What happened when Buffer stopped using Slack on Fridays - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90244091/what-happened-when-buffer-tried-turning-off-slack-on-fridays <comment><USER2> Honestly, I never viewed Slack as synchronous. I kept all notifications off, and checked it whenever I had a few minute break or wanted to catch up on our office's conversation.

Slack allowed anyone to contact me by tagging me or @here, so it was obvious when someone wanted it to be synchronous (therefore breaking my communication), but the grand majority of communication was asynchronous unlike email - which does a poor job of differentiating between messages that should (and shouldn't) break attention.

<comment><USER3> I work fully remote and that's what I think as well. It's a thing that let's you wait or respond immediately, up to you. That's the major selling point.

Depends on company culture, of course. But my team is also distributed from -8 to + 10 UTC. So nobody is expecting someone who is asleep to write back to them.

Another thing to note is the presence of other sources of communication, like GitLab issues. If you have those you don't always have to ping a live person in sync mode. Often you can just pick up an issue and do it with minimal input.

<comment><USER4> Hem, plain classic emails offer the very same thing: it's up to you respond quickly or leave the message behind... IMAP IDLE is not exactly a new thing...

<comment><USER3> As does snail mail.

But I think by now the benefits of a chatroom UX are clearly valued by a lot of people.

<comment><USER4> Mh, perhaps lot of people who never tried good modern MUA like notmuch-emacs or mu4e or perhaps even mutt&forks of pine&forks...

I still have to find a webui more effective than my notmuch-emacs UI (with, of course, notmuch underneath)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Productivity would go even higher if you stopped using for the other 4 days. Synchronous chatrooms have very little work value in my experience. You either miss out on a ton of information from all the people chatting or you have to watch it every minute for updates. Nonsense.

<comment><USER6> Then you haven't balanced the size of your rooms. Slack should be your first and primary communication channel and there's a load of good reasons.

For one, you can never guarantee nor should you expect your team to be colocated. Even if you have one office, people should be free to work from home. Side chats get lost, people forget or don't hear. Slack is public and searchable. No mumbling and if you mistype, you can fix it. Plus you can add documents, links, images while you're talking.

People say getting communication on their phones is like an anchor to their desk but I feel the exact opposite. It means I can leave my desk anytime I want and not be out of communication. If something critical needs my attention, I can answer while I'm home and not go back to work.

<comment><USER7> _Slack should be your first and primary communication channel_

Am I old fashioned in thinking that voice to ear (or nearest equivalent) should have the role of primary communication channel?

<comment><USER6> It can't be primary. If you're going to schedule a meeting you need a fixed agenda and the right attendees to not waste people's time. If you have an agenda and need a decision made as a group, then definitely call a meeting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From what I've experienced, slack is to the virtual company what the open office plan is to physical offices. Cheap, easy, and in many ways pleasant, but having everyone present in the same space makes it very hard to focus.

For centuries tech has been about making everything easier, faster, more connected. IMHO, next we have to thoughtfully and discerningly step back from that where it isn't helping.

As an example, for the last 30 days I've stopped looking at news and Twitter before noon. They put me in a fast-paced, reactive, what's-next mindset. Leaving them until later means I'm more focused and less tense. I'm doing it for at least another 30 days.

<comment><USER9> > makes it very hard to focus.

Companies don't go out of business because employees are distracted by chat messages and noisy conversations, they go out of business because employees are working on the wrong thing. Slack still has a lot of work to do if they really want to succeed in their mission, but I also don't think it's entirely fair to judge them (excessively) negatively based on it being distracting because that's not the point.

<comment><USER8> > entirely fair to judge them (excessively) negatively

This is tautological. Maybe try expressing this more usefully?

> Companies don't go out of business because employees are distracted by chat > messages and noisy conversations

Why not? Unending distraction raises costs and encourages a focus on the urgent rather than the important. That will raise prices and lower the company's ability to do strategic rather than tactical work. That seems like a major risk to me.

I agree that there are risks the other direction as well. A company can become too insular or too scattered. But that doesn't mean that one can ignore the opposite risks.

> being distracting because that's not the point

I agree that's not the point for them. But as a user, it's definitely a point for me. And if you're looking for ways that companies go out of business, doing what they want rather than what the user needs is a common one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > 4\. A CASUALTY: "CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE I SAW"

Wait what? If only there was some application out there that could queue up article sharing to an appropriate time.

<comment><USER11> This made me lol, but also reflect.

I bet the people that championed this deep work experiment, ironically, do not like social media for its distracting effects. It's the main reason I stay off social media.

<comment><USER12> You are on social media right now.

<comment><USER13> Yes and no. HN is definitely social, but there are no friends, no feeds, and no notifications, so it's unlike social media as most people understand the term.

If I skip HN for a day, there's a whole front page of articles that I'll probably never see, and never know that I missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't get the slack hate. It's just a chatroom, if your team is using it in a way that impedes productivity that's on you. Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately every time there's new conversation happening.

<comment><USER15> > " _Noone is forcing you to look at it immediately every time there 's new > conversation happening._"

Nobody except your employer. In shops that use slack it is often the expectation that slack messages should be read and responded to ASAP. If someone PMs you in slack that is taken to be the equivalent of an IM or a phone call, with the same implications of urgency. If there is a chat for your specific team then it's expected you are following that pretty closely (at least as closely as your email if not more so).

Additionally, sometimes it's not possible to avoid paying too much attention to slack. If people have a habit of dumping lots of context and decision making into slack without putting that info elsewhere (like wiki, issues, email, etc.) then at some point you need to go back and read all that backlog to keep up to date on what the hell is going on, typically it's far easier to do that as close in time as possible to the original messages, so that you're in the loop. Relatedly, people have a habit of having substantive conversations and effectively virtual meetings in slack which can include decision making as well. Meaning they can make decisions without your input, advice, or consent if you're heads-down and not paying attention, which can mean people make the wrong decisions (they did it without additional context, information, or advice you could have provided) or they make decisions that put you individually at a disadvantage (because you "weren't in the room" when things got decided).

Yes, these are absolutely undesirable and unnecessary ways of using the platform but they are also very common and they are some of the big reasons why people tend to dislike slack.

<comment><USER16> Sucks for you that you need to be responding ASAP but that's not necessarily the norm. My organization and team clearly set expectations that we are only expected to respond ASAP if it's regular work hours or if you're on call. All other times people can ping you but no one's gonna hold you to it if you don't reply all Sunday.

In our team what organically transpires is that we generally get a response time of 3-8 hours over weekends and a few hours in weekday evenings. No one's complaining over lost sleep.

And from what I've heard from my friends who all made informed decisions on where to work, that seems to be the norm. I'm perfectly fine with that. Looks more like you've decided these hardass companies are the only places worth working at for various reasons and have concluded that these are the norms everywhere.

<comment><USER17> "only expected to respond ASAP if it's regular work hours" \- I think InclinedPlane meant regular work hours.

It's a problem if you have to respond ASAP during work hours, if your job involves doing deep work during work hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the distinction between async and sync messaging is really critical here and highlights a different form of communication that folks are incorrectly using Slack to solve.

When I was at Facebook, this type of communication was extremely abundant and took place on Workplace. When you are pushed information, there is some expectation to respond (as highlighted by the author). However, Workplace's opt-in type of communication via feed didn't have this problem. And interestingly isn't really prevalent outside forums and groups (which I don't think are used commonly at companies).

I think splitting out that kind of behavior was beneficial, it wasn't email (which is a push that people ignore), but rather a subscribe where there was no stigma to be late, and people could take their own time to catch up on posts.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. 99% of workplace coms don't need to be synchronous. Slack assumes that they do. Thus you get tons of noise and chatter and the feeling that you have to check it all the time.

Hell, even the idea of a chat room isn't productive to getting "work" done at all IMO. If you aren't watching it every minute, you immediately lose all the context and knowledge. It's such a waste.

<comment><USER19> Nah. Just turn off all notifications outside of mentions. If people want to reach you they can mention or message you. I do this and don't check Slack for hours or even a whole day.

Most problems people have with Slack are people problems.

<comment><USER13> I'm not on Slack, we have Lync or whatever Microsoft calls it now at work. I have all notifications off, so I only notice new messages when I bring that window to the foreground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think a no-Hacker-News or no-reddit day would be far more productive for me.

<comment><USER21> I spend more time knowingly slacking off than I do reading slack.

Then again I fully subscribe to the '4 hours of full productivity per day' theory.

<comment><USER22> Is that a real theory? Seems to totally fit how I work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In my experience the use of a chatroom has been nothing but positive. We use Google Chat and it's largely where I do most of my work even. I'm able to talk to any person in the organization (which is very spread out physically) instantly.

All of my coworkers share information and ask each other questions either directly or in our shared rooms and all of that can be easily searched and found by anyone else who needs it.

Maybe it's just something Chat does better than Slack (no experience with it) but I can mute any person, room, or conversation in a room. Personally I don't use sound notifications so maybe that's more of a bother. Since Chat is just a tab I have open I can just look up and see the icon colour change when something new shows up (blue for new message, red for new direct message).

All of this also really hinges on the type of work you do I guess as well.

<comment><USER24> _We use Google Chat and it 's largely where I do most of my work even_

Most of us here have jobs where our actual work needs to be done outside of chat rooms.

<comment><USER23> >All of this also really hinges on the type of work you do I guess as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The worst part of a synchronous chatroom is repeatedly asking for something you need now - and getting drowned out by irrelevant conversations, other tech chats, and cat gifs. Because you need the PR to finish the ticket and go home. But 2 people who are done for the day are still discussing house siding with a remote dev.

<comment> crooked-v That's what separate channels are for.

<comment><USER25> You're suggesting to start a new channel just for the PR?

<comment><USER26> I think they're suggesting seperate channels for the non work related stuff.

Or just smaller channels in general.

<comment><USER25> And how do you expect to get the siding discussion into the other channel if you can't get their attention?

<comment><USER26> It's not a one time deal. You have to set the expectation that some channels are for work only, some channels are for off-topic discussions.

You might need someone with some authority to help with this. I take charge of managing some of the slack channels at my company, and we're able to keep the off-topic conversation mostly contained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "But you don't _have_ to do X"

"But you _could_ use it like Y"

Stop with this. Why are you trying to force the square peg into the round hole so hard? Why do people like the idea of using Slack against how it's designed? These arguments are so tiresome.

<comment><USER28> Can you explain why you think Slack is designed to be synchronous and have people constantly checking it? I don't feel like to pushes me in that direction at all.

<comment><USER29> Because its design primarily pushes sync and while you can do async with it, many bosses treat is as an instant messenger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A bit off-topic but the nagging and distracting on that website is insufferable. Firefox reader mode did a great job of cleaning it up and making it readable.

<comment><USER31> I really wonder how a website can end up looking like this: [https://i.imgur.com/GL2buwD.png](https://i.imgur.com/GL2buwD.png)

<comment><USER32> Well, the top and bottom notifications are probably due to GDPR.

But the one on the left is horrible, yes.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure how being related to GDPR somehow makes them okay? It's still a crappy experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Slack is good for group messaging for a real time chat about an issue that will get resolved hopefully in the next few hours, coordinating lunch orders, posting random YouTube videos, news articles and memes.

There are focused channels on dealing with specific projects that can be productive. But those are lesser utilized.

The daily stand-up channel, only a couple people actually read them. For actual stand-ups, every one is checked out.

Slack is nice for a few things because email is useless with thousands of emails that are irrelevant. On the plus side I'm glad I don't have a work voicemail anymore.

At a previous company the owner would forward 30 minute recordings of a conversation, for 3 years I just deleted every voicemail. It actually never caused a problem. Every day I'd have 8-10 voicemails waiting, every day I just hit 7, 8-10 times.

People over communicate but say nothing important and it just adds noise.

</comment><comment> throwaway-18 I'm inbox zero type of personality and my workplace is incredibly email heavy. Reply-All with far more people than need be present is commonplace and it almost feels taboo to remove someone. What you end up with in a situation like that is inbox overload, synchronous conversations in email and lots of anxiety because now I have 2,000 emails in my "inbox" and just the thought of categorizing them now exhausts me.

For that type of culture, I much prefer slack. The synchronous conversation can happen, you can choose to pay attention or not and, generally, someone will @ you if they really need your input. The one thing I wish slack had was a way to mark comments as "decision points", much like what I heard stride was doing. Hopefully that'll get merged into slack after the buyout.

<comment><USER34> I've taken up almost refusing to use email (I'm in engineering if it matters). I'll write RFOs and that sort of "report" portion via email, write HR, etc, or communicate outside of the company with it but I'll go days now without even opening my inbox.

I am absolutely up-front about it as well and mention it to my managers and other engs and a lot of them say the same thing.

Either the companies I've worked for over the last 10 years have gone more and more that route or the fact that I don't check email is causing people to not email me.

It's fabulous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "...the vast majority of summer Fridays were spent in deep work, strategic thinking, or learning a new skill. When the team was surveyed each Monday, no one ever reported taking the Friday fully off."

This made me chuckle. What do you expect employees to say in that situation?

</comment><comment><USER36> Slack is a cancer, I said it publicly in multiple avenues and I still believe it's fundamentally true. I hate it and I hope it went away. At this point it's the digital equivalent of open spaces.

</comment><comment><USER37> Most used Slack channels at our company:

#freefood<location>

</comment><comment><USER38> In my current work we use Zulip and I'm very happy. I'm one of those people who is fine with most stuff and never complain so you wouldn't read a complaint of zulip from me but I honestly really like it. We get real time errors and alarms in dev systems and prob via zulip and its asynchronous model works super good.

</comment><comment><USER39> BaseCamp + Slack has been a general win for us.

We use BaseCamp for anything that should have any temporal meaning beyond the present, and Slack for water-cooler conversation, coordinating tests, coordinating releases, hot-topic issues, and similar. Basically, anything that is best served with a post-mortem or no record at all goes in Slack.

Slack can be totally ignored and one can remain a positively contributing member of the team; but it exists because we're social mammals and we _don't have an office_. Slack _shouldn't_ be ignored because it is a place of coordination and rapid response, but it _can_ be if one wants to focus on a particular task.

That said, Slack's VoIP for meetings sucks when you have more than a half- dozen people.

<comment><USER40> I've been looking to ditch Slack in favor of Basecamp, isn't Campfire enough to replace Slack?

<comment><USER39> We tried campfire and found that mapping chat to projects didn't make sense when what we really wanted was an office banter space. It was even harder to track meaningful conversations!

Also, not enough fun integrations for our team. We have all sorts of custom bots, emoji, and such. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any "big" try to offer "emails alternative" simply because emails are free, interoperable and decentralized, something IT's bigs do really dislike. They want control and they want people live on their platform not on their own world.

That's why we do not have any modern MUA for non techies, that's why there is a big push to web-crap stuff. That's why there is a big push toward centralization instead of cooperation and "power/responsibility division".

People today do not even realize that we are in process to became new illiterate, even loosing writing (on keyboard eh!) ability in favor of audio/video contents, the new "oral system".

</comment><comment><USER41> 15 years ago I thought that we are soon going to use our communication tools in an informed manner - what needs synchronicity will be done on IMs, what is more conversational, but not synchronous, will stay email, things that are more contextual will move to wikis, we'll have general pub-sub infrastructure where the sender and the receiver would have means to negotiate what gets through.

But now I learned that channel stickiness is much bigger than I thought.

</comment><comment><USER42> Shameless plug, but this synchronous vs asynchronous communication is exactly what I wanted to solve with my Slack app ([https://www.qdochat.com/](https://www.qdochat.com/)). I was thinking of building a chat-like communication tool, but to be asynchronous by design. I settled with the Slack app for the time being.

<comment><USER43> Your plug is ineffective, because after reading this comment I still have no idea what your app does.

<comment><USER42> Yes, you're right. Your comment is much appreciated. I'll certainly act upon it and work on improving my (personal project) marketing skills.

BTW, put simply, qdochat.com is Pomodoro technique for Slack teams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm shocked at many of the responses here, when people will also complain about hostility towards remote workers.

Slack is a vital part of my working, PARTICULARLY when one of the parties is remote. Sure, as this article is saying, having some space to not be interrupted is a good thing - but that's hardly the same as saying USUALLY having no synchronous option is good, much less EVER having a synchronous option.

1) Email was great...until too much crap showed up in email and people stopped reading it. Remove the synchronous option and you'll just have another form of email. The Mythical Man Month talks about communication overhead -

2) The vast bulk of my slack communication is quick questions/answers. Sure, an interruption is annoying, but usually well worth it if it unblocks someone. (and when that someone is me, I value it much more). The value here tends to vary in proportion to someone's quick response time. I have a few coworkers that wont' check Slack more than once or twice a day. I hate having to work with them on anything, and we tend to have more scheduled meetings that are far less efficient. Others can be counted on to respond within 10 mins, and usually within a min - working with them is a breeze.

There is definitely a number of tricks to adopt and etiquette to follow...just like any form of communication. It can be used poorly and have more costs than benefits, or well and have the reverse.

My tricks:

* I replaced the default notification sound with something less jarring. Basically a gentle sound that clues me in to glance at the notification. If it's not something I need to respond to, I'm usually not pulled out of flow. This is a huge difference.

* When that notification is still too much, and/or someone starts a detailed chat about something I don't care about, `/dnd 10min` tells slack to shut up for a bit, without me having to tinker with settings and worry about remembering to UN-tinker those settings.

* If using a Pomodoro technique, add in a scan of Slack between sessions. That's fast enough that most people are happy and not blocked long, but doesn't break up your work efforts. This advice is only partially tested, as I'm still struggling to adopt a routine.

* Many people will tell you to turn off notifications - I recommend AGAINST this unless you're using a technique like the last to make sure you don't miss things. Instead, make sure you're only in channels that are relevant to you - if you're getting pinged and aren't interested, the problem is not the tool. In particular, you want to manage the expectations about reaching you - if people think you aren't responding, they'll just get more annoying, not patient. I have coworkers that will often join into channels for related teams, get their answers, then leave...a process they repeat possibly multiple times that day, while I hang out in many, many channels. Both ways do the job well.

* I gave a presentation where I worked on effective ways to communicate with text. One of the best is to not ask A or B questions - instead ask yes/no questions.

Not: "Is the API key for foobar still in file.env? Or is it from the new service call?" (You will be told "Yes" or "no" and have no idea what the actual answer is)

Instead: "The API key for foobar is still in file.env? And not yet from the new service call?" ("yes" or "no" will have a clear meaning)

This technique alone has taken a big bite out of my frustrations in using slack (and any other communication) and reduced unnecessary traffic, though it takes some practice.

I responded to Slack pings in the course of writing this :)

<comment><USER44> I missed one trick - "Remind me". you can tell Slack to ping you about any message at a later time. This is great someone asks something that involves more time/effort than I can give right now. two clicks and I'm back at work but confident that the matter won't be lost. The options are (too) limited, but 20 mins, 1 hour, 3 hours, tomorrow, or next week do cover MOST of my needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Where I work Slack gets a little bit of use for some semi synchronous conversations. Not a lot. The rest of the time it's mostly a way to copy paste things to other people... links, code snippets, log files, screen shots

</comment><comment><USER46> Work with entirely remote staff.. I'll take the pain of Slack over the pain of 5+ hours of voice conferencing days, anytime.

Where's the "We had Skype/GTM/Hangouts/call-free days" articles?

</comment><comment><USER47> I'll take slack over email by a country mile.

A lot (maybe even most or all) of the negativity around slack in this thread is from misuse.

Slack is a tool. If it's becoming a distraction, change your approach.

<comment><USER48> Email is also a tool that can be misused.

<comment><USER49> So is a circular saw. But between the 3 options, one is a clear winner for the topic at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This date uses insane amount of notifications! Tell me more about removing distractions!

</comment><comment><USER51> "A tool's utility is directly proportionate to the skill of the one wielding it."

-Anon</comment>


ProtoLift – Mobile Prototyping - <AUTHOR> http://www.protolift.com <comment><AUTHOR> Testing out this new concept for bringing more app ideas to life. Let me know what you guys think.</comment>


An Exact Value for the Planck Constant: Why Reaching It Took 100 Years - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2016/05/19/an-exact-value-for-the-planck-constant-why-reaching-it-took-100-years/ <comment><USER2> Glancing through it, it almost appears that it's almost copy and paste. It has so many tangents and subject splices, it is hard to follow.

It appears to be arguing that the Planck constant is defined partially by mass, which has never had an high-precision value SI unit. The Avogadro project has determined a high-precision definition the Avogadro constant. The Rydberg constant is known to high precision; therefore, the two can be used to together to find a high-precision value of the Planck constant. Also, once a fixed definition of mass through physical constants is made, we will have an exact definition of Plank constant.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" in 1889 the Romanian prototype was already 953 mg lighter than the international prototype kilogram"_

Is that correct, or should that be 953 μg? I find it hard to believe that a carefully kept reference kilogram designed to keep its mass would lose almost a gram in a century.

μg Also seems more in line with what Wikipedia writes ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram#Stability_of_the_in...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram#Stability_of_the_international_prototype_kilogram))

</comment><comment><USER4> If there ever was a need for a TL;DR, then this is it. Anyone care to take a crack at it?

<comment><USER5> It's an enchanting, well-written essay on the history of an area of science few people ever think about, a window into the past, containing quite a few things I didn't know before, and along the way a showcase of some pretty neat things Mathematica can do.

No, it doesn't need a tl;dr. It doesn't contain any data you're going to personally need today or tomorrow. It falls into the categories of intellectual curiosity and general education. If that's not your dish, skip it and move on.

But I am reminded of a Lewis Carroll quote:

 _" No, no!" she broke in merrily. "I didn't mean our Literature! We are quite abnormal. But the booklets--the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty--surely they are due to Steam?"

"And when we travel by Electricity if I may venture to develop your theory we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page."_

Successful prediction.

<comment><USER6> I mean, if you weren't going to tell the parent what it wanted, as others did, why bother?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting advertising. It shouldn't be that long though, unless they expect us to spend 100 years too.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is unreadable.

<comment><USER9> It lost me with the opening spoof (?) of Sympathy for the Devil. Love the song but not remotely needed in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, is this an entire year's work? It just keeps going and going, and going.</comment>


Facebook Has a Plan to Crush Slack - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/10/facebook_s_plan_to_crush_slack_is_starting_to_work.html <comment><USER2> We have Slack and Workplace. Workplace is a ghost town. Maybe Workplace chat will change things but it has to do many things better than Slack. It must also have an API because so many SW companies are building integrations with Slack.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would flat refuse to use this, or any Facebook product, at work. I don't use any of their products in my personal life and I'm not about to start using it in my professional one.

<comment><USER4> Very, very few people will have the sort of leverage you may have in this regard. Outside of tech, you regularly don't get to choose your tools.</comment></comment>


How do game companies share massive files? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25037653 <comment><USER2> As someone said on twitter the other day:

      If "tech experts" writing news articles aren't really experts, what does that say about all the other experts..?

</comment><comment><USER3> So basically rsync?

Honestly synchronizing 50GB of contents across the globe doesn't sound that terribly novel or difficult to me, or the article makes a pretty bad job of explaining the difficulty.

<comment><USER4> > That's because some of the complete game files were as large as 50GB

50GB is not the total size of the files needing to be transferred - _some_ of the files were 50GB. Knowing the total size would have been interesting for the sake of discussion.

<comment><USER5> Yeah thats bollox , sorry but no game has 50 gb files on launch , and what kind of idiotic company would send round a file they weren't using in launch code base ?

<comment><USER6> TLDR; Internal workflows, not customer facing. Enterprise dropbox.

The article title is misleading. They are actually talking about the internal workflow.

Raw assets, art assets, and such, can be pretty large.

When you have a studio in Country A doing PC, a studio in country B doing ps3, all wanting the base raw data but (presumably) transforming it in different ways, between how the build actually happens or artists tweaking something for a platform, it'd become a nightmare pretty quickly if you were to send it across a company private network (often just VPN pipes across the internet itself).

The article is, at it's heart, an ad for a company called 'Panzura', which sounds like an enterprise-specific dropbox. Boxes 'on-premise', security guarantees, and probably pretty expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not gonna lie, when I saw "delta" I immediately assumed Git or some other source control solution. What boggles the mind is how these professional game developers recently discovered this technology. I didn't think Git was so exclusively beholden to the web development community.

<comment><USER8> Git solves a different problem; sending large binary blobs around is not it. As another comment said, this is essentially RSync, not git.

I've been out of game development for a year, but unfortunately git is not being taken up much by large game developers. The main reason cited is actually git's handling of binary files, which leads to every checkout containing many duplicates of huge files. However this is possible to work around and the benefits of git still make it worth it.

<comment><USER9> The binary file reason is big enough, but it's also the ability to check out a sub tree without checking out the entire Repo. The repo is 1TB and there really is no reason for your texture artist to be checking out the raw uncompressed audio files.

The other reason not to use git in game development is because it's incredibly hard to use, and more than half the game development team are not programmers and/or not technical.

Getting them to use good source control discipline is hard enough with TortoiseSVN. I shudder to think the insane mess we would have using git.

<comment><USER8> So one thing is to use separate repositories - either separate git repos, or use git for code + design data, and something like Perforce for assets. We did this at my first studio (Free Radical Design) and it worked very well.

As for git being 'hard', yes it's not trivial to learn, but for people using just perforce/svn etc. they end up misusing so much that it's almost worthless - as Linus said, even just sending around tarballs is better.

I think if you're running a team, you need to give your team the benefit of the doubt that they can learn new tools, learn to use them effectively, and be more productive. If you spend some time teaching them why the tools are important and how to use them, then using git isn't really any more difficult than anything else. It's just different.

<comment> w0rd-driven This is how I've structured our use at the place I'm at. TortoiseGit is better than svn to me. Submodules are the key though in our situation these are best when they can exist in the same directory structure.

We create a master repo with all the design assets, statement of work, and any other useful files for the end product. Then we have a client repo as it were of the files we serve in the wamp www directory. Because this is physically different, submodules make little sense. For the WPF builds that all live together in the same directory structure, submodules are perfect. My only hiccup is remembering to commit the subs via the master but that's a habit I need to change. The files in the wamp repo are deployed to client computers using git pull with a read only ssh key so people aren't committing from them.

Our wamp files are primarily text either in straight html or usually PHP. We take care not to commit user editable sections so we don't overwrite what a customer ultimately changes. This is kind of a hand rolled version of the now many git deployment tools out there and it works rather well.

I know this isn't gaming nor are our source files that large but the psds can be astronomical very quickly on just simple web pages. I could only imagine what goes into "next gen games". GIT is still useful for binary deltas but you definitely have to carefully plan how you partition things in repositories. If I can do this, really almost anyone can. Kiln brought excellent binary support to Hg so there's really no need to stick to svn. There may be areas where its still useful but the distributed nature of dvcs is just too compelling when your team is well... distributed. I do hear great things about perforce too and I hope any company uses the better vcs not because they think the users can't cope with anything new, but there is extreme benefit for doing so. Again, if I could help our team move into Git with very little hand holding, you would probably be surprised how quickly people adapted. Especially if something like TortoiseGit isn't that much different than TortoiseSvn or TortoiseHg for that matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At some point Microsoft used a third-party solution called Aspera FASP to accept uploads of final game disc images. It was crazy fast - when you launched it, it reached our office' net connection speed within 10-15 sec, and other Internet connections at the office dropp.ed

<comment><USER11> I remember that! I worked at MS in one of the gaming capacities (no need to be specific) and it was unreal how close to maximum saturation FASP would get. Such an awesome tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sohonet 10Gbit/s. Used primarily by post production companies in Soho, London.

[http://www.sohonet.com/sohonet-media- network/](http://www.sohonet.com/sohonet-media-network/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sneakernets are still the fastest way to transfer data. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet)

<comment><USER14> Not necessarily the cheapest, though - express shipping a bunch of disks is an uncertain venture ("oops, we accidentally dropped it a few times, is that bad?") and "I need a return cross-Atlantic flight ticket NOW" is sort of expensive.

That said, I have heard of companies actually couriering semi-large volumes of sensitive data this way.

<comment><USER15> Also in some area's there is a legal aspect due to law of some contract that makes sending somebody with a briefcase with data an easier way to move forward without triggering some technicality in contract or law.

Indeed some countries and there data protection laws make things most interesting in legal ways to transfer data, even today. No standard on data protection World Wide and in itself a minefield, let alone other industries like medical research companies or those dealing with country wide firewalls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the article should mention that it is a Swedish based game developer company, and a California based publisher for the game.

Sounds more fair that way.

</comment><comment><USER17> "That's because some of the complete game files were as large as 50GB, and future games with more advanced graphics for the new Xbox One console and Sony's PlayStation 4 are likely to be even bigger."

Ahm no, Battlefield 4 is already a PC game and scaled down even on the next gen consoles, so console processing power isnt the limiting factor here.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have always wanted to know more about Valve's steam architecture.

Why aren't they presenting at more conferences damnit!

</comment><comment><USER19> Above a certain point, it becomes far quicker to send a hard drive by courier.

<comment><USER20> That used to be true, but considering that hard drive transfer rates cap out around 200 MByte/s, you'd have to send a large bunch of drives that must be read and written in parallel to be faster than a network connection.

<comment><USER19> If you are constantly mirroring your media drives with multiple redundancy, you can just unplug a set and post them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> of all the technical challenges facing us in the 21st century, sending a 50GB file quickly across some wire doesn't seem like the biggest!

also the feedback i see about battlefield's stability and quality has been very poor (on ps4) so I had to laugh when I saw the " to locate defects and improve quality" quote :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Sounds a lot like git or other typical solution.

<comment><USER23> git would be pretty bad in this situation. It sounds more like rsync.

<comment><USER22> Thanks, I'll look into that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Sponsored article?

<comment><USER25> Innit. Someone at EA/Panzura's PR firm just got a raise.</comment></comment>


Atoms star in world's smallest movie from IBM - T-zex http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22364761

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing I find most fascinating about tunnelling electron microscopes is those "ripples" you can see around the atoms. Because of the tunnelling effect that those microscopes rely on, they're actual manifestations of the electrons' quantum mechanical wavefunctions; the complex waves of pure probability that are - when you get right down to it - the best answer to the question "what is an electron made of?" Ripples in probability and a few associated numbers like mass, charge and spin; that's it. Nothing more. And you can actually see it in the video.

Very, very cool.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I was going to ask what those were.

If that's the case, it was interesting to me that the waves appeared to manifest a bit like a standing wave, with regularly repeating, equally distanced, higher and lower probability/amplitude propagating away from the atomic groups.

If _that's_ correct, and electron probability wave functions mimic a standing wave, do different atoms have different standing wave frequencies? Does the resonance between different elements create any physical properties or predict anything...like what elements are likely to form a compound or the physical property of a compound?

<comment><USER3> Yes, great insight! One of the reasons quantum mechanics is "quantized" (which means limited to certain discrete values instead of being continuous) is that standing waves are reinforced as particles move around. For example, the rotational frequency/energy of an electron is limited to integer multiples of the circumference of the orbit. The "particle-in-a-box" model is the name of this quantum model. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_in_a_box>

<comment><USER2> ah, so is what we're seeing in some sense the energy state of the electron? Or is it some probability function of what state the electron might be in?

I'm mentally trying to connect this image to modes of a vibrating string [1]

1 - [http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/waves/imgwav/strh...](http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/waves/imgwav/strhar.gif)

<comment><USER3> "The device works by passing an electrically charged, phenomenally sharp metal needle across the surface of a sample. As the tip nears features on the surface, the charge can "jump the gap" in a quantum physics effect called tunnelling." So the image is a map of the probability that an electron will jump from the scanner to the surface! Check out the "quantum corral" at the bottom of this page <http://education.mrsec.wisc.edu/Edetc/background/STM/>

<comment><USER2> wild, thanks so much for the explanation and great links!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Once you can manipulate atoms directly, I wonder why you couldn't create any of the following:

\- Tiny self-replicating machines which produce other things to atomic precision? i.e. Nanobots... which could in turn create:

\- "Surfaces" with "unimaginably high" surface area (due to the fractal arrangement of atomic height on the surface)

\- "Solids" made out of dense things like 'iron' or 'carbon' and which have a volume but hardly any mass because there are so many holes (e.g. a 3D sierpinksi triangle)

... just 'data storage' seems the least exciting application (but then probably I'm misunderstanding some limitation...)

I'm inspired by this video: <http://vimeo.com/63469979>

<comment><USER5> > Tiny self-replicating machines which produce other things to atomic > precision

Don't expect it to happen soon - we can't even make big self-replicating machines yet.

We don't even know what machines would look like at such a small scale. Structures behave very differently than they do at human scale; fundamental components like ropes, gears and pulleys might not be possible.

And then there's the problem of programming these machines; you can't exactly put an AVR inside them.

<comment><USER6> I don't think there's any particular reason to believe that building a large self-replicating machine wouldn't be feasible with modern technology. It's just not useful or cheap, so nobody's done it. NASA studied the idea and I don't think they came up with anything too impossible about it:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clanking_replicator>

From-scratch nanoscale replicators are a whole other beast. However, I think we can say that we know what they would look like, as we have a ton of examples from the natural world. Building ones that do our bidding is a bit tougher, obviously.

<comment><USER7> A machine that could build faithful copies of itself using only materials from the natural environment (i.e. not this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MolecubesInMotion.jpg>) would be absolutely revolutionary and would essentially be a completely alien and artificial life (mutation not being especially difficult to include, and probably difficult to prevent). It would change the world, because once you have replication you can piggy back just about any other ability on top of it and do it on a _massive_ scale, no matter how inefficient at the individual level.

I will gladly pay you $100 billion for a self-replicating machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> T-zex I like this quote: "This isn't really about a particular scientific breakthrough. The movie is really a conversation-starter to get kids and other people talking about - and excited about - math, science and technology." Technology gets the momentum once it is demonstrated to be used in some fun or even crazy ways.

</comment><comment><USER8> More atoms starring in movies by IBM (1977):

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0>

</comment><comment> non-sense It is incredible to think how we can control atoms so precisely! This shows how nascent this science is and we have to go a long way. Once precise nano- control becomes more widespread we will see a new wave of engineering delivering goods that we thought were possible only in movies. At very high storage densities everyone of us could carry the same amount of data that powers Google's search engines.

</comment><comment><USER9> When everything starts to fall apart for your business model of milking your customers for all they're worth and outsourcing all you can to cheap countries, have Carrie Underwood sing and make geeky movies about boys playing with atoms.</comment>


Machine learning predicts World Cup winner - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611397/machine-learning-predicts-world-cup-winner/?set= <comment><USER2> See also: See also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17297264)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't that what Madden has been doing for the last 15 super bowls? I mean wouldn't 10,000 rounds of FIFA do the qualify?</comment>


It Takes Purpose to Become a Billionaire - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/09/it_takes_purpose_become_a_bill.html <comment><USER2> _I 've spent some time trying to identify common traits in the Forbes list of billionaires and other similar lists of the world's wealthiest._

Best example of survivorship bias I've seen in a long while.

<comment><USER3> Isn't that the idea though, perhaps their purpose is what allowed them to survive? Hard to wrap my brain around..

<comment><USER2> Well, it is like this. The larger the initial population, the greater the probability that long streaks of some favourable outcome will appear purely by change.

So if I see a single monkey throw a die that consistently lands on 6, I might be inclined to reason that something special is going on with the die, or the monkey his throwing. But if I let a billion monkeys throw a die repeatedly, the probability of having long streaks of consecutive '6-es' from a random monkey, is virtually 1, by randomness alone.

Monkey's with streaks you then select out of the initial billion, the rest you discard and then you write about how all hot throwing monkeys like bananas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do those categories come off as very broad and generic to anyone else. I feel like these categories can be applied to many companies and their founders, most of whom will not become billionaires.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think people need to get away from this mentality that you deserve to be a billionaire because of your qualities.

Being a billionaire has very little to do with you. It is more a testament to the wealth of your parents, the gender you were born in, the colour of your skin, and luck. I have no doubt many possess wonderful qualities too, but that doesn't set billionaires apart from the rest of the population. It's what makes them a part of it.

<comment><USER6> Great! Glad we can just discount an extreme attention to detail but also the ability to look past the trees to see the forest. I'm sure that having the knack for seeing an opportunity and jumping at it is pretty much just a blip on the radar. And the ability to convince your friends & coworkers that your dream is do-able and great is second to just _shrug_ luck.

There are some billionaires who inherited their money. There are some who lucked out with investments. Your last statement makes no sense. What sets them apart from the rest of the population definitely does involve their "wonderful qualities".

Sure, luck plays a big role in things. It takes a combination of other things too: hard work, an unwillingness to settle for "meh, good enough", an ability to convince other people (employees, investors) to believe in you and the ability to know your own weaknesses and bring in people to solve those weaknesses. Let's not just lump these all into the "and the rest" category.

<comment><USER7> I just read a book that I think would be enjoyable for anyone who has either internally or externally debated these things; "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell.

It's easy to credit them with hard work and think they deserve it. The biggest thing I notice is how many thousands (millions) of other people in the world have the exact same traits ("Seeing past the trees", "Ability to convince other people to believe in you", etc) and fail in our world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Empty platitudes, not particularly well written.

"Make the world more relevant" \-- what does that even mean?

</comment><comment><USER9> "1\. Making the world more beautiful."

I think the world was more beautiful before there were billionaires. Nature is being quickly destroyed by humans, and capitalism isn't helping.</comment>


Ask HN: A non-Java Android book, what would you like in it? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently working on an Android book to teach people on how to develop for Android using a non-traditional language, such as Scala, JRuby, or Clojure.
My idea is to lead the reader from essentially zero knowledge of Android to developing a relatively simple application, learning Android basics along the way.
The twist, in comparison to other books, is that it would allow the reader to develop in a language of his or her choice.  The book will include information on how to set up a build environment, using the available frameworks/tools for a given language, etc.
Would you be interested in such a book, and, if so, what sorts of information do you think ought to be included?
Also, since the book would guide the reader into building some sort of application, what kind of application would be good to create?  I have in mind a shopping list: something relatively simple to implement, yet potentially useful.
Thank you for your help. <comment><USER2> Even if you don't include any Java-the-language material, I highly suggest adding some solid foundation on Java-the-platform. Android developers should always understand the rudiments of the jvm, java bytecode, dalvik bytecode, the differences between stack and register based execution, DX and .dex, and the entire toolchain involved in the build process.

As for the application to build, you should extend your shopping list to include some sort of network synchronization capability. Teaching Android development without networking is overlooking an extremely important part of the platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. I do plan to include some information about the platform. In particular, it is important to explain why some JVM languages work and others do not. Some of the more detailed discussion will likely end up in an appendix.

I'll have to think about your idea to include networking synchronization. The tricky part with that is exactly how to implement it. Off-hand, there are two basic approaches: server/client and peer-to-peer. The problem with server/client is that either I have to choose someone else's platform as a server or provide a server (either as a service or as an included program you can run from a home computer). The alternative is to use something like Bluetooth or NFC to allow synchronization between two devices.

The second issue that I need to figure out is exactly how much material to present. There are some absolutely necessary basics such as activities, services, and resources. Beyond that, there is a question of which platform features are most important. Certainly, something like location is more important than NFC, but deciding on what to include won't be easy.</comment></comment>


Facebook is the new cigarettes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/futuresin/facebook-is-the-new-cigarettes-d9a13c7d591c <comment><USER2> Could quit FB (took around 2-3 years and wasn't easy) but now I am super addicted to some Reddit subs such as r/mechanicalkeyboards.

Addiction is higher than with FB but it doesn't make me feel miserable.

<comment><USER3> I believe that's what is called a _hobby_.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't class looking at hobby subreddits a hobby. Actually building, replacing keys, fixing or taking photos of keyboards is the hobby part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quitting Facebook was 1000X easier than quitting cigarettes for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good insight but way too old.

In the 00's we already knew Facebook was the new cocaine. Us being the 20 somethings that spent all our lives online creating content in the UGC web 2.0 days.

Everyone wanted to try it.

Cool if you had it.

Fun for parties.

But then we got old.

Now funny enough it's passed on to the old old (40, 50+ and the mainstream), and to them it's reality.

It didn't get passed to the younger kids (18 and below), and the young folks (20-27's) are bored with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> We can look forward to the same tactics cigarette and fossil fuel companies used being repeated, from funded papers being released, to the same law firms etc etc

<comment><USER8> I am in my own bubble but I rarely see any papers that claims positive things about Facebook. Do you have any exanples ?

edit: woops, I wasn't reading with enough attention and missed the "forward" word (you know what I am going to blame), sorry.

<comment><USER9> Grandparent said "we can look forward", so that's probably just a prediction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe contrary to the trend, but I've never hated facebook, it provides a utility for me to stay connected with friends, especially new ones I would have lost track of in my phone contact.

I tried really hard to understand why some people hated it, and at least for some people I know, it seems to stem from the fact that they are trying very hard to impress everyone in their circle / follower, which takes a ton of time and can even be stressful.

It seems there is no way Facebook or other social media can make those people happy, because they are drawn to the attentions they can get, but many eventually grown to hate the work they have to do to maintain it. Only if there is a way to stay popular without constant hard work!

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure why Facebook is always singled out with these comparisons.

If FB is the new cigarettes (which feels like an absurd comparison), then Twitter and Youtube are just as bad — and they've done even less to counter the negative externalities their engagement algorithms create.

I think Twitter dodges this criticism mostly because of how popular the platform is with journalists.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what the author thinks about WeChat (which he prominently mentions just below his name).

<comment><USER13> WeChat has low penetration in the US and also is not HQ'd there; thus, even if you think it ought to be regulated - probably outside the scope of the US government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> and AdBlock is the HEPA filter.

<comment><USER15> More like the nicotine patch made and sold by big tobacco

<comment><USER16> This metaphor doesn't make any sense. Adblock is removal without substitution.

<comment><USER17> Maybe they meant Adblock specifically (vs, say uBlock)

[https://medium.com/varanida/is-your-ad-blocker-selling- you-o...](https://medium.com/varanida/is-your-ad-blocker-selling-you- out-497b8db0761c)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sinatra Book - <AUTHOR> http://sinatra-book.gittr.com/

<comment><USER2> I must admit some general annoyance at the recent trend in labeling 20-page web-only how-tos "books".

Though, given that the Sinatra source itself is under 2k lines, were it a real book, it would quickly be much longer than the source itself. :-)

<comment><USER3> Measuring programming _(books)_ progress by lines of code _(lines of text)_ is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight

<comment><USER2> That's trendy to say, and there's a lot of truth to it, but the fact of the matter is that the number of lines of code in a project _does_ convey useful information about its complexity. More accurate would be to say that it's only one dimension in a multi-dimensional metric.

Just like with an airplane, if we add in the weight and what it's made of and used for all of the sudden it becomes a pretty interesting metric.

<comment><USER3> (Sorry if a quote sounded empty and cute, I will elaborate my thoughts.)

\- Sintara is small (and arguably beautiful), a book on it should be small. Being small doesnot mean it shouldnot be called book.

\- Wasn't our biggest gripe with J2ee monster was the enormous complexity, and to handle them the large books required. Wasn't that why rails Django were hailed as game changers? <http://i44.tinypic.com/98uhs6.png>

Smaller frameworks with smaller learning curve and books take that even further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some reason I enjoy using Sinatra more than Rails, I think it is simpler and more 'Ruby-ish'. Also it works well on the free and scaleable Google App Engine: <http://goo.gl/6eW4>.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice writeup. Sinatra with builder is just about perfect for implementing web services, dynamically generated RSS feeds, simple web apps, etc. Nicely complements using Rails for rich web apps.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is one of those examples of why I love the Ruby community so much, it's almost hard to find a Ruby book/tutorial/blog post that hasn't been written with such love and care. It makes me feel all fuzzy inside, try to find a similar source for spring mvc :(

</comment><comment><USER7> Well written. Includes a section on "deployment" at the end that summarizes various options -- including patches needed to get FastCGI working.

Specific instructions on how to deploy on dreamhost shared accounts (Passanger / fastcgi).

</comment><comment><USER8> How can I contribute? There's a section under the Models for Sequel, but it is blank. I've done plenty of work with Sequel and Sinatra and I'm sure I could fill in the blanks.

<comment><USER9> You can fork it from <http://github.com/sinatra/sinatra-book>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Same as <http://www.sinatrarb.com/book.html>

It hasn't changed in a while. Is there a way to contribute?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get money for remote work done for a US based startup? - <AUTHOR> I will keep it brief. I got introduced to this startup on angelist and this guy had an idea for which he was looking for software engineers. I was going to be a college graduate within some months and being passionate about Javascript, Python and Startups I agreed for equity stake of 2%.
I worked on remote basis along with another Ukranian developing the product. The tech stack changed with time too. This guy asked for more help in creating graphics, marketing on fb,google, email campaigns, developing contents and what not and I did with my passion as I know in startup arena you have to take more responsibilities.
With time, the product is live now. With time, I realized that the Ukranian guy didn't reveal that he was working as freelancer and he got paid too.
I never asked for money, all I wanted was recognition, opportunity to learn and prosper. After knowing all this, I asked this guy if it will take time to get funding, he has to pay me just like a freelancer so as to continue with the platform and to meet my ends. This guy turned his back now and not even replying to my emails and hangout chats.
I sent him the tasks accomplished over this span of time and just want money for all those tasks I did for him.
I don't know what should I do? Need help <comment><USER2> You shouldn't demand money. It's not what anyone agreed to. He can pay you if he wants, but he probably won't.

You can demand your equity, but there's probably not much you can do to force him to give it to you. He can dilute your shares into nothing, or he could refuse to give them to you.

You've learned a few lessons the hard way: never start work without a contract; don't work for equity only, as it takes years to have any value (if it ever will have value); and accept that some clients will screw you over, and you can't always stop them, even if laws/morality are on your side.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. I accept it. I don't think so he will pay but I feel karma is there.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hand-picked templates and themes - <AUTHOR> http://www.templatestash.com

<comment><USER2> Looks cool but it errored out. How is your caching mechanism? are you using Cloudflare? "

An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details. " [http://www.templatestash.com/c/one-page- apps](http://www.templatestash.com/c/one-page-apps)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not immediately clear what the frontpage leaderboard is (maybe b/c all-caps, maybe a lot of white space, maybe no title, I don't know).

Would be nice to filter the front page leaderboard (or zeroboard, or whatever) by type of template (if I'm looking for Wordpress templates, I don't care about the others, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> thx for the feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Suggestion: Add some Drupal themes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out. It's back up. It's on nodejs using express connect cache.</comment>


Urine, the IRS, and She's Just a Smalltown Girl - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/08/urine-the-irs-and-shes-just-a-small-town-girl/

<comment><USER2> That was such an entertaining read. I love your writing style. Fast pace, short sentences, and well-framed details.</comment>


Google Search for WWW - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=www <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone doubts that Facebook has become a synonym form the Web, this should settle the argument.

<comment><USER2> Oh thank god, it isn't just me.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Mootu.be - a cleaner way to view YouTube videos - <AUTHOR> http://mootu.be/?u=mpaPBCBjSVc

<comment><USER2> Q: Why not just reuse the hash from Youtube like this:

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=mpaPBCBjSVc> Would become: mootu.be/v/mpaPBCBjSVc

This way it would be even easier to share content fast through mootu.be...

Anyway, neat service. Will be sure to try it out!

<comment><USER3> And you can teach to users just put the "mootu.be/v/" instead of "<http://youtube.com/watch?v=> " beginning of the url.And please put the contact form into the mootu.be ok I really didn't understand why weren't you put it.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an excellent suggestion and something that I had actually implemented in my original version. After using it for a little bit, however, I wasn't a big fan of the long, garbled URLs. I wanted the URLs to be as clean as the site itself. But maybe I should add that functionality back in. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I think it's neat. People know what it is when they see it and I think your service might be even more useable...

It would be extremely simple to build plugins around your service as well, because the only thing you need is your URL - then appending any Video ID...

Nice work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should consider building a Chrome extension or something of that sort for other browsers to redirect to your site for each video on YouTube.com. Cause it can be a real hassle to copy and paste between tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea. Might have to incorporate it into the next release of the Mootu.be Chrome extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks clean. Can you add title/description of the video being played?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, so the title should appear by default on the video page (with the option to remove it), and I did have the description toggleable at one point but chose to remove it. I'll add in the option to display it.</comment></comment>


Oura ring wearable helps detection of one asymptomatic COVID19 case - <AUTHOR> https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156628875511933&id=642431932 <comment><AUTHOR> Summary: person traveled to Austria and Sweden. When returning home Oura ring wearable detected a +1°c body temperature above baseline, which prompted the person to get tested, despite being completely asymptomatic. Test returned positive</comment>


GROW raises $2.4M to to build a smart planter for easy-to-cultivate vegetables - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/03/grow-raises-2-4m-to-to-build-a-smart-planter-for-easy-to-cultivate-vegetables/ <comment><USER2> IMO this is juicero all over again. Whether you want to go to HD and spend 20 bucks to DIY one of these or just grab one of the other off the shelf option from your local hydro store there are plenty of other more cost effective ways to grow your own anything. Another luxury item that will never yield a decent ROI for the consumer.</comment>


First Prescription App for Substance Abuse Approved by FDA - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/first-prescription-app-for-substance-abuse-approved-by-fda <comment><USER2> Jonathan Bricker makes an excellent point - since the app has no risks of side effects why bother making it prescription only?

<comment><USER3> i guess making it prescription only would make insurance pay for it, thus the app maker can charge something like say several hundred dollars instead of $2.99 if it was an openly available app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The prescription-only aspect of this is really depressing to me. This is not the road we should be going down.

</comment><comment><USER5> So... Next, when I write a similar app now it will be classified as some kind of "medical" app and be barred from distribution without a prescription and the years of paying off the FDA for approval? To protect profits of Big Pharma Apps huh? Is this where we're headed?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how much the app will cost</comment>


Why is it so hard to start a consumer company in Boston? - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/techinboston/ken-deckinger

<comment><AUTHOR> (Audio) Interview with JessMeetKen co-founder Ken Deckinger. Interesting take on building a dating company and why it's hard to do so in Boston.</comment>


Ask HN: Machine Learning Training as a Service? - <AUTHOR> Does such a service exist? I am thinking along the lines of:
- write a model like you normally would (in tensorflow, for eg) with some loose predefined format (eg: model must be returned by model.py#model and must be an instance of something) - git push - trains the model on a cloud service for a small fee - Provides useful graphs on training epoch / loss / error / accuracy - (Optional) Host machine learning APIs
I used Microsoft Azure at some point, but found it quite complex to setup and works well only for well-known models only. I.e: If i want to build a custom neural net, things gets messy and confusing.
It'd be useful to have such a service (or something that achieves a similar purpose). I have only a laptop that I carry around all the time, so it'd be infeasible for me to train a model on it.
EDIT: Update title <comment><USER2> To me, this seems like more of consultancy type business than a SaaS. The reason being the logistics of moving meaningful data sets to the location of the compute are much more difficult than moving compute to the location of the data as data set size becomes more interesting.

The other thing is that the competition for ML SaaS is Google and Microsoft and maybe Amazon. They're able to apply ML to the logistics of ML SaaS and are competing on pricing in a commodity model. That's probably not an ideal market for a small company to pursue.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I once setup a genetic algorithm running in Heroku. See [https://minme.herokuapp.com/](https://minme.herokuapp.com/). It is quite simple to build if you use Flask for the API and Python for the machine learning in the backend.

So, to answer your question, such a service could be built on top of Heroku. I'm just not sure if Heroku can provide the performance you're looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> I rephrased the question to make my intend clearer. I was referring to some sort of service like heroku, but Optimization as a Service sounds like the thing i am looking for.</comment></comment>


AMD HSA kernel driver - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1407.1/02923.html <comment><USER3> I am super excited about this driver. I worked on the early drm first at Precision Insight and then at VA Linux Systems, and having hardware validated command streams seperate for each process is just such a huge deal for performance. I wrote some proof of concept code awhile back that I posted to the Mesa dev list for doing something like this without hardware support, and based on my limited testing it would be a huge improvement in dma throughput. Its nice to see something like this happening finally, I think it is a path to getting a secure and highly performant driver. We have always had to make security tradeoffs with performance in Linux land, now we actually might have the infrastructure to get a chance at matching or beating Windows performance. Terribly exciting.

<comment><USER4> I glad to hear that, for a long time I've always considered Windows HAL (certainly XP/2000 and beyond) to be something the Linux kernel needed to really tackle the desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is HSA? (from the link)

 _Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) driver for radeon-family GPUs.

HSA allows different processor types (CPUs, DSPs, GPUs, etc..) to share system resources more effectively via HW features including shared pageable memory, userspace-accessible work queues, and platform-level atomics. In addition to the memory protection mechanisms in GPUVM and IOMMUv2, the Sea Islands family of GPUs also performs HW-level validation of commands passed in through the queues (aka rings)._

<comment><USER6> The exciting part of HSA though is the APU architecture that AMD is putting out. Its hardware specific, but the CPU and embedded GPU have a coherent cache. (CPU and GPU are on the same die with APUs).

<comment><USER7> Agreed, that's the most thrilling development to HSA in my eyes. Coherent memory structures (with much of it shared) all the way down truly elevates the GPU to first-class citizenship.

<comment><USER8> What I don't really see, HSA-wise, is how they plan to cater for the fact that graphics and compute cores favour significantly different types of memory (DDR vs GDDR). From what I understand, one of the major cripplers of on-die graphics so far as been its reliance on the same bog-standard memory interface shared with the CPU. How will this interact with AMD's side-port memory schemes?

<comment><USER6> In addition to what other posters have noted... there are rumors that future AMD APUs are going to support both DDR4 and GDDR5 RAM.

[http://hardware- beta.slashdot.org/story/14/01/20/0159210/amd...](http://hardware- beta.slashdot.org/story/14/01/20/0159210/amd-considered-gddr5-for-kaveri- might-release-eight-core-variant)

AMD has had sub-par (compared to Intel) memory controllers recently. So maybe the improved memory is for naught. Nonetheless, they're working on it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. From the security point of view, does HSA driver present a significant additional attack surface? I imagine some new kinds of tricks could become possible, like they did with Hyper-Threading [http://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered- harmful...](http://www.daemonology.net/hyperthreading-considered-harmful/)

2\. Is HSA driver a roadblock for virtualization of the OS?

<comment><USER10> I wonder how safe it will be to perform cryptography through HSA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has AMD HSA development been purely a Windows (and game console?) affair up until this point?

edit: now I see that they've had a github up with Linux HSA drivers for a while now. Is the significance of today's thing that the patches are making it into the mainline kernel?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious when we'll begin to see HSA implemented on ARM devices, too - <USER2> year?

<comment><USER13> Given AMD's announced roadmap[1], I'd say it's more likely to come in 2016. Next year, they'll still be doing mostly stock ARM cores.

[1] [http://www.anandtech.com/show/7990/amd-announces-k12-core- cu...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7990/amd-announces-k12-core-custom-64bit- arm-design-in-2016)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I didn't mean AMD's ARM cores, but when the other founding members of HSA are going to use it for ARM.

<comment><USER14> Apple already is.

<comment><USER15> Reference? I cant find any evidence apple is shipping HSA devices.

<comment><USER14> As far as I understand, the A7 employs a shared memory architecture and Apple did not publicize this fact until the recent developer conference.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/16/inside-metal- how-a...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/16/inside-metal-how-apple- plans-to-unlock-the-secret-graphics-performance-the-a7-chip)

<comment><USER16> HSA's requirements are far broader than those provided in Metal. A7's shared memory implementation appears to be far too basic to be able to implement HSA- type API. For example, on-demand paging, user-mode queueing and ability for GPU to do CPU callbacks. Many systems can have shared memory but are not HSA compliant.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Node.js Application Hosting Service running on Digital Ocean - <AUTHOR> http://stackful.io/

<comment><USER2> I have some questions and, please, don't get me wrong, I'm not being sarcastic. I am really interested in your services.

I got a cheap server on DO I use to deploy some apps just for testing purpose and, sometimes, I think I waste too many time configuring, breaking stuff and fine-tunning my servers (I do like it but it's not very productive). The languages I play with are Python (Django and Flask), PHP (Symfony2 and Wordpress) and Javascript (Node.js/Express).

My questions are: Why would I choose Stackful.io over Digital Ocean? Will it help me with that?

<comment><USER3> I'm amazed something that works like stackful.io or heroku for your own servers has not been written yet. Like you, many tinkerers have a cheap server to use as a lab. It would be great if one could install on it some piece of software that provided heroku-like zero-friction deploy for new apps. Just do "app create", push a git repo and, bam, the app is deployed, with sensible defaults. The defaults are not supposed to make everyone happy, but, like a default heroku deployment, to allow you to start new apps with zero friction, thus encouraging experimentation and hacking.

<comment><USER4> You should check out Cloud66.com they are _almost_ there with what you are describing. I'm really hoping to be using them in a month or two.

They'll read in your Github repo and then based on that configure VPS's for you according to your specs (shared db server, standalone, etc.), it's very slick.

Right now, they're lacking in documentation and don't handle some aspects of admin (most notably server security updates) very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a Chef user, what are the honest selling points of cuisine vs. something like Chef Solo? I'm definitely up for moving to something that isn't as heavy as Chef but so far nothing has really clicked. Is it just that you preferred python? Looking at the sample code it doesn't seem more compact or sraight forward than the ruby equivalents. The excellent knife cloud bootstrap plugins, good hypervisor metadata coverage and active community makes it hard to say goodbye.

I'm sure you're not looking to go head to head with opscode or plabs, but what's the elevator pitch? I'd really love something that ended up being much more concise for the 90% of the deploys that are dead simple.

(and no, I haven't tried ansible yet)

<comment><USER6> Regarding cuisine vs. Chef Solo... I think it mostly depends on what your scripts do. In my opinion, Fabric/Cuisine make it absurdly easy to execute commands against a remote server and most of the time that's enough for a decent deployment. Chef's execution API is, to put it mildly, clumsy. I cringe every time I have to type something like:

execute "#{virtualenv_dir}/bin/pip install -r #{requirements_file}" do user deploy_user group deploy_user end

IMO Chef shines when you have to move a lot of config files and generate node- and role-specific configs. I feel it's a lot simpler to just have recipe- specific files and templates packaged with the recipe and move them over with commands like cookbook_file and template.

Right now we are using both the technologies. Our stacks are Chef-based since we want people to be comfortable with reading (and possibly modifying) its code. We also reuse a lot of the Opscode recipes which simply do not exist for Fabric/Cuisine. Fabric and Cuisine have their place when we bootstrap a server and prepare the Chef environment and at several odd places where they keep things running together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> With regards to Digital Ocean. My server there which I installed about a month ago (Amsterdam location), with 2GB of RAM is not responding for several hours now. Including not possible to reboot. Support says they're aware of the issue. But it's been several hours like this now. Never had with with Linode in my 3 years with them. Guess I'll be moving this server back.

<comment><USER8> Gray - send me an email -> mitch [at] digitalocean

I will take care of it for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ah, cool. I'm already using Digital Ocean for hosting the development Linux box that I access from my "Android workstation": <http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/>

Their service has been working without any hassles until now, and so I wouldn't mind having them as a Heroku alternative for hosting my Node.js apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great post, btw.

Unfortunately, there is a problem with DO Amsterdam location.

"The 512MB and 1GB sizes are currently not available in the Amsterdam region due to RIPE IPv4 restrictions and limited availability of IP space."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is offering a lot more server for your money than Heroku / Gondor.io / dotcloud.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks nice, price seems right. I'll have to try it when I have some free time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Feedback and feature requests are welcome.

<comment><USER12> how about custom domain? Where can see/vote feature request publicly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feature request / voting is now enabled on our site. All ideas and feedback are more than welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Founder of <http://www.nodesocket.com> here, best of luck guys. Are you guys in the bay area?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much! Good luck with Commando.io!

Our team is located in Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Azure Websites also offer Node.js hosting [1], and they have a free plan for small (development) sites. Paid plans there seem more expensive.

[1] <http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, the problem with freemium is that at the end paying customers have to sponsor the free accounts.

And in most cases providers do as much as possible to lock you in, so you don't switch to a cheaper option when you reach certain size.

On the other hand, we want customers to know that they can leave us whenever they need to. Your apps are completely portable, so there is no reason not to give it a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a free plan ?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can launch your sever and deploy your app for free. You can keep the server alive later if you need to.

Prices start from $8/mo for 512 ram SSD server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is awesome. I love that there is a new one push deploy in town other than Heroku. Will you guys ever support a Rails stack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes, we will definitely support Rails soon (several weeks). We are working hard to make all major stacks available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting how much Python they use. Perhaps they'll add Python hosting as well?

<comment><USER6> Most of the backend and frontend is written in Python and we are working on a Python stack. Stay tuned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > PaaS Service

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thanks!

<comment><USER19> Also the only VCPU that is pluralized on your pricing page is the 1 VCPU under the 16gb plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks a bunch!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gay marriage opponents say #Nozilla after CEO resigns - <AUTHOR> http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201404082324-0023632

<comment><USER2> Has Brandon made any statements (other than, maybe, the donation) that indicate what his beliefs are? I believe he may have apologized for causing pain to others based on his actions, but I've yet to read anything where he states what he actually believes about gays and their fight for marriage equality (other than, again, whatever the donation itself says). It'd be interesting (to me, at least) how he explains his donation and what he was trying to accomplish with it.

<comment><USER3> No, he hasn't. In fact he made a point of refusing to do so.

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit This is what happens when you get caught in the middle of a topic that pretty much has a 50/50 split on support/opposition. Mozilla has already stepped in shit. Every move from this point on just smears it around without actually cleaning it up.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think the gay community will earn much acceptance if they attack heterosexuals on questionable grounds, I just feel sorry for those who had nothing to do with this.</comment>


Show HN: SetupMyProject – A tool to configure your new java project - <AUTHOR> http://www.setupmyproject.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A wizard that helps you to choose and configure the frameworks you want to in order to quick start a new Java project.</comment>


iPhone vs Android OS Fragmentation - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/2010/11/18/fragmentation/

<comment><USER2> I think the Android fragmentation rant is really, really tired. But, is it fair to compare a year old Android phone and anything prior to 3GS?

<comment><USER3> It is fair if 3GS still has significant market share.</comment></comment>


What to Do with Your Bitcoin Ahead of Segwit Activation on First August - <AUTHOR> http://blog.icowatchlist.com/2017/07/29/what-to-do-with-your-bitcoin-ahead-of-segwit-activation-on-1st-august/ <comment><AUTHOR> Any more suggestions on what to do to minimize Segwit risk?</comment>


Show HN: Plot modern addresses on Earth 240M years ago - <AUTHOR> http://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I built this by adapting GPlates ([https://www.gplates.org](https://www.gplates.org)), an academic project providing desktop software for geologists to investigate plate tectonic data. I'm amazed that geologists collected enough data to actually plot my home 750M years ago, so I thought you all would enjoy it too.

Even though plate tectonic models return precise results, you should consider the plots approximate (obviously we will never be able to prove correctness). In my tests I found that model results can vary significantly. I chose this particular model because it is widely cited and covers the greatest length of time.

The visualization itself is open source, though I have not yet cleaned up and pushed the plate tectonics integration (working on that right now): [https://github.com/typpo/ancient-earth](https://github.com/typpo/ancient- earth)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious about the accuracy of the visualization. Specifically, at around 20M yrs, one can clearly see the mediterranean sea. The wikipedia page for the Zanclean Deluge[1] says it's theorized to have happened around 5M yrs ago.

Does this mean that the data from gplates doesn't support that theory? Or is that just an artifact of how things were put together for this project?

Nonetheless, cool project!

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

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good point, and I think we'd have to take it up with Chris Scotese, the geologist who produced the rasters I wrap around the globe[1]. There are some details in the PDF included in the download, which explains some coloration choices based on elevation (search for "paleocoastline")[2].

That said, I think there is artistic license taken, and the wet Mediterranean might be an oversight or even a statement by the artist (I've gotten emails from angry geologists because the globe does not advance one theory or another). Part of Scotese's work also predates some of the research on this topic.

It would certainly be more accurate to show a simple plate diagram rather than an artistic version of the Earth, and it would make my life easier too because then I could show continuous plate movement for each year. But there is a certain thrill in seeing ancient earth all globe-like, so I stand by my choice to use these rasters :)

[1] [https://www.earthbyte.org/paleomap-paleoatlas-for- gplates/](https://www.earthbyte.org/paleomap-paleoatlas-for-gplates/)

[2] [https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-q0WIa7ofISFHyBe4UxvN8DIPs...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-q0WIa7ofISFHyBe4UxvN8DIPs82SPmS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I felt so silly trying to zoom in and see satellite images of my house as it was 240M years ago.

<comment><USER5> I was hoping that if I zoomed in enough I'd get a 3d street view of a bunch of dinosaurs walking around. I was disappointed.

<comment><USER6> Could be possible if a 4 light year wide telescope is sent via a worm hole to one of the galaxies in the Virgo cluster (65m light years away) and live imagery of Earth (not via worm hole) is sent back via the worm hole to Earth.

<comment><USER7> Not needed. Once we can determine the starting composition of the universe, and have enough quantum computing power, we'll be able to simulate the past... and the future too. So you can see what your home looked like in the past and what it'll look like in the future.

<comment><USER8> Maybe, maybe not. We do not yet know that our Universe is a closed system

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would love to see what a potential future Earth would look like, and where I currently stand will be

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLahVJNnoZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLahVJNnoZ4) is pretty cool

</comment><comment><USER10> As a child I was fascinated by the idea that the cliffs of Moher ([https://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/about-the- cliffs/geology/](https://www.cliffsofmoher.ie/about-the-cliffs/geology/)) stood at the mouth of a massive ancient river but I've never found a picture of the earth in the geological past which showed such a river.

Nor does this model. Anyone know enough about geology to explain why? Is it because rivers are not represented at all?

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool! But the model of earth appears to experience gimbal lock - <USER2> quaternions for rotations.

</comment><comment><USER12> So the land that I stand on today, India, was once part of Africa and America's landmass. Crazy!

<comment><USER13> Yeah. Madagascar was closer to Kerala than Delhi. Blew my mind!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love that you can rotate the globe around and there is a position where you can only see water.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0s75tyqtoh0hrd/Screenshot%202018-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0s75tyqtoh0hrd/Screenshot%202018-06-11%2013.41.43.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER15> That's almost still true if you turn a globe to show the pacific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing: At 540 My ago, you misspell "Cambrian Explosion" as "Cabrian Explosion"

<comment><USER17> It was a long time ago, we don't exactly know what exploded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can we extrapolate this into the future?

Update: found this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLahVJNnoZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLahVJNnoZ4)

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow! This gave me a whole new perspective on the Uruguayan coast, it's so cool to know that what I am seeing latched off the Antarctic peninsula!!! Specially since it so recognisable. Just a nice piece of trivia, but awesome for me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there data telling how deep the oceans and tall the mountains were during those eras?

</comment><comment><USER21> Fascinating! I tried to see how the Alps form but it's quite a complex process

</comment><comment><USER22> The difference between 260M and 240M in the Western US is really big. My hometown, Flagstaff, Arizona, goes from being near the ocean to being hundreds of miles away from the ocean, like it is now.

</comment><comment><USER23> Some explanation of what's going on in NA: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentia)

</comment><comment><USER24> Great. Suggestion-

1\. Can you add the number of years ago (eg. 100,000, 1M, 20M, 200M) next to the periods in the dropdown for those not familiar with it.

2\. Can you simulate the changes automatically so it evolves?

</comment><comment><USER25> The Americas look like the 'old world' in this model, to my surprise, except Mexico looks new. Asia could use better lighting on the marble.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice work! I feel like it can provide some perspective about things like nationalism, etc. Like a minor version of the 'overview effect'.

</comment><comment><USER27> Very hard to steer on a cell phone (Android, Brave browser) - pinch zoom kept flying me into the Cosmos.

Like the idea though - will try later from desktop.

<comment><USER28> Xiaomi redmi 5 plus with brave browser as well works fine though..

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Do you plan to extend it to show the future?

</comment><comment><USER30> It's really great to play with the million years selector and the up/down arrow.

</comment><comment><USER31> Really like it! Especially the short explanation of the age is quite educating

</comment><comment><USER32> This is awesome, nice job!

</comment><comment><USER33> Does that mean that an ocean that big could produce super hurricanes?

</comment><comment><USER34> Be good to be able to turn off current country outlines

</comment><comment><USER35> Thanks, I learned so much from this.

</comment><comment><USER36> Pretty awesome. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER37> Japan

</comment><comment><USER38> why show modern borders for 240M old earth?

<comment><USER39> That's the whole point of it. I don't understand your question.</comment></comment>


OS X Day and Night Terminals - <AUTHOR> http://tech.zpoley.net/os-x-day-and-night-terminals

<comment><USER3> i've recently started using f.lux [1], which adjusts the color temperature of the screen based on the time. after a night of coding, i've noticed i've been able to fall asleep more quickly, probably since my eyes adjust to the ambient warm light in the room while coding.

[1] <http://stereopsis.com/flux/>

<comment><USER4> I used it for awhile, but found the transition to be really jarring - <USER2> happened over a period of ten seconds.

<comment><USER5> You can set it to transition over an hour, so it's a lot more subtle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about Nocturne (from the Quicksilver guys: <http://www.blacktree.com/> )?

Or even simpler, ctrl-alt-cmd-8?

<comment><USER7> You just blew my mind. Thanks for that second tip.

<comment><USER8> Compiz has a similar feature on Linux, though I think it's not bound to any key combo by default.

<comment><USER9> If I recall correctly, it's Super-M for inverting the screen and Super-N for inverting an individual window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be neat if you could use the MacBook light sensor that turns on the keyboard lights to trigger switching terminal themes

<comment><USER11> How would that work? Surely the brightness of the screen (which I believe the sensor can see as it is at the top of the keyboard) is more than the sunlight. Maybe using the gyroscope/anti-drop, someone made a app-switcher that worked that way.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that would be a problem, if that was the case, the sensor would not work for it's original purpose either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Needs to be automated (look up sunset time like Instapaper) 2\. Needs to be part of every browser (for the blank page).

</comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting. I've come to love Solarized, and switch between the two depending on day and night.

<http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized>

In iTerm2 I mapped the lighter theme to CTRL-CMD-L and the dark theme to CTRL- CMD-D. I am sure there is a quick way to change the default theme as well, though I haven't really tried too hard.</comment>


Analysis of Apple's marketing psychology on product depiction (German) - <AUTHOR> http://www.macnotes.de/2015/01/31/marketing-psychologie-apple/

<comment><AUTHOR> In this article Apple's product depictions are analysed for their psychological subtext. The author found indication for 3 different types: evolution, family and winners/winning.</comment>


Show HN: Remind'em – set alarms, todo tasks reminders, in your friends phone - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tgs.remindemandroid

<comment><USER2> A very neat idea. Does it work for husbands/wives as well as friends? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It is a phone number based identification and hence it works for all the contacts in your contact book whoever has installed this app.</comment></comment>