Someone bought my Twitter account 10K fake/bot followers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@geoffgolberg/when-bots-attack-af7f9f87b612 <comment><USER2> It's very unlikely someone bought them for him to make him look bad. Instead, a lot of the time when fake followers are created they are programmed to look 'normal' by following other accounts and engaging. Otherwise a single follow target can be a real outlier and easier to triangulate.

source: worked in spam for a long time.

Also, 10k accounts is like $5-$10 for most 'in the business'. There are a lot of services that sell for this upwards of $50-$100 though. We're not talking about a lot of investment.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think it so unlikely? In the media world, some people faced career- damage after the NYT expose:

[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met- ric...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-richard- roeper-twitter-20180202-story.html)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle- ex...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalists-struggle-explain-why- they-bought-fake-twitter-followers-n843871)

<comment> 52-6F-62 I don't think they're saying it never happens, but I've heard similar reports to OC.

It's a measure taken to normalize the accounts— it muddies the water. That way, they look more like average personal accounts than obviously paid-for followers. The costs on the click-farm side is averaged out so they just have the "clickers" or bots follow a huge variety of people and companies while also putting the most backing to the accounts belonging to whoever hired them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was way more interesting than I thought it would be.

"This is neither a bug nor isolated to my account. Twitter's entire platform is propped up by misleading/inflated follower/following counts, which include accounts Twitter themselves have identified as "suspected spam accounts" (and have been identified as such for years)."

I never knew that Twitter did that "suspected spam accounts" accounts thing.

Also... he calls this an "attack", which seems like the wrong word to use somehow. They bots don't seem to be attacking him, they just follow him. Probably doesn't matter much, but I kept waiting for an "attack" to happen, but then it became obvious they're just following him.

<comment><USER5> I think attack is perfectly appropriate. Having 10k of obviously fake accounts following you is a massive hit to your reputation.

<comment><USER6> >Having 10k of obviously fake accounts following you is a massive hit to your reputation.

What sort of people do you hang out with?

<comment><USER7> It's similar to Amazon reviews-- if a lot of them are fake people think "well this product sucks actually, they just bought reviews." or at least "I don't actually know if this is any good"

Take it to an entertainer/journalist/politician and it's "well this person sucks actually, they aren't really anyone important and their opinion on things doesn't matter".

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's at all similar to Amazon reviews.

It's relatively normal to look at Amazon reviews, but it takes a special kind of a person to browse through someones social media followers.

<comment><USER7> Well the fake bots will post fake comments and spammy links and stuff too, so it's right in front of you for the most part.

I dunno, I poke around in followers a little bit but it's usually to the tune of "what other developers follow this person? I might want to follow them too". Not that I use twitter much so eh. Maybe that only really works on the smaller accounts I usually look at. S:

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "I am certain that my account was 'maliciously [targeted by] someone with > bot followers to make [me] look bad.'"

Imagine explaining this concept to someone five years ago, let alone ten or twenty, and trying not to come across as bad science fiction.

<comment><USER9> Newspapers buying themselves is not something new.

<comment><USER10> Or authors buying copies of their own book to kickstart themselves into the best seller club.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323864304578316...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323864304578316143623600544)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just searched for "buy Twitter followers" and it seems 10000 followers cost only $40: [https://www.socialshop.co/twitter/buy-twitter- followers/](https://www.socialshop.co/twitter/buy-twitter-followers/)

It's funny looking at the page with various packs, just like a normal service: "express delivery", "high quality"!

</comment><comment><USER12> A year or so ago, it was trending in Norway to post that you would donate 1kr (~.1usd) per like, and then challenge your friends to do the same. I bought a friend thousand likes for a few bucks.

So in essence, I donated 100usd for about 10usd, haha

</comment><comment><USER13> To play devil's advocate briefly, assume that Twitter decided to delete all accounts it flagged as spam/bot accounts tomorrow. What would the long term fallout be? It's unlikely that people selling follower counts would simply go away, just become a more active adversary. By putting bots simply behind a quality filter (a pseudo shadow-ban), they avoid an escalating arms race in bot account creation.

The real fix here is to stop showing follower counts completely, since they're trash.

<comment><USER14> Except follower counts motivate active users to stay on Twitter. For some people, Twitter is a social game and follower counts are the score.

<comment><USER15> Plus advertisers need some tangible metrics in order to distribute their ads (and the $ that comes with it).

If followers would cease to exist, half of the emptiness/vanity accounts would also cease to exist (and that is not a bad thing imho).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's actually a really clever way of investigating the "fake" eco- system...buy it and crunch the numbers of what you now know are confirmed fakes.

<comment><USER17> _confirmed fakes_

Does anybody ever sell hacked accounts or accounts where people gave some random app way too many permissions?

<comment><USER7> Yes but not so much for this in particular. If I want to make a bunch of fake Twitter followers I would just generate new accounts and generate some fake tweets. It would take a lot more work to hack someone's account (who then might also notice it's hacked and try to take it back).

App permissions can still be a problem, but usually that is usually centered more around identity theft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The thing is that Twitter can detect bots very easily. They choose not to because they are desperate to keep their numbers up.

<comment><USER19> If they ever do, they will be people trying to weaponize it. It reminds me of old email spam: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job)

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure how that would work in the context of Twitter. Spoofing an email sender is trivial (well, it was before SPF, DKIM and friends). On Twitter the equivalent would be to make an account behave like a bot so that it got flagged but I don't see how you could do that without getting its credentials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > My desire to maintain a clean/legit Twitter following was driven by > necessity. I didn't want to lose out on any work because of the appearance > that I was falsely representing my reach/influence.

Run a twitter follower list API call for all followers with the quality filter on. Save the list to a database

Then run the same call with a the quality filter off and tag each new follower as a bot.

Then block the bots ?

Of course I realize that he's not a developer, but that would basically fix his problem and is not too hard to create.

edit: I now saw at twitteraudit.com that you can use it to block followers too. I guess that he didn't mind THAT much then contrary to the quoted statement above.

</comment><comment><USER22> A few years ago when I realized this was possible I bought myself, a few friends from high school / college, and a few small companies I like a bunch of followers. (50K each roughly)

For me it was mostly so people would ask how I got so many followers and I could tell the silly story. Buying them for my friends was fun because they would end up tweeting about it and I could watch them try to figure it out before telling them. For the small companies I actually knew the CEO/CTO's and ended up talking about it later on. They came out the best because their accounts were flooded with fake followers but after people saw they had 50K followers real people started following them. I believe one of the companies is close to 150K followers now. If only a third of that is real it's still a lot more than they would have had before.

I looked recently and it seems to be more difficult to do now.

</comment><comment><USER23> I saw this title and promptly went and bought a thousand for my daughter. I anticipate much squealing and confused "I'm trending!" hollering.

<comment><USER24> And thus, your daughter's brain begins to see the pattern that leads to true fulfillment, having lots of online followers. ;)

<comment><USER23> Oh she's already there. I hope this shows her how pointless they really are. If she looks into her new followers she will see a bunch of odd sounding names that all follow roughly the same number of people and have no posts so it's pretty clear something is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I had a facebook page which had 4K followers, it around 2 years to reach that much people. But one day the page likes Jumped to 12K ,It was targeted by a guy to make us look bad. I lost interest after this knowing that my audience are fake bots.

</comment><comment><USER26> How much did he sell it for? As people mention you can buy a lot of fake followers for cheap. I do like a lot of the data here though.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is nothing in the grand scheme of social media account selling/trading. Go to any social media account marketplace and look through, you can buy any of the thousands of accounts that are for sale. People will spend literally thousands of dollars on accounts that have "original" handles, think dictionary defined one word handles. Then you have people who will spend money on accounts that have thousands of fake followers, because of how easy it is to game these platforms for views and followers. In my eyes it really ruins the fun of cool handles, because people are literally making livings off of scoping up as many of these accounts as they can and reselling them.

Want to get karma on reddit? Go to one of the endless amount of subs dedicated to karma farming and make clickbait posts. Turn around and sell the account to any of the political trolls that love to harvest those accounts.

Want to get followers on twitter/facebook/instagram/xbox/psn? Set your profile picture to that of any model you can find, claim it's you, then post nothing but clickbait and fake giveaway promotions. Turn around and sell it to the low self esteem teenagers who crave internet attention because they can't get it irl.

Granted you don't see much youtube account selling, I'd say mostly because since the platform is so old, a majority of the original account handle owners are long gone from the platform. You do still see it in some aspect though, especially on Fortnite channels. A bunch of seemingly original account names come out of nowhere and get a few hundred k subs in a short spam by posting clickbait fortnite vids? Not a coincidence. Most of those accounts are bought.

Then you have people who lurk through platforms and try an harvest as many original accounts as they can. I'm not sure how they do it, maybe just guessing?

The people who sell these accounts know how desperate some people are for them, that's why so much effort goes in to collecting these accounts. Just look at what happened with the xbox gamertag refresh, that was a disaster. What was meant to be an opportunity for anyone to get a cool gt,turned into bots harvesting thousands of accounts within seconds of them being released, then sold off.

A driving factor behind this behavior is that their is no effort to stop this. Instagram I believe tried to crack down, but what can you do really? You can't be suspicious of various IPs logging in, that's normal behavior even when it's truly malicious. The only way I can think to catch the selling of accounts would be to have an AI look at the behavior and flag drastic changes. Have an account that's normally on a west coast USA IP that posts cute cat photos that suddenly has a Europe location IP and it flooding its feed with clickbait? Probably a new owner.

In reality though, the amount of people who care about this is very minimal. It's a small niche of that consists of mostly teenagers/young adults who grew up in the digital/video game centric age. The need to impress others by having a cool online identity is paramount here.

EDIT: To give examples, I should include some prices. Want a 1 letter instagram account? It'll run you between $10,000-$50,000 if you can find someone selling. Want a 2 letter twitter handle? it'll cost you a few hundred/thousand depending on the letters. Want a two letter xbox gt? it'll cost you a few thousand. Want an original gmail account? It'll cost a few thousand. 3 letter accounts of most of the social media platforms range from a few hundred to a few thousand depending on if it's actually a word, looks cool, or if it's just a random assortment of characters and letters.

<comment><USER10> > Granted you don't see much youtube account selling

YouTube (and Twitch) have the "view bot" problem though, where you can buy views (viewbotting) for a video to make it appear popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Buying followers is a good idea actually. There are fewer restrictions on Twitter accounts that have a lot of followers.

<comment><USER29> It's not because your engagement/user goes down (unless you now also start paying for fake engagement).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is much more blatant in my country- India.

Rich no-name dudes get themselves a birthday trend (sometimes worldwide) albeit briefly. Given that Twitter has personnel manually looking at trends it shouldn't be hard for them to immediately kill that trend. I've often seen them go on for hours and started by accounts which follow the standard bot template in their bio.

Of course of this were a trend about wiki leaks twitter is quick to suppress. I know people in the US like to pick political sides but they're slowly "progressing" themselves towards 1984 by supporting this.

<comment><USER31> and here I was thinking we were already experiencing 1984 (maybe even a bit worst)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does wasm or web crypto api help web app crypto? - <AUTHOR> Web assembly is a very promising idea and has a chance to provide better means for building security into web apps than SJCL/etc by enforcing same origin policy, sandboxing execution, being able to limit side-channel attacks, etc. Similarly promising is Web Crypto API: better primitives, consistent across browsers. My question is: will it even help, given that end-user interaction is still in DOM, attackers can still inject the code that overrides calls to better implementations of ciphers? Or I'm missing something in the threat model of both? <comment><USER2> I think I don't fully understand your challenge as stated, so I'm perhaps not able to give the response you're looking for.

With that said, let's take the way that Netflix implemented DRM via web crypto and encrypted media extensions. Assuming that an attacker is in a position to inject arbitrary code in the browser's execution, the attacker still cannot bypass the server-side implementation (otherwise it wouldn't be DRM). Unless there is an exploitable weakness in the cryptosystem on the client-side that can be meaningfully chained to the server-side, you need to control both areas of execution to break the crypto involved.

When you say "override calls to better ciphers", do you mean something like a downgrade attack, such as in TLS? It's true that you could masquerade the client as a device that is only capable of using a vulnerable type of encryption, but in that scenario the server-side can simply choose to not support it. In fact (again using Netflix as an example), it is more or less a requirement of these cryptosystems that the algorithm's work be distributed between a client and a server for exactly this reason.

If what you're talking about is more of a situation where a rogue software gains access to the DOM while you're using web crypto to have an OTR- encrypted, browser-based conversation with someone else, and they use your secret key in execution to decrypt the other parties' messages: sure. But I'm not sure what's special about that versus client-side takeover of any other cryptosystem. You could just as easily take over Signal on a jailbroken iPhone.</comment>


Universal Jinja: a crazy idea for a Python-ready front end - <AUTHOR> https://whatisjasongoldstein.com/writing/universal-jinja/ <comment><USER3> Ugh, Jinja is not an "excellent" templating language. It's a terrible broken mix of pythonisms and arbitrary-feeling restrictions and oddly missing pieces. It becomes hard to read very quickly and some of the looping idioms are just nuts. Sorry I don't have anything constructive to say here but I'm genuinely taken aback that there are apparently big fans of Jinja.

<comment><USER4> What is a "good template language"?

<comment><USER5> JSX is kinda nice, once you get used to it. Primarily because it's just HTML and/or your custom components, with arbitrary code execution in { } blocks.

<comment><USER6> When I see JSX in a project I can't help but notice how similar it is to PHP pages that inline all the applications logic with the template making it unreadable. When it comes to react I think JSX is even worse than PHP when javascript objects are passed in and out of JSX directives. It is so hard to debug, and a nightmare to read.

<comment><USER7> That is true, but it is somewhat alleviated by the fact that react restricts what you can (or should) do in a component. A good component has one-way data flow and behaves like a pure function (modulo some AJAX, or interfacing with non-React code, but you can isolate that pretty nicely). Yes, it is not enforces, and JSX can be a footgun. Also, the separation of concerns is along a different line (not markup / behavior / style, but between components. If you want to "theme" your website, its kind of hard). I'm not a diehard functional fan, but I find if you go with it it can actually be pretty maintainable and clean. Tooling is also very good, especially with TypeScript (TSX).

<comment><USER8> TSX has kinda driven me nuts because react-redux connect doesn't seem to type cleanly. Has that improved?

<comment><USER7> I haven't tried redux with tyepscript yet. One thing that doesn't seem to be typed correctly is immutability-helpers (it catches some errors, but some stuff seems to be `any`).

It is impressive though how often you have types when I wouldn't expect it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was wondering if we should not code a Python renderer for one JS framework and be done with it.

We already have one JS engine in Python ([https://github.com/kovidgoyal/dukpy](https://github.com/kovidgoyal/dukpy)). We even have pluggable renderers ([https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyExecJS](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PyExecJS)). Later we will have webassembly renderers in Python, so you will be able to take frontend frameworks, compile them and execute them in Python.

Finally, we have some fantastic framework that are powerful, yet not that big, such as Vue.js, that already have a pluggable architecture for rendering without a DOM on the server side ([https://ssr.vuejs.org/en/basic.html](https://ssr.vuejs.org/en/basic.html))

The Python community has done much more complicated projects already, and half the work is there, so my guess the reason it hasn't happened yet is we REALLY hate js and most of us just touch it to get the job done and go to the next task.

It's a bit like the async situation. We have the tools, but there is no Django of the asyncio because we love our tools as their are so much. I'm so guilty of this.

The problem is: the rest of the Web is moving ahead, and while it's still relevant to do DRF + Vue.JS right now, one day stuff like meteorjs will be so crazy yet stable it will be hard to compete.

I was hopping webassembly would let us eventually run Python on the client side. But I doubt it will happen. However, I'm thinking more and more than it will allow JS tooling to be plugged in many other languages on the server side.

<comment><USER5> I've just got back into the Javascript world after several years of Python programming. My gut feeling is that we will end up with APIs in some language, and universal [0] Javascript apps that can render both client and server side. I don't think there's a place for non-Javascript server-side templating in the long run. JS (as a language, forgetting about the frameworks) has really come a long way in the last few years, to the point where I don't think you'll be able to justify having two different HTML rendering systems for much longer.

[0] aka isomorphic, but universal seems to be the new (IMO better, less overloaded) term for that

<comment><USER9> I don't know, I put Vanilla, jQuery, Angular, React and Vue in production. I used gulp and webpack and manual setup. I used node and static js.

In in end, nothing is well integrated.

You would think the whole bloody "one language to rule them all" concept would make the JS stack the most integrated one of all.

Well to my surprise, far from it. It's a mess of hundred of moving unstable badly documented always changing components that your job is to make work together.

There is no django of the JS word. None.

And because of that, most JS projects I worked on were disposable projects, prototype in production.

Now there is no meteor in the Python word neither. But professionally, I need something solid, not an ongoing experiment.

You can make fantastic stuff with JS, but only because the platform is fantastic. The web is genius. The JS ecosystem is terrible.

But wish, I really wish the JS community would pick on the seriousness of other communities and the python one would take more risks and innovations like the JS one.

<comment><USER5> Oh, yeah, it's a mess right now. Debugging especially sucks. I'm hoping that given 5 more years of work on server-side JS we'll get to something that's not miserable, and that transpiling will be a thing of the past

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Isomorphic" templates are not enough. You also need isomorphic data fetching for client code. If you have to manually reinvent the same data fetching on the client and server, you don't get the full benefits of isomorphic code. You only have brittle templates with two different ways to glue data to view.

So far isomorphic Node + React has been the best (but not perfect) way I've seen to do this. You abstract out the API layer, and now you can define components and their data sources that have the exact same code on the client and server, and it just works. Apollo/GraphQL is probably a giant leap forward in this as well.

Having an option to do hand-glued "isomorphic" data in a few places is probably nicer than Javascript spaghetti on the front end, but it doesn't get you all the way there. Rails has the same problem by the way, the "Rails way" is coffeescript glue to get any kind of modern front end application functionality. Even with React on Rails you have to have to reinvent data fetching, and lose the benefit of a well structured isomorphic codebase.

Until browsers support a different language natively other than Javascript (which will never happen), Node + React is currently the most straightforward path to get there.

<comment><USER11> > Until browsers support a different language natively other than Javascript > (which will never happen), Node + React is currently the most > straightforward path to get there.

I think WebAssembly is promising for this. You could write your app in any language you want, as long as it compiles to WebAssembly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've done this many years ago with [https://github.com/wkral/jinja2js](https://github.com/wkral/jinja2js)

It works - but there are gotchas:

1\. You can't depend on useful pythonisms/javascriptisms such as

      {{thing or ""}} vs {{thing || ""}

2\. Template filter code still has to be duplicated in both languages - <USER2> such as {{_('String')}} for example - which sort of makes sense - but then you have to do the same for some other, really trivial, filters.

3\. Testing becomes annoying because a template can work in one, and not the other - you have to test both.

4\. You don't get the newer html diff style virtual dom rendering which can cause issues with stuff like select boxes. You end up with special case code to handle that, which is more of a hassle.

The conclusions from it all were:

a) You _do_ save time over doing it once in python, once in js

b) You _don 't_ save time over doing it all in js - especially if you use a newer functional style js template framework (react/vue/polymer)

c) You can still get the best of both worlds by hooking up your templates in js to be rendered by your backend - eg like [https://github.com/reactjs/react- rails](https://github.com/reactjs/react-rails) does.

In the end for my next project I decided to do an api for the backend in python and the website/frontend in react with SSR, and am really thrilled with the results - very maintainable, testable and simple overall.

</comment><comment><USER13> I see a few problems.

The biggest problem is testability. Testing that a template renders correctly means parsing the markup into a DOM and asserting that certain conditions are met. This is exacerbated by the differences between Jinja and Nunjucks, which can be non-trivial and unexpected (e.g., Jinja will render synchronously, while Nunjucks can render asynchronously--weird async behavior may appear). Since your application doesn't have the same entry point to the code (they're in two different languages!), you really need to write two different sets of tests for the same template to get proper coverage. Templates being templates, you also don't get the granular testability of a React component out-of-the- box, which can be pulled out and tested individually.

Templates alone also don't include anything in the way of handling events, component lifecycle, and other things that make your code actually do stuff. You'll need to bind event listeners manually, and those will of course need their own separate tests.

Making Jinja useful also usually involves adding your own plugins and filters. This happens in Python, which means you'll need to write all of those a second time in JavaScript, and test them. Doing this right means comparing the output of the two versions, which isn't necessarily straightforward. Given the complexity of this, I wouldn't bet money that other engineers would go through the hassle of making sure this is done correctly.

I'd encourage the author to write more about the pitfalls of this approach. It's easy to write {{ foo.strip() }} in Jinja and forget that Nunjucks requires {{ foo.trim() }}, or empty arrays being falsey in Jinja and truthy in Nunjucks.

<comment><USER6> I recently investigated a jinja renderer for client side templates. Feature support was the main blocker, but I also wanted to do things for the back end templates that don't make sense on the client side.

I setup an asset macro so that I could declare static asset dependencies in my templates at the component level and have them injected into the footer of the page automatically.

Adding a few lines of jinja middleware to my test server made it possible to unit test my templates directly. It also made my HTML fixtures much more enjoyable to write, because I had jinja at my disposal.

I'm glad I didn't limit myself to the overlap of the 2 rendering engines. I am now in a place where I can easily migrate to Vue and start killing off my jQuery dependencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mike Bayer wrote a really interesting article about this topic 5 years ago: [http://techspot.zzzeek.org/category/mako/](http://techspot.zzzeek.org/category/mako/)

These techniques are easier with the Pyramid framework.

</comment><comment><USER15> I usually ignore server side rendering or isomorphic rendering. I'm not saying all projects should ignore it but you're really talking about a high level of optimization if you need it. And if you're reaching that level of optimization you probably shouldn't use Python.

Server side rendering only makes the first view faster. After that, everything is rendered on the client and faster that way. And if you use caching with progressive web apps or just file caching in general, the first view will be fast after. So you're only optimizing for the first of the first. You can then provide the initial data in the page request so that saves a round trip on the first request while still rendering on the frontend.

I say all this to just point out that there are many ways to speed up your frontend without doing SSR and they are much easier to implement with Python. So I'd rather exhaust all these techniques before implementing SSR. If I get to that point though, I suspect Python might be the slowest part of your stack. And lastly if you are doing SSR for SEO purposes then just use a prebuilt prerender service.

With all that said if there was an easier way to SSR with Python/Django, I'd definitely use it. But Jinja on the frontend doesn't sound like that answer.

<comment><USER10> If you're writing a SPA, server side rendering is probably the most important optimization you can make to speed up your application. No other optimization will come close to the benefits of server rendering. SPAs are both slow and perceived as slow. True SPAs are only appropriate for a subset of the web where you have very specific user constraints.

<comment><USER15> > No other optimization will come close to the benefits of server rendering.

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes", Obi-Wan Kenobi

<comment><USER16> Mathematicians also deal in absolutes! Not just the abs function, also proofs and counterexamples.

<comment><USER17> I have a bad feeling about this...

      ObiWan:   deals_in_absolutes ==> Sith
      rhapsOdy: mathematician ==> deals_in_absolutes
      </comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----
      therefore ...

We may have to wrap this in spoiler tags for Episode 9.

<comment><USER18> The logic is inescapable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would not recommend using Nunjucks, unless you would like to contribute to maintaining it.

[https://github.com/mozilla/nunjucks/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING...](https://github.com/mozilla/nunjucks/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

<comment><USER20> Actually, we've started maintaining Nunjucks at The Atlantic (it's in the references of jasonthevillain article).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I actually wrote a JavaScript code generator for Jinja, which allows you to use the Jinja parser and AST and generate pretty readable and fairly sane JavaScript code (for a pretty large subset of full Jinja). I actually used this in my startup (now long dead) where we were able to reuse quite a lot of template code both on the server and the client.

[https://github.com/djc/jasinja](https://github.com/djc/jasinja)

This is in some (conceptual/experiential) ways a precursor to my recent attempt to create a Rusty Jinja-like, which tries hard to take the best ideas from Jinja and mash it up with the best ideas from Rust:

[https://github.com/djc/askama](https://github.com/djc/askama)

</comment><comment><USER22> The post reads somewhat rambly, which I suppose is unavoidable if you're doing a quick whistle-stop of a bunch of related technologies showcasing a new idea.

The only thing that doesn't seem clear is why you'd need to combine server- and client-side rendering in a single instance. Jinja is an incredibly useful and well-made tool, and my experience of it with Flask always leaves me with the best impressions of it being exactly what quick webdev should be, but why would you combine it with JS? Surely the use cases are so different that a separate JS library would be just as applicable, and perhaps more fit for purpose.

<comment><USER9> If you do JS heavy websites, such as ones that require real time data updates, your pages can only render fully with JS. But on the other hand, you may want to pre-render pages on first hit for performance reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Templates cause bugs. The solitary appropriate solution is an unparser – a component that walks an AST and serializes it.

Making sure the result conforms to the grammar of the output language without any unparser would always involve a parser.

> As soon as I'm looking at more than one programming or markup language in > the same file, I'm looking at spaghetti code.

Iain Dooley, December 2011

[http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Your_templating_engin...](http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Your_templating_engine_sucks_and_everything_you_have_ever_written_is_spaghetti_code_yes_you)

<comment><USER9> This article has some good points but the reasons we add more logic to templates are:

\- just pre-generating everything outside of the template can be very efficients. Especially if you language can't make everything lazy or if you have several representations for the same dataset.

\- designers want a bit more freedom that just printing x. Having to go back to the dev team everytime you need a little tweak is terrible

\- all templates are not HTML

\- it's way easier and faster to prototype

\- rendering caching != data caching

\- everything is not about display. Linking and injecting resources are a big deal, and putting that outside of the template is a huge pain.

\- conditional template inheritance ? includes in loop ?

\- stuff like wordpress have entire business based on the fact you can switch templates on the fly without touching the blog code base or without the wp team to know what you are going to need inside the template in advance.

<comment><USER23> Yes, all of those are reasons. None of those reasons apply if users wwant something understandable, maintainable and secure.

Separation of concerns is a thing that can help designers, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been working on a site recently, in Rails, and just been using Turbolinks and SJR (Server Javascript Responses). Granted, it's a content heavy site with fairly light ajax interactions, but it's a pretty delightful process.

So many people jump to heavy JS libs/frameworks to do stuff that can be solved in much more boring/simple ways most of the time. You don't need React/Angular/Vue to submit a form over ajax.

<comment><USER9> Nobody said that. We just said "if your side IS js heavy, then rendering on the server would be nice".

Not all sites need a lot of JS. But your tweeter clone is going to be very boring if you have to hit F5 every 30 seconds and polling doesn't really scale.

<comment><USER24> So use push rather than polling?

My point is that many sites don't really need to be as js heavy as they end up, and people end up solving the wrong problem (how to render all this js server side rather than how to reduce all this js in the first place)

<comment><USER9> Push requires js as well.

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying don't use JavaScript, I'm saying don't abuse it and then try to dig yourself out of that hole with server rendering. Use the tools you have to the fullest extent that do the job perfectly well before reaching for other ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ugh. After living in frontend land (native mobile and react) I'm really not looking forward to going back to Django.

It feels so irrelevant in the world of backend-as-a-service and GraphQL.

...Please forgive my cynicism. I am looking for a reason to like this. Maybe I should just move on.

<comment><USER26> That's fair.

What got me thinking about these ideas were cases where having a distributed frontend felt overengineered. If you have problems where GraphQL makes sense, this would be a step in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER27> To be honest, I'd use GraphQL at any scale. I've recently used it in programming challenges for job interviews, and I've used it in production for about 18 months. It's such a good conceptual fit for front-end, that it now feels strange to work any other way.

<comment><USER28> Looks to be an alternative to the traditional "rest api".

Would anyone care to comment on the productivity benefits of one or the other?

<comment><USER27> It's more like an enhancement of the traditional backend-for-frontend (BFFs) pattern, enabling ad-hoc endpoints (based on queries) rather than static ones.

The main productivity benefit comes from the fact that the query language is a very good fit for the component model. Each component can declare its data dependencies in the form of query fragments, and these get composed into a single query for the entire UI. It means every time you use a component, you can be sure that you'll have the data you need.

I should add that none of this is a unique capability of GraphQL, I know people who've built similar component-data binding with JSON-API, but it's the full package that's compelling. The query language is lovely to work with. You can build GraphQL schemas around the needs of clients, allowing you to hide any weird data modelling or service boundaries you may have in your platform. As an API designer, as well as a front-end developer, I love it.

<comment><USER28> :D

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839576)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand people still using Django for their web based stuff. I was under the impression that ReactJS + aiohttp was state of the art. Please explain why I am wrong.

<comment><USER30> They have literally no point in comparison. Django deals with data, business models, form validation, messaging, and backend. You can render to templates or you can use it to host an API server, or whatever you desire.

React does literally none of those things. aiohttp is just a barebones http server with no built-in functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has anyone had good experience with turbolinks on python?

</comment><comment><USER32> Try nuxt for vuejs

</comment><comment><USER33> Can someone explain to me why we haven't normalized html templating with a Pug-like syntax (formally Jade)?

My perceived benefits of Pug/Jade:

* Significantly fewer LOC

* Improved Readability

* A lot of existing tooling thanks to its popularity in the NodeJS community

<comment><USER34> It seems to me like headless browsing (now in Node) will make it pretty easy to construct your page using the DOM directly on the server without scattered logic and DSLs.</comment></comment>


Mining Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://socialdata.site/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author has written some of the most interesting and thoughtful essays about analyzing her digital life, such as her texts and PDFs of her bank statements after her divorce:

[https://medium.com/@lamthuyvo/you-and-me-as-data- points-958e...](https://medium.com/@lamthuyvo/you-and-me-as-data- points-958ed4723f51)

[https://quantifiedbreakup.tumblr.com/post/71758742836/with-a...](https://quantifiedbreakup.tumblr.com/post/71758742836/with- a-little-help-from-my-friends)

Her work in data journalism (full disclosure: I haven't worked with her but invited her to speak to my class once) is also great: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lamvo/gentrification- co...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lamvo/gentrification- complaints-311-new-york)

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks great! I'm looking forward to going through it to look for next steps for some Twitter scraping I've been doing.

If the author happens to see this, one tiny feedback: it would be very helpful to add the chapter titles to the sidebar links for easier reference.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fantastic, free resource. Excellent intro for those unfamiliar with basic HTML or Python, plus a quick and easy route to building something that works.

It helps that the entire thing is really well written. I'm surprised this is free!</comment>


Ask YC: database screwups - <AUTHOR>

So, what do you do if your database servers drop offline and kill your service for up to 24 hours? This has happened to me recently and my first thought is "I can't afford an offsite DB farm", all my MySQL servers are in one data center. <comment><USER2> This will always be an issue unless you use a distributed/mirror/farm architecture with more than one data-centre.

Most decent data centres are highly resilient and reliable (i.e. cheap solutions are not always worth the headaches if you run important apps/services) but, regardless, if you put all your eggs in one basket there is not much you can do if the basket drops.</comment>


Sling CEO: Comcast data caps so low they hurt competing video providers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/sling-ceo-comcast-data-caps-so-low-they-hurt-competing-video-providers/ <comment><USER2> Data caps aren't even an effective traffic management practice to begin with. It's completely inadequate as a solution to actual congestion, which results from too many people using the service _simultaneously_.

The only purpose data caps serve is to segment users to extract more money out of them, and, as rightly mentioned by the article, to use as competitive leverage against video services not operated by the ISP.</comment>


Amazon to Open First Brick-and-Mortar Location - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-open-first-store-1412879124?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories&cb=logged0.7617116265464574 <comment><USER2> [http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/09/amazon-store- manhattan/](http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/09/amazon-store-manhattan/)

Seems unnecessary. I guess Amazon is getting so bored making money in sane ways that they want to lose money in insane ways.

<comment><USER3> In many urban areas it can be challenging to receive packages, so having a pickup spot in the middle of several million people could well make sense.

Apple's flagship Manhattan store famously does quite well as a showcase for their products and helps to sell millions for them. Amazon could be doing that math that for every user we get into the ecosystem we can extract X in lifetime value from book, video and app purchases (again a way it could make sense).

Also, you can consider this maybe Amazon trying to become Walmart faster than Walmart can become Amazon. Having physical stores still counts for much in the retail sector, having one (or a bunch) would potentially give them leverage and more options. They _already_ have a massive nationwide system of warehouses and logistic centers, is it that crazy that they could move products into brick and mortar shops as well as the presumably much more complicated process of people's homes?

<comment><USER4> I don't know as much about NYC geography, but if they put one of these somewhere in the loop in Chicago I would definitely use it. I would much rather spend my lunch break walking down to the Amazon pickup depot than let a package sit on my front door all day.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't having to pick up a package defeat the purpose of delivery?

If I wanted to pick up packages, I'd go to stores and buy things. I don't want to go to the store though, so I pay Amazon to deliver it to me.

<comment><USER6> Many of the things I buy on Amazon I buy because I can't find them at all in local stores. Sometimes they are just cheaper too, but that really is why I would use a local Amazon store. I wonder if this will also make some things like pet food which aren't really suited to ecommerce more viable for them. Maybe they wouldn't offer vastly cheaper shipping if you want any brand but would stock some staples like that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since we all don't have a wsj account...

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-to-open-first- physic...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-to-open-first-physical- store-in-manhattan-2014-10-09)

<comment><USER8> And if you do, simply take the title, and dump it into Google. The wsj has a stupid rule where they won't require you to have an account to read the full article if your referrer is google.

I created a small greasemonkey script to set the referrer on all wsj websites to google. Works like a champ!

<comment><USER9> Isn't that against Google's T&Cs? I'm sure a website is not allowed to present different content to GoogleBot than it does to regular users. Not sure if there's a rule that says it can't present different content when a user clicks on a search result vs goes directly to the website or from another referrer.

<comment><USER10> They're probably using "First Click Free". See [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first- cli...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free- for-web-search.html)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for this. Good to know about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I assume this will be more of a Kindle showroom with a bunch of Amazon lockers for product pickup. They're always trying to reduce shipping costs and having people pick stuff up is a good way to keep the shippers on their toes.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is probably to help feed the media buzz when they release a new Kindle or such.

TV loves these " people in Manhattan queued all night in front of the store in anticipation of iThingy 15.7 "

<comment><USER13> Yes, which are almost as useless as the "sold x million first weekend" metrics that get parrotted by media.

If the user base increased by 50% between the two releases, they can convince 50% less people to upgrade the first weekend, and still sell more the first weekend than they did last time. The sold x million certainly tells you some hard dollar number that is uninteresting, but it gives you no idea how popular the device will actually be, even though it _sounds_ like it should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, like Argos, but with the internet and stuff. And presumably with better fixtures.

</comment><comment><USER15> Amazon has nothing to lose from this store.

\- They will ride the media wave when a product launches/when they do a stunt like drone delivery and have people waiting outside.

\- You can bet they will be testing in-house tracking/advertising by analyzing their customers' actions under their own conditions

\- You can bet they will sell at least a small number of their flagship products

Kind of surprising that they didnt already have a brick-and-mortar location.

</comment><comment><USER16> UX: Relentless body and eye tracking from the moment you walk in. Physical identity linked to your Amazon account. No opt-out. No cash payment. Tight integration to online experience. Customer is seated beside a large touch screen, product arrives kaiten sushi style. Some visibility of robotic pickers behind the scenes. Reservation of seating days in advance.

<comment><USER17> Shut up and take my money! Can you install one of these things on my toilet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm sure someone can find a niche for it. Stock "deal of the day" items, top sellers, small items (not worth cost of shipping but buyers willing to drive to get), and ship-to-store (lowered shipping, don't worry about shipper leaving it on porch to get stolen). Also provides a live face for service.

</comment><comment><USER19> How many warehouses does Amazon operate in the suburbs outside NYC? I bet they can already do same day delivery on lots of products. Will be interesting to see what inventory they put on display here. Or how its innovative? Maybe giant interactive walls where they let you browse tons of their stuff thats upstairs?

<comment><USER20> We have those (sans giant walls) in the UK.

They are called Argos.

[http://girlinlondon.com/argos-inside-one-of-the-uks-most- pec...](http://girlinlondon.com/argos-inside-one-of-the-uks-most-peculiar- stores/) for a good description.

<comment><USER21> I thought of a similar idea one day when day dreaming at my old retail job. What if in the future, all the stores become so small, malls could house 1000s of stores. You could go in, touch the product, try it on, but they were all just display models. And than you'd order it in store, and it would be on your doorstep the next day. No need to keep inventory in the store, and you pay a much smaller rental fee. And shrink could be almost reduced to zero.

<comment><USER20> Here in the UK that's how many shops (and some chains that are still extant) _started_ out.

You went into the local grocers which had a counter/hatch (think post office/bank), You told him what you wanted (or he your weekly order) and he (or usually his boy) would then drop the merchandise off at your house.

The Supermarkets pretty much paid to your corner grocer (economies of scale, later opening hours, more variety of items, the ability to do your shop yourself as and when needed and the increasing wealth of the UK (cars and refrigerators)).

It would be amusing if we went back to a high tech version of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems cool. Picking up from a store can be useful when it's something you're worried about sitting on your doorstep all day. Could be a great way to improve customer service as well. I'm curious as to whether the store will actually stock non-amazon products.

<comment><USER23> > Picking up from a store can be useful when it's something you're worried > about sitting on your doorstep all day.

This is almost certainly not the main intention of this move, since a store is waayyyy more expensive than a locker and no more convenient, and Amazon has had lockers for a looong time (I can't receive packages at my house so I use the locker one block away extensively).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd be curious what proportion of public facing space would be lockers.

I imagine it'd be great to showcase flash sales and extremely high demand items. I really believe a retailer selling physical goods needs some sort of physical presence and hope this is something interesting.

<comment><USER25> They could easily sell displaying space too for a monthly cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They ship by drone from the warehouse to the store in 30 minutes. You order something, 30 minutes later, after you drink an expensive latte and use their free wifi to watch some TV show from their network, you get your hard-to-find item, and you go home happy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wonder how long it will be until we start seeing subdivisions built around Distribution Centers, with robots delivering the goods almost immediately after ordering. 20 years?

<comment><USER28> With robot cars doing most of the work? Maybe 10 years, though it's hardly necessary that the subdivision gets build around the DC when you can build a DC close enough to the subdivision to make it worth your while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why? Their entire competitive advantage & business approach is based on the opposite?

<comment><USER13> Because they need a way to let people play with things like fire hd, and can't rely on best buy to have their best interests at heart?

<comment><USER29> People buy stuff off Amazon without playing with it first all the time? I did & I'm not even in the US (Kindle).

I can see a Manhattan store working as a novelty type deal but beyond that Amazon is online in my books.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Time to buy BestBuy stock. They just became an acquisition target for Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER31> I could see Amazon using this as a NYC media presence, as much as a store. They could do readings by authors, launch events for Amazon original video content, Kindle product launches, and so on.

Also, six foot HDMI cables. Everybody needs those.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reminds me of the eBay store scene from The 40-year-old Virgin:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxRg5I7r5s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxRg5I7r5s)

The future of e-commerce is bricks and mortar (?!)

<comment><USER33> That wasn't an eBay store, but her job was selling other people's junk on eBay for them. As for the future of e-commerce, it's whoever can get the product to me fastest. Brick and Mortar still wins that race, but lose on price more often than not.

<comment><USER32> There are a lot of products that bricks and mortar lose on, simply because they can't carry the diversity of inventory that ecommerce shops can access.

<comment><USER33> Agreed. It's on the b&m stores to keep a product mix that will sell the most efficiently, and the ones who are surviving are the ones figuring that out. I'm lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on perspective) to live in a city with a Fry's - there aren't a lot of products NewEgg can win on if I'm feeling impatient, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Paywalled.

<comment><USER8> See my comment above. Dump the title into google, click through and you're good. wsj won't paywall you if your referrer is google.

<comment><USER35> It still paywalls me from google.</comment></comment></comment>


Etherpad Lite v1 - <AUTHOR> http://etherpad.org/2011/08/22/major-release-etherpad-lite-v1/

<comment><USER2> Sweet. There's even a Windows build. And it looks like they really improved the performance.</comment>


Tripoli: a new CSS reset - <AUTHOR> http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/

<comment><USER2> Immediately after visiting the Tripoli sample page (<http://devkick.com/lab/tripoli/sample.php>), I was going to applaud the team for not making the dick move that usually takes the form:

      body { font-size: 0.65 em; }

Then I realized the stylesheet wasn't enabled. tripoli.simple.css:

      html{font-size:125%}body{font-size:50%}

Bummer.</comment>


Open Source solution to plastic waste goes bananas - <AUTHOR> https://next.preciousplastic.com/ <comment><USER2> What is it? Is there a direct link to a page that explains what they're trying to do, and how?</comment>


Ask HN: Help me weave in STEM topics for a children's book - <AUTHOR> I have been working on a collection of short children' stories with my farm as the hub. The main characters are all critters and creatures and trees in the farm. The guardian is a crone witch that is the spirit of the Elderberry tree known as The ElderMother. It has a certain magical quality to it, but I really want it to be enjoyable reading for everyone. I would also like to use it as a platform to explain STEM concepts(I am from the bookshelf encyclopedia generation with giant illustrations). So far, I have little stories (less than 5000 words) that includes 'human concepts' like how to a stock taking of a pantry(sorry..I started out as an accountant. That's what grabbed me first as subject), an enchanted nestery run by a pigeon who puts magical spells on birds nests to illustrate different kinds of nests and eggs of various birds, a Beauty Salon for insects whose markings fade...again, to illustrate markings on ladybugs, butterflies and cleaning bee pollen baskets etc. It's turning out to be more of a picture book. I would like to introduce subjects that teach something of the natural world and the physics in it. My favourite has always been time and the uni directional arrow of time. I also want to write a story that explains why we are carbon based life forms. About the night skies. Also..photosynthesis, on soil biology, migration, hibernation etc are easy to include in a farm setting. How to weave in hardcore STEM topics into a plot? <comment><USER2> ambitious here .. but you are mixing mental modes like oil and water. The internal world of psyche is filled with symbolic wisdom and instincts, which is mysterious by definition.. it comes from 'somewhere' in some glimmer of insight..

Science is just the opposite of that .. it is externally focused, repeatable and non-personal..

Your ambition to be both deeply symbolic, and teach reproducible mechanics, at the same time.. is like mixing reds and blues in paint!

In theater and storytelling, there is often a signal to the reader that something "otherworldly" is happening.. a transition marker.. to suspend disbelief of the audience.. this is the entrance to the symbolic..

With public lecture, debate and oration, the basis of presentation is along the lines of authoritative references, short summaries of relevent works known to the audience, and perhaps persuasive content to get the audience to pay attention and give the ideas a chance.

You could mix this things, but it is stretching the requirements of the reader quite a bit, at the least, in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear you. It's not easy. I seem to veer off into the descriptive rather than the narrative mode.

I chose magic because STEM can be dry. Growing up, I really enjoyed puzzle books and folk tales from Russia and later, MIR publications. And so I still have a babushka flavoured lens and other worldly magic to anything science. For someone not-Russian, snow was magical..refraction and rainbows were magical..for anyone, talking animals has to be magical. Chemistry definitely is in the realm of magic and alchemy. I also don't want to 'teach' scientific concepts, as it were..but convey scientific method that leads to discovery of scientific concepts. And curiosity. To want to understand how things work. I agree that it's a fine line...I don't want to be preachy to kids or as an author...so I don't want to 'state'..but lead them to a magical place when things are revealed by special knowledge only through a task or a journey or an adventure.

<comment><USER3> STEM is not dry. It can be, but does not have to be. Dont start with assumption that kids are not interested in STEM which has to be dry, they are interested even if fully factual books and texts. Don't make it analogical to vegetables hidden inside cake. Make STEM parts fun on what makes stem fun to us (puzzle solving? discovery? just knowing how it works). Mix with magic can then add additional wonder.

How old the kids? I think that your question is unanswerable without knowing that. 3 years like something completely different them 7 years old who are not the same as 12 years old.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point re age. I try not to think of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the best way to approach such an endeavor might be to essentially demonstrate Clarke's Third Law in each story. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So what you could have is essentially a bunch of stories where characters discover things that seem magical, but end up having very rational explanations (much like Federation tech in the world of Star Trek was pure magic to the less-advanced civilizations they encountered). Maybe even delve eventually into designing experiments to prove assumptions about the principles being discovered, etc, and explaining the scientific method.

It would be a great way to encourage critical thinking in kids without crossing into too fantastical a world for there to be logical explanations for some things. Even with Star Trek, where some things are potentially nonviable (transporters, for example), they still had logical explanations that make sense at a high level.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hear what you are saying...but including why nonviable tech isn't translating can leave a door open to create a search for that missing magical ingredient. Every story must start with a quest. The hero must go on a quest and fail. Until ..one day..he succeeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm an aerospace engineer, so when we had our daughter somebody bought us "Baby Loves Aerospace Engineering" which is one of those board books about a toddler with a bird friend who wants to see outer space. The book touches (briefly) on why bird's wings can't take her to outer space, and that she needs a rocket.

Good inspiration for your stories maybe?

The same author has done ones about coding, thermodynamics, and gravity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh! That is lovely!! I am currently trying to work on a chapter about a bumblebee who is bullied by a finch and The ElderMother explains how bumblebee wings works differently (dynamic stall) than a bird's feathered wings.

<comment><USER6> > how bumblebee wings works

Years ago I saw a video (and was later unable to find it again) of a slow- motion bumblebee hovering slowly over leaf litter. Vortices of dust. Fragments of leaf tumbling away, like shantytown roofs beneath a hovering helicopter. That the bee was supporting itself on a downward-moving column of air was _visceral_.

So perhaps touch on all flight being "higher pressure on the bottom than top", either floating, or pushing things downward.

For visuals, one might rift on wing downwash and vorticies, like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbRmVucs78s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbRmVucs78s) or [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1c/33/e2/1c33e2f2fa82b7bf4a86...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1c/33/e2/1c33e2f2fa82b7bf4a86a1a67d32c2e3.jpg) .

<comment><AUTHOR> Love that!! I have a lot of slo mo videos from the farm of ladybirds and bumblebees in flight..I do a lot of nothing but staring at the farm. Bees are so awesome and I have spent hours just sitting in front of the apiary.

Myrtle Mouse had an uncle who ran a surgery and apothecary..where she sometimes assisted as a young mouse. A damselfly comes with tattered wings and wants them repaired. In the waiting room, there is a bumblebee with pollen baskets that has been clogged. Maybe I will switch them and make the bumblebee the one with the flight problems and Myrtle can recall how her uncle explained bumblebee flight to her.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On a meta-level, you could maybe look into articles and such about education itself, and see if that improves both your own writing, and maybe even weave in some insights from it:

[http://nautil.us/issue/6/secret-codes/teaching-me- softly](http://nautil.us/issue/6/secret-codes/teaching-me-softly)

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to- learn/](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/)

edit: wait, the first one is about _machine_ learning, haha. Sorry, I was looking through my bookmarks using keywords. Might still be interesting though..

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about that..but doesn't education ruin learning?

<comment><USER7> Depends on the style, which is why it's worthwhile to look into it. These links might also be interesting:

[http://hackeducation.com/archives](http://hackeducation.com/archives)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvgbvtxYRX4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvgbvtxYRX4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My recommendation is to try to focus in topics you grock.

If you live/work/own a farm, try to use your unique knowledge about farm activities to give some insight in the books. Some topics (I hope some of them may be interesting.):

* artificial selection / selective breeding

* chemistry composition of the soil and fertilizers

* irrigation? (natural and artificial) (I'm not sure there is some interesting story here, but perhaps you can think one.)

* Lake freezing (Where is your farm?)

* solar/wind/gasoline electricity power generation.

* crop rotation?

* pollination (do you rent bees?)

* different kind of wood / material resistance

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to separate the human activities from nature's activities as much as possible. The farming we do is like an open air factory where we destroy existing landscape to create a blank slate to grow what we want in straight rows. I could bring up soil science or soil biomes.

<comment><USER9> Even then the distinction isn't so cut and dry.

[https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest- farmers-...](https://modernfarmer.com/2014/04/meet-earths-oldest-farmers- ants/)

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants- becam...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants-became- worlds-best-fungus-farmers-180962871/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a writer, so I can't give advice for _how_ , but for a great example, you should check out the novel _The Diamond Age_ by Neal Stephenson. The protagonist is a young girl who finds a "magic" book that is part fairy tale, part computer science textbook. It seamlessly weaves in allegories for binary arithmetic, Turing machines, and programming.

I wish I could give a more detailed description, but it's been too many years since I read it and online summaries focus on other parts of the novel (there's a lot going on!).

<comment><AUTHOR> It is one of my absolute favourite books! Love it! Thanks!

<comment><USER11> Have you seen this book of ABCs for babies by Judith Neumann?

[https://bubblin.io/book/abcd-animal-book-by-judith- neumann/1](https://bubblin.io/book/abcd-animal-book-by-judith-neumann/1)

I thought it might be useful to consider animations over static artwork in some cases—especially for subjects that are hard to explain without visual explanations -- like a canvas experiment to explain pendulum motion. Or a gravitational slingshot or a chapter on optics and lensing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh!! Thanks for the ideas. All good ones!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-saleh I would suggest reading more childrens books :)

I just remembered how many children's books my daghter loves are kind-of stem- adjacent?

We have a book about a forest-bison that is kinda upset that he doesn't hibrnate during the winter, so he tries to persuade the forest spirits that help other animals to prepare for winters rest to help him as well. When he fails, he decides, he will do that himself, and strts searching for a nest :)

Or a little book about how a poppy-seed grows.

Or a book about a tale of friendship between a doormouse and a vole, where the vole is sad he won't have anybody to play with the whole winter, because the doormouse hibernates.

Or a short book about an islad that has 2 kindoms, each has 3 castles, under every one 4 cities, in every city 5 houses, in every hous 6 room, in every room 7 cabinets, in each cabinet 8 boxes. And then it shows a dot for all of the boxes on a page.

Or a book about a father and his daghter that recieved magic space-suites from an old wizzard, so they go visit each planet in solar system.

Or two siblings that realize that the ants they have at home know pythagoras theorem, so they learn to communicate with them.

Or the kid who discovers his weird neghbour actually managed to communicate with the plants (well, more just their raw emotions?) and then they use this to help the neglected plants in their back-yard?

I might remember more? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the distinct disadvantage of not having any children or even young ones around me. I guess the child audience I had in mind was myself and the stuff I wish I learnt then...

<comment><USER12> Perhaps you could consider writing and adult book that at first glance is disguised as a children's book. Then you wouldn't need proxy kids to judge it. You could use your own judgement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Feel free to email me (see profile). I am the author of _Lauren Ipsum_ , a kid's book about computer science. Happy to help with this.

<comment><USER14> Love your book btw. I was scrolling down to see if someone had already suggested it.

PS. One of my favorite excerpts from Lauren Ipsum: `That's how it starts. A little Jargon doesn't look like much. Some people even keep them as pets. But they form packs, and they are very dangerous.`

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> When my kid was four, the "why" stage started. Why after why. We found (more often than I expected) that the final why was often answered with "because of gravity," which we demonstrated in depth early on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am curious..( and others' input welcome too in this thread) as I don't have kids. Do you explain Death to children?

Also. I wrote a short about 2 birds getting drunk on fermented fall fruits. I didn't use the word 'drunk'but explained their antics(a little comical but also to explain fermentation and how disorientatation can occur)

My friends were horrified. I didn't understand why that's a bad story idea. Isn't it actually a good thing rather?...to know about effects of drinking and 'not to fly when buzzy'(for the scrub jays in the story, of course)..?

Also..it happens in nature all the time. Animals get drunk too from fermented fruits.

<comment><USER15> Death: I have explained but follow the guideline not to give too much information to the child up front. That is, answer their questions simply and downplay your own potentially emotional reaction.

Drugs: I don't see anything wrong with a simple cause and effect lesson, and showing that the effect is generally negative in the long term. However, experience and feelings from past trauma (say family alcoholism) make this a taboo subject for many folks. You may have to tread so lightly that the lesson is lost or not worth the aggravation.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. We discuss death with our young kids if it comes up. And is has in relation to our food, pets, and loved ones. Maybe we did too good a job. Our 5 year old frequently reminds us that it's ok for someone/something to die. "That's part of nature and we can always keep them in our hearts" She likes her meat and we try to teach her to respect where the food comes from and that one should treat the farm animals kindly. We also eat a lot of vegan and discuss why that is also a good choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not so much STEM (more accounting), but I'd check out the book _Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand._ It explains basic accounting concepts via a simple lemonade stand business. Might give you some inspiration.

<comment><USER17> Why wouldn't accounting be considered a pretty solid part of the M in STEM? It's applied mathematics and in my opinion one of the better angles to teach young people maths.

<comment><AUTHOR> They learn numbers by watching farmers from a field next door. Which made me wonder..do animals have a concept of numbers? I had to conclude that they do..Myrtle Mouse runs the General store and stores food to sell in winter. So the little mice learn to count pumpkin seeds and acorns etc. I couldn't go beyond counting. Unsure as to how to bring in complex math concepts.

<comment><USER18> More to maths than numbers of course... it's been a while but I'm thinking Alice in Wonderland. or Flatland maybe

<comment><AUTHOR> I am just rereading flatland. That would be tough for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-saleh When my daughter was 3 years old, she racted really well to stories that described sort of ecology. I.e. we watched together one of the how-to-train- your-dragon cartoons on netflix, and she really liked the stories where several fragons had either symbiotic or adversarial relationships. Dragons as a pecies in HTTYD make no sense, but many of the relationships do (symbiotic relationships, food-chains, migration for better nesting space, e.t.c.) and served as good conversation starters :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am into imaginary creatures! I draw a lot from Japanese yokai. I adore those creatures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> STEM evolved to answer questions about our world. You could just give those questions to your characters and have them work out the answers the way humans did.

For example: How do we know the world is round? Why can't we jump into outer space? Why is the sun so warm? Why do animals breath air? How are birds able to fly? Every thing we experience in life has an interesting STEM answer that most kids would love to know. Please try to get kids to realize that they should be a lot more curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes..there are a few question/answer segments in the Crows' chapter. They hold a parliament every day where young crows can ask older crows questions.

Like..Why is thunder loud? Why is the sky blue? Why does the sunflower always face the sun?

Also..more philosophical questions like why the mighty oak has small acorns that fall but the creeping pumpkin vine that needs support have giant pumpkins? I didn't know why nature designs so!!! But I too would love to know why...writing these made me look up stuff because I didn't know as well. There was opportunity to explain gravity as well as concepts like size vs scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You might enjoy the first "How to remember sizes" section of this my page[1] (very slowwwwly loading - it wasn't intended to be public). The microview/nanoview pair of story frames provide a tangible context for handling things down to atoms, with or without numbers. Though, "barely tested implies barely works".

[1] [http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/Atoms)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!! Size/Scale is something I have just started to write about and wondering how to weave a narrative around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a cool idea. Are you familiar with the early 90s indie band "They Might Be Giants"? Well they are parents now and have been making kids music. Our favorite is "here comes Science!" They did a great job discussing lots of STEM subjects ina fun way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the group (and horrified that they are 'dated' which makes me ancient!). I will look them up on YouTube! Thanks!

<comment><USER12> Let us know what you think. I really like the sun songs. Try to listen to them in order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Basically just an idle thought after reading this: I wonder if you could do something with lensing/water droplets/telescopes/night skies. Using water droplets would seem to fit the insect/small animal theme.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you..that's a great idea..first thing that came to my mind was surface tension and how water drops are formed..maybe a game involving water droplets!

<comment><USER21> Rainbows

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One thing I'd love to see is a description of the scientific method. We come up with an idea, then we come up with an experiment to test that idea.

<comment><USER6> And surrounding scientific inquiry, is scientific discourse, which is now taught even down towards K. Eg, don't chose among widely-differing jellybean counts based on friendship.

Apropos children and verification, while looking for something to point to, I stumbled on and enjoyed the introduction section of [https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2018/papers/0062/0062.pdf](https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2018/papers/0062/0062.pdf) , fwiw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another one to Google for inspiration is Lauren Ipsum, a child's story about computer science

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I just learnt about the book!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > magical spells

> STEM topics

I often find the juxtaposition of these two themes unbearable, if only because it reflects the world we live in today. Magic beliefs give way to true love and romance, but also igorance and disasterous concentrations of political power. STEM beliefs give rise to incredible technology and a world of convenience, but also lead to awful environmental consequences owing to extreme resource use and pollution, and possibly amplify differences in economic inequality.

Friend, if you can weave a children's story around the nuanced interplay of science and magic, then I will buy your book.

P.S. have you read the Moomin books?

<comment><USER25> I disagree; for one thing, how many books where magic exists fail to run into awful environmental consequences, extreme income inequality, and strife like war or political instability? It depends on the story, but it'd be tough to read the Lord of the Rings series and think, 'I bet that ring could have magically fixed everything'.

Also, kids aren't stupid and eventually they figure this out: "Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact." Then they just need to work out those facts.

Have you read _Off to Be the Wizard_ or _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur 's Court_? I wouldn't call them children's stories, but maybe young adult.

<comment><USER26> _how many books where magic exists fail to run into awful environmental consequences, extreme income inequality, and strife like war or political instability?_

For a refreshing and deeply pessimistic take on these issues Jonathan Stroud's Bartimæus books are recommended.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Facebook data analyzer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Lackoftactics/facebook_data_analyzer <comment><USER2> Nice work. I created something very similar with Python ([https://github.com/leerob/facebook-data- analyzer](https://github.com/leerob/facebook-data-analyzer)). It looks like yours touches on some things I didn't get to in mine, like ranking messages. Awesome idea!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the creator of Facebook Data Analyzer. I feel overwhelmed with support I got from community, we already fixed some issues for users to use script. Thank you hacker news.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where can I find the data a similar list of the most popular words for other languages? Is it a known format?

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists#Al...](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists#Albanian)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted on [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/facebook-data- analyzer](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/facebook-data-analyzer). Would be really grateful if you could upvote!

</comment><comment> the-dude Dark pattern brain fart : excellent way to save up user data from users leaving Facebook.

Get it while you can!

<comment><USER5> Don't worry, Zuckerberg will save it for you.

<comment><USER6> *Palantir

<comment><USER7> Palantir will not be involved [waves hand in front of your face]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's worth noting that the messages exported from facebook with their tool are often truncated. It seems to be more comprehensive with your more recent contacts, so analysis will skew favorably to people you were in contact with most recently.

<comment><USER9> It looks like within the past 8 months or so that Facebook has changed to format of their data dumps to not truncate messages, as their previous data dumps were previously structured as one giant messages.htm file which would be difficult to parse and seems like it had missing data for certain cases.</comment></comment>


Curve9767 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pornin/curve9767 <comment><USER2> It's easy for items like this to get lost in the deluge of submissions to HN, but this really deserves some attention. It's one of the best crypto papers I have ever read, an absolute model of clarity and accessibility. Well worth reading.</comment>


Starbucks, More Than Coffee - <AUTHOR> http://tommaxwell.co/post/48730290617/starbucks-more-than-coffee#.UXy7aSaGgak <comment><USER2> McDonalds, More Than Fries

Duh. This is what the franchising is all about - providing consistent branded experience across all outlets. And, yes, one of the prime benefits is that it provides a sense of familiarity regardless of location.

(edit) Another take on the title though - Starbucks main problem is that it _does_ in fact try to be more than coffee. I really wish they weren't publicly traded and didn't have the pressure of growing revenues. I was a loyal customer for several years (2 visits per workday, $10 a pop), but then they started venturing in movie promotion (remember the "Spelling bee" bullshit printed all over the cups?), then they decided that Copehangen danishes were less preferable than overpriced ready-made paninis, after that - low-cal mystery-ingredient polymer-based sweets took over a quarter of the pastry space. Then, finally, they dropped Coffee from the name in preparation for being much more than coffee, i.e. booze. It went downhill so rapidly that it was painful to see. It used to be a nice place with an ugly logotype to visit, but now it's just the logotype.

<comment><USER3> > McDonalds, More Than Fries

I take mine with Peruvian potatoes, organic hemp seed oil and Mediterranean sea salt, to go, please.

<comment><USER4> Gwyneth Paltrow, is that you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I once lamented the Starbuckization of the world.

But then one day wandering around an unfamiliar area in a city in China, desperately needing to go to the bathroom, I could only find bathrooms that were (a) locked; or (b) without toilet paper. Things were about to get really embarrassing, in a foreign city, far from where I was staying.

Then, I spotted a Starbucks. It had a clean, unlocked, well-stocked bathroom I could use even before a purchase. It was like an oasis in the desert.

Starbucks earned a __*-ton of brand loyalty from me that day.

<comment><USER6> I heard a joke once that MacDonalds built a chain of free public restrooms in Moscow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "There's nothing worse than being in a foreign city with a dead phone. It's almost terrifying at times."

OK kid, it wasn't that bad, believe it or not we survived pretty well. Travel used to be an adventure. Part of the adventure was being scared, at least a little bit, sometimes. Kind of an extreme sport.

I am old enough to have traveled quite a bit before and after cellphones and have noticed that the magic talisman of a smart phone makes travel dramatically more boring for me. I also spend a lot less time planning, I'll just figure it out onsite with my phone. I miss the daydreaming/planning phase.

Phone reliance while traveling has effects far beyond just using the GPS to figure out where you are.

I would theorize the lack of fear due to having phones results in the hard core travelers taking even crazier adventures, and a lot of non-hard core travelers doing more travel because the "scary" drops below their personal threshold for "scary".

The author's story was really about his magical phone.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is an embodiment of the American tourist stereotype to an extent that makes it funny — despite, or maybe because of being a very polite attempt to rationalize it.

Why leave your country when wherever you go, the first step is to look for it again?

There are local coffee shops in every country. In most cases they have a great atmosphere, most of them have wi-fi, most of them will let you charge your phone. All of them have… yes, coffee, often served in local ways — an opportunity to learn something about the culture. They will understand your order, no need to worry about your foreign language skills. Most countries have Starbucks-style coffee shops too these days, blended with a dash of local style.

If you go abroad and go to Starbucks, are you any different to those dreadful low-life tourists spending their holidays abroad in their respective country pubs, drinking their home beer like they never left for holidays in the first place?

Last time I was abroad and went to Starbucks dragged in by friends I felt like a loser. In part I guess, for having uninspiring friends. It could also be because I overpaid roughly by 250-300%, compared with prices in those lovely local cafes in the area.

I appreciate the warm tone of your article, clearly it's coming from a good place. But if you're in a coffee country like Italy and get your coffee at Starbucks, you're dead to me! ;)

Apologies for my patronising tone, it was meant to be somewhat warm too…

</comment><comment><USER9> This could be said for McDonalds, Coke, or any other brand you personally prefer, or are looking for. The most fun, i've found, are youtube videos showing americans living abroad and finding american food in the ethnic food sections [0][1].

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywCX6znxUWQ>

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmmZ6q8vjeU>

</comment><comment><USER10> This is an interesting point of view, and almost exactly the opposite of mine.

I also travel a lot and I love it. I travel in order to experience new cultures, people, food and drink. The last thing I want to see when I have traveled half way across the world is something that I see on my own freaking street.

The smallest and most remote places in the world seem to have widely available wireless internet access in lots of coffee shops, pubs, restaurants and bus terminals. I'd much rather support the local, little guys when travelling. It's usually cheaper, tastier and you meet many more amazing people inside. You're right in saying that Starbucks is consistent, but for me half the fun of travelling is playing menu roulette and seeing what you end up with.

I do understand the occasional need for a "taste of home", a haven of comfort if you will (In my case, hunting for a full English breakfast after days of eating fish and rice). I guess the line between "a recognizable, familiar, and reliable brand" and "overarching corporate crusher of culture" seems a little blurred to me.

<comment><USER11> when you are not traveling just for the sake of traveling, you are definitely looking for the comfort of the familiarity.

if you are on leisure trip overseas you would not want to have the exact same experience that you have at home, you seek something novel. but when you are doing frequent business trips that you didn't want to go on first place and you don't have much time for anything other than work you don't want to do risky stuff. all your mind is over the thing you are supposed to do and you just want some "home comfort" to refresh yourself and get your mind ready for the task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was an interesting read. For a person who's always lived in a city with no or only one or two Starbucks, it's a completely different experience.

The first time I visited in Starbucks was when I visited Berkeley last spring. I have to say I care about my coffee a lot, I like to do my own cappuccinos and espresso shots and I love cafeterias where they have excellent coffee and good baristas. Starbucks was such a disappointment. If I pay so much for my coffee I expect to get the best out of it. Sadly I can do better myself, so I don't think I'll visit Starbucks any more.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pity they make such awful coffee.

<comment><USER14> Hey, unfortunately Starbucks is what passes for good coffee in Japan. I know they're not great, but if it's that or Nescafe...

<comment><USER15> Where in Japan? I just got back from visiting Tokyo and Kyoto and there are loads of good places to drink coffee. In Tokyo a few of my favourites were Bear Pond Espresso, Omotesando Koffee, Maruyama Coffee but there are a multitude of great places.

If you're interested in Japanese coffee culture you should read Merry White's Coffee Life in Japan which shows how rich Japanese coffee culture is and how it has influenced the recent speciality coffee movement in the US including popular places like Blue Bottle.

<comment><USER14> Those are in central Tokyo I think? There are a few decent places here (I've just moved to Setagaya) but outside of central Tokyo (I was living in North Tokyo) it's a different story. Even around here, if you just walk into a random chain, I think you'll find the coffee is markedly worse than Starbucks.

I'm not saying the Kissatens generally in Japan aren't great, they are! I love them to bits. They serve good food are independently run and have a really nice casual atmosphere and friendly owners, and unique character quite often with children and or dogs running around...

But the coffee often isn't that great, they can be quite smokey (Starbucks is the only nonsmoking coffee shop I've found in Japan) and the vast majority don't have wifi. I can see why a "digital nomad" might be attracted to Starbucks you know what you'll get and you can hang around working without feeling bad.

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll try and check them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm far from a diehard patriot but one thing I truly love about 'this american life' is the café sitting culture. On the daily I downright camp out at the many and diverse local cafés in Richmond, VA. As far as I can tell from my travel experience in a number of European countries, the long staying café visits I, and many of my peers enjoy, is somewhat unique to American culture. In some senses I think the 'Starbucks Experience' the OP is after is really the license to safely linger for extended lengths beyond what you'd feel comfortable doing in any other local, non-chain joint.

And for what it's worth, you won't catch me in a Starbucks.

<comment><USER17> I have no idea where you got that idea from? I was under the impression that it's more or less the other way around. Of course it's somewhat different between countries and during summer there's few people around in general. Also Arab countries have a strong coffehouse culture.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/business/starbucks- tailors...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/business/starbucks-tailors-its- experience-to-fit-to-european-tastes.html)

<http://www.examiner.com/article/european-coffee-culture>

<http://www.aswetravel.com/cafe-culture-in-europe/>

</comment></comment><comment> UVB-76 If Internet access and a power outlet are what you need, pretty much any café or restaurant in any developed or developing country can take care of your needs these days.

<comment><USER14> This is not true. In Japan Starbucks is one of the few coffee shops chains that offer free wifi, and they only started doing that recently. Reasonable coffee is relatively thin on the ground in Japan as well, Starbucks is really the only chain you can go to and know you'll get a decent coffee.

As far as I can tell they are the only coffee shops that are completely non- smoking too, which might be important to some people.

<comment><USER18> Good points.

In the UK, all cafes are non-smoking by law and many have wifi. I appreciate the US based nomad's desire for comfort (I once had to airmail Marmite and Typhoo tea to a friend working in Odessa) but would suggest trying some of the independents in the larger UK cities. Leaf in Liverpool and Yorks Bakery Cafe in Birmingham spring to mind.

<comment><USER14> yep, there are more decent coffee shops in the UK, even so decent independents can be hard to find.

There was an interesting blog post about Yelp a while back. He talked about how Starbucks and Yelp were trying to solve the same problem in different ways. Yelp's solution was to help you find something like your favourite coffee shops when away from home. Starbucks to build the same thing everywhere. :)

I'm not sure I buy it, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nothing wrong with this of course, but your life experiences might be richer if you also checked out some local coffee shops once in a while, in the USA as well as overseas.

Bonus: many of them have free wifi without requiring those annoying t&cs....

</comment><comment><USER20> so i dont get it - a 3 paragraph long self-posted article about how the OP likes starbucks cause he likes to charge his battery there is on the front page?!

<comment> mkr-hn How to write a wildly popular blog post: say something that resonates with a lot of people with just enough detail to leave room for others fill in the blanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> More than coffee; tax evasion too!</comment>