Timelapse Photography with your spare Ubuntu Box and Digital Camera - <AUTHOR> http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/455975748/timelapse-photography-with-your-spare-ubuntu-box-and

<comment><USER2> Timelapse photography is kick ass and I am all for them, but I wonder if dedicating an entire computer for this task along with the camera is the right way of going about it (unless overkill is the motive). How about a more compact/cheaper solutions such as an intervalometer for dslr (buy or build one), or if you have a canon p&s camera using the CHDK firmware project <http://chdk.wikia.com> which offer the intervalometer feature....

<comment><USER3> Usually one would not leave a DSLR or any digicam unattended, so you if you have an extra laptop laying around this would be an easier solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was definitely a case of "this is what I have laying around." It's just set up in my apartment at the moment. I also agree; a hardware solution would be better for taking timelapses out and about -- but there's a ton of cool stuff you can take timelapses of around your house. And more people probably have an extra computer than a shutter timer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's one I made with my iPhone propped up on the countertop, not long after Auctomatic was acquired and we all moved to Vancouver <http://vimeo.com/1407316>

</comment><comment><USER5> Fun! I love timelapse photography. I used a similar method to timelapse myself working at my desk for a day - <http://posterous.jazzychad.com/office-time- lapse-video>

<comment><USER6> Interesting, you tend to touch your face a lot as you sit there (unless you are eating non-stop). I used to do that as well, but when someone pointed it out to me I became keenly aware of how often I did it, and now I don't do it as much.</comment></comment>


NASA Just Launched Its New Perseverance Rover to Mars - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-watch-nasa-launch-its-new-perseverance-mars-rover/ <comment><USER3> Really excited about this one. It's a sample cacher, so is the beginning of the sample return effort. It also has an _in situ_ resource utilization demonstration involving capturing CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and splitting it into oxygen (and carbon monoxide fuel) using a solid oxide electrolysis cell. That kind of tech is critical for human missions.

And, of course, the helicopter!

<comment><USER4> How will the probe return the Martian samples? Is there going to be a round- trip mission to Mars in the future which will be able to take these samples back with it?

<comment><USER5> No, leaving them in place for possible future mission

<comment><USER6> That's neat, but I can't help but wonder how it's more cost-effective than having the possible future mission reach a scoop out once it gets there and collect its own samples.

"Hi Mars Recon 1! I'm Mars Perseverance! I brought you some decades-old rocks and dirt!"

"Uh, thanks Perseverance. I, uh, might get my own though." ;)

<comment><USER7> I have yet to hear a good explanation for this. Rendezvous on the surface of the planet sounds much more challenging than simply taking new samples, even assuming you need significant equipment to ensure you're taking the most interesting samples.

<comment><USER3> Perseverance will land using terrain-relative autonomous navigation, demonstrating fairly precise landing.

There are multiple reasons to split the mission. Perhaps the main one is that ~1 ton is approximately the upper limit of existing Mars landing technology which is enough for a powerful rover like Perseverance that can carry several sample return canisters (and live long enough to find really good samples) OR a rocket capable of returning the samples back (with just a small, basic canister retriever rover). Yeah, you could just put a sampling arm on the rocket lander, but that's a lot of wasted opportunity (heh).

Perseverance should have plenty of range, and the autonomous landing navigation tech should have sufficient precision that surface rendezvous should not be a major challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And not a single picture of the Rover can be seen in the article.

For the curious: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_\(rover\))

<comment><USER9> Aside from the drone, it's a Curiosity rover with upgraded tires (and diff instrument package). I think that is actually an incredibly exciting statement, not boring: Nasa has such high confidence in the refinement of Mars rovers that they're only making small changes now.

<comment><USER10> From what the guide at JPL said when I went on a tour there and got to see the Perseverance rover in the cleanroom, was that they simply had enough spare parts from building the Curiosity that it was easy/worth building this second one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's awesome, but I'd also call it a reality check if you believe that the future of space exploration is unmanned. Curiosity landed landed 8 years ago and has covered the equivalent of a day's hike (23km) for a human. It's got to stop and drill, take photos, etc, but it still probably represents only several days worth of tasks for a human.

Perseverance has better instruments, but is the same platform and weight because there's no rockets capable of putting anything larger on Mars. It's also not going to be doing anything faster than Curiosity did. The rate of improvement of these robots is really slow.

I'm really hoping the next generation of reusable/refillable rockets changes things.

<comment><USER12> While true, it's not a good argument, humans would require much more equipment, the rover is limited by the amount of weight we can put on Mars, if you use the same weight allowance that even modest manned missions to mars would require on rovers you'll get a very different coverage.

Humans are important because they can think and be in the loop where it matters most, but it's not that they'll be able to cover that much more ground. We don't have the technology to allow for a human to trek 23km on mars yet, even when we will I don't see NASA or anyone approving such a mission so now you need a vehicle capable of transporting humans, providing emergency shelter and life support, the longest single manned trip we've taken on a celestial body was about 7km on lunar roving vehicles.

Yes those covered usually around 30KM in a single mission but not in a single trip, all trips were well within visual range and well within recovery distance if need be.

<comment><USER13> The longest manned lunar rover trip was more like 15km (7.5km out and back on Apollo 17) and the limiting factor there was that the astronauts had to be ready to walk back if it broke down. If the mission called for the astronauts to walk 23km in a single trip on Mars, designing the technology for that would not be a huge leap.

I agree the extra weight required for life support and a return journey would be far greater than what the unmanned rovers need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm excited for Ingenuity, the Mars Helicopter Scout!

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:List_of_active_Martian_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:List_of_active_Martian_Air_Force_aircraft)

I couldn't resist.

<comment><USER15> Why "air force" for a civilian research aircraft?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In terms of computing, anyone knows what's the spec and what's the software stack like? Assembly machine codes?

<comment><USER17> Same as the Curiosity rover back in 2011:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750)

[https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/](https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If budget was not an issue is there a reason that we don't launch multiple rovers during the mars window?

Would one rover team be able to manage multiple rovers?

<comment><USER17> Good question. I imagine that communication infrastructure would have to be taken into consideration, but I don't know much of the details. The rover has the following capabilities for comms, but I don't know what the limits are in Mars orbit for relays:

\- UHF up to 2 Mbps

\- X-band High Gain 160/500 bits per second

\- X-band Low Gain about 10 bits per second

[https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...](https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communications/)

<comment><USER19> How do we communicate with the rovers when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun?

<comment><USER20> Sounds like it doesn't last all that long. They have a keep-alive program running during, and then get back to work once the connection is restored:

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute- wh...](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-what-happens- when-the-sun-blocks-our-signal/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know why the Chinese probe which seems a lighter payload needs a heavy lift Long March 5 rocket, while Perseverance only requires a medium lift rocket? Is it because of some different approaches in the orbit taken to Mars?

Also how does the UAE probe's approach/trajectory to Mars.

<comment><USER22> I believe the Chinese mission actually does have more mass overall - <USER2> the rover is a lot smaller, they're also sending a large orbiter and a landing platform to deliver the rover to the surface.

<comment><USER6> That's cool. If NASA and CNSA can work the details out, they can share comms; it's always good to have more redundant comms solutions in orbit.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask) NASA is very restricted in what it can do with China, so probably not. But NASA does utilize ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter in addition to their own Mars orbiters for relay operations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NA...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NASA)

<comment><USER21> I heard CNSA is also planning to use an ESA orbiter as backup comms relay, besides using the ESA ground tracking stations as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The rovers are very advanced. And they are coming back!! That's a major plus.

<comment><USER24> Coming back?</comment></comment>


Payments startup WePay raises $15M, kills direct-to-consumer offering - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/16/wepay-15-million-series-c/ <comment><USER2> The headline is linkbait. They didn't "pocket" anything, just raised $15M.

<comment><USER3> To be fair when I read that headline I immediately knew it meant they raised $15 million. I would use that term.

<comment><USER4> maybe it's because I'm not a native english speaker and don't understand the financial side very well, but I thought they had really pocketed the profits and devalued the company in the way. The fact that they killed one of the products kinda reinforced that notion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This actually a very exciting development. As a B2B provider of fundraising software for nonprofits, StayClassy (www.stayclassy.org), we do everything we can to put our customers' brands first. This reduces donor confusion, and ends up helping everyone involved be more successful.

Having WePay sunset their consumer-facing products has a similar effect in that it allows us to transact more money through WePay while reducing potential confusion around which services are responsible for which part of the fundraising process.

The WePay team has always been extremely responsive to questions and feature requests, so I'm excited to see what they do with the added resources and renewed focus on partner services.

<comment><USER6> > we do everything we can to put our customers' brands first. This reduces > donor confusion, and ends up helping everyone involved be more successful.

Yup, this is very important: it's one of the reasons why Balanced is 100% white label. We've heard this sentiment echoed over and over again from our customers. They want to own that relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I looked around for a simple pay solution to integrate into my site and chose wepay about a year ago. It was one of the few services where I didn't have to become a "pay API code ninja" to use. I got an email that they will also phase out the easy-to-use buttons.

I want to focus on delivering value to my customers - I'm not trying to become a pay button implementation expert. I'm not very happy about wepay making this move. I think I am going to be switching to stripe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Keith - I'm sorry the shutdown is disruptive to your business. Discontinuing our direct-to-merchant products was a tough call for us and something we debated intensely.

At the end of the day, unlike Stripe which is building broader payment functionality - we're trying to provide payments for a very focused usecase: platforms (like marketplaces, crowdfunding sites, small business software, etc)

Any product that isn't directly working towards that takes resources away from our platform work. In addition, because it isn't our core focus, it won't be a best-in-class product. That's why we made the tough call to do this.

If there's anything I can do to help make the transition to Stripe or anyone else easier, please let me know - email@example.com Thanks for being a customer.

<comment><USER8> Stripe targets marketplaces too: [https://stripe.com/connect](https://stripe.com/connect) \-- you have your work cut out for you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, we have a lot of respect for the guys & gals at Stripe. Patrick, John & I were in the same YC batch and we know them well. I think we have different visions - in my words (not theirs), Stripe is looking to build a general- purpose payment API for developers. WePay is trying to build a payment company to serve platforms only.

We believe we can service platforms better by focusing on that usecase. For example, we built Veda, our risk engine the specializes in underwriting the risk of individuals and small businesses using social media. Because of this, we can pay out marketplace sellers faster, collect less data from them (making signup easier), and not hold the marketplace accountable for fraud loss.

I think that platforms are such an interesting segment of ecommerce that they deserve special attention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use WePay's invoices for a non-profit that I help run. While they weren't perfect (what is?) they did the job and let me focus on other things. I'm now on the lookout for a simple invoicing platform that supports single and multi- payment invoices and some basic branding capabilities. I might even look at building something on their API or Stripe (would lean towards Stripe as I've used them before but IIRC their fees are a touch higher).

Sad to see these services go, but I can imagine that the support burden of a consumer-facing service is something they'll be glad to be rid of if nothing else.

<comment><USER10> I'm not quite sure what your needs are, but as a consultant, I've used Wave ([http://www.waveapps.com/](http://www.waveapps.com/)) for invoicing and basic bookkeeping, and it's worked out pretty well.

<comment><USER9> That actually looks pretty good. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Killing the P2P pay features? Let's do a little detective work..."Other investors include Max Levchin, former chief technology officer of PayPal."

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a much larger opportunity in serving other companies who are building specific usecases and need payment functionality, versus trying to be the best at everything yourself.

<comment><USER11> Then why does PayPal persist in offering P2P?

<comment><AUTHOR> PayPal uses P2P as a way to get users to link their bank accounts. Then later, when those users are checking out at a merchant, PayPal tries to trick/strongly encourage those users to pay with that linked bank account, instead of a credit card.

The economics are dramatically different - PayPal makes about 3% of the transaction on a bank account funded payment, they make much less than 0.5% on a credit card funded payment.

So P2P is a loss leader to drive funding mix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there anything that WePay is offering that Balanced doesn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bill from WePay here

The fundamental difference with WePay is that we take the risk of loss, so marketplaces don't lose money to fraud. Balanced holds the marketplace liable for chargebacks.

Since they aren't taking the risk, Balanced does offer a greater flexibility around the user experience. We have produce improvements in the works to accomplish our vision of complete flexibility & no risk of loss. We also don't charge for payouts, which can make a significant pricing difference for marketplaces.

<comment><USER13> Can't wait to see the "complete flexibility" thing show up. Once I don't have to ask my customers to make an extra click to accept payments I'll take a look at your solution again. Until then, we'll stick with Balanced.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. It's tricky to both take the risk and not have a relationship with the seller, hence why we insist on it right now. If we pushed the risk to the marketplace, it would be trivial - but this isn't something we believe is valuable in the long term.

>Once I don't have to ask my customers to make an extra click to accept payments I'll take a look at your solution again.

You actually can setup users via an API call today (so they can start accepting payments immediately) using our register call. They then have 14 days to confirm their email and set a password. On many sites this improves conversion double digit percentages over alternatives like PayPal.

[https://www.wepay.com/developer/reference/user#register](https://www.wepay.com/developer/reference/user#register)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Used WePay for years. They never fixed several problems with their interface, so now I have followed their link to EventSpot (Constant Contact), but Constant Contact does't even support WePay as a provider. Always feels bleeding edge using WePay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bill from WePay here. Sorry you had that experience. EventSpot hasn't gone live with their integration yet, but they will before we shut down our Event tool. We'll do everything we can to make the transition smooth - please let us (or me) know if we can help. email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com

Edit: More info here [https://support.wepay.com/entries/31989493-Event- management-...](https://support.wepay.com/entries/31989493-Event-management- with-EventSpot)

<comment><USER14> I worked with support on issues, but was told that nothing would be changing. Basically seems that WePay was never committed to explaining things well, or a user interface. This change was certainly explained poorly. EventSpot didn't even know what was happening, though they eventually had someone in the know get back to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's a bummer. I thought WePay was trying to be something like a more modern version of PayPal's "add to cart" and "donate" buttons, with additional API features for more advanced setups.

So what's a good way to get an "add to cart" button that you can paste into some html and have customers check out without registering for accounts or seeing too much confusing 3rd party branding?

<comment><USER16> [http://www.fleapay.com](http://www.fleapay.com) \- full disclaimer: I'm a founder (and we're hiring).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I already replied to the team with similar sentiments, but I think this is a great move.

Many of their D2C products competed with the businesses that were using their APIs, so it makes sense to pick a channel and focus on just one side of the equation.

I really like everything about WePay other than the fact that it's limited to the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! we'll fix that last part soon.

<comment><USER5> Can't wait!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TIL: wepay had a direct to consumer offering.

<comment><USER11> It did. I considered it for freelance billing at one time. In fact, I signed up, but for life getting in the way never finished setting it up. Guess I can cross that one off my to-dos!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> WePay simply has the best business / API combination out there right now. No monthly fee, sure that is important, but getting your money deposited to your account ASAP is the main value and no amount of tech, no matter how simple does what WePay can accomplish.

Writing some OAuth code is pretty much standard fare amongst the API providers....getting your cash? Now that's a different story.

There's no other API out there that is as transparent or seamless to a business, without the new business disruption of having to wait 1 week (or more) for the cash.

</comment><comment><USER20> At least among my friends Venmo totally dominates the so-called "direct-to- consumer" payment market. Maybe they just didn't anticipate hitting critical mass in competition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bill from WePay here

Venmo is a great product (I use it too! And so does Lucas.)

We originally launched WePay thinking we could build a great P2P experience and charge fees for it. We found that end-users preferred free options like Venmo & PayPal versus paid versions, so we gradually drifted up market in response.

We ended up serving platforms because they aggregate lots of individuals in a context where they expect to pay for payment processing. It leverages our core capability of processing payments for individuals, but it does so in a context where our business model makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there something like "app-fees" ([https://www.wepay.com/developer/platform/app- fees](https://www.wepay.com/developer/platform/app-fees)) for paypal? Normally I would simply use wepay but it is not available for Germany, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> not yet, sorry. but we're on our way as fast as possible

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sad about this. Quite a lot of non-profits and activist organizations use WePay for their campaigns and organizing. It was one of the backbones of local Occupy fundraising in many cities.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Occupy Movement were some of our earliest customers. Our hope is to continue to serve them through our donation partners (like GoFundMe, Fundly, GiveForward, etc) now.

WePay will still be the same backend, but you'll benefit from our partners' software, which is far better for donations than ours is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >But its primary use will be international expansion

EMEA? APAC? I guess both, and it'd be nice in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER24> wouldn't be surprised to see someone buy these guys up pretty soon.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does WePay support ACH debits (payments from a bank account)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Set the funding_sources parameter to "bank" or "bank,cc" depending on whether you'd like to give the customer a choice of payment methods.

[https://www.wepay.com/developer/reference/checkout#create](https://www.wepay.com/developer/reference/checkout#create)</comment></comment>


Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1218390/what-is-your-most-productive-shortcut-with-vim/1220118#1220118 <comment><USER2> "The "Zen" of vi is that you're speaking a language. The initial y is a verb. The statement yy is a synonym for y_"

ok, so what is y underscore?

<comment><USER3> This is maybe not the best example. I've used vi for a very long time, and I'm only now finding out about the underscore. The point that's being made here is that the first y is an action and the second is a motion. I was content to think of "yy" as a special case. Better examples would be yw, ye, yj, which respectively yank to the beginning of the next word, the end of the current word, and the current line plus the one following it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That first answer... Is amazing. I have used vim exclusively for several years now, and just _skimming_ the first answer has probably changed how I use vim forever.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been using vim/neovim for 6 months now and thought that I was making a good use of the editor (I came from Atom and what a good decision that was). Now this just opened new ways of using the editor that I never knew. (I have only used %s/ command).

Must read for any vim user who has completed the beginner stage and wants more to learn. (Pure gold).

</comment><comment><USER6> Never thought about vim this way.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yuck.</comment>


Taking naps boosts memory and creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081125.wsleep1125/BNStory/Science/home

<comment><USER3> It's a shame naps aren't commonly seen as a productivity enhancer (here in the US, anyway) - there have been quite a few days where just a 20 minute nap would probably have helped me focus for the rest of the afternoon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree. It's been a fantasy of mine for years to have a company where there are a couple of beautiful quiet rooms with an armchair and some sort of couch or cot. You could reserve them for a half hour to think or sleep. I know for sure that this would enhance my productivity, and probably others' as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've always believed in the power of a nap when you start losing focus or are stumped on a particular problem. I've put a futon in my office for that exact purpose.

<comment><USER5> Agreed - I have a small couch in my office that I use for naps; Sometimes in the early afternoon, I lose motivation and hit the proverbial 'wall' - <USER2> this happens, I just set my cell phone alarm and nap for an hour.

I usually wake up alert and refreshed and try to make up for the lost time. As an aside, I once forgot to set my alarm and ended up sleeping for about 3 hours. My colleague thought I had left for the day :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I try to take 3 naps + per week. I'm a big fan of the caffeine nap for the extra long days:

[http://lifehacker.com/software/sleep/take-a-caffeine- nap-154...](http://lifehacker.com/software/sleep/take-a-caffeine- nap-154237.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very interesting. What makes you a big fan? What effects do you observe? How does it compare to drinking coffee and not sleeping, or not drinking coffee and sleeping?

<comment><USER7> Not the parent, but I often take caffeine naps as well and they're great. For me they're always accompanied by an awesome action-packed nap dream and I wake up extremely refreshed.

Mine are a lot longer than 15 minutes, though -- usually 1.5 to 2 hours.

<comment><USER8> What I've read for years, and experienced myself, is that a 20- to 30-minute nap is refreshing, while a longer nap (1-2 hours) will make you feel fairly sludgy for a while after you wake up.

<comment><USER9> It all depends on when you wake up in your sleep cycle.

20 minutes is usually that period where you get max rest before entering deeper sleep. The average full sleep cycle is about 90 minutes, so at that point you're usually in light sleep mode again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me, or have a lot of pro-napping stories been making the rounds for the past two weeks?

</comment><comment><USER11> "When in doubt get horizontal"</comment>


Cheaper to rent in Barcelona and commute to London - <AUTHOR> http://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/cheaper-to-rent-in-barcelona-and-commute-to-london/ <comment><USER2> The point of this piece is not that living in Barcelona and commuting to London is _sensible_ \-- it's that the North London property market has gone totally batshit insane.

No, seriously: renting a 2 bedroom flat in a not brilliant suburb of London costs around £25,000 a year, or US $40,000. Then you can add council tax (another £2000), water, electricity, and gas bills, and travel. Upshot: the _fixed costs_ of living in London are on the order of US $50,000 per year (two beds) or around $40,000 per year (one bed). Note that I focus on the two bed option because that's the practical minimum for a family unit, or for someone who telecommutes from home. Note also that the average gross income in London is a little under £28,000 per year (before tax).

Upshot: normal people and normal families can't afford to rent in London any more. The only thing propping up these insane prices is the scarcity induced by the current bubble in the foreign investment housing market. The crash, when it comes, is going to be epic.

<comment><USER3> Not the only thing. The other major factor is housing benefit, in which a landlord can charge well over the odds, and the govt just pays it. They are trying to cap it, to howls of outrage but from whom? Not the tenants, they never see the money. But from well-heeled buy-to-let landlords whose cash-cow is about to be slaughtered. That's why papers like the Graun oppose it - that's their readers!

<comment><USER4> You know there's something called a local housing allowance, which sets maximum rates for housing benefit, right? And that's been in place for years? There are rules about ages and size of accommodation.

There are strict rules about over-accommodation too. The bedroom tax has been operating for many years for everyone except those in council houses and housing association properties.

<comment><USER5> > There are strict rules about over-accommodation too.

Not sure what you mean there

> The bedroom tax has been operating for many years for everyone except those > in council houses and housing association properties.

Or there

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here a fellow hacker from Barcelona.

I rented a loft for 6620€/year. It's mint condition and it's in the outskirts of Barcelona. I'm 12 min in subway to the plaza Catalonia and in 7 min using the train or 20 mins in bus. To be honest, I would never never again will rent in the centre of the city. It's expensive and all buildings are antique, without the proper commodities.

If you want to come Barcelona, check the outskirts, get a scooter or enjoy the Barcelona transportation system. It's wonderful.

I want to add some more info about living in Barcelona.

The weather is magnifique. It barely rains all the year. You can go mountains withing 2h car travel if you want to enjoy the snow in winter.

Eating can be really cheap IF you go to the supermarket, buy all the meals and cook yourself like I do, I saved 300€/month doing this instead eating outside. If you can compile rails, you can be a chef, :). I do buy the meals and stuff for around 90€/month. That includes the 40lts of water i buy. Then daily i try to buy meat, fish or vegetables for the week and it cost me no more than 220€ month.

I pay 90 euros electricity, 30 gas and 40 water every 2 months. 60 euros for 100mbit fiber connection + phone and mobile and that's all.

<comment><USER7> Sounds great - but would I be right to assume that Spanish is the working language in the tech community?

<comment><USER8> Most tech startups work in English, specially the ones with international/remote workers. Besides that, the "working language" is Catalan, because Barcelona is a city in Catalunya.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> About 5 years ago I did this. I flew from the south of Spain (flying from Jerez on RyanAir) to London once a week for 2 days a week (couch surfing with a friend).

Its a hard lifestyle - by about the 10th of these flights you will be sick of the security hassles (and RyanAir) - but it was way better than living in London full time (no offense).

I did it for 18 months before finally burning out on it and moving to a full time remote position (which paid less but I decided that that was worth the upgrade in lifestyle).

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi Once a week for 2 days a week?

<comment><USER10> Every week he flew in, spent 2 days in London and then flew back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> UK renting is just idiotic at present all over, although especially bonkers in our capital city.

Remember that 1 bed flats are especially in demand at present as a result of the (in)famous bedroom tax[1]. A single person or a couple are only allowed 1 bedroom if they need to claim housing benefit (unemployed or low-wage, and remember that in London 'low waged' is a pretty high threshold, e.g. teachers, social workers, retail staff, bus drivers &c).

Bear in mind that building 1 bedroom flats has (hitherto) been regarded as a waste of money for housing associations or councils, so that really only commercial lets are available (at usually twice or three times the rent of a HA/council flat with 2 beds), so, ironically, the tax payer will be paying _more_ to move couples out of 2 bed high rise flats in rough areas which are hard to let into expensive private let 1 bed flats. There will be no takers for the high rise flats (unsuitable for children) so they will be mothballed then expensively demolished.

Yes, bonkers, but the UK is run by the Daily Fail and other populist idiots.

[1] [http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/housing_benefit_and...](http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/housing_benefit_and_local_housing_allowance/changes_to_local_housing_allowance/bedroom_tax_from_april_2013)

Edit: OK anonymous downvoter, state your reasons

<comment><USER12> Not the downvoter, but I think s/UK/London/. I agree with everything on what you say about London, but outside of London the rest of the UK isn't really that bad. You can rent a 3 bedroom house for £300/month in Yorkshire. Even if you are the only earner in a household, on minimum wage, you'll still have over £500/month left after rent (probably more if you have kids due to benefits).

Bonus: It's a three hour commute to London [1].

[0] [http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to- rent/details/20671512?search_iden...](http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to- rent/details/20671512?search_identifier=9fd9a5bfe1e532e8ea1a096bfa063a11)

[1] [http://traintimes.org.uk/Gainsborough/London/06:30/monday/18...](http://traintimes.org.uk/Gainsborough/London/06:30/monday/18:30/monday)

<comment><USER11> _" You can rent a 3 bedroom house for £300/month in Yorkshire."_

Leeds? York? I suspect not.

Bear in mind that _single bedroom flats_ are mainly built in areas where land is expensive, because it is only then that the small space saving over a 2 bed flat outweighs the similar building cost.

Birmingham: 3 bed house commercial, way outside city, is £750 pcm. That will increase when H2S happens (if it does).

<comment><USER13> Maybe £300/month was a bit ambitious for Leeds, but here's £400/month:

[http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to- rent/property-4286620...](http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to- rent/property-42866204.html)

This is in Bramley / Pudsey, 4 miles out from Leeds city centre (well within the Leeds / Bradford urban area). I imagine you could get similar in Armley or Holbeck (1.5 miles out).

<comment><USER11> If the metro reaches Bramley, I accept your point!

In the Birmingham/West Midlands anything in reach of centre is over £500 per month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a roughly 4 hour commute in each direction: 1h flight, 1h train ride from airport to liverpool street + commute to the airport and waiting. And this are, in my experience, conservative numbers.

So you spend 128 hours per month commuting, to save 387€. Not what I would call a bargain.

Oh, what about double taxation? I'm pretty sure you'd be hit by that and that would most likely put you well in the negative.

<comment><USER15> I know an assload of people who work in the NYC area that have commutes that long or nearly that long. 3hour+ commutes aren't uncommon at all.

<comment><USER16> Well then I would confidently say that's stupid, unless they are using their commute time to work on something or catch up on their favorite shows.

Your most limited resource is time. Money is a distant second. And if those people arent monetizing their commute or taking care of their entertainment, they are wasting time to save some money. It's nearly as stupid as fracking - wasting water to get oil, only to later have a water shortage and a raped environment. And half as stupid as wasting your health for money, then trying to get it back with money.

<comment><USER17> It's not stupid. High salaried people in NYC often locate their families in the suburbs in CT and NJ, which are safer and more livable. The commute is just a function of where they determine the salary/lifestyle tradeoff is even. Some people just place a higher utility on their family's lifestyle than their own time.

<comment><USER18> I don't know that I'd call CT or NJ safer or more liveable. Especially not to the point where it would justify such a long commute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cheaper, but fairly ridiculous. Stay in Barcelona and telecommute.

Similarly, it would be cheaper for me to rent in Mexico City and commute to my job in Los Angeles. Yes, some global metropolises have lower rents than others.

<comment><USER20> > _it would be cheaper for me to rent in Mexico City and commute to my job in > Los Angeles._

Is this serious? Because that's the whole point of this blog post: flying everyday between London and Barcelona it's actually doable, for real. As in: some people might end up doing it.

<comment><USER21> BCN-London can be had for E$34 round trip. LA-MEX goes for US$400 cheapest average seat. That makes all the difference. Maybe try Tijuana, though.

<comment><USER22> Nah, the Mexican government imposes a $100 tax on all international flights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm still convinced that we're just a few years away from a time when people don't have to commute to an office just to sit at a computer. That company in London could save some money and so could the employee in Barcelona if telecommuting were an option.

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of geeks have a vision of a perfect world when a detailed, unambiguous spec arrives in their email, they write the code and upload it, then the money is transferred to their accounts. There is a fundamental flaw with this concept, which is writing a spec that good is more work that just writing the code yourself. And the guy who writes that spec will need to collaborate with others enough that having everyone in the one place to do that makes sense. Videoconferencing works if you want to discuss something with which you are both familiar with someone you already know, and this admittedly is a large part of many people's jobs. But for everything else, you really do need to be there.

<comment><USER24> I think videoconferencing sucks because the tech is so primitive. In 10 years we'll have proper videoconferences which are using augmented reality and have sufficient quality to replace physical meetings 90% of the time.

Of course, even conference calls suffer from the use of low-quality software and hardware. For some reason companies tend to use $1 microphone and $5 speakers for conference calls.

<comment><USER25> If someone cannot write it, he will want to say it, and if he cannot even say it, he will want to come over to gesticulate.

<comment><USER26> God that annoys me. He can explain things properly, so assumes moving his arms around will make it clearer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is silly. Just go southwest a few miles.

There is, for instance, a flat steps from the London Overground in South Norwood ([http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to- rent/details/30891717](http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/30891717)) that is going for £400/month (€470/month).

(It's unclear why you'd want such a long commute, versus living in far-away green suburbs by the train.)

<comment><USER28> From the description:

"Men Only / No Females"

What the hell? How is that legal?

<comment><USER29> Technically a landlord is allowed to be very particular (e.g. discriminate) if they are also a resident in a dwelling.

<comment><USER30> I've seen tons of Craigslist ads for roommates that say "females only".

The irritating thing is that they usually say it at the bottom of the advert instead of in the title, so you waste time clicking on the link and reading it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's a 4 hour commute!

Why would you live in Central London? You can commute for an hour into Liverpool St and get much cheaper rents.

<comment><USER32> There isn't a single house or flat (for any price whatsoever) within 4 hour by train radius from Liverpool St that compares to a three bedroom in Barcelona.

<comment><USER33> Well sure, the selection of tapas in England is rather limited, it's colder and rains more, the local football teams aren't as good and you have to speak English all the time because Catalan and Spanish aren't very widely understood. But if you can't beat Barcelona for living, you'd probably want to work there too. You can definitely get similar space for your money to the Barcelona flat highlighted in the blog post in a perfectly adequate dormitory town a short commute from Liverpool Street, if Southeast England is more your thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm not convinced that house prices area actually a big deal, except as an indicator that more housing should be permitted (by zoning laws).

There are two arguments that are typically given.

Firstly, you want to encourage people of different incomes to live together. I don't believe that this is a worthy goal. It's not clear that the benefit to people on low incomes outweighs the loss to their high income neighbors. And the richest 1% always find ways to isolate themselves anyway.

The second argument is that welfare should taken into account the cost of living. I also believe this within reason, but the welfare system already does this in many ways. In fact, London's "one bedroom rule" is a clunky way to do precisely this: it lets people live where they like, but prevents people from purchasing an excessive "quantity" of housing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Or you could live in Birmingham, in a £650/month one-bedroom apartment 10 minutes away from New Street station, where you can take a 70 minute train to London Euston.

Sure, Birmingham is not Barcelona or London, but I'm not sure how you'd enjoy them by living most of your off-work time in a Ryanair flight.

<comment><USER36> A yearly season ticket from Birmingham to London incl the tube is £7,252 (or £5,240 without the travelcard).

A peak return ticket is £158 (this Tuesday, trains arriving before 9am)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I like this article as a thought experiment, but I think in practicality, it would probably be miserable to fly to-and-fro 4 days a week.

The main cost that was ommitted that would give us an idea whether the commute is worth it is the opportunity cost ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost)). While it'd be difficult to estimate how much the author's time is worth, if we assume that he/she gets paid an hourly wage of W, and it takes H hours to commute to and from London, then the opportunity cost would be something like W x H. If that opportunity cost is greater than the 387€ in savings, then it would not be cheaper to commute from an economist's perspective.

</comment><comment><USER38> I just moved to North-West London Two weeks ago and can confirm these numbers. It's an interesting write-up and I can see that it's been written for the mathematical demonstration rather than the practicality but it does give food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER39> So he can live in Barcelona and get home at 10 PM and leave for the airport at 5 AM.

Who cares if you live in Barcelona if you're asleep all the time?

<comment><USER40> Hey, in Barcelona, that means he's getting home just in time to go out for dinner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I left Barcelona in 2007 to come to London and although the cost of living is higher here ( I live in West Hampstead ), salaries and opportunities are also much better. Granted, I spend more money per month in fixed costs than my entire salary in Barcelona, but I still save more than I spend.

Also, from this article it seems that rents have actually fallen, because in 2007 I could not find that kind of accomodation for that price and I was strugling to save any money compared to now.

I guess the housing market collapse in Spain has actually impacted the crazy Barcelona prices of mid 2007.

<comment><USER26> I moved in 2008, and the rents have gradually been going down. Usually involves a bit of negotiation with the landlord, as legally they are allowed to raise it in line with inflation each year. Or moving out, which is a hassle, and ends up costing. So fine if you are moving anyway, but otherwise it depends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Had a friend on UCSD that rented at Tijuana and crossed the border everyday to San Diego.

<comment><USER43> Was this recently? The hassle/delay of crossing the border has really gone up in the past 10 years. Both the Mexican and Canadian borders, actually.

<comment><USER42> 5~7 yrs ago. I asked the same thing. She said she had a "pass" that allowed for faster crossing, and it was pretty common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just moved to London, less than a month ago.

I decided that I was willing to pay a premium for my <25 minute commute to work (close to Tottenham Court Road). And as long as other people think the same, rent will go up. Pretty standard supply and demand. Everyone works in the center, and nobody likes to waste 2 hours of their day hopping trains and buses.

So this is what you get, take it or leave it, I guess...

<comment><USER45> Where do you live (and what did you get, and what does it cost), if I may ask?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This post is also a great idea to start a HN Barcelona meeting :).

</comment><comment><USER46> It's not the point of the article, but 4 hours wouldn't be that bad per se. I would hate to be on an airport every day and being with ryan air every day (I rather pay a lot more than fly ryan air personally; I am almost 2 meters in length and quite bulky in width due to food and daily gym; ryan air is cruel punishment, no matter the cost), but when I still worked in an office in the Netherlands (granted, that's over 10 years ago), I would spend 2.5-3 hours at least in traffic jams. At least in a plane you can read a book or do some work. Sitting in a car, usually in the rain/cold, foot on the break ready to move yet another 30 cm I might even consider worse than ryan air...

</comment><comment><USER47> so 1500 GBP is about 2420 USD 1 bedroom in the good part of SF, USA cost about 2500/month.

Sure, there's no council tax and utilities are cheaper. Still, its pretty close.

I bet Paris ain't so far from that either, and let's not talk about NYC.

Basically, all of the large tech cities prices are "batshit insane".

The only hope I see, barred 1h30/2H by plane travel time, as the author suggests.. is remote work whenever possible. You can then live 3-4h away from big cities (so you can still get together if needed), and prices are slashed by 10.

</comment><comment><USER48> How exactly does one qualify x as cheaper than y when the comparison requires y to omit a massive economic component: the opportunity cost or value of one's time?

Additionally, why propose such an intrinsically inefficient model? What about using a hostel on M, Tu, W, and only fly in M AM and out Th PM? Monthly commute ~28 hours, quality of living benefits, and probably save even more $.

Can someone from the EU comment on the potential tax benefits of an international live/work arrangement?

</comment><comment><USER49> Ryanair lies about flying to 'Barcelona' \- it actually flies to Gerona, about 95km away (1hr by ground transportation):

[http://gospain.about.com/od/ryanair/qt/ryan_barcelona.htm](http://gospain.about.com/od/ryanair/qt/ryan_barcelona.htm)

Although, Gerona is itself a beautiful city and would be a nice place to live.

<comment><USER50> Actually, your link says:

"However, Ryanair have recently decided to start flying to Barcelona from around Spain and a few other airports in Europe."

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Now how much does he earn per hour? How much time does he waste on a long commute each of those four days a week?

</comment><comment><USER52> Funnily enough, I came to the exact same conclusion last week while visiting London, from Dublin.

€30 return flights and it's faster than Barcelona, 1hr flights (and you can show up 45 mins before flight leaves for IE->UK).

Even using Hotel Tonight while I was in London, accommodation was €200+ on a Tuesday night.

</comment><comment><USER53> To Barcelona hackers - which districts are the best to rent a nice modern- built loft/apartment:

\- from quality angle?

\- from price angle?

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER54> quality: sarria-sant gervasi, eixample. price (without being bad areas): nou barris, sants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It is well established that prices RyanAir advertises are not prices passengers pay.

Given the option of the hassle and commute, people would prefer to just live in London. Which is the whole point- real estate pricing is efficient in this case.

<comment><USER56> > It is well established that prices RyanAir advertises are not prices > passengers pay.

The prices on the website are exactly what you pay, as long as you pay by debit card and don't check luggage.

Source: I live in Barcelona, and travel monthly to London.

<comment><USER12> People sure seem to hate a lot about Ryanair. I also flew with them regularly back to the UK when I was living in Ireland. I tried a few other airlines (FlyBe, Air France, BA and Aer Lingus) but found Ryanair to be the easiest and most reliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Just wanted to add that the apartment that the article refers to is located in a really nice place of Barcelona. Definitely not the center, but relatively close to FC Barcelona stadium, and close to the rich part of the city.

</comment><comment><USER58> It might at least get you a HON circle membership if you take Star Alliance flights but daily use of Ryan Air can't be beneficial for your mental stability.

</comment><comment><USER59> My friend works for one the City. He is permanently renting hotel room nearby. He says it is actually cheaper compared to normal rent.

</comment><comment><USER60> East London is where it's at! It is cheaper to buy than rent though!

</comment><comment><USER61> Time to move to Texas!</comment>


Teach me to code - <AUTHOR>

I ant to learn to code. I don't know where to start! I did some Basic, PASCAL, C/C++ at school/college, but never kept going with it. I've read some books on Ruby, Python, Haskell, Javascript but don't know where to start to learn "properly". I know the answer to the question "which language?" is "whichever solves the current problem best!", but where does one start? Do I just pick which one I like the look of best? IS there even a best place to start? Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated!<p>Dave <comment><USER2> You will need to know HTML and CSS. They are basically easy, but you want to create some static pages first. Next, you will want to try using Ruby on Rails or PHP. PHP is probably easier to learn but its functions are less intuitive. You can find a plethora of information at <http://www.php.net> and the documentation of the language is phenomenal. If you have a shell account with your web site, that would be good, but it is not required with PHP as any file ending in .php will likely run on servers that support it. Start with <? echo "Hello, world!"; ?> and go from there! You will need to know how to use an FTP program to upload your files and a web site where you can play, and you are good to go. Getting started is the easy part. Breaking bad habits is the hard part, but you must get your feet wet before jumping in the ocean.

<comment><USER2> Oh, and to add more... JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are primarily client side languages. You can learn these by simply creating content in an HTML file on your own computer if you do not even have a web site.

If you want to do anything with databases, you will want to use MySQL with something like phpMyAdmin to help you create your databases. Learning MySQL is important, but if you just want to get started, you can use phpMyAdmin at first. When you are ready to be a real web developer, though, you will want to learn the following:

• HTML, CSS, Javascript • Basic Linux commands with a SSH login • Use something like WinSCP instead of FTP programs • MySQL • Object oriented programming in the language of your choice and how to make your code modular • (PHP with a framework like Yii or CakePHP) or (Ruby on Rails)

I recommend simply playing at first. Always remember to abstract and encapsulate whenever you can. This is a good habit and can make learning easier because you basically start to form your own meta-language in this way and things are easier to learn if you are the one that created them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, gives me some things to think about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>

I'm starting to feel like a shill for pushing this one on people, but it really is one of the best "learn to program" books I've seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do believe i may have a copy of that book somewhere in my "to read someday" pile :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just launched <http://peanutty.org> \- it's still very raw, but the point is to help people learn how to code. There might not be enough there, but I'd be happy to help you figure out how to code your own levels.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://learncodethehardway.org/>

</comment><comment><USER6> One answer to that: <http://codeyear.com/> :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Already signed up to that! Also saw the link on that page to codecademy.com, so might take a look at that too.</comment></comment>


Photoshop glyphs tester - <AUTHOR> http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/04/photoshop-glyphs-tester.html

<comment><USER2> Why is this useful? (I'm not a designer and I have no idea what problems are even in this space.)</comment>


LG signals plan to put Wi-Fi in every appliance it releases in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/01/lg-wi-fi-in-everything/ <comment><USER3> I sure hope they also plan to provide security updates for the lifetime of these fridges (10-20 years?) and make them update without any need for user interaction.

<comment><USER4> Even if they do offer updates will they engineer the updating system properly for devices that aren't connected for a while?

Sounds like an "of course they would, who wouldnt?" situation.

Well, I have a Sony Bravia KDL46EX520 that I bought in June of 2011. It wasn't connected to the Internet for a few years while I used a PS3 with it. This year I moved, ditched the PS3 and decided to use the built in apps. I tried connecting to the net with both the USB dongle for WiFi and over Ethernet. The TV told me it had a connection but none of the internet features would connect. The built in software update tool also told me it couldn't connect.

After messing with my network, swapping cables, swapping switches, I went online and found very little documentation about my device.

Finally, as a bit of a last resort, I found a Sony support page where you can download the latest firmware and put it on a USB drive. If the USB drive is compatible with the Sony TV (no list of compatible devices is provided) then it will update the TV.

I got lucky and my USB drive was compatible and the TV updated.

After updating the TV's smart features work again, I can use Netflix and the software update tool says it can not find any newer version of software available.

If I wasn't technical I wouldn't even think to look online for some obscure software update procedure. Sony really dropped the ball on this. So badly that even though I love this TV I went and bought a Samsung unit for another room to hedge against future situations like this.

<comment><USER5> My wife had a Kindle that was really out of date. It wouldn't connect to the store or find updates.

I had to put an update on the device using a laptop and then restart, which then updated the device. However that was still too old, so I had to repeat the process before it was fully up to date.

<comment><USER6> Was this the update? I remember Amazon made a pretty big attempt to notify everyone at least a month before the date but I imagine it would have been difficult to reach everyone.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201994710)

<comment><USER5> I think so. My wife had the Kindle stored away somewhere and found it again, so we didn't know about it. She hadn't used it in at least a year, maybe two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm signalling plans to stop purchasing anything from LG in 2017. This is going to be a security nightmare.

<comment><USER8> It gives me the impetus to set up another SSID that just loops-back every packet to its sender.

I was going to suggest not even associating them with an AP, but knowing how vendors code their software they'll probably overcome that 'problem' by having them search for and attach to the first open AP they find. So I might as well make that one be MyNullRoute.

<comment><USER9> What's the advantage of this instead of not connecting to any wifi networks?

<comment><USER10> Software that doesn't respect user settings. In this case, the fear is that wifi-capable devices may just associate with a random unsecured access point, on purpose but 'covertly', to send and/or receive unknown data, at the behest of the manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The DDoS attacks of the future will to be caused by refrigerator, washing machines, TVs etc. along with surveilance cameras and routers. And the 2.4 GHz commercial band radio spectrum is going to get so crowded that legitimate WiFi shall be rendered useless.

<comment><USER12> This is probably the nastiest part of the whole Internet of Things hype. There is so much stuff that now comes with internet connected functionality that securing it all is simply not manageable. Sure, a household may demand that their smart thermostat keeps working reliably and securely, but how about the smart TV that's connected to WiFi, but is only used as a (classic) dumb screen? Or the talking doll the kids got for Christmas that talks back? (Yes, this is a thing!) Or the baby monitor? Or any other plug-and-play webcam?

All of these devices are by design capable of performing HTTP requests, and can be exploited to perform DDOS attacks. There is no economic incentive to keep these devices secure once the warranty runs out, yet hackers do have a lot of interest in hacking whole classes of devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Alexa isn't an inherently bad fit for a refrigerator

I think people are forgetting the purpose of a fridge. People already store food that doesn't need to be kept cool. They already throw out food based on dates stamped on packaging, not condition of the food. And they keep spoiled food in the back, forgotten. The fridge is a terribly mis-used kitchen device. So unless Alexa somehow develops a way to interact biologically with the contents, I do not see it as a good functional fit for that device.

<comment><USER14> > So unless Alexa somehow develops a way to interact biologically with the > contents

This pipe dream overlaps with something I've wanted since I became a reluctant bodybuilder: an appliance to measure the macronutrients of a meal, or at least a viable, reasonably priced calorimeter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Back in 2013 some LG TVs were caught scanning users' networks and connected drives.[1]

At the time I think LG said that this was a mistake. Even taking that in good faith I would still be wary of connecting any LG consumer appliance to my own home network.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/lg-smart-tv- snooping...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/lg-smart-tv-snooping- extends-to-home-networks-second-blogger-says/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I imagine my fridge showing me ads. 10 years ago, an idea that online ads will be put into offline software seemed ridiculous, but now that admob cr@p is being put into every piece of 'begware'

</comment><comment><USER17> That's fine.. What's more of a problem is that the device will not have an open platform or even an open bootloader and be unsupported and obsolete in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking through their site the cheapest home applicances that LG sells are microwaves.

They cost on the order of 100USD for the cheapest models. The cheapest Wifi "IoT" microcontrollers are on the order of 1USD.

Seems like it might be a reasonable business move, even if it's just a box ticking exercise.

I'll be surprised if they do put them in their lowest end products though. Perhaps those product lines are stable and won't be updated in 2017?

<comment><USER19> It's not just about a microcontroller, it's also about developing the software and them supporting and maintaining it.

<comment><USER18> I guess I was looking for a lower bound. I'll be surprised if they can manage to implement this on their cheapest products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I look forward to the "we couldn't foresee the security risks, we cannot be held responsible" non-apology in 2022.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you don't want your LG device to connect to anything, then don't feed it your SSID and password. (I don't have any unsecured networks in range of my house, so there's no way LG devices could connect without me doing something.)

I have a Samsung TV. I never hooked it up to my wifi, so it's a dumb device.

</comment><comment><USER21> These type of try-hard (every appliance) efforts are crazy... The market hasn't demanded every appliance based on the sales of connected devices currently. I'd guess if they did do every appliance they quickly reverse and offer non connected devices very soon after.

</comment><comment><USER22> As the article points out, their "smart fridge" costs more than a regular fridge plus all the electronics involved. This has been an ongoing problem with LG since they put a tablet in a refrigerator door and raised the price by about $1000.

</comment><comment><USER23> A fridge with a glass door would be better.

Or if you want a techie solution, glass that can be toggled between fogged or not.

<comment><USER24> This is such an obvious (and obviously good) idea, there must be a reason it's not done. Is it because it's difficult to get glass with the right thermal insulation properties?

<comment><USER25> If you go to any convenience store, you'll see this exact solution keeping drinks cold. The problem is that the refrigeration unit has to be running all the time or heat will enter through the glass.

<comment><USER26> Heat via radiation? So would blinds not work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is that a valid headline, more from an English usage point of view. LG didn't threaten to do anything really. It is just that it can have bad unintended consequences.

<comment><USER28> It's totally valid and was obviously written with tongue firmly in cheek - <USER2> author (or their editor) is just having a little fun and suggesting that adding wifi to e.g. a stove is a consumer-hostile move.

<comment><USER29> Consumers have the luxury of voting with their money.

<comment><USER30> Already it's getting difficult to find dummy versions of consumer appliances such as televisions. They all have Craproid or CrapOS now and all the bugs and problems, security breaches and vulnerabilities that come with it.

A fridge has a 10-20 year expected life span as it is. Anyone think that _any_ manufacturer is seriously commited to maintaining software for that duration of time? In fact I'm going to speculate that having the software become unmaintained would be used as a marketing incentive to have people renew their fridges every couple of years.

<comment><USER29> No, currently they seem to be really bad at this, judging from cases like "Can't sign in to Google calendar on my Samsung refrigerator"[1].

But, isn't this exactly how big names get replaced by more modern and technologically savvy alternatives? or at least, the big names gets forced to adopt?

[1]. [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/Uhfp...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/calendar/UhfpcwO0X0c)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why you should use WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://codeflow.org/entries/2013/feb/02/why-you-should-use-webgl/

<comment><USER2> While the article is right WebGL isn't supported on iOS, supposedly it IS supported in iAd ads on iOS, which are HTML5. So it is to be expected some future version of iOS will expand this to webviews/Safari.

Also strange he says Unity has no support on mobile: While it's not supported in mobile browsers, creating mobile apps it one of its strengths, afaik.

<comment><USER3> It's definitely supported in iAds, and you can enable WebGL in an iOS UIWebView via private APIs today (you just won't be able to release it). There's a few places with details, but here's an implementation you can grab off github: <https://github.com/benvanik/WebGLBrowser>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A grain of salt, cannot fault the article except it skimmed over a couple of areas. Keep these things in mind, especially if 3D graphics is something new for you:

 _Why you shouldn't use WebGL_

* Performance: This is the big one. In 3D graphics and in particular games performance, both execution speed and memory usage, is everything. You can do some great stuff in WebGL but fitting lots of complex stuff (physics, AI, motion) in 1/60 of a second is hard enough when you can scratch around in ASM if you have to, let alone being constrained to javascript.

The Three.js demos are fantastic examples and a great learning tool. But they do feel to me like 90s demo scene[2] stuff. Working within strict limitations and using all the tricks of the trade to produce more than the sum of its parts.

* Libraries: the leading library Three.js is great and getting better and I enjoy using it. But I have a background in 3D graphics and know my way around 3D and OpenGL. Alternatives such as Unity hold your hand and have larger communities from which to draw help from if you don't know much about 3D.

[1] <http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene>

<comment><USER5> A lot of people are underestimating what this stuff can be used for, IMO. It goes far beyond traditional games. I myself have been doing a lot of work with WebGL-driven articles [1]. With nothing more than nginx and Jekyll, I have an incredibly efficient pipeline to get 3D math lectures out to thousands with less than 20KB of JS per graph and 200KB of shared libraries. I can edit the content anytime I want and rsync an update. I got a 100k hits on that article last month, my little linode didn't break a sweat.

I've also been working on setting up GLSL based computational chains easily, allowing me to implement a fluid dynamics solver [2] with a dozen lines of JS and a hundred lines of GLSL [3].

It's not as demoscene-like as it seems, I don't have to work very hard to get it to run well, as JS is rarely the bottleneck.

Dedicated game engines will always be the realm of optimized native code, but there is an entire field outside that of rich 3D content. Between GLSL, Web Workers and fast JITs, there is a lot that can be done here. With JS, you not only get a platform you can deploy easily, but you get live access to a fully introspective VM at the same time. I expose all my JS to the console, and do most of my prototyping in there. All for free.

It's also the only platform that has a chance to be available universally, from pockets to desks to living rooms. I know I'd much rather restrict myself to techniques that are a couple years old, if it means it actually runs well on modest hardware—which a lot of demoscene stuff does not do.

[1] <http://acko.net/blog/how-to-fold-a-julia-fractal>

[2] <http://acko.net/files/never-seen-the-sky/git/>

[3] [https://github.com/unconed/NeverSeenTheSky/blob/master/js/fl...](https://github.com/unconed/NeverSeenTheSky/blob/master/js/fluid.js)

<comment><USER4> Exactly, you need to understand the trade offs, which I don't feel the article touched on.

<comment><USER6> I did say that I won't talk about the gotchas in this article up front though :)

It's already a wall of text, I think it's better to pick one topic and limit its scope for one post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Right now I think WebGL still does not make any sense to develop for. The best path for making money developing video games is either mobile, desktop, or Facebook. WebGL covers 2 of those bases but you lose mass market potential because of browser support and it's still ultimately not the best choice. For desktop you're better off just making PC / Mac apps and for Facebook/Web you really have to use Flash as it has far more browser support.

Personally I'm going with Unity and targeting mobile (iOS / Android). I don't really care about publishing to the web right now (Unity Flash doesn't work too well because the full feature set of C# .NET is not supported) but when Unity adds support for WebGL (which I'm sure they will) it might be a good option.

If I wanted to make hardcore games or games with higher graphical requirements I would publish to PC / Mac and not to the Web.

So, right now I don't see a compelling reason for publishing to the web or developing in WebGL.

edit- I'm speaking from a business perspective. If you just want to make cool stuff deployable to the web, then go for it =)

</comment><comment><USER8> There are some big mistakes about Flash Stage3D which makes an article that pretends to be an informed overview very suspect. Stage3D allows dynamic shaders even more than any other platform and does work very well on mobile via AIR.

WebGL as an API has serious problems that are not mentioned:

\- High level language vs. bytecode at the API layer makes it very hard to implement consistently. The js API should take bytecode and a shader compiler (outermost loop) should be implemented in a safe script language via libraries.

\- Very large API surface based on an 80s standard. This makes it much harder for browsers to support and test consistently.

\- Extension mechanism makes it very hard to target consistently. A common problem in graphics is that every hw vendor wants you to optimize for the highest end in their line. Which gets you into the "make the best case better" optimization case when you really want to "make the worst case better".

\- Serious interop/performance issues with js targets. Typed arrays are for example very important to a low level API like this.

\- Low end support. Like Intel GPUs and mobile. WebGL is simply to big for testing and enforcing those constraints.

Sorry for ranting. :) Feel free to PM me for discussing 3D APIs for the web. I personally think the Flash Stage3D API is much better but I also realize the benefit of going plugin less.

<comment><USER6> \- Please post documentation on flash being able to on-line compile.

\- Both Direct3D and OpenGL (any variant) are moving away from requiring people to supply bytecode (or native code) to an on-line compile model of a high level language. Starting with Direct3D 10 you cannot supply your own bytecode anymore. Direct3D bytecode is cryptographically signed by the HLSL compiler of Microsoft and the DirectX runtime will refuse to run any shader bytecode that does not pass signature verification.

\- WebGL is the smallest most concise of any 3D API around. Your claim of 80ties legacy is baseless. It is re-engineered from OpenGL ES 2.0 which cut away much legacy. WebGL threw out the entire remaining OpenGL ES 2.0 legacy profile. The entire API, all of it, fits on 2 PDF pages of a quick reference (compared to 4 for ES 2.0 and a dozen for full blown OpenGL). WebGL is extremely well tested with close to 10'000 tests in around 500 test suites that test everything from API consistency and behavior to actually verifying rendering results. It is not hard to test at all, evidenced by a superb conformance test suite and performance regression suite, unique among any 3D API in existence.

\- The extension mechanism offers you the possibility to introduce alternative renderpaths. On any account, none of the extensions present are more than what Direct3D 9 already supports (but OpenGL ES 2.0 does not). Instead of checking the D3DDeviceCaps for capabilities, you check extensions, same thing really.

\- Typed arrays have been introduced and are supported well by any vendor doing WebGL

\- WebGL runs on mobiles because it is an implementation of OpenGL ES 2.0, which is supported by well over 90% of smartphones and tablets. Implementations of WebGL are offered from multiple vendors for android, and out of the box from Blackberry and Firefox OS

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Unity projects could be exported to WebGL I would use it for some projects. Many programmers / designers (myself included) don't have the time or skill to code at such a low level for common functionality. I really enjoy the ease of use certain engines such as Unity3d and UDK bring to the table and it appears I am not the only one looking at all the 3D indie games being released using these tools.

<comment><USER6> Brandon Jones does a bit of Unity 3D exporting to WebGL, you should read up on his blog: <http://blog.tojicode.com/>

I've heard rumors Unity 3D is thinking of a full blown WebGL exporter as well, no idea if real/soon/at-all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I missing something here? I've been trying to use WebGL for weeks now, based on [unconed's MathBox articles][uc]. For the life of me, I [cannot get this to work][my] on any laptop that uses the Intel HD 4000 graphics card (my samsung series 9) ... which includes nearly all the macbooks, no less. If that pretty common graphics card isn't supported, how can anyone develop WebGL libraries, let alone expect others to use them. Perhaps this will be patched in some (linux?) driver update in the future, but until then....

[uc]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5158989> [my]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5088918>

EDIT: I clearly don't understand HN's subset of Markdown, either...

<comment> T-A <http://www.tuxlom.com/> runs fine (60 FPS) on a mobile Core i5 with HD 4000. :)

<comment><USER10> OS/version, browser/version? Doesn't work here, though if I reboot into Windows 7 I'm sure it will.

<comment> T-A Windows 8, Chrome

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Total lack of IE support is a bit...problematic.

<comment><USER12> I have no problem dropping IE support for app-like experiences. Honestly, people on IE are mostly at work or don't know much about technology and are less likely to play games. I don't see how asking the user to install another browser is bad compared to having to install steam or be limited to your flavor of mobile OS or console.

<comment><USER13> > "people on IE are mostly at work or don't know much about technology..."

IE9 is pretty solid in many ways. Runs javascript faster than Firefox. Jquery animated interface effects and so on run noticeably smoother and quicker in IE9. My main browser is Firefox and I like it, but I've noticed IE9's faster performance when testing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> WebGL is great, but as a game developer that works with these technologies daily, it isn't ready for the mass market yet. The lack of mobile and IE support are deal-breakers for the short term. Give it a year or two and it'll be a whole different story.

<comment><USER3> It will be great when support expands, but I don't see how those are really deal-breakers. Are there even any equivalent platforms that would suggest mobile and IE support will be required before WebGL takes off? Meanwhile Firefox + Chrome is hundreds of millions of potential users.

Yes, people will get confused and annoyed about why a game doesn't work in their browser of choice, because they don't really know what a browser is, or the difference between a mobile browser and a desktop browser. But that's no different than my mother wondering why her flash games don't work on her ipad, and flash games are still a substantial (if not always stable) market.

The real problem holding back rapid progress, I think, is that lack of strong development tools, and that's (very slowly) being worked on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Blindly trusting webgl is even more unwise than blindly trusting js, because most stacks are accelerated via passing third-party data to shoddy native code. If you're actually putting content on the world-wide web (not just a game that's useless without interactive behavior) js+webgl should never be the only rendering, but I fear that most authors don't care about this.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you responsibly host your personal/small-biz email? - <AUTHOR> After a number of years with Google Apps for Your Domain (which you can't sign up for free for anymore, anyway), I'm beginning to both worry that AfyD's free service tier won't last, and that Google doesn't necessarily have my best interests in mind (in part because I'm not paying them).
Previously, fastmail has crossed my radar as a potential host that would have the proper balance of technical competence and valuing user privacy/security, but that's really all that comes to mind. I'd prefer not to self-host; keeping my main contact avenue functional should be a decision, not a project.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> Assuming you want both a web ui, as well as the option to run your own client, SMTP relay, etc:

Yandex Email for Domains (free): [https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/](https://domain.yandex.com/domains_add/)

Zoho Mail (free and paid plans) [https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail- pricing.html](https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html)

Exchange Online ($4/user/month) [https://products.office.com/en- us/exchange/exchange-online](https://products.office.com/en- us/exchange/exchange-online)

As for "valuing user privacy/security", that's pretty hard to gauge. Depends on the context I suppose. Yandex seems unlikely to care about an FBI warrant :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Rackspace Mail is the leader in this category, with 3 million paid mailboxes. They offer webmail/IMAP/POP/Mobile/Exchange hosting, a 100% availability SLA, and 24x7x365 live chat/phone/email support.

Pricing starts at $2/mailbox/month, but there's a $10/month billing minimum. $10/month is more than reasonable for a small business to spend on e-mail hosting, IMO.

[https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting](https://www.rackspace.com/email- hosting)

</comment><comment><USER4> I run my own mailserver on a $5 debian Digital Ocean node. The only problem I have run into is that DO blocks outgoing SMTP on IPv6, and in spite of complaints it doesn't seem like they intend to ever change that. (You can easily mitigate this by disabling IPv6. But I want to use IPv6, so I'm in the process of switching over to Ramnode.)

If you also want to run a ZNC host or personal webserver, it's a pretty good deal.

Your concerns about self-hosting are fair, but I would encourage you to take a leap of faith and do it anyway. Exim doesn't require any maintenance-- if you get it setup right in the beginning, you'll never have to touch it again.

<comment><USER2> Running your own mail server certainly has advantages. But, it is typically more than just Exim. You'll need to install something for IMAP access. Or, if you want web mail, something for that. And, even if not right away, eventually, something to deal with spam...it will come soon enough. Also, those pieces tend to require other pieces (backing database engines, etc).

Similarly, you have to read up on things like domainkeys, spf, IPV6, MX records, PTR records, firewalls, etc...then implement them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've recently started using [http://mailbox.org](http://mailbox.org).

It's hosted in Germany by what seems to be a reasonably serious company, and running [https://www.open-xchange.com/](https://www.open-xchange.com/) for the web UI (mail, calendar, basic docs).

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been using Zoho Mail for years without much issue. They do have occasional outages, which can be frustrating, but they're generally alright for what I'm doing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fastmail too as many has pointed out, pretty quick response for help issues.

A little plus point, paid more in advance to get the discount.

I'm a happy user.</comment>


How Corporations Got the Same Rights as People (But Never Go to Jail) (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://consumerist.com/2014/09/12/how-corporations-got-the-same-rights-as-people-but-dont-ever-go-to-jail/ <comment><USER2> Corporate executives go to jail, believe it or not. Some may feel that they should go more often, but go they do.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." — Robert Reich</comment>


Show HN: jsdares – learning programming visually - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsdares.com/

<comment><USER2> I showed it to my 12-yo son. He wants to learn programming. Right now he's able to create complex machines in Minecraft, which are similar to programs and to electronic circuits.

Anyway, he was thrilled by jsdares because of the gaming approach. He was excited to do the first 3 robots tutorials, and then he got tired but asked me to send him the link to the site. Those were the first programming lines he wrote.

So, the overall experience of jsdares is awesome. As a suggestion to Jan Paul and team, please make it translatable so kids from around the world can benefit of it. There's already a few good introductions to programming in JavaScript in English, but very few ones in Portuguese using this new approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, great to hear he liked it!

Unfortunately there are not many dares implemented yet, so he will not be able to follow a nice path from playing with robots to writing games. But anyone can create their own dares.

If you would like you could try to recreate the existing dares in Portugese. Better integration of different languages would be great at some point though!

<comment><USER3> How is the localization done? I'd be interested in a german version (and would contribute).

<comment><AUTHOR> No support yet for localization at all, unfortunately. Except for creating your own dares in other languages.

<comment><USER4> It's one of the greater hurdles for teaching kids to code, in non-English countries. Everything is in English, which greatly impacts their ability to figure out most things for themselves. And you can't really expect kids under 12 to meaningfully decipher English (there's exceptions, yes).

That's the first reason I clicked the link--I thought the "visually" part in the title would perhaps be about something doing away with written language entirely, but alas :)

Anyway, if children are important in your audience, please consider (a support framework for) localization. In the technology world, you can usually expect people to be able to read and communicate English, it's the _lingua franca_. Most software gets diminishing returns for each language you add, many people even prefer English interfaces over their mother language (because so many industry-words are English--looking at you, Photoshop/GIMP). But with children, for every new language you add, it's like opening up an entirely new can of audience that simply wasn't able to work with your software before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree with that. I just wanted to spend all my time on other features, but since it is an open source project my hope is that people will help me out with building things like internationalization! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This makes me want to find an old BBC Micro and a LOGO Turtle :)

I Think the initial page has too many paths that I can start on. I think it needs a single clear starting point (higher up the page) that lets one get used to the UI... for instance it took me a while to work out how to 'start', then a while before I noticed that there was a tab for the 'robot' I was controlling.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point! I've heard that a couple of times actually. For the first couple of dares it would probably be better not to have any tabs, in order to be able to get started right away.

I did want to have the game on the frontpage however, both as a showcase of what's possible with the platform and because making games might appeal to people. But maybe on the frontpage there should be a number of different examples to explore, including some with robots. What do you think?

<comment><USER2> I also didn't find the actual tutorials below the fold at first. I thought we were supposed to start at the big game, which is rather complex for novices.

Consider placing the main/default path at the top of the page (start your first lesson, a la Codecademy) and below that (but still above the fold) 3 or 4 examples inside small squares of the kind of programs you can write (possibly starting points for more advanced students).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very cool, we need more things like this in the industry. Easy entry, and instant gratification. The question that gets asked by every beginner in any field is "okay, but am I ever going to use this?" and instant gratification and identifying concepts in the context of a greater whole are crucially important.

However, the title makes me think more of actual visual programming "languages" or interfaces. Much like minecraft as is being pointed out here, or the National Instruments project, LabView (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LabVIEW>) which uses a language "G" ... a graphical representation of inputs, outputs, logical operators and translators that all get connected via "wires" in a flowchart. I was playing with this at 10 or 12 and I think engaging my visual-spacial skills early in something entirely logical and non-visual dominated greatly helped me. I have to think that kids playing minecraft now will be great programmers were they to go that direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The instant gratification was indeed an important part of the design, as it hugely helps the motivation. (Think I've seen studies to that effect, but can't remember exactly.)

My biggest problem with these "visual programming languages" is that they don't scale well to "real-world programming". There's also a pedagogical discussion on whether they are effective for learning, but I don't want to get involved in that. ;-) In practice I've seen though that most children/students don't have a problem writing actual code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome. How to make it even better?

1\. Add some of the really nice error parsing and automated suggestion heuristics from Khan Academy's JS editor <https://www.khanacademy.org/cs> (sadly doesn't seem to be on their Github yet)

2\. Integrate some of the typechecking features of ternjs to again provide more helpful error messages and suggestions <http://ternjs.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Great to see a lot of suggestions coming by here, I'll add them later to the existing TODO list: <https://github.com/janpaul123/jsdares/issues>

<comment><USER2> Oh, I hadn't noticed that this project is on GitHub. And under a MIT License to boot! Hmmm.... where's my thinking hat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The robot dares reminded me of "Lightbot"[1], a game which I admire and think gives a great introduction to programming concepts, without going into the details of a programming languages' syntax.

Anyway, great work. I showed it to my girlfriend who wants to learn programming; she finds it way more fun than Codecademy.

[1] <http://armorgames.com/play/2205/light-bot>

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me a lot of Bret Victor's Inventing on Principle talk (<http://vimeo.com/36579366>). I went to the lecture he gave at Stanford back in February ([http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/speaker.php?date=2013-...](http://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs547/speaker.php?date=2013-02-01)) and meant to ask him what ever happened to that editor he demonstrated. He's working on new software right now now that lets you take datasets (think plaintext CSV files) and programmatically construct new visual displays of those data (so perform this set of actions on each item, and repeat that through the entire set with this one change, which the software will learn to repeat through the rest of the data). That new software is web-based, but again, didn't hear anything from him about when to expect it to be released.

Very cool to see this stuff moving in the direction of being responsive inside the browser, and actually working. Understanding variables is one of the most common problems for beginners, and being able to change the variables and see the immediate effects in existing code is compelling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bret Victor has indeed been my primary inspiration for this project, even before the Inventing on Principle talk (e.g. Ladder of Abstraction, Kill Math, etc). I've written up some more details on the implementation and motivation here, if you're interested: <http://www.jsdares.com/blindfold> :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks similar to what I've tried to do with Modelian [1].

With Modelian, I went the route of developing a Domain Specific Language designed to be simple to learn (which has an interpreter built all in JS). It has things like case-insensitivity that I think make learning simpler.

[1] <http://modelian.com>

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome!

From Jan Paul's thesis: > The syntax tree can be used to generate back the original code, be it in normalised form, but also to generate the safe runtime. For every Javascript operation a wrapper function is provided, which sanitizes the input and output, and restricts the operation if necessary.

Like I said, awesome!!

</comment><comment><USER12> Very nice over all. Some parts definitely need some polish, though. I get what you're going for with the player-piano type dots crossing the line, but I really couldn't tell what was going on the first few times I brought it up. It was just too busy with the current line of code in it's own highlighted box and the line and the dots. I also accidentally clicked one of the numbers and didn't know why all the dots and stuff wouldn't get off the screen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comments! The step bar at the bottom is definitely sub-par, but wanted to have it so quickly hacked it in there :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is so great! We find our students want help with only a small number of large concepts as they learn. Mostly, these are the basics of programming (conditionals, loops, control flow). This looks like a great tool!

(The other main area students struggle is how to fit HTML and JS together into a real project...)

Darrell (<http://www.thinkful.com/>)

</comment><comment><USER14> I really enjoyed these exercises. One bug I found: for the "Find the Largest" dare the solution only allows 10 lines of code- but the test code takes up 9 lines! Since I was unable to solve the problem by creating and implementing a function (not enough line allowance) I found that was able to complete the dare by simply printing out the test answers. Only bug I found, though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, yeah, I put less thought in the second set of exercises. All my exercises are honestly just examples, since anyone can create their own! :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Jan Paul showed me this at Fronteers last year. It's super impressive and works incredibly fluid. I hope this gets a bunch of attention and gets incorporated into a lot of curriculums. Even the first example offers more insight that the entire javascript/programming courses i had in college.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Kilian :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just wish it featured some JS syntax highlighting, true to spec JS linting (drop a semicolon and the parser errors) and perhaps CoffeeScript support. Not sure what the implications would be with learning CS before JS or during, but I support its presence none the less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Syntax highlighting would be great indeed, I didn't implement it because it didn't seem like the most important thing to do. The project is open source though, so if you would like to implement syntax highlighting or CS support, then that would be superb! :D

<comment><USER17> How do you feel the extra step of compiling to CoffeeScript would impact performance and response time? I have been considering contributing in that direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably a limited performance impact. But keep in mind that my current parser doesn't even allow creation of objects, closures, etc., so the value of adding CoffeeScript is also rather limited, at this point. :-(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is so well made. Would be a great intro to programming for kids or newbies of any age. Congrats and great work!

</comment><comment><USER19> this is sweet. i was recently throwing around the idea of a visual code progression alongside the actual execution as a form of tute/documentation (sort of like docco w/execution) and this is pretty damn close.

would be great if you integrated syntax coloring, like Codemirror.

</comment><comment><USER20> The robots remind me of the Karol the robot... Very cool concept though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Karel the Robot has definitely inspired the robot interface!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks very promising. I look forward to seeing what you add.

</comment><comment><USER22> Excellent work, congrats!</comment>