especially for best practices), but I think that open game code is a good starting point.

EDIT:

Dr. Dobb's had a good writeup on the unit testing stuff:

[http://www.drdobbs.com/testing/unit-testing-in-c-tools- and-c...](http://www.drdobbs.com/testing/unit-testing-in-c-tools-and- conventions/240156344)

That's a bit different from how we've solved it in the past, but still good!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Can modern web applications and REST API's be built in any practical way > using C, or is it just too painful?

Sure, you can write anything in any Turing-complete language.

I've never seen one, but I am sure a C Sinatra clone exists. Quick googling finds things such as: [https://github.com/tyler/Bogart](https://github.com/tyler/Bogart) (while written as a joke - this should illustrate the possibility. afaik tyler is a reader here)

Possible: absolutely.

The question that needs to be asked, though, is: "Why?"

There are far better-suited (task: web application servers) languages that compile to C (Nim is a great example). Nearly every language has C interop in some capacity (at the very least, FFI to C. In the case of Rust and select others, the capability of compiling with C-compatible ABIs.)

</comment><comment><USER5> > If you had to do your day to day development in C, what would you do to make > yourself more productive?

I wish I could come up with the idea of writing a scripting language in C during my spare time.

</comment><comment><USER6> You could do a web-app in C if you really wanted to, but you wouldn't be playing to the strengths of the language. But you could write a compiler or interpreter for a new language that is well suited to that... But then you would be just reliving history.

</comment><comment><USER7> Huh? So, what, you think that C can handle writing the language you write your web app and similar in but somehow it suddenly falls apart when transferring text back and forth across a network socket?

Anyway, I would write a library akin to the STL, then write a library that overlays that which handles whatever I needed to do (id est HTTP library with an extension that handles REST/etc).

Then I'd sell all of the extra servers I no longer needed and hire actual programmers to replace you.

<comment><USER8> > So, what, you think that C can handle writing the language you write your > web app and similar in but somehow it suddenly falls apart when transferring > text back and forth across a network socket?

Well, if you care about buffer overflows, and you are a human, as opposed to... no, actually, a computer can't statically check to ensure that your code has no buffer overflows, either. You need dynamic instrumentation to do that, which C doesn't give you, or at least not standard C, as opposed to some C-like language we can define, at which point we might as well go all the way and write in Rust or Python.

> Anyway, I would write a library akin to the STL

C, not C++. C doesn't have templates, which makes a Standard Template Library quite meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What do you want to do? Do you want to use C, or do you want to do web programming? C is by far _not_ the best tool for doing web programming. Yes, it can be done, but it will be much more pain than necessary.

Or are you in a situation where for some reason you _have_ to use C, and you still need to do web programming?

</comment><comment><USER10> Write a Lisp interpreter?

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew there would be plenty of responses like this i.e. "I'd do something else apart from C?" Ha!

<comment><USER10> How else do I get Emacs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having one-off internet facing applications written in C as the norm sounds great to me, but I test the security of one-off internet facing applications for a living :)

</comment><comment><USER12> CCAN has some potentially helpful snippets and libraries.

[http://ccodearchive.net/list.html](http://ccodearchive.net/list.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd have a job quick. I'd have fun projects to work on quick. I'd be at an advantage over all the hip and cool kids who know JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER14> Be happy!</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deploy software? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious, what do you do (at a high-level, you only get technical if you think it's super unique or exciting) when deploying software?
I'm thinking of finding some common ways this is done and perhaps this can lead into a knowledge base of what other people do.
Thanks :) <comment><USER2> Jenkins</comment>


Open access: The true cost of science publishing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676 <comment><USER3> _As that lack of enthusiasm demonstrates, the fundamental force driving the speed of the move towards full open access is what researchers — and research funders — want. Eisen says that although PLoS has become a success story — publishing 26,000 papers last year — it didn 't catalyse the industry to change in the way that he had hoped. "I didn't expect publishers to give up their profits, but my frustration lies primarily with leaders of the science community for not recognizing that open access is a perfectly viable way to do publishing," he says._

Among the reasons that a scientist may have against embracing open access publishing is perhaps being Editor in Chief or Associate Editor of a prestigious journal. That is just a line in a scholar's CV, but sometimes it counts. I would happily do without that line, but I'm sure many, young and old, would not.

Building prestige in an open-access publication is slow, and the transition might be slow by design.

<comment><USER4> Building prestige for any new publication, open-access or not, would be slow now, given the number of incumbents.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Yet my field (Operations Research) has seen four or five new journals born in the past 10 years, all of relatively high level. Most often they were born as an initiative of one or more scholars in the field, who convinced a publisher that the journal would receive submissions.

So there is room for new challengers. However, now these scholars treat this journal as their precious pet project, would like everyone to submit articles to it and are (understandably) unwilling to embark in another, open-access initiative.

[edit: clarity]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The main obstacle to dethroning commercial journals, as I see it, is the reputation they've built up over the decades. They're simply prestigious _by default_ because of lock-in.

There are now ways of running an online reputational community, e.g. StackExchange, but they rely on a willingness to do things a different way. The more conservative members of the academic community aren't likely to shift their approaches, especially when they don't already participate in forums or academic blogging. They don't directly feel the pain of expensive subscriptions, either. So the academic publishers - the old order - <USER2> continue to rely on their deeply entrenched position as the arbiters of research quality - even though this quality is created by the _unpaid academics_ who sit on the editorial committees.

(In fact, the publishers even sell this as a value that their journals provide - _reputation_ \- when it isn't an intrinsic value, but one that accrued to them while there was no feasible alternative. That value has now lost its underlying basis, but it persists because of inertia, and they're merely _extracting rent_ from their ownership of the journals' brands, now.)

The solution, to my mind, has to be multifold:

1) Spread the dangerous idea that science should be accessible to all and free from paywalls, such that in all polite circles it should be a matter of course to believe so;

2) Build a very simple-to-use, cross-journal meta-database and community - preferably open-source - that collects papers from all open journals and aggregates upvotes, citations and prestige/rankings, and help it gain wide, career-influencing acceptance like Github enjoys now (maybe the arXiv could be evolved and adapted to fill this role?);

3) Get buy-in from senior decisionmakers and thought leaders in various academic fields by offering them a chance to shape the system.

This won't happen without the joint efforts of leading academics (like Sir Timothy Gowers), skilled technologists, UX designers, and government funders. Most of us on HN know how we could build a technical solution that fills these needs - we might even volunteer our time toward it - but we need marketers and advocates who can sell this system to the people who matter (who currently don't see the need to upset the current system). The reputational advantage enjoyed by commercial publishers won't be overcome simply with engineering.

(If anyone knows of open-source projects to this end, or about the arXiv's plans, please share them.)

<comment><USER6> Such a cross-journal database that allows scientists to share ratings and reviews is Epistemio ([http://www.epistemio.com/](http://www.epistemio.com/)).

<comment><USER7> probably more subversive to drop arXiv''s existing content into an instance of GitHub and conform the user interface to the existing arXiv U/I. Or, actually, just keep the colors and stick with Github's UI.

<comment><USER8> Github UI? Before forcing everything to look like github, please, please, remember the term "user experience research". Github UI has major issues and they keep improving. If every open website has a github UI, that's gon to be like seeing every website running default bootstrap interface. No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why does science have to be published in articles in the first place? Isn't it more fruitful to have a peer-reviewed, citable, machine-readable database of scientific findings? We are no longer in the 1700s and there is too much redundant information in published papers anyway.

<comment><USER10> Science is still a very creative (i.e. non systematic) process. To create new "scientific findings" you need new insights. These insights typically come from publications/conferences/discussions with other researchers rather than big machine readable datasets.

<comment><USER9> Most research articles I read can be boiled down to a paragraph of substance, with the rest of the space filled with introductions and things we already know. Agree about conferences etc. but I don't see how articles create discussion, since most journals do not even have comment sections, and even those that do, rarely have any comments. Articles are an arcane notion used to gauge researcher's output, until something new and more efficient comes along.

Ps. [http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii/S089662731300648X](http://www.cell.com/neuron/retrieve/pii/S089662731300648X)

<comment><USER11> Depends a bit on the area. You can machine-code results _if_ the field is extremely static in its conceptual and epistemic framework, so it's just a matter of slotting new things in place. Some "industrial-style" science does work like that. But large areas don't.

Most of the articles I read have the majority of the actual research going on in the text, not in whatever the "results" might nominally be. For example, a programming language paper might prove a few theorems about type-soundness, but it's rare that a new type-soundness theorem is really want you want out of the paper; that's just supporting apparatus. What's more interesting is the design discussion, motivation for why this feature was introduced and how it relates to previous features, explanation of how it was implemented, discussion of variants and future work, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nature should declare its conflict of interest...it requires article authors to do so.

<comment><USER13> some conflicts of interest are viewed as obvious. If I publish a journal article with my affiliation being Genentech, I don't have to state that my work is owned by Genentech. If I am employed at UCSF and list my affiliation there, but hold significant equity in a spin-off that is commercializing the published technology, then that's when I declare a conflict.

Everyone knows Nature is not an open access journal. Putting a sentence that states that at the end of a news article written by their staff is pointless.

<comment><USER12> > some conflicts of interest are viewed as obvious. If I publish a journal > article with my affiliation being Genentech, I don't have to state that my > work is owned by Genentech.

That's simply NOT true...Nature's guidelines on declaring financial interests ([http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6849/full/412751a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6849/full/412751a0.html)) say that these include "Employment", defined as "Recent (that is, while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through publication of the paper."

Nature is covering this for one reason only: they stand to gain.

<comment><USER14> Did you read the article? It isn't anti-open-access at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nobody really gives a damn what you built your site in (why I chose asp.net). - <AUTHOR> http://tumblr.com/xzh1ixatl0

<comment><USER3> I disagree. For starters, _I_ care what I build my site in. I'd have a lot more fun using say python or (if I'm lucky) lisp or Haskell than I would using PHP. And more fun = easier.

Secondly, developers who might join your company are going to care. Developers are more than the technologies on their resumes. Good ones can learn new technologies quickly. And they might even be happier learning something new.

This view is typical of business people. There isn't anything wrong with that, and it's necessary to a certain degree. But as he scales up, I hope that he can find someone who can help him make a more informed technical decision.

(And for the record, this isn't necessarily targeted at ASP.NET. I can think of worse technologies to work with)

<comment><USER4> "And more fun = easier."

That's the thing though - you and I think programming is fun and awesome, whereas this guy thinks business is fun and awesome, and programming is just a means to do what he wants to.

What I think is a valuable lesson here though, is that he stayed focused on his goal of "put out the site", whereas with hackers it's easy to have a real goal of "Use technology X and write some awesome code" with a tertiary goal of "ship a product". Always be focused on getting your product out the door, even if you don't make perfect technical decisions.

<comment><USER3> Hey, wait a minute. Just what are you trying to say here? That business and technical people do better _working together_ than ignoring each other? Next you'll tell me business people are _human beings_ and not drones some cruel hacker made to torment other hackers.

<comment><USER5> Oh, if I had a dime for every time an MBA has interrupted and ruined a productive hackathon...

s/MBA/Hacker s/hackathon/sales_meeting

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think ASP.Net is a pretty smart move even if you do have a strong CS background and know a few other platforms. The basic reason is that Microsoft stuff performs really well and you won't have to worry about a lot of problems for a very long time.

Chances are one or two webservers will handle your page requests for quite some time before you need to start thinking about it. ASP.Net's sessions also work very well with server farms without much work beyond configuration you just need to follow a few rules and it works great.

Assuming you went with SQL Server 2008 then chances are your database is going to perform very well for quite some time. A DBA or consultant can come in when things get tough but any senior level developer who tries to act cool by pretending to be a DBA can keep things moving along until you have cash to pay someone to really make sure things scale well.

Plus no one cares. If your startup is moderately cool getting C# developers won't be tough either. I've met plenty of great C# developers so they're definitely out there.

<comment><USER7> By what metric does Microsoft stuff perform really well?

You're seriously saying you choose Microsoft for performance and stability? And you have a dozen upvotes?

<comment><USER8> .NET actually isn't that bad as far as performance and stability go. It's about on par with Java. It's _much_ faster than scripting languages, and significantly more stable than Ruby.

Administering a Windows stack can sometimes blow, but the languages and virtual machines themselves are relatively solid.

<comment><USER9> More stable than Ruby? Rails may have started off quite leaky, but to call anything that's been put into production in the past 2 years unstable is just plain FUD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I noticed that both examples of companies he didn't want to compete with talent for (Tumblr and Etsy) are NY companies, so I wasn't surprised to see his company is in Hoboken (just across the river from Manhattan).

The reality of course is in NY you're always competing for talent --- not just with the hot startups of the moment (Etsy, Tumblr, Foursquare, etc etc etc) but with the banks which are still paying big salaries for developers and solid benefits and bonuses.

The truth here - whether the author thinks the technology or not matters - <USER2> that he isn't competing at all for programming talent. He is competing for the kind of people who want to work at a hot startup, and have that mentality, versus a small one man shop. His statement "Hiring quality coders on a bootstrapper's budget is easier for ASP.NET than it is for anything open source. It just is. " is telling.

Of course, its a completely unqualified unbacked statement.

But understanding the reality of what your talent shortages are caused by is important. I get the feeling that he went with the first technology he could hire people for cheap enough with.

</comment><comment><USER11> "I don't know anything about programming, therefore my first choice is best."

Sure, that makes sense.

(It also follows from this logic that cheap programmers are a good thing to have. If you need to do twice as much work, you just hire twice as many programmers! Combined with an IDE, you're sure to succeed!)

<comment><USER12> That's my go-to argument when choosing languages.

Whenever someone says to use Java or .NET rather than the relatively obscure Ruby (or Node.js or whatever) because that makes it easier to find programmers, I always ask why they want to staff up on average to below average programmers. (Edit: sure there are good ones, just far more bad ones)

At least if they use the obscure language, you know that the programmer in question has his eyes and ears out there, finding things out on his own, trying things, reading stuff. There are a lot of cubicle programmers who simply don't; that find out about things when things are added to Visual Studio.

Not saying obscure languages are better in and of themselves (well, maybe just a pinch), just that the opposite isn't true. Easy access to droves of average to poor programmers is not a feature.

<comment><USER13> _why they want to staff up on average to below average programmers_

1\. Because they don't want to spend a lot of time looking for developers - it's far easier to find a Java developer than, say, a Ruby developer, simply because there's so many of them. Also, because there is so many of them, in all likelihood they will ask for standard wages whereas a developer with a good knowledge of some lesser known language/technology might ask for a higher pay because he knows his skills are in demand and the employer cannot easily find somebody else with those skills for a lot less money.

2\. For certain types of software there is no need to have _the best of the best_. Average programmers are just fine for working on a standard CRUD application. If you're Google and you're hiring people to work on your search engine, then yes, you want to have the most brilliant minds out there, but if you're a company that just needs somebody to maintain it's CRUD application than you'll do just fine with an average developer, who'll be more than happy to work for standard, average pay.

That being said, it's my opinion that, when hiring developers for work on an enterprise app, it's probably best to hire those that have a good knowledge of some enterprise-proven language like Java or C#, but with an interest in languages such as Scala, Ruby or Python. This way you get the guy that knows his way around an enterprise stack, but that's also not just a drone that considers programming nothing more than a day job, you get somebody who actually likes coding and frequently codes just for the fun of it.

<comment><USER14> > a developer with a good knowledge of some lesser known language/technology > might ask for a higher pay because he knows his skills are in demand and the > employer cannot easily find somebody else with those skills for a lot less > money.

Given the huge productivity gulf between low and high ends of programmer productivity - a gulf that vastly outstrips the gulf between low and high pay levels - it stands to reason that as you move up the pay scale, programmers will tend to become net more productive in relation to what you pay them.

If you pay twice as much for a programmer who is ten times as productive, you end up ahead of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think a startup that _is not fundamentally technical_ has much to say about the merits of different technologies. This is a startup, and it's innovative, but it doesn't rely on the technology. Technology is just one piece of the puzzle for this kind of company. The company could succeed even if the technology were junk. Let's say he had a competitor who had a similar business model. They're competing on pricing models, advertising, convenience of shipping methods, turn around, and, yes, convenience and reliability of the website. But the last one is only a deciding factor if there's nothing more important in the other factors.

To summarize: nobody really gives a damn what you build your site in, if you aren't trying to do anything hard or innovative on the technology side.

<comment><USER16> Succeeding _harder_ if the technology was junk is one assumption you might agree with.

Furthermore, from your list, anything that's not business is technology. Not every company ships physically, and those who don't just ship their product through the stack.

How fundamentally technical the startup is, is not decided by the owner but by the context. And technology matters there, a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find this juxtaposition pretty funny:

"I made a list of likely acquirers and then looked at what kind of programming skills they hire for. It was clear they all favor Microsoft. All things being equal it seemed logical to do the same."

and

"At the end of the day things just have to work and customers don't give a shit what technology you built your site on."

If you're building a startup to "flip" it, isn't your future acquirer just as much a customer as your, er, customers?

<comment><USER18> yeah, what a misleading title.

"nobody cares what language you use." "potential buyers like asp."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Your endusers may not care. Not directly. But they'll care when your site has problems or is slow. This part, in turn, is heavily influenced by the quality of engineers you have behind the scenes, and the choices they make. The nature/quality of your engineers will be influenced by what kinds of technical choices are in place at the time you start trying to hire them on. As a general rule, for example, a LAMP stack is going to attract a different mix than a Microsoft stack would. Lisp will attract different than PHP. Therefore, tech does matter. Does it matter as much as making a product people want and are willing to pay for? Probably not as much. But if/when the time comes and you want your site to scale, or have lower problem rate, then your engineers and your tech are going to matter.

<comment><USER20> Pardon my ignorance. But isn't your site slow if you develop it wrong, not because you use the "wrong" language?

I thought there where good developers in all programming languages and really bad ones too?

For how many people is overnight success really the case? Most companies grow slowly over the years making scaling issues much less volatile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The right answer is almost always to go with what you know best. As long as what you know best isn't completely ridiculous it will be the least of your problems.

</comment><comment><USER7> You know why you don't have a good reason for choosing a language? Because you are a total programming newbie who hasn't actually tried to use other languages for anything!

If you use a better language, you will add features faster and spend less time fixing bugs, and you will be making the world a better place.

Your logic is naive at best, and awful at worst: "It just is." isn't an argument anyone should take seriously.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm doing the same. I'll give a shout out to appharbor. They have made it insanely easy and cheap(as in free) to deploy a .net app.

...and here is a little secret that they may or may not want you to know...if you don't have the MS tools, it doesn't really matter. You don't even have to have windows. They build the code for you. You could used notepad to write an ASP.net app on their platform. Push. Test. Repeat.

<comment><USER4> Yep - and MonoDevelop will run ASP.NET just fine on any platform, or just use gVim and make

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > It's not about the quality of the talent. It's a simple supply and demand > question.

Uh oh. "Programmers are a commodity" again.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was trying to make the point that from my vantage point the talent pools are deep in each camp. Bad choice of words on my part.

<comment><USER24> >the talent pools are deep in each camp

That doesn't really matter if in the PHP and .NET world you have to filter through 10,000 people to find somebody of the same median grade as you'd find in haskell/python/ruby/clojure.

I'm exaggerating for effect, but the take-home here is that if you don't have unlimited resources you need to have some way to differentiate and filter from the guys offering the sweet vacation packages and steady career options.

How exactly are you differentiating and filtering for higher quality people if not by technologies and developer freedom?

Do you have nice offices ala 37signals?

Are you an advocate of developer 'rights' such as Joel has been known to enumerate?

Why exactly should a dev tolerate using VisualStudio and Windows for the sake of working on your company?

<comment><USER19> Exactly. I know a recent startup that did their initial build-out in Lisp. Then the CTO left, for whatever reason, and then the remaining leadership team seemed to decide to rewrite the stack in Java. They probably thought, "Hey it will be easier to find people." Yes, it will be easier to find bad people. Are their great Java people? Of course. But the total number of resumes you're going to have to wade through, and the ratio of bad to good, is going to be much higher with Java than with Lisp.

<comment><USER24> Moving from .NET to open source improved the quality of code and people I worked with.

A lot.

>rewrite the stack in java

A rewrite was a bad idea to begin with. They shot themselves twice in the same leg. GG guys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a newbie, you are as likely to write shit asp.net code as you are any other code.

</comment><comment><USER25> Whatever you chose - is it really a good plan to write an article that amounts to "my startup was written by somebody who's new to coding in general. And the whole point is to flip it" ?

(Yes, I believe "exit strategy" is a fancy word for "built to flip".)

</comment><comment><USER19> The absolute number one bottleneck in software-based startups right now is the availability, interest and affordability of good software engineers. The number and quality of engineers you're going to be able to attract will be heavily influenced by your tech choices upfront. There are some engineers who are so desperate they'll say yes to anything. There are others who have lots of choices and get to pick which to say yes too. In general, you'd rather have the second kind. So yes, tech does matter. The exact shade of the color blue you use in some image somewhere? Probably not matter too much. Your tech mix? Hell yes.

</comment><comment><USER26> The biggest lesson I learned at my last startup is that your dev platform is an HR decision.

After the fact, I realized it would have been smart to at least check Indeed Trends to find out how niche our platform was. If you aren't seeing many jobs asking for CodeIgniter, just to use as an example, don't count on finding a lot of developers. If you have a good company, you're better off competing for talent head-to-head on a rising platform.

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=codeigniter%2Ccakephp&...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=codeigniter%2Ccakephp&l=Austin%2C+TX)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't quite work that way. Strictly speaking, you _will_ find more developers if you choose the technology of the week or some other popular thing. But that doesn't mean that you'll find more _good_ developers. They're difficult to find no matter what technology you're working with.

That said, you're on the right track as far as realizing that technology has an impact on who you hire. I would choose one more because it helps set you apart from other companies, not because it's what everyone else is using.

<comment><USER26> Having inadvertently chosen something (almost) no one was using, except us, I mightily regret not doing a sanity check to get the big picture. It made hiring really expensive and slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel that the author just didn't try any other technologies.

> I found ASP.NET to be unmatched in terms of documentation

I find this hard to believe. Again I think the author knows his way around Microsoft products, and is biased towards it.

> Hiring quality coders on a bootstrapper's budget is easier for ASP.NET than > it is for anything open source. It just is.

I find this statement self-justifying and false. If a product is more scarce than others than it will probably be more expensive, in other words: if there is bigger competition there are lower prices.

The premise is true, no one cares about the server side technology expect maybe programmers who will have to build on that... wait what?

<comment><USER28> _> I found ASP.NET to be unmatched in terms of documentation

I find this hard to believe._

Why do you find it hard to believe? ASP.NET is really well documented. Is it absolutely the best documented product in the world, but it is reasonable that someone doing an investigation could reasonably believe that ASP.NET has the best documentation.

<comment><USER27> I find it hard to believe if the author does not back it up with a lot of research and statistics. If the author would have just said 'it has great documentation' I would have said nothing about it, but when the compares it with others, he should have something to back it up.

<comment><USER29> I think calling it "unmatched" is a bit strong, but generally I would say that the documentation of .Net is definitely one of its strong points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My personal experience is that the MS stack is tough for a startup because Sql Server can get expensive... especially if you want uptime. The feature to rebuild the indexes (without downtime) and do horizontal partitioning requires the enterprise edition... and it retails at 25k/processor.

If you go with asp.net consider your budget before choosing sql server.

<comment><USER31> You can rebuild indexes in-place in even the free versions of SQL Server.

<comment><USER29> I think he means online indexing <http://technet.microsoft.com/en- gb/library/cc966402.aspx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For those who are a solo developer and get strange requests such as "I demand this to be in ASP/PHP/etc." With whatever language you use, program away and modify .htaccess file to display the desired extension of .asp/.php/.etc.

I haven't yet wanted to try this but get tempted.

</comment><comment><USER33> Although I agree with the point that customers don't give a shit about the technology stack, did it seem to anyone else that he may be a little self- conscious about his choice of choosing ASP.NET? Read every single point. They all mention why he chose ASP.NET.

Edit: why the downvotes? I'm not saying that ASP.NET is a bad language. I'm just saying that his title doesn't agree with what he wrote.

</comment><comment><USER34> While Scott Guthrie is in charge of ASP.NET team -- ASP.NET would be a good choice (even though Microsoft overall is stagnating).

<comment><USER35> While Microsoft seems to be stagnating at the same time Mono and Linux is gaining huge popularity. Checkout these links

<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-14.html>

IOS \- IPod, IPad, IPhone: MonoTouch <http://monotouch.net> \- Windows: Mono <http://mono-project.com/Main_Page> \- Mac: MonoMac <http://www.mono- project.com/MonoMac> \- Android: MonoDroid <http://monodroid.net/> \- Blackberry: MonoWebOs to be announced

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The people who come along later to scale to those millions of users your site attracted might.

<comment><USER37> This is what I don't get. ASP.NET scales pretty well as Joel opines. Why do people think .NET is bad just because it feels enterprise-y?

More: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWHfY_lvKIQ>

<comment><USER36> My beef with ASP.NET is that it makes it disturbingly easy to write code that doesn't scale well and then is ridiculously hard to scale after the fact.

It really is all about the initial design not the language. ASP.NET just makes it too easy to go with bad design and library choices, not to mention the tons of examples of bad design that newbies might accidentally follow at the beginning.

<comment><USER38> I'll have to agree with this... but its worth noting that there's a difference between ASP.Net WebForm and ASP.Net MVC.

I'm a huge fan of .Net (in fact my startup runs on it) but I absolutely hate the 'magic' that WebForms does for you.

<comment><USER39> Of course, you don't have to use the magic of WebForms (as I'm sure you know). You can use it just like 'MVC' where the code-behind class definition is the controller. In fact, now that I think about it, the big difference is that the controller-view mapping is static in WebForms (with code-behind) and dynamic in MVC (method loads a view).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Article should be called "I should not have built my site in ASP.NET, but it's too late now, so I'm going to rationalize it as follows."

</comment><comment><USER41> My beef with .NET is that the platform and community does not feel very organic like it is with others. Making a huge generalization, I would say that the .NET community waits around for the Mother ship to produce something that it can use. This was one impetus for the ALT.NET movement.

A great example of community in action is the castle project at <http://www.castleproject.org/>

In the year 2010, .NET finally has a package management system. Guess who created it?

<comment><USER42> It was first created by non-MS guys, and there are others out there by community members. MS decided to form an officially-endorsed open source project for NuGet. Pretty good model actually. It's a collaboration of MS employees and community members and they take outside contributions. Not sure what's wrong with that. It needed to be in VS to take off.

The organic community is there, it's just not the dominant one but it has a significant presence.

<comment><USER41> >> It's a collaboration of MS employees and community members and they take outside contributions. Not sure what's wrong with that.

I agree, nothing wrong with that. I think a lot of the stuff that MS has been doing under Scott Guthrie in recent years has been very good in regards to fostering a better community.

>> It needed to be in VS to take off.

Do you think NuGet would be successful if MS had not officially endorsed the project?

<comment><USER42> Lots of things are successful without MS endorsement. If the integration had been as good as it was when it launched, yes. Only MS was willing to dedicate the resources to make that happen (VS addins, gallery site, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Nobody gives a damn but then he provides us with 4 debatable reasons why he personally chose a technology. Sure looks like he gives a damn to me.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wow, great insight for a fellow non-CS person who wants to build their own site anyway. I just subscribed to your blog. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER45> Dan has all the qualities of a Microsoft employee - staff photo on blog (check), stripey shirt (check), called Dan (check), enterprisey design (check), wall of text (check).</comment>


Idyll: Interactive Document Language - <AUTHOR> https://idyll-lang.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Hey HN - I'm the creator of Idyll, it is really cool to see it here! To respond to the other comment - I did post it a few months ago but it didn't get much traction then.

Happy to answer any questions about the project, or why you would want to use something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for making this :) As of now I just export Jupyter Notebooks to html, throw them on my site and call it a day but have been meaning to try Idyll for some data visualization.

<comment><USER3> Presumably you can switch between idyll and Jupiter notebooks using note down and nbconvert with a bit of extra work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I have already put some extra work in making jupyter notebooks look good when exported as html (for example - [http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html](http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html)). I am planning to use Idyll for d3 plots and such, but thanks for the idea, exporting to markdown and then using Idyll was something I hadn't thought about.

<comment><USER3> Nice notebook more railways around the world should be using notebooks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> See also [http://aprt.us](http://aprt.us) as an interesting way to build interactive diagrams.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks cool, would be a lot more interesting to me, if it included data io with postgres database functions and views. I never use direct to table updates. Being able to easily created a web front end to a database with a tool like yours, would be extremely useful to me and I would happily pay for such. There are umpteen tools for creating schemas and managing databases - most like PgAdmin are pretty poor - I use Sublime Text. Unfortunately there are no RAD tools available for creating simple UI's. All my logic is in the db so I just need simple forms and display grids. I had a quick look at Envelope but complexity of setup and poor documentation put me off.

<comment><USER2> We are in the process of adding compile time logic, which will hopefully enable more use cases like this. (so you could e.g. run a database query at compile time and use that to populate the page). happy to ping you once this is landed, or you can follow the progress here [https://github.com/idyll- lang/idyll/issues/70](https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll/issues/70)

<comment><USER2> In the meantime we support browserify plugins, so you could actually accomplish something like you're talking about today by using a plugin like [https://github.com/mathisonian/dbify](https://github.com/mathisonian/dbify)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A somewhat similar in concept using attributes in markup is Tangle [1]

[1] [http://worrydream.com/Tangle/](http://worrydream.com/Tangle/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very cool. Thinking of using it for my lecture notes. I like the math support and that it seems to support d3 albeit with a bit of extra work, am wondering how easy it would be to bulk convert from another format say. LaTeX using something like Pandoc to markdown and then to idyll? Would rather not cut and paste everything.

<comment><USER7> on the other hand, it seems too gimmicky and too focused on their favorite scrollable interactions

<comment><USER3> Still early days is my impression. It is extendable which is a plus. I think it goes in the rightirection and can see myself using it. Which is not something that happens that often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This was previously posted about a month ago</comment>


Why support older browsers? - <AUTHOR> https://zellwk.com/blog/older-browsers-why <comment><USER2> Great, comparing old browser Users with people which have disabilities. _facepalm_</comment>


Ask HN: Favorite Coworking Spaces in US? - <AUTHOR>

I am compiling a list of the best coworking spaces in the US. <comment><USER2> I haven't used it, but NedSpace in Portland, Oregon is popular. I myself usually hang out in cafes such as Peet's, Starbucks or Shari's - this last, a local diner chain.</comment>


The Ubiquitous Kronecker Product (2000) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115.5655&rep=rep1&type=pdf <comment><USER2> Also known as the tensor product of linear maps in a particular basis:

[https://jeremykun.com/2014/01/17/how-to-conquer- tensorphobia...](https://jeremykun.com/2014/01/17/how-to-conquer- tensorphobia/)

[http://www.math.harvard.edu/archive/25b_spring_05/tensor.pdf](http://www.math.harvard.edu/archive/25b_spring_05/tensor.pdf)

[https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/tensors3.html](https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/tensors3.html)</comment>


Ask HN: In C, why is the * operator both reference and type casting? - <AUTHOR>

This is something that's been bothering me since I've learned C. Take the following code:

  *(int*)pointer_param = bar;
 In the above code the two * operators do two different things:
1. Converts variable type to pointer.
2. References value found at address.
What was the historical reason for using the * operator for both things? Memory? Is it easier to write a compiler for? Is there something I'm missing?
EDIT:Code, also, It seems like a lisp version would be much easier to write a compiler for and to write; i.e.
(define (address-ref (float_pointer_cast pointer_param))
 bar)
Is there some reason that the C-version is easier to write a compiler for/optimize than the lisp? <comment><USER2> I imagine the rationale was something like: how do we indicate that types are references to memory? Let's be concise and use the asterisk after the type of the memory.

How do we dereference an address? Since it only makes sense that types with an asterisk will be dereferenced, let's use an asterisk like we did in the type declaration. There, we have uniformity.

Oh wait, f-. What about if we want the address of something on the stack? Oh, maybe use the ampersand, and then that returns a pointer just like a pointer to something on the heap. Awesome! Let's even extend that ampersand to return the address of anything. Dereferenced pointers. What have you.

And yet, it's not completely symmetrical. Hence, pointers not being completely intuitive.

In addition, the ampersand as 'reference' is another completely unrelated syntax convenience. Which of course makes the language even slightly less symmetrical.

But, once you understand exactly what it's doing -- and your mind will adapt until it seems completely intuitive -- it is quite concise.

But the trick is that it's not concise like s-expressions. There's no clear symmetry. A lot of C (and even more C++) is simply syntax.

</comment><comment><USER3> The second * has nothing to do with type-casting -- it is part of the type identification. The operator performing the typecast is the pair of parentheses.

Consider: int and int * are two different types. So typecasting to int when you really mean int * is completely different.

</comment><comment><USER4> The * in the parentheses is part of type name and it indicates that the type being named is the sort of type to which it makes sense to apply the run-time * operator.

</comment><comment><USER5> Substitute the obvious character for $%^& below -- I couldn't figure out how to convince HN that I wasn't just delimiting italics.

 _What was the historical reason for using the $%^ & operator for both things?_

I think the argument was that it allows you to say "foo is a pointer to an integer" == (int $%^&) foo == int ($%^& foo) == "that which is pointed to by foo, is an integer".

</comment><comment><USER6> (Mentally replace all ^s with asterisks in the following:)

I don't understand your C code. What is "(int foo^)" supposed to do? It looks almost like a cast, but "int foo" isn't a valid type in C. Maybe "(struct foo^)" or "(int^)"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote that wrong, my bad. I was copying from a call-by-value example from memory. Changed the following:

      *(int *foo)pointer_param /*changed to*/  *(int*)pointer_param = bar</comment></comment>


Jonathan's Card 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.talkaboutdesign.com/starbucks/

<comment><USER2> So as a test I donated $10 to the card:

<http://i.imgur.com/2p3gK.png>

And the balance still shows as empty. It's probably a scam. (Or someone has already found a way to siphon the money off immediately.) I don't care personally, its just $10 for me, but I thought you all might like to know the results I got.

Edit: Never mind, it just took about 10 minutes for the main page to update. Here's to the good people and coffee drinkers of the world. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I used it earlier, and it worked like a charm. The page now displays $120 donated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If they don't have an API, why does it say "Opps! Look's like I'm Empty!" on the web site? If they show the current balance there, they have an API.

<comment><USER4> It might just say "there's money", not an exact figure like the first card… Who knows, I haven't actually seen the page with the card having any cash on it

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "My guess is that Jonathan made a big mistake by releasing API to keep track of cards balance."

Er... Wasn't the API part of the experiment? It wasn't really a mistake then if the experiment was undefined.

</comment><comment><USER6> Er, as far as I can tell:

• this isn't associated with Jonathan but uses his name

• this isn't associated with Starbucks but uses their logo

• it's already empty

• there's no details to suggest that the previous transfer-balance vulnerability has been closed – only that it's now harder to optimize the attack by knowing when the active card has a fat balance

• the usable card number will change regularly so as to confuse both attackers and users, and putting primarily the site maintainer in full control of all monies deposited

What is this supposed to achieve? _Are you really Sam Odio trying to prove another point?_

<comment><USER7> _this isn't associated with Jonathan but uses his name_

My name is Jonathan and I give this guy permission to use it. If you don't want someone to name their knock-off after your product, maybe don't name it after a common first name :)

<comment><USER8> By your logic, I should be able to make my own Craig's List.

<comment><USER7> The popular site is called Craigslist, one word. If he had called it Craig's List, then yes, you would be able to make your own. It's your given name and a common English word. Not trademarkable.

See also: Windows.

<comment><USER6> It is not true that you have to combine things as a novel compound word (as with 'craigslist' and many other tech firms) in order to obtain trademark protection. Common names and plain words/phrases can be protected too, within a well-identified field of use, by either formal registration or force-of-use- over-time.

"Craig's List", in the field of an online listings site and community, is just as protectable as the smushed-together version. And, by risk of confusion with 'craigslist', the two-word version is now just as excluded from others' use as if 'craigslist' itself were named "Craig's List".

Even if your name is 'McDonald', you won't be able to open a "McDonald's" hamburger chain. If you wanted to sell cash registers worldwide, you couldn't start an "International Business Machines". You couldn't even get away with "Jonathan's International Business Machines".

<comment><USER7> Could you cite come case law here?

<comment><USER6> This introduction to trademarks from a course by the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society includes many legal references:

<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm>

In the legal terminology, a trademark like either 'craigslist' or "Craig's List" would be considered a descriptive mark that has acquired secondary meaning via use, such that the consuming public identifies a mark with a particular producer. It now doesn't matter if your name is Craig and you have a List. If you name a business that and people are confused because the field of use is similar to those for which Craiglist is known, Craigslist has a valid case against you.

The Wikipedia article (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark>) also highlights that "The test is always whether a consumer of the goods or services will be confused as to the identity of the source or origin."

Another example of the primacy of the liklihood-of-confusion standard is the following guide page at the USPTO:

[http://tess2.uspto.gov/webaka/html/Likelihood/Likelihood_of_...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/webaka/html/Likelihood/Likelihood_of_Confusion.html)

Small changes in appearance/spelling/punctuation (like adding a space in the middle) are not enough to resolve a conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Got myself a caramel macchiato. Works and I'll definitely donate later.

Hopefully this lasts and doesn't get abused.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just used it in the W Seattle area... worked.

I will put $10 on it next Friday (if it lasts that long).

</comment><comment><USER11> I can confirm this works, just grabbed a coffee. I'll donate $10 when I get back home.

Edit: donated using my iPhone. Neat project, great hack.

</comment><comment><USER12> Any idea how they're changing the number? Sounds like it'd have to be a manual process rather than something they could automate.

<comment><USER9> Jonathan 1.0 automated it, why couldn't they? To curb abuse they are probably just not polling/updating as often. Who knows.

<comment><USER13> It's my understanding that in 1.0, the card barcode/number never changed, so it couldn't have been automated. Someone correct me if I misunderstood.

<comment><USER9> Yes you're right, that part is probably manual. I misunderstood the question, I thought he meant the amount shown from the card. My mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Someone should create a jonathan's card aggregator of all sites attempting to do this. Yeahyuh.

</comment><comment><USER15> Put $10 on it this morning. Enjoy.

<comment><USER10> Thank you, you made my day! Tall mocha :)

I just hope it's still around by Friday so I can put some money on it.

<comment><USER15> Your welcome. Hope this keeps going as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can confirm this works. Just bought a latte!

</comment><comment><USER15> Added more money to it. Enjoy, and give back.

</comment><comment><USER16> meta: I already miss the days that we were grilling AirBnB or even the bitcoin days.

</comment><comment><USER17> I got a coffee earlier. Says total amount donated $130. Not bad for one day. Will put some money on it later.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh look, it's a cheap marketing trick. Ad. Blocked.</comment>


How US Debt to GDP ratio has changed since Obama took over - <AUTHOR> http://ycharts.com/indicators/us_public_debt_gdp#zoom=10

<comment><USER2> This is because GDP dropped, hence tax revenues dropped, hence debt went up. None of which are related to his policies. It's not because he started some big spending program. Some relevent links:

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/hey-small- spende...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/hey-small-spender/) [http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/big-spender- upda...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/big-spender-update/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a Obama defender by any stretch, but he did have to deal with the largest financial crisis I've ever witnessed.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Plus, he had upto 2 expensive wars to fight, and now a hostile House of Representatives who clearly do not understand anything about economics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Took office Jan 20, 2009.

That chart starts spiking before he went into office.

</comment><comment><USER6> This appears to be a chart of our recession. Obama is just one of many loosely-connected actors here.</comment>


8 Ways To Quit Mousing Around - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/11/touchscreen-future-computers-tech-personal-cx_ag_0711touch_slide_2.html

<comment><USER2> Speaking as someone with mouse-induced RSI, this is great news. I can't wait!</comment>


Healthcare.gov - still not scaling - <AUTHOR>

Why haven't they been able to scale this thing so users can sign up?  Was Ruby the right choice here? <comment><USER2> I don't think the problem is Ruby. Scalability involves a whole lot of other factors.</comment>


Why Whale? - <AUTHOR> http://justinkan.com/why-whale <comment><USER2> Wow, impressive lineup of people answering on the app already!</comment>


Researchers Create Fuel Cell Powered by Rat's Blood - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100914-fuel-cell-biofuels-medical-implants-human-health/

<comment><USER2> I love this sort of article. You know, the "Researcher Gets Patent on Urine- Powered Battery", that sort of thing. Gee whizz! A fuel cell powered by Rat's Blood! I'm going to get into the Rat Blood business on the bottom floor! There's gonna be a Rat Blood boom, just like the Oil Boom made Texas and Oklahoma into Big Money places, New York City's gonna power the planet with all the Rat's Blood!

Sadly, the fuel cell in question just uses Rat's Blood because it's too risky to try fuel cells out in Real Humans. There are no fortunes to be made in Rat's Blood.</comment>


Automating xkcd Diagrams: Transforming Serious to Funny - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/05/automating-xkcd-diagrams-transforming-serious-to-funny/ Use math and programming to turn serious scientific diagrams into humorous hand-drawn-like sketches. Even online app to try it. <comment><USER2> xkcd-style graphs in your language:

\- Mathematica: [http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11350/xkcd- st...](http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11350/xkcd-style-graphs)

\- Matlab: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12701841/xkcd-style- graph...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12701841/xkcd-style-graphs-in- matlab)

\- R: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12675147/how-can-we- make-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12675147/how-can-we-make-xkcd- style-graphs-in-r)

\- TeX: [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd- sty...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd-style- diagram-in-tex)

I've really enjoyed all these questions! Thanks to the original asker. The TeX ones are especially neat because they are a vector graphic, no image distortion involved.

<comment><USER3> matplotlib: <https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/1329>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This also links to an interesting article describing how to create an xkcd self referential chart.

<http://blog.wolfram.com/2010/09/07/self-description/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I would love to see this in the next CERN ATLAS presentation slides. Someone should ping Fabiola Gianotti ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> When will wolfram alpha do this for me?

<comment><USER7> We already have a framework that can do this kind of thing -- see <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=blur+plot+of+sin(x)> \-- but because of our release schedule, it'll take around 2 weeks for the xkcd code to make it to production.

<comment><USER8> s/blur/xkcd/

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=xkcd+plot+of+sin(x)>

I'll be back in two weeks to click that link :-)</comment></comment></comment>


The Architecture of the Medieval Page (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://medievalbooks.nl/2018/09/07/the-architecture-of-the-medieval-page/ <comment><USER2> The word I would use here instead of "architecture" is "composition." The article reminds me of William Morris who helped transform design into a conscious, deliberate practice.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to see more pages of artwork, check out [https://openimages.media](https://openimages.media). it's a collection from the Ghetty Open Images project that includes 100's of such scribed artwork.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating - it's interesting that commentary seemed so common in these old texts, and it's cool to see how decorative graphical elements were often "first-class citizens" on the page.

When every codex was a bespoke item, I guess it made more sense. If you're interested in that sort of thing, check out the Book of Kells:

[http://codex99.com/typography/37.html](http://codex99.com/typography/37.html)

There's also a great animated movie about the relic, called The Secret of Kells.

<comment><USER5> The Secret of Kells is a beautiful animated film. It was nominated for an oscar but lost to Up that year.</comment></comment>


Can You Still Date a Co-Worker? Well, It's Complicated - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-you-still-date-a-co-worker-well-its-complicated-1517913001 <comment><USER2> >Others said they weren't changing their behavior at all, stressing that they are adults who understand how consent works and know the difference between harassment and asking someone out on a date.

I think that is the biggest problem today: understanding consent and self awareness.

Will be interesting to see how corporations deal with work place romance.</comment>


Meso-computing and meso-data: the forgotten middle - <AUTHOR> https://milliams.com/posts/2020/mesocomputing/ <comment><USER2> This is a good article about the gaps that are hit between going from Laptop to something larger when your problem doesn't quite need a super computing cluster i.e. the intermediate stage that many scientists and researchers go through. Definitely worth a read.</comment>


Fundry - An Answer to Opensource Project Funding Woes? - <AUTHOR> http://fundry.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was chuffed to find out about this today after just posting on the topic yesterday ([http://distractable.net/business/crowdfunding-opensource- lib...](http://distractable.net/business/crowdfunding-opensource-library- development/)). I am hopeful that tools such as fundry might help to make opensource development more sustainable for smaller software companies.</comment>


Oh God, Bravo's Silicon Valley Show Looks Even Worse Than We Thought - k-mcgrady http://gizmodo.com/5949966

<comment><AUTHOR> Truly, truly awful.</comment>


Dark lands: the grim truth behind the 'Scandinavian miracle' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/scandinavian-miracle-brutal-truth-denmark-norway-sweden

<comment><USER2> All this does is show that human societies are big, complicated, and flawed, even the successful ones. And you can always cherry-pick statistics to point that out. I don't think anyone is under the illusion that Scandinavian countries are perfect, but it's quite true that they also have many statistics going in their favor and programs other countries can learn from.

Also, some of the statistics are questionable. Quoting ecological footprint and suicide rates without adjusting for climate? Not sound, but what do you expect from an article that just presents a random grab-bag of out of context statistics?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Ask the Danes, and they will tell you that the Norwegians are the most insular and xenophobic of all the Scandinavians, and it is true that since they came into a bit of money in the 1970s the Norwegians have become increasingly Scrooge-like, hoarding their gold, fearful of outsiders."

I wish UK had a story of successful multiculturalism to tell.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-12371994)

<comment><USER4> True. And Norway's a sovereign country, free to introduce immigrants at a rate that works for them. The New York Times just featured an article about how Norway's immigration is creating ethnic ghettos.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/world/europe/anti- immigran...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/world/europe/anti-immigrant- party-norway.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Look to me like dear Michael has been forming his view largely by asking assorted grumpy people for their personal opinions about people in their out- groups. I want my four minutes back.

<comment><USER6> Yes, I think it's a bit tongue in cheek. There are few countries that compare to Scandinavia and Finland in terms of quality of life - Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Austria, Switzerland...nothing else really springs to mind.

<comment><USER7> Luxembourg, Liechtenstein..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Woha, does this really qualify as journalism? It seems more like the author has been been holding a grudge and urgently needed to spew out all the things he doesn't like about Scandinavia. This coupled with a few backing quotes from natives. The short "description" of Iceland really tells the tale.

This kind of slanted view would present any country in a bad light.

<comment><USER9> This is a cutesy little throw away column, not a precise analysis of the pros and cons of living in Scandinavia. It's silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definitely very biased and highly inaccurate in several places. I particularly reacted to these negative statements regarding Norway:

"..in September the rightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party – of which Breivik had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of the vote in the general election, enough to elevate it into coalition government for the first time in its history."

This is absolute fear-mongering and demonizing of a respected political party (disclaimer: I voted for them about 10 years ago).

It's correct that Fremskrittspartiet has been calling on stricter immigration laws, and it's correct that it's negative towards islamic fundamentalism and extremism (as are most of the other parties).

It's also correct that they've had party members with slightly more extreme opinions than what is considered mainstream. Internal problems can be attributed to almost any political party.

Although the article is right about many other aspects of Scandinavia, I felt that this had to be pointed out.

</comment><comment><USER11> This article is deeply flawed.

> _Why, asks one expert, does everybody think the Nordic region is a utopia?_

Is this a satire? Expert of _what_ exactly? According to his profile at the Guardian :

" _Michael Booth is a freelance journalist and author of several books including Sushi and Beyond: One Family 's Remarkable Journey Through the Greatest Food Nation on Earth._"

Oh, well in _that_ case...

On a less cheeky note, it's obvious that any claims of 'Utopia' (anywhere) are misguided - it's just hero worship in another form. That said - it's perfectly rational to examine positive aspects of another society without either deifying or demonizing it.

This article does no one any favors with its weird mixture of opinion and hyperbole.

<comment><USER12> There are also other points that are completely wrong:

> in September the rightwing, anti-Islamist Progress party – of which Breivik > had been an active member for many years – won 16.3% of the vote in the > general election, enough to elevate it into coalition government for the > first time in its history.

Although I feel weird as a norwegian and voter of a different party to come to the defense of FRP, the party was founded in 1973 on reducing taxes and reducing the states influence on the economy. And this still seem to be their primary goal and was all they talked about during elections when I still lived in Norway.

I have seen the statement repeated by others more familiar with Swedish and Danish politics that FRP is a racist party, but at least historically that has not been their call-to-action and I have not seen anyone make a convincing argument that this has changed.

<comment><USER11> > _I have seen the statement repeated by others more familiar with Swedish and > Danish politics that FRP is a racist party_

To put it in context of American politics, FRP is no more "racist" than the Republican party - which also regularly runs on an anti-immigration platform.

There are certainly protectionist, and xenophobic, elements in both - but it's dismissive, and simplistic, to claim that either is "racist". The issues are more complex than that.

<comment><USER13> I agree. As a Norwegian who have never considered voting for them, I have to say they are misunderstood. I think it all started when the Swedes thought they were similar to the Swedish "SD" party. That caused a lot of attention in the Norwegian and Swedish press that unfortunately were picked up by other countries as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If Scandinavia is the "Dark Land" then the British model of society can only be called the "Black Hole".

</comment><comment><USER15> Meanwhile, Norway has 1MM per capita in assets. Their net debt as a percent of GDP is -165% while the US is +88%

<comment><USER16> The lesson here is... The US should discover a really, really, _really_ large amount of oil?

I mean, I don't take Booth's takedown of the Nordic countries very seriously, but the reason that Norway is in such great shape financially is that they have an enormous amount of oil that they sell. It's not exactly a reproducible strategy for nation-building.

<comment><USER17> To put things in context. The oil industry is producing 20% of the total GDP of Norway and 50% of all exports. It's very important and it will be painful when it ends, but Norway will not be much worse than other European countries when the oil runs out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Add to this the fact that Greenland is the suicide capital of the world (most suicides per capita).

</comment><comment><USER19> He has some good points, but it mostly just sounds like a pointless rant. And nitpicking every flaw with these nations just because he has gotten tired of the positivity surrounding their "success" comes off as just childish.

</comment><comment><USER20> It was a fun read, even without being well supported. This is something that would have been more enjoyable if it were delivered in the back room of a quiet pub by a slightly more buzzed version of the author.

</comment><comment><USER21> As an Icelander I cant say I agree with his description of us. Its like saying Brittain sucks because of Margeret Thatcher, without considering she was not the sole inhabitant of that country.

</comment><comment><USER22> meh, while there are certain truths in what he says, it only paints a very small picture of Scandinavia. I mean which nation doesn't its faults? Uninteresting.

</comment><comment><USER23> Satire? ... not very witty.

</comment><comment><USER24> What a nice take-down.

<comment><USER25> Seemed like a random assortment of cherry-picked stats and anecdotes.

<comment><USER26> Is that a problem?</comment></comment></comment>


The Universe Project [video] - <AUTHOR> http://launch2.universeprojects.com

<comment><USER2> There is a tendency for wannabe game designers who are not programmers to "design" this game.

"It's the MMO where you can do anything" is something I have heard so many times.

The interesting thing is that a lot of these people think that the idea is somehow original. As if the concept of modelling reality hasn't been considered before.

I'm not necessarily accusing this particular project of not being programmers or thinking that the idea is original because I don't know that, but it's something I have observed so many times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats fair. I haven't even hinted at anything particularly new or novel because I'm afraid we're a bit too early in the project to go to that depth. The video is meant to find those interested in the concept. We'll be revealing more about how it works when we're closer to a release.

Sorry I can't divulge more just yet. :/

<comment><USER3> But you can divulge how many people are in "we" and what your backgrounds and past experience are like. That should help bringing some credibility to the project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I almost never respond negatively to a proposal on HN, but this seems like a bunch of BS. They're claiming to build a full-world simulation, and all they have to show are some doodles and a voiceover. MAYBE if I heard that the world's 5 biggest game studios were working together on this I'd believe they might get close, but as a indie project this is not possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, the purpose of the video is to garner interest while the game is still in development. We're releasing this video as a means to find those interested in such a game early so that when we have something more to show in a year or so, we'll be in a much better position.

As for whether or not we're capable of doing it, I time will tell. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _What if_ you had unlimited budget, programming talent, art assets, scalability, _and_ an infinite supply of fun/novelty/etc without even needing NPCs.

Wouldn't that be _awesome?_

<comment><AUTHOR> heh

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The biggest problem with games like these is the fact that people aren't on enough to guard their creations. I have played on and helped construct many minecraft servers trying to do this, and one-man midnight raids supported by deeply hidden bases quickly become the only viable strategy.

The only reason civilization was able to arise in real life is the fact that people can be "exploited" by moral obligation and imbalanced fear to put the common good above their own. This doesn't work in a video game.

<comment><USER7> Having control of a group of semi-automated characters (think Age of Empires) could be one way to guard your creations when you're not playing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ambitious? How about impossible?

How do you create a truly dynamic ecological environment? The only option in video games is to program in each and every option. Lets say I wanted to make a bow and arrow. Game engines are not nearly as far along to make that organically available. Someone has to program it in. And that's the problem with ideas like these - for the time being, you can't just get a universe filled with tools, structures, and skills for free. You have to build them. And this is very hard, especially if you're trying to make the game balanced. So I don't see what's advertised in this video coming out of a kickstarter campaign

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand what you're saying but its not nearly as difficult as you make it out to be. The exact mechanic we plan on using for inventions like the one in your example is a novel one and I'll have to be vague until I'm farther along in the project.

As for balance issues, IMO, that's a silly notion that have evolved from poorly constructed MMOs; MMOs that have been constructed from obsolete mechanics and limitations. There wont be balance issues (of that sort) in this game. Just to step back a bit, I still like playing MMOs of today, they're great fun, but balance issues are a natural issue in their design, not ours.

There will certainly be shifts in power as technology breaks a barrier in one place and not the other. But equally, shifts in power can emerge in other ways like, via a well controlled government or army.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Three possibilities for this project:

1\. Vaporware.

2\. A project pivot that retains a few qualities resembling the original idea.

3\. A software prodigy achieves the holy grail of MMOs.

</comment><comment><USER10> Will technological progression necessarily follow what a historically similar path as our own? Or are there multiple directions that technology could take...

Ex. Perhaps we develop more steam punked tech, develop alternative fuel sources, etc

So. Short question. Can technology progress in different ways than it historically did?

</comment><comment><USER11> This would be more interesting if the authors provided anything to suggest they were capable of making more than a video.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, the purpose of the video is to garner interest while the game is still in development. We're releasing this video as a means to find those interested in such a game early so that when we have something more to show in a year or so, we'll be in a much better position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Was this not what Spore was intended to be? You evolve a life form into a civilization. It seems as though the OP is going for something a little more open (and therefore ambitious) than Spore's rigid 5 stage structure.

Good luck! You're going to need it. If this game gets finished, I'll be first in line.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea I would hesitate to draw any resemblance to spore. Spore seemed more about the evolution of a species than a simulation of humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How will time progress? Are the first people in the game going to be playing in a primitive era, and people who join later on (2+ years down the line) playing in a high tech future world?

Very interesting and highly ambitious. Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it would be as you say. Although "high-tech" likely wouldn't happen for more like 10 years, maybe more.

And if you think that is a long time, consider how long we've been getting expansions for WoW. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is ambitious, is the thought that any tab (which I usually open in the background) starts playing automatically video and/or sound won't get closed immediately.

Sorry but you got to respect your visitors.

</comment><comment><USER15> What I find would be interesting is how the virtual world would differ to ours today. Would we still have world wars, would we have different social expectations in the game?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mechanics would be in place to assist with the organizing of players to make large scale wars possible. Although, especially at the beginning, the logistics of doing so are still a feat in itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll stick with Xsyon, until this project has some real content to show. <http://www.xsyon.com/content.php>

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds exactly like real life. It sounds boring, for a game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it depends on your life I guess. :p

Everyone plays games for different reasons because everyone gets a kick out of different things in life. Theres no reason why one game can't satisfy all and the best way to accomplish that is by creating a game based on the one environment we know _can_ be enjoyed by all personality types -- real life. (note: not that everyone _does_ enjoy real life, those who generally dislike everything have other issues and probably wont like my game either :p).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that a game in 1000 years is not going to be like this - its going to be basically the same games we have now only fully immersive - plugging into our brain etc. A virtual parallel universe is great, but it's not a game. It seems like _within_ this universe you'll have an opportunity to start a game company. But why start a game company in world1 when you can start one in world0?

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely agree with you regarding the fully immersible quality of games in 1000 years. :) But how frustrating would it be to be in such an amazing experience where the gameplay is limited like MMOs are today? I would simply be unnecessary to cap game mechanics at where they're at today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> lol, that is ambitious.</comment>


Go 1.1 design freeze - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-dev/ajifK81ZUbg/discussion <comment><USER2> Really looking forward to Go 1.1. For those that missed it, Rémy Oudompheng outlined the then current changes in Go 1.1 a couple months ago. Anyone else want to chime in with an updated list?

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang- nuts/FxELIOik...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang- nuts/FxELIOik2f4/discussion)</comment>


Ask HN: Why not put onus on AdBlocker to prevent terms of service violations? - <AUTHOR> If, for example, the terms of service for using Facebook are that adblockers may not be used, the why not force the adblockers to enforce that policy?<p>i.e. if you are using an adblocker, then the adblocker not only blocks ads but blocks the entire site. <comment><USER2> Because if you do that, someone will fork your codebase, and patch it out. Or, failing that, code a new adblocker from scratch, without said feature.

If you're talking about giving legal power to websites' ToS to define what software may parse the data you download from their servers before/after rendering it to you, you're opening a gigantic can of worms, and I don't think most users would be particularly happy with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> If a website excludes adblockers, then any commercial company associated with an adblocker is legally exposed is it not?

Seems reasonable to me that the adblocker should act responsibly and block entire sites where the TOS prohibits its use.

Not hard for sites to set something in robots.txt to say "no adblockers allowed"

<comment><USER3> > If a website excludes adblockers, then any commercial company associated > with an adblocker is legally exposed is it not?

This is not true in any country at the moment as far as I know. There's some initial stupidness in the US like [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2016/07/12/9th-circuit-its-a-federal-crime-to-visit-a-website- after-being-told-not-to-visit-it/) , but in practice that's going to be disputed in courts many times before they agree on some final version.

Especially since there's a related recent ruling (can't find the article now) which basically said - if your ToS are too complex and people are unlikely to understand all the details, they're not bound by it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because people using ad blockers don't want to see ads when if the terms of service demand them, they want not to see ads.

If Facebook or any site wants to prevent people using ad blockers from viewing their content, that's their right. But an ad blocker that doesn't block all advertising, all the time, by default is just broken. Any exceptions should be explicitly made by the user, not the ad blocker or the site.

</comment><comment><USER5> First, I believe that some anti-ad-blocker tools do something similar--the hosting site refuses to load until ad blockers (or ad blocker-like behavior) is no longer detected.

Second, exactly how would you force them? Do you really want a legal ban on the distribution of software that could permit the end user to violate a civil contract? That might fly in China and possibly the US, but probably not in the EU.

</comment><comment><USER3> > why not force the adblockers

How do you force a program to do anything? Or how does facebook force you to use an approved adblocker?

An exercise: I say you can't use the internet with extensions I disapprove of. Do you comply?

<comment><AUTHOR> I seem to recall plenty of software being driven out of existence due to legal pressure.

popcorn time, napster.

<comment><USER3> Kind of... the tools themselves were never really illegal. It was primarily the distribution of copyright protected content instead. You can still download and run napster clients however. Just like torrent clients will still be alive, even if specific services like popcorn time go down.

Adblockers do not distribute copyrighted software. It's a different issue. While blocking ads could be challenged legally, it has not happened yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> True.

It seems likely to me that companies like Facebook will spend alot of money fighting adblockers. Not just in court but in Washington with lobbyists. The politicians know which side their bread is buttered on - laws will come into effect banning adblockers sooner or later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because you used to have a friend called Tom, if they make enough people resent using them you will used to have a creepy uncle called Zuck.</comment>