Twitter Cuts Off DataSift To Step Up Its Own Big Data Business - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/11/twitter-cuts-off-datasift-to-step-up-its-own-b2b-big-data-analytics-business/#.acq8mm:kcu0 <comment><USER2> 2008 - Facebook had a meeting with us Crowdstar describing how our current business model (quizzes) was getting their own section in their TOS, and would cease to exist.

2010 - After switching to a game model and doing quite well - neck and neck with Zynga. We were walked into a Facebook meeting room and told a bizarre story how Mark was upset about friend feed forms. They explained that we could only share (by means of post feed forms) our games with people that already had our games. Pleading did nothing, they ended that model. Zynaga is still flailing around.

2012 - I changed companies and focused on mobile advertising. Another decent path with 12 employees or so. We got a phone call _. [EDIT REMOVED REST OF STORY]

2015 - I received another phone call from a large company (They deal in search) _. I wont go into this one.

* Phone calls from large companies are extremely bad. That means they don't want things in writing.

So sure, have fun with working with large companies. Just remember one thing: they hate you.

<comment><USER3> Honest question, because I'm neiher american nor familiar with their common law:

        Let's call the company that called us [redacted]

Does that really hold water, legally speaking? Because we all know what are you implying...

<comment><USER4> If you think this is inappropriate you shouldn't be quoting it

<comment><USER3> You are completely right, I didn't think that the parent would delete it (it was a honest question, really). But I can't edit it now. Perhaps someone from HN can?

<comment><USER5> Ok, we redacted that bit.

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Never, ever trust another company for your business model.

Here's a previous comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9262245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9262245)

That was about FaceBook, but exactly the same holds here.

Quoting:

        Certainly I'd be incorporating an exit strategy,
        and my game plan would be to leverage off FB to
        start with, to grow as fast as possible, develop
        my own community and eco-system, and then be able
        to shed FB and replace it with something else.

<comment><USER7> >Never, ever trust another company for your business model.

This is just another thought-terminating cliche not unlike "if it is free, you are a product" and I can't help but respond.

Large technological companies create ecosystems where smaller players can coexist with "hosts" in a mutually beneficial relationship. Ecosystem companies are not able to predict the future of the ecosystem, its evolution for all intents and purposes is mostly unpredictable. Sometimes the relationship works out, sometimes it doesn't.

Startups have 70-90% failure* rate, the possibility of the host cutting of some parts of the ecosystem to integrate their food chains into the corporate borg is factored in the business and investments strategies of the smaller companies.

You should not trust another company for your business model, but building your tech business in the ecosystem of a large fish is an absolutely valid and quite possibly lucrative strategy.

*definitions vary

EDIT success/failure

<comment><USER8> The problem is that there is nothing preventing the "ecosystem host" from deciding that a niche an "ecosystem player" is exploring is lucrative and worth pursuing.

You can fly under the radar for a while but if Twitter/Facebook/Google/etc decide your area is lucrative, they will go after it, whether that will kill one of their "ecosystem players" or not.

There is no partnership involved, they provide a service as a huge "blob" that is making them money and they don't care about 1 out of 1 million of their regular users. Your small company cannot call itself a partner, you've as much leverage as any user when it comes down to deciding to sacrifice you in the name of something else more lucrative.

I'd say explore the benefits to bootstrap but have a strategy to depend less and less on them or your time will come. And if you really want to tie your business survival to one of these ecosystems, get yours and theirs responsibility down in writing (and even that won't help much because a breach of contract for them will mean nothing in terms of dollars, while for you it'll be your existence).

<comment><USER9> Ah. So you mean, "If you want to be perfectly secure for all future time you must be completely self sufficient."

Can't really argue with that. Maybe not useful advice, but it's self-evidently true.

<comment><USER6> It's more like:

        If you build a great business based on something over
        which you have no control, and which is such that the
        ones who do have control actually may have an interest
        in cloning what you do and terminating your facility
        without warning, be sure to have a "Plan B".

Yes, sounds obvious, but _so_ many people seem to ignore it, and in some cases actively disagree with it. You seem to be disagreeing with it - what would you suggest as more useful advice and a more reasonable stance?

Honestly, would you build a business based on a Twitter or Facebook facility, relying entirely on them not arbitrarily terminating your access?

What is your advice?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps to realise these companies are walled garden abberations, and that in an open competitive world, the Eco system would exist but the monopoly would not.

As such encourage and build openness by default into _your_ products, as for sure users want that (how many people for example wanted _only_ to email other AOL users, or view only other AOL websites?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was involved in a company that heavily depended on a popular site's API. We could clearly see they thought of the API's best value for them as filling in features before they had time to create them, and as a testing ground for ideas. It became harder and harder to stay ahead as our business grew, as at any time our features could be replaced with an official version. We decided to stop development.

Now, a few years later our largest competitor has been doing quite well with a product along the same style... but now, without warning, they've been cut off from API access and are facing requests for hundreds of refunds. Glad it wasn't us.

</comment><comment><USER12> At ScraperWiki, we had our Twitter to spreadsheet tool cut off (at a much more modest size!). I wrote up an analysis of where you can get Twitter data from and why which is relevant:

[https://blog.scraperwiki.com/2014/08/the-story-of-getting- tw...](https://blog.scraperwiki.com/2014/08/the-story-of-getting-twitter-data- and-its-missing-middle/)

</comment><comment><USER13> > He said that before this, the pair had been discussing a renewal of the > deal.

This should be a case study for anybody looking to get into a BD role.

A partnership is fundamentally coming from a position of weakness, and the relationship is a way for both partners to partially fill in whatever gap they believe they have in their strategy.

Sometimes partnerships go south, especially when the relationship is highly asymmetric.

In this case Twitter was the stronger of the two partners and they decided not to renew. That sucks, but that's life. Don't build your entire business around a single partnership, because that signals to your partner that all they have to do to get rid of you is replicate what you do and cut you off. Once you've gone through the blood sweat and tears to prove the market, you've just given your larger partner free market development.

DataSift's website lists a number of data sources [1], but Twitter comes up first. More importantly, I suspect these sources are slightly massaged to look like they have more sources coming in than are really useful for their business model. e.g. is Wikipedia _really_ in the same space as Twitter? They also have a bunch of minor sources but they're listed like they all rank equally. This is fine, most businesses would do the same to make themselves look better -- it's just advertising.

Another part of business partnerships is that you have to expose your weakness to your partner. Twitter is going to know at some point that DataSift's business model is heavily built around their firehose. They might even have some sense about what volume of business all the rest of those sources makes up to DataSift's business. Twitter _also_ , through their other partnerships, has a better sense of the size of the Twitter Analytics market. Even if DataSift's piece is 15% of the overall market, Twitter has other partners it can use to get a feel for the other 85%.

Partnerships are dangerous. Know what you're getting into before you get into them, and try to only do them with similar-sized partners or you'll find yourself getting screwed over/screwing somebody else over.

1 - [http://www.datasift.com/platform/datasources/](http://www.datasift.com/platform/datasources/)

<comment><USER14> _> Sometimes partnerships go south, especially when the relationship is highly asymmetric._

It's arguably not really a partnership if the relationship is highly asymmetric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Twitter is quickly approaching the point where it has lost my goodwill and I will actively look for something to replace it. (Apple has already passed that point)

I understand the way big ecosystems and walled gardens work. I also understand that every large technology company that has come down the pike in the last 30 years has wanted to conquer the known universe. That does not mean I have to actively assist them in this activity.

<comment><USER16> I'm losing faith that this is a viable approach. For example, laptops are a domain where your options are Apple, Lenovo, Dell, or a company that whose future in the laptop market is bleak. All of the options have done goodwill losing things in the past.

Can't we all just "conquer the known universe" together? We need a framework for educating these companies that open solutions have greater reach than closed solutions even if they are less directly profitable. The people making decisions are often successful enough this should be possible.

<comment><USER17> I am not sure these companies don't actually already know "open solutions have greater reach than closed solutions". They are run by extremely smart and capable people - but they are more concerned with pleasing the shareholders and hence short term profits than creating truly open systems (with some exceptions here and there) and we can't blame them for it. A more effective approach would be to create/support open systems and educate _consumers_ instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Have some fairly strong feelings about how much of a bad idea this is for twitter in the long run - posted here: [http://www.3scale.net/2015/04/loosing- innovation-twitters-fi...](http://www.3scale.net/2015/04/loosing-innovation- twitters-firehose-mistake/)

I have no idea if DataSift and NTT were good partners, but not having anyone else access the Firehose suggests they think they can cover all significant use-cases. This almost always turns out to be wrong.

It also sends another chilling signal to say "we're a platform, but when we feel we want to roll over part of the ecosystem we'll do it".

<comment><USER19> Gnip was DataSift's biggest competitor, and Twitter acquired Gnip. So firehose access is still totally available, but only through Twitter itself (b/c of the Gnip acquisition).

When the big company you relies on buys your competitor, you should be very, very scared.

<comment><USER20> i heard a (possibly apocryphal) explanation of that acqusition that had something do with a forgotten invoice on Twitter's part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's great for companies like Twitter and Facebook when startups build on their platform. The startups innovate and experiment with new features and business models (at their founders' and investors' expense). The lousy ideas fail, the good ones survive and the platform owner can cherry-pick by either replicating the successful feature/business model themselves or buying their favourite.

Then, by cutting off others' access to the platform, the platform owner can make their own service a monopoly and capture a significant proportion (if not all) of the others' customers and revenues.

Phase 3: Profit!

<comment><USER21> DataSift was simply reselling Twitter's data, along with whatever enhancements and cleaned up API niceties they offered.

And getting 80% of the revenue for that (according to the article).

How does this benefit Twitter? How does this benefit startups wanting to use Twitter? The data is still available, just not through resellers.

<comment><USER19> DataSift and Gnip had access to the Twitter firehose (every single tweet posted, live). Normal businesses / developers can't get access to that. Twitter's "streaming" API is a tiny fraction of the firehose.

So DataSift wasn't just reselling their data - they, along with Gnip, had a partnership that allowed them to get access to the firehose. For many social media companies, the firehose is a necessity, so they bought contracts with Gnip or DataSift.

Then Twitter bought Gnip, and is cutting off DataSift's access to the firehose.

<comment><USER21> Right so if we say Gnip is Twitter, then anyone can go buy data from Twitter (even if it's a wholly owned subcompany).

DataSift didn't have much of a value add (OK, historical data, common filters for Twitter and Reddit and others, etc.) But nothing that Twitter can't just in-house now that the market got nice and established.

<comment><USER14> Yes. Having acquired Gnip, Twitter can now offer the same services that DataSift offers.

So, Twitter terminates their "partnership" with DataSift, and all of DataSift's customers (i.e. the market that DataSift spent money and effort _getting_ "nice and established", educating potential customers, helping them figure out how to make use of the data, etc.) who want to continue benefitting from those services will now migrate to Twitter/Gnip.

I bet Twitter/Gnip will come out with some tool to make it ultra-easy for DataSift's customers to migrate across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was once invited to be a co-founder of a startup (by the other founder), whose business model was to build something using the API of <insert-big- social-network-company-here>. I declined, for the same sort of reasons mentioned in this comment by georgemcbay - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9364391) \- i.e. "yes, this fact should really give pause to people who are thinking about basing an entire company around an API, portal or other service that is 100% controlled by a large company. Any such dependency should be seen as the huge risk factor that it is."

Have read of multiple other such cases where the rug was pulled from under such startups that relied on a single point of failure (SPOT) - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_point_of_failure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_point_of_failure)

I told that founder the reason why I thought his model was not a good idea, after thinking for a while and then declining the offer.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone doing business with Twitter is a fool. There are few companies that show as much disdain to their partners as Twitter does. With partners like these, who needs enemies?

</comment><comment><USER24> For all the great things going on in open source software, truly open source data isn't all that common. I love playing around with third party APIs as much as anyone but as software developers we need to be extra careful that we are not building on sand. Just the thought of being cut off limits lots of interesting ideas and side projects for me. In some ways I want to build a platform just to get 100% access to some really fun data thrown off from the platform in which to build fun things on top of.

</comment><comment><USER25> _Talking to Nick Halstead, the CEO and founder of DataSift, he said that his company was "blindsided" by Twitter's announcement, which it made without any warning to DataSift._

He should have totally seen it coming and been prepared. When you don't think about the future and don't have the foresight to build competencies to take advantage of what you discover, you end up being blindsided. This is not about hating on Twitter or siding with them, it's pure competition.

<comment><USER26> That's untrue. DataSift was explicitly telling customers the contracts were up for renewal and that they did not have anything solidified.

<comment><USER20> But it wasn't totally unexpected, the rumour mill has been running for months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is terrible for Datasift, but I really hope they saw this coming. Twitter buying Gnip should have been the writing on the wall.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure Datasift saw it coming.

I researched this last summer. Even before I was explicitly told all the original firehose contracts were five years long, I could infer it from attitudes and behaviours.

I'm excited that Datasift are launching interesting new Facebook features. They're a great company, with good technology.

I hope Twitter's "no data resale" attitude leads to them becoming irrelevant, as it is so destructive of much innovation.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I'm sure it was significant source of talk within the company for a while. But what can you do? It's not like there are other Twitters out there. The value of Twitter is that there's only one. It looks and sounds like they're trying to diversify out to other sources, but none-of-them are Twitter and for whatever reason Tweets are like crack to market research firms.

<comment><USER12> Well, Instagram and Twitter are converging in terms of feature set. They're pretty well indistinguishable now.

They've not totally converged in terms of audience, but I think have surprising overlaps. Lots of Twitter data use cases you can get from Instagram, I bet.

<comment><USER27> _Well, Instagram and Twitter are converging in terms of feature set. They 're pretty well indistinguishable now._

I don't see how that's true at all. While Twitter now has well-developed image capabilities it's still not the core of what people use it for. Also Instagram has no equivalent of retweets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a shame, for sure, for DataSift.

We have been working with DataSift for about a year now though and it is pretty damn clunky. I'd say GNIP is probably even worse at the moment but maybe not for long?

As a user, if GNIP can capitalize on being part of Twitter, I gladly welcome the improvements this could bring. I'm not super confident though as now Twitter/GNIP will also be a monopoly in the space with the usual disincentives that come along with that. Also, our use case is strongly biased towards the "historic query" features and neither service seems as interested in that as they are in the real time streaming features.

Also, I had considered earlier developing a niche competitor solely focused on the historics space for companies with research-oriented use cases like ours. I suspected Twitter would be dropping this hammer though so glad I didn't waste my time!

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if using the hundreds if not thousands of twitter api credentials checked in on public repos, one could mitigate against things like this?

Though I suspect companies not in the jurisdiction of the US or its "partners" will probably be more likely to get away with an approach like this if caught or public about it, while still providing value added services based on walled gardens like facebook and twitter.

</comment><comment><USER30> That's not surprising. Twitter is very controlling about their service. They had an open API only until they got market share. Then the jaws gradually closed on Twitter-related programs. Twitter strongly discourages client programs other than their own. I once wrote a Twitter client with spam and ad blocking, just to see what it would be like, but I knew Twitter would never approve it.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Parasites are not crushed by the strong, they feed off of them" but sometimes the strong simply buck them off.

Apple did this with their introduction of Gamecenter, killing OpenFeint, and a couple others (can't remember their utility).

</comment><comment><USER32> I feel bad for DataSift. I always understood that their business was really risky. More when Twitter acquired Gnip.

<comment><USER26> I hope some of the people got good salaries. And maybe got some of the almost $80M raised.

DataSift was proud of the money they raised. The said it made them "more difficult to acquire than Gnip". I was amazed when I heard that. It sounds like they are happy they took on so much money and were moved passed by Gnip.

But it is worse, I think. For many services they require you to provide API keys. Rate limits are a problem? No! Create more API keys and give them us. Why are they not blocked? If any big service decides to block API key rotation ... game over? If we do it in-house, then we can use many proxies and pretend to be separate. Maybe.

Or maybe not. Maybe because of VC connection DataSift can rotate API keys and with impunity. Who knows?

But yes, to me it is very very risky business, but not too difficult technology. (Maybe that is why I have not had a big hit. Too little risk.)

So does HN think it is successful to raise money like them? Do the founders make more than $500K/year total from this venture?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Their strategy to handle this business risk was to ...accept it? It seems kind of shortsighted given twitter has ALREADY did a version of this to a bunch of other companies/apps.

At it's core, what twitter provides is no big deal. The ability to post 140 chars. They could have been quietly funding an open twitter protocol (it will happen eventually) but they chose to keep their heads in the sand.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wonder how you have done it, but this post was already published. A breach on HN?

</comment><comment><USER35> This doesn't surprise me at all. If you are going to use the infrastructure of an existing business to start your own, you will need to have a plan for figuring out other sources of users and diversifying your risk. Otherwise, you will be out of business if you ever get too big or you do something that the larger business disapproves of.

This is a good lesson in business.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is why we are building a new kind of social platform!

[https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of- platfo...](https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2013/04/a-new-kind-of-platform/)

One where you won't be cut off if you're a developer. And one which organizations can host themselves.

<comment><USER37> Why will you succeed where App.net, tent.io, etc hasn't?

<comment><USER38> Both of those services are still alive - seems a little bit silly to say they "weren't successful" unless your definition of success means having as many users as Twitter.

<comment><USER37> For general purpose social networks, yes, that's my definition of success. They aren't very useful otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why APL Programmers Don't Use Libraries - <AUTHOR> http://www.vector.org.uk/archive/v201/lib201.htm <comment><USER2> Because APL is almost completely unreadable?

<comment><USER3> Everything is unreadable to an illiterate person.</comment></comment>


Sparrow 1.1 adds awesome new features - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sparrowmailapp.com/post/3876592213/sparrow11 <comment><USER2> Looks like a good set of updates, although I'm still waiting for OmniFocus support before I can completely switch to using Sparrow.</comment>


What if Apple and Twitter merged? - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/06/03/whatIfAppleAndTwitterMerge.html <comment><USER2> Apple is notorious for doing very few acquisitions, I fail to see why Twitter, a company that is struggling to monetize, would be the exception. What leg up does Twitter give them and does it have the potential to generate billions in revenue? I have my doubts. See Apple's half-hearted attempt with Ping to show where their priorities lie.

If Apple really wanted to do a social network, they could very easily have already, Twitter doesn't solve any problems for them.

<comment><USER3> I think their current efforts are nothing to scoff at: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can only imagine a desolate landscape where hoards of hipsters roam the earth killing everyone with weaponized tweets and great smugness

<comment><USER5> That would make a fantastic movie. Or at least an SNL digital short.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple sees what Flipboard does, they have also bought Tweetie. I don't think buying Twitter is a very bright idea. Did Microsoft buy Nokia?

</comment><comment><USER7> Twitter investors would leap at the chance for their shares to be converted into AAPL - Apple, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER8> Twipple?

<comment><USER9> That would make Michael Orias of Oakland, CA a very happy man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "A fool and his money are soon parted."</comment>


Searching for Sanders in a Russian Archive - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/world/europe/russia-bernie-sanders.html <comment><AUTHOR> Paired with the (somewhat more charged) front-running story:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/world/europe/bernie- sande...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/world/europe/bernie-sanders- soviet-russia.html)</comment>


Facebook ads 90% of traffic is coming from bots and fake visit - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=10153880424557933 <comment><AUTHOR> and also look at the post here, it was 2012 [https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/startup-claims-80-of- its-f...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/startup-claims-80-of-its-facebook- ad-clicks-are-coming-from-bots/)</comment>


RethinkDB 2.4.1 - gabor-boros https://rethinkdb.com/blog/2.4.1-release <comment><AUTHOR> RethinkDB was always one of my favorites, and I still use it to this day to perform more complex ad-hoc queries on data since it's fairly easy to chain a query together in Javascript from the web console. I'm glad to see that it's still alive, even if progress is slow.

<comment><USER2> Great query language. Fun to still see references to it every so often (for example, saw this recently: [https://hapi.dev/api?v=20.0.0#response- toolkit](https://hapi.dev/api?v=20.0.0#response-toolkit))

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> RethinkDB was behind my first major software project at my first job, and it was so great to use it it has been hard to find an alternative database. Really happy that it's still getting some development!

</comment><comment><USER4> Ah, RethinkDB, the former love of HN.

Sadly it got a bit silent around it since the company shut down.

I used it for a product in 2015, pretty nice piece of software.

<comment><USER5> If 80 upvotes on a minor release post is any indication I'd say HN's love of Rethink is very much not a thing of the past. Glad you had a good experience, I helped right it back in the day.

<comment><USER6> Rethinkdb is a kind of perfect piece of program but never been in production. Meanwhile, I know some companies who still stuck with a single giant Mongo db that couldn't scale anymore. And of course a push for Mongo Atlas, smh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd recommend checking out materialize.io for anyone who still has hopes for a reactive db. Is the only project I've seen with the ambition of rethink (besides ksqldb, which feels too caveat-ridden, although still interesting).

(Yes, rethink is still "alive", but between the performance issues and death of the supporting company it's probably not the wisest piece of tech to become wedded to)

<comment><USER8> Does materialize.io have a trigger system yet though? One of the great things about Rethink was that client libraries made it easy to have application code stream live changes over websocket etc. to a client.

<comment><USER9> Yes, we do! It's a little non-standard SQL syntax we added called TAIL. You write TAIL <viewname>, and you get changes pushed to you. You can see a video of me badly explaining it in [2]. You can also do the thing where you create a Kafka SINK of a view and have the system push this to Kafka rather than have a long-running open SQL connection. There's some fun stuff with TAIL AS OF (start the changes at a specific point in time) and TAIL WITH SNAPSHOT (run a SELECT query, and then begin the change stream transactionally with the time of that SELECT query) that you can read about in the docs[1].

[1] [https://materialize.io/docs/sql/tail/](https://materialize.io/docs/sql/tail/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/9XTg09W5USM?t=2650](https://youtu.be/9XTg09W5USM?t=2650)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would be interesting to compare this RethinkDB release performance against a modern time series database like Timescale[1].

[1] [https://www.timescale.com/](https://www.timescale.com/)

<comment><USER11> It's a good question. In general we've found that it's hard to beat a purpose- built time-series database like TimescaleDB for time-series workloads, but I would also like to see a thorough comparison with Rethink. :-)

(I work at TimescaleDB.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Rethinkdb, still wear my t-shirt from them for creating the the Scala library[1]. Learned so much on that project. Fun times

[1][https://github.com/kclay/rethink-scala](https://github.com/kclay/rethink- scala)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure if Zerotier still uses Rethinkdb in production. Someone knows?

<comment><USER14> They have migrated to PostgreSQL due to performance issues.

> Unfortunately RethinkDB was a bit slow. It was fast enough for our needs at > the time but as we grew we gave up waiting for its performance to be > improved. We sponsored one improvement in an effort to help it scale with us > but it wasn't enough. We ended up abandoning it in favor of PostgreSQL.

[https://www.zerotier.com/on-the-gpl-to-bsl- transition/](https://www.zerotier.com/on-the-gpl-to-bsl-transition/)

<comment><USER15> It would be awesome to know if the other issues hey had have since been improved. RethinkDB has some great ideas and great ergonomics and I'd love to use it again.</comment></comment></comment>


Results of yesterday's personality poll: we're strange. - a-priori

On the hypothesis that this site selects for certain personality types that are different from the general population, I decided to run some simple statistics on the results of yesterday's MBTI poll (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=943722).
I compared the frequencies of each of the types to the population means on the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Type_dynamics_and_development). The results show that we are a very atypical group indeed:

  Using a binomial test at a 99% confidence level.
  ISTJ is significant:      1.82% ( 12/660) vs. 11.60% expected.
  ISFJ is significant:      0.61% (  4/660) vs. 13.80% expected.
  INFJ is NOT significant:  2.12% ( 14/660) vs.  1.50% expected.
  INTJ is significant:     31.21% (206/660) vs.  2.10% expected.
  ISTP is significant:      2.42% ( 16/660) vs.  5.40% expected.
  ISFP is significant:      0.15% (  1/660) vs.  8.80% expected.
  INFP is significant:      8.48% ( 56/660) vs.  4.30% expected.
  INTP is significant:     28.94% (191/660) vs.  4.30% expected.
  ESTP is significant:      0.45% (  3/660) vs.  4.30% expected.
  ESFP is significant:      0.15% (  1/660) vs.  8.50% expected.
  ENFP is significant:      3.33% ( 22/660) vs.  8.10% expected.
  ENTP is significant:      8.48% ( 56/660) vs.  3.30% expected.
  ESTJ is significant:      1.36% (  9/660) vs.  8.70% expected.
  ESFJ is significant:      0.76% (  5/660) vs. 12.30% expected.
  ENFJ is NOT significant:  2.27% ( 15/660) vs.  2.40% expected.
  ENTJ is significant:      7.42% ( 49/660) vs.  1.80% expected.
 The data are up-to-date as of about 20 minutes ago. Here's the script I used to generate these results: http://gist.github.com/236850
EDIT:
Here are the results broken down by pairs:

  FP is significant:     12.12% ( 80/660) vs. 29.70% expected.
  TP is significant:     40.30% (266/660) vs. 17.30% expected.
  FJ is significant:      5.76% ( 38/660) vs. 30.00% expected.
  NJ is significant:     43.03% (284/660) vs.  7.80% expected.
  NF is NOT significant: 16.21% (107/660) vs. 16.30% expected.
  TJ is significant:     41.82% (276/660) vs. 24.20% expected.
  NP is significant:     49.24% (325/660) vs. 20.00% expected.
  NT is significant:     76.06% (502/660) vs. 11.50% expected.
  EN is significant:     21.52% (142/660) vs. 15.60% expected.
  EJ is significant:     11.82% ( 78/660) vs. 25.20% expected.
  IP is significant:     40.00% (264/660) vs. 22.80% expected.
  IS is significant:      5.00% ( 33/660) vs. 39.60% expected.
  EF is significant:      6.52% ( 43/660) vs. 31.30% expected.
  IT is significant:     64.39% (425/660) vs. 23.40% expected.
  IJ is significant:     35.76% (236/660) vs. 29.00% expected.
  IN is significant:     70.76% (467/660) vs. 12.20% expected.
  ET is NOT significant: 17.73% (117/660) vs. 18.10% expected.
  EP is significant:     12.42% ( 82/660) vs. 24.20% expected.
  ES is significant:      2.73% ( 18/660) vs. 33.80% expected.
  IF is significant:     11.36% ( 75/660) vs. 28.40% expected.
  SP is significant:      3.18% ( 21/660) vs. 27.00% expected.
  ST is significant:      6.06% ( 40/660) vs. 30.00% expected.
  SJ is significant:      4.55% ( 30/660) vs. 46.40% expected.
  SF is significant:      1.67% ( 11/660) vs. 43.40% expected.
 Apparently, 76% of Hacker News is an NT type of one type or another. I've updated the Gist link above with the code that computes this. <comment><AUTHOR> There seems to be a bit of misunderstanding about the purpose and intention of this test, and the Myers-Briggs type system. I'm by no means an expert, but I know enough about the system to see there are some knee jerk misunderstandings going on here. So feel free to correct me if I get anything not exactly right, but this should raise the level of discourse on this subject a bit I hope.

To talk intelligently about the results of the test, you must first understand the vocabulary they are using. That vocabulary is more technical than the common understanding of the words that are used to name the categories. This test, love it or hate it, was created by people in the sciences, and the categories, whether useful as predictors or not, have specific definitions.

The M-B test is centered around four behaviors [(N|S)(F|T)] and two attitudes [I|E]. The attitudes are perhaps the most commonly misunderstood, because we have strong natural usage around the words extrovert and introvert that is quite different from the technical definition in the M-B system. For starters, it is probably safe to just think of these as modifiers on the behaviors, such that an extroverted behavior is directed out to the world, and an introverted behavior is directed towards your mental life.

Of the four behaviors [(S|N)(T|F)], two behaviors function to Judge the world (Thinking, Feeling) and two behaviors function to Perceive the world (Sensing, iNtuiting). Feeling is another misunderstood one. While it includes "emotional" decisions, it also includes "going with your gut".

The least obvious piece of the system is how the four letters interact. Lets take INTP, since for once, we are the majority here, and it is mine, so I can use myself as the subject to discuss rather than the obnoxious "If one is a ... than he/she..."

What these four letters do (yes, in theory) is establish my PREFERENCE for these behaviors. From INTP, my core type is NT or Rational (according to Keirsey). I prefer to perceive through iNtuition, and decide through Thinking.

The I and the P are modifiers on those types. The P tells me that, when interacting with the world (in my Extraverted attitude), I prefer to be in a Perceiving behavior. The [I] tells me that, all other things being equal, I prefer to be in an Introverted attitude.

The primary piece of M-B theory that I find interesting and worthy of debate is this: A person has a primary Perceiving and Judging behavior, and they tend to prefer to use one in an Extraverted attitude and the other in an Introverted attitude.

This implies that, since I prefer to use my Perceiving behavior (iNtuiting) in my Extraverted attitude, I prefer to use my Judging behavior (Thinking) in my Intraverted attitude. This is the difference between an INTP and an INTJ.

So, M-B would say my two main behaviors are Ne and Ti. Ok, now let's deal with the [I]. This tells us which, of the two attitudes I prefer. So, according to M-B:

My primary behavior is Ti

My secondary behavior is Ne

My terciary behavior is S(i) (sometimes i is not shown)

My inferior behavior is Fe

One actionable result for me from taking this test has been that it reminds me that I have a tendency to under use my extraverted feeling decision maker. Which I have found to be true, and so I make sure to consciously bolster this response when the opportunity to use it presents itself.

In closing, it is crucial to remember that this test determines PREFERENCES. It says NOTHING about ability or correctness. If you have Judged Thinking better than Feeling, or think you can perceive more by Sensing than iNtuiting, than you are probably out of touch with your other behavior. I believe that we should all strive to be very balanced on this test.

However, I do agree with M-B theory that people do have a tendency to gravitate to the poles, often because of strength or social culture. I believe one of the best uses of this test is to recognize which behaviors you prefer, and also recognize the ones that you could benefit from giving more attention.

Thanks. :)

 _edits for clarity and such_

</comment><comment><USER2> Most significantly, 502 out of the 660 respondents (76.1%) are type NT (11.5% expected). With a single significant exception (INFP), every non-NT group is underrepresented. Conversely, _every_ NT group is overrepresented, even the extroverted types.

Perhaps our Erlang-flooding people-filter has some influence on this.

<comment> a-priori Thanks, I just updated the original post to include a break-down by pairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a fun analysis to see. Here's a suggestion for cleaning up the stats, though it won't help you get around people noting that there's a selection bias for the poll results themselves.

If you're interested in showing that the frequency distribution for personality types is different on Hacker News than in the general population, then the right way to show this would be to run a single multinomial test to see whether your empirical multinomial distribution is outside of the range of chance variation from the canonical distribution listed on Wikipedia for the MBTI. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinomial_test> for a description of this hypothesis test.

To give you a sense of why your multiple comparisons across binomial tests is problematic, imagine that the INTP group is underrepresented because all of the people who would test as INTP tested as ENTP this time around; in this case, you run two different binomial tests, but you really only have one result, because the size divergence in one group is effectively the cause of the size divergence in the other group.

I hope that makes it clear why you should really treat your data set as containing an N of 1 and doing a simple null hypothesis test of the probability of getting your results given the canonical values for the global multinomial distribution, rather than testing based on a series of binomial marginal distributions.

</comment><comment><USER4> So _this_ is why my "free electron" post was so popular here but nowhere else: <http://jasonmbaker.com/the-free-electron-programmer>

</comment><comment><USER5> Would anybody be interested in sharing the results of the Gallup's "Now Discover Your Strengths" results? Maybe a few of us also have results on that.

</comment><comment><USER6> The work you've done is interesting and I appreciate it, but it's really nothing more than a "precise estimate of a wild ass guess".

I have tested as INTJ many times before, but yesterday my result was ESFJ. Go figure. I've been a programmer all my life and I have the classic personality. All I did was answer their questions. I remember thinking that many of my answers could have easily gone either way. Maybe if I took it today (which isn't a Monday), some answers would be different. I have no idea why the result would vary so much.

You are doing analysis to 4 significant digits of work based upon the appropriateness of questions with no significant digits. You've built a concrete structure on top of quicksand. Nice job, but I really don't think it means much.

<comment> a-priori Thanks, I appreciate your feedback. Yes, I definitely should not have given anything to four significant figures. I did that without thinking; none of the calculations are precise enough to warrant more than three at most.

I've kept my opinions out of this discussion so far, but I definitely agree with what you say about the test. While the MBTI undoubtedly indicates _something_ , its utility and validity are questionable. It's interesting for novelty value, but that's about it.

I'm definitely in the same boat as you: at various times over the past 5 years or so I have scored as INTP, ENTP and ISTP, so in both our cases, test-retest reliability is an issue. (I didn't take the test yesterday, because at this point I feel I'm too familiar with it to answer without bias.)

I make no claims about how valid this analysis is; it's certainly not going to appear in a statistics journal any time soon. I just decided to do it for fun and was surprised by just how drastically different the results are from the general population.

<comment><USER4> I think Myers and Briggs would argue that the test is a reflection of how you see yourself. If you get different results, it's because how you see your personality has changed. I've tested differently in the past, but as I've gotten older, I pretty consistently come up with INTP. I think that's because I know my personality better by now.

At the end of the day, all that matters is how you view your own personality. The test is just a way to try to pry that data out of your brain.

<comment> a-priori If that's the case, then it defeats the entire purpose of the test. It's not a personality test anymore, it's a self-image test. The idea of a personality test is to dig below your self-image to get a picture of what your 'innate personality' is. Whether they're successful at doing this is another story, but that's the idea.

<comment><USER7> I don't think there's such a thing as an "innate personality" - I'm a very different person than I was 10 years ago, and having just taken the test right now, the results are also likewise different (INTJ -> ESTJ if anyone's interested).

IMHO your personality is not something set in stone - it's a rather slow- changing beast surely, but I think it's a fallacy to believe that it's somehow cemented by some age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The ridiculous overrepresentation of INTJ and INTP has shown up everywhere I've been on the internet -- not quite to this degree, though. That may have something to do with the places I go, though, since I consistently test as one or the other.

<comment><USER9> Yup, I've found that as well. For example, here's a poll of 4chan's /jp/:

<http://i36.tinypic.com/3011z11.png>

It matches up surprisingly well with HN, except that (perhaps as expected) the results are 97% I.

<comment><USER10> Wow, so why are people interested in Japan _extremely_ shy? It doesn't seem like cosplay is inherently an introverted activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surely, given the fact that one group is vastly over represented(in this case INTJ), it is hardly a surprise that the others have distributions that are skewed as a result?

<comment> a-priori Certainly true, and I'd definitely include INTP in that as well. I'm not sure how to adjust this analysis to reduce that influence. To be honest, statistics is not my forté.

Any suggestions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of course, this really only shows the personality types of people on HN _who answer polls_. Still, that INTJ/INTP domination is kind of amazing.

<comment> a-priori Oh, yes. Caveat emptor and all that. This is self-selected, took significant effort to do (so possibly eliminated busy people), and the test itself is based on questionable science. This analysis assumes that none of that had any significant bias.

<comment><USER13> Well if anything you'd expect a bias towards sensing/feeling for these kind of tests wouldn't you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I should admit that for most of the questions, I could not come up with the correct answer (yes/no). I feel I answered many incorrectly. Did anyone else have difficulty in answering the questions objectively?

<comment><USER15> I had this problem with quiet a few of the questions, but the end result (INTJ) seems to fit well to me when reading the description. This could just be that I haven't read the other descriptions and am bending it to fit to myself subconsciously though.

<comment><USER16> _but the end result (INTJ) seems to fit well to me when reading the description. This could just be that I haven't read the other descriptions and am bending it to fit to myself subconsciously though._

Yes. It is very likely that once you have gone through what appears to be a laborious procedure to generate a description, you will accept whatever description comes out of that procedure.

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

<http://www.skepdic.com/forer.html>

<comment><USER17> In this case I think there's a simpler explanation: the result fits us well because there are so many overlapping questions. You might answer one question in a way that indicates you as an extrovert, but there will be many other answers that will clearly mark you as an introvert.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You might be interested in a similar poll done a couple years back: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240>

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool compilation. The NT (logicalness) is strong. It also seems introversion is strong too.

</comment><comment><USER19> I didn't answer the poll because I don't believe in Myers-Briggs Type Indicators.

<comment><USER2> Does seeing the results affect your belief?

If you take as a given that the HN population is not representative of the population at large, then it is clear that Myers-Briggs measures _something_ , as it correctly identified that.

If you'd asked me for a hypothesis before the survey, I would have predicted a significant overrepresentation of NT-types. That would seem to give the test some predictive value, unless you attribute the full significance of the findings to selection bias in who chose to answer (in which case Myers-Briggs would be an outstanding predictor of who will answer surveys).

<comment><USER20> It's limited to sixteen personality types and most have trouble picking just one so I think it's fairly useless.

I can be extremely charming, I like being outgoing in large groups, and a friend of mine said I was probably the most popular person in high school. I also dislike most people so I spend a lot of time online. I can be extremely rational and I have little problems programming computers, but I often make irrational decisions on a whim because I trust my subconscious way to much.

So, I don't know am I an introvert or an extrovert, rational or irrational? I honestly don't know and I don't think picking one is important because they don't tell me something I don't already know.</comment></comment></comment>


Frustrated Musk Shakes Up Autopilot Team - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/articles/frustrated-musk-shakes-up-autopilot-team <comment><AUTHOR> Or as Grady Booch put it:

 _"Senior management establishes capricious and arbitrary deadlines for a software-intensive system with impossible-to-achieve features then fires dev leads because they can't deliver."_

[https://twitter.com/Grady_Booch/status/1148652080166395905](https://twitter.com/Grady_Booch/status/1148652080166395905)</comment>


Deep Learning Hardware Limbo - <AUTHOR> http://timdettmers.com/2017/12/21/deep-learning-hardware-limbo/ <comment><USER2> We're getting 90 TFLOPS on AWS V100 for deep learning (using dlib not Tensorflow), so I can't understand this comment:

> With TensorCores the Titan V has a new shiny deep learning feature, but at > the same time, its cost/performance ratio is abysmal.

<comment><USER3> Can you help me understand, how can the V100 have 10x the TFLOPs of the P100, but only get a 2.5x speed increase in training a neural net according to nvidia's docs? [https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/inside- volta/](https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/inside-volta/)

Do we need significant software changes to take advantage of the new power? Are the TFLOPs somehow not directly comparable?

<comment><USER2> Most published numbers aren't actually using the tensor cores. We're using dlib (which is in c++) and gives us more direct control, but surely Tensorflow will eventually do this too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disclaimer, I am long Nvidia. But this doesn't convince me that Nvidia is really threatened at all, they can easily lower the Volta chips cost and win. CUDA has so much more momentum than anything else, that cost/performance comparisons don't make sense yet, and won't for a while.

I hope as an Nvidia customer that this competition catches up sooner rather than later, but I am an nvidia investor because it seems like the competition is incredibly far behind and are trying beat a very quickly moving target.

<comment><USER5> The new driver EULA clause banning the use of GeForce GPUs in "datacenters" except for blockchain purposes has ended my positive impression of NVDA. To that end, we have ceased the use of the term in favor of "GeForce Houses of Ill Compute."

[https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/](https://wirelesswire.jp/2017/12/62708/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is potentially really good news.

I would love to see real competition in this space.

I would love to see dedicated deep learning hardware (i.e., without all the graphics cruft) commercially available, with good support in TensorFlow/Keras and Pytorch. (Perhaps Google will consider selling TPU hardware?)

Even more, I would love to be able to mix hardware from different vendors and use a framework like TensorFlow/Keras or Pytorch to manage heterogeneous deep learning hardware from Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and maybe others (e.g., Google).

BTW, the moniker "GPU" no longer feels right to me. We should start calling deep learning hardware something else, like "DLU" for deep learning unit, or "AIU" for AI unit.

<comment><USER7> > without all the graphics cruft

What cruft are you referring to here? I doubt that removing the rasterization logic from the GPU is going to make them signifcantly faster at matrix-vector multiplies or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is ridiculous, NNP has not even reached the market and he is already betting the farm on it. The reason Titan V does not yet significantly outperform previous generations is because those Tensor Cores have not been properly utilized. E.g. Current stable version of TF 1.4 does not uses CUDA 9.0 .

<comment><USER9> > " NNP has not even reached the market"

And it never will....

Seriously , Nervana is dead, they're on 28nm still and most of the team has left (e.g. many have gone to Cerebras systems).</comment></comment>


Do you read at or away from the computer? - <AUTHOR>

Before now, I've pretty much read my technical books in front of my computer so I could stop whenever I wanted to play with some cool new function or whatever. It's occurred to me that this could be terrible for my productivity and I'm going to start reading away from my laptop. Then, between reading and coding, I'll write down exactly what I want to accomplish and this will hopefully save a lot of time. <comment><USER2> This may be a bit off-topic.

I had to code a project in C once - nothing big, maybe 200-300 lines of actual C code. Instead of going straight to the computer, though, I sat down with a coffee for 2 hours and wrote the entire thing on paper.

Have you ever sat down at a computer and not known exactly where to start on a project? Usually this is because you've started too early. There's not enough content in your head to form a mental model of your problem.

Sitting away from the computer introduces a barrier and forces you to reconsider whether you have assimilated enough material before sitting down to program.

</comment><comment><USER3> both.

I love display output that I can parse for what I need by key strokes though. But a handbook is handy when you got no power, you know the page, and your eyes are not f __ __ __*.</comment>


A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet - rav-rdz http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13314.html

<comment> rav-rdz Basically, _natural DNA_ (can't believe I get to say that) comprises the nucleobases A/C/G/T (adenine/cytosine/guanine/thymine) which pair up A-T and C-G (via hydrogen interactions) and, along with some other junk (a sugar and phosphate group) make up nucleotides, which in turn are the monomers that DNA is composed of.

This team managed to a. insert wholly synthetic bases that b. bonded with each other (so the DNA now has A/C/G/T/x/y) and c. weren't easily susceptible to repair via normal mechanisms, thus the modifications "stick."

This opens up a lot of possibilities since it removes the artificial four "letter" constraint, theoretically allowing researchers to create DNA that could in turn manufacture previously impracticable and/or synthetic proteins. These would obviously have tremendous value in bioscience at least, and maybe in other fields e.g. materials science.

Incredibly exciting work, though at the moment it seems that the specimens must be artificially supplied with building blocks for the novel bases.</comment>


280 Slides launches (YC Winter '08) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/05/280-north-launches-its-online-keynote-280-slides/

<comment><USER2> While I am generally very skeptical of half-assed reimplementations of existing tools with a stamp "now in the browser!!!", 280 was probably the first case when I said to myself "this is damn nice!"

Very well done. So much different from the typical crappy and laggy "online app" experience I've seen before.

And THANK YOU!!! for not using Flash.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why Flash is so bad. The general concept of having a plugin with a rich built-in API makes sense for a lot of reasons (natively compiled code in the plugin, smaller download of additional code). The problems with Flash are: (i) it's proprietary, and (ii) it's not on 100% of browsers. (i) is mostly a complaint from developers based on principle, and (ii) -well- isn't true for Javascript either if you include mobile browsers.

Disclaimer: my app is built on Flash.

P.S.: 280slides is great! And very impressive this was done with JS.

<comment><USER4> Flash sucks balls if you have an older mac (1ghz). I don't know how it performs generally on an older pc, but for me, its just aweful. I _hate_ anything online that uses flash.

<comment><USER2> Flash sucks balls because it _only works well where Adobe wants it to work well_ , as opposed to openly accepted standards like HTML/CSS that work good enough on nearly every computer in operation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Damn impressive work with Javascript, guys!

We are rapidly getting to the point where it's almost difficult to tell at a glance if you are using a web-based app or a client-based app.

<comment><USER6> A JavaScript application is a client-based app. The only difference is that you go to a url that loads your client app, versus having it already installed on your system.

<comment><USER5> Hrm, I've always used the verbage 'web-based app' for anything that funneled its way over to the Internet and was stuck in my browser. (Versus something that hung out on my hard drive.) Do you guys think it's inaccurate to call an app like this one that is 95% Javascript 'web-based'? If not, what is a more accurate word?

<comment><USER6> Do you consider a Java Applet to be a web based application?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used an early version of this to make my slides for startup school.

</comment><comment><USER8> That looks technologically impressive. I heard they will be releasing their Objective-J tools as open source, is there any truth to that? I'd love to see what's running behind this.

Does anyone know how long this took?

<comment><USER9> We started slides at the beginning of Y Combinator in January. Since then we've written both slides and a significant portion of our framework.

<comment><USER8> Any news on whether you're planning to open any part of it and if so, an estimated time?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely, and, as soon as its ready :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations! It is impressive product. The site is little slow but expected. I like how clean the editor looks and you added all the necessary functionalities without using Flash. Wish you great success in future.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have to admit, I right-clicked looking for the "About Adobe Flash Player 9" thing

<comment><USER12> me too!

It looked much like flex UI at first impression

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Clicking on the next slide button or the slide itself just took me to the top of the page.

EDIT: I'm not complaining, I used the actual slide builder and that was awesome. It's miles beyond any of my hacks :).

<comment><USER14> The embeds definitely have a few kinks to work out. Until then, you can view the same presentation here:

[http://280slides.com/Viewer/?user=187&name=My%20test%20s...](http://280slides.com/Viewer/?user=187&name=My%20test%20slideshow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow! They have done an amazing job! Definitely light years ahead of anything else I've seen (that works in a web browser)..

</comment><comment><USER16> You guys are really really impressive.

Crashed my firefox but that crashes at everything and is damn slow. works like a charm in Safari.

The video embed were not working though...

<comment><USER17> _Crashed my firefox but that crashes at everything_

Worked fine for me in 3rc2 - might be your plugins?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like the interface and way it works. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like a great product but I wasn't able to connect to the site... is anyone else experiencing the same issues?

<comment><USER9> The TechCrunch embed has bitten us a bit harder than expected. We're actively working on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Congrats Guys, I saw you at IO at 'birds of a feather' for a little pre-launch demo, very cool.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why a Keynote clone? The implementation is beautiful, but I don't see why you'd choose an app that relies on full screen mode and control via remotes.

</comment><comment><USER22> A bit slow, but seems nicely polished after a very quick run through. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER23> i don't want to be the mean guy and although I realise the technical challenge, it feels very slow and unresponsive (i tried it on IE 7, AMD Turion 64 which should be more than enough)</comment>


Gitg – git repository browser for GNOME - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.gnome.org/jessevdk/2010/02/21/gitg-git-repository-browser/ <comment><USER2> I miss one "stupid" feature of git gui: the tools menu. I have some small tools in my ~/.gitconfig for things like creating and mergin "feature trees". Like:

[guitool "Development/Feature/Create"]

cmd = git checkout development && git checkout -b feature__\"$ARGS\" development

argprompt = yes

[guitool "Development/Feature/Merge into Development"]

cmd = git checkout development && git merge --no-ff feature__\"$ARGS\" && git checkout feature__\"$ARGS\"

argprompt = yes

[guitool "Development/Feature/Finish"]

cmd = git checkout development && git merge --no-ff feature__\"$ARGS\" && git branch -d feature__\"$ARGS\"

argprompt = yes

...or for more mundane tasks...

[guitool "Tools/Switch branch"]

cmd = git stash clear && git stash save \"cambiando a rama $ARGS\" && git checkout \"$ARGS\" && git stash pop

argprompt = yes

[guitool "Tools/Pull"]

cmd = git pull

[guitool "Tools/Sincronice"]

cmd = git checkout master && (git push && git pull) || (git pull && git push && git pull)

I know, those are stupid hacks, but this let me do lots of work withought touching the terminal unless I really have to. Any chance getting something like this in gitg?

</comment><comment><USER3> Those who prefer console for getting things done can try out tig - a text-mode interface for git.

<http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone know of a build for Ubuntu 9.10?</comment>


The high cost of software in the 1980s - <AUTHOR> https://robservatory.com/the-high-cost-of-software-in-the-1980s/ <comment><USER2> Not to forget that the software (until the mid-late '90's and early 2000):

1) was licensed "for life"

2) did NOT "phone home" your data (actually had no way to phone home at all)

<comment><USER3> On the other hand "for life", in the 1980s and early 1990s, was a bit different - your platform could go extinct. You might technically have a license to a program on a Tandy Color Computer or Atari 800 or even the more popular Apple ][ and Commodore 64. But all those platforms were abandoned by their manufacturers (and most of them went bankrupt anyway).

<comment><USER2> >But all those platforms were abandoned by their manufacturers (and most of them went bankrupt anyway).

And later Virtual Machines/Emulators for them were invented and (possibly with some limitations/quirks) you can still use _that_ software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The runtime environments of the time were incredibly flaky and weird, until well after 2000. Most of the cost of making and maintaining software was in working around horrible bugs and misfeatures in the OSes, particularly MS ones. MS set the whole industry back at least 20 years by having such horrible systems, and getting people convinced they were normal and acceptable.

After spending all day discovering a workaround for an OS bug, you might have a few minutes left to work on a feature.

In the earlier '80s, before MS-DOS, it was partly the very small market, and partly the horrible development tools available that kept prices up. We are spoiled today.

</comment><comment><USER5> You have to remeber this was long before the "A computer on every desk" era of mas market asia supply chains. The computer itself was a major investment. An Apple II with a floppy disk set you back over $4K. Add a functional printer for another $1K at least, not including the parralel port addin card needed to communicate with it.

So software was a low volume business. On the upside, in those days often free telephone support was included. And this wasn't some call center person reading from a script either. You actually called the company helpline and some knowledgeable person would help you out whatever the problem.

In today's market, low volume business software is still expensive, I'd even argue much more expensive than it was in those days.

</comment><comment><USER6> > And from the screenshots, it becomes clear that "hi-res" is a term whose > definition varies with the state of technology at the time:

"Hi-res" has a specific meaning in the context of an Apple II, referring to its 280x192 pixel mode with artifact color (or in this case 280x160 with 4 rows of text.)

>Penguin Software's The Complete Graphics System—a set of drawing and shape tools for programmers was $119.95 ($330ish).

A modern state-of-the-art graphics engine like Unity 3D will set you back $1500. Though for 2D games you can get the desktop version of GameMaker Studio for $100.

</comment><comment><USER6> Besides vastly greater sales volume and higher programmer productivity due to better tools, another reason why software is cheaper now is cheap distribution via the internet and app stores.

Not having to deal with boxes, printed manuals, inventory, warehouses, shipping, and shelf space saves money. And the 10%-30% markup from app stores is probably lower than the 50% markup from brick-and-mortar stores of the 1980s.

I still occasionally miss printed manuals though, especially for games.

</comment><comment><USER7> Did software engineer salaries reflect the ~3x higher costs? Or was there simply less volume of sales -> lower salary?

<comment><USER8> At that time, software engineers were (at least where I live) almost exclusively uni physics and math grads. I would not say 3x (some more some less) but they were well paid.

Anecdotal; I started out with the same freelance rate, in numbers, per hour in the 80s as I have now; so that misses all inflation and the change of our currency to euro. So I make (if I would work as a freelance software engineer, which I usually do not anymore) vastly less than I did then for the same work.

<comment><USER9> Yes, when I look at my contract rates in the nineties they look similar to what I'd expect today in the UK. I guess all that outsourcing and cheap imported labour had the desired effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's not _cost_ , it's _price_. Prices had to be high because of the smaller market and the rampant piracy (partly, IMO, caused by the high prices)</comment>


CSS Float Theory: Things You Should Know | Smashing Magazine - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/05/01/css-float-theory-things-you-should-know/ <comment><USER2> Floats can drive me nuts. Good reads; thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too, thats why I posted it

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Dayum this is useful! thanks!</comment>


A Man Stopped Thousands of People Becoming HIV-Positive - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/meet-the-man-who-stopped-thousands-of-people-becoming-hiv-po <comment><USER2> I'm a 30-something gay dude on PREP. I primarily take it because I'm in a sero-discordant relationship with my boyfriend who is HIV+, but also as a safety precaution for when I was single and hooking up.

PREP has the potential to completely turn the tide on HIV infections. I live in a mid-sized midwestern city where between 10 and 25% of gay dudes in my dating pool are HIV+, many of them unknowingly and therefore continuing to spread it. There is a big push from the local public health department to get gay guys at risk of contracting HIV on PREP and it is starting to pay off.

PREP also is helping reduce the stigma of having HIV. Many people who are HIV+ live with a huge mental health burden of dealing with feeling like they are going to be rejected as a romantic partner because of their HIV status. With PREP as an option this helps reduce that burden. I'm not necessarily proud of this but I'm not sure if I would be dating my current boyfriend if PREP were not available because of the risk it could present to my health. He's an amazing guy and having this issue out of the way for us has been very helpful for us.

That's not to say that it doesn't have side effects and that it should be carefully considered but it really needs to be publicized more as a preventative treatment option in high risk populations.

<comment><USER3> HIV is a pretty rare disease. About 1 in 300 people in the USA. So I don't understand 1 in 4 gay men are HIV+.

<comment> barry-cotter [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_and_men_who_have_sex_wit...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_and_men_who_have_sex_with_men)

The CDC reports that in 2009, MSM accounted for 61% of all new HIV infections and that MSM who had a history of recreational drug injection accounted for an additional 3% of new infections. Among the approximately 784,701 people living with an HIV diagnosis, 396,810 (51%) were MSM. About 48% of MSM living with an HIV diagnosis were white, 30% were black, and 19% were Hispanic or Latino. Although the majority of MSM are white, non-whites accounted for 54% of new infections HIV related MSM infections in 2008.[7] A recent study estimated that for every 100,000 MSM, 692 will be diagnosed with HIV. This makes MSM 60 times more likely to contract the virus than other men and 54 times more likely than women

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll second the call to donating:

[https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/about-us- donate](https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/about-us-donate)

 _> "I'm thinking, 'You don't know I have to walk sometimes because I can't afford my Oyster [the London bus and tube pass]. You don't know that I'm literally eating once a day because I'm so broke, and I'm sleeping on someone's sofa because no one is going to pay me to do this,'" he says. "I am no different to how I was when I was a sex worker."_

<comment><USER5> > Donations will never be paid to an individual, only ever put back into the > running costs and expansion of the website.

Just fyi. This does not mean that you should not donate.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I hadn't seen that. Although, honestly, that only sounds like more reason to donate..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a great guy and group of people.

I've emailed offering to help out if I can. Their costs of running the site should be zero to them, if I can help make that so then great.

</comment><comment><USER7> The NHS has recently announced an expansion of the trial: [https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/12/hiv-prevention- pregramme/](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/12/hiv-prevention-pregramme/)

There was some confusion about who should be paying for this preventative treatment. Both sexual health and prevention is normally part of Public Health and not the NHS, but public health weren't paying. This is because funding to local authorities has been slashed. Remember this when conservative supporters tell you that funding for health care has increased: they're not including the cuts to public health.

This is explained a bit here: [https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/11/update-on- prep/](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/11/update-on-prep/)

A statement from public health: [http://www.adph.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/ADPH-PrEP-...](http://www.adph.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2016/11/ADPH-PrEP-Press-Release.pdf)

A statement from earlier NHS: [https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/08/august- update-on-the-comm...](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/08/august-update-on- the-commissioning-and-provision-of-pre-exposure-prophylaxis-prep-for-hiv- prevention/)

<comment><USER8> _There was some confusion about who should be paying for this preventative treatment._

This is the part I really don't understand. I suppose its a consequence of big bureaucracies.

This is a clear case of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It is so much cheaper to pay for the PrEP than to pay for treatment of HIV.

And in the UK the HIV treatment is "free", i.e. part of their national healthcare, right? So wouldn't it make so much sense for them to flood the country with PrEP, giving it at very low cost to anyone who expresses an interest?

<comment><USER7> It's incredibly frustrating to me too.

Firstly, this is only for England. Health is devolved in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Preventative stuff and a lot of sexual health stuff (STD screening, free contraception) is paid for by "Public Health", which is part of local government.

Treatment is paid for by the NHS, which is sort of nationally funded by NHS England to local Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Sometimes you'll have "joint commissioning" \-- for example in Gloucestershire there's joint commissioning across public health and the NHS for Mental Health.

But yes, it's stupid bureaucracy and budget holding and it's caused harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One consequence of gay organizations deciding to focus all of their energies on punishing rubes in flyover country via gay marriage campaigns has been a significant de-emphasis on HIV education / treatment / prevention. The latter has actually done us significant amounts of good and it's a shame to see it wasted in favor of spite.

</comment><comment><USER10> Last time I checked on my insurance it was going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $1K/mo for PrEP. Now minimums would be met soon enough but still way too expensive. The website mentioned in the article appears to sell it for ~$54/mo which is crazy.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's an inspiring story. I can't wait to see the movie adaptation.

</comment><comment><USER12> The real issue is simply that the cost for Truvada oral tablet (100 mg-150 mg) is around $1,564 for a supply of 30 tablets. In the US, the patents expire in 2021.

<comment><USER11> No, $1,564 is the price when bought through US pharma. They're available via the site recommended by [https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/buy-prep- now](https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/buy-prep-now) for $80. So, presumably the cost is more like $20 or so.

<comment><USER13> What makes you think this spammy affiliate marketing site is sending you to online pharmacies that will actually send you the drug, rather than take your money and send you nothing?

<comment><USER14> This "spammy affiliate marketing site" is neither spammy, nor does affiliate marketing. It saves hundreds, if not thousands of lives. Read the linked article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> too bad these companies don't have an affiliate program.

[https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/buy-prep- now](https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/buy-prep-now)

<comment><USER16> I often use the same legal mechanism to buy modafinil, and have reached out to my supplier about affiliating. They don't do it either. I have to wonder if there's some kind of risk or law working against them.

<comment><USER17> Isn't the sale and import of modafinil restricted? I would think that becoming an affiliate would introduce legal risk

<comment><USER16> It's legal for personal use. You can import prescription only medication from abroad, you just can't buy it domestically.

<comment><USER18> Modafinil is Schedule IV in the US. The law may or may not be enforced with respect with to Modafinil, but possessing that drug without a prescription is illegal.

<comment><USER16> The article was about someone from the UK, and I'm also from the UK. That's the circumstance I was speaking from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is sloppy reporting:

"In the space of 12 months, the number of gay men in London being diagnosed with HIV had dropped by 40%. Across England it was down by a third."

The New Scientist article they link to has it correct -- this is a drop in reported _new_ infections, not a drop in infected persons. It still hasn't been corrected.

<comment><USER20> _being_ diagnosed, as in new diagnoses.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone working on Covid tracking tech? - <AUTHOR> If we ever mitigate enough to get back to containment, we'll need to be able to track. Is anyone working on this in the US?
At the very least, a mobile app that tracks your location history over the last 2-3 weeks would be helpful. Even if the data is just stored locally, perhaps eventually overlaid onto a map for reference, that would be helpful if you test positive, because then you have a way to review it and clearly indicate where you've been when, to report to authorities that might want to contact-trace or alert communities. ("A covid case was at your local Safeway between 7:14 and 8 pm on the 23rd.")
More spruced up is something where location history is submitted through a central service so that people could be automatically informed if there's an overlap. A while back I was working on an Akka Cluster Sharding app that did something similar, but it wasn't for pandemics. It'd only be valuable if a critical mass of people were using it though, which might mean it'd have to be a government or big-corp effort. <comment><USER2> We did exactly this! [https://covidtrace.com/](https://covidtrace.com/)

We built a privacy focused contact tracing app. It records your location history for a 3 week period and then compares it against reports of COVID-19 infections. The comparisons happen all on your phone so your location history is not exposed.

We are working on getting into the app stores but both Google and Apple have changed their requirements requiring us to partner with an existing recognized organization. We are working as quickly as possible to find someone, if you know of any potential partner, please let me know!</comment>


How Bitrix24 Thinks About Freemium - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@did_78238/how-bitrix24-thinks-about-freemium-5776e0f4dfc <comment><AUTHOR> Particularly liked the reasoning behind "one-size-fits-all":

> That why we have a plan with unlimited users, storage space and everything, > and it's priced at only $199/mo. The only decision we want our customers to > make whether they can afford $199/mo. It's a simple one to make.</comment>


Visual Studio Code 1.4 - <AUTHOR> https://code.visualstudio.com/updates <comment><USER2> I've been using VSC as my daily driver for a few months now and it's great -- even on nightly builds. The most powerful features is the tasks.json. Once I learned to use it (the docs aren't good on it), I was able to utilize it to bring a more cohesive experience across many code bases.

I enjoy the fact that it gives an integrated experience and allows community extensions. This is a big change from atom where everything must be cobbled together, hope that it works and will break. My hope is that the MS team will pitch in on the most popular extensions per language and take them to the next level as well.

To top it off, it's one of the most open development processes I've ever seen. They have a clearly defined roadmap, release schedule and even tell you exactly how they work in the wiki ([https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/wiki](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/wiki)). It's fantastic to see such a large company open up like this.

<comment><USER3> Me too. I was a bit skeptic at first. Been a long time vim user but wanted to try something new. I now use it to code Python (I write a lot of it). It works very nicely. So much that I'm in the process of making it the official company -wide text editor for python at work.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious, what's the thought behind having an official company-wide text editor? The companies I've worked for usually take the route of "leave their choice in tools up to them", which I appreciate.

<comment><USER3> We needed a good standard setup that fit our needs. People can opt to use something else as long as their code meets the style guidelines. But its easier to use the same tool. We share tips and tricks a lot. That way we improve our workflow as a whole.

Why not vim itself? We tried it. They are more used to GUI centric editors. (shrugs)

<comment><USER5> While I agree with what you are saying, editor config is a good tool to enforce coding standards across multiple editors (as a bonus it already supports VS Code)

[http://editorconfig.org/](http://editorconfig.org/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Still no auto-import on Typescript. The main reason I use Webstorm over VSCode currently.

What I am talking about:

      * new Foo|

      * <Ctrl+Space>

      * (Automatically inserted by editor top of the file where imports are) import {Foo} from "../relativePath/to/Foo.ts"

      * new Foo(param);|

Working on a large TS codebase without this is absurd. Webstorm is way ahead of VSCode in this area, including things like multiple named imports like:

      * import {Foo, Bar} from "../../foobar.ts"

Additionally, things like refactoring filename that affect the all imports that reference that filename -- not sure if that got added in VSCode recently tho.

<comment><USER7> There's actually an extension which can do this: [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=steoates...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=steoates.autoimport).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been trying to use VSCode for languages besides JS, like C# and C++, but I've been getting stuck. There's a big opportunity here for someone to write up some brief tutorials on how to use VSCode for other languages. So far, the instructions are basically "Get VSCode. Enable the C++ extension. Enjoy!"

That's not enough, especially when it comes to setting up debugging, which c'mon, everyone needs. The json config file for C++ debugging has zero documentation. Until there is some more documentation besides the extensions readme, it's going to be a little challenging for new users to pick this up and have a delightful experience.

<comment><USER9> I've been using VSCode for C development fairly successfully, although I don't recall if I ever got the debugging working (due to the same reasons you describe). I do remember getting debugging working was a nightmare and had only minimal success on various different platforms (linux, OS X).

I'd suggest installing the clang extension, this was the best out of the box experience for auto completion etc in VSCode.

<comment><USER10> Thanks to both of you for the feedback on the debugging options for the C++ extension. I'll pass this on to to the documentation folks to get better launch.json documentation released.

I know it isn't ideal, but in the meantime, the best way to get more info is probably the comments that appear when hovering over the fields in the launch.json file or to open up the package.json file to read the comments about each available field in the schema for the extension. The package.json can be found in the .vscode sub-folder of your user account. On my machine, this would be ~/.vscode/extensions/ms-vscode.cpptools-0.8.1\package.json.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks to the awesome plugin from Luke Hoban, VSCode has been great for writing Go. The best feature is the integrated debugging. Granted, it still relies on Delve, so you have the associated madness with taming _that_ beast (self signing certs on OS X? Although that appears to gone now with the homebrew package).

But just being able to type some code, set a breakpoint, run to it, and inspect some locals makes me so much more productive than the Printf driven debugging that so many masochists still cling to.

</comment><comment><USER12> I felt bad for Sublime. It would be hard for Sublime to compete with MS's free IDE. MS finally decides to take over the open source code editor market. VSC also borrowed many features from Sublime such as its famous integrated package manager and keyboard based shortcuts.

<comment><USER13> I also felt the same for Sublime, but I think they need to innovate much faster if they want to complete in this space.

With Visual Studio Code, I think, MS is trying to reinvent their VS family of products. Since the current Visual Studio is strongly tied to Windows and MS has accepted the multiple operating systems future (I think, in MS roadmap, revenue from Cloud Operations is one of the major factor), it's important for them to have a developer platform which works great on all the operating systems. HTML5 and JavaScript provide this opportunity to create that development tools platform for the future.

It also leaves the possibility open to port it inside browser/cloud with a lot of code reuse. If Internet Speeds improve a lot and computing in cloud becomes a lot more cheap, I think in next 10 years, for typical web projects, developers might just prefer remote development environments, which they use for coding from an App/Browser.

It's good to see that MS didn't wait to first port .Net on major Operating Systems as part of their .Net Core initiative and then write their cross platform development environment on top of that. Instead they have taken the bet on HTML5/Electron.

<comment><USER14> It's already integrated in various websites. The Monaco editor is used on Azure and you basically get VS Code in your browser along with a console and error log. I believe they also use it in other places like Bing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The reason I use it: It's the only Editor that supports debugging JS in Firefox with this extension [https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hbenl.vs...](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hbenl.vscode- firefox-debug)

AFAIK the only editor that really supports the Firefox Debugging Protocol so far.

</comment><comment><USER16> Number one drawback of VSCode, for me, is poor vim keybindings, especially visual mode. If that was fixed I'd use it extensively.

<comment><USER17> I wanted to use VSCode when I started writing TypeScript three months ago, but I found the Vim plugins super lacking, so I used Atom instead, which has a much more robust Vim plugin.

However, I tried VSCode again last week after being disappointed by continued bugs in atom-typescript, and was happy to discover the Vim plugin ([https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim](https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim)) had made a ton of progress since I'd last given it a shot. It's still not quite as good as Atom's, but it's definitely getting there. Plus, the project's team is very active and friendly - I actually submitted a PR a few days ago fixing a bug (the VSCode extension development workflow is super easy, it turns out!) and they quickly merged it :)

I also found out that the VSCode developers know that it's an important plugin, and they actually have a category of issues on the VSCode repo specifically for extension APIs they need to add to make the Vim plugin as powerful as possible. This new update includes several of those, and I have a feeling by the end of the year the Vim plugin in VSCode will be on par or better than that of plugins for other editors.

<comment><USER18> I don't know what turned at MS exactly but something did, at least in the department where VS and VSC are developped. I've had major bad experiences with reporting bugs to MS in the past (almost as if they had a standard 'by design' or 'wontfix' message generator). The last couple of years however, not so much. Submit a report, get a reply like 'thanks for the detailed report, we're on it' and then the bug is fixed in the next service pack or version. And now they're also doing PRs for VSC and other things and the response times seem ok (well, a tleast yours was, but it's still sorta 'unseen' for MS). If it continues they might reach a point where the competition (including open source) starts to look very bad - there it's sometimes still the usual business as it was with MS: report a bug and/or PR, nothing happens, for months or even years.

<comment><USER19> They don't get restricted by backward compatibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Visual Studio Code is currently my favorite editor. Fast, informative intellisense, great debugging environment, good git integration, faster than Atom, etc.

<comment><USER21> Fast? Really? What are you comparing it to?

<comment><USER20> "Fast, informative intellisense" not fast in the general sense. Also, faster than Atom .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whenever I try a new text editor, I run into a problem: I absolutely love the feature where it auto-completes based on other words in open windows (or other files in the open project). But there's no official term for this so I can never tell if a text editor has it.

Years ago this used to be called "hippie expand", but I can't figure out a more modern name that is used. Does anyone know what Visual Studio Code calls this feature, and/or how to enable it (assuming it even exists?)

<comment><USER23> You mean you have a text editor that knows what words are on the page in a CHROME tab (for example)

Or you mean, that if you've got 2 text files open as tabs in the same VSCODE window typing in 1 tab will auto-complete with words from the 2nd tab?

Where have you seen this feature as it sounds AMAZING!

<comment><USER22> I mean the latter (other open windows in the text editor). TextMate and Sublime both operate this way, as opposed to IntelliSense style auto-complete where it only operates off of symbol definitions (class names, function names, properties and variables, etc). Which makes sense, because TextMate and Sublime don't really "understand" your code like Visual Studio historically does.

<comment><USER24> Sublime Text doesn't do this by default although there's an extension[1] to do that.

[1] [https://github.com/alienhard/SublimeAllAutocomplete](https://github.com/alienhard/SublimeAllAutocomplete)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great work on the integrated terminal. I'be been waiting for this. Might even fire up Windows 10 with Ubuntu shell and see how everything works together.

<comment><USER26> If you're curious, the integrated terminal is actually xterm.js behind the scenes: [https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js](https://github.com/sourcelair/xterm.js)

<comment><USER27> I find it amusing that the stack I'm using to write a systems application is javascript all the way down, from the editor window to the terminal it runs in.

(not bashing. just saying it's amusing. I freakin love VSC.)

<comment><USER28> The future as foretold by "The Birth and Death of JavaScript" ([https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)) gets closer every day :)

<comment><USER29> I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone like MS announces a new open source "JS to efficient native machine code" compiler one of these days.

<comment><USER30> MS Chakra JS VM is already open source: [https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore)

Like all high-performance JS VM's their JIT's already emit efficient machine code. If Google, Apple or MS could get JS running any faster they would've.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This editor is also very good to write Golang code.

<comment><USER32> Have you done an overlap against LiteIDE?

<comment><USER33> Doesn't seem to have debugging. If that's the case it already lost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm sure it's a great editor but it's, to me at least, a bit weird to have to read a privacy statement for an editor to work out what it's actually sending home.

[https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/dn948229](https://www.visualstudio.com/en- us/dn948229)

I guess it's open source though so if anyone's really bothered they could fork it and take all that stuff out.

<comment><USER33> You can disable all telemetry in configurations.

<comment><USER14> Even with all telemetry disabled you can still see it attempting to connect to MS domains. Just open the developer tools (F12).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What would be some of the cool features that only exist on VSC that Sublime doesn't have?

<comment><USER35> The cool telemetry phone home features that cannot be turned off in a reliable way (think updates). It's the feel good vibe that runs through all new MS apps and Win10. We should thank the third CEO for his great vision and be happy to give him all insight he needs. He is clearly steering his thriving platform to the next level.

<comment><USER36> Judging a specific part part of a behemoth company based on the controversial and by no means decidedly unethical actions of another are as annoying as using Micro$oft as a slur.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone know how to hide the bug icon from the left bar?

Other than that I absolutely love vscode. I use it on osx and linux daily. It really hits the sweet spot for my work flow. Cheers to the team for another great release.

</comment><comment><USER38> vscode is now my favorite editor when I'm not dealing with command line(e.g. vi), I used to edit with another light weight editor geany.

Thanks for all the efforts to make vscode a great tool.

</comment><comment><USER39> I recently switched over from a combination of Sublime and Notepad++ to VSC. The only thing I found was Notepad++ opens up files almost instantly and there is still a bit of a noticeable lag with VSC, so when I need to be jumping in and out of different scripts Notepad++ is still my preferred choice, but for actually writing code, VSC is golden.

Hopefully I can uninstall Notepad++ in the near future!

</comment><comment><USER40> VSC rocks. I am on .NET/Win platform and I can open and work on the same .NET Core project both on VSC on Mac and VS2015 on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER41> I tried to use it for C++ development on Linux. A project I'm working on uses Qt, and I put QT's include directories into the configuration file as was described in documentation. I was unable to get autocompletion to work with Qt and after 10 minutes I gave up on it and went back to using Netbeans.

<comment><USER42> Have you tried Qt Creator? Its really good for normal C++ development and even better for Qt specific development.

<comment><USER41> A colleague uses it on OSX, and it's awful: unstable, crashes, hangs during debugging, the debugger doesn't always update the displayed values, doesn't grok auto declarations, etc. So far, Netbeans is the best free C++ IDE I've tried.

<comment><USER43> What about KDevelop?

<comment><USER41> Waiting for version 5 to try it out because it has clang-based completion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm actually finding myself torn in that VSCode is a Microsoft product that I'm actually liking. For Unity development it offers a much snappier + cleaner experience than the built in MonoDevelop editor, and as a general text editor it seems more responsive than Atom.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm curious about the note on them having implemented an IME for CJK and Indic character input. I thought an IME was a component of the operating system or a contextual widget that appeared like an onscreen keyboard and was separate from the text editor itself.

</comment><comment><USER46> "By default, VS Code shows snippets and completion proposals in one widget. This is not always desirable so we added a new configuration setting called editor.snippetSuggestions. To remove snippets from the suggestions widget, set the value to "none"."

Sold me on it.

</comment><comment><USER47> 1.4 still has an odd bug - it can't deal with some fonts:

      https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/5537

<comment><USER48> I don't think that a HN version release thread is the place to get publicity for bugs.

<comment><USER47> It's a very odd bug. If you take a minute to read its description, you'll see it causes rendering issues depending on the font name. It's also a bug that does not affect Atom or other editors based on it, which makes it even more odd.

I think HN is _precisely_ the place to highlight things like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm not particular about what editor you choose. I've been looking for a good JS IDE. Webstorm is of course the only real player in this space (with an amazing IDE) but it's pricey. I've been watching VSCode with great interest. However, every time I try the editor it's a huge letdown. Buggy, crashy, shitty and weird interface (they have completely made up their own tabbing/splitting paradigm for example, which is buggy and alien compared to existing patterns). It claims to be an IDE but doesn't come close. I think that one day VSCode will actually be an IDE, but it's been a repeated abject failure to date. Based on the current progression I would avoid it for at least the next year, and then I think its potential will be visible.

<comment><USER50> Visual Studio 2015 is the only real player. Have you tried it? I've compared it to every other IDE and nothing comes close. Of course, you need to add quite a few extensions (addons) to make it really nice but other than that, it's got the best autocomplete and the best debugger outside of Chrome Dev Tools.

Add the Node.js Tools for VS and the Tools for Apache Cordova extensions (including the kick-ass VS emulator for Android) and you've got a complete kit for programming JS everywhere. Developing ionic apps with this tool is an absolute dream.

EDIT: And it's free.

<comment><USER51> I've extensively used WebStorm, VS2015, and VS Code for writing JavaScript and TypeScript (both server-side and client-side). VS2015 was the worst of the three. When it worked properly, it was pretty good, but it was incredibly bloated and buggy. It installs GBs of extras onto your machine that you have to painstakingly remove and hope they don't mess anything up. I dealt with a bug that required me to remove some packages and not others. It was a nightmare.

WebStorm is the best, but it's absolutely loaded with features that most people won't use. VS Code supports most of these same features, but they must be implemented manually via config files and scripts. A lot of people will prefer the latter approach because it leads to a leaner starting configuration.

I found the debuggers of all three to be fairly similar, although VS Code's was very slightly less usable.

Edit: To clarify, I used VS Code and VS 2015 at the same time. After getting frustrated with both, I switched to WebStorm and haven't looked back. Every time I think up a "nice to have" feature, I find out that it already exists and is configurable via GUI.</comment></comment></comment>