A Large Self-Annotated Corpus for Sarcasm - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.05579 <comment><USER2> To provide you refuge from the inevitable deluge of sarcastic comments in this comment section, here is a genuine/sincere comment: I like cats.

> sarcasm is labelled by the author

They literally just searched out "/s". Clever. Though I'm guessing the "independently verified" entailed reading a lot of those comments.

Did they also read through the nonlabelled comments to catch any unlabelled sarcasm? (Guessing not since the pitch is of "self labelled sarcasm") wonder if that'll trip any usage up.

<comment><USER3> From the paper: "To investigate the noisiness of using Reddit as a source of self-annotated sarcasm we estimate the proportion of false positives and false negatives induced by our filtering. This is done by having three human evaluators manually check a random subset of 500 comments from SARC-main tagged as sarcastic and 500 tagged as non-sarcastic, with full access to the comment's context. A comment was labeled a false positive if a majority determined that the "/s" tag was not an annotation but part of the sentence and a false negative if a majority determined that the comment author was clearly being sarcastic. After evaluation, the false positive rate was determined to be 2.0% and the false negative rate 3.0%. Although the false positive rate is reasonable, the false negative rate is significant compared to the sarcasm proportion, indicating large variation in the working definition of sarcasm and the need for methods that can handle noisy data in the unbalanced setting."

<comment><USER4> I've seen people add '/s' to their comment when what they wrote wasn't actually what I'd call sarcastic. Probably quite a few people have seen others use '/s' but they've inferred the wrong meaning of the label and then they use it incorrectly.

Seems from what was said above that this is something that has not been taken into account.

<comment><USER5> If it's indistinguishable to fellow humans as sarcasm then it doesn't matter for the purpose of this corpus.

<comment><USER4> What I mean is, it looks like the researchers only looked at whether or not the "/s" was intentionally placed at the end of the comment, not whether the comment was actually sarcastic or whether the person that wrote it understood that "/s" is meant to convey sarcasm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A professor of mine named John Haiman had many interesting thoughts on sarcasm. His book "Talk is Cheap", which I unfortunately can't find a PDF of online, is definitely recommended:

[https://www.amazon.com/Talk-Cheap-Alienation-Evolution- Langu...](https://www.amazon.com/Talk-Cheap-Alienation-Evolution- Language/dp/0195115252)

I haven't read it in a few years, and my copy is at my parent's house in another country, but his writing always avoided the obtuse, impenetrable style that a lot of linguists are unfortunately guilty of. It is also approachable for anyone without a linguistics background.

<comment><USER7>
      Select Format

      Kindle – $65.39
      Hardcover – $129.74
      Paperback – $18.70

_head spins_

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I know. No idea why the ebook is so expensive :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A Kaggle user had the same idea two years ago: [https://www.kaggle.com/smerity/d/reddit/reddit-comments- may-...](https://www.kaggle.com/smerity/d/reddit/reddit-comments- may-2015/finding-sarcasm/code)

I had some fun exploring the data so I wrote a short blog post about it: [https://davefernig.com/2015/10/19/the-lowest-form-of-wit- mod...](https://davefernig.com/2015/10/19/the-lowest-form-of-wit-modelling- sarcasm-on-reddit/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Funnily, though I have a naturally sarcastic personality and frequently (and unintentionally) confuse people with my tone, I also have trouble sometimes persuading people that I _was not_ being sarcastic when I say something plainly. I think it has to do with some statement I've made being so outside the norms of what they find acceptable that for them it is only understandable as sarcasm.

And this sort of thing happens both with written and oral communication, unless I really focus on providing facial and other body language clues as to my intent, which I find to be somewhat annoying. I am, after all, of Scandinavian extraction, and excessive emotional expression is not only frowned upon culturally, it has also been systematically bred out of my genetic code for dozens of generations.

<comment><USER10> Funny you should say that. My spouse is Norwegian, and I still occasionally have to ask him if he's being serious or sarcastic.

And to be fair, I find the lack of emotional outbursts to be a rather enjoyable part of society. It lets me relax and not have to keep track of so many "approved" emotions to keep track of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > We collect a very large corpus, SARC-raw, with around 500-600 million total > comments, of which 1.3 million are sarcastic.

So Reddit is 0.2% sarcastic. That sounds accurate.

</comment><comment><USER12> Has anyone used this to build a Sarcasm bot? I desperately need this to handle all my Twitter & Facebook replies.

<comment><USER13> There was this time my daughter and I were having a conversation that descended into sarcasm to the point where we no longer could tell if the other was still being sarcastic.

My daugther ended it with: "I'm afraid we're caught in a sarcasm trap."

I'd be worried two sarcasm bots would end up similarly entangled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, that'll be really useful.

</comment><comment><USER15> am I walking into something here? I am concerned about regional bias. which dialect of English is being spoken?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this Corpus for Sarcasm real or is this report of a corpus of sarcasm sarcasm?

<comment><AUTHOR> Real, you can download it there : [http://nlp.cs.princeton.edu/SARC/](http://nlp.cs.princeton.edu/SARC/)

<comment><USER17> Is that the actual URL? Seems to be missing /s

Marginally related: on cs.CL the other day was "Punny Captions: Witty Wordplay in Image Descriptions"[0]. A mashup of these two projects would bring us that much closer to the dream of Social Media In A Box.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.08224](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.08224)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the URL provided in the paper (first-page bottom left)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Neat. HNers could train themselves on it.

<comment><USER19> Now we just have to train machines on subtle meta!

<comment><USER2> > subtle

search '[forum name]' or 'recently trending phrase'. subtle indeed

<comment><USER19> It's a good start, but that sort of meta seems pretty on the nose. I'm not sure that would catch the comment I replied to though (it was meta because it was sarcastic and included a comment about machine learning, not because it referenced HN).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you combine this corpus with a compilation of Donald Trump's tweets, will it result in a matter-antimatter explosion of intentional sarcasm and unintentional irony?</comment>


Mobile-First Is Dead, Says Google Display Ad Chief Neal Mohan - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2014/02/27/mobile-first-is-dead-says-google-display-ad-chief-neal-mohan/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

<comment><USER2> That's not what Mobile First means...</comment>


The Most Hated Company In the PC Industry - <AUTHOR> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php/3719776

<comment><USER2> This is pure speculation. Moreover, business isn't war and companies don't "hate" each other; they just happen to be in competition on some markets.

<comment><USER3> The article written like link-bait. In fact, the only news-worthy item in there was that ASUS had released a flash-based laptop with a fairly cheap price.

[http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24&l2=0&l3=0...](http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24&l2=0&l3=0&l4=0&model=1907&modelmenu=1)

Even the short engadget review on it was better than the link provided above.

<http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/01/eee-pc-review-roundup/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mini-PC or not, normal PCs are also getting so cheap that it might become difficult to charge much money for Operating Systems.

Also, I wonder if Bill Gates timed it deliberately so that his followers will fail, to cement the myth of his leadership? I guess not, but in general, it might be a consideration of CEOs when stepping down. Or maybe in general they tend to step down when prospects are poor.

As for the mini-PC, it might be cute, but so far I don't see why I would need one.

<comment><USER5> yeah but i'm thinking it might be perfect for my mum. her old imac is running 9.2 and she just wants to surf her email and bid on trademe - for this price, i can buy her one for xmas every other year and never need to update her software! i'm not an early adopter but i'm going to keep an eye on this for later. also - a great school pc for kids (?)

<comment><USER6> It has a little screen. Does she have good eyesight?

<comment><USER5> hmm, good point, i really need to see one in the plastic

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting -- i'm reading this on my eee pc. I love it!

</comment><comment><USER8> The only problem I can see with this is only 4 GB or 8 GB of HD space and no CD/DVD drive. Also no mention of USB. Otherwise I would buy one tomorrow to have as a 2nd travel laptop.

</comment><comment><USER9> I ♥ ASUS and thought back in 2004 they were on a hot streak of promising products:

<http://gojomo.blogspot.com/2004/12/i-asus.html>

At the time, it seemed they only needed more native-english-marketing-savvy to achieve mass appeal in North America. I hope the Eee PC will be their brand breakthrough.</comment>


More Airlines Ban MacBook Pros in Checked Luggage - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-28/apple-laptop-flight-restrictions-spread-as-qantas-imposes-limits <comment><USER2> One, I didn't know this was an issue but two, who puts their MacBook Pro in checked luggage? I keep mine in my backpack which I then carry on.</comment>


The FBI Needs Hackers, Not Backdoors - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/01/wiretap-backdoors/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29

<comment><USER2> The second someone works for the FBI, with that being their main motive and only plan, they may be a lot of things, but hardly a hacker. I guess everybody has their own definition, but to me this is like saying "water needs dry surfaces".

<comment><USER3> Everyone sells out sometime. Is someone that believes in justice even in spite of an inelegant set of legal boundaries a particularly exceptional case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Never trust a traitor, not even one you create" -- Baron Von Harkonnen

</comment><comment><USER5> This strategy has been working very well at DARPA.

[http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Personnel/Mr_Peiter_Zatko....](http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Personnel/Mr_Peiter_Zatko.aspx) [http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Personnel/Mr_Daniel_Roelke...](http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Personnel/Mr_Daniel_Roelker.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER6> The FBI and other organizations like it emphasize strong (blind) loyalty in their hiring criteria. That is the opposite of what makes someone a hacker. Even if a hacker did end up working for the FBI, he or she would be an asset, not an employee -- they would be handled no differently from gang snitches.

</comment><comment><USER7> Considering that penetration testers are usually _certain_ they'll find a new 0-day when they work on a new system, why bother with back doors?

</comment><comment><USER8> Why wouldn't they just have both?

</comment><comment><USER9> For your own safety ;)

<comment><USER10> I think this is part of a sadness buffer underflow attack by the FBI.</comment></comment>


IPhone App Gets You To Eat Better, Using The Crowd's IQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665700/massive-healths-massive-plan <comment><USER2> I like this idea- People can benefit from rating other people's food, and in the process act as a free source of labor to subsidize their own use of the app.

The only question is, do we really know anymore what "healthy" is? If I eat a cheese omelet, some may consider that a healthy "paleo diet" food item or a cholesterol-ridden fat bomb, depending on who you ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but by adding all of those opinions and averaging them we probably get quite a decent idea of a given food quality.

Plus, since you'd (hopefully) be embarrassed to put a pic of that bag of cheetos to public scrutiny, as long as you keep snapping absolutely everything you eat, it should work great in curbing your tendencies to eat junk food.</comment></comment>


Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances - <AUTHOR> https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/though-forests-burn-agroforestry-advances-as-trees-retake-farmland-globally/ <comment> GuB-42 > Agroforestry is an ancient agricultural technique being rediscovered all > over the world as limitations of the globe's highly industrialized > agriculture become obvious.

What are the "obvious limitations"? There are many problems with today's industrialized agriculture, but I wouldn't call the limitations obvious. The article says it doesn't work well in Africa for instance, and I believe it, but isn't it just because we don't have the proper GMOs/fertilizers/pesticides for this kind of soil due to a lack of interest? Is there some "obvious limitation" that makes it impossible.

I am not criticizing agroforestry. It is not like I _want_ pesticides, artificial fertilizers and lifeless fields. But they cite 1920 as the starting year for the beginning of modern agriculture. During that time, the world population went from 2 to 7 billion. If we want do bring back ancient techniques, we have to do it in that context.

I often see the forest treated as an example of an efficient for of agriculture, and sure, forests are really dense with life. However, they are like closed systems, everything that is produced by the forest is used by the forest. Now, what we want is a patch of land from which we can pull as much as possible in order to feed our cities. There may be trees, but it won't be like a natural forest.

To make things clear again, I don't view agroforestry as a bad thing. If it allows good yields on previously unexploited land and does it so while preserving biodiversity, what's not to love. I am just skeptical when considered as a substitute for modern industrial agriculture.

<comment><USER2> Modern farming isn't suitable for Africa for two reasons. First, the poor people cannot afford expensive modern equipment (but there are a few rich farmers who can and in some cases the governments have stepped up to buy modern equipment to be shared, though only time will tell if this is real efforts or just a publicity stunt) , and many governments lack rule of the law such that you can invest in something better and get a return (if there is another revolution you lose the land and all your effort to make it better are lost).

Note that both of these are political problems at the core. The first will be solved (or not) as people decide living in a city is better leaving more land for the rest to get rich from. Education is a major factor here, and things have improved a lot in many countries. However political problems threaten to take this away.

Political problems are hard. I don't know how to get stable governments and rules so that farmers can trust some investment in better farming is worth making. Nobody else does either, but you will see lots of people proposing something.

<comment><USER3> > many governments lack rule of the law such that you can invest in something > better and get a return (if there is another revolution you lose the land > and all your effort to make it better are lost).

It's not revolutions. If you as an ordinary not politically connected person are doing well, one of the government's henchmen will just take your property off you, and you (or your surviving family members) have no recourse.

It's easy to see how this dis-incentivizes investment in improvements.

Secure property tenure is probably the key problem to crack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One nuance to make is that having trees doesn't necessarily equal a forest. Lots of agroforestry ends up being a monoculture with very limited biodiversity.

<comment><USER5> Here in Finland the agroforests (99% of all forest coverage) generally do get some biodiversity in them but then the entire plantation is clear cut and the forest floor is raked clean and sterilised of all life. They take everything but rocks. The end result is a massive biodiversity loss. Everything is put through a grinder and shipped away. I hate agroforestry like this with a passion and fully expect prison sentences to these criminals in the future.

<comment> quixoticelixer- There is a lot living in the slash left after a harvest operation, also that's forestry, not agroforestry. Wood also has to come from somewhere.

<comment><USER5> Yes but they don't leave it at that. They dig up the roots, stumps everything up and pile it up and grind down and ship it out.

Sustainable forestry would only take out some of the trees, leave the stumps and replant. The forest would still look like a forest but only a little sparser for a while. there are studies proving this leads to greater yields.

<comment> quixoticelixer- Have you got a source for that? I would be very surprised if they dug up roots and stumps but I guess its possible when producing wood chip

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We need to have trees mixed with diverse crops. Trees will provide nutrients for the crops through a network of micro fungus which are living in biodiversity with the trees roots. Trees will naturally also cool the close surroundings so that it does not get too warm needed due to global warming.

Already a lot of fields in Europe are not active due too over production of crops. We should probably mix trees and farmland and open up some of those closed fields. Trees will take some capacity of the land but that can be replaced by opening up closed areas.

" Roots take in water, and nutrients, from the soil. Without help from fungus for better uptake of nutrients, trees would be small or would die. Most trees have a favorite species of fungus that they associate with for this purpose." Source: [https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree](https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree)

Now say that you mix crops and trees then you probably can find trees and crops which mix well together. The crop will side load get a boost of nutrients from the trees fungus.

<comment><USER7> One issues with trees is that they block sunlight. Thus if the type of crop you are growing needs a lot of sunlight, you are going to have problems.

Furthermore, since the amount of photosynthesis is dependent on the amount of sunlight, it is likely that your staple crops would be the ones that required a lot of sunlight, since those are usually calorie dense.

<comment><USER8> This article is about countries bordering on the Sahara using trees to help nurture back desert no good for growing anything back to healthy farm land. There's a notion there of too much sun light preventing growth because it dries out the land and kills off what remains of the soil turning all of it into desert unable to retain any water; UV radiation is not great for microbial life. Using trees to restore water balance and regulate temperatures, seems like it works.

We have similar processes going on in industrial farming in North America and Europe where we have been slowly depleting and giving up on what used to be healthy farm land. E.g. large parts of Spain are very arid but that wasn't always the case. Likewise parts of Italy and France are drying out because of intensive farming. It's less of an issue in more Northern parts of Europe but even there, decades of monoculture have created problems.

The message here is simple: it's a revertible process and it's a relatively quick process that doesn't necessarily involve much more than a bit of pruning, nurturing, and being mindful of the way nature works locally. It seems most of the complexity and cost is related to creating the right incentives, removing bureaucratic obstacles, and educating people a bit. Scaling this up seems like it's worthwhile. In most places where this could work, people have very little left to lose and a lot to gain.

If Africans in the middle of nowhere, far away from modern infrastructure can pull this off in some of the harshest environments in the world with little or no means, others can do that too. E.g. the Mid west and Texas come to mind in the US. Or the plains of Spain, which used to have forest and now looks more like the Sahara.

<comment><USER2> The mid west is improving their soils. No till and cover crops make the soil better. Different climates demand different farming to improve .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you live in the UK, you might be interested in helping crowdfund this new regenerative agroforestry project in Scotland:

[https://projectwren.com/projects/regenerative- agroforestry](https://projectwren.com/projects/regenerative-agroforestry)

<comment><USER10> For profit company, but asking for crowd funding with little in return.

I love to support - but ultimately I am volunteering my money for their profit margin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been planting and tending to trees in a forest that I purchased a few years ago. On top of that I have been actively building organic soil in my fields by top dressing with compost and organic cover crops.

That being said, recently I have been feeling that all my efforts are for not, sure I might be making the world a better place in my own small way but for what purpose?

Every day I watch as the people around me exploit the environment to enrich themselves while I get left behind. So lately the little voice in my head has been whispering "You own this land, why not clear cut the trees, make a couple hundred grand off the raw logs, buy a tractor to disc the land that's left and grow out a few years of annual grains then sell off the spent pesticide laiden land and live the rest of my life in a condo with a big bank account."

I know this sound selfish but why should I just scrape by working my fingers to the bone, whilst the rest of my community sells out? I feel like someone shit in the pool and I'm going to be the last one to get out.

I guess my point is every inch of soil I build and every tree I protect is like money in the bank, I can cash in at any time I want. The truth is every day I get more tired and feel the pull to cash it all in for my own selfish gains.

<comment><USER12> Surely you can sell the land for much more money if you haven't ruined it?

Making money by destroying your own property is in general not doable.

<comment><USER4> Not necessarily, often the value of the land is mostly the value of the trees on it based on type, age, quality, density, ...

As such, nature areas - especially when they have a protected status - will be worth less than areas where the trees can be harvested commercially.

<comment><USER13> It's really a shame that our current economic system has no way to account for miniscule value provided to everyone. I'm glad about every tree on the planet and I'm sure there are many others who feel the same way. Yet that value doesn't get reflected. The value only gets reflected once three is out of the commons and logged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's not just for farmland folks. You can have you own mini food forest in your backyard in the span of 5 years. You just have to start.

Check out my YouTube channel [1] if you find yourself wanting to learn more. I'm trying to get 1,000 subs to unlock mobile streaming so I can go live during weekends while tending to an establishing food forest.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/c/RussellBallestrini](https://www.youtube.com/c/RussellBallestrini)

<comment><USER15> Do you know of any resources for places on water restriction? We're moving out of the city in a few weeks to an area that allows for zero outdoor water usage other than roof catchment. I've got some native wildflower areas planned out but haven't been able to find much on drought tolerant fruits and vegetable. The couple suggestions I found pointed me towards varieties that didn't turn out to be drought tolerant once I researched further.

We'll be in an area that gets a fair amount of precip (typical afternoon t storms) but could go a week or two with rain.

<comment><USER16> The Groasis Waterboxx is a device designed to help in growing trees in dry areas. [1]

It works by using a slow dripping wick to make a connection with the capillary water deep below for the roots to follow. [2]

A cheaper biodegradable version is available. [3]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groasis_Waterboxx](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groasis_Waterboxx)

[2] [https://www.groasis.com/en/technology/how-does-the- reforesta...](https://www.groasis.com/en/technology/how-does-the- reforestation-and-anti-desertification-technology-of-groasis-work)

[3] [https://www.groasis.com/en/products/plant-trees-and- bushes-i...](https://www.groasis.com/en/products/plant-trees-and-bushes-in- dunes-and-deserts-with-the-biodegradable-growboxx)

<comment><USER15> Interesting, thanks! I'll have to see if this is allowed under our water laws

<comment><USER16> Should be okay as you just fill it once then rainwater does the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Time to give another plug to [https://projectwren.com](https://projectwren.com) \-- one of their biggest CO2 compensation projects is tree planting in Kenya: [https://projectwren.com/update/2/may-2020](https://projectwren.com/update/2/may-2020)

Support it!

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, there is the problem that the reduction in farmland utilization is reliant upon cheap artificial fertilizer, which is currently produced using natural gas as an energy/chemical source, which causes pollution.

<comment><USER19> 2% of current greenhouse gas emissions are creating ammonia for fertilizer from natural gas.

Two potential solutions are a)

Create the ammonia from green hydrogen i.e. made from water with renewavle electricity

b)

Theres a process that turns natural gas (ideally from food waste) into hydrogen plus graphite do the carbon becomes a usable resource ratger than being vented as CO2.

<comment><USER20> c) use practices that were commonplace before artificial fertilizer was invented; fallowing, manure, compost, etc.

Of course, manure and compost have their own set of CO2 (and methane) emission problems. At least it's carbon neutral I guess.

<comment> quixoticelixer- And get much lower yields as a result

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article is based on assumptions of global and local ecosystem health. Quantifying ecosystem health is fascinating, important and very difficult. Etymologically, health is based on wholeness. In classical Greek philosophy, health is harmony, which can be defined as integrated diversity. Can we therefore measure the diversity and integrity of ecosystems? Bio-Diversity measures in ecosystems seem easy, but are actually quite complicated (two species of pine the same as pine and oak, or pine and rare moss?) — and measures of ecosystem integrity are even harder. But not hard as in impossible, hard as in more scientists should be working on it. Here's one recent paper.

Vieweger, A., & Döring, T. F. (2015). Assessing health in agriculture–towards a common research framework for soils, plants, animals, humans and ecosystems. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 95(3), 438-446.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a tree-lover this is a heartwarming story but it has to be put in context: the population of Niger will double by 2050. The country will be growing by almost a million people per year. How will it support all those people who will be living on the edge of starvation? And how many of those desperate people will be tempted to cut down the trees?

<comment><USER23> [https://xkcd.com/605/](https://xkcd.com/605/)

<comment><USER22> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_momentum)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Our North American aquifiers are drying up and topsoil is being blown away? I live in a major farming province of Canada and none of this is true. There's a massive worldwide glut of wheat this year because there are so many good crop- producing areas around the world and this has been true for decades.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think this will work... as usually we just destroy everything...</comment>


Hey guys Do you think our homepage is clearly describing what we do? - <AUTHOR>

www.helpingb.co.uk <comment><USER2> Yes. But at first glance, the video background distracts from the page copy. Not sure if I should read or watch. And the video is just a talking head.

<comment><USER3> yeah the video was irritating me. As I understand it - kickstarter for NGO/3rd world aid projects? the text was clear but uninspiring - very buzzword heavy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Bryan,

Not NGO's but businesses that serve a social mission e.g. TOMS. Thanks for the feedback, we definitely should look at making it more inspiring and clearer as we're not catered for non-profits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> you used lots of "social" on the page. social entrepreneur, social ideas. I wasn't sure about the meaning of it at first. Is it "facebook" kind of social, or non-profit/charity kind of social. it seems to be the later case after clicking around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Bill,

I guess the term social entrepreneur is still not widely used. It refers to entrepreneurs that solve a social, environmental or economic problem through a revenue-generating business. We'll definitely look into this to make it clearer. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/23/purism-aims-to-build-a-philosophically-pure-laptop/ <comment><USER2> This appears to be similar to the open source hardware Novena laptop ([https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open- laptop](https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop)), but closed source hardware.

From the Purism crowdfunding campaign: "The Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop where you are in control and have complete visibility into the kernel, the operating system, and all software."

It seems like the Novena came first and is substantially more free/open. A laptop running all open source software is still good, but it's not as pure as claimed.

<comment><USER3> I'm interested if anyone has any insight into why there is a such a push for "Free" software (for example by the FSF, Richard Stallman), but not also "Free" hardware.

<comment><USER4> From RMS himself: [http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999062200505NWLF](http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999062200505NWLF)

From the linked article: "Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important. I see no social imperative for free hardware designs like the imperative for free software. Freedom to copy software is an important right because it is easy now--any computer user can do it. Freedom to copy hardware is not as important, because copying hardware is hard to do. Present-day chip and board fabrication technology resembles the printing press. Copying hardware is as difficult as copying books was in the age of the printing press, or more so. So the ethical issue of copying hardware is more like the ethical issue of copying books 50 years ago, than like the issue of copying software today."

<comment><USER5> I'm a little surprised and disappointed by this answer. It seems like all four of Stallman's four essential freedoms of free software apply to hardware: to use as you wish, to study and modify, to distribute, and to distribute modifications [0]. Only the freedom to distribute is mitigated by the cost of copying hardware. The others all seem like an active battleground for end-user freedoms, and the freedom to distribute will be more important as both design tools and fabrication technologies become cheaper.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Partially offtopic, but looking at the case of that laptop I wondered if I am the only one that slides them to the right to have the touchpad and the spacebar aligned with the central symmetry axis of my body? That means having 2/3 of the screen to the right of my eyes, which is a waste because I end up piling windows with important information to the left, for not having to tilt my head to the right.

I believe that the reason for that (IMHO) ergonomically poor design is the will to include the numberpad. With the exception of Macs it's difficult to find any 15+" laptop without a numberpad. Is that feature so important? My numberpad lies there unused since I bought my zbook 15 one year ago. Maybe if I were playing games I would find a use for it. I write specs or code, so there are no many numbers I must type and it's easier to reach for them on the row above the letter keys.

How about optional cases without a number pad and centered keyboard and touchpad? I'd pay an extra for that (plus another extra for a 16:10 screen, but that another story). Or maybe people wanting a number pad should pay an extra. I wonder what are the numbers for the two groups of people "I must have a number pad" and "I don't use it".

<comment><USER7> Every non-programmer/IT person I know want a `numberpad`. It's really easier for them to type numbers and when they happen to use my laptop and have to type numbers they really struggle with the shift keys.

<comment><USER8> Shift keys?

Which keyboard layout is this? I've used a few and always had 1-0 directly on keys.

I personally find number pads infuriating; I just don't really get it. It seems like something of very limited application, useful for only those who spend hours per day inputting numbers solidly and not much else. What's the use case? It seems like that amount of manual data entry would be slowed down by error checking much more so than the input stage.

<comment><USER6> The old Italian keyboard (last seen in the 80s) was like that. It was qzerty too. Numbers moved to the unshifted position and Z and W swapped place.

From what I see at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout) there are very few keyboard like that now. I'd go with a number pad myself if I had to use one of them. On the bright side, if the US keyboard had shifted numbers the keys !"£$%&/()=?^ won't be shifted and a programmer might actually be using them more than numbers.

<comment><USER7> Funny thing is that some of the keys `!"£$%&/()=?^` still require some shift or dead-keys combination with the french/belgian layout (and the french belgian and french layout differ slightly as well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You may also be interested in a project a number of us have been working called lowRISC, aiming to produce a fully open-source SoC in volume using the RISC-V instruction set architecture. [http://www.lowrisc.org/](http://www.lowrisc.org/)

I'm giving a main track talk on it at FOSDEM next weekend: [https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/lowrisc/](https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/lowrisc/) so say hi if you're there. My speaker interview gives more background on the project and our motivations [https://fosdem.org/2015/interviews/2015-alex- bradbury/](https://fosdem.org/2015/interviews/2015-alex-bradbury/)

<comment><USER10> I haven't looked at RISC-V much; a quick glance at the ISA spec makes me think it has 32 GPRs? That is nice to see, as with Power slowly fading and Sparc essentially dead, we are stuck with the somewhat more constrained x86-64 and ARM.

SBCL, for example, uses 2 stacks in its precise GC, as it will use one stack for unboxed integers and calling out to C, and another for lisp objects, which should be the roots for the GC; on x86-64 it uses a conservative GC for this reason (on ARM they implemented the precise one, but seem to be losing significant performace due to register pressure).

In general 16 registers seems to be "just barely enough" most of the time, which translates to "super painful" the few times you could use more.

<comment><USER11> Yep, it's got 32 GPRs, with #0 hardwired to the constant 0.

And the lowRISC project is looking into adding two tag bits with a focus on practical security for languages like C, but with the ability to use them for things like GC.

Largest nits I see about the RISC-V ISA is no support for integer math error checking aside from divide by zero (a New Jersey design), and per a slide set I found for the January workshop, the work in progress 64 bit VMM mode will only support 43 bits of address space, i.e. "only" 8 TiB, vs. e.g. the 256 TiB of x86-64. Which of course is rather a lot, but I find it uncomfortably close to the DRAM you can put on current systems with Intel CPUs; I've watched this game way too many time in my career.

<comment><USER10> The 43-bits; is that a limitation on physical or virtual addresses?

Also, don't forget that DRAM isn't the only consumer of physical address space.

<comment><USER11> It's from a slide set, the first draft of RISC-V's "Privileged ISA Specification" is still being worked on before initial release, which is supposed to happen RSN.

I'm assuming it's the virtual address space limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised no one has said this yet but I can testify that a numpad keyboard on a laptop is like the worst ergonomic design that is somehow currently still popular. It's one of the things where I literally cannot comprehend how someone would think that it is ok.

<comment><USER13> How is it any worse than the rest of the keyboard, in terms of ergonomics?

<comment><USER12> I just found this which says exactly what my thoughts are

[http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-stupidest- trend-...](http://ramblingfoo.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-stupidest-trend-in- laptop-design-is.html)

<comment><USER14> That's a fairly compelling argument, but I definitely have had times where I wished for a numpad on my Macbook, mainly so that I could play games that required them (I went through a few months where I played through several traditional roguelikes, and this isn't uncommon in that genre, though vikeys is more common and far better IMO).

<comment><USER15> Fortunately, there are lots of hardware solutions to that problem.

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&De...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=keypad)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> On a similar note, I've recently become very interested in buying a Lemote laptop. It's exactly the tiny form factor I'm looking, runs an open MIPS chip, and comes preinstalled with some version of Linux, though I'd probably load Gentoo as it's said to work quite well. The various models run $150-300 in USD depending on the supplier, from what I can tell.

Unfortunately it's very hard to buy these computers in the US, and I will probably have to pick it up on some future trip to China. I would definitely a Massdrop or crowdfunding campaign to send purchase a set from the Chinese distributor.

<comment><USER17> The Lemote Yeelong is very slow, comparable to the 1.6GHz atom netbooks of 2008. You'd be better off with a thinkpad x60 with libreboot installed.

<comment><USER16> It's the novelty I'm interested in. It will be 99% used as mobile keyboard feeding into vi.

<comment><USER17> For that purpose it would serve fine. You could try and contact the person at kd85.com. They formerly sold lemotes and maybe have a few laying around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "...uncontrolled by outside forces..."

Who validates the silicon and how is this accomplished? We've known for quite some time about the potential for rogue circuits hiding amongst the millions of transistors.

<comment><USER19> Especially that 500GB HDD. What open-source firmware is loaded onto that?

<comment><USER20> From the website: "There are also hardware components, like the HD or SSD, that are flashable, and therefore upgradeable, but that currently run firmware that is not yet freed. We are working to get freed versions of this firmware! Being the first manufacturer to care about freedom and privacy, we are making a lot of progress upstream."

<comment><USER21> I am skeptical they are going to get firmware for the hard drive. It would be easier to make your own SSD from nand flash chips and write your own firmware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What CPU is it running? Because last time I checked the Intel microcode wasn't open source

<comment><USER23> an i7, which while proprietary doesn't necessarily have to be bundled with the typical Intel AMT, which the FSF dislikes[1].

Besides the CPU, it contains proprietary nVidia chips. Another company which doesn't have too stellar of a 'open' record.

[1]: [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management- techno...](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/active-management-technology)

<comment><USER24> The chip this uses , the i7-4770HQ , uses vt-d. According to invisible labs[1], vt-d can allow certain malware attacks. Afaik, even after being informed of this by invisible labs researchers, intel did nothing(afaik) to solve this.

[1][http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.co.il/2011/05/following-w...](http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.co.il/2011/05/following- white-rabbit-software-attacks.html)

<comment><USER25> It was mitigated in software and fixed in post-2011 hardware, [http://xen.1045712.n5.nabble.com/Xen-security-advisory- CVE-2...](http://xen.1045712.n5.nabble.com/Xen-security-advisory- CVE-2011-1898-VT-d-PCI-passthrough-MSI-td4390298.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> stephen-mw I'm excited about a company that will ensure a good, compatible experience with linux on a laptop. I develop on mac osx and linux vms (vagrant). I want to move to linux but the linux desktop experience just isn't there yet.

<comment><USER26> For me, the linux desktop experience _is_ there. So I guess it depends on what you want.

There's nothing I want to do I can't do on Linux as well or better, except play games, and that's not enough of a factor for me to not prefer Linux.

<comment><USER27> From my testing, the macbook air is one of the better laptops on the market now in terms of battery life and general feel (the touchpad is second to none in my opinion).

But even for a laptop this prevalent, getting it to work with Ubuntu is a pain, and you run into a bunch of little bugs consistently.

I understand that it's a major uphill battle, but over the many many laptops I've tried to use with Linux, I've not found one that offers a good experience when it comes to the things that are important to a laptop (like battery life, secondary display support, and the like).

I'm totally cool with using Linux on a desktop (though I don't own a desktop anymore), had some great experiences even when going full Arch.

<comment><USER28> I've been happily plugging away with Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T530 for a while now and an old Dell w/ an Intel Core 2 Duo for years before that. Both installs went smoothly.

The hassle involved in getting Ubuntu working on a MacBook is not representative of laptop installations in general. Macs are special beasts and looking at the relevant support wiki page there are all sorts of hoops that I just didn't have to jump through in either of my non-Mac installations. I'm sorry you had a poor experience!

<comment><USER27> I've had some Dell and HP laptops (and a super old thinkpad, but that one worked alright given it couldn't really do much), and have had extremely bad driver issues. The big one has been the graphics card, but also flaky wifi, and even sound card issues! Battery life was always an issue (I would have 4 hours on windows, only an hour and change on linux), but I think that was linked to graphics card issues.

Having issues with a sound card gives me flashback to windows 95.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A truly philosophically pure laptop would, among other things, guarantee absolutely no involvement of slave labor/abusive practices in its supply chain. Everyone from the mines to the assembly plant to the retail store would have secure, middle-class employment. Revenue would not fund political corruption or violence related to labor, natural resources, or environmental impact.

But it would not contain binary blobs either, so this is a positive step. The branding is a little grandiose for the extent of its "philosophical purity," though.

<comment><USER30> Depends what philosophy you're talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow, that price is not justifiable, the spec at System76[0] is way better and cheaper.

0\. [http://www.amazon.com/System76-Galago-Ultrapro- Processor-120...](http://www.amazon.com/System76-Galago-Ultrapro- Processor-120GB/dp/B00QQOU5FY/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1422112938&sr=1-1&keywords=System76&pebp=1422112964036&peasin=B00QQOU5FY)

<comment><USER32> I beg to differ. (I'm unaffiliated and haven't donated btw). The Purism project is not directly comparable. They are doing substantial extra work and hassle and working with different parts. It's not about whether the machine runs a fully-free OS (System 76 running Ubuntu isn't even fully-free as Ubuntu isn't fully-free). It's about even the basic hardware drivers, BIOS, firmware etc. all being free/libre and the extra cost is covering the hassle and specifics of making that happen in the real world today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what about this company? What is their reputation? I'm in the market for a Linux laptop with about those specs, but how can I easily compare this to a more established brand in terms of after sales support and overall build quality?

</comment><comment><USER33> Add hardware switches for the mic, webcam, lan, wifi and bluetooth and you have my money.

<comment><USER17> [https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem- laptop/updates/lib...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem- laptop/updates/librem-13-and-more)

Your wish is granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How do they do Wi-Fi? Bluetooth?

<comment><USER35> Bluetooth isn't mentioned on the campaign page [1], but the wifi is ath9k.

[1] [https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem- laptop](https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-laptop)

<comment> david-given Last I heard, radio firmware pretty much had to be locked down or the regulators wouldn't certify you; the principle here being that as all modern radio chipsets are basically software-defined radios, they're indistinguishable from incredibly effective jammers. They consider the right to dial emergency services on a cell phone and have it work to be more important than the right to play with hardware.

So I'm interested to see that there's actual open source firmware for the ath9k, and it looks like the hardware will accept unsigned firmware images. Have the rules changed? Or are the regulators simply less concerned about wifi relative to mobile phone radios?

<comment><USER36> Long answer: [http://youtu.be/WOcYTqoSQ68](http://youtu.be/WOcYTqoSQ68) Short answer, iirc the atheros will usually play within the rules, and the free drivers aren't super officially supported so what those crazy hackers do isn't so much their responsibility.

But that's based on half-remembering that talk, which I watched five months ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> For that price the components seems rather inadequate. 4GiB RAM for $1800? Come on.

<comment><USER38> Yeah. It doesn't even come with cake!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So, does it really offer something that this doesn't: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GIVX0FM/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GIVX0FM/) ?

Except for silver casing...

<comment><USER40> It doesn't have SSD, so in my book it's not high performance(a bit too big as well).

IIRC Ubuntu sends some analytics data. There is no guarantee about the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The future of anything we wish was built out of philosophical purism is to be built on crowdfunding.

As for this particular case, SSD > liberty for me. I'd rather boot at a reasonable speed than die waiting to copy files.

</comment><comment><USER42> This looks pretty cool to me. I've been happy with the Ubuntu/Dell efforts over the years, but it's really, really good to see people working on nice Linux machines.

</comment><comment><USER43> They talk about ensuring that open source works on the machine, anyone else concerned if they will try to inhibit close source software? Like this whole shitstorm around GCC?

<comment><USER44> "absolutely free and open and uncontrolled by outside forces ensures complete control of every aspect of the hardware at all times."

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The 10^6$ question is whether Richard Stallman[1] would use this?

[1][http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/](http://richard.stallman.usesthis.com/)

<comment><USER46> That's a bit outdated - Stallman's now using a ThinkPad X60: [https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html)

OT, but an amusing line from that page:

> I never pay for anything on the Web. Anything on the net that requires > payment, I don't do.

Or more succintly:

> Out, out, damned Spotify! Flick off, Netflix!

<comment><USER47> It would be pretty hard to run netflix in emacs anyway

<comment><USER23> don't say things like that out loud. the emacs repos are already too crowded. we'll have a _netflix-mode_ by sun-up.

<comment><USER48> I wouldn't worry too much, as there isn't a netflix-mode-by-sun-up-mode, as far as I can tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Can somebody explain the intel processor freedom thing. They say this is the first intel processor that doesn't rely on a signed bios.

</comment><comment><USER50> Call me a skeptic, but there's nothing philosophically "pure" about a locked down hardware platform where discrete components are all dependent on each other and NOT user serviceable.

</comment><comment><USER51> Stallman, I remember that he used a Loongson computer

<comment><USER51> Well, currently he is using Thinkpad x60. By the way, I dislike the style of his personal website, which is disordered and primitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Start purism by removing the numpad ...

</comment><comment><USER53> I wish it was more Thinkpad-y rather than Macbook-y; especially since Lenovo -I've heard- is well on its way to ruining the former.

<comment><USER54> The newest Carbon X1 looks pretty good, at least compared to the previous model.

<comment><USER55> It would be nice if Lenovo provided the option of the classic Thinkpad keyboard. I'm considering going with a used Thinkpad as my next laptop for that reason.

Laptop choice seems to have become a monoculture of Apple clones. If Purism would provide that keyboard option I would find it hard to resist.

<comment><USER25> Goldtouch (derived from Lexmark/IBM aesthetics) makes ergo keyboards and has mobile (foldable) USB and BT versions, [http://allthingsergo.com/blog/reviews/goldtouch-keyboard- rev...](http://allthingsergo.com/blog/reviews/goldtouch-keyboard-review/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Nearly $2000 for a laptop I could have bought for that price in early 2008?

Sorry, call me a stickler, but I just don't see the value here.

<comment><USER57> Fine, if you don't perceive value, then you are not part of the target market for this product/project. Enjoy your current choice of hardware and software.

Other people may see value where you do not however.

<comment><USER56> 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB HDD sounds like a hand-me-down I'd get from my grandma, not a new cutting edge laptop. What exactly justifies that cost?

<comment><USER57> I'm typing this on a Georgian reproduction then :-)

Thinkpad X61s with 2.5Gb RAM and 100Gb hard drive. Runs Kubuntu 15.04 alpha very responsively (with baloo working) and allows me to complete office/planning type tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A good idea but tainted by association with Stallman and therefore with Stallman's made-up, non-empirical, false morality.</comment>


Samsung Focus – Unified Inbox; email, calendar, task, memo, and contacts - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.android.focus <comment><AUTHOR> From Google Play page:

Samsung Focus does not operate any cloud server. It connects only to the actual mail servers. It stores your account's data on the device and Samsung Electronics® never access any user's data at all.</comment>


Programmable Water (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.blikstein.com/paulo/projects/project_water.html <comment><USER2> If it's easy to do and does not require electricity nor electronics then could it be that computers has been created in previous civilization and we are not aware of it yet?

<comment><USER3> The concept of logic systems themselves have far preceeded the first electrical circuits. I am sure this was put to physical use somewhere in history, but to call it a "computer" would be kind of a stretch. Very doubtful in my opinion, certainly not a computer to any extend we would imagine one today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Terrible title. I came here hoping for mystical stuff like,

[http://www.personal.psu.edu/~tms9/Therapy_Waters.html](http://www.personal.psu.edu/~tms9/Therapy_Waters.html)

Also. Look everyone! Programmable electrons!

<comment><USER5> yeh the thing being programmed not same as thing title said was being programmed, am annoyed too

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are these gates "regenerative", in the sense that you can combine them indefinitely in theory? Or do they lose power, so that after a few consecutive gates they lose their function?

<comment><USER7> I think if no water leaks away it looks like it can be infinite, but the article mentions lots of leaks. Also, the amount of water doubles after AND, that could escalate into a problem unless excess can be removed somewhere...

<comment><USER8> So, if the water is the medium moving data, that make it a device with actual memory leaks, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> hydraulic analog computing machines used to be one of many ways to perform economic simulations, and there is a whole discipline came out of it.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER10> I think I remember Terence Tao talking about something like this in relation to Navier-Stokes.</comment>


How to take back control of /etc/resolv.conf on Linux (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/resolvconf-tutorial.html <comment><USER2> Oh man, this nightmare situation drove me completely nuts when I was trying to get DNS + VMs working with K8s test scripts.

I ended up writing this series to exorcise the demons:

[https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/08/anatomy-of-a-linux- dns-l...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/08/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup- part-i/)

[https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/18/anatomy-of-a-linux- dns-l...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/06/18/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup- part-ii/)

[https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/07/06/anatomy-of-a-linux- dns-l...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/07/06/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup- part-iii/)

[https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/08/06/anatomy-of-a-linux- dns-l...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2018/08/06/anatomy-of-a-linux-dns-lookup- part-iv/)

<comment><USER3> I'm more and more leaning towards "run dnsmasq on every single machine and be done with it", it feels like the sweet sweet spot to get flexibility and the predictability. Otherwise, systemd-resolved is not as unpredictable and frustrating as resolvconf or networkmanager.

<comment><USER4> > Otherwise, systemd-resolved is not as unpredictable and frustrating as > resolvconf or networkmanager.

NetworkManager uses dnsmasq or systemd-resolved as it's backend...

<comment><USER5> Isn't systemd-resolvd using dnsmasq under the hood?

<comment><USER4> No, systemd-resolved does its own thing independently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Inaccurate information in the man pages doesn't help. The one for resolved.conf claims that, if the DNS entry is not present in its configuration, systemd resolved will use the DNS servers in /etc/resolv.conf. But using strace showed me that, in fact, it is ignoring that file and using the resolver provided by my ISP (as resolved's status output confirms). After copying the entries (for 220.127.116.11 and a few backups) into resolved's configuration, it's doing what I want it to, now.

I've suspected for a while, and am now pretty sure, that this system has become so byzantine that the (incredibly talented) people assembling distros, writing the software, and maintaining the man pages, don't know how it works.

<comment><USER7> > I've suspected for a while, and am now pretty sure, that this system has > become so byzantine that the (incredibly talented) people assembling > distros, writing the software, and maintaining the man pages, don't know how > it works.

Which is... precisely what a lot of people were worried about re: systemd :(

<comment><USER8> As one of the people assembling distros:

If you think things are byzantine with systemd, you should have seen how things were before!

<comment><USER9> Deterministic, and not as prone inexplicable flakiness?

<comment><USER8> I don't know about deterministic, but there's something to the flakiness.

The old stuff was byzantine, but it was decades old, which meant that it had decades of people beating on it, figuring out all the ways that it could flake, and fixing those flakes. And that's not something to sneeze at.

That doesn't make the old stuff any less byzantine. And systemd really is a lot more coherent than most of what it replaced. But systemd doesn't have decades of people finding all the ways it can fall over.

<comment><USER6> I agree. My comment wasn't a complaint about systemd per se. The old init system was nothing to fall in love with. I think this is an improvement. The problem is that is hasn't "replaced" all the older mechanisms, but is one more layer that adds to the confusing mess, with sedimentary layers of conflicting systems, mysterious files all over the filesystem, and obsolete and conflicting documentation.

What I've enjoyed in particular: systemd timers are an improvement over cron; and I've been making great use of systemd-nspawn, which is very convenient and powerful.

<comment><USER10> I agree that it is another layer of complexity, but when it works well it's a really good layer of abstraction for user space programs to interact with the kernel. It's only when issues arise that the extra layer brings in more complexity. And like GP stated, that's mostly an issue of time needed to eliminate the most serious bugs and for edge cases to be well understood and documented.

there were plenty of growing pains at first, but the transition period for any project looking to replace the old init system was going to be a headache no matter what. It does take some time to grok, and it feels monolithic at first, but I actually think that's a good thing. It's composed of many separate binaries that individually conform to the unix philosophy, but they're all distributed, maintained, and released together. You still have tons of configurations options, but you can be confident that standard systemd components are always going to play nicely with each other.

The only issue I've really had are the binary logs. If the indexes get messed up it's a pain to access the logs even if though the actual files rarely have issues with corruption. But it's fairly easy to forward messages to syslog if you need.

<comment><USER6> The problem that I can see is not that systemd and other new systems are complex. They deal with complex problems. The problem is that the old stuff stays around, so a distribution like Ubuntu keeps growing in complexity and obscurity. My Ubuntu laptop and the couple of Debian servers that I take care of have systemd, which is fine, and I'm happily using it. But they also still have an init.d directory, are still running cron, etc., etc. It's not coherent. When I have to use strace to spy on my system to I can figure out how to configure it, something's wrong. And it's not just the init system. My laptop's sound is much more reliable after I removed PulseAudio, because it seemed to be fighting with alsa, or something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This post is simply wrong. Even on a plain old Debian without any of those programs (networkmanager, ...), the file /etc/resolv.conf will probably be written over at boot time. I don't want to draw a political comparison to the Brexit, but before engaging in "taking back control", one should learn how the current situation works and what the change will bring.

The main missing concept in the article is _DHCP_. Most computers use this to get their IP and the DNS servers. For example, for as long as I can remember the default Debian way to handle the network was _ifupdown_ , where a hook called `dhcp` after an interface is connected, and by doing so the file resolv.conf is updated. If resolv.conf is manually controlled, there is no DHCP to update it, and then you have to declare your DNS servers. But the DNS that you can query from home may not be reachable from a public wifi. And at work, you won't have access to the intranet unless you add some private DNS servers at the top of your resolv.conf. So a totally manual handling of resolv.conf is a bad idea, at least for a laptop.

The article also never wonder why do all these programs try to "take control" of resolv.conf. Some of them just try to update it when they receive DHCP data about DNS. Other, like resolvconf, try to separate the manual part from the dhcp-generated part (which is what "manual control" should aim to). Other programs may add features, like a local cache or automatic knowledge of the local network (containers and such).

<comment><USER12> Sometimes you don't want to blindly trust dhcp. My isp is set up so that the internet-facing host gets an IP through dhcp. I don't want to use the ISP's dns however.

I use OpenBSD on that machine. I think it was "ignore domain-name-servers" in dhclient.conf that fixed that for me.

<comment><USER13> > I don't want to use the ISP's dns however.

Careful. Even if you point at a different dns resolver, your ISP still gets to see this traffic, and it can still MITM it. This is not theoretical, it is trivial. Many ISPs do it.

<comment><USER14> Confidentiality isn't the only form of trust, many are simply annoyed with "features" such as wildcard catch-alls that direct you to ad/search pages instead of saying the domain doesn't resolve.

<comment><USER15> I use non-ISP dns servers for a variety of reasons. I've tested and found 184.108.40.206 faster than my ISP dns in the past.

Some people use e.g. opendns because they want to use that for keeping track of what dns names are being queried from inside their networks.

I actually do use my ISP's dns for some names (particularly netflix), because only they know the names of their internal cache boxes. I have a dnsmasq configuration that sends queries that end in `netflix.com` to the ISP dns and others to 188.8.131.52/188.8.131.52 or whatever.

<comment><USER16> > I actually do use my ISP's dns for some names (particularly netflix)

Oh it looks like good setup, I'll try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article is a great condemnation of how badly Unix networking has gone in the last 10 years. For many, many, many years we used /etc/resolv.conf to configure name service. Easy and simple, but not very flexible.

All the tools this article talks about turning off are trying to solve problems. They're trying to let resolv.conf be configured with DHCP, or handle VPNs correctly, or roam across networks. You need software to do that, not just a static config file. The problem is every Linux distro has a _different_ tool. And those tools behave opaquely or do bizarre things like use 127.0.0.53 as the loopback address. No one built the One True Tool that got it right. And so we have a mess that has the sysadmin throwing up their hands, disabling all the tools, and making immutable config files just to get back to basic static file functionality.

<comment><USER18> > _And so we have a mess that has the sysadmin throwing up their hands, > disabling all the tools, and making immutable config files just to get back > to basic static file functionality._

I'm not a big fan of sysadmins coasting on their existing knowledge, and this sentiment sums up what I object to precisely. Complexity has increased somewhat since the Slackware days, and it doesn't always seem to be for the best, but that's no excuse for disabling it.

Expressing this viewpoint in an interview would materially harm a sysadmin candidate's chances: it suggests that they are inflexible, unable to adapt to change, and prefer to simply sweep issues under a rug rather than document them and resolve them.

I empathize with the desire to set it all aside and go back to bare metal, but it's not a position I would take as much pride in.

<comment><USER19> > it doesn't always seem to be for the best, but that's no excuse for > disabling it.

Seriously, this is the best possible reason to disable something. You don't just submit to downgrades because progress is progress.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Or, if you're a lazy f, just recreate the file with your desired contents and then do

        chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

To make it immutable.

<comment><USER21> If you're lazy, never do this. It's not very visible and you or someone else will lose hours troubleshooting it later.

<comment><USER22> Troubleshooting what?

<comment><USER23> For example why some daemon in the future takes lots of CPU spinning and logging errors about not being able to write to a file it's configured to manage.

<comment><USER22> Sound like exactly the kind of badly designed daemon I'd be trying to protect against by making the change in the first place

<comment><USER23> Let's be honest: Next to no service is designed to expect immutable files. At best they're handling a situation of read-only filesystems. If they document how configure not writing to a file and instead of doing that, the user is marking the file immutable, I wouldn't blame the app design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure that just replacing the /etc/resolv.conf symlink with a regular file will prevent all of the major network configuration tools from modifying it. I've verified this for resolvconf and systemd-resolved at least:

> To make the resolver use this dynamically generated resolver configuration > file the administrator should ensure that /etc/resolv.conf is a symbolic > link to /run/resolvconf/resolv.conf. This link is normally created on > installation of the resolvconf package. The link is never modified by the > resolvconf program itself.[0]

> To improve compatibility, /etc/resolv.conf is read in order to discover > configured system DNS servers, but only if it is not a symlink... [1]

[0]: [http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man8/resolvconf.8....](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/zesty/man8/resolvconf.8.html#contenttoc4)

[1]: [https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd- res...](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd- resolved.service.html)

<comment><USER25> No, it won't. Some of the managers for this file will overwrite it.

<comment><USER24> NetworkManager is the one exception I'm aware of here, but I don't think any server distros use it. Using NM is also the best option for configuring desktop environments, so I wouldn't bother disabling its resolv.conf management functionality.

<comment><USER26> Doesn't RHEL ship with NM by default? And test on its usage?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Resolve.conf is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you've got a file that nearly every flavour of Linux will use for DNS resolution with a standardised format. On the other hand, you've got four hundred network managing programs that all need to be told separately that you don't want to use them to manage the file for you because you want to set it up yourself.

Makes me wonder if the file options should be extended contain a config option to indicate what program manages the file so that others know to keep their hands off. Right now there's comments in there, but those comments are often hardly machine readable.

<comment><USER28> The handling for the resolv.conf file is embedded in the libc and is larger than Linux. This whole issue is a failure of the Linux distribution community to come up with coherent standards for managing a simple text file on a system using DHCP. The solutions today are horribly complicated and appear to optimize for laptop users on simple, naive networks. I have no idea why I have to mess with any of this garbage on my servers.

No, we need to get back to software like it was in the early 2000s when people cared about consistent, long-term behavior instead of re-inventing everything because laptops.

<comment><USER23> It makes sense to me. It solves the problem for simple networks and roaming users - so basically situations where things are expected to "just work" with minimal knowledge. It's our (sysadmins) job to configure the system correctly in other places. Especially in case of weird networks.

<comment><USER29> But simple networks and roaming users are perfectly fine with regular static file. I have no idea what user base this overengineered crap is catering but it seems equally useless both on (my) servers and laptops.

<comment><USER23> A significant number of hotels do the login portals using their own DNS servers, do if you ignore those, you can't use that network. Pretty much every corp environment forces local DNS servers.

<comment><USER30> The web portal isn't the only way on to a hotel network, just the most convenient. The Nintendo Switch console doesn't support captive portals either, so I've gotten in the habit of dialing the front desk any time I stay at a hotel and asking to be transferred to the network team. You tell them you need a device whitelisted and provide your room number, duration of stay, and the MAC of any devices.

<comment><USER23> This may work in a large hotel chain, but not in a b&b which licenses their it solution from a 3rd party that never wants to speak with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 and configured a home gateway. I had not done something like that in a while (3+ years). My experience was not much different this time than any other time before as far as I remember.

It took me an hour of reading the ubuntu official documentation and a few man pages on systemd, interfaces, networkd, resolvd, netplan etc to figure out how stuff works on this distro.

After that I was able to simply do 'systemctl status' and look at all the running processes, then stop and disable all the ones I didn't want.

I wanted to run unbound dns as my dnssec verifying, tls-forwarding, blocklist/filtering resolver. I was able to do that without any difficulty – stopped resolvd, enabled and started unbound and changed the entry in resolv.conf. I also brought up dhcpd for my network and was able to serve that dns server to the devices on my network.

Then I had to spend a bit of time figuring out pppd, policy routing and nftables to do a bit of fancy dual wan routing and traffic filtering. I found netplan to be quite good at what it does (still incomplete for more advanced scenarios - but then so was all the previous tools similar to this).

In all this, I actually found systemd quite helpful. I think those who complain don't take the few minutes it takes to read the man pages and familiarize themselves with the tools on the OS.

Ofcourse things change, and you will have to learn new things. Expecting things to stay constant is unrealistic. As long as I'm able to depend on man- pages and official distro documentation, I'm not objecting to change.

<comment><USER32> Then you restart, and /etc/resolv.conf is different again? Despite resolvd being disabled(??)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Haha I had a pi for toy projects and somehow dns kept breaking. I didn't have time to find the root cause so I made a cronjob to overwrite the file every minute. Maybe top 10 dirtiest things I've ever done but it worked fine for months

</comment><comment><USER34> Sometimes I'm baffled that setting a static value for DNS servers is harder than updating resolv conf itself.

Not to mention the fact that the information containing the proper steps to do this simple task of often buried among other network configuration information.

I think SUSE had the best approach: if file doesn't have a certain header (a comment stating something like "automatically created by x") it means management scripts shouldn't touch it. Not sure if it's still like that.

</comment><comment><USER35> Pretty sure I remember finding this ctrl.blog page when fighting with this systemd-related Ubuntu bug that changed resolv.conf to use "127.0.0.53":

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1624320](https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1624320)

My hate for this whole situation (but especially the fact that it broke resolution of short names with search domains) is bone-deep.

<comment><USER36> It also adds to my hate for Google Chrome..

"The primary purpose of adding 127.0.0.53 to resolv.conf is for client software that wants to do DNS resolution by itself instead of using NSS -- most notable example is Google Chrome, and third-party software which is statically linked (e. g. Go)."

All this mess just to work around Chrome? That's annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> To be honest, it's this sort of thing that makes me happy to be back on FreeBSD for everything but gaming and DRM media (hi Spotify).

Sure there's a little more work to get set up (which I've scripted and put in Gitlab, so it's easy the second and subsequent times).

But the documentation is first class (in particular, the FreeBSD Handbook is great), and generally, when you set something up it stays that way.

Reminds me of late 90s / early 2000s GNU/Linux in that regard.

<comment><USER38> I love FreeBSD. Are you using it in a laptop? If so, which one? I've been looking for a friendly laptop to check out the latest FreeBSD. It's been a while.

<comment><USER39> I've been using it on X1 as a desktop driver since 9.0. Lovely setup: [http://trafyx.com/?p=2551](http://trafyx.com/?p=2551)

OpenBSD would be even cleaner and leaner, but I needed wine, keras, theano and a few other things it didn't offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Don't tools like network manager have config options to manage resolv.conf - so you can have autoconfig with your own customisations if you wish...

This seems similar to the "don't disable selinux, learn how to use it" shenanigans..

</comment><comment><USER41> What is the real world impact of every host doing their own recursive lookups?

The popular TLD nameservers would receive a lot of traffic but the amount depends on average TTLs _in the wild_ — metrics which hopefully someone here will be knowledgeable about.

Presumably handling the traffic is nothing compared to handling www.google.com, but the TLDs can't afford the same scale of infra that FAANG can?

Several billion people resolving their favourite websites every 86400 seconds — it's either a lot, or one of those things the C10k folks love to show can be handled by a Pentiun III.

<comment><USER42> There's been several articles and HN posts about chromium's nxdomain/intranet detection feature and its impact on root DNS traffic that may give a hint.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24231857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24231857) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24270369)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've spent hours on figuring out Dns related issues in Ubuntu and always wonder how such a basic part of the OS can become such a huge mess... Impossible to figure out for average (/non techies) people.

<comment><USER44> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23718997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23718997) might help you to understand some of the reasons why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I like to use Linux network namespaces for fun and profit. You can for example run a program with it's own IP/network. Network namespaces doesn't however work with network managers, systemd-resolv et.al. because network namespaces create separate unique mounts for /etc/resolv.conf

</comment><comment><USER46> This article offers wrong advice of disabling resolvconf. You shouldn't be doing that, since it's resolvconf that acts as an arbiter of resolvconf writes. Rdnssd in Debian, unfortunately, bypasses it, and it's a bug in the package.

</comment><comment><USER47> Oh, I had that fun once, when Ubuntu had moved to a systemd resolver, I'd managed to get two/three programs conflicting - think I used `lsof` to track which programs were opening resolv.conf.

</comment><comment><USER48> I've saved these commands for Ubuntu;

       sudo apt install resolvconf;
       sudo vi /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head;
       sudo service resolvconf restart

</comment><comment><USER49> Great article.

I installed pihole one a server once instead of running the image. It was amazing to see the 3 way fist fight that broke out on resolv.conf

</comment><comment><USER50> Just point resolv.conf to your pihole and then make it read only. Problem solved

</comment><comment><USER51> Does anyone actually like NetworkManager

<comment><USER52> nope.

<comment><USER53> It's funny that the only technically correct answer got downvoted.

You can never answer that question with 100% certainty with "yes", only with "no".</comment></comment></comment>


Quotes from 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wfs.org/blogs/thomas-frey/eight-shocking-quotes-2012-will-redefine-our-future

<comment><USER2> By 2030 over 2 billion jobs will disappear

Big data will replace the need for 80% of all doctors

Those two are scary

<comment><AUTHOR> I think thats good news. Aren't people tired of jobs that they don't love ? These 2 billion jobs will be done by the robots and computers, and eventually it will be 99% jobs. But thats the goal. But until we move to 99%, there will be lot of pain caused by loss of job and income unless governments create protection plans for people.

But I am wondering what kind of innovation would get rid of 80% of lawyers!

<comment><USER2> _But I am wondering what kind of innovation would get rid of 80% of lawyers!_

Now, THAT would be very welcome !!</comment></comment></comment>


Zucchini iOS testing framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.zucchiniframework.org/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting, but it looks like I have to learn another DSL, as well as figuring out how to describe my screens in CoffeeScript so the DSL can interact with them. I'm not even sure what the point of the intermediate layer is. Why not write the tests directly in CoffeeScript? Or even better (for those of us not infatuated by CS), why not just build a DSL expressive enough to interact with the screen directly?

For those not wanting to deal with yet another language/server, Square's KIF testing framework is really well done, integrates right with your project in Xcode 4, you can write your tests in the same language you write your code in, and you also get screenshots when tests fail: <https://github.com/square/KIF>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're going to require Ruby, why not just write the steps and features in Ruby too? Seems like overkill to require both. I do like the idea of using a screenshot as an assertion though.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ohh using a screenshot as a reference point. Nice. I like the idea of using screenshots as a test assertion.

</comment><comment><USER5> looks like a cucumber-like testing framework for iOS

<comment><USER6> I think thats kind of the intention :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - Lean Designs Website Builder - <AUTHOR> http://www.leandesigns.com

<comment><USER2> I tried to click past the signup form so that I could try it out, but it gave me this:

      10 errors prohibited this user from being saved

      There were problems with the following fields:

      Password can't be blank
      Password is too short (minimum is 6 characters)
      Password is too short (minimum is 6 characters)
      Password confirmation can't be blank
      Login can't be blank
      Login is too short (minimum is 3 characters)
      Login use only letters, numbers, and .-_@ please.
      Email can't be blank
      Email is too short (minimum is 6 characters)
      Email should look like an email address.

Or, translated:

      These 10 arbitrary barriers just cost us a potential customer.

You guys offer a Free plan, fer cryin' out loud. _Let us try your thing without filling in a form_. It looks like a cool product, but it's 2011 and people stumbling in off the Internet have zero attention span and zero tolerance for hassle. If I can't get to a working demo with a single click from your homepage, I'm gone.

And so is a hefty fraction of your potential userbase.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- a demo of the export tool is definitely something I'd like to implement, but doing so would have postponed the launch by a week or two. I made the decision to launch without it and that's that.

Appreciate the feedback as it helps me prioritize what to work on next.

<comment><USER3> You have to think about whether this person would ever actually become a customer of yours.

From my experience, you could spend the next couple weeks building a perfect sandbox for people who will NEVER buy your service, or you can leave the login restrictions in place, and the people who may actually become customers will certainly take a few minutes to get in there.

If they don't have the time to create a simple login, they may become real support nightmares anyway.

\- They won't take the time to read instructions.

\- They will think they can do things they can't and the service doesn't even provide.

\- They are the people who expect EVERYTHING for free including your help.

Don't just jump on this. Remember, you are in charge. You know the service you are providing. This person already complained about something FREE, how much more of that do you really want to deal with?

<comment><USER2> For the record, this person makes his living selling a few services in the same space as the original poster, and has been in the exact same position of having launched a product and watched tons of potential users bounce away because the "try it now" button asked for a single username and password.

I also run a service that gets 100% of its business as a result of people converting from free trials to paid users, and the biggest lesson I've learned from that site is that the more people you can put into the top of the funnel, the more come out the bottom. It's not a matter of getting more trial signups at the expense of a worse conversion rate. It's a matter of the conversion rate staying constant and income going up in direct proportion to how much friction you can remove from the signup process.

<comment><USER3> :) I didn't mean to offend you, so sorry. Your services appear to be SaaS, but I don't see much in terms of a design tool in your list.

My company needs a tool like what he's providing, and I had absolutely no trouble with his sign-up process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, can you shoot me an email? I'd like to ask you a few more questions off- thread.

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't be afraid to charge people money for your service! Your free plan is way too generous. Personally, I would replace the free plan with a working demo, so people can kick the tires. But definitely lower the free plan to one design.

I think you need to address the line that says "Requires an HTML5 compliant browser." For one, it's not clear enough whether you mean the _builder_ needs HTML5 or the _output_ requires it. In any event, I think you should frame it by telling the user which browsers will work -- those are terms they'll better be able to understand, especially considering you're aiming for the market of people who don't know what they're doing online.

Anyway, there's my two cents. Good luck.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. With a service like this, I think someone would know instantly whether or not they were going to use this service in the future, and having the option to do 3 designs just delays the inevitable - that they will pay. BUT, having 3 designs also gives people time to forget about the service.

In my opinion, instead of $19.95 per month, I would rather buy design "packs".

\- $19 for 10 designs

\- $49 for 100 designs

\- $99 for 300 designs

\- $499 for 100,000 designs (you're good to go plan)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd venture to say that for most people 10 designs is more than they'll ever use. You could pay $19 once and use the service forever (because you can just delete your old designs if you ever hit the limit). At least that was my reasoning for choosing a SaaS model, which I admit has flaws too.

One idea that someone mentioned was to buy usage time.

You pay $19 and get access to the tool for a month. Or you pay $99 and get access for a year.

That way if you only use it periodically you're not locked into a recurring plan. It's ghetto SaaS, but a few folks said they'd prefer it.

<comment><USER3> It's just got to be dead simple.

The reason I keep commenting is because I want to be your customer. This tool is exactly something I would need throughout the year.

For example. Today. Our company just received approval back on a graphic design for a new site that has a homepage and an inner page format which are different.

Now, we have to turn it into a CSS/HTML layout that we can plug into a WordPress theme.

I want to use this tool right now, but I don't want to commit to $20 per month AND I don't think I want to pay $20 just for the 1 design AND I was frustrated with the fact that I couldn't get those blocks to line-up side by side which will be required for this particular design.

You see, when a design is created and approved, this tool MUST be able to work with that design. I don't see many instances where I will use a layout editor then try to squeeze a design into it and hope the client approves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys -- I'd love to get your feedback on Lean Designs, a new web design tool for web developers.

Some of you might be familiar with jMockups [1], a high fidelity mockup tool that was the precursor to Lean Designs. The overwhelming feedback that I received was that people wanted the ability to export their mockups to HTML/CSS. Lean Designs is the result. For additional details, check out the Lean Designs blog [2].

Thank you all for your feedback along the way; the app wouldn't be what it is without your direction.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829657>

[2] [http://blog.leandesigns.com/2011/04/introducing-the-lean- des...](http://blog.leandesigns.com/2011/04/introducing-the-lean-designs- website-builder/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Do a demo video showcasing the application, so that users can get idea whether the product meets their requirements.

Compelling offering otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER6> You should show the interface of the editor on the marketing pages somewhere. Also, the "view the source" links don't work for me in Safari Mac.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can see the editor a bit on the homepage, but yeah, it's hard to see. I'll probably add a "Tour" section at some point, where I'll definitely include more detailed screenshots.

Re: view the source -- got it. It's a shame that Safari doesn't support it; I removed it for now and will look at alternatives later. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not sure if I'd given my feedback on jmockups earlier, but this is the sort of thing I was wanting jmockups to be.

Monthly pricing - I don't know how often I go through periods where I need to design sites, so paying $240/year for the few times I'd need this is a little on the steep side, but I understand others might want/need more.

The core system looks nice - congrats.

EDIT: couple of thoughts:

change "examples" to "templates", then have an 'examples' link later with examples that people have built using the tool.

lastly, I'm slightly confused by the diff between a 'layout' and a 'mockup' (and then I also have 'designs' that I did). This is still confusing to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Howdy -- pricing this is an area that I need help with so thank you for your input.

Examples to templates. Great idea -- done.

Layout vs mockup vs designs: probably not as clear as it should be; agreed. Layouts are high level (regions and text only) and you can export them; mockups are detailed and you can't export them. Designs are mockups and layouts. I'll work on the copy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does the builder require a HTML5 browser or does it output HTML/CSS that requires a HTML5 browser? I'm guessing the former, but that wasn't clear to me from the homepage and I'm not sure you want more text there to describe/confuse the user... Actually, I might even leave that off. Your number one goal is to get them to click the button. The more committed they are, the more they'll stick with it and maybe download chrome just to use your product.

<comment><USER9> You should explicitly list which browsers your app works on. I use FF4, is it HTML5 compliant? I don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi,

You've obviously put a lot of work into this, but what's the advantage of using your lean designs web site builder over Boks (a free Adobe Air App grid builder) for Blueprint CSS?

Also I like that you've left your jMockups code in as the high-fidelity mock- up builder, but it might confuse new users who aren't familiar with the history behind jMockups.

Hope this helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey -- I agree that the whole jMockups & Lean Designs app in one is confusing. Without spinning Lean Designs off into its own app, supporting the high fidelity mockups (though not marketing it) seemed like the best option for now.

I haven't tried out Boks, but it may be a viable alternative to this. Long term you'll be able to design an entire site with Lean Designs, which I don't think any other tool does well right now. On that note, are there any features that Boks doesn't support that you'd like to see with Lean Designs?

<comment><USER10> Boks gets you to the same point as Lean Designs - a grid-based layout you can customize. I run into problems taking the layout from Boks and making it not look flat - rounding corners, adding shading, using good fonts, picking colors that go well together - all the little tricks that make a well-designed page look good.

What if you integrated with Adobe Kuler or a similar color-picking tool to generate a CSS file?

<comment><USER7> FWIW, Boks doesn't seem to come with any templates at all - I think that's a real value-add with leandesigns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it a lot. I am working on something similar, but you definitely have a better distribution plan than I have. Good luck to ya!

</comment><comment><USER12> Matt looks good I just signed up - I'll have time to tinker around with it this week. Very promising. I'm very interested in these tools and your competition (psd2cssonline.com, divine, etc.) in this field. I just moved away from Boston to Florida after 25 years but I'll be up there frequently and maybe we can catch coffee and chat.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have an actual designer take an hour and spruce up your design. If your target audience is designers light on coding (and likely high on aesthetics) a quality design will go a long way in getting them to stick around.

</comment><comment><USER14> I like your idea, but be "warned" :D -> I'm building something like this for free. (And there are many others who are getting into these kind of website apps). Sent you an e-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not too worried - we'll see in 10 years who still exists :)

<comment><USER14> I sure hope you will, it's a great concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I tried it and found it really useful.

It is especially useful for people like me who aren't very well versed in CSS. I guess you should market it as WYSIWYG CSS template builder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, glad you found it useful.

The tool as it exists now is a template/layout builder, but long term the goal is to export complete and styled websites. A kind of automated PSD2HTML service that doesn't suck. Marketing it now as a website builder vs a WYSIWYG CSS template builder serves that end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am confused: is it a mock up tool? I don't see any design in the examples, just mockups. You should make more clear what is it that you are offering.

</comment><comment><USER17> Good idea in theory but I won't sign up to try it out for the first time. You should give a sandbox to play with but to export make a user sign up.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've had this EXACT idea brewing in my head for a while. As fodder for the eternal debate: execution matters. Time to get off my sorry tail.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice job! This will make building sits a lot faster :). I would love a demo video on the homepage rather than needing to try it out myself.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, that's a very good idea.

If anything, I think you might be able to charge more. I think 3 free designs/month is very generous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- I've received a lot of conflicting advice for how to price the app and honestly I'm not sure what direction to go so I'm leaving it as is for now. Might change it down the road (grandfathering in existing users) depending on the feedback. Thoughts?

PS: It's a three design limit period (not per month).

<comment><USER21> The wording on the Sign Up & Pricing also lead me to believe that it's 3 designs a month for free.

How about pay as you go pricing? I'm not going to pay monthly if I only need it every now and then, but I'd happily pay $15 per design on a non-recurring basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice job. More templates and integrate some color scheme templates and you've got a winner.

</comment><comment><USER23> _It appears that your browser does not support LeanDesigns._

Wow, one of the few "Review my startup" posts for something I'd actually use, and I hit a roadblock on the first click.

I understand that you want to use the latest and greatest technology, and do you part to drag the rest of us kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but does mounting a roadblock in front of legitimate prospects really serve your best interests? Is HTML5 a "must have" or a "would be nice"?

I on a work desktop right now, so I'll have to wait until I'm on my own later to try this out...if I remember. Sigh.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Ed -- what browser are you using? Most modern browsers with the exception of IE8 should work; if not there's something wrong on my end. The majority of my market uses an HTML5 compliant browser, so it hasn't been a major issue in the past.

I would love to get your thoughts though. If you don't remember, you can expect an email from me later today :)

<comment><USER2> Why not simply support IE8? It's not any harder than, say, supporting FireFox.

Cross browser stuff is really really easy now that you don't have to worry about IE6 anymore. Give it a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is harder than supporting Firefox.

Lean Designs makes _heavy_ use of the canvas element and it would be impossible to implement on a browser like IE8 that doesn't support it. There are libraries like excanvas which help, but they're very limited (no toDataURL() and the like).

In order to support IE8 I'd have to severely limit what the app can do. Since this isn't an issue for 95%+ of the people visiting the site, it doesn't make sense to support it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Will you be adding more css frameworks like blueprint ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe; depends on the demand.</comment></comment>