Show HN: Remove backgrounds from images online - <AUTHOR> http://clippingmagic.com/ <comment><USER3> I actually wrote my honours thesis on this topic. In academia it's called Alpha Matting/Image Matting.

There's a great website <http://alphamatting.com/> that provides a benchmark dataset and a comparison of a lot of influential methods.

I applaud your work in making a real time and interactive matting algorithm! One day it might be also as accurate as state of the art methods. You guys should write a paper about your method.

<comment><USER4> (I'm one of the devs.)

Thanks for the link! Real time is a pretty big constraint, and the input for those results is a much more complete labeling than we expect (only 22 to 44 pixels around the ground truth boundary are left uncertain). But I'll definitely read the paper and hopefully we can gain some insights from it!

<comment><USER3> Have a look at KNN Matting <http://ihome.ust.hk/~dli/projects/knn/>. Their MATLAB implementation uses a similar style to yours but is not as real time. They take single mouse clicks and spread them over a much larger window/bounding box. Only takes a few clicks on foreground/background to get excellent results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really slick. I work at a newspaper where we do a lot of cutouts and I've looked at several automatic tools to save people time, and I think this is the best I have seen in terms of balancing ease of use with accuracy.

The only thing I might suggest is that for photos with softer edges, you might offer some degree of "feathering" on the edges of the cut out. I don't know how hard this is with your algorithm, but it seems like it might be an easy fix.

<comment><USER4> (I'm one of the devs.) Thanks! Yes, adding user-controlled edge blur is a great idea. So much to do, so little time.

<comment><USER6> Congrats! I had a similar idea a while ago so I really appreciate that somebody accomplished it in so high level! I already signed up and already waiting for the post alpha version :)

Did you guys consider in the future to add multiple object segmentation? That looks like a natural next step. Keep it up the good work! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is beautifully done -- great UX, truly impressive tech. My wife loves it and is using it to repurpose some shots from our wedding for e.g. Christmas cards.

<comment><USER8> Completely agree! I actually tried it out with one of our pictures [1] from my proposal in Rome. I'm just having a bit of trouble with the small tuft of her hair that's forcing the algorithm to keep some of the background. I suppose I could probably fix this by using the full resolution picture, instead of this scaled down one.

I'll be recommending this to many people!

[1] [https://www.evernote.com/shard/s130/sh/2ef070f7-252d-4e79-8e...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s130/sh/2ef070f7-252d-4e79-8ed4-7e538ad0a335/643fefc7da272ef1584cf76540238e69)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. So I went looking for an image I thought it would have a hard time with: <http://fileza.com/d/5h2wco/clippingmagic_test.png>

A pretty busy background, soft/furry edges between subject and background, less-than-obvious clear color boundaries.

The real-time feedback makes it easy to give it the markings that it needs in less than 20 seconds for a near perfect crop (or as good as one would expect with fluffy hair as a boundary). I was pleasantly surprised.

</comment><comment><USER10> Really neat. I was really itching to use CTRL+Z though.

I screwed up the first image I tried to clip. Maybe have a walkthrough of the features when the user first uses it? I didnt notice the help button until it was too late. I thought if I closed out of the editor and clicked on the image again, it would let me start over but it just takes you back to the editor. It would be nice if there was a way to redo editing the image from the start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we need to add both undo and reset/clear.

The help should have shown during the upload / init!?

<comment><USER11> For me, the help popped up for an instant but then instantly vanished. Does it only appear during upload/init? That process _can_ go quickly…

<comment><AUTHOR> We only auto-show it during that time. The hope is that it triggers you to click the button if you need it, but lets you ignore it if you already know the drill...

(all these wonderful tradeoffs between "first visit" vs "repeat visit" - <USER2> what if it was missed the first time, blabla... )

<comment><USER12> The animation was a bit too quick to make that behaviour obvious, so I just tried without it the first time. I thought it was a bug.

The second time I loaded an image, it did the same thing, and only then did I actually click Help.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, same thing for me. The action was too quick for me to notice that it was intentional. I would just leave the help window open on first time use until the user decides to close it. Very nicely done site though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Worked pretty well for me: <http://i.imgur.com/db0QOet.png>

<comment><USER14> Wow! Anyone know the stack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Image processing backend is java, website is scala + play framework ( <http://www.playframework.com/> )

<comment><USER15> RequireJS! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, yes, and some JS for the frontend... ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get "Your Browser Is Out Of Date... Terribly sorry, but your browser appears to be missing key feature(s) required to use this website: Data URL Support Please try the latest version of one of these browsers instead: Google Chrome, Firefox", however I'm using Safari 5.1: data URL support has been in Safari since 3.1 (according to <http://caniuse.com/datauri>).

<comment><USER17> I get the same message for FF 21.0 on my phone ... it's the current beta release, so I'm not sure how to run anything newer without building it myself... 😓

<comment><USER18> If you want something newer, try Aurora[0], it's the nightly build, pre-beta, of Firefox. But should work in Firefox Beta.

[0] <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/aurora/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does this compare to the gimp "Foreground Select tool"?

<http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-foreground-select.html>

<comment><USER20> Doesn't matter. Gimp is insanely hard to use. This isn't.

<comment><USER19> I guess you've never actually used gimp.

Because this is _exactly_ how the gimp tool works - you highlight the foreground, background areas and it shows you in real time what it's picking.

It's so similar to it I was wondering if it actually _IS_ it (behind the scenes).

<comment><USER21> GIMP doesn't give you a realtime boundary like this does, nor a preview image. I've done a lot of alpha matting in The GIMP and this seems far quicker to get similar results (except the up/download for me).

For quick and dirty work I'd use this for sure but revert to a desktop tool for precision work I think.

Does anyone know other Linux tools, or online for that, that do this comparatively well?

<comment><USER19> > GIMP doesn't give you a realtime boundary like this does, nor a preview > image.

Yes it does. Look at the link in my post - Figure 14.33. The dark blue area is the background that will be removed.

<comment><USER21> I use The GIMP for these sorts of things, the boundary is not realtime in the same way. As you select using the foreground or bg paint, the boundary doesn't change immediately. Instead it waits until you've finished painting, un-click and then it processes - it's a minor but significant difference in UX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is great, especially for an "alpha" (ha ha).

My wife will love this for creating transparencies (she does serigraphy).

</comment><comment><USER23> Very cool! I've seen this technique before in research papers and their videos, but not as actual software.

The one suggestion I would make is to follow Photoshop's shortcuts. Space-Drag to move the image, [ or ] to change the brush size, scroll wheel to zoom (already there), and letters to select the various brushes.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pretty neat! <http://imgur.com/p1B9Hng> But sharing the shift key as the hotkey for erase & panning made Windows's "Sticky Keys" dialog appear a couple times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Good point. We recently changed the shift key from "hold to pan" to toggle between pan / erase. Should probably change it to another key now that the operation is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Didn't work very well for hairs

<http://i.imgur.com/g16qR4J.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's right, we don't handle hair yet. See the bottom of the page.

(I'm one of the devs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems that the same tech could be reapplied to giving depth of feel to images by giving an option to unfocus the background instead of just deleting it.

Filters could also be a consideration for future (ie. popular things like black and white background with a color foreground)

</comment><comment><USER27> It's doing the weirdest thing for me, I get this[1] for the preview, but I get this[2] when I download it. Other than that it works better than I expected for non-real life stuff.

[1] <http://i5.minus.com/i49HmJ8HXW90P.png>

[2]<http://i4.minus.com/ipofptgUlIIlj.png>

closer inspection on the preview reveals this

<http://i1.minus.com/iTe6ZEeS9Xv1k.png>

It's playing nice with all the other screenshots I've thrown at it so far, though.

here's the original I guess if anyone wants to see if it happens with them too

<http://i5.minus.com/iC7VIeASPpmHi.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, yeah, that didn't work right. Thanks for pointing it out! I'll take a deeper look tomorrow. (I'm one of the devs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow! This is incredible. An interesting alternative to the iWork "instant alpha".

</comment><comment><USER29> Is anyone else getting an error?

"Network Error

We are having trouble connecting to the server. The following tasks have been unable to complete: Connecting to worker "Unable to connect to the worker." Waiting"

This is occurring after I drag and drop an image

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, that's me being slow scaling out the backend. I've added a couple more boxes. (Haven't added auto-scaling yet)

<comment><USER30> I first thought that there is still the same problem but then I saw that the web socket worker is using 9006. Our company network is blocking unusual ports. Any chance to move that to 80, 443 or 8080?

[http://ec2-23-20-184-45.compute-1.amazonaws.com:9006/api/web...](http://ec2-23-20-184-45.compute-1.amazonaws.com:9006/api/websocket?imageId=7542&secret=..).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Miraculous. Took me 15 seconds to remove this picture of my lovebird from a pretty busy background: [http://clippingmagic.com/images/10765/f5ddd90ec956d482174e7e...](http://clippingmagic.com/images/10765/f5ddd90ec956d482174e7e9616c00b0ba64e42a924683d6abfa2d9093bce2beb)

I thought it'd have trouble since the bird is constantly changing colors but with just a scribble and a circle it figured it out.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is seriously great and very intuitive to use. Two small improvements : it would be great to be able to change brushes (at least size). The workaround is zoom/draw/unzoom which is a bit awkward. The second thing is to add an example on the landing page. I didn't take the time to try it on a picture of mine until I read the comments (and saw screenshots) here. HTH, keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER33> Also available, and newly made free: <http://www.bonanza.com/background_burns>

Pros: Doesn't require the fg/bg coloring step needed here, just figures out your FG without intervention. Cons: Have to register for an account to access it currently, but can use FB or Google to register

</comment><comment><USER34> Thats cool, but still it needs a lot of work/features. I tried removing the background using the purse picture in the pictorial, and it wasn't as easy as it was made out to be and I wasn't able to achieve the same results. Maybe I'm missing something, but the fixed brush size makes it pretty useless at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, one of our usability headaches is that people draw OUTSIDE of the lines - any pixel marked green WILL BE IN THE RESULT.

Now, that's not how people actually use it at first - they "just scribble" (which our example might exacerbate), and then accidentally go outside the actual lines => not good.

Will need to figure out a way to make that more clear.

<comment><USER35> I copied the marks in the example and besides needing to tell it to include the cream color under the strap, it worked exactly as shown on the homepage, so maybe just add that extra red there in the example.

Unfortunately it is freezing up on me using an image with a gradient at about 90% of the initialization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we're getting some null pointers in the worker. Not entirely clear why that's happening (it of course wasn't happening an hour ago...).

I think I stuck a race condition in there somewhere and it's getting exposed for the first time.

Please try uploading the image again :-/

<comment><USER36> Could be related to the image color profile. Noticed the same issue when I uploaded a jpeg image with a CMYK color profile, with RGB images it worked normally. I've had the same trouble when using Java's ImageIO to read images. There were some workarounds, but I didn't find a robust one. Ended up using a preprocessor to normalize images before reading them with Java. Would love to know if someone knows a better solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Really found this quick and useful. Easy to achieve what I often have to agonize with in Gimp or Photoshop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I will use this every week. Might be the best "Show HN" yet.

Great domain name too, especially how hard that is these days.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Really nice. First time I tried it I carefully shaded the red and green areas and it worked ok. After looking through the comments here though I clicked green once on the part I wanted to save and then 3-5 red clicks in other areas and it worked flawlessly. Great job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we need to figure out a way to get people to do the first time what you did the second time...

<comment> k-mcgrady I worked it out after seeing this comment[1]. A screenshot like that placed close to the file upload box may help.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5683162>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting, but shadows, brown and blacks, tend to trip it up. Was playing with a photo of my car that is really difficult to break out because the rear bumper is pretty dark in shadow and blends to the driveway.

Does work well in high contrast shots.

</comment><comment><USER40> Works much better than I expected it to, so props. Brush size could be smaller though.

<comment><USER4> You can make the brush size smaller by zooming in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I tried hitting it with a toughie (monochromatic, low res, lots of subtle shadows), performed amazingly well: <http://i.imgur.com/mW58VC2.jpg?1>

</comment><comment><USER42> I've been trying to use the demo for the last... 30 minutes or so, but after I upload the image the "Initializing" progress bar in the "Booting" window always freezes around 90%.

<comment><AUTHOR> We probably have a bug. Please try another browser and hopefully I can nail that issue soon. (I'm one of the devs)

<comment><USER42> I was using Chrome Version 26.0.1410.65 on Mac OS X 10.7.5.

Opera 12.15 is apparently not compatible since it lacks data URLs.

Safari Version 6.0 (7536.25) freezes at the same place.

Firefox 20.0 gives me an error in a dialog box saying that it's "unable to connect to worker."

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm. That's not ideal. I added some more servers, so hopefully it can at least connect to the worker now. Sounds like I have some JavaScript debugging to do. (I'm one of the devs)

<comment><USER42> I just gave it another shot with the same results in all browsers.

Edit: I'm in Japan and going through a http proxy, if that makes a difference.

<comment><USER43> May do. I think it uses websockets and they are a little temperamental over proxies.

<comment><USER30> I already wrote that a little further down in my other comment. The web sockets are using port 9006. Maybe this is an issue on certain networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This works way better than I had expected. Very well executed!

</comment><comment><USER45> Really nice work! I tried a fairly complicated image and it worked quite well.

Couple bugs: 1) Chrome on Win8 consistently gives me the Network Error dialog when trying to upload 2) Was able to get it working fine on IE10, but sometimes the background still shows up in the preview, even though it is erased correctly in the download. <http://i.imgur.com/fSB4n4r.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER46> We all know these things never work as well as the demos. Well... this worked as well as the demo. Better, actually--I was literally finished before I knew it because I didn't see the real-time update on the right at first. A deceptively simple UI and beautifully implemented. Useful, well conceived--I'm quite impressed.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is really nice, it would be cool to add a rotate button - the image I picked at random to upload I think was rotated via EXIF.

Also, it'd be really cool to have a "simplify lines" type feature, I was using a fairly dark photo and the lines were a bit jagged - but generally the foreground item will have smooth edges.

<comment><USER48> Yeah. The same things happened to me with an iPhone picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Adding a "step-back" button (even if it was only a few states), and the ability to increase or decrease brush size would greatly enhance this. Great start though, and something like this is much needed for a lot of people who may not know an image editor, or don't want to open it for something simple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Undo is sorely needed.

Just deployed a smaller brush size (30px instead of 40px when zoomed out).

It should get picked up when you reload the page (though default asset caching might hold it for another hour. Well, well)

<comment><USER49> Otherwise, this is a killer job :) Keep up this awesome project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Tried removing a background from a stock car photo. It involved quite a bit of precise mouse wiggling and the end result was still pretty sloppy looking. I assume there are cases where this works well, but it would probably help clarifying what those are before inviting people to try the tool out.

<comment><AUTHOR> See the bottom of the page (yes, it could be more clear): you need good edges in the image. Ideally also good chromatic separation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> That's a very neat solution! Really like the UX too. A long time ago I had a crack at it because I was working on an app that requires image background removal.

In the end I settle for a hybrid like this <https://gist.github.com/mvsantos/5554663>

</comment><comment><USER52> Great work! Fast and easy to use. Just curious why more and more projects dont support opera =(

<comment><USER53> You have Chrome, Firefox, and even Safari. What compels you to use Opera over any of those?

<comment><USER54> Bookmark manager, speed, GUI configurability. It's pretty much the difference between a yacht and a tricycle.

I won't even let Chrome on my sytem directly (i.e. outside of a VM), because I'm tired of it downloading updates with some super needy background service, keeping 100s of megabytes around for no good reason, and no way to turn it off. At least Mozilla products ask. For that reason alone Opera and Firefox play in an entirely different league than Chrome or Safari. Fuck features, let me see your heart... Firefox I use and love, it's just not my main browser because only Opera has bookmark management worth calling that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I got a bunch of "Failed to get a worker assigned: undefined" for a bit, but once that stopped happening and I figured out the zoom, it was very impressive: <http://i.imgur.com/WT4bH5M.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow! That's amazingly easy for good-enough results. With some general UI slickening up (good suggestions in this thread), this could save a lot of people a lot of time. How have Adobe not wrapped this into Photoshop yet?

</comment><comment><USER57> Works well. [http://clippingmagic.com/images/15861/a22417d1c2cc94b5d0efb8...](http://clippingmagic.com/images/15861/a22417d1c2cc94b5d0efb8def7d45e89b687566e292271c69d65f97addfae78f)

</comment><comment><USER58> Another vote for space-to-drag. Though, I guess us photoshoppers probably will continue to use photoshop for this sort of thing so our muscle-memory shortcuts might not be so important :-D

</comment><comment><USER59> Very cool. The red and green suck for us color blind folks, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Ooops. Sorry! Will have to think a little about that one. I guess there's a reason it's team red vs team blue...

(I'm one of the devs)

<comment><USER59> Thanks! Colors aren't a good way to portray information accessibly.

I just helped dto implement color blind support in his game 2x0ng[0][1] and we settled on the solid colors being hashed[2] to allow people with all forms of color blindness access the game.

[0] <https://github.com/dto/2x0ng> [1] <http://blocky.io/2x0ng.html> [2] <http://imgur.com/a/098zC>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Pretty Awesome. Would be good if you could choose a smaller brush.

<comment><USER4> You can get a smaller brush by zooming in using the mouse wheel. That way the brush is always an appropriate size (small when you are zoomed in for detail work, and large when you are zoomed out for the broad strokes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Worked really well for me. One issue though: after doing a few of these and returning the main page, my uploaded images look broken. Anyway, great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, sometimes the thumbnailing doesn't quite succeed (that's all done client side). Somewhat unclear why. Still some debugging to do...

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> It claims my browser (Firefox 20.0.1) is out of date :(

</comment><comment><USER63> A beautiful piece of work. I'll use it again and again. Any roughness in the resulting image can be fixed in a couple of minutes in Photoshop.

</comment><comment><USER64> This seems very similar to the "Magic Wand Tool" in Photoshop. It's nice that it's free online, but it doesn't seem to produce better results.

<comment><USER65> Eh, maybe you don't use Photoshop much but this barely similar to the Magic Wand in any way other than selecting a part of an image. Magic Wand doesn't give you a nice live preview of the alpha channel for starters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's pretty tough to use, but it's not bad: <http://imgur.com/QvZjAfU>

</comment><comment><USER67> Would be good to be able to give an image link, and not just upload from the computer. Really sweet tool though

</comment><comment><USER68> This is kickass... is the whole thing happening in JS or server side? Any idea what algorithms are being used?

</comment><comment> peter-fogg Any chance of source code, or at least a detailed post explaining the algorithms behind this?

</comment><comment><USER69> Scala & Play Framework :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, they're pretty sweet ;)

<comment><USER70> You should consider doing a write up on the tech stack you used!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> You need to add this as a photoshop plugin STAT and sell it on your website.

</comment><comment><USER72> P.S. Reddit will like this.

</comment><comment><USER73> Wow. This is so fast and so slick, and works very well. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER74> intensely cool. very useful for re-purposing icons whose backgrounds would otherwise clash with a website's color theme.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it actually works really well on vector art. If you're into that sort of thing, check out the sick bg color removal and alpha channel "recovery" by zooming way in on the boundaries.

(I'm one of the devs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Why don't you contribute to GIMP instead?

<comment><USER76> GIMP already has a feature like this: <http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool- foreground-select.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> lazy people like me are now a step closer to having good photo editing skills.

</comment><comment><USER78> this is really awesome! undo/redo and "start over" would be very helpful.

<comment><USER79> I agree, definitely needs these buttons. Works amazingly well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Works really really well!

</comment><comment><USER81> Works great!

</comment><comment><USER82> does it use GraphCuts?

<comment><USER15> Like the interface! :)

There are many ways to solve such a problem. Another one beside GrabCub would be e.g. Watershed.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrabCut>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watershed_%28image_processing%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watershed_%28image_processing%29)

So many variations available via e.g. OpenCV.

<comment><USER4> (I'm one of the devs.)

Regarding the segmentation phase, we were not satisfied with any existing algorithms because we wanted the tool to be as real-time as possible (for up to 4 megapixel images), so we rolled our own segmentation algorithm that has some similarities to GrabCuts (not GraphCuts).

But the binary segmentation is really only a small part of the technical challenge. You also need to figure out how to anti-alias the boundary, and remove the background halo. Simply feathering doesn't do the job unless you also erode the foreground first, which we wanted to avoid. So we developed a custom sub-pixel background-removal and anti-aliasing algorithm.

<comment><USER15> I think you guys did a great job. This is a very tough problem (speaking from experience) particularly depending on the complexity of the image. One problem we had to solve along the way for our startup is similar, but focused only on fashion related images. Quite tricky particularly if you want something automatic. Anyway cheers! :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Very cool. Stalled each time for me at the "initializing" phase when using Safari 6.0.1 (OS X 10.8.2), but worked like a charm in Chrome.</comment>


What I've learned after half a year of working remote - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.panoramaed.com/what-ive-learned-after-half-a-year-of-working-remote/ <comment><USER2> I've been working from home for the last 12 months. There was a very nice tweet about it [1] :

STAGES OF WORKING FROM HOME

\- Yay I get to work from home

\- It would be nice to talk to people

\- I hope that pigeon sits in the window today

1 : [https://twitter.com/MarkAgee/status/620990471720992768](https://twitter.com/MarkAgee/status/620990471720992768)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isolation was the biggest problem for me switching to remote work. Even if I'm working on something that requires me to be head-down on it, I'm pretty extroverted and like at least having people around me. I started going to a coffee shop with noise cancelling headphones from 9a-12p just to have a structured (and humanized) start to my day. Slack helps with keeping up your visibility among the team.

<comment><USER4> it's repeatedly surprising to me how many people equate "remote work" to "work at home". leave your house. go to the cafe. go to the library. go to the bar. the only requirement I see for a productive workspace is a flat surface on which to place your laptop, and maybe some holes in the wall if your battery isn't up to snuff.

sitting at home by yourself all day is a great recipe for depression, I think.</comment></comment>


Nokia FM Transmitter? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
First, sorry for my english :)
I have a Nokia n72 and i want Fm Transmitter for nokia
Can you help me:) <comment><USER2> try <http://s.dealextreme.com/search/nokia+fm+transmitter>

/F</comment>


80% of my Asian friends took this extra math class as kids: any other ideas? - <AUTHOR> http://www.lunchboxmoms.com/boston/rd-1368/kumon---andover.html <comment><USER2> Kumon is not too bad. (Disclaimer: my sister-in-law in Taiwan used to be a Kumon teacher there, back before when I had children.) Some of the stronger students in the supplemental math program I teach are Kumon alumni.

But there are plenty of other good math programs. I use ALEKS regularly for all of my children,

<http://www.aleks.com/>

there is also EPGY,

<http://epgy.stanford.edu/>

and especially there is Art of Problem Solving,

<http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/index.php>?

with its vibrant online community and very challenging online courses.

And of course Khan Academy

<http://www.khanacademy.org/>

is free to users (supported by foundations) and still developing. And there are local math circle programs

<http://www.mathcircles.org/>

and supplemental class programs like mine.

So Kumon is good, and perhaps helpful for your family, but it is not strictly necessary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Presumably Khan Academy is a major alternative these days...

</comment><comment><USER4> Aops is the best</comment>


InBed.me - cleverest startup name in a while - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/15/8102/

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. (1) Why can't HostelWorld do this? (2) Why do they need to? HostelWorld as it was in 2009 was great when I spent a month backpacking in Europe. This app sounds like it'll creep out some people (= attractive women). I got along just fine, you know, actually 'talking' to the people in the various hostels and making plans together. Pub crawls were also a great way to meet people and quickly form friendships. In fact the very idea of using a machine to socialize when you're off adventuring seems very weird to me. My iPhone was used solely to place last minute bookings and to do research (carrying around books is a pain in the ass).

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok, I wathed the 'how it works' video'. That's how I see it: pre-stalking future hostel guests for creepers - guys who will select the hostel where there are the hot chicks.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article is interesting but I don't understand why the subject title was changed here and why inbed.me is such a clever name? Maybe there's something I don't see not being English nativespeaker?

<comment><USER5> Don't worry, it doesn't exactly ring any bells for us Englishmen either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Traveling is inherently social_

It's exactly the opposite for me.

<comment><USER4> I totally understand your vision of travel. Socialization is not inherent in traveling, you can discover wonderful places without wanting to talk to complete strangers, especially other people traveling like you.</comment></comment>


Cloudmacs: access your Emacs in browser - <AUTHOR> https://beepb00p.xyz/cloudmacs.html <comment><USER2> "The authors intended redisplay to be used on text terminals over slow links. Emacs, to this day, has code that activates if it thinks you're running on a connection slower than 2600 baud." [https://m.facebook.com/notes/daniel- colascione/buttery-smoot...](https://m.facebook.com/notes/daniel- colascione/buttery-smooth-emacs/10155313440066102)

I feel like a grumpy fossil for asking this, but if your problem is "Sometimes you have to use non-personal computers where it's not possible/undesirable to install desktop Emacs," why not run emacs the way it has been run in exactly those sorts of situations for almost 50 years? Remotely, via shell?

Is the hat trick here that by stuffing emacs into a docker container and accessing it over the web you can consume like 10,000 times the energy and resources of just running it over ssh in a terminal window as God intended ?

Sorry sorry that was a rude question. Now please get off my lawn.

(Honestly though I ran emacs for 5+ years entirely on an overtaxed Sun workstation shared with dozens if not hundreds of other students, over ssh, and it was fine! I believe I even had color working. I began at 14.4kbps and went from there. I saw the machine once, maybe twice.)

<comment><USER3> > why not run emacs the way it has been run in exactly those sorts of > situations for almost 50 years? Remotely, via shell?

You know what? This project is doing exactly that; using Emacs remotely, via a terminal (not a shell BTW, shell is just a name for some specific language's interpreter, that is good at launching sub processes).

It's using the gotty[0] library, which is an implementation of the tty[1] in the browser.

It's a natural extension; ttys have been ported for a few decades, starting from teleprinters[2] to text terminals[3] and terminal emulators[4].

[0] [https://github.com/yudai/gotty](https://github.com/yudai/gotty)

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

[2] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter)

[3] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_terminal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_terminal)

[4] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_emulator](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_emulator)

<comment><USER4> But the migration from teleprinters to text terminals to terminal emulators was in one direction. I think the comment's point is terminal emulator to terminal emulator embedded in a web browser is a regression.

<comment><USER5> If you squint hard enough, the browser is just a different location for the same old crufty TTY subsystem that normally lives in-kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this seems to be using gotty [1] to run spacemacs and serve it up as a web app.

[1]: [https://github.com/yudai/gotty](https://github.com/yudai/gotty)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, should have summarized in a comment, thanks! I've got a 'how does it work section' in readme: [https://github.com/karlicoss/cloudmacs#how-does-it- work](https://github.com/karlicoss/cloudmacs#how-does-it-work)

\- Gotty is a tool that allows accessing any TTY app as a web page (also allows forwarding input)

\- We use Gotty to run emacsclient --tty -a '' command, that connects to the existing Emacs instance or starts a new one. That makes the session persist tab closing, connection problems etc.

\- Your Emacs configs and files you want to expose to Cloudmacs are mapped in docker-compose.yml file.

Rest of the setup is basically dirty business of setting up Docker container, permissions etc.

<comment><USER7> Do you know how gotty compares to shellinabox? I use the latter when I cannot use SSH.

There is WeTTY, too, that is based on xterm.js, which seems interesting. This one is listed in the readme of Gotty.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did some googling and couldn't find any clear differences, so just settled on gotty. If anyone knows, I'd be happy to add it to readme!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With Termux I run spacemacs on my phone and oculus go and quest, but this is neat as well. Now I could theoretically use emacs in Firefox Reality where I have all my other apps handy.

<comment><USER9> I would love to read or watch about how you use all that!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, would be interested to know as well! I can somewhat comfortably use vim via termux, but emacs seems too much in terms of keybindings. Unless you connect external keyboard?

<comment><USER8> Bluetooth keyboard of course, can't really use vim or spacemacs without it. In Termux I install curl and all the prerequisites for a spacemacs install. Oculus TV can be made to use Android apps like Termux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Q: a) can emacs be "emscripted"? b) could one access emacs using the web browser built into emacs?

<comment><USER11> No - it doesn't run js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a bit old and abandoned, by ymacs is another approach:

[http://www.ymacs.org/](http://www.ymacs.org/)

<comment><USER13> Cloudmacs seems favorable since it's not a rewrite but use of the existing infrastructure, which means all emacs packages are available to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this work with numerous Emacs keybindings which surely conflict with browser shortcuts? If you press Ctrl-N in the Cloudmacs, will your cursor move one line down or will the browser open a new window?

<comment><USER15> Chrome has an app mode. From memory, the steps are roughly

1\. Press the three dots to the right of the url. 2\. Click more tools on the drop down menu. 3\. Finally "create shortcut".

This should let you open that website in a mode where it hijacks relatively few keyboard shortcuts, so that `C-N`, `C-W`, etc, work. I don't think it gets all of them though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can this run graphical version of emacs or just terminal? Any support for Kui? ([https://medium.com/the-graphical-terminal/visualizing-ci- cd-...](https://medium.com/the-graphical-terminal/visualizing-ci-cd-in-a- terminal-cf49c4d211cb))

Would like to be able use latex-preview in something like this.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I suppose the GUI analog to gotty is Apache Guacamole, which should run emacs fine (along with most anything else).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this better than using emacs over SSH?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have access to ssh client and can connect to your server, then not really.

Could however be better from security perspective if you don't want to expose a shell and the whole filesystem to potentially untrusted computers.

<comment><USER18> Based on [1] it looks like you could gain root within the docker container. From there, you need a bit of luck to get root on the host [2].

[1] [https://github.com/karlicoss/cloudmacs/blob/master/asEnvUser](https://github.com/karlicoss/cloudmacs/blob/master/asEnvUser) [2] [https://security.stackexchange.com/a/153016](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/153016)

<comment><AUTHOR> Within the Docker container, everything runs as root by default, since container can't know your UID in advance. Main reason for this script is to make sure mounted files are not written back as root.

Although a section explaining how to build container that runs as non-root user in the first place (even though it requires modifying Dockerfile, I think) would be useful, so I'll add it, thanks!

Yep, potential kernel/Docker bugs would let you escape the sandbox, but I guess that's the risk I'm accepting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone done an Emacs compile to WASM, like someone did for Vim? [https://rhysd.github.io/vim.wasm/](https://rhysd.github.io/vim.wasm/)

</comment><comment><USER20> emacs in browser, so you can use your emacs in browser while using your browser in emacs</comment>


Intel 8080 CPU emulator (written in HTML5 and JS) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tramm.li/i8080/

<comment><USER2> Bellard's jslinux does steal the thunder from this, but one interesting twist on this is that you can persist storage in your local browser database and do drag and drop tape mounting.

Now that full-system emulation has been shown to be feasible and performant in javascript, it's like the four minute mile has been broken and it will be interesting to see the hundreds of variations and practical uses of these techniques that will result.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could this one boot CP/M or MS-DOS?

<comment><USER4> There wasn't any MS-DOS running on 8080. If it emulates the Z80 and a couple of other things, it could run MSX-DOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> had that x86 emulator that could boot linux a few days ago.

<comment><USER6> Who cares? This is still an awesome bit of code.

But, if you really want to go there, based on the dates listed on <http://www.tramm.li/iWiki/FrontPage.html>, this was done a few months prior to Bellard's x86 emulator :)</comment></comment>


The Ultimate Airfare Hacking Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.nomadicmatt.com/travel-blogs/the-ultimate-travel-hacking-guide/ <comment><USER2> This is a pretty simple and cursory overview - hardly "ultimate".

Also, having seen some actual creative bookings (not full-on penetrations, either), calling this "hacking" is a stretch too. Google things like "fuel dumping" to start learning about actual airfare hacks.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, and it's a little strange to mention using airline miles to reduce your costs, but then fly Astraeus which doesn't award miles. There are lots of better ways to "hack" your travel than spending time on the sites he listed.

<comment><USER4> I suddenly have an interest in this, since I'll be travelling quite a bit (Amsterdam-Vienna). Do you have any hints? I've had trouble finding anything that actually saves money.

To add at least a little value: matrix.itasoftware.com has found trips (e.g. Amsterdam-Tallinn) for me that the local (Dutch) travel sites didn't. I was pleasantly surprised by this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The information about AA is not quite true. No status gives you automatic upgrades. Having Platinum status gets you the ability to upgrade domestic flights with "stickers" (which you earn by flying and can buy), but it's all space-available. You won't know if you're in first class perhaps until everyone has boarded and they are closing the gate. You get no official upgrades on international flights except the cash + miles upgrade. If you get the next status up (100,000 miles required), then you start getting the real benefits. You get unlimited free domestic upgrades (space-available, of course), and you get 8 systemwide upgrades that you can apply to any ticket to upgrade to the next class of service for free (space-available). It's nice if you buy a cheap business class ticket ($1000 half-round trip to London, for example) and upgrade to first class. (But of course, business and first on American are not nearly as nice as business and first on Cathay or BA, and your AA status gets you nothing there.)

Anyway, if you want to go the elite status route, you can't be a price comparer. You have to value the benefits you'll get with your status over saving $100 on your next flight. Because 33,000 miles on United, 33,000 miles on Delta, and 33,000 miles on American gets you pretty much nothing. But 100,000 on one of those gets you quite a lot. (I personally lean towards the Oneworld airlines because AA chose good partners. Even if you are flying on AA, you can still use BA's lounge. And they are very nice. Cathay's lounge in Hong Kong is also amazing. Shower rooms, nap rooms, etc. Great way to kill a layover after a 15 hour overnight flight :)

</comment><comment><USER6> > _"On our example, this doesn't work because we are going from the United > States to England and the English Pound is worth more than the US dollar. > Additionally, the Iceland Krona is not worth less than a dollar. However, if > we were going the reverse way, this would work."_

Not quite. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage>

I think the way you are looking at it could cost you a bit of money if you are not careful.</comment>


What it's like to pursue a dream for 30 years and fail - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/bionic-boot/ <comment><USER2> I read the article with fascination, and googled his name to get a website with some media upon which I found a link to a page with a non-clickable link to this video (likely the same as has been featured earlier):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7ClbhLNOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD7ClbhLNOc)

As a fellow passionate creator, it pains me to see a video production like this. Having never seen this product before, I'd argue what interests most people first and foremost is seeing the product in action, and what's possible with them (which wouldn't be possible without).

It takes 18 seconds until the video actually shows them being used while worn. 25, if you want to see them running in real-time. The first time you actually get a sense of how they compare to anything else (bikes / cars) isn't until one minute and 16 seconds into the video. It boggles my mind. I understand that not everyone can be a video da vinci, but this video could be 1000 times better in so many ways.

It's literally the ideal product for a click-baity - WE OUTRUN A CAR/BIKE/OLYMPIC MEDAL WINNER - type video. Sure, have a little bit of a lead in, but then show him squaring off against 3 other commonly known modes of transportation etc. etc.

And don't even get me started on that constant heart-beat and increasingly present jet 'woosh' noise O_O.

<comment><USER3> I had to turn the volume to its minimum, this woosh noise is borderline painful.

You are spot on, most of the video shows somebody running alone. It is uninteresting, just having shiny boots does not make such a clip attention grabbing..

<comment><USER4> Someone running alone on various types of terrain and various levels underbrush. This is fairly important, and very interesting.

<comment><USER5> It shouldn't be the start of the video, though. Right after showing how cool they are, is when you show utility (you can run in the woods as well!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really surprised that the article doesn't mention PowerSkips (aka powerbocks or jumping stilts), the remarkably similar product which were invented around 1999 and featured in the 2008 Olympic closing ceremony.

They're pretty common, with several manufacturers making them to this day under different brands. Several of my friends own a pair.

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

To be fair, jumping stilts don't use quite the same mechanism as Bionic Boots, but the results are almost identical.

There was clearly a market for this invention - and somebody else actually filled that market very successfully.

<comment><USER7> I've always wondered what the efficiency of movement is on these things, specifically WRT fatigue of the user/rider... in that I have often wondered by soldiers arent equipped with things like this.

Would walking around on patrol in a place like Afghanistan be more or less better if you were wearing these.

Can they be added to the bottom of the exoskeleton legs which allow relief from part of the weight of a pack - but then adding faster movement when wearing the exo-legs+pack?

<comment><USER6> From this article: [https://newatlas.com/powerbocking/12337/](https://newatlas.com/powerbocking/12337/)

it looks like jumping stilts allow you to deliver a lot more energy in a short period - for instance, running up to 25mph, or jumping over cars - but you pay for that with significantly increased calorie burn and the use of many more muscles.

So, probably really not what you want for endurance activities such as foot patrol.

In addition, the springs in them need to be calibrated for the weight they're supporting, and they top out around 240lb / 110kg. So you'd need extra heavy duty ones for soldiers with packs, and then you couldn't use those once the packs had been removed.

Maybe if you had a situation where you needed a couple of soldiers to dump their packs, don a pair of these that they'd been carrying, and run somewhere _really fast_ ... ;)

In related news, the Russian Army investigated gasoline-powered 'rocket boots' for soldiers. Because of course they did. Sadly they didn't work out too well.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/worldbusiness/17gazshoes.html)

"One result of the Russian space agency testing was a calculation that the energy in calories used to move the two-pound boot at a run would exceed the energy input from the gasoline engine. That meant, it was more tiring to run with the motorized footwear than without it, undermining the original rationale. Only if the weight could be reduced to below 2 pounds per boot would the wearer have a net energy gain. So far they have failed at this."

Also,

" 'The worst situation is when the spark fires as the runner just lands, and the force of the blast is absorbed by his body,' Mr. Garipov explains flatly."

Maybe not the best idea. (Although I reckon if you outfitted them with modern electronic ignition and a sensor to ensure that they'd bottomed out and begun recoiling before ignition, you could do a lot better...)

<comment><USER8> I've seen robots use brushless motors as replacements for springs, but with an adjustable spring constant. I wonder whether motorized jumping stilts would be practical. The motors could also add some power to your jumps.

<comment><USER7> Does the motor add force, or absorb force to regenerative-braking-->energy?

A fly-wheel-compression system on a brushless alternator would be an interesting addition to a spring-ish based stilt-prosthetic. Let it pump an alternator in the unit to create power for all the gear over time/distance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like he was too focused on inventing and forgot the production/sales aspect. He literally had the product and had thousands of people emailing him directly ready to buy! And he still complains that he couldn't sell.

He should have realized his personal shortcomings and partnered with someone who had the qualities he lacked.

<comment><USER10> I don't know. There's many people that do practically nothing in that regard and become mega hits overnight. Happens all the time in software. How many sales people were marketing facebook back in the day?

<comment><USER11> You can become rich with 0 work. The harder you work, the more preparation you do, the more you minimize the luck factor.

<comment><USER12> "The more I practice, the luckier I get" used to be a common .sig quote.

[https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "More egregiously, a Chinese firm nicked Seymour's design, mass-produced the product, and sold it under the "Bionic Boot" name on Amazon."

This is the most important line to me. I've heard so many horror stories along these lines.

Yet, does anyone here know why companies like Sarah Blakely's Spanx didn't suffer the same fate? Spanx is now a billion dollar company that launched with an easily clonable product.

She talks about how she filed a patent on her idea on her own with no lawyer and that was the only explanation. I don't think she had a lot of money to fight cases.

[https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mos- ep...](https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mos-episode- transcript_-sara-blakely.pdf)

<comment><USER14> > does anyone here know why companies like Sarah Blakely's Spanx didn't suffer > the same fate?

Spanx succeeded because they built a brand around convincing a wide swath of the population that their life would be better if they wore a fancy girdle. Their success was because of sales excellence and a smart customer engagement campaign, not proprietary tech.

<comment><USER13> Presumably you're making the case that they grew quickly enough that by the time any competitors were aware of the potential of product they did have the money to fight infringement.

Even still, in the early days of their marketing campaign it would have been so easy for a foreign competitor to swoop in and make the same thing. I didn't get the vibe that they grew that quickly, and I do get the vibe that there are foreign manufacturers on the hunt for ideas to copy.

<comment><USER14> I really don't think it's a question of proprietary IP, infringement risks, etc. It's not complicated technology. Spanx succeeded because they created a brand that massively expanded the market for slimming compression undergarments; they were especially effective in marketing to men.

<comment><USER15> Yes absolutely this imo. I worked at Saks Fifth Avenue around the time Spanx we're taking off. It was absolutely about the "lifestyle" and the brand. There might have been competitor and there might have been knockoffs, but they were just that: not Spanx. And that was very important.

I remember one of the top sales girls joking with her clients constantly after Christmas one year about how she'd had too much to drink at the Christmas party and she'd fallen and rolled or something and "next thing I knew my Spanx were hanging out". And they'd all laugh uproariously as they held several pairs to buy.

It's this magical sweet spot where they were just expensive enough to be special and "the real deal". Competition didn't matter. Price didn't matter. Spanx mattered. I found it insanely interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article tells about Seymour's many failed attempts to get investors onboard, but nothing - not one word - about the inventor selling prototypes himself.

Yes, producing 100K units will require serious capital. But producing a few units and test-marketing them on Amazon should be well within reach.

There are so many ways to do this. For example, how about starting with a signature edition, produced as a series of 10 units. The guy's had crazy media attention. There are people who know about him and who might be willing to buy a first-run as a collector play or simply to fund a man with relentless drive.

I suspect the investors and other companies he's pitching to see this and _that 's_ why they refuse to invest. They don't believe Seymour is the man to bring the idea to market.

And they may be right.

Seymour can solve this problem by:

1\. switching focus to marketing;

2\. bringing on an associate who is focused on marketing.

<comment><USER17> Why marketing? According to the article, he already had the orders coming in via email, that's enough publicity to start.

Some others here said it already, but he could have just accepted the orders, start manufacturing a small batch and sell them. Why was that impossible to do? The article is completely lacking that detail. Why the focus on getting an investor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was lucky enough to meet Keahi at a World's Fair Nano in SF a few years ago and chat with him a bit afterwards as well. He's a really smart guy, and his boots are awesome, but I have to echo a few other commenters here: he seemed too focused on the design and engineering and didn't seem to know how to execute past that. In particular, it seemed to me that the boots themselves weren't ready for production. They worked exceptionally well, but they were hand-made, and it was clear that they weren't designed to be made in a factory setting.

Hardware is a slow business by its nature, especially when coming into it from the inventor/designer side. But at some point the lean startup is right. "Fail Fast" has one concept at its core: win or lose, you have to execute. Keahi actually went out and built his design (which is more than many hardware inventors can say). But the next step in the execution of a consumer hardware business has to be building enough of your product to sell to customers, and that's a different skill set.

If you find yourself stuck in the design phase, try to find a way to push forward. If you're short on cash, maybe a group of early, dedicated customers (or a Kickstarter) can provide the funds you need to set up small-scale manufacturing. If you can't find some initial customers and can't successfully run a Kickstarter, at least you'll know it's time to move on. Hardware's a tough industry, and I firmly believe that there are plenty of great ideas out there that would survive if they could get past this particular bump.

Anyway, I hope he manages to push past the design phase and into production - it's a cool product, and one that I'd love to be able to buy someday.

<comment><USER19> I think his real issue is market fit. He only talks about _his_ vision, what _he_ wants to do. Not a word about his customers. The ability to run that fast is amazing, but the boots themselves are ungainly and the stride looks awkward as hell. I wonder what kind of speed boost he could get in a boot that looks more like a boot than a pair of stilts. I'd bet there's a bigger market for a "normal" boot that gives you, say, a 10% boost in speed, than these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Take it to Kickstarter, Keahi. Take it to Kickstarter.

Figure out how many pairs you'd have to manufacture so you can amortize the cost of making your molds and other setup to around $500 a boot. Maybe you've already got those, maybe they're only sized for your feet and you need to re- work them to be adjustable, I dunno.

Kickstart a run of a couple thousand, then go talking to bigger manufacturers.

Or maybe you've thought about this already and it turns out scaling up is gonna take something more in the range of tens of thousands of pairs of boots, maybe they're just stuck at $1k/pair, I dunno what the materials cost is on these things. I'd kinda worry about the legal liability too, if someone is running at 25mph with these and something breaks they could fuck themselves up pretty badly. Have you been willing to even make _one_ pair by hand for any of the people coveting them? You're still in the Bay Area, there's _gotta_ be at least one person who's coveted these in person who has Obscene Bay Area Money and can offer enough to own the next pair you build, maybe even pay a rush fee to cover your rent while you take a few weeks off work to build them faster.

<comment><USER21> > Take it to Kickstarter, Keahi. Take it to Kickstarter.

And maybe send Casey Neistat a pair. He has a huge following on youtube and loves this kind of stuff. I'm sure he'd feature them in a video with a clickbait title and everything, lol

<comment><USER22> > Casey Neistat

Ugh... I've been sick of that guy ever since he made that phony "i took mega- corp's ad dollars to go travel the world, lulz" video.

<comment><USER21> I'm not personally endorsing him, but you have to admit that's the kind of thing he'd put in a video which millions of people would see. Pretty small investment for a potentially huge return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> He only failed if the end goal was market success. It looks like he did what he set out to do.

His latest model doesn't look too different from the Olympic blade runners. Maybe it should have been marketed as a prosthesis.

<comment><USER24> There was another parallel development as well, somebody who attached a rubber band to a large spur off the back of the heel. Might have been related to Nike's thing. Bit of convergent development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is quite an amazing story, love the persistence and passion.

One note. Just because the patents are expiring, doesn't mean this can't still succeed. Inventors and scientists sometimes think that legal defensibility is what allows you to monetize an invention (it echoes some of the debates I've had with my father, a scientist).

Instead, well after a Chinese knockoff is in market, I could see a niche product succeed when seeding it with the right early adopter community, using just Instagram/YouTube, and having great branding.

A product category is not "done" when there's a manufacturer in the market.

<comment><USER26> I think specifically the success he was looking for which is finding an investing/manufacturing/sales partner and he just does the invention is dead without a patent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't help but think of the bullet ball guy. Spent 26 years developing this silly game and devoted his whole life to it and it went nowhere.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHwNiXgnh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHwNiXgnh0)

<comment><USER28> Wrong spin. Marc persevered and now the game is thriving:

[https://youtu.be/FcGeFo5lz-A](https://youtu.be/FcGeFo5lz-A)

Honestly brings tears to my eyes to see him triumph over naysayers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There are no hard and fast rules, but I've noticed that it always seems to take two personalities to create a new tech business: A hacker and a hustler. Sometimes these are two people: Jobs and Woz, Gates and Allen, Page and Brin, Moore and Noyce, Yang and Filo, Hewlett and Packard... Sometimes they are the same person (who are also generally a-holes): Ellison, Zuckerberg (but not always): Benioff. Sometimes a hustler hires the hackers: Ford, Bezos. Sometimes the hackers find the hustlers: Andreessen, Omidyar.

OK, these are probably generalizations, but it seems to fit a pattern, no?

<comment><USER30> Zuckerberg is an alien/lizard. But seems like yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Isn't this the exact concept of those running blades used by paraathletes?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex- Foot_Cheetah](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex-Foot_Cheetah)

These use carbon fibre and if I recall correctly are proved to be a more efficient tool for running competitions than natural legs. There is debate if it should be allowed on regular competitions or if it counts as "doping".

A similar design adapted to able-bodied people might be a better solution than his metal structure design.

I think this is the downside of working solo and focusing solely on registering patents and getting rich. You miss how other people contributions could improve your product.

<comment><USER32> There's also the whole "jumping stilts" category that appears to have peaked few years ago and now subsided to almost zero.

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

<comment><USER33> Those are great if you can wear stilts, which I can't (well, I did when I was a kid but I don't have great balance). What I'd like is just something small that makes my step bounce: kids get to have those little roller balls in their sneakers. Why can't I have a pair that just lets me jump a little bit with my step? It would make running and playing so much fun.

<comment><USER34> It'd be useful for me on mountain descents as well. I really love steep descents on snowshoes because the landing is so soft. Ice/rock descents _hurt_. Having a little spring at the bottom of your stride would go a long way to saving the knees.

<comment><USER35> Trekking shoes have a device to absorbs the shocks, which is usually a gaz or gel layer inside the sole. Unfortunately, this cannot absorb much, since a thick sole would reduce the stability of the foot. By the way, always walking with shock absorbers has bad physiological consequences on the feet and knees.

I think the best way to protect the knees, aside from soft snow and screes, is to lower the body when walking down, and absorb the shock using the thighs' muscles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sorry, why the duck doesn't this guy start a Kickstarter?

</comment><comment><USER37> He had a lot of interest but for some reason didn't pull the trigger on sending his product into the market.

I'm guessing it was some kind of safety measure that he must have believed that he needed/wanted to achieve.

Honestly, he achieved his dream - Ie building the boot.

He failed in building a multi million dollar business - but that's something most all of us will fail to do.

</comment><comment><USER38> There was another blog post on HN a few months ago titled "Fall in Love with the Problem, not the Solution." This is a very clear case of the latter. What problem is he trying to solve??? That humans are too slow? The bicycle solved that ages ago.

</comment><comment><USER39> You have to love the journey, otherwise it isn't worth the pain. The joy of entrepreneurism isn't the huge check; if you want that, just become a doctor or dentist or corporate lawyer.

<comment><USER40> Lots of those just barely stay ahead of their student loans for much of their lives... Labor is an eventually-efficient market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I the only one who thinks being able to bring a vision you had at 12 to life is a remarkable success?

<comment><USER42> No, you're not.

A lack of commercial success != failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I would buy a pair of these things. Assuming they don't do something pathological to your bones or your joints, these sound like a mountain of fun. But he should take heart, the inventor(s) of inline skates suffered a similar fate with respect to the patent on them.

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

<comment><USER44> It does seem that he could sell probably 10-20 a month. I bet the Chinese knockoffs probably are poorly made, he could be on the high end of his product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> These remind me of Chell's boots in Portal (in reverse?). For that matter, there's a little bit of Cave Johnson in this story too.

But throughout the article, while I was delighted by the concept, fascinated by the execution and impressed by his dedication, I still couldn't think of where his market for these lies.

<comment><USER43> The same demographic that runs around Google imitating Sergey Brin in those toe sneakers perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm very surprised DARPA, ONR, or SOCOM didn't at least offer a startup grant for this. ONR has an entire office devoted to developing stuff exactly like this.

There is an art to writing DoD research grant proposals, just as there is (I presume) an art to pitching VC. So maybe a lack of understanding of how to go about securing these types of grants could explain him not getting one. But DARPA, in particular, goes way out of its way to take that out of the equation.

Which leads me to wonder whether there isn't more to this story.

<comment><USER47> It's possible that safety and/or energy consumption is the issue. As noted by others, there are similar products like jumping stilts out there. While they are effective, it is very easy to get hurt on them. Falling from that height is very risky. One Amazon reviewer broke a wrist for example.

It also sounds like it takes a tremendous amount of energy to use these. One guy was hoping to replace his bicycle with these but discovered that despite being in tremendous shape he couldn't handle more than 15 minutes.

Having been in combat situations, the safety factor and energy depletion factor would be a serious problem for military use, especially while wearing body armor and/or carrying a pack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This reminds me of the Moller M400 Skycar. Although the inventor behind it was likely years ahead of his time, after 50 years he is still trying to get it off the ground. Sadly at this point the company is characterized as "no longer believable enough to gain investors".

One interesting thing I see in common between the two is a great deal of effort spent quite early on retaining IP (patents, etc), vs successful companies who seem to rely more on execution velocity and first mover advantages until they're much more mature.

<comment><USER49> I looked it up and interestingly the Moller skycar received $100 million in funding. I think it was just never a working product.

<comment><USER48> As the many drone-like flying vehicle prototypes have shown, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the idea of a vtol aircraft.

Knowing what we do today about modern rotorcraft theory, it's likely that the disc loading of the Moller prototypes was too high for the design to be practically efficient. It's also likely that the Wankels didn't perform anywhere near expectations for this reason... I don't believe either of these to have insurmountable problems.

Rather, it seems likely that a disproportionate amount of effort was sunk into the software for the flight controller before software development practices had advanced enough to make it practical; if I recall correctly there was something like 10's or 100's of millions of lines of assembly code involved...

Just an idea that was ahead of its time, plagued by corporate missteps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The big fail here is lack of focus. The guy has not defined who he's creating the boots for. He just created them and hoped someone found a need for them. It's no wonder he's gotten nowhere.

Now that he has a working prototype, he needs to pick a market segment that can use his boots and tailor them towards that market. My first guess it that the army would find them useful for soldiers that need to carry heavy backpacks over long distances or abid outdoor sportsmen that carry lots of items over a long terrain.

This is a product without a defined need. If I'm an investor I need to know that I'm going to get my money back so I need to know someone will buy it. If I'm a buyer I need to know what problem it will solve.

A product that exists without a reason to exist is useless. It does not matter how cool it is.

<comment><USER51> It's right there in the article:

> ... his target customers: "Well-to-do adventure-seekers in their mid-30s who > had tried every type of extreme sport and wanted something new."

<comment><USER50> Well, it's obvious it did not fill their need. If you look at the inventor's website you'll see that there is nothing that speaks to that target segment. It's just a bunch of random shots of him using the product. It's obvious that he has no idea what his target audience wants. What's the point of saying you are marketing towards a particular segment and yet you don't work towards marketing to that segment. You don't just say you are doing something. You have to act too.

If that's his segment then I would at least have a website showing how to use the product. I would have some athletes using it too. The demand is not automatic you have to build people's desire for the product.

He should have consulted a marketing expert even before he had his first prototype ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Other already sold similar boots. That's why he cannot do a kickstarter anymore [https://www.amazon.com/CREATETECH-Bionic-Running-Jumping- Sho...](https://www.amazon.com/CREATETECH-Bionic-Running-Jumping- Shoes/dp/B07G26YVD3)

<comment><USER53> "With it, you have the power to keep running With it, you will no longer waste the annual fee of fitness card. With it, you can use your footsteps to measure the length of your life. With it, there is health With it, walking on the road, you are the most special one."

this sounds like one of the chinese knock-off companies that just ignored the patents.

<comment><USER54> Amazon will take down product pages that violate patents--not sure how quickly, but I've seen people complain about it in the FBA reddit forums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is why it's so important to divorce self worth from achievements. Everyone cannot possibly win everything.

<comment><USER56> Often , the biggest motivation for achievements is self-worth,or ego.

Once you remove that motivation , isn't it much harder to endure and to win against more motivated competitors ?

<comment><USER55> For me the motivation can be hard to describe. The best I can do is to say I try to follow a path where it feels like I am improving the universe, but that starts to sound like the back of a smoothie bottle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I remember watching the episode "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" on NOVA about physicist Hugh Everett III.

I confess I initially watched it because I was interested in Hugh's son, Mark Everett of the band The Eels.

But it ended up being a poignant look at the also-rans in science. The ideas that failed.

Link: [https://vimeo.com/eels/parallelworlds](https://vimeo.com/eels/parallelworlds)

<comment><USER58> Failed? There are very few top theoretical physicists (though still some) who still believe in collapse, and the rest believe something morally equivalent to an Everettian theory.

<comment><USER57> I agree, from the point of view of a layman, there seems to have been a reawakening in regard to his parallel worlds theory. The NOVA episode suggests there was nothing like that in his life time though. Sadly.

<comment><USER59> In his lifetime in our world :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> So he is a Wozniak that didn't have a Jobs....

<comment><USER61> agreed - he's missing a business-savvy co-founder

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> He knows about the manufacturing process, set up a kickstarter get orders of 10 make those 10 sell them, stream line your manufacturing process within the United states think 3d printing. Put out the next order of 100 hit the hundred then take it from there. Get the first 10 to make viral videos for you. Put made in the US on the outside.

<comment><USER63> > Get the first 10 to make viral videos for you.

This is difficult on multiple levels. Most people won't make videos no matter what (and they paid for the product so they would feel even less pressure), and those homespun videos are almost certainly not going viral.

<comment><USER64> Something similar was done with glasses for color blind people:

[https://youtube.com/results?search_query=enchroma+glasses](https://youtube.com/results?search_query=enchroma+glasses)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Indeed, it's very hard to win with unknown products that can be readily cloned. And with so much commerce online, it's much harder to fight knockoffs. I mean, Amazon would probably just bin them all together.

But in fact, as passionate as this guy has been for decades, it's arguably not such a novel idea. William S. Burroughs featured spring shoes (and spring knives, flails, etc) in some of his novels, starting in the late 70s.

And if you've ever read _Archeology_ or other elder-targeted media, you'll know that spring shoes are a trope.[0] Along with "exotic" knives, watches, cpoins, necklaces, and statues of the Archangel Michael.

0) [https://www.hammacher.com/product/spring-loaded-walking- shoe...](https://www.hammacher.com/product/spring-loaded-walking-shoes-mens-2)

</comment><comment><USER66> This is almost too painful to read. I'm at the verge of abandoning a 20-year old venture and I can feel this guy's pain. Some say we should not give up hope, but others say fail fast, fail often. It's hard to know which way to go, especially when you're so emotionally invested.

</comment><comment><USER67> Nike Vaporfly has a carbon fiber plate for energy return built into the shoe: [https://www.outsideonline.com/2262486/researchers-confirm- ni...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2262486/researchers-confirm- nikes-4-marathon-shoe-claim) Some say it should be banned because of unfair advantage to wearer: [https://sportsscientists.com/2017/03/ban-nike-vaporfly- carbo...](https://sportsscientists.com/2017/03/ban-nike-vaporfly-carbon-fiber- devices-future-performance-credibility/)

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm not going to bother reading the article, but title reveals wrong mentality. It should be replaced with: "What it's like to pursue a dream for 30 years (among pursuing other dreams), then deciding it failed and then stopping the pursuing and not pursuing any more." 1) Failure is never absolute. 2) Every situation is relative. Apple opened their first shop when Compaq closed their last. 3) Absolute terms, like doing something for 30 years is misleading. It's generalising and it's not objective.

</comment><comment><USER69> I think the take-away isn't that his idea is pretty radical, but that he was 15 steps ahead of himself and that seemed to set himself up for failure.

Not sure if it's that the article was poorly written, but he didn't seem to have any early small wins to get him to the next big step.

All great inventors (except maybe for Dyson), seemed to have all these small wins that would help leverage them to the next chunk. If he needs investment, he should have started with something early on that would win investors trust so that eventually he could call on his network to tackle his crazy ideas.

</comment><comment><USER70> This highlights a fundamental truth about human psychology. People want to have fun without having to do much. If the boots were simply powered, as in, the person wearing them didn't have to walk in order to move from A to B, it might've attracted a large following. In fact, check out the [0] Segway Drift W1

[0] [http://www.segway.com/products/consumer-lifestyle/segway- dri...](http://www.segway.com/products/consumer-lifestyle/segway-drift-w1)

<comment><USER71> These boots look like they're great fun. They also look like you could get badly hurt easily with them (also with other similar jumping boots). That's what's preventing me from getting something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I am by no means an expert in human physiology, but the way he is running does not seem particular good for the way our body is build.

When you see sprinters run, they are tilted forward and use the quads to propel - this is now used to put tension in the rubber springs to gain some height. While it increase your speed, it is essentially wasted energy because it's not forward motion. But that just an initial impression, I'd have to try them to comment more.

</comment><comment><USER73> Whenever I fullfill a dream I feel empty. So I don't pursue dreams, I live life, and try to get the best of the present, as long as it exists, I know not for long.

</comment><comment><USER74> Why didn't he start selling, even if it meant selling the prototypes one by one? If people can live by selling choppers, it can work with this as well.

</comment><comment><USER50> Here's a very similar product. Are these the Chinese copies the article is talking about.

[https://www.amazon.com/Air-Trekkers-Jumping-Extreme- Exercise...](https://www.amazon.com/Air-Trekkers-Jumping-Extreme-Exercise- Protection/dp/B01EBL5OCW)

</comment><comment><USER75> This guy has led what sounds like a charmed life -- flying to places such as Spain, France, England, Denmark -- while having enough disposable income to pursue his passion project (which project is not bullshit, nor does he sound like a bullshitter). Is this really what we moderns call "failure"?

</comment><comment><USER76> Speaking about the product -- doesn't the weight of the boots make the body unbalanced? I mean, weight of hands is an important factor while running. So, my guess is that adding wrist weights might make running with these boots on less uncomfortable.

</comment><comment><USER77> I did't see a video if them in action in the article, but there's more than on on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jvKaM7R5iY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jvKaM7R5iY)

</comment><comment><USER78> > Though he'd spent a small fortune securing international patents, Seymour > didn't have the means to fight infringements.

Wouldn't lawyers take the case on a commission basis? (I just learned it's called "contingency fee")

<comment><USER79> You need to have Apple-sized leverage to successfully take on knock-off manufacturers in China. He has no leverage.

<comment><USER80> How much leverage does he need to just get them off Amazon.com?

<comment><USER79> (a) There's a lot more retailers than just Amazon, and (b) Knock-offs just keep coming back under different brands anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

</comment><comment><USER82> Wow. Props for the effort and passion.

If I were him, I'd be wearing a helmet when I ran. I can't image what a 25 mph crash would feel like, from a couple of feet above standing height. Yikes!

</comment><comment> gene-h Now what I'd really like to know is if these boots can actually decrease the metabolic cost of running at these speeds.

</comment><comment><USER83> Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?

</comment><comment><USER61> What I am missing on the website is a "buy" button.

</comment><comment><USER84> It is much better than doing nothing notable for 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER85> Why not fund/sell this through Kickstarter?

</comment><comment><USER86> That didn't seem like failure to me.

</comment><comment><USER87> This is a lesson in opportunity cost.

</comment><comment><USER88> What is the max speed this thing can go? The article mentions 25miles/hour? It can't outrun a human...

<comment><USER20> The _average_ human running speed is 15mph. The _record_ is 27.8mph, but that is the domain of a small set of outliers who train for a long time to get there. If you put these on Usian Bolt (the current record holder), he might end up closer to 40mph than 30. Or not, that record was ten years ago and he's retired now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> While in hell, keep walking

</comment><comment><USER90> I checked three times I swear to make sure it wasn't April 1st

</comment><comment><USER91> These shoes/equips remember me some Genetic Algorithm Simulations of "Kangaroos" , some of them had only 1 leg, some had 2, They were made to fuel prototypes of hardware robots that run like a chicken or jump like a Kangaroo.

These robots were scary Impressive! And run Scary fast. And Jump some mortal loops and flip-flops and stuff.

This was 25 years ago now. 25 years!

Therefore... those bionic Dogs from google or darpa , whoever, were supposed to be a normal thing 20 years ago, If someone back then let himself be taken by the Hype, and by 2020 everyone should be wearing Exo-Skeletons like the iron-man.</comment>


First major python framework (pyramid) had official python 3.X alpha release - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pylons-discuss/ymfHutRf5Ag

<comment><USER3> Misleading title.

This is "the first major release in the 1.3 series" of Pyramid".

<comment><AUTHOR> The point was it's first release of a "major" web framework for python 3.2 - which i think many was waiting for. Django recently started passing tests too but it will probably take a while before we will see release of 3.x compatible django in the wild. Pyramid is very well tested so the version number - <USER2> if alpha - is not that important in the big picture in things.

I know it's not the best title out there but i tried my best to get the message across ;-)

It's a lot bigger thing than it might look like.

A link to changelog if someone is interested to dig deeper:

[http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/1.3-branch...](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/1.3-branch/whatsnew-1.3.html)

<comment><USER3> OK, now I understand what you meant :-)</comment></comment></comment>


End of Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/01/21/the-end-of-apple/#19fd9e926dc0 <comment><USER2> The cell phone market has matured, the rate of innovation has slowed and the need to update your phone at every release has subsided. Apple has recognised this, they have better long term support for their phones then any other manufacturer that I can think of. As an example I have given my son an old iPhone 5S that my wife got in 2014, it had been sat in a draw for a couple of years but a good charge and an update has made it like new, it is running the latest iOS like a champ. Apple is taking a hit on sales because it is making an effort to support it's products long term. Now for me as the consumer I'm prepared to pay a premium for my phone because I know it will last 3+ years.

</comment><comment><USER3> 5 months ago: [[https://www.forbes.com/sites/dantedisparte/2018/08/06/apple-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/dantedisparte/2018/08/06/apple- and-the-rise-of-the-trillion-dollar- firm/#53aa6f1b631d\]\(https://www.forbes.com/sites/dantedisparte/2018/08/06/apple- and-the-rise-of-the-trillion-dollar-firm/#53aa6f1b631d\))

1 day ago: [[https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/01/21/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/01/21/the- end-of- apple/#25c7e0606dc0\]\(https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenmcbride1/2019/01/21/the- end-of-apple/#25c7e0606dc0\))

It seems a bit ridiculous how, in a span of 5 months, Forbes decided to publish an article about the "End" of the most valuable company in the world.

<comment><USER4> Build them up, tear them down. Same thing happened to Theranos, but on a much bigger scale.

<comment><USER5> I don't think Apple's been credibly accused of committing massive fraud?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this is ridiculous. Apple has been selling actual products that work and that billions of people happily use for 43 years. Hard to compare that with a company that never released anything that actually worked the way they claimed, and was revealed to be committing outright fraud.

<comment><USER4> "much bigger scale"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple's stuff just works (mostly) - but at this point any iPhone that's come out since the 5S does the its job pretty well (mail, navigation, social media, browsing & gaming.) Apple has let off the gas pedal. It's far from dead, but I don't see myself upgrading my iPhone X for several years because there's nothing on the horizon that would make me shell out $1000+. A foldable phone? No thanks, I have a tablet for that. Augmented reality? Another gimmick like 3D Touch, etc.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. The smartphone market has matured. The tablet market is maturing, but still has a ways to go. The laptop market has matured now that processors aren't getting appreciably faster anymore. Heretofore everything in computing has been about specs, but now that Moore's Law has taken a hiatus it's becoming more about fashion now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated. Mark Twain

The end of Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Bitcoin etc but for every startup that grows, they spend 40% of their revenues in ads on Ms/fb/Amazon

</comment><comment><USER10> it wont be but i hope they hurt. they used to be the company that produced a great product at a slight markup. Their markups have gotten ridiculous. Also their pushing of design into absurd territory where laptops got more dongles on it than a spider has legs. Its like really , thats the most elegant thing you could come up with?

</comment><comment><USER11> $199 + contract with carrier

The monthly service charges being inflated to pay off the difference

All stocks have tanked in the last few months

Some cherry picked facts to peddle a narrative

There isn't a year that goes by without some reliability flaw being found in hardware or software for all the vendors

What's dying is the inflated emotional love affair with Apple. Jobs launched a few stinkers with glaring defects, but people overlooked it due to their dying love affair with Microsoft after XP worms and other security issues

Apple will still make oodles of money and people will still buy in enough to justify their prices

</comment><comment><USER12> Smart phone industry will soon enter its adolescent and will show the sign of maturity. Also, smart phones became (or sold as) fashion device compared to computing devices (like computers, laptops etc) in previous decade, which were more like utility. Fashion changes every year, utility does not; may be the market is getting to that maturity too.

</comment><comment><USER13> Symbian was crap and Windows Phone fell really short. On the other hand, iOS is arguably good. Also, Nokia was very, very mismanaged.

</comment><comment><USER14> My iPhone cost $750. Come on.</comment>


Firemacs: Emacs keybindings for FireFox - <AUTHOR> http://www.mew.org/~kazu/proj/firemacs/en/ <comment><USER2> I've been using Keysnail and it seems to provide Emacs keybindings for pretty much any task. It also seems to be actively maintained.

[http://blog.binchen.org/posts/use-firefox-in-emacs- way-3.htm...](http://blog.binchen.org/posts/use-firefox-in-emacs-way-3.html)

[https://github.com/mooz/keysnail](https://github.com/mooz/keysnail)

<comment><USER3> elisp : emacs :: javascript : firefox+keysnail

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Conkeror is a standalone browser (not to be confused with KDE's Konqueror) I've been using with a similar mission, though I look forward to trying this out and take advantage of FireFox's technologies (debug, pdf.js integration, etc.)

<comment><USER5> Boy, do I have good news for you: [http://conkeror.org/PDFViewer](http://conkeror.org/PDFViewer)

Conkeror is so much Firefox, that you can easily fit the former with most things that work with the latter, including the built-in PDF extension. As a matter of fact, the Conkeror "binary" is just a shell script that launches Firefox or xul-runner with the proper config (something like: firefox -app /usr/share/conkeror/application.ini).

Also worth noting is that Conkeror was the original inspiration for vimperator (and thus for uzbl, dwb, luakit and the likes - all very splendid and worthwhile projects), and that this message is written on an editor spawned by conkeror (which, surprisingly enough, happens to be vim).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I much prefer Keysnail: [https://github.com/mooz/keysnail](https://github.com/mooz/keysnail)

</comment><comment><USER7> I tried these for a while.

It confused my muscle memory more to have almost but not quite emacs behavior in the browser vs standard browser keyboard shortcuts.

<comment><USER8> That's been my biggest problem with every wannabe Emacs keybinding I've ever tried.

Even in OS X, I love that I can use the Emacs cursor movement keys everywhere, but even after years of using it, I still occasionally start using other Emacs shortcuts before realizing it's not doing what I expect.

I actually think it's easier to just add more to Emacs and use the keybindings there, than it is to add proper Emacs bindings to other software :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What would be really nice is a Firefox/Chrome window hosted inside an Emacs frame, which would be controllable via an elisp api so I can bind hotkeys to control it.

Would make web development easier by keeping web based documentation look ups right there in Emacs, plus could have a window dedicated to viewing your work as you edit, especially when working on frontend stuff.

<comment><USER10> I've wanted this for just about forever as well. There is one project I've noticed on the EmacsWiki - [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WebKit](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/WebKit) . I haven't tried getting it up and running yet, would be curious if anyone here has.

<comment><USER9> Installing dependencies... will take some time but will report back if I get it working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If any Vim users are feeling generous, fret not - Vim bindings for Firefox exist as well!

Vimperator has been the go-to for a long time, with VimFX and Pentadactyl as alternatives. However, none of these support e10s (multiprocess Firefox), and the migration path and timeline is unclear.

I wrote a very slimmed down alternative that does support e10s Firefox, named Electrovim[0]. It has far fewer features than Vimperator, but it includes the minimum subset that my workflow required before I could enable e10s on my own machine.

[0] [https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/electrovim](https://github.com/ChimeraCoder/electrovim)

<comment><USER12> Oooh, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would prefer Conkeror since it allows me to programagically extend it. I can do nearly anything that I can do in xulrunner with conkeror, not just the emacs key bindings

</comment><comment><USER14> I tried these things but I found that when I'm working on Emacs and have to use a browser(Stack overflow etc ) M-x eww is less disruptive.

<comment><USER15> Yeah that's nice for specific cases where you just need to see the text (and the site doesn't require JavaScript for that).

But beyond that, I can see it being really nice for the muscle memory keystrokes for cursor movement, marking text, copy/paste, etc. being the same. I'm definitely going to give these a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> for me, firefox is under control (I use keysnail) anybody succeeded in sanitizing google spreadsheets and skype?

</comment><comment><USER17> I really should be doing this, now that I'm on Linux a lot. Way less print dialogs to dismiss…

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't imagine using Chrome without Vimium anymore. Even if it's just for the f key, to open links without using the mouse. That's the only key binding that matters

</comment><comment><USER19> Why cant we have this for chrome?

<comment><USER20> Lack of APIs, maybe?

</comment></comment><comment> TD-Linux Why this over vimperator?

<comment><USER21> Because, (unlike what reading HN could lead you to believe), not everyone uses VI or Vim – some, even many, prefer Emacs.

<comment><USER22> Of the people I know who prefer Emacs, what they like is the extensibility and customisation, and not necessarily the keybindings.

In fact I'm almost willing to bet that if it was initially designed so as not to require pressing simultaneous keys but only in sequence (like the mechanism used for navigating menus in Windows with the Alt key), Emacs would become even more popular. For example, in many applications I find it much easier and faster to type Alt,F,S to save instead of Ctrl+S.

<comment><USER23> As a Vim user, I wonder, is Emacs superior in any way for non-lispy languages? Say JavaScript?

<comment><USER24> As an Emacs user, I can tell you that Emacs is superior in every way, except perhaps for emulating VI, but even there it's doing a good job. Next question?

<comment><USER25> Yep, as a 5+ year vim (then nvi) user...emacs was a eye opening text editor and gets way too much hate for no reason...people say emacs is not modal...but everytime you press control, alt, meta, hyper or super, you enter a mode...then every other subsequent key could put you into another mode. It doesnt make sense to vi users at first, but after you swap control with caos lock and a few other adjustments it really is better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd rather have them for thunderbird.

<comment><USER27> It looks like keysnail has a plugin for Thunderbird.</comment></comment>