Go, REST APIs, and Pointers - <AUTHOR> https://willnorris.com/2014/05/go-rest-apis-and-pointers <comment><USER2> Here is a practical everyday example where languages that can represent emptiness in the type system come in handy.

He ends up using pointers and mentions: "Using pointers also means that clients of the library will need to perform their own nil checks where appropriate to prevent panics."

Looking forward to using Rust :)

<comment><USER3> > Using pointers also means that clients of the library will need to perform > their own nil checks where appropriate to prevent panics.

In practice, as your Rust comment alludes, I find working with nil properties in Go types (used to shuffle between the DB and JSON) to be quite painful. I end up keeping track of a lot more state than I really want to, and errors can be introduced subtly.

In Go, you can usually use a type's zero value without doing anything special. But if that type contains any nil properties, you can't presume this anymore. If I have:

        type Thing struct {
            ID int
            Bad *string
        }

I then have to do nil checks in every method that might handle Thing, or I have to make it accessible only via functions which perform those checks for me in advance. Either way, much less convenient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> PATCH is a nightmare in reality, especially with the default zero nature of Go.

We opted for the JSON PATCH notation in RFC 6902: [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6902)

Essentially there's a standard format for instructions on how to modify an existing JSON document, like this:

       PATCH /my/data HTTP/1.1
       Host: example.org
       Content-Length: 326
       Content-Type: application/json-patch+json
       If-Match: "abc123"

       [
         { "op": "test", "path": "/a/b/c", "value": "foo" },
         { "op": "remove", "path": "/a/b/c" },
         { "op": "add", "path": "/a/b/c", "value": [ "foo", "bar" ] },
         { "op": "replace", "path": "/a/b/c", "value": 42 },
         { "op": "move", "from": "/a/b/c", "path": "/a/b/d" },
         { "op": "copy", "from": "/a/b/d", "path": "/a/b/e" }
       ]

We've implemented the operations "add", "remove" and "replace" in our REST API.

We don't have a meaningful way of doing "move" and "copy", and "test" can be done by performing a GET and looking at the document (and that can be used in the If-Match).

You can see the documentation for our stuff here: [http://microcosm- cc.github.io/#events-single-patch](http://microcosm-cc.github.io/#events- single-patch)

And that gives away why we chose to do this... booleans and the default value of false. We wanted it to be more explicit and no room for accidental expression of a value anywhere, regardless of the callee language/environment or ours. JSON PATCH makes this very explicit.

Of course there's the mild inconvenience of handling the value type, but that's relatively easily overcome.

What was really interesting was handling permissions for the PATCH instructions.

For example a user might have permission to issue a PATCH that changed a string, but only the admin could issue a PATCH that updated some special part of a resource.

PATCH is relatively easy with the above, and very predictable... fine-grained permissions of which part of a document someone can update... that's definitely where the fun is.

<comment><USER5> So you mean patch operations should be atomic right?

<comment><USER4> Atomic and not idempotent as per the HTTP spec.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another approach is sql.NullString and related types from database/sql: [http://golang.org/pkg/database/sql/#NullString](http://golang.org/pkg/database/sql/#NullString)

      foo := sql.NullString{"bar",true}
      if foo.Valid {
        fmt.Println(foo.String)
      }

<comment><USER7> Yes, but the blog post makes it pretty clear that easy JSON decoding/encoding is a primary goal, and this is not friendly to that.

<comment><USER6>
       func (ns NullString) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
           if !ns.Valid {
               return []byte("null"), nil
           }
           return json.Marshal(ns.String)
       }

It would render `user_id: null` instead of `user_id: ""` which should work, I think.

<comment><USER8> sure it's valid JSON, but it really depends on the API as to whether it handles null values properly when it's expecting some other type. I honestly haven't tried that with the GitHub API, but based on what I've seen it probably handles it fine. Others may not.

<comment><USER9> And this is the problem about using null as a valid state for data. In many languages, using null as a valid data value just can cause all kinds of problem (extra checks, not supported, or problems accessing null data).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm designing a Go backend to interact with a backbone client. Our API receives form data and spits out JSON, so the situation is not exactly the same. But we still ran into a similar problem with the way revel does parameter binding (if fields were not included in the form data, they ended up being interpreted as the zero value).

Check out this solution we came up with in a testing/learning project: [https://github.com/cranberryofdoom/peeps/blob/master/app/con...](https://github.com/cranberryofdoom/peeps/blob/master/app/controllers/persons.go#L38). Basically we just had to do an extra check to see if the fields actually existed in the form data. Will probably generalize it later on to make it less verbose.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is actually a rather annoying problem. This is what I'm doing temporarily (all fields have the "omitempty" tag):

        Fetch struct A from DB
        Unmarshal JSON data into &A
        Unset read-only fields of A
        Save A to DB

It's very inefficient but it beats dealing with bugs caused by various flags not being set (or being unset).

I'll switch to using pointers to boolean, int and string since most other (non-trivial) fields are pointers anyway. I'm not happy about the indirection, but it's certainly much faster than the current database roundtrip I'm performing.

And for anyone shouting 'Rust' \- there's always going to be that perfect language out there, at the end of the rainbow.

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting...point about using pointers to get nullable JSON values. Especially important for booleans, where false is the default value, and would not show up if "omitempty" is specified on that JSON field. Demo here: [http://play.golang.org/p/K3sG6T2wDd](http://play.golang.org/p/K3sG6T2wDd)

</comment><comment><USER13> Mentioned this in the blog comments, but would anyone familiar with the Go internals know if a set/modified/etc flag could be added to the struct field and available via reflection?

(That would be awesome!)

<comment><USER14> Sure, it'd be possible, but it would also require changing the language. And that's not going to happen for something like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't the problem here to absolutely want to manipulate a struct for the update ? What about a method like that ?

        func ( rep Repository ) Update( map[string]interface{} )

</comment><comment><USER16> So why not just use a map (hash, dict, etc.) instead of an object? You're sending and receiving JSON data, that's maps in maps all the way down. Why this fetish towards mapping your JSON 1:1 to some inner program object?

<comment><USER17> Well in a real language your objects have guarantees associated with them; constructing them should imply things about their validity. You can draw a distinction between an unvalidated request to construct an object, a valid object, and an update that can apply to an existing object. And your type system lets you ensure that you don't mix them up, that all code paths pass through the assertions you want them to pass through, so you don't do redundant checking and don't worry about missing anything.

In go, shrug, hell if I know what anyone's doing with that language.</comment></comment>


Usability in Icons - <AUTHOR> http://stiern.com/articles/usability/usability-in-icons/ <comment><USER3> It drives my boss crazy that the universal icon for Save is a picture of a floppy disk. We haven't been saving documents to floppy since 1993! But it's also scary to be the first one to buck the trend, so our product uses the same floppy disk as everyone else...

<comment><USER4> It recently occurred to me that the icon of a phone is of a type of phone that almost nobody uses anymore. And the icon of a camping site uses a model of tent that nobody uses anymore either.

Our kids will be so confused...

<comment><USER5> Similarly, to access music on my iPhone, I click an image of an iPod.

Another anecdote: I heard on some NPR show that most kids don't understand what the sound of a record being scratched to a halt actually is. (This sound: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn6s1FE-yKQ>) When asked, they describe it as the noise that is made on TV when you do a double-take.

<comment><USER6> TIL I guess.

And since I don't qualify as a kid, I am guessing that most mid-twenties wouldn't know either.

<comment><USER7> I think vinyl was still sufficiently popular for most folks in their mid- twenties to recognize it. I'm 25, and several of my grade school classrooms had record players, not to mention all the homes of my parents, their friends, and our extended family.

But as far as I can tell, few folks born in the mid-80s had significant direct experience with records, to the point where there were cultural references to our ignorance. In particular, I remember a sunday morning comic strip when I was young that centered around kids not being able to identify a record player. We were right on the cusp of its obsolescence.

To wit, I couldn't tell you the difference between a 33 and a 45 (well, it's rpm, but are they different sizes?), and I've never owned music on vinyl.

I'd wager that people born in the 90s would be the first to be completely unaware of the origins of the record scratching sound.

<comment><USER6> It might have been in the US but although my parents sometimes played records I don't think I have ever heard that sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A great example of the wrong way to report user research.

\- How many participants were tested? \- Who was tested? \- What kind of test was it? Survey? Lab study? etc? \- Between subjects or within (i.e. did the same people see all the icons)?

I could go on.

<comment><USER9> None of which really matters, at all. It's a blog post not a journal paper or a research report. It would have been nice to see a link to a full account but perhaps they couldn't decide how to represent that.

<comment><USER8> Omitting these details turns it into "a fun discussion". Including these details (even as a footnote) would turn it into a potentially useful piece of research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They seem to suggest the 'winning' icon for their purposes was simply 'www'. (Perhaps, it was also blue and underlined, which are strong cues to average users of linkishness.) But, there's no example image!

</comment><comment><USER11> Of course their experiment would show that.

It's a widely misunderstood claim that there exist some sort of universally objective way to visualize various features.

Intuition around interfaces is learned through using the interface not by some universally understood metaphors.

Most user don't understand what they are doing conceptually.

The original link (blue color underlined) is the most understood version of a link yet the concept in itself brings no clarity of it's purpose.

The experiment is more or less a self-full-filled prophesy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Icons, in general, are overrated in my opinion. Only if an icon has a _very_ clear meaning to all it can be safely used. Using an icon anywhere else is a big bet and starts with usability issues. E.g. whoever designed the play/pause/stop/previous/next buttons pulled that off, but it's a risk.

I think a button that says "Save" is much clearer than a floppy disk. I think a button that says "Link" (or "Insert Link") is much clearer than a globe, a chain or whatever weird arrow you can come up with.

I never understood why so much software has so many icons. I also think MS got it right in Office 2007+ with the ribbon, which essentially was made to enable "more text, less reliance on icons".

I don't know any software that I find easy to use that relies on icons.

<comment><USER13> Icons in a toolbar are like keyboard shortcuts: they have to be learned, but in the end they're more efficient.

And they're not labelled (but usually have tooltips) because of screen real estate. They're simply faster shortcuts to menu options, or dialog-box options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The big problem with a chain icon is that it depends on English as well, because a "hyperlink" and "chain link" have absolutely nothing to do with each other, except that in English they both contain "link".

I agree with the first commented in the blog... an arrow that points to a page, or an arrow pointing from one page to another.

Kind of makes me feel stupid for never having thought of it, but I'll be using it the next time I solve this problem!

<comment><USER14> Before this blog post, I'd always squinted at those chain icons and wondered what in the world they were supposed to be.

Bad visual puns do not usability make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder how many of the participants were able to go back and insert a link without any problems after they were told what the chain icon does?

Icons are really useful once you learn how to use a particular interface. It's ok not to get it at first as long as you only need to learn it once.

You will always need to educate customers to some extent, what you need to do is make that learning curve as easy as possible.

</comment><comment><USER16> No wonder kayak recently replaced icons for "details", "pin", etc., with simple text.

A/B test could also provide statistics of how well text v/s icon performs for non-trivial items.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why not write "Link" instead of "WWW"? Clearer and to the point.

<comment><USER18> Because "Link" only means "link" in English, whereas "WWW" means "WWW" everywhere the web is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> OK, "WWW" is fairly universal, but generally it's best to avoid any text - <USER2> icon should be language-independent.

<comment><USER20> Considering that HTTP is a universal protocol and everyone using WWW in their URL, I don't see this as a problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone using WWW in their URL? Look at the address bar right now. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Bold: 100%

well, they didn't asked anyone outside of the english speaking world. Where I came from, everyone knows "N" is for bold text.

Also, having studied cognitive sciences in my free time, the author should learn soon that icons are not meant for discovery or explanation. They are place holders. Tokens for your mind to _return_ to effortlessness.

So, the save icon could be an Elephant (my old idea, nobody likes) or a dolar sign or a clown. it doesn't matter. The user have to explore where the save is. then the icon will just serve for him to return.

<comment><USER22> Do you have different icons in Word, too?

<comment><USER23> Yes. Word even localizes the keyboard shortcuts (e.g. in Swedish office, you bold text with command-F for "Fetstil")</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage passwords for a group/organization - <AUTHOR>

Small group of 5 people. We're in different locations and we create a lot of web accounts, hosting, service, etc.  Thinking of using something like SplashID and pointing to a data file on a shared DropBox. Is there a better way? <comment><USER2> Password formulas. Something like:

first 3 letters of the main group location + last three letters of the site's domain name (not extension) + a constant (gHqW2#).</comment>


DjangoCon Europe 2011 announced - June 6-10 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands - <AUTHOR> http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2011/jan/14/djangocon-eu-2011-announced/

<comment><USER2> Excuse the noob here: Djangocon.us doesn't have any updated information for 2011 <http://djangocon.us/about/>

Will the only django con this year be in Europe?

<comment><USER3> Looks like the site hasn't been updated yet.

"djangocon US 2011 is September 6-8 at the Portland Hilton and Executive Towers <http://bit.ly/dohjCC> "

<http://twitter.com/djangocon/status/6717838614069248> _this says 2010, but it is clearly a typo_

<comment><USER2> You're totally right; [https://groups.google.com/group/django- users/browse_thread/t...](https://groups.google.com/group/django- users/browse_thread/thread/9de9dbc1057a0c12/)</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Edits Why's Graphic Depiction of Suicide - <AUTHOR> https://www.vulture.com/2019/07/netflix-edits-13-reasons-whys-graphic-depiction-of-suicide.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a welcome move. It comes a bit late, after having caused the deaths of a few people, but late is better than never.

Let's hope Netflix continues to consider the harm their shows can cause ( _Sharp Objects_ being another example of irresponsible broadcasting) and make changes to production.</comment>


Tech Firm Ubiquiti Suffers $46M Cyberheist - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/08/tech-firm-ubiquiti-suffers-46m-cyberheist/ <comment><USER2> I feel like the banking industry needs to catch up here: in this day and age with digital fraud being easy and getting easier, they should be able to reverse any transfer internationally.

This will fall apart when we get to cashing out downstream, or buying physical goods that are on-demand manufactured/shipped, or stock market trades, but a large percentage should be recoverable in $large cases and (outside of certain sophisticated patterns) the receiver of the money who spent it should be on the hook for the difference.

30m unrecoverable as yet is just silly.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough, the original goal for PayPal as Elon Musk articulates it is that they would end up as infrastructure for all digital transactions which would make fraud much more difficult. _All the fraud issues seem to be at the intersection between different methods of transfers._ Wire transfers can involve multiple banks and the information for them can be shoddy; there's too much room for error and the whole authentication issue, ugh.

Paypal or now bitcoin (or the blockchain at least) as the main infrastructure would definitely reduce fraud and errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this mean an employees of the company got an email from someone posing as their boss, or their CEO, instructing them to wire $46 million dollars, and they simply...did so? without asking any questions?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Basically.

I've seen similar attacks before, granted for lower amounts, but in many companies, finance departments sending out wires for many hundreds of thousands of dollars is a common operation -- suppliers, contracts signed, and everyone wants their wire transfer to be done ASAP.

Get an email from the CFO/CEO/SVP of X saying to wire money for contract Z ASAP, and action will be taken.

<comment><USER6> Sounds like cryptographically signing emails is not such a bad idea after all...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, except it's also possible, and not unusual, to compromise the cfo or someone's email/computer and then send signed emails all day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a hard attack to defend against - because the person sending the money can also two-factor authentication them.

With that said - internally, there are usually lots, and lots and lots of controls over who/how one can send money, and it's pretty darn rare for someone to be able to "spoof" a request like this without throwing a lot of red flags.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing that you can con a technology (or any) company out of 46M simply by sending emails sitting on your couch in your pajamas.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, they were only able to recover $8.1 million!!? Hopefully they have some sort of insurance that covers that.</comment>


Bajau tribe evolved huge spleens so they can dive deeper in the ocean - <AUTHOR> http://metro.co.uk/2018/04/19/tribe-of-fish-people-evolved-huge-spleens-so-they-can-dive-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-7481734/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion, based on better NYT article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16881818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16881818)

Original paper in Cell (full text): [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.03.054](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.03.054)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so ridiculous I'll repeat it in this thread.

The "enlarged spleens" they saw (~200 cm^3) are actually closer to _half_ the size of typical spleens according to their own reference for spleen measurement (~500 cm^3). They apparently found another group to compare to with even smaller spleens, then acted like that was "normal" size to get this enlarged spleen for diving narrative. Details here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16884186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16884186)

<comment><USER4> Wow. Could there be any explanation for this or is this as bad as it looks? If so, serious question, how do they get away with things like this? It's at Cambridge, I mean you would have higher expectations? Maybe not?

<comment><USER3> It is common sense to check your control group measurements against the literature and see where they stand. I would also expect to mention the results of that search in the paper.

Looking closer at the paper I see they also had some spleen sizes from a European cohort. They do not seem to tell us what those volumes were, instead only reporting p-values. Can anyone find it?

<comment><USER4> [http://www.humanfunctionalgenomics.org/site/?page_id=82](http://www.humanfunctionalgenomics.org/site/?page_id=82) is what they used

Those don't appear to be spleen sizes, though. It looks like they're just saying that they did a regression on some data linking "SNP"s to thyroid hormone levels. Then, they did a different but similar regression on data from the Bajau. I don't know what the relation of the SNPs are to spleen size but don't see anything noted in that area of the paper. IANA social scientist, but it looks quite goofy. They also note that they could not verify any relationship between spleen and thyroid sizes anyway.

<comment><USER3> I think they did look at "other" spleen sizes and just chose not to mention it. This really just looks like another case of "reject null hypothesis -> conclude whatever we want".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So how did this evolve over the past 1000 years? Selection pressure? The ancestor who could dive better had more children? Could feed his family better? Was it just one person with mutation that started it? Or, did the frequent exposure to deep diving triggered something in one generation that influenced the genes of their children (along the lines of Epigenetic magic)?

<comment><USER6> This ability gives you a huge competitive advantage in times of limited resources, so most likely others have died/had limited offspring.

<comment><USER7> Even something more modest like "had on average 0.01 surviving offspring" could make a big difference over many generations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The understanding of evolution in the title of this article is appalling... They didn't evolve large spleens so they could dive.. they dove a lot which resulted in selection bias which resulted in larger spleens...

<comment><USER9> Replace "so" with its synonym "therefore" and the ambiguity is resolved in a more pleasing way.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough. When I see "so" used in this way I generally see it as meaning "so that", which is also a perfectly valid inference. Perhaps it's an Anlgo/American grammatical difference?

<comment><USER9> Well it _is_ ambiguous, so that is a headline-writing failure. Especially since this is a common misunderstanding of evolution anyway! In some sense this would be a logical ambiguity even if the writer _meant_ to say that adaptations are goal-driven. Headlines simply shouldn't be written like this. Perhaps we're looking at this the wrong way, however. One gets the sense that most journalists don't really concern themselves with logic and clarity of thought anymore, since their intended audience is similarly unconcerned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do wooden goggles work? What did they use for glass? How did they make a seal?

<comment><USER11> Transparent oak

<comment><USER12> Huh, I was thinking it would just be a ledge like a pronounced monobrow, strapped on and sealed to the head with either just pressure or pressure + gum, that would catch exhaled air.

Wouldn't very thin wood implode?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow sounds like we could take that thyroid hormone to enlarge our own spleen. I wonder if divers have tried that.</comment>


Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1791

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2861825>

Not the same article, but closely related, and by the same author, and lots of discussion.</comment>


Pre-alpha search engine - walk2web - <AUTHOR> http://altsearchengines.com/2007/08/06/pre-alpha-search-engine-walk2web/ So, what is a pre-alpha alternative search engine? walk2web has developed a nifty web application that allows you to "walk" from one web site -via links - to another. They are working on a Search Engine version which will allow you to query a search term, something like Quintura or KartOO, but that's not done yet; so I'm calling it "pre-alpha." (or Stealth Mode) <comment><USER2> Wow, I haven't seen a site that makes such annoying use of sound in some time.

Unless I hear they've removed sound, I have no intention of trying it again.</comment>


MacOS 10.14 Wishlist - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sindresorhus.com/my-macos-10-14-wishlist-c499448afdd6 <comment><USER2> Please fix the dumpster fire that is AppKit! Doing a grep for angry words in my source code and commits reminded me of some traumas over the years…

* Core Data's generated classes are broken for one-to-many relationships

* NSTableView is a total mess. Lots of things don't work quite right. For example, calculating the correct height for a row of wrapped text is nearly impossible without hackily adding a few points here and there.

* In Metal, constant buffers over 64k get silently truncated on some GPUs.

* MTKView is half-baked. Resizing it stretches the window's contents, for example. If you don't use layers it overlaps the window's rounded corners. If you do enable layers, the framerate drops by half.

* The one field editor per window hack breaks expectations every time I use it. It should be done away with.

* NSTitlebarAccessoryViewController is officially supported but was never documented and forces the entire window to use auto layout

Please don't add any features. Just fix the garbage fire you already have rather than throwing more garbage on it.

<comment><USER3> Yup. Feature freeze / bug hunt challenge with some morale incentive honorariums.

The only features that vital necessities.

* Peripheral Shield - "firewall" I/O security and disablement on 2008+ machines. Many a disk cloner and malware loaders use USB, Thunderbolt or FireWire to install their stack.

* Deep Sleep that works. /var/vm/sleepimage is 1 GiB but it has 16 of RAM.

* Official internal OS tweak platform that's sandboxed.

* Open source much more of macOS and iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Topping my wishlist would be for Apple to not have to put every product in the same "fashion bauble" category and consider pro, workhorse computers to be a different type of thing with different criteria. Both the Mac Pro and the MacBOOK Pro should be treated as workhorses, not show horses, and optimized for practical usefulness. Less emphasis on looking thinner and more fashionable and more on keyboards that feel great and go on working just fine when splashed with bacon & eggs, thrown in a backpack, dragged around on a desert adventure, lots of convenient connectors, maxed out on battery power, useful buttons instead of gimmicky touchbar, and so on.

My wish would be that actual _computer_ users could look forward with excitement, the way we used to, at what new improvements were about to become available rather than dreading what they'll "courageously" take away next.

<comment><USER5> • Thinner means _lighter_ —i.e. more luggable, which you'd think would be an important consideration for a workhorse.

• Apple's ecosystem (at least for business leasing) is sort of like the luxury car ecosystem: there are rather few models, and they're not very customized, but there's a dealership close enough to you that if there's any problem—any problem at all—with your [under-warranty] device, the idiomatic "solution" is to give you a loaner (the exact same model, with your data copied over) while they _attempt_ to repair yours; and then either you get it back fixed, or you keep the loaner. Like luxury cars, this enables them to use nice-but-brittle components, under the expectation that nobody will actually have to _put up with_ the component being broken, instead just being fed a steady supply of working devices. (Anecdata: my MacBook's keyboard has failed five times. Do you know what that means? It means that I've received a same-day replacement MacBook five times!)

• I think you're confusing "professional" with "ruggedized." Apple has never made, or claimed to make, ruggedized hardware. (The iPhone is waterproof, I guess?) Apple has no product category aimed at e.g. the ThinkPad's "techs performing maintenance on cell towers in deserts/jungles/swamps" use-case. Apple makes its desktop products like most companies make servers, or scientific equipment: intended for climate-controlled, central-air-purified conditions, to be operated by techno-priests who take the proper ritual-purity precautions before touching them. The Macs really _are_ workstations, in the sense that they are intended to do their _work_ from a designated _station_. ;)

<comment><USER6> Everything you said is right, but you are missing the point.

Thinner means more luggable, but if it restricts a workhorse machine from having more than the 16gb of ram the base model can also have because they can't fit enough battery to power it, then why not go all the way and shrink it to the size of the 12" MacBook? Well, because of the other components you might say! But, if the CPU throttles, the GPU throttles, the keyboard stops working and the anti-reflective coating peels off, all because of the thermal stress the machine is under when used as a workhorse, then is not much of a workhorse is it? Besides, no one is asking for an aircraft carrier, the thickness of the 2015 version was good enough for nearly everybody, specially when you do have laptops like the MacBook that do make those compromises.

Apple is sort of a luxury brand but the problem is they want it both ways. They want to be seen as an aspirational brand and as a workhorse brand. That is why they keep releasing FinalCut, Logic, and XCode. At some point those two ambitions are going to collide; most people think they already did.

No one is asking for a tank, you are presenting a false dichotomy as no one is confusing professional with ruggedized. Every serious complain about the MacBook Pro is about specs, ports and reliability, not unbreakability. In fact, based on your previous point about luxury machines I say you are the one that is confused. Are MacBook Pros professional machines or not? If they are luxury items as you claim then by all means don't make them waterproof but if they want to aim it at people editing 8K video on-site in Africa, which happens by the way, then ffs make the screen less reflective.

<comment><USER5> > why not go all the way and shrink it to the size of the 12" MacBook?

Personally, I see the MBP as a hybrid use-case device, much like the Nintendo Switch: it throttles when freestanding (because it has nowhere to dissipate its heat to), but it runs more quickly when "docked." So you can use it for light things portably, and for heavy things at a desk.

Unlike the Switch, there's no first-party dock for the MBP, but search "mbp cooling dock" and you'll see many accessories designed specifically for the MBP to enable this workflow.

> FinalCut, Logic, and XCode

Two of those persist for the sake of enterprise media-production companies that fund the engineering resources for them all on their own. If Apple were trying to push these for _new_ customers, they'd still be making Xserves, as the hardware to go with this software. New companies need render-nodes, right? But they aren't, because these apps are only for these "legacy" media companies that already have render-farms and don't need Apple selling them render-nodes.

Xcode exists because Apple uses it to make macOS and iOS. (And because the period where MPW sucked and CodeWarrior was third-party and so hard to get new features supported in was a bad time to be an Apple system-software developer.)

> No one is asking for a tank

No, but a keyboard that'll keep working when you spill bacon grease on it, or a computer that won't choke in a sandstorm, is pretty damn ruggedized. Most computers, regardless of manufacturer, are not capable of surviving those onslaughts.

> editing 8K video on-site in Africa

See, this is what I was getting at with the difference in perspectives here. A _ruggedized_ workstation would work just sitting around outside in the heat and dust and light of the savannah. Whereas a _professional_ workstation is—like a server, or (in previous decades) a news crew's satellite uplink—something that exists in a designated editing-room in a designated trailer you're hauling around with the crew.

<comment><USER6> > I see the MBP as a hybrid use-case device, much like the Nintendo Switch: it > throttles when freestanding (because it has nowhere to dissipate its heat > to), but it runs more quickly when "docked." So you can use it for light > things portably, and for heavy things at a desk.

MacBook Pros throttle even on "docks". They can't magically dissipate more heat when stationary on a desk.

> New companies need render-nodes, right? But they aren't, because these apps > are only for these "legacy" media companies that already have render-farms > and don't need Apple selling them render-nodes.

Companies need lots of things. One of them is a Pro Apple laptop. Apple has no problems charging Pro prices, they should in return give a Pro machine.

> No, but a keyboard that'll keep working when you spill bacon grease on it, > or a computer that won't choke in a sandstorm, is pretty damn ruggedized.

You are being unreasonably extreme. _No one is asking for anything more than what we already had_. A keyboard that is defeated by dust particles, dust!, is a failed product at any price and in any category, let alone in the luxury non-pro market where you want Apple to focus on. You should be even more outraged than the rest of us! Which Rolex dies when you eat a sandwich wearing it?

> See, this is what I was getting at with the difference in perspectives here. > A ruggedized workstation would work just sitting around outside in the heat > and dust and light of the savannah. Whereas a professional workstation > is—like a server, or (in previous decades) a news crew's satellite > uplink—something that exists in a designated editing-room in a designated > trailer you're hauling around with the crew.

You should tell all the pros carrying their laptops into war zones that they've been doing it wrong all these years. No, wait, they have been working fine even in the dust and in sunlight, despite not having armor.

<comment><USER5> > MacBook Pros throttle even on "docks". They can't magically dissipate more > heat when stationary on a desk.

 _Cooling_ docks. The kind of docks that have case-fans in them, and often are made of porous metal than makes direct contact with a large portion of the surface-area of the bottom of the device, making them gigantic heat-sinks.

> You should tell all the pros carrying their laptops into war zones that > they've been doing it wrong all these years. No, wait, they have been > working fine even in the dust and in sunlight, despite not having armor.

Err... those _are_ ruggedized devices, whatever you want to call them. By "ruggedized" I'm not referring to laptops with extra armour tacked onto them (e.g. "mil-spec ruggedization"); but rather to laptops built to certain specs regarding tolerances of heat/cold/light/dust/radiation/vibration/etc. You know, like how a satellite is ruggedized.

 _A lot_ of laptops are ruggedized, by this standard. Everything produced under the ThinkPad brand, the HPe brand, etc. is ruggedized. But, outside of these, most laptops aren't. Your average HP Pavillion, or Asus Chromebook, won't survive a war zone. In general, _consumer electronics_ won't survive a war zone. (Some lower-quality consumer electronics won't even survive the cargo hold of a plane.)

And everything Apple makes, even for "professionals", is consumer electronics.

You wouldn't expect the iPad Pro to survive in a war zone without absolutely "babying" it, right? It's a piece of delicate, finicky consumer electronics that happens to be targeted at one particular type of professional—artists—whose needs don't include ruggedness. Well, Macs are pieces of delicate, finicky consumer electronics that happens to be targeted at college students, businesspeople and engineers, none of whose needs _usually_ include ruggedness either. No real difference.

\---

> You are being unreasonably extreme. No one is asking for anything more than > what we already had.

To be clear, I was replying explicitly to this line from the root of this comment thread:

> keyboards that ... go on working just fine when splashed with bacon & eggs

That's not your average laptop keyboard; that is, in fact, _only_ the keyboards in ruggedized laptops that can do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about an iTunes experience that doesn't make me want to jump off a bridge.

I can't name a single more consistently infuriating piece of software to interact with. It's been horrible as long as it has existed, without fail.

On second thought, perhaps its stalwart consistency as one of the most unusable applications in the history of consumer software is one of the few constants in this fast changing world. Perhaps its flawed nature is meant to remind us all of our own deep imperfections.

God I hate iTunes.

<comment><USER8> Version 1 was really good.

That's where my frustration over the app comes from. It _used_ to be pretty much perfect.

<comment><USER9> It's an app to play music. How bad can it be?

<comment><USER8> It _was_ an app to play music. I fear that is has been transformed into some amalgamation of an app/media store, a mobile device wrangler, one interface to your Apple ID account - and a lot of good features that now kinda are half broken. Lots of stillborn features too - wasn't there a music social media integration that went nowhere? It's not very light on memory usage, either.

It was so nice to rip a CD, have it part of your library, and well that's it. Search worked great, everything just worked.

The UX is just so bad now, I don't even want to listen to the music I have saved. It's literally changed my music listening behavior.

<comment><USER9> I get it became a way to sync all your mobile devices with a music and apps library, along a music player and music/mobile app store (which, I agree, should all be moved to the App Store and become a "Store"), but that's the extent of my usage of it and it's mostly fine (apart from the fact it's becoming harder to manage my music library - I ripped all my CDs back when my Mac had a DVD drive).

So far, the stillborn features don't bother me that much.

It's heavy and _should_ be lighter, with the features not being used quietly swapped out and remaining there - it seems like it's trying to reanimate the parts that are not in use all the time and that may be the root cause of the humongous memory footprint.

Moving the store and sync out would somewhat make things better, but Windows users would need to run 3 apps instead of one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > True Color and hyperlink support in the Terminal app

Why? Isn't iTerm better in every imaginable way?

> Markdown support in the Notes app. Including code blocks and syntax > highlighting.

1) there's plenty of good apps (better than Notes.app anyway) that support this already

2) I'd argue <1% of Mac owners know of Markdown, let alone use it. Sure, _we_ both do, but I'd rather them focus on the important bits (stability/performance/etc) and leave the niche app features to the ecosystem.

<comment><USER11> I get your point, and somewhat agree, but I think it's important to remember that the two (feature updates to Terminal and Notes vs. stability/performance/etc.) aren't typically mutually exclusive; the developer that would implement Markdown support in Notes isn't likely the same developer that would be implementing performance/stability enhancements to the core of the OS.

<comment><USER10> Each new "nice to have" feature requires QA testing time that steals away from potentially more important things. Nobody writes bug free code forever, so I'd rather they focus on the very important issues and make sure they are solid before adding nice to haves, especially ones easily solved by other existing apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > No More iTunes!

(Desktop) iTunes is the way it is in order to present a unified, familiar experience between the macOS _and Windows_ iTunes desktop apps.

In Windows, iTunes is essentially "just enough macOS to manage an iOS device"—with every disparate responsibility that management entails all smushed together. (It's been this way since it was iPods that were being managed.) And macOS iTunes is the same codebase(!) as Windows iTunes, so it's not like that codebase is somehow going to compile as eight apps with their own UIs on macOS, vs. one on Windows. It's going to look, and work, on macOS as it does on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER12> I want customizable "later/snooze" options for reminders/calendar notifications. Specifically, I want a "Snooze until tonight" or "Snooze until I get home".

… Mostly when I tell Siri to remind me to do something and she records the wrong time and the reminder comes up at 2pm at work instead of 8pm like I tried to record it.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Remove old junk like the Dashboard and DVD Player apps.

Should just include those the app store as well.

Not mentioned are the many years old bugs with multi displays and networking.

I just want Apple to take a year and really fix all the core problems they've introduced. No more new features until the existing stuff works!

<comment><USER9> The App Store is Apple's package manager. It's not going anywhere.

<comment><USER14> They are not saying that the app store should go away, they are saying that the apps should be added to the app store like the other utilities that the blog post mentions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'll be happy if the only thing that ships with 10.14 is a bugfix for the Preview.app. It amazes me that they have not yet unfucked the PDF rendering with a minor release. It amazes me even more, that this issue is not present on the linked wishlist. Do people not view PDFs on their Macs?

<comment><USER16> The Preview PDF handling drives me mental too. Luckily it's not outright unusable for me, but it's still a pain. Buy Apple, they said... Apple always looks after the details :(

Happens on both my Macbook Pros, too - a early 2015 13" (i7-5557U) with Sierra, and a mid 2014 15" (i7-4980HQ with discrete GPU) with High Sierra. The symptoms for me, with the proviso that I'm not in OS X right now to double check:

1\. set Preview to open PDFs at 100% zoom, 1 page at a time. Open a PDF. Preview opens the window at the right size, then pops some scrollbars in. Now the client area is smaller, and that means the window is the wrong size! - which means the mouse wheel scrolls the view, rather than scrolling from page to page. Gets me every damn time.

(This could be related, I imagine, to that setting that forces scrollbars always to be displayed. I suppose it's too much to expect Apple's QA to have a test matrix that encompasses this case)

2\. scroll from page to page. Each new page appears blurry - or, if lucky, merely wonky - for a fraction of a second, then replaced with the clearer rendering one might expect. Actually quite distracting when scrolling page by page! - and when scrolling at keyboard repeat rate, the clearer version never has time to appear, making it impossible to scroll through a document visually at full speed

3\. when resizing the Preview window, some sizes look mucky - looks like the sort of thing you get if you render to an offscreen buffer that's 1 or 2 pixel the wrong size, or add the 0.5 to only one edge of your quad, and so on. Really annoying

<comment><USER17> "scroll from page to page. Each new page appears blurry - or, if lucky, merely wonky - for a fraction of a second, then replaced with the clearer rendering one might expect."

THIS drives me nuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can you just include a little checkbox in the mouse settings that lets me reverse mouse scroll independently from the touch pad's two-finger scroll without having to pay for an app?

That'd be swell.

<comment><USER19> (I have not tried either of these solutions, so I'm not sure if they actually work.) Although still separate applications, Karabiner and Scroll Reverser are both free. (I mention this since you stated having to "pay for an app".)

(1) Karabiner: [https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/](https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/) → Cf. Kellen Mace, "Separate Trackpad & Mouse Natural Scrolling in Mac OS X" (2014) [https://kellenmace.com/automate-trackpad-mouse-natural- scrol...](https://kellenmace.com/automate-trackpad-mouse-natural-scrolling-in- mac-os-x/)

(2) Scroll Reverser: [http://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/](http://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/)

<comment><USER18> Wow, thank you for this. Scroll reverser did the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's abundantly clear to me that Apple is not interested in improving the desktop experience. They simply want to show some shiny new features, and to continue to reduce the dimensions and weight of their laptops (even at the cost of usability). At this point I am hoping for a new unix-based alternative to windows with the same level of stability and usability as macOS. Long gone are the days where I would expect Apple to do what so many of us want with the operating system.

</comment><comment><USER21> Realistically, all I want are performance and stability improvements.

Unrealistically, there are number of relatively simple things Apple could do to improve the hackintosh experience.

</comment><comment><USER22> How about the _option_ to remove the dock entirely? Spotlight and Launchpad are preferable alternatives for opening apps, Mission Control works way better for switching between apps, and the list of running apps can be stuffed into the top menu with a pulldown list that can display diagnostic info and give a nice way to switch-to or force quit.

I hide the dock and keep it off to the side, as I find it more annoying than useful.

<comment><USER23> Whereas I cannot stand Spotlight, Launchpad, or Mission Control.

Any time I use a different machine, those are the first things that I completely and totally disable.

For me, the dock and the menu bar are much better solutions than any of the above, and they are in the category of "if it ain't broke, don't bloody flippin' fix it!!!"

<comment><USER24> I have to agree with you, with the exception of Spotlight. Spotlight for me is just simpler of an app launcher for my rarely used apps than Alfred (though I use Alfred for other features), though I do miss Quicksilver. But Launchpad is worthless for me, and I've never had a time when Mission Control hasn't just choked for a noticeable amount of time (I've even had 4 seconds of UI lockup just waiting for it to show up). Granted, I tend to keep a lot of apps open, but still, it's irritating whenever I accidentally trigger it or accidentally move a window to a different Space (this is on a still very capable mid-2014 Retina MBP with the highest specs available), and I much prefer using Keyboard Maestro to open/focus my most used apps (if the app is open, focus the foremost window, hit the combination again to bring all app windows forward; if it's closed, open it), and for window switching, Witch does the job faster and more logically than Mission Control. And I agree about the Dock and menu bar. Sadly the Dock is easy to hide for those who don't want it visible, but Mission Control and Spaces can't be disabled (AFIK, I'd love to be wrong).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lots of people still have macs that have DVD players. Why delete the DVD player app?

<comment><USER9> Putting it on the App Store could be a good idea though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They could fix the free disk space indicator. Mine goes up and down between 50GB and 200GB. I know this is because of local snapshots and supposedly it will clean up space as needed but I have no idea how much space is exactly available to me. Some versions ago the free space indicator was accurate. When you emptied the trash free space went up exactly by the amount of deleted files. Now it doesn't change at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> How about APFS on Fusion drives?

<comment><USER28> Sounds like it's coming soon (or being cancelled soon, of course): [https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/22/craig-federighi-apfs- su...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/22/craig-federighi-apfs-support- fusion-drives/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish reminder alerts were triggered at the correct time or as soon as my Mac wakes from sleep, not hours later or even on the next day.

<comment><USER12> Or reminders that reliably synced across Mac/phones. It works _most_ of the time, but there's at least 4 or 5 times a week I open one of my macs and it reminds me to call my mother even though that was checked off my list.. four days ago.

<comment><USER30> Maybe that'll improve with Messages on iCloud finally being delivered?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My vote is for forcing Microsoft to respect Control-A for beginning of line and Control-E for end within all Office applications.

</comment><comment><USER31> My developer wish would be a redo of the Keychain Services API. [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/keychain_...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/keychain_services?language=objc)

</comment><comment> m-p-3 If they could allow non-iCloud authenticated users to update and install free apps, that's be great.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would love the ability to customize the location of notifications so that I can set them on the bottom right corner instead of having them fixed to the upper right. Really hate how calendar notifications can hide my chrome extensions and many other things.

<comment><USER23> Funny. I just heard exactly the same comment from a co-worker yesterday.

You two are the first people I've ever heard of complain about this issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> >Better Window Management

YES! Please add native Snap in MacOS (and native Exposé in Windows).

<comment><USER34> Isn't the second one already available in windows 10?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Still hoping for some kind of integration between iPad + Pencil and macOS. (I think it was vaguely rumored last year.) It would be so amazing for art. Not holding my breath, though.

</comment><comment><USER36> The option to enable Windows-like click-through behaviour would be great.

<comment><USER37> I'd love an option to disable that in Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Give a little love to OpenGL. Sure Metal is great... but...</comment>


Ask HN: Why does the Slack Mac app take so long to start? - <AUTHOR> I love Slack, and I think it's made a huge difference with respect to workplace communications, but it seems the app takes a long time to load.
Any ideas why this would be the case given their considerable warchest and engineering expertise? <comment><USER2> JavaScript + Webkit.framework = Leaks.</comment>


Use Yahoo Pipes to Grab TV Show Feeds - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5272902/use-yahoo-pipes-to-grab-tv-show-feeds

<comment><AUTHOR> When legitimate startups have been hampered by licensing and users gets sued for sky high damages by RIAA, how does lifehacker get away with promoting downloads of TV shows?

According to google trends lifehacker has more than 150K+ daily unique vistors. <http://trends.google.com/websites?q=lifehacker.com>. It is high profile. So i'm wodering why RIAA is quiet and this is not the first article on lifehacker on downloading illegal stuff.

*illegal in the title and story just means that it is illegal to do it according to the law, not whether it is right or wrong</comment>


Giant Ant Hill Excavated - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFg21x2sj-M <comment><USER2> "We do not know what a body can do" - Spinoza, Ethics</comment>


Fountain pen inks: the good, the bad, and the ugly (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://richardspens.com/ref/care/inks.htm <comment><USER2> To all the people who keep asking why we would bother write with a fountain pen, a few reasons I do:

People are less likely to walk away or accidentally steal your fountain pen

I can write in the exact colour I want

I know scribbles or notes are mine without even looking at the writing

My colleagues know which pieces of notes are mine without asking My notebooks never wander far

I don't feel like I'm constantly killing the planet by binning my pen when it runs out of ink, I can just use the piston cartridge to constantly refill from a glass ink pot

It feels better in my hand than a biro

<comment><USER3> > _It feels better in my hand than a biro_

Ballpoints require one to constantly press down to keep the ink flowing. This makes writing tiring. (Fountain pens draw ink with capillary action.)

<comment><USER4> This is the main reason I use one, keeps my RSI from acting up when I have to write a lot.

Best $25 I've ever spent ($5 on a pen, jinhao x750, the rest on ink).

<comment><USER5> Put a JoWo #6 nib on it ($15) and it will write like a $150 pen.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious - what makes the nib "better"?

<comment><USER5> It is subjective - they feel smoother, glass-like. One factor is most cheap Chinese nibs are not cut exactly at the middle. This can be seen with a 10x+ loupe. The metal is not as hard. Different metal types have different surface tension so it affects ink flow. It works without adjustment while most Chinese nibs need adjustment, alignment and polishing (which is fun in itself to do).

The original Jinhao pen nib is quite usable, but the other parts of e.g. a x750 pen are much better, so it is a popular mod to change the nib for a German one, or a Japanese Zebra G flexible nib.

I have recently bought a Lecai Chinese pen and the nib seemed to be flawless. These guys in the right track on making a 100% Chinese upper quality pen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went through a fountain pen phase for about a year and finally gave up on it after a few notable incidents.

\- going through the airport was hit or miss. Bristol? Stuttgart? things are perfect. interstate travel in the US? id lost two pens to the TSA. My flight to calgary started perfectly, and ended after a half full fountain pen quietly burst in my jacket pocket. not fun.

\- No one seems to know what these things are anymore? signing formal documents was met with additional scrutiny from realtors and attorneys. Id had an attorney once insist I use his pen as he was convinced the liquid in the pen was not real ink.

<comment><USER8> In the US most notaries will not allow you to sign official documents with a fountain pen- it seems to be part of the training, and many realtors and attorneys are notaries for convenience. As great as they are to write with, many FP inks cannot withstand tampering, so they don't allow any FP inks because it's hard to track which of the thousands of brand/color combos are safe. A cheapo ballpoint is better for official documents- although in this era I'd trust a cryptographic signature more than a handwritten one.

<comment><USER9> I have a bottle of cellulose reactive fountain pen ink for such purposes. Also, there are mass produced tamper-proof inks. So, in fact it's possible to sign documents with an FP.

On the other side of the spectrum is "washable" blues which are waiting to disappear in a small drop of water.

<comment><USER10> I think the problem is that a notary might have trouble being convinced that your fountain pen ink is what you say it is.

<comment><USER9> Probably yes. For these stuff I always carry a Uniball elite with blue-black ink (I'm a blue-black guy), and for other documents -like office and other stuff- I use the reactive ink.

Uniball's super ink is ridiculously tamper-proof, contrary to its cheesy name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fountain pens are one of those things that probably would have died out if not for the internet, especially on the cheaper end of the market. There are today more pens and inks to choose from than at any time in history, even times when fountain pens were widely used.

<comment><USER12> I am a fountain pen enthusiast, or I should rather say "used to be". If any effect Internet has had on my fountain-penmanship or any penmanship it has resulted in drastically decreased usage. Isn't it a general phenomenon? (I've no data on it, just what I have observed around me)

So if you meant just buying, selling, collecting, swapping pens, and talking about fountain pens then it makes sense (which is what it seems you have focussed on in your comment), but if that also involved actually using them then, I would say, overall the Internet has instead done great harm to it.

<comment><USER13> I'm the same. I used to almost exclusively write with a fountain pen. Now I write everything with a keyboard. Primarily, because I realised that notebooks full of words are hard to search and fragile in a archival preservation sense. Far better to type everything, and print it all on archival paper with pigment inks (no laser printers!).

Sort of a bit sad though, to not play with pens and bottles and syringes etc. any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This articles says that inkjet ink "frequently uses pigment, not dye," but my understanding is that most inkjet inks are actually dye-based, and that you have to somewhat go out of your way to find pigment-based ones (and they cost more).

The latter are usually recommended for archival printing purposes (e.g. Epson's "Dura Brite" inks), because they are less likely to fade over time and are better bonded with the paper (and actually have particles that _can_ bond with the paper).

<comment><USER14> Which one is it that won't run when I put a coffee mug down on my notebook? Because that's the one I want.

<comment><USER15> I've had good luck with De Atramentis Document Ink. Dries very quickly, won't smear when I set my beer can^W^W coffee cup down on it. I have been using it for years, and it hasn't screwed up my pen.

I don't know if it is as safe on fine pens as the article would want, but since I use it in a $30 Lamy, I'm not too concerned.

<comment><USER5> Diamine Registrar Ink is another option. It writes blue then it fades to gray. Some Noodler's (US) inks are resistant to a wide range of solvents as well.

<comment><USER16> Rohrer und Klingner Dokumentus ink works great too, it's certified to withstand water, organic solvents, bleach, acids and the lot. It bonds with cellulose, but it won't stick to your fingers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Richard Binder is a legend in the fountain pen community, both for his skill and helpfulness in repairing and restoring pens, but also as one of the community's best curmudgeons. (Nathan, of Noodler's ink fame is another.)

I've been a big fan of Richard for years, while using exclusively Noodler's ink for its permanence. I've had no ill effects. (Twitch, twitch.)

</comment><comment><USER18> When I first got into fountain pens, Noodlers was a pretty heavily recommended ink. I wish I had seen this article ten years ago.

<comment><USER19> Richard Binder specializes in repair and maintenance of old and valuable pens. Recommendations for those pens don't necessarily apply to cheaper modern fountain pens. I've been using Noodler's inks for about 8 years in a Lamy Safari, and I've never had any trouble. The only Noodler's ink I've heard of causing problems with these pens is Bay State Blue, which is unlike any other Noodler's ink.

I personally recommend Noodler's Bulletproof Black. It writes consistently and reliably on any paper I've tried, it's waterproof, and it's reasonably priced. If you're interested in fountain pens as a hobby rather than as practical writing implements you might have different recommendations.

<comment><USER20> Same here, been using it for years in Lamy Safari, Shaeffer 100, and Noodler's own pens, as well as Preppy Platinums. Would I put it in a vintage pen? Absolutely not. Modern <$100 pen? Most definitely.

<comment><USER21> I'll go a little further. I've been using Noodler's inks, mostly Heart of Darkness (which is bulletproof), for several years. I started with a TWSBI but when I upgraded to a Pilot Vanishing Point I continued to use Noodler's without any hesitation. It's continued to serve me well, and it remains my favorite and most dependable brand of ink.

I did have one mold issue with Private Reserve in my TWSBI, and to be safe I have avoided using it in my Vanishing Point. I may be being overcautious though; I'm not sure how much to extrapolate from that one incident. My mother is an artist and has used several dozen Private Reserve inks spanning over a decade, all without any issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you like pigmented pens but don't want to use them in a fountain pen, for the reasons the author lists, consider a Pigma Micron pen: [http://kk.org/cooltools/pigma-micron-pn-pen](http://kk.org/cooltools/pigma- micron-pn-pen). They're available from Jetpens and are expensive enough to be good but not so expensive as to be terrible when lost.

<comment><USER23> I've actually got a set of these and I have to agree that they are fantastic to write with. The plastic tips have such a nice friction, well, at least to my personal taste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Dude hates Noodler's ink, but Noodler's brought back fountain pen interest. I still only use Noodler's inks, including Baystate but not the weird ones.

<comment><USER25> Isn't Baystate _the_ weird one?

<comment><USER8> It is the most ill-behaved fountain pen ink there is but it's also the most permanent (which is why Noodler's still makes it and people still buy it). You need a pretty strong bleach solution to get the staining out of anything. Water, ammonia, and other standard ink cleaners won't touch it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I use fountain pens and glass pens all the time, and have tried inks from all over the world. My favorite ink is Take-Sumi, by Pilot, from Japan.

If you're interested in fountain pens and ink, Massdrop is a good place to sample a variety of options.

<comment><USER27> Assuming you're in the US, you'll be able to find a lot of pens and ink on Amazon. If you're looking to support American retailers, try Vanness Pens, Anderson Pens, Goulet Pens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> THERE ARE DOZENS OF US ... DOZENS!!!

And there are pen shows around the world where collectors and enthusiasts come together. e.g. sf pen show in the bay area (sfpenshow.com), LA Pen show ([http://www.lainternationalpenshow.com/](http://www.lainternationalpenshow.com/)) which as been going for like 30 years, and more - many more.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think I'll stick with my beloved Bic Cristals, this looks like an incredible amount of trouble.

<comment><USER29> The guy uses a lot of vintage pens. Most modern pens are very low maintenance.

I can refill a pen in less than 30 secs if using a converter, 5 secs if I'm popping in a new cartridge. For those that want to go the disposable route, there are several options.

The guy is making it sound more involved than it is for 99% of the FP using community.

<comment><USER30> > Most modern pens are very low maintenance.

And very forgiving. I dragged out a Pelikan I hadn't used in a couple years and found it was half-full of ink, dried ink all over the nib.

Gave it a quick wipe, worked perfectly.

<comment><USER16> Amazing. I'd expect it to be clogged. Nothing a thorough rinse cannot fix, but just a quick wipe? What ink was in it?

<comment><USER30> Yeah, I couldn't believe it :) The ink's Waterman South Sea Blue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love my Parker Sonnet and Watermans. But I love my rollerball - I see no reason to deal with the mess of a fountain pen, when I get the same ink-like quality with a rollerball.

The best part is that I can replace my Waterman rollerball refills with a significantly cheaper Signo (which gives me indelible, waterproof writing) or the Pentel Energel refills (which is as close to ink as you can possibly get).

[http://www.lambdacurry.com/2017/05/cheaper-better- waterman-r...](http://www.lambdacurry.com/2017/05/cheaper-better-waterman- refill-signo/)

<comment><USER27> J. herbin makes a rollerball that you can use with FP cartridges. Standard international cartridges/converters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I use fountain pens when I can because I like the feel of writing with them and, to a limited extent the, I enjoy the ritual of caring for the instruments.

It has long bothered me that I cannot simply buy pen ink without the background information presented in this article. Because of the issue of inks damaging my pens, I've become increasingly unwilling to experiment with new brands of ink or trying sensational colors. I now limit myself strictly to inks sold by pen manufacturers (specifically, Pelikan, Waterman, and Parker), which don't pose the problems discussed in this article.

<comment><USER33> Do you get "Quink" in the US? Always the standard in the UK.

<comment><USER32> We do indeed. I use it regularly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In India kids use pencil up to 4th standard. From 5th standard onward they start using pens. Buying a fountain pen and inkpot used to be a big thing back in the day. I still remember my first fountain pen. My mother purchased it for me in 1987. It used to be sort of rite of passage. We did not have gel pens in India back the. Using ball pen was strictly forbidden. The reason given was that writing with fountain pen improves handwriting. These days kids use gel pen as their first pen. Usage of fountain pens in India is dying at least in bigger cities.

</comment><comment><USER35> My wife and I both draw with Namiki Falcon fountain pens, which are fantastic, and use Platinum Carbon Black ink, which is a pigmented ink. I don't know if it's nano-particles (i.e., the pigment is ground extremely fine so brownian motion alone is sufficient to maintain dispersion), but we've never experienced clogging, and it has a permanence (and blackness) on par with Noodler's Bulletproof Black. She uses her pen almost every day; mine can go a week or more without being used. Still works perfectly every time I pick it up.

<comment><USER20> Which weight? I had a fine for a while and it was the worst thing to use, it scratched worse than a 4H pencil... (currently using a Bock #6 titanium nib in a $20 Noodler's Konrad and the amount of flex and control is second only to a vintage gold nib).

<comment><USER35> We both have extra fine nibs, and haven't found them to be scratchy at all. I do recall a bit of a break-in period with hers, making circles on a sheet of paper for a while, to smooth it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I use a cheapo chinese brass fountain pen with an extra fine nib for scribbling in my notebooks, and I use a fancy Mont Blanc 146 with a medium-fat nib for writing cards, signing and others...

People always mention how they loved my cards/notes, just because of the handwriting. I had stopped writing for about 20 years (at the time I could barely write checks due to the lack of training!) until a friend who's also a graphic designer send me a xmas card a few years back with some fantastic calligraphy, and I was instantly hooked.

Edit: Fixed autocorrect 'fixes'

</comment><comment><USER37> I love fountain pens! I've been using them all my life and try to have my kids use them too (with some success so far).

But, so called "rocking" (or rocker) blotters are increasingly hard to find, so much so that I decided to design and produce my own. (It's a beautiful sheet of metal with a bent plastic part to hold the blotting paper).

But I wonder if there really is a market for it? Do people still use fountain pens, and of those who do, how many would buy a blotter? Anyone knows where to find that kind of information?

<comment><USER38> Fountain pen-related stuff seems to do pretty well on Massdrop.

<comment><USER39> Agreed. Massdrop actually re-ignited my fountain pen obsession after years of me trying to pretend I wasn't obsessed about them...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love fountain pens. My handwriting is way better with FP than using ball point pen. I started with camel, then pilot and then switched to Parker in my school days. After almost 8 year break I decided to get back to FP last year and bought Lamy fine charcoal pen after reading some recommendations. I didn't like it and after writing 4 pages my fingers started hurting. Is there a decent FP that anyone here can recommend ?

</comment><comment><USER41> I like fountain pens a lot, but most of the times I actually _need_ to write, I need to do so away from a desktop and fountain pens aren't ideal for these conditions (for those occasions I have the zebra 701+space pen hacked pen [e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S4bjPG5Lr4]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S4bjPG5Lr4\])).

<comment><USER42> I don't quite follow?

<comment><USER43> While fountain pens are nicer to write with, they are also more demanding than ballpoints (humidity, temperature, paper quality, writing surface, blotting etc.). Hence, for reliably being able to take notes it might be a better idea to carry a space pen (pressurized ball point) instead of a fountain pen.

However, if you can control conditions and for example write comfortably at your desk, a nice fountain pen is preferable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Unrelated to the subject matter, but I really miss websites like this.

<comment><USER45> Indeed... except, my eyes!!! The combo of font / size / spacing / coloring makes reading this site quite difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hmm, I love using fountain pens, and have been using Iroshizuku inks for years. However, none of my pens have a bladder well (mostly screw plungers) so I think I am safe ?!?

<comment><USER46> Most Iroshizukus tend to have high pH [1]. It might be problematic on e.g. celluloid pens depending on the particular ink color you use. It's a shame as they are superb inks.

I tend to use J Herbin Lie de Thé which is close to neutral and its formula is very safe (basically water plus food-grade colorants).

[1] [http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/ink_ph.htm](http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/ink_ph.htm)

<comment><USER39> Thanks for the heads up on J Herbin Lie de Thé - They seem around the same price point as the Iroshizukus, so I will see if the place I usually order from stock these and try them out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It's been years since I wrote something on a paper using rudimentary hardware, but my wife is a great fan of fountain pens and spend a great deal of time taking care of them. She writes into her notebook and calendar with series of vivid colors, it is really a joy to the eyes. She explained me in great details how the ink for the pen to write japanese was flowing differently than the ink to write roman characters. It's geeky in its own way :)

</comment><comment><USER48> I haven't written anything substantial by hand in years for one simple reason: even if I scan it, it's not searchable. Has there been any progress on handwriting recognition from images (rather than strokes)? I'd love to be able to write again like I used to 15 years ago, but I'm not prepared to give up the searchability of my notes.

</comment><comment> brian-armstrong There's a really fantastic review of fountain pen culture within Something Awful at [https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=37...](https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3705136) that makes me laugh every time. Seems appropriate here.

<comment><USER49> That page is completely unreadable to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I had similar experiences with my Noodler ink. They have a blue that is imo the nicest dark Prussian blue on the market. Unfortunately, it gave my Water Kultur, then Lamy 2000 endless clogging problems. The Pilot Ishigaki line of inks is probably the best compromise between color and reliability.

</comment><comment><USER51> I stopped using my fountain pens years ago, but my kids have picked them right back up, and thats about the best good use of them that I can imagine. Nothing like seeing a young 'un, carefully spelling out the letters in their words, oblivious to the splats and puddles on their periphery ..

</comment><comment><USER52> I use Rohrer & Klingner Verdigris Ink and am quite happy with it.

Prompted by this article I looked up its pH value, which is close to neutral with 7.98, while many other colors are more off-center.

</comment><comment><USER53> Love writing with cheap bic disposable fountain pens... any suggestions for a low-maintenance first ballpoint? Preferably relatively inexpensive

<comment><USER3> Parker (EDIT: Pilot) Metropolitan.

<comment><USER54> Pilot* Metropolitan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If you're not a caligrapher, why bother? Just buy gel pens and get the comfort with way less maintenance.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi I can write faster, for longer periods and getting less tired with a fountain pen.

When I was a student I always took notes with a fountain pen, and I was the only one in the class who could log pretty much everything that was said, and with relatively good handwriting for the speed. A lot of people photocopied my notes!

Maintenance depends on the pen. Some require frequent cleaning, but for example, I have a Platinum Century #3776 that can sit unused for a month and will still write perfectly with no fuss (it has a sealing mechanism that prevents the ink from drying). I use it with Platinum's blue-black ink, which is one of the mythical iron gall inks, but since the nib is gold and the pen is designed so that no other metal parts are in contact with the ink, it's not going to eat my pen any time soon. I think you could give that pen+cartridges combination to anyone and it will probably run for years without maintenance (although I do clean it every few months just in case).

<comment><USER12> Hey, I would be interested in knowing about pens that do not need regular service and caring especially when not used for longer periods. Could you please suggest some good resources on it (preferably not very costly, if at all) or suggest such fountain pens?

<comment><USER29> JetPens has good guides:

From this list, I can personally vouch for the Platinum Preppy and Pilot Metropolitan. Though the Preppy is a disposable, the catridges from the non- disposable Platinum pens fit it. You could could even get an eyedropper and refill the cartridge from a bottle of ink.

[https://www.jetpens.com/blog/great-beginner-fountain-pens- th...](https://www.jetpens.com/blog/great-beginner-fountain-pens-that-wont- break-the-bank/pt/862)

Most of my collection is in the under $20 range, most under $2.50 and the worst I've had is the ink had dried, which took some soaking in water for a bit to get out, but this was from letting a pen sit unused for months.

<comment><USER12> Hey, thanks.

I have a Pilot Metropolitan and it dries pretty fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> All I know is that my extra fine Pilot custom 823 beats all my other pens for flow and capacity.

</comment><comment><USER57> Pilot Varsity. Good enough, no messing with the ink.

</comment><comment><USER58> diamine is great. oxblood is one of my favorites.

</comment><comment><USER59> I use a fountain pen exclusively for all my work. I used to use a Waterman Expert[1] but someone I lent it to dropped it and destroyed the feeder. I've tried to get it repaired but it's dead and gone. These days, I use a Noodlers Ahab these days. It has a flexible nib and so I can do some amount of lettering and copperplate calligraphy when I need to (e.g. headings and for emphasis). I've tried a number of inks and I've finally settled on Private Reserve Velvet black[3]. I use other inks for calligraphy because those are with dip pens and the demands are different (specifically Winsor and Newton calligraphic ink).

The Ahab is always in my pocket along with a Rotring 3in1 Tikki[4] mostly for the pencil and for places which demand a ball point pen. I practice calligraphy and often use the Ahab to write nice thank you notes or other such short messages for people.

A sad thing I've found is that much of the paper you get today doesn't go very well with fountain pens. They're either too shiny (typical photocopy paper), too feathery (typical fancy notebook paper) or drink the ink too much. I've found a few companies whose books and papers are manageable and stick to them as much as possible.

Some of the other pens in my collection are a steel broad nibbed Sheaffer. It's a little too fluid for my tastes and I don't use it much. There's a small shop in Kozhikode (the town in Kerala, India where I'm from) who makes handmade pens[5]. It's fun to see. They have a foot powered lathe. They carve out ebonite rods and fix feeders and nibs. I have a few of these.

As someone who's very fond of handwriting (especially cursive) and calligraphy, It's heartening to see a renewed interest in this.

\--

[1] [http://www.waterman.com/en/expert/123-black-fountain-pen- gt-...](http://www.waterman.com/en/expert/123-black-fountain-pen- gt-3501170951644.html)

[2] [https://www.gouletpens.com/noodlers-ahab-flex-fountain- pen-m...](https://www.gouletpens.com/noodlers-ahab-flex-fountain-pen-medieval- lapis/p/N15027)

[3] [https://www.amazon.com/Private-Reserve-Velvet-Black- Bottle/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Private-Reserve-Velvet-Black- Bottle/dp/B0013ISL6S)

[4] [https://www.cultpens.com/i/q/RT16730/rotring- tikky-3-in-1-mu...](https://www.cultpens.com/i/q/RT16730/rotring- tikky-3-in-1-multipen)

[5] [http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/253458-some- un...](http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/253458-some-untold- stories-about-calicut-pens/)

</comment><comment><USER60> As someone who writes with his left hand I hate them with a vengeance. Haven't looked at them since primary school.

<comment><USER20> That... kind of sounds like you need to relearn how to write. Which sounds silly, but there are 100% good ways and bad ways to write (both right and left handed writers suffer from insane 'who taught you to write' hand positions). Learning how to properly hold your pen helps a lot with not smudging ink even when it's a long drying ink.

And not unimportantly, a fountain pen requires writing _without_ any pressure on the pen; the ink gets drawn out simply by there being any kind of contact at all, so if you write with a fountain pen the way you're used to writing with a ballpoint pen, or pencil, both of which require pressing into the paper, you're literally doing things wrong (and probably through no fault of your own other than not having realised there might be different ways you need to write).

<comment><USER61> The biggest problem with left-handed fountain pen writing is that unless you adopt some horribly bent-over position you're pushing the nib into the paper instead of dragging it across. That damages pens and leads to horribly scratchy writing, even if you can get over the constant smudging. It's OK though, there are plenty of other writing implements - personally I chose the keyboard.

<comment><USER20> No question, if you need efficient writing, keyboard every time. And I say that as someone who has plenty of fountain pens and 500+ inks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Man I forgot how annoying frames pages are when you try to zoom them for readability.

Double annoying when the pages inside the frames have redirects when you try to load them outside the frames. :(

</comment><comment><USER63> Could someone change this to [http://richardspens.com/ref/care/inks.htm](http://richardspens.com/ref/care/inks.htm)? The current link ([http://richardspens.com/index_m.html?page=ref/care/inks.htm](http://richardspens.com/index_m.html?page=ref/care/inks.htm)) is a "please allow us to run arbitrary malicious code on your computer" nag page.

<comment><USER64> That's a serious accusation.

If you actually look at the code it wants to run, there is nothing malicious. It is just a small amount of (clearly written, not at all obfuscated) JavaScript to do innocuous things on the page, such as help with filling out forms, convert between Roman and Arabic numerals, provide a magnifier, and similar things (not all of which are actually used on that particular page).

<comment><USER63> It isn't a accusation in the first place; permission to run javascript _at all_ includes permission to run arbitrary malicious code, and I never claimed (and don't care) whether they actually exploit that perrmission.

And none of that changes the fact that the link is to the wrong page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've used fountain pens long ago, but the Tul gel pens are my cherished replacement.</comment>


How do to an ICO if you have a startup idea? - <AUTHOR> If I have an idea and I want to raise money using ICO, what should be the roadmap? <comment><USER2> (1) Copy a coin that already exists (filecoin, etc.)

(2) Get wealthy investors.. be good at powerpoint and bullshitting.

(3) Pre-mine a bunch of your coin. Don't respond to anyone that calls you out on this.

(4) Hype the shit out of it using puppet accounts, russian botnets, instagram advertisements.. pay for publicity.

(5) Use your wealthy investors to make your coin worth X amount of BTC at launch. Cash out a large portion of your coin quickly after launch just in case, and then wait for other people to buy your coin because general investors are clueless.. if you ride that wave, cash out more over time.

(6) Open a hamburger stand or charity.. something to give back to society and to decrease boredom.

<comment><USER3> Wow I think you actually nailed it and I'm in peels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Based on recent statements and enforcement actions from the SEC, I would highly recommend _against_ considering "ICOs" as a way to "raise money".

ICOs for the purpose of raising money are likely to an investment contract under SEC rules. If your offering is an investment contract, then the transaction is considered a security and is subject to SEC requirements.

In other words, don't expect an ICO to be a simpler or easier or better way to raise money. It's not. Start by reading the SEC bulletin on Coin Initial Offerings:

[https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and- bulletins/ib_co...](https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and- bulletins/ib_coinofferings)

Not all coin offerings are necessarily securities, but if you're viewing it as a way to raise money, then it almost certainly will be. To determine whether an offering is likely to be a security, consider the Howey Test, which is a test created by the US Supreme Court for whether a transaction represents an investment (and thus may be regulated by the SEC). The test is whether:

(1) It is an investment of money (2) There is an expectation of profits from the investment (3) The investment of money is in a common enterprise (4) Any profit comes from the efforts of a promoter or third party

If you are selling coins in an ICO with the promise of profit for the coin holders; if the money will be invested in your enterprise; if the coin holders are expecting to profit based on your efforts or those of others, then the ICO is likely to be a security.

Here is one example of an investigation by the SEC into one coin offering (the DAO), where it was determined to be a security: [https://www.sec.gov/litigation/investreport/34-81207.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/investreport/34-81207.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) Talk to a lawyer, there is a chance your ICO could be considered selling securities and doing so without being licensed could get you into legal trouble[1].

[1]: [https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and- bulletins/ib_co...](https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and- bulletins/ib_coinofferings)

</comment><comment><USER6> The first question you shouldn't be asking is how to have an ICO, but why do you NEED an ICO? What's the role of tokens in your idea? Otherwise you're just buying into the hype that is blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER7> One item on the roadmap could be considering using [https://ico.indiegogo.com/](https://ico.indiegogo.com/) who have lawyers reviewing compliance and it acts as marketing channel. Like with other crowdfunding the platform helps you concentrate more on the startup itself.

</comment><comment><USER8> Try to research the list of ICO. Idea, Whitepaper, Team, Milestones, etc There are more than 1200+ ICOs [https://icomarks.com/](https://icomarks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> step 1: accumulate a lot of bitcoin step 2: use the accumulated bitcoin to prove your new ICO has a value rooted in an already established coin step 3: offer an initial price for the first however-many units of your coin step 4: get your coin popular enough to be on the exchanges eventually

Bonus points / better chances if your coin does something in a new way, or using the cryptographic puzzle solving step to do something useful like Fold Proteins.

Many ICOs are not at all rooted in BTC. Something like IOTA is backed by just under 1337 BTC.

Imagine BTC as the gold in fort knox and any new coin you want to make as a currency that needs to be backed in gold, this is my advice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Look up the Truffle Ethereum Development Framework. Take a look into the Coin creation sample and work it out from there.

</comment><comment><USER10> Don't. If the idea is soldi enough, I would suggest a RegA+ offering

</comment><comment><USER11> Also make sure that tokens have nothing to do with the performance of your company to get around regulations</comment>


Webkit: Reinstate Support for SharedWorkers - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149850 <comment><AUTHOR> Please help creating an awareness for the Webkit team that we need SharedWorkers:

Mobile: Native shell with multiple WebViews.

To be clear: they _dropped_ working on SharedWorkers on purpose and it won't happen unless smart devs like you add some weight on it.

Every(!) browser on iOS is using Webkit.</comment>


The YC Application Deadline is Now March 29 (1 day later) - <AUTHOR>

Demo Day this year is March 27, and we just realized we'll all be too tired to read a lot of applications the next day anyway, so we might as well give everyone another day to work on their application.<p>I'm changing the deadline now in the various places where it appears. <comment><USER3> What happens on the deadline. This is the first cycle that I'm submitting an application.

Do I just need to submit the application before midnight on the 29th? Still frantically trying to get a demo up of the application! I'm assuming the form gets taken down immediately after midnight.

(This reminds me of University again! Finding out the professor is ill and the paper submission date gets pushed back a day! Get well soon Paul - <USER2> ).

<comment><USER4> That college reference is funny! I have almost the opposite problem. I can't stop editing and submitting every time I think of a change I want to include or something on our project evolves. I just want the deadline to come already! Good luck with your demo!

<comment><USER5> That REsubmit button is a curse, always evolving :)

<comment><USER6> I think I've clicked that re-submit button more times than I have clicked a "like" button on Facebook!

<comment><USER5> Seriously, REsubmit is a great feature!

<comment><USER7> If the applications are read on the daily basis, what's the point of editing and REsubmitting your application?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmm.. This and the "no idea" stream opening for more people to be able to apply makes me wonder if YC is indicating a lack of applications this time around.

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. Actually I can't believe they only need one day to rest after what must have been three months of hectic work...

The "no idea" track makes total sense to me for several reasons:

1\. Many YC participants changed their idea in the course of the program, some of them multiple times. As an extreme example, the founder of Greplin started working on his final idea three days before demo day.

2\. The YC selection process has already been biased towards the team vs the idea.

3\. YC is all about experimenting. They like to try and see what happens – this is how the whole thing evolved. Based on the above two, this seems like a logical experiment.

I actually believe the "no idea" track will be a success. Though a major disadvantage is that an idea helps evaluate the quality of the team, even if they end up pivoting. But PG and the rest of the YC team are smart; they'll figure it out...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be interesting to know the distribution of submissions versus time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome, thanks guys!

</comment><comment><USER12> More time, better application.

</comment><comment><USER7> cool.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes!

</comment><comment><USER14> Great!</comment>


Amazon Surrenders in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-surrenders-in-china-2019-4 <comment><USER2> Moral of the story- if you don't have local (government, sure, but also populace) support, it doesn't matter how big you are- TaoBao, AliExpress, etc. are China-first, locally built platforms that already had a foothold _before_ Amazon showed up.

Also, business models- in my experience, Ali, and especially TaoBao are really open to drop-shipping and the like, which means that they don't need quite as many warehouses as Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> With its minimalist website design, Amazon failed to adopt to Chinese consumer tastes. It also lacks its own payment system akin to Alipay.

</comment><comment><USER4> Let's be clear, the government gives an advantage to home grown companies. Of course Amazon can not compete</comment>


V8 JavaScript Engine: jank busters part 2: Orinoco - <AUTHOR> http://v8project.blogspot.com/2016/04/jank-busters-part-two-orinoco.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> The Gmail benchmark dashboard linked from this article is best viewed in Chrome. The page won't load in Firefox, IE11, Edge, or Safari.

[https://chromeperf.appspot.com/report?sid=d56a657cd1ca3c0b04...](https://chromeperf.appspot.com/report?sid=d56a657cd1ca3c0b0435b2b37c0c731f49f987ab5454ab1ffd63b4ee1faefa62&start_rev=381139&end_rev=383898)</comment>


Ok Color. How about solving the more basic (and important) problem with photos? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sethlevine.com/wp/2011/03/ok-color-how-about-solving-the-more-basic-and-important-problem-with-photos <comment><USER2> -10 for piggybacking on the color hype

+100 for a spot on idea.

(and no it's not just dropbox for photos - it should find and deduplicate and centralise them. Plus it should be able to read the libraries of all of the major photo organisation apps - iphoto and all the others)

</comment><comment><USER3> We're doing this (but better). And we're hiring. <http://blog.getgush.com> Get in touch if you're in Canada.

</comment><comment><USER4> DropBox for photos? It's a great idea.

<comment><USER5> <http://dustin.github.com/2011/02/27/dropbox-queue.html> \-- works for me. :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this. Photography and CouchDB are two of my favourite things. I've been looking for a Flickr replacement, so I might try a similar setup to yours.

<comment><USER5> The app is pretty much a ground-up rewrite and has a ways to go vs. the previous version. It's much more awesome, though.

I've lost pictures in the past due to things that it's really hard to repeat with this version. The act of adding a photo from "share" into dropbox automatically makes the copy exist in dropbox's cloud (which is S3, I suppose) and my computers that sync with it. It's deleted from dropbox (but will stay for ~30 days) and placed into a work directory until I manually delete it by a process that places it in S3 _first_ , then my local couchdb, then replicates that couchdb off site. If I'm home (or at least, my computer is), it also replicates to my laptop immediately, otherwise I'll eventually pick up the pics.

Hopefully I'll get bored with reliability and start making new features again. :) I'd be glad to help you out if you want to try what I've got, though.

<comment><USER4> I thought about this some more over the weekend, and one thing that occurred to me is that virtually all of my photos go via Adode Lightroom. The image files don't change; instead, all of the metadata and retouch history lives in Lightroom's database. I guess users of Aperture and iPhoto are in a similar position.

Plain image files are fine on the way out of the camera (and maybe via a laptop), and on the way to the Internet (which will use low-res .jpgs with embedded metadata), but my central repository is currently Lightroom, which doesn't like opening up its database.

Lightroom can, however, talk to external photo services through a plugin system; its Flickr and Facebook exports work like this. So maybe your photo app is another of these services, as far as Lightroom is concerned.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>