Trouble at Cyanogen - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/12/01/steve-kondik-blames-kirt-mcmaster-for-cyanogen-incs-failure-cyanogenmod-to-reorganize-and-regroup/ <comment><USER2> The OnePlus drama with MicroMax killed them. No one would want to do business with a company that did what they did and treated their first client.

"Without Cyanogen, OnePlus would have sold like one device in international markets," … "Essentially they built their brand on the back of Cyanogen." – Kirt McMaster

I don't know about you but I would never do business with someone who said that about anyone. Some team effort.

<comment><USER3> Especially when Cyanogen was the worst thing about the One+</comment></comment>


How Design Can Help Bridge the AI Gap - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tedp/how-design-can-help-bridge-the-ai-gap-87526ca31dd4 <comment><AUTHOR> I jotted down some thoughts about slack bots, NLP, and blending UI affordances into conversational interfaces in this Medium post</comment>


Computer vision camera detecting problem, solution, past and future - <AUTHOR> https://linkcabinet.eu <comment><USER2> I've got 99 problems, and some solutions, but a clue what this is isn't one.

<comment><USER2> Idea for an app (what I thought this was going to be): you take a photo of your problem. That can be that your tie is untied, your plug's fuse is blown, your cable is frayed, your haircut is bad, your kid is having a tantrum, you've got five ingredients for dinner but you don't know any recipes, even some kind of problem you can see but don't know how to describe. The app uses some computer vision and heuristics to say "I think your problem is dandruff" and then does an appropriate web search and presents a video or a paragraph explaining a solution.

<comment><USER3> That's something for Watson. (the computer)</comment></comment></comment>


Dark Energy May Be Incompatible with String Theory - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Orly?</comment>


Radeon RX 5600 XT Gets a Performance Boost with New VBIOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/leaked-benchmarks-show-11-percent-uplift-on-radeon-rx-5600-xt-with-new-vbios <comment><USER2> Unfortunately it kills the performance on Linux

[https://twitter.com/phoronix/status/1219645628298539008](https://twitter.com/phoronix/status/1219645628298539008)</comment>


Is Technology Fostering a Race to the Bottom? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/02/us/02iht-currents02.html

<comment><USER2> In other words, does it make the economy more efficient? I think so.

This kind of reminds me of articles from the 70s + 80s wondering if computers will steal jobs. Sure, but they also made jobs. Services like airbnb might take money away from hotels, but then give it to enterprising people that have extra space to rent. Overall, I can't imagine how that's not a good thing.

<comment><USER3> Why is that technology hasn't decreased the amount of hours we've worked in a week then?

<comment><USER4> _Why is that technology hasn't decreased the amount of hours we've worked in a week then?_

We (working people in the United States, which at a wild guess both you and I are) have far more stuff, better health and longer lifespans, more flexibility in work schedules, and much more expensive tastes in leisure than "we" had back in the 1960s. Genuine personal wealth in the United States has increased greatly in the last few decades, despite government figures understating that increase in wealth, and we have every prospect of continuing to increase personal wealth, gaining more utility in whatever we value most, as the decades roll on.

See Matt Ridley's writings for the long version of this argument.

<http://www.rationaloptimist.com/>

As for why people aren't content to live an early 1960s lifestyle with fewer hours of work per week (which is perfectly possible to do in the United States), most people gauge their wealth on a relative rather than absolute basis, and so compare themselves to their neighbors. As "everyone" they know enjoys more of today's wealth, they work hard enough to keep up, subject to the utility trade-offs they consider important. So most people still work full-time hours at most occupations, even though part-time employment at today's rate of compensation allows a lifestyle that was considered quite adequate within my memory.

<comment> mark-r That's half the answer. In reality much of the efficiency gain due to technology is going to the employer rather than the employee. Even if you were content with a 1960's lifestyle, it would take more hours to support than the technology gains would suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to be a poorly titled piece, when the real insight is simply that government regulation has stifled innovation. If you compete because you've sidestepped some of that regulation then it's not really surprising that some of the things you liked have also gone as well.

Basically governments need to step back a bit, before they're completely swept aside.

</comment><comment><USER6> These seem to be make-work for lawyers in the making, which IMO supports the idea that too much regulation stifles innovation...

That said, what keeps me from turning libertarian is that most of these regulations were extremely well-intended and addressed genuine societal issues. I just wish there were a middle ground here and there doesn't seem to be one.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have gradually increased my airbnb rates while maintaining a constant level of occupancy from $35 to $90 over two years, so at least from where I'm standing it doesn't seem like a race to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER8> Summary: new startups enable mildly illegal markets to operate at a large scale making you feel less illegal because, hey, like, everybody is doing it.

There's a good chance renting your place and car violates your homeowner's insurance, lease agreement, and/or car insurance.

<comment><USER9> Or perhaps better phrased: YOU are the next business externality.

The name of the game now is how businesses can pay you a pittance and get you to take loads of risk. I need only speak of the lady who's car was involved in a fatal accident. It was her car, driven by someone who paid her for the time. Who's at fault?

<comment><USER10> For that case in particular, you're talking about a new business model that uses an insurance and liability model that might not be suited for it quite yet.

That case hasn't been decided and the only article I saw on it just was warning about possible problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is silly. It looks to me like what happens when a writer meets a situation he is unable to comprehend yet wants to say something really profound about it. Really poor execution on the structure of the piece.

What he _should_ have done, instead of quoting the blogger who was worried over the collapse of western civilization or one of the startup founders, is interview people on both sides of the economic transaction. Are sellers happy with their experience? How about buyers? This would have given the reader the ability to at least anecdotally walk in the shoes of those involved. That would be a nice newspaper story. Take me to the scene of where something unique and interesting is happening.

Or, if he wanted to make some over-arching societal point, he should have written an opinion piece. Gave us more statistics. As it is presented it is not much of a newspaper story _or_ an opinion piece, neither bird nor foul. Meh.</comment>


I am graduating soon. Should I work at a small startup or a large company? - <AUTHOR>

I am graduating from college soon. My eventual goal is to start my own company. I think I should work at a small (<50 employee) company. My parents think I should work at Google or Facebook. Any thoughts or links to previous discussions about this?<p>Specifically, I would like to know what all you think is the best preparation for starting something on my own. <comment><USER2> HN does a great job of extolling the virtues of working at a startup, so I won't bother going into that. However, I graduated 3.5 years ago, and I sometimes regret not starting my 'career' at a large corporation for a few reasons:

1\. I think I could be a more well-rounded entrepreneur if I had some understanding of the protocols and practices of a large corporation. For example, it's tough to get experience working with 100+ other full-time developers on the same build target outside of a large corporation.

2\. Similarly, at a large corporation you have a lot more people to learn from, instead of having to learn things for yourself/from the internet.

3\. At a startup, it's tough to not get emotionally invested in your company. This is good, but it also limits your mobility--you can't really just say, "I'm going to quit so I can spend six months in Madagascar photographing lemurs", because you will probably be screwing your coworkers.

4\. It's really tough to go from a startup to a large corporation without an acquisition, because of #3, and because you'll likely lose some personal freedom. The degree to which this happens depends on the company, but at the very least, you will probably have to interact with a lot more people, and thus you'll probably have to make your working hours more compatible with others (e.g. 9 to 5).

</comment><comment><USER3> As a whole big companies are machines for turning energetic, scrappy, visionary people into sluggish, overspending, risk-averse, reliable cogs.

Don't even work at a startup unless you need to. You're more likely to succeed by repeatedly starting your own companies than any other path.

<comment><USER4> Excellent!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some people have already mentioned the benefits of a startup, but if you want to start your own company there are a couple of reasons why experience in a larger company might also help you do that (aside from just starting a company). YMMV of course.

1) That big company might be your startup's competition. Knowing how they work might give you insight into how to beat them and others like them.

2) That big company might buy your startup or be a customer (if you're doing something B2B) Getting insight into how decisions get made in larger organizations will help you sell to the right people.

You might think the supposed "insights" from these are obvious, but they might not be to someone who hasn't been in a big company for a long enough period of time. I'm still in school and I'll admit that I'm pretty clueless about these myself.

</comment><comment><USER6> HN has a certain bias towards entrepreneurship and start-ups, so let me try to offer at least a few morsels of support for working at Google or Facebook, though I definitely advocate for start-up or small companies too.

At Google or Facbeook, you would be well-compensated and comfortable while learning new skills in a still quite fast-paced environment. You will be surrounded by many very smart people, and that's probably the most important part.

Your ability to learn new things is definitely greater if you can wear many hats and accept a lot of responsibility at a small company, but at the same time, you may find that you are ultimately better equipped by working at a larger firm full of bright people and building not just your skills, but your network.

Who would you want to start a company with? While it is often difficult to entice away workers from such enviable jobs, you will find a large pool from which to recruit! This is something that you would find rather more difficult at the smaller company, though if it were in the SF Bay area, you could still do a lot of socializing. That's not quite a substitute for getting to work closely with people, obviously.

That's one line of argument there, but really, I suggest going where you think... A) you like the people best and B) you will learn the most. The rest is ancillary and will come out in the wash (a bigger bonus, etc, is much less important than being able to grow a little bit more someplace than somewhere else).

I struggled with many of the same questions myself recently, ultimately choosing something quite off the beaten path from what I originally imagined - we'll see how it works out next summer when I start work!

</comment><comment><USER7> It really depends on the company(ies). There's a lot to be said for working at a big established outfit: clear paths to career progression, decent and reliable pay, the kudos of working for a firm people have likely heard of, mostly free weekends and evenings. The downsides are office politics, bad managers (inevitable), the constant feeling that things could be done better/more efficiently, being a small largely unknown cog in a big machine. And yes after a few years people do tend to get disillusioned and hacked off - often prompting a move to the country or a start-up or something different.

Saying that I wouldn't knock the experience. Seeing how big businesses operate is probably an important education for every wannabe entrepreneur. And if you learn to play the corporate game you can do very well - and put away a few dollars for when you make the jump to something a bit more risky.

Startups will generally involve less pay, longer hours and a more unstable / insecure career outlook. So if you decide to go this route, choose your firm with great care. But saying that, in a smaller firm you'll be closer to teh day-to-day administration of the business which also would be great experience re starting your own outfit.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am in favor of you starting your own company. But prior, there are certain points you need to consider, try get a co-founder who is at least as motivated as you or more is better. Get ready for long hours with very less or no money for initial days , month , years, Be receptive to failures and flexible to learn new things everyday. Most importantly have endless passion and belief towards you goal. At the max you will fail but at the end of day you will learn a lot , will make good contacts, will develop never give up attitude and satisfaction that you at least tried. If nothing works, you will definitely in a good position to get into these technology houses again. But Remember once entrepreneur is always an entrepreneur. :)

It's Ok even if you start at these places but you need to be focused towards your passion and keep working continuously side by side on it and manage your time well. Most importantly, don't show your entrepreneurial personality/liking in interviews else although you are technically skilled and crack certain rounds , its highly likely they will not hire you considering your commitment and dedication towards your work.

</comment><comment><USER9> My first job was at a 40 person shop that designed and manufactured specialized data processors. I look back and thank my lucky stars for that job, because you can learn far more in a company like that. Think of it this way - a company with 10,000 employees has ten thousand cogs in its machine. Each cog is very, very specialized.

Small companies can't afford to specialize. We had three or four full time programmers, and seven or eight EEs. I designed and tested circuits, laid out PC boards, designed enclosures ( _that_ turned out to be the hardest task - whaddayamean customers won't appreciate taking out 40 screws to change the power supply? It's _solid_.), wrote microcode, talked to customers, wrote software for an automated tester I designed and built myself. All in the space of four years. It's not impossible to do that in a big company, but it's very, very unusual.

The downside to a company like that is you don't make nearly as much money. But for me the money came later, in spades, because I learned how to _do_ things. If you go to Facebook or Google what will you learn?

</comment><comment><USER10> I think both have their good points. Smaller companies allow more freedom and a wider range of experience. If you pick the _wrong_ small company you'll pick up bad habits (what's version control? backups? testing?). I didn't have a software engineering degree, so wasn't aware of some of the things I was doing wrong (or missing) until I spent some time in bigger companies.

</comment><comment><USER11> nix that part of the debate. Find a company with the smartest group of developers you can find, hopefully working on a project you are interested in (secondary concern). LEARN. Three years later, repeat. Repeat that until you have 10 years under your belt. After that you will know what to do.

</comment><comment><USER12> You already have a bunch of valuable comments to wade through. One tip though - do not think of large companies as one monolithic organization. If you look around, you will spot those smaller 'startup'y teams inside big orgs where you'll learn a ton and have a lot of fun in the process.

Also, write down what you want to achieve in your first job. Financial stability? Engineering skills? Proficiency in a particular platform, framework? Ability to work in a team? Narrowing down what you really hope to get out of this job will really help you focus on finding the right workplace.

And finally, never say never. Both of them (large companies and startups) have their ups and downs. You'll learn _something_ from both.

</comment><comment><USER13> Working in a small company, you'll have an opportunity to do more if you take the initiative. Some days you might be doing things outside of your job maybe you have to deal with a client, or have to be part of a sales presentation, or take part in high level meetings.

Of course you also have to be extra careful not to get comfortable since all companies (especially smaller/older companies) can get comfortable with their employees. There may be dinosaurs who just aren't very good at what they're supposed to be doing. Make sure to not limit your knowledge because of them or be hindered by them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Small company. Personally, I'm working in a 10 man boutique buy-side firm having just graduated in September. I'm getting real responsibility i.e. responsibility for clients, working across several roles not just one like you'd get if you join a larger firms graduate scheme. By getting involved in all these aspects you get more operational experience as well in terms of the 'nuts and bolts' plus smaller firms tend to be headed up by very experienced individuals so you'll pick up their habits directly instead of only maybe meeting them once or twice if you were at a comparably larger firm.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think your parents is right on this, either Google/Facebook are great places to start off your career, not to mention it's a good place to learn how they iterate, how they go about their product development, especially in such a large (and yet fairly agile) company. Think of it as a learning pad.

Also, there's nothing stopping you from working on your idea right now. Once your idea turns profitable, you can explore the other possibilities; hiring, working on it full time, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have worked at both small and large. Eventually, I co-founded a company that was mildly successful. Small companies are better place to learn lots of skills, take risks, and be noticed. Large companies are rather hard to do anything with scope outside your group, and sometimes tasks like getting hardware seem impossible in a timely manner.

My opinion, go small, then when you are a bit older try a larger company. Try both and see for yourself. GL.

<comment><USER17> _...and sometimes tasks like getting hardware seem impossible in a timely manner._

This is a good point. There's a lot of red tape at big companies and sometimes doing the simplest things (e.g. setting up an Apache server) can be made into maddeningly bureaucratic operations (fill out the support ticket -> X -> Y...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I exited school to work at a small, (about a year or so in) established startup that has funding from accel and norwest. I'm employee 15. It's honestly one of the funnest things I've ever done, since the work is interesting and my work actually has an impact on the product.

I'm also the youngest person there, so I am learning very quickly from people with 10+ more years in Silicon Valley than I have.

</comment><comment><USER19> Probably the best decision I ever made in my life was to study Math because I wanted to study Math, when everyone advised me to take a more "vocational" course. Talk to everyone, find out what the jobs are, take the one that sounds most interesting and forget The Plan. While you're at it, buy a copy of Johnny Bunko. I wish I'd read it earlier.

</comment><comment><USER20> You'll learn a lot more at a small company as you get / have to wear many hats in your role. The many roles you play will prepare to better for your own business

In a large company everyone is very specialized so you won't really get to step outside your role too much

</comment><comment><USER21> i'd say if you're just starting out and have a chance to work for a big company that's been around longer than google, go for it. there's a lot to learn from large orgs that you aren't necessarily exposed to in small team environments.

after college, i joined a fortune 100, where i worked for three years. during that time, i had extra time to devote to consulting gigs and working on my startup. had i joined a startup, there definitely wouldn't have been much free time to do my own thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> So you want to work at a small company and you want to know whether working at a small company is a good way to do it? Yes, I'd say so.</comment>


Acme-style mouse chording for Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://8bitb.us/insert-picture-of-yak-bunny-chimera <comment><USER2> Not particularly impressive, now if we could somehow use mouse gestures we're getting somewhere.

Although I avoid the mouse completely during programming, it may be convenient during code reading to just click, scroll and gesture as if the code was in my favorite browser.

<comment><USER3> > Not particularly impressive

Text pattern matching from the mouse in all apps is the real strength of the Plan 9 interface, the chording on Acme is only part of the picture</comment></comment>


Nature's Most Perfect Killing Machine: Ebola is nightmare fuel - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/natures-most-perfect-killing-machine

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

 _An effective response to an outbreak is surprisingly simple. Modest containment efforts, such as gowns and gloves and dilutions of bleach, tend to be successful. People who are infected with Ebola, after all, aren't out running around spreading the disease for long before they're too sick to leave the bed.

The virus is too hot—choke the supply of new hosts and it smothers itself._</comment>


Press Conference on First Result from the Event Horizon Telescope - <AUTHOR> https://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann19018/ <comment><USER2> The article announces a press conference on April, 10th. There is no content whatsoever.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for the confusion, I should have edited the title to include the future press release date.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Adversary Rises Instinctively at Yahoo Bid - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/technology/06google.html?ex=1359954000&en=c8a7132d9ae68e62&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I was skeptical of yet another post on Google vs MSFT regarding Yahoo, but I found the post interesting.</comment>


Make element height inversely proportional to width- pure css - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/3tzL4/1/

<comment><USER2> Maybe you can explain a bit better what this does?

It looks like the content is resizing in chrome based on the number of characters in the :before tag. is that right?

So in this case the width is a percentage of the total, but the height is determined by the total number of chars in the :before

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, the width is a percentage. It's meant to simulate a fluid grid. I'm working on a site right now that has a row of boxes with excerpts of longer articles. I would like them to all have the same height for neatness, but I don't want to set an explicit height because I would like them to resize to contain roughly the same amount of text at different widths.

So the :before pseudoelement on #container has a bunch of _'s and spaces that reflow like any text will. #element has the actual content, and is absolutely positioned to the edges of its parent.

So as the width changes, the text in the :before element reflows and expands #container's size. #element simply follows the size of #container. The :after pseudoelement is just there for decoration.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Particularly elegant programs to study? - <AUTHOR>

Examples help tremendously in learning any abstract subject.  What are some famously well-written programs whose source is available to look at? <comment><USER2> The djb way: "straight, no chaser":

       http://cr.yp.to/

qmail in particular, and also (if you like math) primegen.

BTW, his code is _not_ easy to understand (quite the opposite) -- there are few source comments, and most of these are snarky, cryptic or both; and not only does he explain almost nothing on a global scale but oftentimes what he is doing might look, at first blush, kinda wrong, obtuse even.

But that's precisely the point -- there are a lot of idioms in there that most C programmers just wouldn't think of, especially if you're into minimalism (when it comes to things like dealing with strings, error handling, forking, etc).

<comment><USER3> > and not only does he explain almost nothing on a global scale but oftentimes > what he is doing might look, at first blush, kinda wrong, obtuse even.

Can you give some examples?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know about famous, but Conal Elliots ideas about denotational semantics have led to some beautifully elegant libraries - [http://conal.net/blog/posts/denotational-design-with-type- cl...](http://conal.net/blog/posts/denotational-design-with-type-class- morphisms/)

Don't be put off by the academic tone, at its heart the paper is about how to design abstractions.

<comment><AUTHOR> This looks awesome, thanks. How to design abstractions was what I had in mind when posing the question.

<comment><USER4> I really enjoy reading Conals work. This paper is a particularly good example of how denotational semantics can guide the design of a library - <http://conal.net/blog/posts/paper-beautiful-differentiation/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TeX.

Or, any of Knuth's other Literate Programs.

Also, the book "Beautiful Code" is an attempt along these lines, but personally, I don't find the programs there as beautiful as Knuth's.

</comment><comment><USER6> Léon Bottou's implementation of Stochastic Gradient SVMs is the most concise implementation of an SVM that you'll find: <http://leon.bottou.org/projects/sgd>

<comment><AUTHOR> (since I had to look it up what a SVM was)

"Support vector machines (SVMs) are a set of related supervised learning methods... The standard SVM takes a set of input data, and predicts, for each given input, which of two possible classes the input is a member of... Intuitively, an SVM model is a representation of the examples as points in space, mapped so that the examples of the separate categories are divided by a clear gap that is as wide as possible. New examples are then mapped into that same space and predicted to belong to a category based on which side of the gap they fall on." [wikipedia]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> sqlite is both beautiful and has a significant test suite. <http://www.sqlite.org/>

<comment><USER4> The sqlite test suite is a fantastic example of how to produce solid software. I wish it were used as a case study for all software engineering courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's Peter Norvig's toy spelling corrector (in Python), along with some helpful explanation:

<http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Code from Peter Norvig's "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming"

</comment><comment><USER10> Lua (The programming language) is very well written and well worth reading and understanding.

<http://www.lua.org/>

<comment><USER11> I have to disagree. The language spec and the docs on the Lua website are well written but the VM itself is a mess. It's a trainwreck of ambiguously named variables, minimal documentation, and overuse of macros to force inline code.

The Lua VM is a good example of something that isn't well written from a reading / understanding point of view, but is something that is well written from the 'it works' point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am surprised that nobody has pointed to <http://news.usethesource.com/> yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> I searched for "russian doll pseudocode" hoping to discover something elegant, but the clearest "code" there is a nicely colored Venn-ish diagram.

<http://ijcai.org/papers09/Papers/IJCAI09-106.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER14> This is very Ruby specific (so mostly not "famous" stuff) but if that's your scene, I asked the same question to Rubyists recently and got some good suggestions: <http://www.rubyflow.com/items/1817>

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/> is the source for the Go compilers and standard library. Very clean, clear code in the Bell Labs tradition.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Lift framework core has some rather lithe Scala in it. Do mind that it's an actively developed, actively deployed framework - functionality sometimes takes priority ... ;)

<comment><USER16> <https://github.com/lift/lift>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've heard that Postfix is as close to perfect you can get, but I haven't dived in personally.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've heard good things about the code of Redis and Tokyo Tyrant.

</comment><comment><USER19> c99shell. No, really, it's very well written.</comment>


$30 Gets You the Sensor-Packed, Curie-Powered Arduino 101 - <AUTHOR> http://makezine.com/2015/10/16/30-gets-you-the-sensor-packed-curie-powered-arduino-101/ <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting due to the use of the Intel Curie which includes a 6-axis accelerometer and Bluetooth support.

At this price point that makes it pretty great value for an Arduino/Genuino brand product with all the supporting software/libraries and community that brings.

I wonder how the IO ports perform as the three chips near the pin headers look suspiciously like they might be IO expanders. This may mean limited performance compared to bit banging the IO registers directly (though it's possible they are purely level-shifters).

Edit: They are level-shifters! Each chip is an LSF0108 which are 8-channel bidirectional level shifters. So that should be good news for IO performance - unlike the Galileo...</comment>


NASA Unveils Plans for Electric-Powered Plane - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/18/science/nasa-electric-plane-x57.html <comment><AUTHOR> Even this advanced design only gets one hour of flight time with 800 pounds of batteries. Yikes.</comment>


Show HN: Simple in-app voice chat for every app - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
Our team has been building a voice chat application for more than 2 years and now we would like to extend the amazing voice chat experience to all developers by introducing our SDK. With this SDK, developers are able to integrate a Talk Button into their apps seamlessly and empower their app with simple, fast, and stable in app voice chat feature to their users.
We're now recruiting early adopters for trying out our beta and would enjoy any honest feedback.
TalkBox Button SDK: http://talkboxapp.com/sdk
Thanks, Gilman TalkBox team <comment><USER2> Well done, looks interesting. Have provided my email through the sign up form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to know you like it! will send out a follow up email soon.</comment></comment>


Skills Don't Pay the Bills - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine/skills-dont-pay-the-bills.html <comment><USER2> "The secret behind this skills gap is that it's not a skills gap at all. I spoke to several other factory managers who also confessed that they had a hard time recruiting in-demand workers for $10-an-hour jobs. "It's hard not to break out laughing," says Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, referring to manufacturers complaining about the shortage of skilled workers. "If there's a skill shortage, there has to be rises in wages," he says. "It's basic economics." After all, according to supply and demand, a shortage of workers with valuable skills should push wages up. Yet according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of skilled jobs has fallen and so have their wages."

This is true in other fields as well. Take the "shortage" of Phd's. I believe the average fresh Phd is probably doing post doc work at a college for little pay.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I spoke to several other factory managers who also confessed that they had a hard time recruiting in-demand workers for $10-an-hour jobs."

No shit...

not news.

<comment><USER4> It _is_ news, because the "skills gap meme" has gotten deeply embedded in our entire culture and public consciousness. In everything from skilled manufacturing and trades to research science, heavy engineering and computer programming, there's a meme that we face a "skills gap": a working class that can't make good wages because it lacks skills, and employers who can't upgrade their productivity because they can't find skilled workers.

Problem is, whenever you investigate it in _almost any field_ , you find the explanation given here: that employers want lots of skills for very little money. Software is almost the _only_ exception, and software salaries only started trending up in any real, serious, "shortage" sort of way a year or two ago as the latest wave of Silicon Valley start-up hiring hit.

Hell, in software it took start-ups to raise salaries because the BigCos even had _blatantly collusive_ anti-poaching agreements to _hold salaries down_.

There's a salary gap, not a skills gap. There's a unicorn shortage, not a workhorse shortage (to blatantly rip off a noble Redditor of /r/programming).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> " Running these machines requires a basic understanding of metallurgy, physics, chemistry, pneumatics, electrical wiring and computer code"

For $10/hour? Sign me up...

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting points; I would be curious to take the economic argument a step further and understand the effects of traditionally unionized labor on the manufacturing industry. The economics of supply and demand driven wage efficiency falter in the face of unionized labor, and you have to wonder if the skills gap the author is talking about is really just people adjusting to a non unionized market for their skills.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. A well-run union, professional association, or "flexicurity" program can _help_ keep the labor force up-to-date on the latest skills, raising productivity and wages.</comment></comment>


Ancient Genetic Defenses Against AIDS Virus Reactivated - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/ancient-genetic-defenses-against-aids-virus-reactivated.html

<comment><USER2> Looks like a really bad article on a possibly promising treatment...

<comment><USER3> It's not that bad... it is very hard to translate the contents of a technical article like this one into a story that the lay-public can understand.

It's like trying to describe why a particular compiler optimization doesn't work in an edge case to your mother[1].

\---

Based upon the actual article @ PLoS Biology: [http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal....](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000095)

The take home message is that we at one point had a gene that can block HIV infection. Somewhere along the way it got a mutation that produced a truncated protein. These guys found it, fixed the glitch, and showed that the resulting protein is effective at blocking HIV infection. They then took the next step of figuring out a way to "fix the glitch" in humans without using some complicated gene therapy approach. All in all, this is very impressive.

\---

[1] I'm assuming your mother isn't a committer to GCC :)

<comment><USER4> It is pretty bad, there's only a theoretical cream that may be in use some day, many years from now and it may reduce infection rates.

If you take the article at face value, we just cured HIV. And IMHO articles like that are VERY bad because over the years they have built a consensus of _science is wrong and confusing and disappointing_ into the general public.

Anything that's repeatedly over hyped will end up like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this science or "science"?

<comment><USER6> See for yourself: [http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal....](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000095)

<comment><USER5> > Given that the endogenous production of retrocyclins could also be restored > in human cervicovaginal tissues, we propose that aminoglycoside-based > topical microbicides might be useful in preventing sexual transmission of > HIV-1.

That's a long long way from the sensationalist tone of the terrible linked article. We already have the above. (Condoms.)

<comment><USER7> And just like we have spermicide to go with condoms today, we might have aminoglycoside-based topical microbicides to go with condoms tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> fascinating story.. kind of a blemish that the article contains an error:

 _a virus which can't get into cells is just a scrap of amino acids waiting to be destroyed._

To the best of my knowledge, viruses do have DNA, if very little. That is in fact the reason they need to enter the host's cells - they need access to the DNA reproduction machinery inside to make copies of themselves.

<comment><USER9> edit: this is wrong. See timr's comment below.

DNA is made of amino acids. If the DNA can't get into a cell, it's useless as DNA and is only good for digestion into amino acid building blocks for some other protein.

<comment><USER10> _"DNA is made of amino acids. If the DNA can't get into a cell, it's useless as DNA and is only good for digestion into amino acid building blocks for some other protein."_

No, just totally, absolutely 100% wrong. If you voted this comment up, please smack yourself for voting up things that merely sound authoritative. Thank you.

 _Proteins_ are made of amino acids. _DNA_ is made of deoxyribonucleotides. They're nothing alike. Proteins are translated from the information in RNA, which is a minor variation of the information in DNA. Think of proteins as molecular machines that are made from the instructions in DNA, and you're closer to the truth.

<comment><USER3> The funny part is that when I first read this comment, the wrong post (GP) had -1 points. Now it's +1. That's two people smacking themselves. Congratulations.

On a side note: this brings up a great XKCD quote: "Someone is _wrong_ on the Internet". (<http://xkcd.com/386/>)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anyone want to sail through the Gulf of Aden? You might die. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/sailing/comments/g1y4l/anyone_want_to_crew_through_the_gulf_of_aden/

<comment><USER2> I'm going for it if he accepts me. I have some basic training experience in the Canadian Army(bum ankle). The chance to fire an AK and make a little cash while sailing around that part of the world...hell ya.

</comment><comment><USER3> Except if you are a US citizen other's tax dollars will have to be spent to rescue you anyway.

Why not plot a less stressful and more respectful course. Otherwise please do not send out a mayday.

I'm not excusing or condoning the (REAL) pirates behavior but they are doing that kind of stuff out of desperation since their country has zero economy, etc. You can't reason with crazy desperate.

<comment><USER4> At some point somebody has to stop the pirates we can't accept mid-eval behavior like that. Considering that this is way cheaper than a full war and that there are already warships of the cost of Somalia, this is likely to be a lot cheaper.

<comment><USER3> The UN/NATO is going to have a stop them, a few private individuals won't be able to and they'll get killed in the process.

Go watch the 60 Minutes documentary on this, the pirates keep upgrading their weapons by stealing larger and larger ships that happen to have them. I know virtually nothing about weapons but I suspect an AK-47 is not going to do much against a surface-to-surface missile or grenade launcher like I saw in the segment. They almost stole some tanks but the navy made it clear if they didn't return them they would sink the ship before they could get them to shore.

<comment><USER5> Militarily, I think a large commercial ship with existing radar and maybe cheap UAV support, and small arms, would be capable of defending itself from the pirates -- they generally raid in small craft, using AK-47s and RPGs, and rely on speed and the lack of resistance.

A small sailboat is probably too small to be defensible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only hn relevant thing to say here is that northern Somalia (somaliland) has some of the cheapest and best international telephony in Africa, thanks to some pirate gsm providers and satellite VoIP backhaul.

<comment><USER6> Cool. The crew can do some war driving as well as, uh, war fighting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is clearly insane, but god I'd love to do it...

<comment><USER8> So why don't you? It's looks like one life time opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone want to come hiking with me through Iran?</comment>


Apple's five worst products ever - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/isuck-apples-five-worst-products-ever/

<comment><USER2> I don't know, it seems this is more a list of products that didn't happen to strike the writer's fancy — rather than _canonical_ failures. Whether something is a success or failure is not a whole lot about personal opinion — it's about observable, measurable fact.

For instance, the white earbuds, whatever you may think of them — had a pretty important role in popularizing the iPod, as they stood out from the rest. iPod users, in spite of having the actual devices hidden in their pockets, could be identified from afar (among users of other unidentifiable brands of mp3 players). Look at the iPod commercials with the black silhouette people wearing white earbuds. I'd say Apple's earbuds, regardless of audio quality, has been a phenomenal success. They're not failures by any stretch of the imagination. You may think they suck, and you may be right, but they're not a failure.

About the same thing goes for iTunes. You may think it suck, and you might be right. But it's not a failure. It is a resounding success. iTunes has become the leader in music organization (second only to manual "organization" in ad- hoc folders). iTunes has been essential to making the organization, synchronization and purchasing of music an overall smooth experience.

While I agree with most of the points brought forth; iTunes is becoming increasingly bloated, being responsible for many things that has absolutely nothing to do with music — it maintaining that role has also made it easier for users already familiar with iTunes to start buying apps for the iPhone, synchronizing their calendar and contacts, etc.

I agree iTunes needs a bit of an overhaul, everything not related to music organization should be moved into separate apps dedicated to just doing that. So yeah, iTunes sucks. But it is not a failure — it is an enormous success.

Having the opinion that something sucks does not magically make it a failure.

<comment><USER3> Apple is a great company with many great products, but fanboyism irks me to no end. The article isn't about market failures, it's about bad products from a user standpoint. For the ones that I've used, I agree wholeheartedly:

Hockey Puck Mouse: I could never feel how it was oriented. I know I'm not the only person who had this problem.

Earbuds: They fall out of my ears if I'm not completely still. I know I'm not the only person who has this problem.

iTunes: Great in 2001. Now it's bloated, slow, doesn't handle large libraries well, has terrible error messages (or none at all), movie rentals don't work, sync'ing works weird, the list goes on and on and on. I know I'm not the only person, again.

I would add OS X to the list in terms of usability as well. Take, for example, the 7-year long thread on Jeremy Zawodny's blog about focus-follows-mouse. Why couldn't they put an option in the mouse settings to allow focus-follows- mouse?

<comment><USER4> _^ iTunes: Great in 2001. Now it's bloated, slow, doesn't handle large libraries well,_

What is considered a large library? I have about 3500 songs, and I am not having problems.

<comment><USER5> I have about 16k and it's almost unusable. From what I hear the PC version performance is much worse than the Mac version though.

<comment><USER6> I have 52k, usage is fine on iMac late 2007, but at times a little bit slow when scrolling through the cover art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They say of the Mighty Mouse: "inexplicably copying the ThinkPad's red nipple instead of using a scroll wheel"

That's completely incorrect. The Mighty Mouse has a mini trackball, the trackpoint is a pressure-sensitive stick.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. And it the scroll-ball were larger, I'd probably like it. Just do that, and make the 2 buttons physically distinct, then it would be a halfway decent mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Anything we missed? While these failures are big, we have restricted them to the modern-day Apple, and ignored the Jobs-less wilderness years of beige boxes and overpriced printers."

Didn't I see the Quick Take somewhere in the list ? As a matter of fact Steve Jobs "steved" (as we used to say at the time) those when he came back to Apple, with all the printers, the Newton, and everything that was not, well, a Macintosh (or the softwares running on it).

</comment><comment><USER10> _ahem_

Newton / Cube / Lisa / Pippin / 20th Anniversary Mac

<comment><USER11> I must stand up in defense of the Newton. It was way ahead of its time when it came to user experience. Version 1.0 was like most version 1.0s not quite ready and its handwriting recognition took a lot of criticism (even getting Doonesbury to riff on it). By version 2.0, that problem was completely fixed. Alas, 2.0 came 2 1/2 years after 1.0 and was too little too late. In addition, NewtonScript was an excellent language to program in (able to create apps quickly with a minimum of effort).

The Palm Pilot wouldn't have been what it was without Newton having tested the ground first and finding the mines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have one of the iHiFi's

I dunno, it's a pretty good speaker and it's nice that it's good for plugging into a computer, sticking the iPod in, and bringing outside.

The biggest problem with the damn thing is that the iPhone has always been ridiculously flaky with it, and I don't mean the cellular noise.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the author just doesn't like iTunes. So he picked four other products which he believes everyone dislikes, and which did not have so much market success, and says that iTunes should be disliked by everyone too. But as far as I know, iTunes is quite successful.

</comment><comment><USER14> They missed the worst one: the Mighty Mouse with the scrollball that you cannot clean.

<comment><USER15> There are lots of ideas at [http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200602101154178...](http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060210115417864) (first hit from [http://www.google.com/search?q=Mighty+Mouse+with+the+scrollb...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Mighty+Mouse+with+the+scrollball+that+you+cannot+clean)). Most of them seem pretty close to Apple's suggestions at <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1537> \- sometimes with alcohol instead of water.

Mine hasn't needed cleaning yet, but it's less than 12 months old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_...](http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_apple_flops)

</comment><comment><USER17> There have been actual failures, and then there is this list, seemingly chosen at random. Wired would do well to separate those categories.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is pretty shortsighted for being a "worst ever" list. What about the Pippin?</comment>


The joys of maintaining your own server - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/mockadillo/the-joys-of-maintaining-your-own-server-b030d7edafee <comment><USER2> Well yeah internet is full of bots scanning for vulnerabilities, nothing new here. Am I missing the point of this post?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, sorry if the point isn't clear, but, at least in my experience, the situation was different 10 years ago, there weren't as many bots, and you had to be guilty of success before being targeted. Nowadays all you need to do to be a target for bots is to exist.

<comment><USER3> What did you do such that we could trust your take?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been working on web projects for the last ~15 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The number of unauthorized SSH attempts will also very much depend on your IP address.

I've hosted my own SSH server at home and from a university dorm room. At university, I'd get way more attacks (usually from foreign IPs) than at home. Also, on IPv6-only, I got zero attacks. I run everything behind a Wireguard VPN now, so I don't know how things have changed in the past few years.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of attempts based on IP address type (residential, business, various universities, various clouds). How does the number of attacks compare within and between these categories? Perhaps there could be a cool graphic with arrows (or some other indicator) showing where attacks are coming from and targeting.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you change the SSH port be sure to tell fail2ban about that. ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> I had enabled the port forwarding on my home router for 5 hours, so I could get into my home server. I saw exactly same log pattern on my server's ssh logs.</comment>


FDA Cracking Down on Site That Lets You Take a Vision Test from Home - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/opternative-vision-fda-warning <comment><USER2> This is pretty dangerous. The reason a lens prescription is just that, something that must be prescribed to you by a certified professional, is because if it's wrong it can permanently damage your eyesight over time. I'm not saying the current system is perfect, but a self administered vision test that spits out a glasses prescription is a bad idea for the same reasons a self diagnosis quiz that prescribes medicine is a bad idea. It's self medication.</comment>


Economic Enlightenment does not Correlate with Going to College - <AUTHOR> http://econjwatch.org/articles/economic-enlightenment-in-relation-to-college-going-ideology-and-other-variables-a-zogby-survey-of-americans

<comment><USER2> The survey did seem to use a fairly biased set of questions for economic literacy, though, as even one libertarian blogger (who would otherwise agree with the sentiment) noted: [http://volokh.com/2010/05/07/ideology-and- economic-ignorance...](http://volokh.com/2010/05/07/ideology-and-economic- ignorance/)</comment>


Unify task commands across all languages and frameworks - <AUTHOR> http://adambrodzinski.github.io/doit

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, I made this.

Also if anyone can help me with stdout streams i'm having troubles getting all of a Github push to stream.</comment>


Ask HN: Risks (and benefits) of publishing my Facebook password - <AUTHOR> Facebook is understood to be fairly toxic, for various reasons. Rather than simply deleting my account, I would rather actually starve them of the datapoint that "this account was deleted on dd/mm/yy", and would prefer to simply voluntarily sabotage it. Before doing so, however, I'm curious as to the legal and other risks that might be incurred. Is doing so legal? I don't use Facebook as an authentication provider, so that is not a risk. There may be other technical reasons not to, however, that I haven't considered yet. <comment><USER2> If someone uses your Facebook account to do something illegal, like sell drugs or post child porn, you might get a visit from the police. Good luck explaining to them how you made your Facebook password public.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting point, and it brings up an interesting question: how to publish the password in such a way that it can be verified that it happened, and when. You'd want something publicly timestamped. Twitter might suffice.</comment></comment>


Flask-SQLA2api – SQLAlchemy Model to REST API in One Line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/acifani/flask-sqla2api <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Feel free to ask anything and feedback is very welcome.

This package is not yet fit for production usage, it is just a short exercise I did on weekends.</comment>


25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-11/msg00515.html <comment><USER2> With inline LaTeX previews, we're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term.

I've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than StackOverflow's markdown. Similarly, switching from Word to LaTeX was an improvement for most tasks once I got used to it.

Unfortunately, LaTeX has a bunch of its own shortcomings not related to it's non-WYSIWYG nature. For common tasks, I think going from markdown to LaTeX is ideal. Markdown itself is far from perfect, but it's the best compromise I've found especially with Pandoc's extensions.

So here's my idea for a great emacs-based document editor: markdown with inline math previews coupled with a full live preview to the side. All the necessary modes for this already exist (like whizzy TeX and AucTeX's previews), so it should be much easier to put together than a full WYSIWYG editor. More productive, too.

<comment><USER3> > _With inline LaTeX previews, we 're already surprisingly close. In fact, I'd > say that going all the way would be almost a step back. WYSIWYG is > ultimately not an ideal editing paradigm: it wins in the short term, being > easy to learn, but drags you down in the long term._

That --in the extend that it happens-- is a byproduct of the limitations of current WYSIWYG editors, not something inherent in the idea of WYSIWYG editing.

It's not like we had a lot of brainstorming and innovating solutions competing in this area (in fact, there are only 3, all too similar, major products: Word, Pages and Open Office, of which one has 90% of the users).

Second, what's "inconvenient" and "distracting" for one user, is a must and an inspiration for another.

Not to mention there are several different use cases for WYSIWYG editing, and LaTeX style editing doesn't cover them all. For example it's dreadful for quick experimentation with placement and formatting of small, disparate elements (basically, anything not according to the "spec").

> _I 've recently started using Quora a bit more. Unlike StackOverflow, they > use a WYSIWYG editor. I've found this significantly less convenient than > StackOverflow's markdown._

WYSIWYG's strong point is not small website comments.

<comment><USER4> > That --in the extend that it happens-- is a byproduct of the limitations of > current WYSIWYG editors, not something inherent in the idea of WYSIWYG > editing.

If WYSIWYG editing is not inherently limited, why do pretty much no editors actually support it? For example, spelling/grammar checkers are useful, but when pseudo-WYSIWYG editors implement them, they underline the text, or change its colour. This colouring and formatting doesn't appear when the document is printed. Hyperlinks are usually hit and miss; sometimes they print as 'blue and underline' (but, of course, are useless), sometimes they don't. Annotations don't print, but they do show on the screen. Automatically- generated content like page numbers are often shown differently, eg. with a grey background. Again, this doesn't appear when printed.

In short, what you see is certainly not what you get; but removing these non- WYSIWYG features would be a step backwards.

<comment><USER3> > _If WYSIWYG editing is not inherently limited, why do pretty much no editors > actually support it? For example, spelling /grammar checkers are useful, but > when pseudo-WYSIWYG editors implement them, they underline the text, or > change its colour. This colouring and formatting doesn't appear when the > document is printed._

That's just an extra convinience feature you can turn on or off, and doesn't have anything to do with whether the editor is WYSIWYG or not.

It's not like the program forces you to see red swiggly lines underneath words when editing...

> _Hyperlinks are usually hit and miss; sometimes they print as 'blue and > underline' (but, of course, are useless), sometimes they don't._

Which is configurable too in all editors I know of. And the "blue and underline" is not exactly useless -- it conveys the information that this part of the document was a hyperlink initially.

> _In short, what you see is certainly not what you get_

No, it's 99.9% of what you get, minus additional layers of information that people expect to be there, and you can turn on or off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I don't know how to use Org mode, and don't know what it does (it seems to > do so many things), but if it displays through Emacs then there are many > formatting features that it can't display in a WYSIWYG fashion like Libre > Office.

I can't believe Stallman doesn't know how to use Org mode. If he is interested in selling people on Emacs, then Org mode is one of the killer features for the presentation. I don't expect him to know something he has no use for, but he should know the most popular components in the Emacs ecosystem. Org mode is one of the only reasons I started using Emacs.

<comment><USER6> I completely believe it. First of all, Stallman isn't known for hiding his opinions, or masking his version of the truth.

But beyond that, Stallman has often failed or refused to use technologies that the rest of us take for granted. Years ago, I spoke with him about a proposed bill in the US Congress that would have affected intellectual property laws. (I can't remember the specifics.) At some point, Stallman, who had strongly encouraged people to contact their representatives to oppose the bill, told me that he hadn't actually read it. I told him that it was on the Web, to which he responded, "I don't surf the Web."

Now, I can understand being against certain browsers, servers, and operating systems. But to flat-out refuse to read things on the Web struck me as counterproductive. I don't know if he has changed his attitude toward the Web in the years since, but assume that when he says he doesn't use a certain technology, he means it.

<comment><USER7> > But to flat-out refuse to read things on the Web

As you described it, he did not actually flat-out refuse. He simply stated that he hasn't read all the documented published on the world wide web, since he don't "surf" the web.

His approach to the web has been described many times. When someone sends him a link that they want him to read, stallman uses the program wget to download the file and reads it offline.

<comment><USER6> When I specifically asked him if he had read the bill in question to which he was objecting, which was available on the Web, he said that he had not, because he doesn't surf the Web. He, not I, equated "surfing" with "reading documents."

The impression I got from that conversation was that Stallman makes no effort to go out and find things that would be useful and of interest to him.

I don't call that "surfing," but "research" and "responsible," especially from someone who then calls upon people to contact their public representatives.

I don't care how much he hangs out on Hacker News, or elsewhere. I do care that he clearly indicated, in that conversation, that he will not do the necessary legwork (which doesn't even require using your legs) that can even help to strengthen his arguments.

I also think that it's helpful for everyone to read things from opposing and diverse viewpoints. By only reading those documents that his supporters send him, I worry that Stallman is ignoring arguments that may inform his own, or even change them.

<comment><USER8> >I worry that Stallman is ignoring arguments that may inform his own, or even change them.

Of course he is! It is called confirmation bias. It is very very strong, especially with people like Stallman who hold strong beliefs. We are all guilty of it to some extent.

Here's some reading:

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

[http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation- bias/](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/)

[http://socialpsychologyeye.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/confirma...](http://socialpsychologyeye.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/confirmation- bias-satire-and-stephen-colbert/)

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.[Note 1][1] People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).

A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.

\----

The most interesting is the last link. They did a study about the show The Colbert Report, which is satire, He plays a parody of conservative political pundits. The study looked at the viewer's political beliefs and what they thought of Colbert's.

"More liberal participants believed Colbert was liberal and that the show was satirical. More conservative participants believed Colbert was conservative and genuinely believed his "satirical" arguments. Essentially, viewers of liberal and conservative orientations tended to perceive Colbert as supporting whatever views they personally held."

<comment><USER9> I actually read a fascinating article about the Colbert Report saying that conservative viewers of the show thought that he was a conservative satirising a liberal satirising a conservative. Fascinating, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this as staggeringly naive as it looks?

Some of the people responding are steering the discussion to a layout language with a preview window. I don't know if they are doing it because they prefer to work in such a user-hostile mode (I did this for a book, in Eclipse. Ugh.), or if they think this is a more sane goal.

WYSIWYG has its own issues. most users of word processors have no idea that paragraphs are objects in an object model, but the command structure only becomes clear when you realize that. Most users just hack at a document it until it looks right enough. At the really diabolical end of the spectrum I could show you an Ericsson documentation template that manages to manifest dozens of bugs in Word, laying in wait to eat your previous hour's work. I'm sure you have inherited documents like that.

It's all more or less a kludge, and WYSIWYG never is quite, nor is it real direct manipulation. At best it is something like "moderately friendly visual document CAD, if you get the trick behind the slick appearance."

<comment><USER11> _a layout language with a preview window_

aka digital typesetting

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting#Digital_era](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting#Digital_era)

If not quite the Correct Answer, it might be the Best Available Answer.

My mother used to be a Linotype ninja, blazing thru the sunday paper's ad inserts. The user input language was a page description language, little different from PostScript or HP's PCL (or HPGL/2). While modern systems are more accessible, I've not seen a system since that matched that concision and productivity.

I loved the precise control of WordPerfect (reveal codes) and FrameMaker (parametric styles). I can't comment on modern InDesign (stopped around version 2), but early on it was not considered a feature complete replacement for FrameMaker.

People speak highly of LaTex. I've not used it for real work.

I've done my share of UI, scenegraph, layout engines, plotter/print drivers, prepress / imposition, etc.

I gave up trying to integrate general purpose constraints systems into layouts. Too many edge cases, hard to debug. I now believe layouts heuristics should be implemented imperatively.

So I created DesignGridLayout, which captures grid based rules for UIs in a "fluent" API (aka method chaining). [https://designgridlayout.java.net/examples.html](https://designgridlayout.java.net/examples.html) (The awesome Jean-Francois Poilpret has maintained, extended the project for years.)

Though the box model sucks, I haven't yet given up on some mythical, simple scenegraphs + typography + content hybrid. I still don't know what that'll look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quite simply, explicit markup makes it very easy to see what formatting will be applied to what text.

WYSIWYG only shows you the end result, with no clean way to see how you got there. Was this font introduced because of some theme? Was it applied because of some toolbar button? Is it the result of some template? Was it copied from somewhere else, thereby baking someone else's theming into the copied text?

These are the questions that make WYSIWYG so confusing. These are the things that make explicit markup so straight forward. I don't think you can have WYSIWYG without the confusion or while maintaining the power of explicit markup.

If anything, Markdown or RST or Org provide a compelling middle ground: Markup is still explicit but minimal, and styling tries to come as close as possible to WYSIWYG without sacrificing control.

This, I think, is a far more compelling route to take than WYSIWYG or LaTeX- style explicit markup.

<comment><USER13> I prefer the paradigm where you edit in something like markdown but the live preview is available on the right hand side or down below the text. All it needs is a catchy acronym.

The controls for the text should be immediate in the text, that makes sense and is the most powerful implementation. But you have to see what it all means and be able to identify problems along the way when you make a mistake & know what your markdown is creating. Otherwise you type it out and notice that you forgot to force 15 line breaks.

<comment><USER12> I think this is usually called What You See Is What You Mean, or WYSIWYM.

However, there could be a performance problem. Font setting and layout in Latex is markedly superior to, say, web browsers or Word. But Latex often takes several seconds to lay stuff out. Then again, Indesign can do it, so it should be possible in general.

<comment><USER14> it is possible to do it.

without performance problems.

markdown has several such solutions, online and off. the offline apps are typically mac, the leaders being "marked" (marked2.com) which works with any text-editor, and "multimarkdown composer" (multimarkdown.com), which wraps a dedicated-editor around the conversion-routine.

i will soon be introducing my own light-markup system \-- z.m.l. (zen markup language) -- and will offer apps which are cross-platform offline, as well as web-apps, including one with an a.p.i. that can be used by anyone. send it a light-markup .zml file; it sends back .html.

for a similar online solution for markdown, see here: [http://markdownrules.com](http://markdownrules.com)

and this is where stallman's request has gone awry...

namely, you don't need to wrap the conversion-routines into the app, or change the interface of the app at all.

instead, simply route your light-markup plain-text file to a converter, and show the output in a preview window. and yes, it should be side-by-side with your editor and show the changes in real-time as you make (or save) them.

my light-markup system differs from markdown in that it: 1) is targeted at long-form documents, such as books, 2) avoids the problems which plague markdown, 3) focuses on lightness as an asset that _eases_editing_, rather than as something that _fosters_readability_of_the_raw_format_ (as there's no reason to read the file in that raw format).

speaking of readability, as well as my focus on long-form, .html is not the only output format supported by my system; we also need .epub, .mobi, .pdf, and still-to-come formats.

the other important thing about z.m.l. is that its focus on _books_ shines a different focus on needed functionality, compared to that provided by generation of a mere web-page.

all this and even more, coming before thanksgiving day...

-bowerbird

<comment><USER12> This sounds exciting! (Though I must say, I am all but married to Org at this point.)

On a different note though, I feel that Microsoft Word, and web browsers, really do a terrible job at rendering text. Kerning is often bad, there are frequent widows and orphans, pagination is often a mess, hyphenation is laughable. These are real issues and they are not solved by a different markup language.

So far, TeX and Indesign are the only software I know of that really manage to solve this problem. I would love to see a new export format that can deal with this.

Maybe what we really need is a new middle ground: A kind of LLVM for text processing. An intermidiary machine format that serves as a target for all different kinds of markup languages that can be further compiled to beautifully rendered text in whatever format you desire.

<comment><USER14> thanks! it's been so long, i lost my excitement. ;+)

here's my kickstarter, one jump-off point: > [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bowerbird/jaguar-cub- a-s...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bowerbird/jaguar-cub-a-simple- tool-for-great-e-books)

got a working web-app there, as an appetite-whetter.

 __*

also just posted "markdown considered harmful", at:

> [https://medium.com/the-future-of- > publishing/495ccfe24a52](https://medium.com/the-future-of- > publishing/495ccfe24a52)

needed to clear my plate / get that off my chest...

 __*

if you'd be so kind as to point to either of those, here at h.n. or elsewhere, i'd consider it an honor. (i have never been able to get any traction here; i guess i need to go see what the reddit kids say.)

 __*

i too am totally dissatisfied with web typography. it's atrocious. but a lot of the problems you note _can_ be corrected, such as widows, and pagination, if you adopt a mindset that considers it important.

and i won't stop until i've created e-books that are _both_ highly functional _and_ very beautiful.

anyway, thanks again.

-bowerbird

p.s. but i don't think we even need hyphenation now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm hoping this is a joke, otherwise

> Could people please start working on the features that are needed?

sounds far too like the completely detail-less requirements we get through from our clients like "please provide robust MI".

<comment><USER16> Visualize RMS as like the patron saint of a religion, which is full of schism and sub-sect.

He's using his position to influence mindshare, and he doesn't think he's got a handle on the details. He just wants some of his devotees to start kicking the problem around.

<comment><USER17> Does this style of management work for them? I'm not close enough to know if this is all that it takes.

<comment><USER18> Read the thread of comments, people take him seriously and are discussing the problem. I'd say, in the short term at least, it does work.

<comment><USER17> Right - but how about the long term?

My experience in the corporate world is things start with momentum, but without a cop managing all the details, things don't get over the finish line.

Does this method get projects over the finish line? I fully understand that it's unproductive to be a cop with high talent volunteers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the epitome of the challenge of open source.

RMS whines : _" 25 years ago I hoped we would extend Emacs to do WYSIWG word processing. That is why we added text properties and variable width fonts. However, more features are still needed to achieve this.

Could people please start working on the features that are needed?"_

And he's 100% accurate, it has been 25 years, and there is an open source WYSIWYG word processor, called Libre Office these days, but that isn't what RMS wants. He wants someone to do the work to make _his tool of choice_ into something which can do _what he wants to do in it._

A lot of people go this way, and we see several tools that all do variations on the same thing in their own peculiar way (Vive du choix!) but that means it is really really hard to figure out how to get somethings done when each set of tools rely on their own set of other tools.

The nice thing about Cathedrals is that you know what is expected of you :-)

<comment><USER20> I don't see why this is specific to Open Source. Android does all the same stuff iOS does. WebKit was a senseless clone of stuff already handled well by Gecko. How many Javascript interprers do we need in this life? What's the point of clang again when we have gcc and icc and msvc?

People work on what they want to work on, based on the products that they want (or that they think someone else might want to buy). Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong.

Sometimes they troll. RMS isn't known for that (at all), but... if you _did_ want to troll the free software nuts, WYSIWYG emacs certainly has to be up there on the list of flameworthy titles...

<comment><USER19> It is specific actually to all volunteer organizations. Such organizations have a hard time getting things done for which the population of the organization that would benefit is 'small' relative to the capable volunteers. I often use KiCAD as an example, its an excellent EDA program for Linux but is nearly as capable as early Windows offerings from commercial outfits were 10 years ago [1]. The challenge was that people who wanted to use EDA tools couldn't write one, people who could write EDA tools didn't need one. So until Jean-Pierre came along there were no EDA tools for Linux.

Basically in a 'free software' context, there was no way for people who wanted an EDA tool to fund the development of that tool spontaneously. Jean-Pierre got it to the point where is was kinda sorta useful and it has since gathered enough momentum to get to be very useful.

So RMS wants emacs to have a WYSIWYG mode, and has wanted it for 25 years, but there is no way for him and say the other 150 people [2] in the world that want that to express some sort of financial interest so that someone who could do it would be willing to sit down and spend a year and do it.

At a company they have this revenue stream and someone says "We need a new product" and they pick one and set some developers on the path of making it real. But in the open source world we don't have that (either the unified direction or the funding to push for it).

I've long felt that we could perhaps create a 'prize' system ala the X-prize where people could donate to a 'prize fund' if they wanted something, like "I'll donate $10 to a prize fund for an awesome CAD tool that runs on Linux." and that prize fund would grow as people donated to it, and anyone who wanted to claim the prize could do so by shipping / releasing a product that met the requirements of the people who had donated to the prize fund. Once a prize fund got to $100K or so I'm sure you would find a couple of programmers who would take the chance to sit down and write it to claim the prize. This would satisfy RMS' philosophy that you pay for the creation of code, not the use or redistribution of it.

[1] This is not a disparagement of KiCAD, it started much later and it is going through much the same evolution of other tools that started decades before it.

[2] This number is pulled out of the air because it is also a problem of identifying how many people would like this feature, could be 10 could be 10,000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Stallman lacks a coherent vision. He has an end goal but he really doesn't have a great plan to get there. It's really frustrating. Emacs could be a lot better. For instance, it has taken forever to get a high-performance Lisp working inside of Emacs. I think Guile is partly there?

Anyway, since we'll all be long dead before his plan starts to work, I think the better solution is to support inexpensive software. For example, I pay for Sublime Text. Recently I bought PixelMator and Sketch, and I'm planning on learning how to use them soon. :-)

Sure it would be great if Free Software ruled but faster change comes with a paid ecosystem. The real problem was that software was expensive. If it's simply inexpensive, we'll get most of what we need.

<comment><USER22> The real problem was that software was expensive??

Also, I don't know how much of the success/failure of FOSS can be pinned on RMS. He's just one man. The plan was never for the entire movement to be dependent on him.

<comment><USER23> Moreover, the amount of work that he has done towards this end is _incredible_. His productivity (at _least_ in the early days of GNU) was astounding and inspiring. Perhaps one RMS didn't get us there, but two? Or five? It'd be a treat to know what that would have looked like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Out of curiosity, what is Stallman a doctor of? Wikipedia says that he did not finish his Ph.D. Or is that one of the honorary doctorates he received?

<comment><USER25> It's a pain to see "Dr" next to bullshit like this:

      > "Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software."

You don't like skype, fine. I am prety sure what it enables millions of people to do: freely communicate no matter the distance, but I don't really get what freedoms it denies. Do I lose som freedom just but installing it, or must I use it for that to take an effect?

<comment><USER26> Freedom, in Stallmans words, is not meant to be 'free as in beer' (like free skype calls). Instead he refers to the freedom to read, modify, understand, and ultimately _choose_ everything about the software that you use. I.e. be able to answer these questions (say about Skype):

\- Is any communication not properly encrypted

\- Is your communication being spied on / being recorded

\- Is there a way to add feature "x" to the application

\- Is there a way to remove feature "x" from the application

\- Is there a way to use the application on your specific hard / software

With Skype, none of that is possible. You can't see what's happening with your Skype calls internally, you can't see if there's somebody else listening. If Skype comes out with a new interface, and you really don't like it, you can't change it, if Skype removes support for older operating systems that you just happen to have to use because your IT department still wants to run Windows XP, then you can't support, change or fix any of it.

Of course, Skype is a free product, so you may say the proverbial never look a gift horse in the mouth, but Emacs is also a free product, and provides all these benefits I listed above.

You have to understand Stallman as someone who is concerned about the future, not so much about the now. Right now using Skype is all fine, but imagine the world in 20 years time, when everything is connected to software, and every movement you make is tracked. Wouldn't it be nice if all the software then would be fully transparent, allowing you to see every detail that is happening, and change it all to your liking, without being afraid of what happens if you do this or that.

Sounds like an utopist dream right? And Stallman is the guy who tries to fight for it, however unwinnable the fight may seem.

<comment><USER27> Fair enough. But then he says:

> Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.

Let's go over your list for an ordinary phone call. Here the 'client app' is your phone terminal, and the 'server' is the phone operator.

> \- Is any communication not properly encrypted

Yes, it's not encrypted at all.

> \- Is your communication being spied on / being recorded

I would say yes, at a similar level of probability as a skype call.

> \- Is there a way to add feature "x" to the application

> \- Is there a way to remove feature "x" from the application

The specs for the phone terminal are not open-source, so you can only do that with some hacking. The same is true for skype, even though there it might be more complicated technically.

> \- Is there a way to use the application on your specific hard / software

Irrelevant for a physical phone.

The main difference between the skype client and a phone, is that a phone follows an open protocol, and therefore you can build your own. This is the only reason I can think of why using a phone is 'free' while using skype is not. But I think that if the skype protocol was made open, Stallman would still argue that it is not free and therefore should not be used, and therefore I do not understand his argument.

<comment><USER28> > Yes, it's not encrypted at all.

Right, but at least you can _tell_. No-one knows whether the encryption Skype claims to be applying actually works. And you can integrate an encryption system into a phone if you want to, whereas if you try and do that with skype they'll change the client so that your thing doesn't work any more.

> The specs for the phone terminal are not open-source, so you can only do > that with some hacking.

Speak for yourself. There are open source phones available if you want them. There are no open-source skype clients.

> Irrelevant for a physical phone.

Sure. But I don't have to use a physical phone. I can run a virtual phone on my freebsd box, whereas I can't run skype.

> The main difference between the skype client and a phone, is that a phone > follows an open protocol, and therefore you can build your own. This is the > only reason I can think of why using a phone is 'free' while using skype is > not.

That's not a small difference; I'd say it's the most important difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've always felt it was this kind of thinking that puts Emacs at odds with the UNIX philosophy of _do one thing well_. Unless your _one thing_ is everything- you-can-do-with-text.

<comment><USER30> Emacs is a conscious computer virus with the aim of hollowing Unix out function by function, eventually to overthrow it. It's like a vampire: a shadow of what made it beautiful in life (elisp vs the old lisp machines), sustained mostly by blood (of its new users) and its long-term goal of revenge.

<comment><USER31> I read this comment and got so mad that I looked at your previous comments and submissions. They seem high-quality.

I think I concede that I didn't get your joke. Oops. :)

If you're being serious, FLAME ON.

<comment><USER30> Believe it or not, I'm actually a diehard emacs fan. That's why I buy into its mythology enough to make jokes about it :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Could people please start working on the features that are needed?_

As someone aware of gnu, but not an active participant, how effective are requests like this? Does "Can people start working on this?" actually get results? I'm curious as this gets to the heart of why they may have trouble finishing things. (You can't toss money at someone to do the dirty work)

I'm coming with an open mind, and would like to hear either side of this.

</comment><comment><USER32> Personally I think that orgmode is more useful than WYSIWYG

</comment><comment><USER33> I love emacs, and although I have long tried switching to other editors (I am fairly determined to use web based applications only, brackets is getting close) I havent been able to replace it yet.

However its the only application I didnt know how to copy and paste in when I started using it, its still the only application I use that I dont know how to resize the text in.

It would be kinda nice to see people work on those type of things.

<comment><USER34> > _I am fairly determined to use web based applications only_

That sounds really unpleasant to me. Why on earth would you want to do that?

<comment><USER33> Because I likely dont think the things you relate to web software being unpleasant are inherent to the actual platform and can be fixed, both by 3rd parties producing better web based software and by the platforms themselves being fixed.

That combined with the advantages of having a single, cross platform runtime platform that is shared as opposed to owned as being too important to ignore, I think its silly that people have to consider writing the same app 3 times at a minimum to reach a reasonable portion of the audience.

<comment><USER34> My biggest issue with web apps is that I don't have control of the software -- someone else can unilaterally decide to change the interface or functionality from day to day. (GMail is an example of a case that regularly irritates me by doing this.)

While I appreciate what you're saying about a common, open runtime being valuable -- I've considered using a self-contained, special purpose browser as the GUI for a project before myself -- I feel like web apps give users _less_ freedom ultimately. Even in the worst case proprietary desktop app with nasty DRM, I could resort to reverse engineering the executable on my machine to find out what it does if I really had to; as soon as you move the computation to a remote server, you're totally at the whim of the operator for the continued ability to even access the program.

Edit: Removed redundant phrasing.

<comment><USER35> Seems like Firefox OS' packaged web apps (shipped as a zip file) solves those issues without losing the common runtime benefits.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Apps/Publishing/Packaged...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/Apps/Publishing/Packaged_Apps)

<comment><USER28> If you just want a common runtime, what's wrong with java apps (or the CLR or similar efforts)?

(I mean yes, performance sucks and swing looks terribly ugly, but those were once the same problems on the web; they're not unsolvable by any means)

<comment><USER35> _If you just want a common runtime, what 's wrong with java apps_

Oracle v. Google. By CLR I assume you mean the CLI, but only a fool would trust a "standard" controlled by MS and driven by a proprietary implementation, not to mention that the latest version doesn't even have a patent promise from them.

<comment><USER28> Oracle lost the lawsuit, except for the part where Google literally copied one of their classes.

<comment><USER35> And all they had to do was pay Keker & Van Nest for two years, without knowing whether they'd win or not - and Google didn't even make a VM that can run Java apps!

Not to mention that Oracle has appealed, so we still don't know if Google is clear or not.

If you want to risk getting yourself or your company involved in that quagmire, by all means do so.

<comment><USER28> This is FUD, pure and simple. Anyone can be sued for anything.

<comment><USER35> Oracle has already - and is currently - suing for implementing a competing JVM. It's not FUD to suggest they might do it again.

FUD is what Oracle is doing; blame them, not me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The thing about "What You See Is What You Get" is that you have to define 'where you get it'. You have to define 'it'.

The implementation will look vastly different if you define 'where' as a printer, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, wearable device, etc. It sounds like RMS means his desktop/laptop computer. On the upside, you have a user archetype: Richard Stallman. A good product manager would start building up a list of user stories:

      - As Richard Stallman, I want *goal* so that *benefit*.

<comment><USER3> > _The implementation will look vastly different if you define 'where' as a > printer, desktop, tablet, mobile phone, wearable device, etc._

Not since more than a decade ago, when we started using the same rendering infrastructure (e.g Display Postscript, Quartz, Cairo, what Windows uses etc) for both print and display.

In fact nowadays, with hidpi (retina) displays, you even get similar resolution between the average print and monitor.

<comment><USER36> I have a couple HTML documents open on my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. All three look different.

I opened a couple of eBooks on Kindle and iBooks on my MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. All three look different.

All three use Display Postscript, CoreGraphics and Quartz. All three look different. WYSIWG depends on where.

I don't own a printer, but I bet if I printed from all three devices all three documents would look different.

<comment><USER37> HTML and CSS are very, _very_ explicitly _not_ WYSIWYG. Their specifications are crystal clear on this point. The same HTML document can and should be displayed differently depending on device.

Your ebooks are also not WYSIWYG. They're also specifically designed to display differently on different devices, and according to user preferences for things like font, text size, brightness, background, line spacing, etc..

WYSIWYG is exactly the _opposite_ of these formats, and does _not_ depend on the device. Postscript and PDF are WYSIWYG.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Quick! Someone add emacs bindings to MS Word, change the styling a little bit, and we can get Stallman to unknowingly be using the devil's software :)

<comment><USER39> The first part's done, at least: [http://sourceforge.net/projects/womacs/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/womacs/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is this Stallman-humor?

<comment><USER41> I even checked the calendar- for a second I thought it's the first of April.

<comment><USER42> Stallman always seems like a caricature of himself to me.

I think he did the world good deeds, but fun that gets made of him and the stuff he says himself are indistinguishable to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> We've already run the experiment and seen what happens when people try to collaborate with the Gnu Emacs team (jwz, lemacs, xemacs).

</comment><comment><USER44> Neat. Really. I really want to use emacs but I find it hard to justify learning all it's intricacies when I'm only going to use it at certain times while programming.

This kills two birds with one stone, gets me off MS Office and into keybind heaven

<comment><USER45> For some people Emacs acts like a maelstrom for everything you do on a computer. In the beginning you use it to code in one language, then in another language, then you use it for (La)TeX, then you use it as an organizer, then you use it to read your mail, then your RSS feeds, then you embed it into text-fields in your web browser...

At some point everything that does not act like Emacs feels annoying and uncooperative. That justifies the learning curve easily.

<comment><USER16> Amen. Think of 20 years using the grossly identical UI for all those disparate tasks... How much time do you think you lose learning the little quirks of a new app just because you're typing things inside a differently labelled box?

And then you can script or macro all of those processes using the same set of concepts...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Reminded me of this: [http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr- Fun/df200002/df20000210.jpg](http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr- Fun/df200002/df20000210.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER47> I like enriched-mode for simple markup purposes, like bolding headers. It's nothing spectacular, but makes an on-screen document that much more readable, and it doesn't add that much bulk to a text file, just a few extra markup directives.

It's easy to use, too. Select the text, ALT-o b = bold, and so forth.

Still, a true WYSIWYG editing mode would be cool once in a while. Although, it's not that much trouble to select text and paste into a nearby LibreOffice window for true formatting.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder what is preventing Stallman from doing it himself? It is, after all, open source.

<comment><USER49> Time. He is quite busy with conferences and FSF stuff.

<comment><USER48> Time? It's been 25 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> but we have many great wysiwig editors... isn't emacs specifically for all the people who want a highly configurable weird and wonderful dev tool and care little about wysiwig because they are writing code etc.?

i don't agree with what those kinds want.. but they should be allowed to have it. :)

</comment><comment><USER51> How about making emacs close when I hit the "close window" button on Windows 7?

<comment><USER52> Do you start emacs.exe or runemacs.exe?

<comment><USER51> Manually runemacs.exe, but I'm not sure which mode Windows has chosen to auto- associate with *.log files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Dear Mr. Stallman,

I don't think that's how open source works, but hey, can't hurt to ask.

</comment><comment><USER54> Why don't we have both: a WYSIWYG Designer, and a Source code editor?

That way you get productive immediately with the designer, yet still have the power to fine-tune every detail using the text editor.

<comment><USER55> You mean like Oxygen, just to mention one of them?

[http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/WYSIWYG_Editors.html](http://www.oxygenxml.com/xml_editor/WYSIWYG_Editors.html)

There are quite a few products already, for those willing to pay for the software they use.

<comment><USER49> Seems nice, but it is not freedom software. But I would move to use this docbook, ie xml and xsl as external file formatd for an emacs word processor.

<comment><USER55> Freedom software?!

I use a lot of FOSS software, but I never put religion over convenience.

Plus, as someone that earns money selling software developer skills, I tend to look down to companies using FOSS software as free beer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> How are one supose to get usefull wysiwg in the console. You are basicly restricted to bold and a few colors.

I guess that could work but when i want anything useful like larger font size. Then what?

</comment><comment><USER57> No thank you; I like Emacs as a text editor, and if I need a word processor, there are alternatives out there. No need to make Emacs even more complex.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm surprised there's no shortcut for this.

</comment><comment><USER58> Take a look at asciidocs, really a great solution.

</comment><comment><USER59> ironic he recommends regular phone calls which use software that is not free to just using skype</comment>


5th Hacker News Cologne Meetup - <AUTHOR> http://fr.anc.is/2012/03/22/5th-hacker-news-cologne-meetup/

<comment><AUTHOR> Can the people I mention in this blog post step up & tell me where I should link to? I'm sorry, I did an even lousier job than usual at remembering names last night, prolly the beer </excuse>

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I linked up Matt & Solution Space. Who was the hardware guy? </blush>

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Awesome meetup and great group of guys! Thank you so much to Solution Space for hosting the meeting, the new space has dramatically increased the value of these meetings!!

<comment><USER2> <https://www.facebook.com/solutionspace></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where's July's "Who's Hiring" Post? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Those are posted on the first _weekday_ of the month.

<comment><USER3> Dang, it should really be automated away.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best technology privacy guide? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://www.privacytools.io/](https://www.privacytools.io/) is worth reading

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://spreadprivacy.com/](https://spreadprivacy.com/) from DuckDuckGo is quite good</comment>