Visual Basic, PHP, Rails. Is Node.js next? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchenblog.com/2012/04/01/visual-basic-php-rails-is-node-js-next/ <comment><USER2> IMHO, Node.js will not directly compete with Rails/PHP as long as it forces programmers to program in an async style. As an example, async style makes it impossible to implement lazy loading (a technique commonly used by ORMs). Furthermore, Node.js is basically based on the idea of cooperative multitasking[0] which carries a certain trust issue in large teams or projects with lots of third party dependencies.

There is definitely a niche for Node.js but it's not likely to become a direct competitor to Rails.

FWIW, I'm currently writing a web app with Node.js and have written multiple Node.js modules and native extensions.[1]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Cooperati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Cooperative_multitasking.2Ftime- sharing)

[1] [http://syskall.com/how-to-write-your-own-native-nodejs- exten...](http://syskall.com/how-to-write-your-own-native-nodejs-extension)

<comment><USER3> Why does it make lazy loading impossible?

<comment><USER2> A typical ORM allows you to do stuff like this:

        var user = orm.load('User', 'some unique id...');
        console.log(user.name + ' was referred by ' + user.referrer.name);

where user.referrer is another User instance. Since the user.referrer object might be a bit slow to load from the DB, we want to delay its loading until we actually use it (lazy load it) and not load it at all if we don't use it. This is not possible in Node.js because every I/O calls (i.e. database calls) are async. In other words, we have no guarantee user.referrer will be loaded in time (before console.log() outputs the result).

Every time we want to load something from the DB, we need to supply an explicit callback which will be called one the DB query is completed.

Of course, there are several ways to achieve the same result in async style, but none of them are _transparent_ to the programmer. You will either have to load the referrer object upfront or supply a callback whenever you need to load it.

For example:

        orm.load('User', 'some unique id...', function(user) {
            user.referrer.onLoad(function() {
                console.log(user.name + ' was referred by ' + user.referrer.name);
            });
        });

<comment><USER3> Ah yea - so it's not impossible, it just makes typical usage overly cumbersome. Maybe this is something a coffeescript extension or analog could help solve.

<comment><USER2> Well, it is impossible to _transparently_ lazy load from a database. CoffeeScript won't solve the problem since it is still ultimately limited by Node.js' async libraries.

A "solution" would be to cheat and write a _sync_ database API but then, you would break the assumption that everything is async with Node.js, making it harder to work with other programmers or use third party modules.

<comment><USER4> > CoffeeScript won't solve the problem since it is still ultimately limited by > Node.js' async libraries.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. .net 4.5 is coming out with an await and async keywords which will basically signal to the compiler that method should be re-written to an asynchronous. So for the example you gave, if the await keyword was available in coffeescript, you could just write:

        await console.log(user.referrer.name);

And the coffeescript compiler could then re-write callback style.

<comment><USER5> In fact, IcedCoffeeScript (<http://maxtaco.github.com/coffee-script/>) already implements this, using keywords called "await" and "defer".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think node really wants or needs to be the new VB, PHP or Rails.

Somebody might build something with node that really competes in that space, but for the most part the node community seems to be route around 'opinionated' frameworks and fall behind very very small libraries. I find it a breath of fresh air tbh.

There's a constant influx of people who try to turn node/js into what they are used to (be it java, php or rails), but I don't think they are really gaining any traction.

Learn to appreciate node for it's strengths, which are actually very difficult to communicate and really takes a level of understanding far beyond 'oh, i can build a blog with this'.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found the last paragraph/sentence a little weird - "Until then, I think people will still continue to mostly build in Rails with a large contingent going to iOS – the latter not due to the superiority of the development platform, but rather because that's what is needed to access iOS users."

Rails -> iOS??? Apples and oranges.

<comment><USER8> Ditto from VB to the other tech (php, rails). I think he is after something else; a pattern/trend regardless the platform: desktop, or web , or mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The future is more of a continued polyglot environment. Developers will use different programming tools/ frameworks to provide different features for their app via a service-oriented -architecture or something like that. This is an example: a chat app built with Rails, Socket.IO, Node.js and Backbone.js <http://node-chatty.herokuapp.com/chatty> See blog post on that: <http://bit.ly/zorHYA> Everything is in rails but just the chat bit that makes sense to be realtime is served by nodejs. Redis pubsub is used to communicate between rails and the nodejs chat server. You can use ruby based event-machine or async sinatra or async rack to write the chat server and communicate with them with redis and drop nodejs if you are so inclined..

In summary rails, nodejs, php, java will continue to co-exist as tools and people will use what they are most comfortable with and what gets the job done in each problem space.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think you have your order wrong. If you are talking about web frameworks, then Rails pretty much kicked off the bloom of web frameworks in the PHP ecosystem. There were web frameworks available in the PHP ecosystem before Rails, but they all sucked and none of them had gained any serious traction.

Also, I'm not sure you could ever call VB or Ruby mainstream. Of course, this depends on your definition, but hosting issues and a lack of things like a Ruby equivalent of Wordpress (in terms of popularity and usage) has kept PHP at the top for web development in general.

<comment><USER11> I don't believe your statement. IMO the reason why Rails was popular was because it was the only real MVC framework for Ruby at the time. PHP have CakePHP, Zend, CodeIgniter, Symphony, etc... Python Django was before Rail and it failed to have as much fanbase as Rail because it was also competing with other within Python ecosystem.

<comment><USER10> CodeIgniter was released after Rails and at that time the developer listed Rails as being an inspiration. Zend Framework was released after CodeIgniter. I don't know the history of CakePHP and Symfony but Wikipedia shows they were each released in 2005, which was before CodeIgniter but after Rails. That's why I mentioned that Rails was an inspiration for a lot of the PHP frameworks which came out after Rails. Again, there were already PHP web frameworks available, but nothing really took off until after Rails hit the scene.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The question is, when will people tire of learning new ways to make HTML web pages that save to a database. I know I sure have.

<comment><USER13> Whenever other people stop needing web pages that save to a database. Until then, we'll continue learning better (as in quicker and easier rather than "new") ways to lazily create what people need.

<comment> ryan-allen I'd argue in a lot of cases the new methods are not significantly better, just significantly different.

I cynically believe that this is what happens when you ask a reasonably intelligent programmer to connect forms to databases. They will get bored and invent alternate techniques and want to use 'new' tools to pretty much achieve the same thing.

I'm guilty of doing this myself, but I now see the pattern and I'm over it. There is more interesting things to learn than the 'next hot thing' in web tech and there's also something to be said about maintainability.

I've had to troubleshoot bugs in years old Rails applications on Ruby 1.8.7 in Rails 2.1 that were jam packed full of the current trendy plugins of the time. I'm telling you I'd prefer debugging and maintaining a boring old PHP app with hand-rolled SQL statements over it any day. To be fair these apps are still around because they generate income, but they don't generate enough income to justify a 3-6 month long error-prone 'upgrade' project to get it inline with the tech of the day.

I think this is why big-co standardise on years old tech, because building every new thing in every new tech with 1000 programmers is a recipe for disaster. Yes we need to try new tools, new techniques, but when overwhelmingly the corporate world have chosen the safe route I suspect it's not because they're old and boring themselves, just they've seen through the smoke and mirrors and no longer buy it.

It takes a number of years working in a few environments to see this for yourself (try telling this to an 18 year old hot-shot and they'll think you're an old fuddy duddy). I believe there's merit when an old greybeard is yelling at all the younguns because they left out not null constraints and omitted foreign keys. They know (and have dealt with) the impact a few years down the track.

<comment><USER13> > _They will get bored and invent alternate techniques and want to use 'new' > tools to pretty much achieve the same thing._

Yup, and plenty of re-invented alternatives will be no better or worse than the tried and true. But occasionally the new tech will be significantly better; that's how tech evolves.

The main advantage I expect to get from experimenting with node.js and NoSQL is to be able to take the client-side code that's on the web page (eg instant form validation with javascript, and saving offline to html5 localStorage because the customer wants it to work where they don't have wifi), and re-use it on the server (would rather not have a second codebase in php or ruby-rails to do all the CRUD). With coffeescript I write less boilerplate. And I have to use the latest jQuery-esque plug-ins because the customer also wants touch- screen drag-n-drop functionality.

To be sure, there is plenty more interesting things I would rather be learning. But customers don't really care that I might find something else more interesting than their project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Rails made it ridiculously easier to write common CRUD apps. Whoever is the next fad, a rails comeptitor or rails version, it will find a way to make real-time apps easier. While I love node, I do not think it has the particular same appeal as Rails had a couple years ago. As an intermediate Rails developer, I really hope 4.0 can bring some of the freshness and magic back

<comment><USER8> ... or make mobile development a lot easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree with what this guy is saying about form-based applications.

What I have just started working on is a system built on Node.js that is designed to make developing CRUD and other common types of applications efficient.

Its a little bit along the lines of ASP.NET, but with an aim towards making things simpler. There are components with a front end in JavaScript/CoffeeScript and a back end running on Node.js and Mongodb. CodeMirror to edit the HTML/CSS and Javascript or CoffeeScript for the front end and also the CoffeeScript/JavaScript of the backend of each component.

Front end components (widgets) are composable. As far as CRUD goes there are a lot of different types of forms people want and so there isn't going to be a built-in widget for everything, but to start with, there is a record widget, a field widget, and a list widget. These widgets would be associated with certain collections or fields in a database and so there can be multiple list widgets for example displaying data in different ways.

To start with I am working on the basic component framework and editor with some type of drag-and-drop composability for the front-end widgets. Still at a fairly early stage.

</comment><comment><USER16> To be honest, where real time collaboration apps and updates are concerned, we're using WPF and WCF on top of .Net. There's a lot ready to roll there - much more than any open source framework. It's conveniently the "forms paradigm" with a nice asynchronous network backend and scary scalability (AppFabric/Azure really does scale!)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's worth mentioning the upcoming .Net 5 runtime featuring await/async operators to dramatically simplify async programming, read more at [http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2010/10/28/async...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2010/10/28/asynchrony- in-c-5-part-one.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER18> It's scary to see VB, Rails, and Node in the same line of text.

<comment><USER19> But very appropriate IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of these things is not like the others.

(Visual Basic wasn't a web-specific technology)

<comment><USER21> node.js isn't a web-specific technology either. It is an event processing framework, like EventMachine on Ruby or Twisted on Python. And then PHP and VB are programming languages, while the other two are only frameworks atop other languages.

Beyond them all being tools programmers use, it is tough to draw any real commonality between them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What does Node have to do with forms?

Does he mean backbone?

<comment><USER23> Comparing PHP and Rails to Node.js is not quite right, as PHP and Rails are application frameworks and Node.js is primarily a platform for creating application servers. There are a number of more analogous frameworks being written on top of Node.js, but none of them have reached a similar level of maturity and adoption yet.

I believe that the author is arguing that Node.js could reach a similar level of popularity as Rails if there were a framework that provided some of the ease of use for common use cases, such as creating typical CRUD apps. However, he also states that in order to displace Rails, such a framework would also need to offer some distinct advantages, such as better support for realtime.

Backbone, Ember, Knockout, etc. are client-side frameworks. They make it easier to structure complex client code, but they don't include a simple solution for creating a server or synching data among clients and servers.

It's still under active development, but I have been working on a full-stack framework on top of Node.js that is more like what the author was envisioning: <http://derbyjs.com>

Derby provides server _and_ client rendering, and it automatically synchronizes data in realtime. The idea is to make writing realtime apps so simple that any app can take advantage of advanced realtime features, fast server-rendered page loads, and instant client-rendered page updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Node.js bases everything around async programming, and this is just too difficult for mediocre programmers to wrap their heads around, and use effectively. (But it's fantastic for good programmers.)

I don't think Node is even _trying_ to follow in the line of those other easy- to-use languages. Why would it want to?

<comment><USER25> _> Node.js bases everything around async programming, and this is just too difficult for mediocre programmers to wrap their heads around, and use effectively. (But it's fantastic for good programmers.)_

It has nothing to do with mediocre vs good programmers.

A good programmer maybe better able to hold an async callback flow in his mind than a mediocre one, but he too will be hampered by it. I.e both will be MORE productive with non-callback async style programming. Callback style async code is needlessly more difficult compared to linear style async code --and the keyword here is "needlessly", as this difficulty doesn't buy you absolutely nothing, only introduces more bugs and hampers readability.

(To clear another misconception, it also shares very little with event-driven UI code --there the callbacks are much more coarse, based on high level tasks).

Guido, the creator of Python, a good programmer if I ever seen one, absolutely abhors async programming. And the designers in all modern languages, from C# to Go to Scala to Erlang etc, have also decided against using the Node style for async programming.

Plus, it's not like Ryan Dahl is some programming of Dennis Richie proportions, or anything like it either. Compared to most language designers, he is just a script kiddie. Considering, also, that node isn't even a language, it's a hack on V8, similar to what dozens of people have already done on other platforms, from Tornado to Twister, to EventMachine etc.

<comment><USER26> > C# does have API's like this

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7de1x8cb.aspx>

<comment><USER25> Which is why they scrapped it and introduced async and friends:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2010/10/28/async.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/csharpfaq/archive/2010/10/28/async.aspx)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix integration with Facebook is a no-go in U.S.: Here's why - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/07/netflix-isnt-coming-to-facebook-in-the-us.html

<comment><USER2> Why is netflix wasting it's limited time and money on Facebook integration in Latin America and Canada?

Don't they have bigger issues?

1) a blundered site redesign

2) removal of DVD queues from the API and

3) price increases (double the price) I have to wonder when do they find the time to integrate withe Facebook in Latin America and Canada...

All in a matter of a few months.

I really wonder where Netflix is going. They used to impress me with their service and their API was great.

<comment><USER2> Just so you know where I'm coming from - head over to the api forums <http://developer.netflix.com/forum/topics/18904>

This is a good example: <http://developer.netflix.com/forum/read/121936>

Images aren't loading on the authorization page. No response, no action?

"This is really frustrating. How hard can it be to put two images back on the web servers? This takes weeks to fix?

I'm really starting to regret working on my project to integrate with Netflix data. It just makes me look bad as people won't understand the issue is with the Netflix servers.

Even if there is some better API is coming, I would really have to think hard about whether I would spend time converting my app to it if issues like this don't get fixed in a reasonable amount of time."</comment></comment>


A Scientist Finds Her Child's Rare Brain Illness Stems from the Gene She Studies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/health/genes-mutation-foxg1-brain.html <comment><USER2> By my read she had only a passing knowledge of the gene as any researcher in her field would before a colleague suggested it might be worth looking at and she confirmed a single nucleotide mutation and started to study the gene in more depth.

<comment><USER3> But where "her field" is "brain genetics, specifically around FOX genes". Fairly specific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd worry that this was somehow acquired rather than just random. If it is exceedingly rare, I always worry it isn't a coincidence but rather a yet not understood method of transmission.

<comment><USER5> Possible, but unlikely. Single nucleotide changes to DNA are very common. Every single person born has multiple altered base pairs ("SNPs") and acquires more throughout their life (this is in part how cancer develops).

DNA is pretty interesting. It's kind of like reading a binary file in that every three base pairs constitutes a "codon" or the code for an amino acid, a building block of a protein. In this case, a base pair was knocked out via one of many unfortunate methods, and this causes a "frameshift error".

This is kind of like if you have an array of xyz vertices (common in 3d graphics) xyzxyzxyz and then you suddenly delete one: xzxyzxyz. If you try to read that file, you'll get unintelligible artifacts. Unfortunately, that's what happened to the little girl's gene. Depending on where the error occurs, more or less of the gene is read incorrectly. Sometimes if you're lucky, it occurs near the end and it might not be a big deal, but if it happens at the beginning or middle, the entire protein is messed up.

Anyways, I hope that helps illuminate what's happening here if you weren't already aware.

I'm not a professional biologist, but I sometimes act like one. Please correct me if I got a detail wrong. :)

EDIT: I should mention the reason why those changes don't hurt most people is that there's a lot of non-coding DNA that serves various functions such as structural, can promote the activation of other genes, could be part of disabled viral genomes, and then there's the fact that DNA is a degenerate code (some codons code for the same amino acid). There are probably many other categories that I didn't mention too.

<comment><USER6> Sure, spontaneous point mutations are very common. They account for many spontaneous abortions. But spontaneous point mutations in the Forkhead box G1 (FOXG1) gene are _not_ very common. And scientists researching FOXG1 are _also_ not very common.

But then, correlation is not causation. And this could well reflect selection bias.

And unless she was working with some vector carrying defective mouse FOXG1 genes, the probability that this particular defect would get transmitted is small.

<comment><USER7> I take the title as telling me there are a lot of lab biology going on in the world (and that many of them are women).

<comment><USER8> I think your correct. 3 billion base pairs so with ~3 mutations per person it's 1/billion per child per location. But, lots of children (~2 per researcher and many researchers), lots of valid locations as researchers study many specific locations etc.

IMO, odds of something like this happening is fairly high.

PS: I don't think gender means anything here as the same story would get out if it was a male researcher.

<comment><USER9> It's also not a random draw. Genes that have a significant impact on human development are the ones that cause disease - and by extension, draw the attention of researchers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the Human mind has the ability to control genes. So, if you focus much on a single gene, you can unlock its ability.

Some people have gained "superhuman" abilities with meditation-like practises in past.

<comment><USER11> There is literally no scientific evidence to support this. How does one even "focus" on a gene? Please keep ultra-low effort comments away, thanks.</comment></comment>


Cadillac Creeps Up on Tesla with a Plush Plug-In - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-19/cadillac-creeps-up-on-tesla-with-a-plush-plug-in?cmpid=BBD051917_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170519&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily <comment><USER2> The review says that the car goes just as fast on electricity as gas, but Cadillac says that it only has 200hp of electric motors, and a total of gas+electric of 449 hp. So no, it doesn't go as fast in pure electric mode.

At least it's better than the BMW i8, which only has 139 hp of electric motor.

Compare to Tesla's lowest-end Model S at 362 hp.</comment>


Network and server issues plague first Pokémon GO Fest - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/22/pokemon-go-fest-network-issues/ <comment><AUTHOR> Oops! This has been posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828772)

Sorry about the dupe. Hiding the post.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I understand the cell carrier proximity issues, but I'm very interested to see if there's any follow up the server side of things. Perhaps there are some Kubernetes lessons to be learned.</comment>


National Security Inc. - Part 2 of the Top Secret America Investigation - <AUTHOR> http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/national-security-inc/print/

<comment><USER2> "...corporations offer such perks as BMWs and $15,000 signing bonuses, as Raytheon did in June for software developers with top-level clearances."

That seems very low, considering the relative scarcity of people with TS clearances and the level of compensation made by software engineers in industry.

Am I right?</comment>


Twelve-Year-Old Awarded $3,000 for Finding Critical Firefox Flaw - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twelve-Year-Old-Awarded-3-000-for-Finding-Critical-Firefox-Flaw-162522.shtml

<comment><USER2> See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822116> <\- This one has the comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1828671>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824895></comment>


European Court Strikes Down Law Allowing Users to Rip Their Own CDs - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/european-copyright-madness-court-strikes-down-law-allowing-users-rip-their-own-cds <comment><USER2>
        > THE QUEEN on the application of
        > (1) BRITISH ACADEMY OF SONGWRITERS, COMPOSERS AND AUTHORS
        > (2) MUSICIANS' UNION
        > (3) UK MUSIC 2009 LIMITED

Perhaps, as a token of defiance, we should compile a list of the people at the top of these organisations, and forbid them from using our software.

There's a time and a place for spite, and this is it.

<comment><USER3> The BipCot NoGov license [0] might provide a template, replacing "government" with "[leaders of] media organizations" (or whatever), as applicable.

But if you're looking for something with teeth, this probably won't meet your needs -- as they say, "It is not copyright-based, it is entirely shame-based."

[0] [http://bipcot.org](http://bipcot.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> European Copyright legislative is an inconsistent mess.

Right now, in Austria, the government is up to demand 6% of the price of any digital storage device, to compensate copyright holders when the legit consumers of their work _execute their right to make a private copy_.

So the European Court apparently just has settled that in one country of the EU, consumers do not have the right to make private copies, while in others consumers just got a new tax to do so. AFAIK the Austrian model follows German legislative.

What a mess.

<comment><USER5> From the linked text.

 _The government 's choices are now to remove the private copying exception—making personal copying illegal again, or to supply additional evidence that copyright owners suffer no or minimal "harm" from personal copying, or else to begin imposing a new tax on users to compensate the industry for that "harm"._

Which sounds to me like UK has the option to start collecting a similar surcharge to compensate for the right to make private copies of works. They are not required to ban private copying completely.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I read the article but this sentence must have slipped my attention. I really would like to see them to supply evidence that _copyright owners suffer no or minimal harm from personal copying_ but guess they won't even bother attempting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Seizing on the opportunity to use this supranational directive to overturn a democratically-enacted law_

The directive exists pursuant to action of the European Parliament* which is also a democratic institution, as someone with Jeremy Malcolm's outstanding education is surely aware.

* [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...](http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML)

I'm not expressing an opinion on the merits of European copyright law; I'm not familiar with this case or the details of EU regulations, and I'm not suggesting the EFF is wrong to oppose this provision of EU law. I just get irritated as a citizen of the EU when people dismiss anything that comes out of Brussels as 'undemocractic'. Why does the EFF keep pandering to lowest common denominator like this? If I want xenophobic arguments I'll buy a tabloid newspaper.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'm from Europe and I don't like most of the things that come out of Brussels. In fact, when polls are made it would seem majority share my view. Maybe then 'undemocratic' is not such a bad name for it?

It's tons of bureaucracy with very little democracy.

<comment><USER8> I think the majority don't have a clue what laws come out of the EU versus their own parliament.

The EU has about 33 thousand employees, this is hardly tons of bureaucracy, just UK local government has 2.3 million employees.

<comment><USER9> A lot of local government are not strictly bureaucrats but are people providing services.

<comment><USER10> Bureaucracy services, mostly.

<comment><USER9> Teaching? Libraries? Rubbish collection? Street cleaning? Public health? Social care; adult social services, child protection social services?

Most of that isn't what people think when they hear bureaucracy.

<comment><USER10> All those services are surrounded by huge bureaucratic machines. As is any private company who wishes to make business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good old greed. The speed CDs and the music industry is disappearing probably will solve this issue going forward. Music is getting more and more fragmented and smaller and smaller styles show up that are very specific to a particular location. This will help to dismantle the music industry lobby probably.

<comment><USER12> I hear this argument very often but I don't see any strong evidence that it is happening in the majority case, nor will happen. The music/entertainment industries have been relatively slow to react to digitisation, the internet and technological advances, but their lobbying prowess is frightening. Just look at their power and handywork at the national level instigating ridiculous and oppressive laws and at the international level at the trade agreements being instigated. Just like in the linked article.

I __do __agree that small scale /localised success - the long tail as it used to be referred to - is a positive force too. It looks like we all just have to learn to live with both camps (and many more besides) being given scope to thrive. Hopefully that's the best outcome, but this type of out of touch and obtuse legislation is not helping.

<comment><USER11> "In early 2015, Bandcamp released an announcement that artists using the website had officially gotten $100 million in total from music sale"

Total music industry is 15B (afaik). It is 1/150th of the entire music industry and that is just one site. I think the artist make more on Bandcamp and other music distribution platforms than on big labels, that might be the reason why Bandcamp is greatly successful.

<comment><USER12> Well that's incredibly positive and I wasn't aware of that. I'm used to seeing more of the news that artists get almost no money through Spotify and similar channels or that consumer websites like Pandora getting legally harassed.

<comment><USER13> Bandcamp is very different though - you buy and own your music there. An album bought is worth much more to an artist than fractions of a cent per stream.

I'm not surprised that Bandcamp has been doing that well for a long time now. In contrast to all those streaming services it's a business model that seems to be sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is just UK. I dont think it will fly in Spain, Czech rep or other parts of EU.

For start there is author tax to compensate authors for fair use, it is collected as VAT on empty mediums and printers. With this law many powerful people would loose money. I would welcome it, since it means cheaper hardware.

And secondly: YES! More stupid laws like this, more DRM and people will turn to free music under Creative-Commons like license.

<comment><USER10> Minor correction, the authors tax charged on printers and copy mediums is in addition to VAT, not the same as VAT.

<comment><USER15> Minor correction, depends on the eu countries, but in France, the authors tax charged on copy mediums is in addition to the product price without VAT, and then VAT is applied to the whole. So you pay VAT on the authors tax. To be clear you pay tax on tax, a french speciality.

<comment><USER16> In NL you pay VAT on the special taxes added to fuel and there are a couple of other cases like this. Tax on tax is unfortunately not just a French thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The same story as reported by Ars technica[1] paints the EU law as the hero that produced some slight advances in copyright regulations based on essentially a completely reversed causuality than reported by the eff.

"The UK's music industry has successfully landed a significant judgement from the UK's High Court, countering a copyright exception that was brought in by the UK government last year. Since last October, there was a law that allowed you to make private copies of your own music; now the future of that law is uncertain."

"The UK government brought in the new copyright exception under a European Union directive that gives national governments that power, but which requires compensation to be paid to artists unless the harm caused to them by the change in copyright law is minimal."

It is also fun to contrast the position on the rights holders between the eff:

"Neither can we fully absolve the rightsholders from blame;"

and Arstechnica:

"The refusal to accept gracefully legislative changes is not new for the copyright industry. Perhaps the most egregious example of its dog-in-the- manger attitude [snip]"

[1]: [http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/music- industry-...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/music-industry- wins-against-uk-government-over-private-copying-of-music/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The teaser is wrong. It's a UK court, deciding for the UK. Not on the European level.

<comment><USER19> While not wrong, as the UK is in Europe, it is a misleading title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lets be realistic here.

So I'm going to go and delete 90% of my mp3s and go and purchase a CD player this afternoon.

Actually nope, I'm going to continue to steal all my music out of a combination of apathy and disdain for the system.

Oh and continue to go to the odd gig.

<comment> guard-of-terra You and some other commenters miss the point completely.

Now the "rights holders" will have right to tax every storage medium you buy. n% of what you pay for your HDD goes to them. (And I don't know who is that, since everybody I lisen to won't get a cent)

<comment><USER20> I'll have to steal more then to get my money's worth...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This idiotic decision will not stop one single CD from being ripped in Europe.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that any but the most naïve lawmaker believes that these laws will stop the behaviour they criminalise. Rather, they simply further the "3 felonies a day" state of being ([http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.asp...](http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx\)—and) I will set aside (because I honestly don't know what I believe) whether that is an intended or unintended effect.

<comment><USER23> I'm in favor of anything that degrades the respect for the rule of law qua law.

We'll have direct democracy on this stuff yet! Look at the Swiss.

<comment><USER22> > We'll have direct democracy on this stuff yet! Look at the Swiss.

Sorry, I'm not sufficiently up to date on this stuff to know at what about the Swiss to look. Could you elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In other news: not single person who rips their own CDs in all of Europe will give a crap.

Also, the only people still buying CDs don't rip them, and the rest of us have ripped their last CD over a decade ago.

The actual impact of this decision is close to zero, and therefor not a strong argument for copyright reform. Many countries still have outdated laws on the books nobody bothers with, making noise about this just gives the impression copyright reform isn't urgent.

<comment><USER25> Exactly, I'm old enough to have many hundreds of CDs, cassettes and vinyl, it's quicker to download an album that I own than to go and look for it around the house let alone including the time to rip it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "UK court". Reading "European court" made me think it was a ruling by an EU level court. That would have a different fallout.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm curious. This is phrased as a ruling on CDs. But doesn't the logic used suggest that if I buy an album on MP3, I cannot copy those files to my server and phone? It would be really weird if (US prices here, maybe UK is different?) I spend $15 on a CD I can only listen to the music using the original CD in a CD player, but if I spend $9 on an MP3 album, I can copy it to all my devices.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the EFF needs to send its people on a copywriting course, this article is so poorly written it's almost unreadable.</comment>


Designing a modern email - <AUTHOR> http://blog.postmarkapp.com/post/47718375205/designing-a-modern-email

<comment><USER2> Perhaps a more fitting title would be "designing a modern spam message"?

Those emails are exactly the kind of emails that I never read.

<comment><USER3> While you may never read them, a surprising number of people do. I had an internship where my primary responsibility was composing HTML emails that went out to users on a weekly basis. If I remember correctly, the majority of our users opened the emails, and roughly 5-10% clicked on a link to content on the site. I imagine these number vary quite a bit, but for a site with a paid membership we saw a lot of traffic from HTML newsletters.

<comment><USER4> Yes, spam is a profitable business, that's probably why there is so much more of it than personal email.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how opt-in messages from a paid service qualify as spam.

<comment><USER4> I get a lot of opt-in messages that I didn't really opt-in for, as does everyone. How many people do you think even know what 'opt-in' is ?

<comment><USER5> Do you get any email you did really opt-in for? If so, just think of those.

<comment><USER4> No, I don't receive any mass-delivered email that opted-in for, because if I wanted to read something generic I would go to the relevant website or blog. I do, of course, receive some 'group email' which is equally relevant to all the recipients, but the sender obviously had all of us, recipients, in mind when writing the email. And I'm not even opposed to mass-emails, it's just obvious that for the most part these emails are not relevant to the recipients, and adding any styling to these advertisements isn't making them any more relevant or useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And once again, the anti-HTML zealots are out in force, declaring that just because they don't like HTML email, no one else should be permitted to receive HTML email.

A counterpoint:

I subscribe to several HTML newsletters, and the fact that they are in HTML is a huge advantage to me. It means that JavaScript Weekly (Peter Cooper's newsletter) isn't just a mass of URLs. And it means that I can quickly preview the newest fonts from FontShop without having to visit their site.

You may not like HTML email, but it has tangible benefits to many of us.

<comment><USER7> Kinda impressive how many zealots, near-luddites HN has - I think some of the opinions on this topic are more passionate than OS or editor wars.

<comment><USER8>
        Kinda impressive how many zealots, near-luddites HN

Disliking HTML email makes someone a near-Luddite?

<comment><USER7> No - not at all, but making absolutist claims about it, and about how no-one should have to "endure" it, does - and there are multiple comments of that nature in this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nobody wants to receive e-mails like this.

<comment><USER10> Well if people read them and click on the links from these emails, then you must be wrong. Surprise! Did you even read the post?

If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does. There's also an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I read the entire post from beginning to end. I still wholeheartedly believe that nobody wants e-mails like this. Yes, I'm speaking in absolutes and yes, I don't give a damn.

> If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does.

Correct. I chose to speak in absolutes to make a point.

> There's also an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

That's wonderful, but I'm pretty sure the terminal emulator I'm running Alpine in doesn't do automatic URL lexing...

HTML is for the WWW. Please keep it out of e-mail. Thanks.

<comment><USER11> Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and password reset links? How do you account for broken links due to message truncate or unicode rendering? What about aligning various sections of the message? Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web. Taking HTML out of email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out of phones today.

<comment><USER9> > Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and > password reset links?

Yes, I do.

> How do you account for broken links due to message truncate or unicode > rendering?

I've never encountered a broken hyperlink due to message truncation or Unicode rendering. My terminal emulator is set to use the UTF-8 character-set. Please provide an example or demonstration of this.

> What about aligning various sections of the message?

Text comes left-aligned in most of the world and right-aligned elsewhere. What kind of alignment are you referring to here?

> Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

What's the value in altering the appearance of the text you want to send to someone?

> HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web.

Incorrect.

> Taking HTML out of email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out of > phones today.

I don't have a "smart" phone. What can I gain by owning one?

<comment><USER11> >Please provide an example or demonstration of this.

There are two limits that this standard places on the number of characters in a line. Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998 characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding the CRLF. [1]

>What kind of alignment are you referring to here?

>Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

I am talking about visual separations within the message. In pure text, everything carries the same weight, same font and same color. From the link of the site in the header to the unsubscribe at the bottom gets prominently displayed to you.

>Incorrect.

Well I couldn't find any reliable information to counter that. However as far I can remember, HTML emails have existed in the early days of Hotmail and Yahoo.

[1]<http://mailformat.dan.info/body/linelength.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Modern email should be completely banning any markup but spaces, going to UTF-8-32 encoding. Maaaybe increasing the maximum column width from 80 to 120, but that's stretching it (hehe).

</comment><comment><USER12> If the goal is to make an email feel like it's written by a human being, why not emulate what human emails actually look like? Does the author photo actually make it feel more human, or less? I can't think of a time I've ever gotten a real-person email that included a picture of the sender.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because this would be a lie. We don't try to fool our users by sending them fake personal emails - who would believe that CEO actually emails every new user? But we want to show that there is a really small team behind the product, and you can get in touch with anyone just by replying to email. Every reply goes directly to the person who wrote email, not a support inbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > 79% of your readers spent longer than 2+ seconds looking at your email

I understand how opened emails can be tracked without javascript, via server hits to img files, but what magic allows you to track _how long_ it was opened?

<comment><USER14> Use the tracking pixel and hold the connection open. When the user goes to the next email, the connection will close and you'll have the length of time they viewed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Html in email is bad.evil.wrong.stupid. When will these people get it?

<comment><USER16> I like plain text as well but I dislike the fact that it looks so ugly. Why do we need to insert line break at 72 (or something) characters? Can't we wrap text emails?

<comment><USER17> There's an RFC that nobody uses for rich-text e-mails.

[edit] found it! <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1523>

<comment><USER16> Perhaps I need to think about what I don't like about html-formatted emails. I can't really put my finger on anything. I am not against html when I think about it. It just feels like it is not the right tool for the job. (I know I am doing a pretty poor job at explaining myself. Sorry!)

<comment><USER17> I don't like them either, for the exact same reason!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm one of the developers for the Direct Mail app mentioned in the article. Would be happy to answer any questions. Thanks for the interesting post!

<comment><USER19> I'd never heard of it, but just gave it a spin and it's really impressive.

I work for a decent sized publishing co that sends a lot of email newsletters as part of it's core biz. I know this e3 thing is part of your service, but is there any planned integration with something like Exact Target (via API, not just SMTP)? Thanks!

<comment><USER18> Thanks! We have additional integrations planned, but if you have something in particular in mind, please drop me (Jonathan) a note: <http://directmailmac.com/support>. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I want to underline one change they made that in my experience makes a huge impact: GET RID OF THE HEADER / LOGO

This is one of the basic steps that I've seen drive conversion almost every time be it ecommerce checkout / lead gen / email / etc.

The header distracts from your content, eliminate it or limit it as much as possible, especially when you have somebody that's already engaged (somebody added to cart, joined your list, etc).

In email they did exactly the right thing - center the user on the brand w/the "from address" or the title vs. wasting pixels in your content.

Several years ago I wrote about including company name in the email title as an "Always" winner for email:

[http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/optimize- your-e...](http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/optimize-your-email- conversion-rate-with-3-quick-tips/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Side note, anyone remember Google Wave?</comment>


Glenn Reynolds: Millennials don't dream big. A Millennial responds. - <AUTHOR> http://www.radicalsocialentreps.org/2012/05/a-millennials-dystopia-want-us-to-dream-give-us-a-sci-fi-of-social-technology/

<comment><USER2> Feh... I'm 39 and most of the "I ..." statements in that article rang true for me. I don't think being a "Millennial" or not has as much to do with things as the author believes.

Likewise, most of the quoted stereotypes about millennials were once said about "Gen Y" and "Gen X" kids as well.

<comment><USER3> Millenials are Gen Y: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y>

So this is referring to people born in the 80's and onwards. You're close but I guess it probably does apply to the late Gen X'ers as well.

<comment><USER2> Interesting, I could have sworn I'd seen some definitions that broke "Millennials" down as a smaller (and younger) group than "Gen Y." Oh well, sociology isn't my field. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you subscribe to the Strauss and Howe theories <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_(book)> , then we (millenials) will guide the world during its next high point.

</comment><comment><USER4> "If we are to dream, we need ..." "Want us to dream? Give us ..."

No. Take responsibility for yourself and stop the belief that your fate depends on something that someone else gives you.</comment>


1pxdeep v1.0 released: Now a Bootstrap 3 theme - <AUTHOR> http://rriepe.github.io/1pxdeep/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. I've often gone to colorschemedesigner.com to generate some base colors, then tweak my Bootstrap template for those. 1pxdeep seems to merge the two.

Suggestion: give some good example schemes for each category (e.g. "example good tetrad scheme")

Good examples would help because when I played around with several colors, I couldn't find anything that didn't remind me of hot dog stands or MySpace pages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Should the modal be overtaking the screen? It feels odd, almost buggy, in use.

Otherwise though, I really like this. The more muted color scheme is much more my style than defaults.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a trade-off: You lose the context of the document but you gain more err... modality.

Bootstrap uses transparency by default to preserve the page context, but that just didn't work as well with the color theming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool. Don't visit on your phone though. Client side less will hammer it. (Not a critique)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apologies to anyone who got nabbed by this. Bootstrap 3's changes, while fantastic, made it much harder to optimize the previewer on this version, since I couldn't just load everything in asynchronously on top of the basic Bootstrap stuff.

<comment><USER5> Chrome on my Nexus 7 was a little bit sluggish but basically fine. I was mostly too busy going "ooh, pretty" to mind, anyway :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome! Is it possible to have a light background, while still having strong accents?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're looking for a more color-friendly base Bootstrap (not 3... yet), check out Flamingo, which also uses SchemeLESS: [http://rriepe.github.io/flamingo/](http://rriepe.github.io/flamingo/)

If you like 1pxdeep's stylings, start with a @seed-color of white, and then edit @color2, @color3 and @color4 in scheme.less to your liking. It will generate appropriate subcolors from those (which you can also overwrite, if you want).

<comment><USER6> Thank you, rriepe. It would be great if 1pxdeep let me pick color1, color2 and color3 with sensible defaults.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why is Bootstrap still using LESS?

<comment><USER8> ... as opposed to SASS?

What's wrong with LESS?

<comment><USER7> [https://gist.github.com/chriseppstein/674726](https://gist.github.com/chriseppstein/674726)

<comment><USER9> You think the simplicity of LESS is what's wrong with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I going mad, or am I surpose to be able to click on things on that color selector? .... I think something is overlayed on top of the controls getting in the way [latest FF - Linux]

EDIT: fixes if I make the browser window wider than 1024ish

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it's broken for everything but the smallest and largest layouts. EDIT: It's fixed now, thanks for pointing it out.

<comment><USER11> Thoughts on adding secondary or tertiary color selector?

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably won't. You can overwrite any color in scheme.less, though, if you download it and play around with it. You can also tweak things like the theme's contrast, and the breaks where it considers things "light" and "dark".

My big wishlist item is a "Download current theme's CSS" but that's pretty tricky to do. If it had something like that, I'd consider making the preview tool more powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I crazy, or does it not agree with the color relations from [http://colorschemedesigner.com/](http://colorschemedesigner.com/)?

Using #602375 (dark purple) as a seed color with Complement mode yields the complement as being a dark green, whereas in ColorSchemeDesigner the complement is more of an olive color?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, color wheels are crazy. Different wheel, different results. I'm guessing LESS and CSD3 don't use the same wheel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a designer, this is why computers don't have our jorbs yet. Algorithmic color generation is _really really hard._ (Trust me, I've researched and developed tools for it quite a bit, using everything from golden ratio to exotic classifiers). Nothing reliably beats the creative human when it comes to color aesthetics.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1pxdeep is more about showcasing relative color design, not so much the colors themselves.

I stand behind the algorithmic color generation I've put into SchemeLESS, but it's intended as a starting point. The theme doesn't just take any seed color, it takes any SchemeLESS color scheme. If you don't like the @color3 you get, overwrite it. You'll get a new @color3a, @color3b, and @color3c. Don't like those? Overwrite them too. Or just change the variables used in the rules SchemeLESS uses to generate them.

Make no mistake, this is a tool by a designer that's intended for other designers. This isn't about competing with designers or replacing designers. It's about enabling designers to work with color in powerful ways without significantly adding to the tech debt of a project.

<comment><USER13> For sure, it's a great starting point, and you're right it's a good tool. Not criticizing the existence of the tool or the work that went into it, just noting when playing with it myself that there's a large gap between the generated colors and usable colors. Not sure if that gap is due to the generation or just the nature of algorithmic color selection, but it does exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems extremely similar to another project with the same philosophy: [http://pikock.github.io/bootstrap-magic](http://pikock.github.io/bootstrap- magic)

It's very nice to see how customizable all those CSS frameworks really are. The days of not having to fiddle with all those colors are upon us.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who feels that the colors are not good enough. I didn't like any color associated with the theme.

</comment><comment><USER16> the color combinations are very dull.

<comment><AUTHOR> More saturated colors get more dramatic themes, if that's what you're looking for:

[http://rriepe.github.io/1pxdeep/#ff3f38](http://rriepe.github.io/1pxdeep/#ff3f38)

It's also completely built on SchemeLESS, so you can easily override any color in the theme. I think "dull" is a pretty good tradeoff for generally working with any color you give it.

<comment><USER17> I actually was going to point out that _less_ saturated colors get... well, maybe not more dramatic, but in-my-opinion-"better" themes. For example, with this one, any but 'complementary' are almost usable [http://rriepe.github.io/1pxdeep/#e9ede4](http://rriepe.github.io/1pxdeep/#e9ede4)

Also, anybody that's using this should be sure to add a rule like

        input { outline: none}

or it completely ruins the whole 1pxdeep theme with OS-defined outlines on clicked buttons. On the demo, this may not work for the main "Scheme now" button, but

        #change_color { outline: none }

will.

<comment><AUTHOR> Less saturated colors definitely produce better themes. The very-close-to- white colors (and white itself) behave weird in general but I liked all the results so I just kept it. Should fix that navbar contrast issue though...

Be careful with outline:none. It's an accessibility issue:

[http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2012/04/how-to-remove-css- outl...](http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2012/04/how-to-remove-css-outlines-in- an-accessible-manner/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 50+ requests to load the page? This locked up my browser for a good while. I don't really want to even consider a css/less framework that takes 5s to load its dependencies.

<comment><USER19> I think a lot of the slowness is because it's being compiled in your browser. It would be much better if you compiled all the less files down to one minified css file.

<comment><USER18> I totally understand that. I just wish the OP did.

<comment><AUTHOR> The demo requires client-side LESS to work.

<comment><USER18> "working" does not make a site good. I understand that the site requires client-side less to "work". I simply wanted to point out that this "working" is painfully slow and miserable for the user. By my own definition, this does not "work".

Edit: Just noticed this was the OP I was replying to...

If you want to make the site exemplary, then make it fast. Use all manner of web optimizations for the example, to show what's truly possible. It's not just about design, it's about experience.

<comment><USER20> Are you understanding what's happening? The site uses client side less so that it can do some of the dynamic stuff. YOUR site, using this theme, won't have to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd love it if I could preview what everything looks like right on that page after I change the individual colors at the bottom.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been considering building something like that out for SchemeLESS, but I'm not quite sure how to implement it yet. If I do it there, I'll definitely be adding it to this page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The theme building tool I've always missed! <3

</comment><comment><USER23> Buttons are not flat, so, how can this be flat-ish?!

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks great but your #navbar-brand link is broken.

</comment><comment><USER25> looks nice :), Try it with #FFFFFF, this is some nice contrast.

</comment><comment><USER26> love it, but looks terrible in #f29eba</comment>


Permutations in Google Translate (PHP-Script) - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/FbZyquzA

<comment><AUTHOR> The script will translate a given text from one language to the next for all languages that google supports.

\- Invoke php -f translate.php "TEXT" > translate.html \- Open translate.html in Browser.

An example (in German): Ehefrau->Frau->Weiblich->Männlich->Mann->Ich... (wife -> woman -> feminine -> manly -> man -> I...)

Fun to play around with.</comment>


Calculating Bitcoin Arbitrage Profit - <AUTHOR> http://hankstoever.com/posts/14-Calculating-Bitcoin-Arbitrage-Profit

<comment><USER2> I can't really agree with your findings. I still think the largest hindrance to taking advantage of the arbitrage is the international wire transfer fees that coincide with transferring money into the exchanges.

Mt. Gox - Astro-based deposits. Not available for US customers. Kraken (US Based Exchange) - Still waiting on getting their licenses on a PER state basis, until then digital currency can be bought or sold. CampBX (US Based Exchange) - ACH withdrawal only after Dwolla dropped support, only other options are personal checks (requires KYC verification)and money orders which require 4 days for completion. Their volume is much too low for taking advantage of arbitrage.

Coinbase is by far the easiest yet their trades take 4 days to complete if you have a tier 1 account. On top of that they take 1% for every buy and sell of Bitcoin and do not allow you to keep funds within the coin base platform hence no ability to swap funds easily.

I've tried arbitrage but the structure is not there to take advantage of...yet.</comment>


Gitlab does not comply with GDPR - <AUTHOR> https://reddit.com/r/europrivacy/comments/8oymby/source_code_hoster_gitlab_is_not_respecing_the/ <comment><USER2> They've most likely been mislead by very poor advice on marketing communications. Under GDPR a company can rely on "legitimate interest" as their lawful basis for processing for marketing purposes. However, this ignores the older PECR rules that say that electronic marketing requires consent.

Requiring users to agree to the a new privacy policy or updated terms and conditions is obviously still fine. GDPR does not restrict companies from requiring that their users agree to terms as part of their provision of services.

As far as I can tell from this post, the only problem is that GitLab have used the guidance for postal marketing when they're doing electronic marketing. Yes, it's not compliant, but references to the UDHR and the general tone of this suggest the user has a prior grievance and they're trying to over-inflate this issue.

</comment><comment><USER3> GitLab has a strict opt in policy for processing personal information for marketing for all users, even in jurisdictions where opt in is not required. We very much respect the privacy of our users. With regard to services, consent isn't required since the personal information we process is necessary for providing the services. There seems to be confusion on what consent is needed for.

</comment><comment><USER4> Regarding the displaying of public activity in your public profile:

While we don't use any page tracking or anything like Google Analytics (or equivalents like Piwik) in the application, nor the activity is generated from that, we understand that there are people who would prefer to not have that information publicly available: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/38604](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/38604)

On the other hand, some would like to opt-in to provide even more information (in the form of the contribution calendar) to have their activity in private projects counted as well: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/14078](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14078) (to match feature parity on how it works in GitHub).

We are listening and we intended no harm.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how long before the GDPR starts to act AND if it will have teeth...

<comment><USER6> since a week the teeth are active and lawyers started to send out their letters. The two years with it being law without teeth are over.

<comment><USER7> How do you think they'll try to regulate a non EU company.

"Hey American incorporated company, we fine you EUR 150,000"

"K"

How would it be enforced?

<comment><USER6> It can be enforced in multiple ways. For instance by going after the European ad business or just yesterday a ruling of the European Court of Justice was published stating that Europeans who run a "Facebook Page" take some of the responsibility [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=202543&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=298398) (this s not about GDPR, but older rights, but shows how European organizations can go after US corps)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for an mobile/web app that tracked your goals? - <AUTHOR>

We all set goals - career, personal, mental, physical etc
However how many times do we actually track and measure our performance? How often do we look back to see what we have achieved versus our goals?
Would you use an app that: 1) Allowed you to set your goals? 2) Allowed you to track your performance over weeks, months, years? 3) Reminded you about missed or achieved targets?
Would you pay for this app? If so, how much?
Looking for views on existing apps or desires for a new app to do some (or more) of the above. <comment><USER2> I could see myself paying a one time fee for something like this, but only if you show me that your app is really going to keep me on target. I can set reminders for missed targets in my calendar app and I can keep a text file that has my goals in it. You would really have to sell it to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> [devil's advocate] I don't know - is this something I need? Aren't there thousands of apps like this? Don't they all suck?

But if you find a way to solve my procrastination related problems, I can imagine paying you $10-20 per month.</comment>


How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets – Salon.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/how_netflix_is_turning_viewers_into_puppets/?123 <comment><USER2> That's just creepy. While I can see how it would be nice to have Netflix, I don't wish to be tracked. I'd rather pay cash for a DVD at a retail store; that way I won't be tracked.</comment>


Long Live Grim Fandango - <AUTHOR> http://blog.longreads.com/2015/01/29/long-live-grim-fandango/ <comment><USER2> >> "The game was built for Intel's 386 processor; one year later, the 486 arrived. Computer games rely on a web of interlocking code that resembles more a cityscape of cards as opposed to a single, measly house. These new chips were too fast, and the difference in speed made this towering game tumble down."

Errrr..... This seems wrong. I played the original on a Pentium 2 box back in the day

Damned awesome game though, been meaning to replay it.

<comment><USER3> Here are the original game's system requirements, courtesy of Disney:

[https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/What-are-the- syst...](https://help.disney.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/What-are-the-system- requirements-for-Grim-Fandango?section=Games&siteLang=de_AT)

Minimum CPU: Pentium @ 133 MHz

The video requirements are actually pretty long, but for the overwhelming majority of people who played this game back when it came out it all boiled down to one thing: 3DFX required.

I'm not sure if I played this on the Diamond Monster I or the Diamond Monster II 3DFX card, but I'm pretty sure it was one of those two.

For those young enough not to remember, the 3DFX chipset was on the first cards with logic specifically built for 3D rendering that was affordable for consumers. For the first couple of generations, you typically had to own a 2D graphics card (for all your usual stuff) and a 3D card. You would plug the video output from your 2D card into your 3D card, and then connect the output to your monitor. Running code that used the 3DFX's glide API would cause the 3D card to cut in and replace the 2D card's output with it's own. This is pretty ghetto by today's standards, but the step forward in graphics was amazing at the time!

<comment><USER4> My brother still has his 3DFX cards (Banshee, Voodoo Dragon, perhaps a Voodoo 2 as well?) Playing Screamer 2 with 3DFX acceleration and Need For Speed 2 SE with 3DFX was very impressive at the time, still great fun now (he keeps an old ancient Celeron around and runs Windows 98 on it for such vintage things)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The game was recently remastered and released on Steam. It's an incredible game, with some of the wittiest writing I've seen, and I couldn't recommend it more highly.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/316790/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/316790/)

<comment><USER6> "remastered" -> a lot of the assets were not really remastered. I know that is what they are calling it but they are overselling the actual changes.

<comment><USER7> So? It's not called Grim Fandango Every Single Asset Remastered. They updated the controls, made hi-res versions of all the character textures, added dynamic lighting, re-recorded the entire score with a full orchestra, and of course made it run smoothly on modern machines. It would have been nice if they could have updated all the backgrounds as well, but I think what's there counts as "remastered" by any reasonable definition.

<comment><USER6> > They updated the controls, made hi-res versions of all the character > textures, added dynamic lighting, re-recorded the entire score with a full > orchestra, and of course made it run smoothly on modern machines

You forgot one thing: they updated the price as well. Instead of costing 5 dollars like every game older than 10 years mostly does, it's 15. But hey, there's no little profit, and they got a lot of free press coverage on top of that just because it was a miserable mess before to run this game on modern computers (Thanks ResidualVM folks for doing their work).

<comment><USER7> So that's the real issue? You're bitter that they're charging all of $15 for what's been called the best adventure game ever made?

<comment><USER8> I don't think that's what he said or meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A significant portion of Grim Fandango was written in Lua 2.5! Here is a followup talk from the developer in 2005: [http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Mogul.pdf](http://www.lua.org/wshop05/Mogul.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Somewhere I read that GF implements game saves by serializing the whole Lua heap.

<comment><USER4> Good idea, serialization is a good technique when you don't need to switch architectures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nitpick from a Mexican raised in Mexico: we never say "día de los muertos". This is a literal back translation of English of "Day of the Dead". We say "día de muertos", without the "los".

The only times I see "día de los muertos" is in English-language media.

<comment><USER11> Oops, looks like I spoke too soon. I _do_ see the "los" version now, but it's far less frequent than the one without:

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de+los+muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22jornada.unam.mx%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de+muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de++muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3A%22reforma.com%22+%22d%C3%ADa+de+los+muertos%22&btnG=Search&gbv=1)

Maybe the English back translation is making its way into Mexico? Maybe it always was there? Who knows. It sounds weird to me, as if you were speaking of a particular group of dead people instead of all of the dead, but maybe usage has changed or it always existed.

<comment><USER12> Quite possible that the difference is due to Mexican-American influence in the Southwest US where the holiday is celebrated.

FYI my high school spanish teacher (who grew up in New Mexico but was Hispanic) always called it Dia de los Muertos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always wanted to play this and never got around to it. Would someone who's played both Grim Fandango and Secret of Monkey Island (one of my all- time favorite games, also released by LucasArts about 8 years prior to Grim) be willing to provide their comparison of the two?

<comment><USER14> I played Escape from MI (which I am assuming is kiiiinda similar to Secret of MI) and Grim Fandango. Loved both.

 __* possible spoiler alert __*

Both are puzzle kind of games. There isn't anything like the insult fighting in GF. Both storylines are fascinating and suck you right in. Great voice acting and sidekicks. I think (if I recall correctly) both games make you travel to different places.

I found that GF moved me a lot more emotionally than MI (subjective, yeah) and I think it's probably because the GF storyline is a little darker/serious (not to say it didn't have funny moments). When I finished MI, I felt accomplished. When I felt GF, I felt like I was saying goodbye to friends that I'm not sure I would ever see again. That kind of feeling.

I could go on and on, but I don't want to spoil it too much more. :)

<comment><USER13> Thanks! I highly recommend the first MI game since you haven't played it. It was my favorite in the series.

<comment><USER14> Thanks! I'll need to check it out for sure. I wanted to do all of them in the MI series but didn't get around to it. Lately I've been trying to play through some old games so I will put that on my list.

<comment><USER15> Escape was probably the weakest of all the MI games and hasn't aged as well Grim Fandango or any of the other MI games due to its art style and the early 3D engine.

The Curse of Monkey Island still looks amazing (if low-res), as does Full Throttle. I'd love to see the return of big-budget games with 2D art.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is definitely one of my all time favourite games. The atmosphere and story are top notch. Good to see it being revitalized.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting to note that remastered version requires OpenGL 3.3, which makes it unsuitable for Intel GPUs older than Sandy Bridge.

</comment><comment><USER18> Tim Schafer has also made a new point and click game: Broken Age [http://www.brokenagegame.com/](http://www.brokenagegame.com/)

<comment><USER19> It drew quite a bit of ire when, after a wildly overfunded Kickstarter campaign in 2012, they missed their deadline by a year, only to deliver a short "Act 1" instead of a full game. After yet another year, the rest of the game still remains to be completed.

<comment><USER20> Not to mention that Double Fine then went on to start Spacebase DF-9, which despite a successful Kickstarter relied on a paid alpha model[0] via the Steam Early Access program to fund the ongoing development and was eventually canned[1] when it didn't meet the monthly sales numbers they depended on to finance the project.

[0]: Sadly they didn't really communicate that they were relying on continuous funding for development and had to use most of the Kickstarter funds to pay back the initial investment. This miscommunication resulted in a lot of bad blood because many fans had assumed the Kickstarter funds would pay for the future development rather than the development that had already happened.

[1]: Well, they just called it "1.0" and released it, but calling it a finished product would be absurd. It's barely playable, has game-breaking bugs and contains only a fraction of the gameplay that was originally proposed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm playing it now for the first time (GOG release). It's a great game.

If you have a large XFS partition however (1+TB) it will fail to run. For a workaround see: [https://www.gog.com/forum/grim_fandango_remastered/grim_fand...](https://www.gog.com/forum/grim_fandango_remastered/grim_fandango_remastered_fails_to_run_on_linux)

</comment><comment><USER21> one of the best games ever. play it.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is what I was really excited about when I first heard about Lucas selling everything to Disney.

</comment><comment><USER23> Brings back memories of reading the article in PC Gamer. OpenGL has come a long ways

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem with that article - it's too long.

Are they creating new version of Grim Fandango? (The original game was really great!).

<comment><USER25> Were you expecting something wildly different on a site called 'longreads'?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps there is a market for "condensedlongreads"?

<comment><USER24> I am thinking about that too</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Samsung Galaxy Fold's display seems to have problems - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1598094/the-samsung-galaxy-folds-display-seems-to-have-problems/ <comment><USER2> Even if the Fold has some problems, I commend them for being bold with their design and ambitions. It may be safer to wait for the next generation of that phone, but many recent developments in the hardware space have been lacking in ambition. Kudos to Samsung

<comment><USER3> Had this happened to Apple, there would be an uproar.

Samsung's $2000 phone breaks in two days? Kudos to them for being bold and brave.

Smh.

<comment><USER4> That's because Apple would have spent the last 2 years saying that no one would ever need that feature, then pretend to invent it saying it was the most amazing thing ever, then remove some functionality that everyone loved to make room for it while still staying thinner than anyone cared...

When it quit working after 2 days they'd tell you you shouldn't have held it that way.

<comment><USER5> Which is fine because the device I bought would still work.

<comment><USER6> Unless it has a keyboard or you hold it wrong.

<comment><USER3> "You hold it wrong". Affected less than 1% of the users. Called "Antennagate". Still remembered 10 years later.

Samsung: phone breaks two days after use. Kudos to them, bravo.

See?

IIRC Samsung also had its own antennagate, nobody batted an eye.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Summary:

\- 4 review units have failed (a day or two in)

\- 2 failed due to a removal of a "polymer coating" that essentially looks like a screen protector. This is not supposed to be removed, but several reviewers did (or tried)

\- 1 failed due to supposed ingress into the hinge mechanism. I'm sure failure analysis is currently going on at Samsung

\- 1 screen failed with no apparent causes.

<comment><USER8> how many review units were handed out? Seems like every Youtuber and Instagram influencer got one

<comment><USER7> I would guess a hundred.

<comment><USER9> I'll go a hundred fifty and not a cent higher

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the idea of a proper foldable screen, but sadly, I'm not surprised.

I remember thinking they'd have issues with material fatigue, what with the screen being on the small side of the bend radius. Then their demo showed a visible line of different brightness along the fold and figured it'd be a low- volume launch.

(Hope they figure it out eventually, though. Far be it from me to chastise someone for taking the stuff of R&D labs and selling it in an actual product.)

<comment><USER11> I would like to see this is a low end disposable phone. Bear with me on this, but there are many cameras on this phone, it could have just average cameras front and back, good enough for sending WhatsApp messages etc, not winning photography awards. Then the screens. If there was a low-res screen that folded with no extra outer screen then that would be a lot cheaper.

Then if the hinge is little more than two screens held together by a screen protector then you could replace the screen protector bit every year or so depending on use.

One side could be that large battery a lot of people still want and the other side could be the normal phone gubbins with SD card slot, plastic cover and a lame but capable processor.

For people who just want a big screen and don't care for having it 4K it would be great. It could even be at a $250 price point and be affordable in countries that don't have reliable electricity.

In posh countries it could be 'disposed' after three years and be engineered for that type of lifespan, in more resourceful places it could work with the hinge screen protector missing or if one side does not work.

<comment><USER12> > the hinge is little more than two screens held together by a screen > protector

Yes, but that would be rubbish. Big black bar across the video you're trying to watch. What Samsung actually built was the genuinely folding screen with pixels all the way across, which would be amazing if it works and didn't cost $2,000.

> even be at a $250 price point and be affordable in countries that don't have > reliable electricity.

That seems rather high compared to the $50 tablet market.

<comment><USER13> I would say it's amazing if it works even if it costs $2,000. I mean, it's too much for _my_ blood, but if you have the money and you want a tablet that can also fit in your pocket...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's worth noting that Samsung previously announced they would replace for customers any Galaxy Fold with screen issues. Also all Galaxy Folds are covered under Samsung Care+ which includes accidental damage. It's still a risky first gen device but at least you're getting some protection.

<comment><USER14> Don't most countries have a minimum required warranty? Seems like fixing devices that were faulty is the least they could do.

I do like that accidental damage is covered, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if I'm in the minority but I would prefer two separated clamshell screens to one bendy screen. At least until the bendable tech is 100%.

Two separate screens would still allow great multitasking when necessary. When not used perhaps it can completely fold behind the device for a traditional smartphone experience.

<comment><USER16> Ooh. I saw this in SK: [https://www.techradar.com/news/lg-dualscreen-first- look-at-l...](https://www.techradar.com/news/lg-dualscreen-first-look-at-lgs- alternative-to-foldable-phones)

Honestly I don't know why it exists. You could just buy a case and then buy two phones.

<comment><USER17> .... this is like saying "why do you need a second monitor for your PC? just buy two PC's"

A two-screen smartphone is something I'd love to have, if bendable screen smartphones end up tanking. Multi-tasking is something that would be so much more convenient (say, writing notes while looking at a certain website, or discussing something with a friend while referencing a website, or ... etc). These are things that I already do with my smartphone, but it's just a huge pain in the ass because of the single screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't understand the appeal of a foldable screen - it looks like shit (big crease down the middle and thick when folded) and for that I get a marginal improvement on idle surface area consumption.

Would love to be proven wrong but I think it's going to be a monumental flop in regards to sales.

<comment><USER19> My guess is it helps people who don't like large phones (in terms of surface area) in their clothes pockets. Sure it'll be thicker, and maybe some people have an issue with that, but it would potentially fit better in some situations while still unfolding to a larger screen size for regular use.

<comment><USER18> If the size in the pocket is the problem, surely the extra thickness makes it more cumbersome? It would be like carrying one of those Anker battery packs around all day (the non-travel/portable ones) would it not?

<comment><USER19> I guess compare forcing an iPad Mini or Nexus 7 in your pocket versus an original iPhone, which was much thicker than what we've had the past few iterations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just wondering about the actual statistics here...

Is this a higher failure rate than average phones? Or is there a extremely large focus on all of these devices because of what they are, and therefor problems are more "visible" (there's probably an English word for the phenomenon)

<comment><USER21> > Is this a higher failure rate than average phones?

At this point these are just review models—the phone itself hasn't been release yet.

> Or is there a extremely large focus on all of these devices because of what > they are, and therefor problems are more "visible"

There's a large focus on these devices, because the people who got them were given them for that purpose.

<comment><USER22> Samsung said that the units sent out are the same as the final consumer devices, for what it's worth.

<comment><USER23> The phone is supposed to release 26th.. "Just review" models can't be much different from the final devices. Also, why would Samsung risk giving high profile reviewers inferior "just review" models? I would give them the best QAd devices i'd got.

Sounds like a lot of people are wishful thinking this isn't going to be a release disaster. My bet is Samsung will pull the plug and not release it at all (this year).

<comment><USER23> Oh boy, it looks like they are going through with the release

<comment><USER21> And now, they're not. It was the right call on their part, even if it should never have gotten to this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think the concept of a scroll device, as in RUBY might be a more interesting approach than a true foldable. I do hope they're able to work through this... but given the pricing, seriously doubt I want to be an early adopter for this ride.

<comment><USER25> A screen between collapsible grips is nice design and it comes round again and again. But has to work one-handed once folded out, and be strong enough unfolded.

<comment><USER24> It doesn't seem like it'd be _THAT_ different than the fold design, but could be done with less extreme bends... would just need a lock when open option.

The main grip could hold the actual battery, and the screen part would only need to be the screen. It could be like a micro tablet.. when used as a phone, it could be collapsed to something reasonable to hold against your head... open for video/chat etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how well Xiaomi's version of this will turn out durability-wise. The Mi Mix3 was pretty well-engineered with its slider and out of all of these foldables their version looks the most appealing (and is rumored to be the cheapest)

</comment><comment><USER27> > Samsung told Quartz that the Fold is supposed to be durable enough to > withstand being folded at least 200,000 times, which would equate to about > 300 unfolds every day for two years. (The average person checks their phone > between 80 and 300 times each day.)

I wasn't expecting these screens to hold up very well over time, but that number seems shockingly low to me. I don't like the idea that the screen is expected to fail under normal use conditions well before the other hardware in the phone will be considered outdated. I also imagine that it will start showing some signs of damage as you approach the rated 200k folds.

<comment><USER28> Even at 300 phone checks a day, you're probably not unfolding the phone each time. it has a screen you can get to without unfolding it, so _many_ of the quick phone checks you do can be done without unfolding it.

<comment><USER29> But there's not another screen when the phone is folded.

<comment><USER30> There is a second, smaller screen on the back (or front, I suppose) of the phone.

<comment><USER29> Sorry, my bad. I didn't realize the design can be even more horrible like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Huawei previously mentioned that they started with the same concept as Samsung, but ditched the idea after they found numerous drawbacks. Looks like this might be that

[https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-prototyped-folding- ph...](https://www.businessinsider.com/huawei-prototyped-folding-phone- samsung-galaxy-fold-killed-it-mate-x-2019-2)

<comment><USER32> Didn't Huawei steal this tech from Samsung in the first place? Or was there more to this story?

[https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/30/tech/samsung-china- tech-t...](https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/30/tech/samsung-china-tech- theft/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > The phone comes with this protective layer/film. Samsung says you are not > supposed to remove it. I removed it, not knowing you're not supposed to > (consumers won't know either). It appeared removable in the left corner, so > I took it off. I believe this contributed to the problem.

How do you even?

<comment><USER34> Electronics, especially with displays, are very commonly shipped with protective, removable plastic coatings. How is this at all surprising? Seems like an honest mistake on the part of the user, combined with a bit of design (and documentation) fault on the part of the manufacturer.

<comment><USER33> No, this is straight up design fault.

I bet the engineers even warned internal testers NOT to remove the coating. And I further bet someone in QA told them they were a pack of idiots and they didn't listen.

If a non-removable coating has air gaps or loose edges that invite peeling, that's a manufacturing defect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> [https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1118575264026333185](https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1118575264026333185)

(Pulls the fucking screen off) I think this may have contributed to my screen not working

</comment><comment><USER36> No, "You're folding it wrong".

</comment><comment><USER37> Imo Smartphones and tablets in general werent ever made because someone starting from 1st principles thought this was a good design. Its was just, heres some _cool_ gizmo we can flog to people.</comment>


Nasdaq to Delist Long Blockchain as Pivot from Tea Fizzles - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2018/04/11/nasdaq-to-delist-long-blockchain-as-pivot-from-tea-fizzles/ <comment><USER2> You mean blockchain ain't useful to create better iced tea?

<comment><USER3> Who woulda thunk it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, I didn't see this one coming.</comment>


Show HN: Coinwall, a bitcoin paywall - <AUTHOR> http://www.coinwall.co <comment><USER2> Very cool. One idea you might play with is the idea of debt. In other words: allow me to view the content for free a couple times, while racking up an "IOU".

Perhaps after the debt accumulates I'm forced to pay my freeloader's bill to continue seeing content.

Second: Go to where the users are. You should have Coinbase support.

Looking forward to watching where you take this :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Re IOU system: that is an interesting idea! It would solve one of the big problems with micropayments, which is the mental barrier. Thanks.

Re Coinbase support: point taken; they are indeed one of the most popular wallets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Excellent concept... but I could not use it. It says "To view 46 words of content, send exactly 0.00015612 BTC ($0.10) to 12smAWhdY9aMFyEenX6NLVZDend5WJgfVc". I paid with this transaction: [https://blockchain.info/tx/047a379b7530f98876818540356b66964...](https://blockchain.info/tx/047a379b7530f98876818540356b66964534d00115553a78845d41ba390e5e84) And nothing happened, not even after 2 confirmations.

<comment><USER4> Yes, excellent concept, but also did not work for me. Also attempt to refresh the page asks for another payment. In this moment of weakness you wish there was a "refund" button on BitCoin :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you happen to have the transaction ID on hand for the failed payment?

Also, if you have a refund address, I can send the BTC back. It is a small amount, but still :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Coinwall is a zero-friction paywall that uses bitcoin."

A little bit ironic. Isn't paywall itself friction?

<comment><USER6> Given that you need the paywall, there's no _additional_ friction. By that logic, doing _anything_ is friction, compared to not doing it. Why breathe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A friend of mine, Zach Latta made something very similar and posted to HN a while ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881757](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881757)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm assuming the technology behind this is either of two things:

* An implementation of probabilistic nanopayments ([https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Nanopayments](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Nanopayments))

* Massive amount of extremely small transactions.

I'd like to know if any consideration has been made for the amount of data hitting the blockchain when this scales. A flood of transactions will cause fees to rise higher than the principal payment.

</comment><comment><USER9> I built something like this into my URL shortener a long time ago ( [http://tny.im/toll.php](http://tny.im/toll.php) ). However, it is nowhere as easy to use, uses the Blockchain.info wallet APIs in a way they were never meant to be used, doesn't have automatic (nor automated) payouts and I'm not even sure that it still works. I never really advertised it seriously. Since nobody ever really used it, and because it's not the main purpose of the service (it has enough feature creep already...), I am considering discontinuating the feature.

If Coinwall becomes popular (and I hope it does) I'll be damned :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool. Good for Soundcloud or YT users that want to provide links to dl their content for a fee without requiring too much hoop-jumping. Even a way of locating some content just through the referral link would be nice... that way a user on their SC and YT pages can set a permalink, but provide the redirection addresses on coinwall. Or rather, coinwall could have a "Soundcloud/YT" referral url that the user fills in when setting up the download: it's preprogrammed to handle those referrals and even stats could be given on the download page and the site could offer top-10 lists of music and video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I was thinking of adding file upload support for music/videos is a next feature. Having support for Soundcloud/Youtube/etc. URLs is a neat idea and would make for an easy UX.

<comment><USER10> Another idea is to have a "set your own price" w/wo a minimum price, like with Bandcamp, where the download is like a post-donation gift. Also, once paid, the purchaser may want to be able to leave an email address or message to get further discounts in the future from the artist as VIP fans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah. It seems to link directly to the protocol address "bitcoin:" \- and I don't have anything registered to pick up on that - making the button appear completely broken for me.

<comment><USER12> You should get a bitcoin client :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very clever. However I still think that any scheme that requires people to pay in advance is going to struggle. You're always going to be facing the "simulation heuristic".

</comment><comment><USER14> Tinypass is another paywall service that accepts bitcoin payments. [http://tinypass.com](http://tinypass.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately bitcoin's potential for micropayments isn't so great at the moment, when the transaction fee is 5-10c.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was lowered by 10x recently, to .5-.1c: [https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305)

<comment><USER16> It really hasn't been lowered. Most users aren't running the latest code, so you would struggle to ever get your transaction into a block that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great concept. Experience still needs some work...

How does the verification work? Do I have to register to verify that I've paid?

<comment><AUTHOR> No registration is required to pay or to make a paywall.

Verification is done by assigning a slightly different payment amount to each person. For example, if you are charging 0.00015 BTC, the amount 0.00015001 and 0.00015002 may be used to distinguish two payments. These amounts are cycled every ~15 mins.

Edit: Also, I may add support for BIP32 master public keys in the future. This would allow derivation of child public keys on behalf of the user, providing a unique payment address for each transaction. This is technically easy to do, the only problem is most people don't know how to access their master public key.

<comment><USER18> That is kind of confusing isn't it, because there's also a miner fee. Does your algorithm know how to subtract the miner fee to get the unique amount? Also, are your floating point operations (subtract, compare) done correctly?

[http://floating-point-gui.de/errors/comparison/](http://floating-point- gui.de/errors/comparison/)

<comment><USER19> Anyone who uses floating point numbers in a bitcoin project is doing it wrong. Bitcoins have a fixed (for now) level of precision. 1 satoshi is currently the smallest discrete amount of bitcoin that can exist.

The miner's fee is separate from the amount sent, this is easy to distinguish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> slipstream- Any chance of dogecoin support? Given their community thrives on micropayments...

</comment><comment><USER20> Ooo, I like this concept.</comment>


A programmer's code of ethics - <AUTHOR> http://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201005#22

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of something I read a long time ago that I think is worth bringing back up:

<http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html></comment>