Show HN: Remotehour – Allows people to talk to you anytime you're available - <AUTHOR> https://remotehour.co/ <comment><USER2> > Sign on with Google

Game over. Zoom requires no account to join a meeting and I just learned a couple of days ago it even works in the browser (toggle in the account settings of the one starting the meeting)

I even plugged a Logitech c920 webcam in my Xbox One and did a meeting this way using Edge. Sadly the audio API seems unsupported in that Edge so I had to join the audio through another means.

> VS Zoom

> Don't have to fix a schedule. Remotehour enables you to connect when you're > online on the app.

Give someone your fixed Personal ID and they can call you anytime.

<comment><USER3> > it even works in the browser

Only in Chrome, unfortunately, and it's severely limited at that. The most limiting factor is that you can only see one other participant at a time.

Additionally, Zoom's past attempt to prevent you from uninstalling part of their software is extra reason to only use the Chrome version, if any: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407233)

<comment><USER2> Ah, tested it and it behaves the same WRT audio in all browsers but Chrome (so works, except audio). So that's not Edge on Xbox One as the culprit but Zoom implementing a Chrome-only audio API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is Jitsi ([https://jitsi.org](https://jitsi.org) and [https://meet.jit.si](https://meet.jit.si)) which does not need any login - this is really seamless.

<comment><USER5> Jitsi shows a warning when using Firefox and recommends using Chrome or Chromium. Why? No, thanks.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't happen any more, the firefox WebRTC API's are more mature now - either that, or you're using an older Firefox, which you really shouldn't.

<comment><USER3> I'm using v74 and still get that warning. That said, it's working fine, and is one of the only ones to actually work in Firefox at that.

<comment><USER5> FF v74 on Linux too, tested [https://meet.jitsi.si](https://meet.jitsi.si) and I do get the warning (otherwise I would not have post my initial message). Even tried disabling uBlock Origin, same orange box in the bottom-left corner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In person, I have an open door policy with my students. If my door is open, it generally means I'm available to talk with them. Since all of our instruction has moved online, I'm adopting a virtual open door policy. I have a camera pointed at my door. If that door is open, students know I am there and if they announce themselves, I "let them in" by turning the camera around. When I'm in a meeting, I mute the audio and close the door so they know I'm not currently available. To be determined how effective this will be.

<comment><USER8> Frankly I'd be really worried about forgetting to mute the stream.

<comment><USER9> I use a room with my team that auto-mutes everyone on a timer, so you have to un-mute explicitly to talk. So we can leave the audio on all the time.

Also, one can use an external mic, w/physical switch and lamp indicator.

Auto-mute has saved me many times tho.

<comment><AUTHOR> No worry. You can set up a room default-mute-off on the setting on the app :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hate the title. "10x"? How is this 10x more seamless? It is push to talk video...many alternatives exist.

<comment><USER11> Maybe it's inspired by Peter Theil's "10 times better" argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 10x more seamless. Step 1 - register Google account... I suppose contact discovery is also through Google?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try to add multiple authentications soon. Thanks!

<comment><USER13> How about no authentication (guest mode)? That seems even more seamless.

<comment><AUTHOR> A good idea! Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not sure if this app supports it or not, but it would be very useful with a 5 second warning before being thrown into a video call. I could see all kinds of embarrassing moments happening otherwise.

<comment><USER15> It would be better to not have video running by default. People can drop in to talk over audio and request to switch over audio if necessary.

I honestly prefer the push to talk approach for audio too. It is always better to have explicit user consent at every audio and/or video session. Accidents happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, I'll try to make it more correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> People use Zoom because it's really reliable, not because it's "seamless."

I've been in the middle of nowhere in South Africa and could use a 3G connection on my phone to speak to people in Germany and the United States at the same time and it was reliable and useable.

<comment><USER17> I fully agree with this. Zoom has done a huge amount of work optimizing its transfer protocols to make it that reliable. Is it possible to offer same reliability using WebRTC in a browser when 50 participants are connected? I am not sure. Even [https://whereby.com/](https://whereby.com/) offers only up to 12 people on their highest plan. I think videoconferencing software like Remotehour serves a different purpose - seamlessly jump to a videocall without any software required to install until zoom releases a web client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When using linux, everything is "more seamless" than Zoom. This company hates linux users, everything is broken and requires root user to even start.

<comment><USER19> Zoom on linux isn't too bad. Unlike other companies, they provide a linux client. It has all the essential features in it (I haven't spotted anything missing). In addition, it doesn't depend on some ancient java stack. Yes, you have to install the package as root, but I don't see a lot of hate from zoom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We use Zoom and it's great for ad-hoc video calls or screen sharing and commenting.

But last week we were wondering what would be a good remote alternative to sitting around at our desks and asking a quick question to the room. You know what works really well? Teamspeak. I hadn't used teamspeak in ages, but the simple fact that you can set a global push-to-talk button makes it perfect. Ask a quick question to someone in the room, they answer, if it becomes an actual convo you switch to a zoom call to not bother anyone else.

<comment><USER21> Discord is also good for that and seems to be taken over teamspeak in some teams I work with. I can't tell really if it's better though since I never used teamspeak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is there only a login for Google?

<comment><USER23> Why is there a login at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hey, I like the idea of trying to make remote more seamless, it's certainly a need. Looks like nice work so far. I do agree with some of the other comments that some folks would like a "knock" type feature to give a warning, clearly you get the concern from your gif. Keep it up and personally I think it's great to see more options for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for your feedback. "knock" type sounds really interesting. I'll try to add this feature soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The gif under 'Talk Seamlessly' made me laugh :)

Looks great, I aim to give it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that's a real use case!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Sign in with Google

Pass.

I hope others find it useful, though

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. Okay, I'm building other authentication now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just tried it and got in the room with the founder. Great xp. Keep up the good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for talking :) See you soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not affiliated, just someone who recently started using it daily, but another "always on" video conference alternative is [https://tandem.chat/](https://tandem.chat/) . It integrates well with Slack, and keeping it open while working with colleagues feels very natural.

It's the closest I've seen to recreate a coworking environment -- we even have a #lunch channel where we "eat together" at noon (that was a bit depressing to write... we're doing what we can to keep up the illusion of normalcy).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've added a multiple authentication :)

</comment><comment><USER29> how is it better than whereby? (ex appear.in)

<comment><AUTHOR> The appear.in is for a meeting, this app is for coworking. You can show your status like online, offline, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> BTW about the "vs Zoom" part -

Zoom does have a personal room url and a configuration option to open meeting on entry

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. Zoom is useful, I love it. This time, I wanna solve a problem that my clients want to see if I can call or not right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not that I like Zoom, but how's this '10x more seamless than Zoom' calculated?

</comment><comment><USER32> I just tried this.. and it worked amazingly well. It was smooth and seemless

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm so sorry that everyone's bleating about a bit of text in the header text rather than the actual product you've created. Sometimes HN is all about finding any hole to nitpick over.

</comment><comment><USER34> Based on the comments, you can tell that trying to pit yourself against zoom is not going to work. Zoom users are loyal for a reason. You need to be clear if you solve a different problem.

</comment><comment><USER35> sometimes it shows "online NaN seconds ago"

rest very nice. good idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, sorry. I'll try to see it!</comment></comment>


Schrödinger's Cat When Nobody Is Looking - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/89/the-dark-side/schrdingers-cat-when-nobody-is-looking <comment><USER2> _One of the problems is that quantum theory is obscure (to say the least) regarding what it claims about the nature of the world when no one is looking. Is the involvement of a consciousness required for the theory to make sense, and if so, does that include a mouse's or a fly's? In particular, the specification of what constitutes a measurement is irreparably vague. Perhaps all that's needed is a large enough apparatus. But what's large enough? And what happens at the boundary? These issues are referred to as the measurement problem._

In my utterly uninformed imagination I've reconciled this by defining observation as the point where the observer (whether it be a simple apparatus like the sensor on a photon counter, or a complex and squishy one like my consciousness) becomes "intertwined" with the observation. i.e. Once the information has reached some particle, that particle's view of the waveform/event has collapsed.

It's easy to forget the actual conveyance of the information has some physical manifestation (photons hitting my retina, electrons bumping against transistors in an IC and eventually manifesting as dots on a screen which send out those photons) and I picture those causal steps as propogating constraints through the universe. Light speed sets a maximal boundary on how much of the universe may be "intertwined" with the observable, but even if the data is sitting on the computer next to me, until I take a peek (or otherwise subject myself to any consequences stemming from them) those constraints haven't yet permeated any of the bits of the universe that make up me.

Akin to how relativity permits two different observers to hold differing views of some phenomena (eg. silmultanaety) this worldview allows me to imagine the cat is both dead and alive even though my computer or the Geiger counter may know the correct answer.

I'd love to hear from real quantum physicists whether this interpretation is bunk or has some validity (and if so, whether someone else arrived at it before me and gave the theory a name).

<comment><USER3> I sympathize with your view a lot and it is, in some way, also the way I (degree in mathematical & theoretical physics) think about it.

Do note, however, that the wavefunction and its collapse are at odds with special relativity and thus cannot be an object of reality. (Provided you're interested in realism to begin with.) Take two entangled electrons, for instance, which get sent out from the origin 0 in opposite directions towards detectors A and B, respectively, which are placed at equal distance from 0.

Now take two observers, one moving in the direction from 0 to B and one moving in the opposite direction. Then, depending on which observer's POV you take, it is either detector A might makes the wavefunction of the two electrons collapse (because the electron 1 reaches detector A and interacts with it before electron 2 reaches detector B) in which case interaction of electron 2 and detector B doesn't do anything. Or, vice versa, it is detector B which makes the wavefunction collapse but then detector A doesn't do anything special.

Either way, if the collapse were actually something physical, both observers would have to agree on the causality chain of events. But they can't. In fact, varying the above setup a bit, they won't even in general agree on whether the wave function of a given system has or has not yet collapsed.

<comment><USER4> What I particularly find interesting is that there is a nice correspondence of this in programming language theory where depending on the evaluation strategy the same values are derived differently from a set of expressions i.e. values are computed in different orders and different causality relationships arise (causality in the sense of which expressions cause another expressions to get evaluated e.g. call by value vs call by name) but ultimately you arrive at the same result (or varying the initial "setup" may result in some expression not being evaluated)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good new theory which makes SENSE as far as I can understand.

But, if we apply Occam's Razor then isn't the explanation to all quantum weirdness simply that we live in a simulated universe?

</comment><comment><USER6> So, I am missing something, how does it work with the double slit experiment ? the result should never act as a wave without observation if we have spontaneous collapse all the time ? Or is this spontaneous collapse quite rare in practice ?

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's right. _Extremely_ rare. The only reason that the theory works at all is that a single spontaneous collapse can propagate throughout a complex system of entanglements and collapse the whole system.

The nice thing about spontaneous collapse is that it makes a testable prediction: there should be a scale at which the behavior of an _isolated_ system starts to show divergence from quantum predictions. So far that prediction has failed to be demonstrated, but people are still working on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a reinvention of the Penrose Interpretation.

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

<comment><USER9> Both are collapse theories [1][2], but presumably not identical being that the author is aware of Penrose's work and credits Penrose earlier in the article for some terminology as well as acknowledging his influence on the theory in the following footnote form the article:

> 6\. In this, we have been strongly influenced by considerations in this > regard made over 3 decades ago by works such as Penrose, R. Time asymmetry > and quantum gravity. In Isham, C.J., Penrose, R., & Sciama, D.W. (Eds.) > Quantum Gravity II (1981); Wald, R.M. Quantum gravity and time > reversibility. Physical Review D 21, 2742 (1980).

The first footnote tells us that the author is referring to GWR theory [3] specifically (which is distinct from Penrose's):

> 1\. Ghirardi, G.C., Rimini, A., & Weber, T. Unified dynamics for microscopic > and macroscopic systems. Physical Review D 34, 470-491 (1986); Pearle, P. > Combining stochastic dynamical state-vector reduction with spontaneous > localization. Physical Review A 39, 2277-2289 (1989); for a relatively > recent review see Bassi, A. & Ghirardi, G. Dynamical reduction models. > Physics Reports 379, 257-426 (2003).

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective- collapse_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective-collapse_theory)

2\. [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm- collapse/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-collapse/)

3\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%93Weber_theory)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article contains a consise explanation of the black hole information paradox, and, for the first time, I feel as though I understand what the issue is (assuming that it is not glossing over some important issues.)</comment>


To Save Net Neutrality, Senator's Attempt to Not Reconfirm Pai - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/senator-launches-opposition-to-ajit-pais-fcc-re-confirmation/ <comment><AUTHOR> _As the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he has demonstrated a disdain to these important public interest principles that he 's supposed to be upholding, and it shows a disregard for the innovators in America that are striving so much to build the economy of the future. The public interest mission of the FCC is encoded in the agency's DNA. The law created the FCC and clearly states that the agency's mission includes promoting equal access to communication networks for all people around the United States._</comment>


What's Inside a Black Hole? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/where-nature-hides-the-darkest-mystery-of-all <comment><USER2> There is a misconception: Light cannot escape a black hole for gravitational reason (not to mention that gravity does not exist, it is a not a force, read up General Relativity). The real reason is that the space-time curvature does simply not provide a way for the light to go back. Same reason you can't go to the end of the universe if the universe would be a sphere.

Also if someone likes to talk about black holes it is good to remind people that it is not a hole...as the article mentions its a region, to be more precise it is a region in space-time that is cut off from ours. The whole issue is not just spacial but also temporal, that is usually the point when your brain gives up understanding the whole problem.

A good description would be: a black hole is the collection of events that do happen outside our space-time/universe. This also explains some of the paradoxes near the event horizon.

<comment><USER3> If one consider that exactly opposite is true - gravity actually do exist as a "function" of a matter, but space-time doesn't (especially a curved one) being a conditioning of our "serialized", self-centered perception, everything, it seems, falls to its places.

<comment><USER2> Gravity is not a function of matter, and proving that curved space-time is real is trivial. So not sure where you are going with that idea...

<comment><USER3> Could you, please, give me a link for the proof of existence of time. Not some processes in the Universe, but time itself.

<comment><USER4> You can find a wealth of information at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time)

<comment><USER3> I am afraid I don't quite understand you, my friend. Are you trying to suggest that existence of this particular page or any part of its content constitutes the proof of existence of time as an independent from an observer phenomena?

May be it somehow related to Kantian view mentioned there about time as a mode of perception, being, as he said, prior to all perceptions, as a condition, but not of observable phenomena, but of sequential mode of perceptual machinery of an observer?

But, as far as I know, in Russia "Kant - lokh".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the stat buried in there, that voyager 1 is 17 light HOURS away, and the nearest known black hole is 8,000 light years. That will put my youngest (9) step-son's mind at rest, he was worried about them when he heard about them first, despite my saying there was nothing to worry about, having concrete facts is always better!

<comment><USER6> Just make sure you don't mention that the edge of the visible universe is 46,000,000,000 lightyears away, making 8,000 lightyears feel relatively (arf!) close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My theory is that it's the other side of the dual universe. (as opposed to multiverse).

It goes something like this: membrane theory, universe a broke into our universe, big bang, but from a single point, causing quantum entanglement on all matter in this universe, which seeks a return of it's original state in universe a, and therefor gravity is actually a second teir effect of matter seeking to return via building up and entering a blackhole. Eg, quantum mechanics and entanglement are stronger than gravity based upon the fact it works at longer distances.

Thats my non-physicist version of the grand unifying theory, but I'm not sure how to create a falsifiable by humankind version of it. I suspect dark matter discoveries will be the key.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could someone suggest some books or reading for someone interested in learning about general relativity, black holes, and quantum mechanics/physics?

<comment><USER9> About Time by Paul Davies is amazing!

[http://www.amazon.com/About-Time-Einsteins-Unfinished- Revolu...](http://www.amazon.com/About-Time-Einsteins-Unfinished- Revolution/dp/0684818221)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >>Outside the horizon, an object can escape the black hole's gravitational pull if it's moving sufficiently fast; inside, it would need to move faster than light-speed, something forbidden by the laws of nature.

Are they trying to say that if there was something that could move faster than light then it can escape? If that's is forbidden by laws of nature, then how did they determined that this is possible?

<comment><USER11> All things have a constant speed in spacetime: the speed of light. If you stand completely still, you travel through time at "the speed of light". If you start moving faster in space, you'll lose a similar amount of speed in time. Go fast enough, and your life will pass in slow-motion. Go at the speed of light and your time stops. Go faster than the speed of light, and your time will start going backwards.

Since you can't get out of a black hole normally, the only way to get out is by reversing time. I.e., going faster than light might be an option to get out of a black hole.

Of course, doing so is nonsense, but the maths work out.

<comment><USER10> So how something can move faster than light. To move at the speed of light, mass must be 0. To move faster than light, what would the mass be?

<comment><USER12> There isn't really such a thing as faster than light. It's more that light travels at c, than that c is the speed of light. By way of analogy, it'd be like having a chart with an x and y axis, and having a line going straight up the y axis, then asking "but how can we make it more along the y axis?". I realise in terms of numbers it makes sense, but in terms of physics it doesn't. There's no such thing as faster than light through spacetime.

Travelling at c, your perception of time would have stopped. From that point, it can't become more stopped, any more than you can go faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The weird thing is that it differs from your perspective. If you're looking in from "infinity" (ie. where the gravity field of the black hole is negligeable) there appears to be a region where nothing can get to : the event horizon.

After all, what does one see when looking at a light source falling into a black hole. That light source slows down as it approaches the event horizon. When it gets close you'll see it dim. That's because time is going slower for that light source. Also it becomes smaller and smaller. It will never cross the event horizon, which is the point where time would stop and it's size would be zero. Because of the amount of time it takes to actually get there, one can semi-accurately refer to it as the end of time. The weird thing is that the end of time is a spherical region of actual space, not a point in the future. Because this only happens close to the black hole it'll likely look confusing : it would fall very quickly to the event horizon, ever accelerating, then suddenly every 50% reduction in distance between it and the event horizon takes 100% more time to happen.

If you're the one falling into a (large) black hole you'll see the opposite : the rest of the universe will go faster, grow brighter, and grow bigger (since the universe is mostly empty space and you can't really tell the physical size of stars from a distance you'd mostly see the empty space being bigger and may think everything else is the same size. It's not though, you just can't tell the difference between 10e-50 degrees and 10e-48 degrees). The event horizon is a theoretical concept, there is nothing in space that corresponds to the event horizon. No obstacle, no marker, no force, no nothing. From up close, it's just empty space. Think of the path between you and the rest of the universe, that path is getting longer, and you can see and measure that. That's all that happens, nothing more. Everything you can reach is falling in as well, and you see the distance between you and other things falling in increasing just the same. If you were to go anywhere, you'd notice that the distance between you and wherever you're trying to go grows bigger with time. If that happens fast enough you can never get there, because the distance will never decrease.

The weird thing is that that is true for us here on earth as well. The distance between us and everything outside of our local galactic group (everything contained by a few galaxies who are bound by gravity. Granted, this structure is several million lightyears across, but it is finite and very tiny compared to the total universe) is getting bigger and further away. The vast, vast majority of the universe is expanding, exactly like you'd expect to see if you were falling into a (extremely huge) black hole. Furthermore the edge of the universe is suspiciously close to where those "hallways" expand at superluminal speeds (ie. the rate of distance increase between us and the faraway object > c). The distance between the furthest object ever measured and the point where distance increase speed becomes superluminal is 400 million light year. That seems suspiciously close to be coincidental.

So the answer for "big" black holes might be very simple. What's inside ? Look around you. That's what's inside. Certainly some black holes are of a size that you could conceivably throw a solar system inside, and nothing out of the ordinary would happen to it at all for a very long time, essentially for the lifetime of the black hole, which can be hundreds of billions of years.

That leaves small black holes where you'd be torn to shreds by the difference in gravity between the closest part of you to the black hole and the parts further away. It'd be like falling while having rockets accelerating your feet downwards. At some point, those rockets accelerate fast enough to rip your feet clean off. However, small black holes evaporate through Hawking radiation. They quickly convert all their mass to energy. So there'd be a massive explosion happening below you, which will likely vaporize you long before the tidal forces become an issue.</comment>


Show HN: Postbelt – a text-only, privacy-first, social network - <AUTHOR> https://postbelt.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News,

I built this after wanting it to exist for a while. It's a social network that focuses completely on the one feature I care about, discussing things with people I know in a forum-style environment.

I feel like on the current selection of big social networks, this core feature is being lost in the noise of everything else that's been added on top over the years. I'm also not completely happy with the fact that they are mostly running under a model which pushes public sharing, and/or regular interaction with ads and advertisers. I basically put up with all this because I have to, just to have a place where I can have discussions amongst my contacts. So I thought, why not try to build a place that focuses only on that?

You'll notice that the site closely resembles another one you might know, with the major difference being that it is private, not public :-) That's no coincidence. A big part of the initial inspiration for this project was this community and the endlessly fascinating discussions that take place here. I wondered if I couldn't bring a similar thing to mine and other peoples' personal circles.

It was a fun project to build and I thought I would put it out there. If you have any feedback, I'd be really grateful to hear it. Cheers.

<comment><USER2> Do you take Bitcoin? How do I find connections?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not right now, but it's on the todos list and I think should just be a configuration change since the payments are done via Stripe. I'll look into it this weekend!

In terms of finding connections, it's quite basic at the moment, in that you have to know someone's username to send them a request. Please feel free to add me, my username is davnicwil

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hm. What's the big draw over Twitter? You can protect your profile over there as well, and it has support for embedded media.</comment>


Competition: Design algorithm to predict magazine sales at newsstands - <AUTHOR> http://www.hearstchallenge.com/index.php

<comment><USER2> I guess all we do is choose how steep the downward slope is?</comment>


Google Sites - What's All the Fuss? - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-9881642-80.html?tag=nefd.pop

<comment><USER2> To me it seems like Google sites isn't much more than all the other free sites you can generate all over the web. Am I missing something?</comment>


Greplin becomes Cue - Intelligent "Snapshot" of your Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.cueup.com/ <comment><USER2> Our sincere apologies for the confusion - our launch got jumped 48 hours by a press mixup and we've been working all night to get everything in place as quickly as possible.

Greplin search hasn't changed - it is still availalble as Cue Search - both in our app and on our website. Web access is hard to get to for the next few minutes - right now it's accessible at <https://www.cueup.com/login> (will be linked from cueup.com momentarily). In the iPhone app, the search functionality has been streamlined and is available as a tab.

We still care about search a lot. It's the foundation of all the new features, and it's critical to the long term goals of our service.

If you encounter any issues, as always, we're quick to respond at email@example.com

<comment><USER3> Robby, congrats on the new launch-- it looks great!

Zero-click search is really impressive when it works [edit: actually, this is zero-search search: you get results without searching, simply based on context]. I think greplin can make it work with heuristics + usage data over the last few years :-) Showing not just what's next, but context (when, where is it? what emails are related?) makes this really cool-- something that can very quickly form a habit, perhaps.

PS: why show Sunrise and Sunset times?(first screenshot on landing screen) Do people actually search for that? Personally, I don't care-- the day starts when I wake up.

<comment><USER4> About sunrise and sunset: that's a more interesting subject that it sounds like at first. The sunrise and sunset times have a few purposes, mostly unrelated to telling you about the sun. First, they make it clear at a glance that you're looking at a visual representation of a single day's events. It's surprisingly non-obvious how to make a user interface's purpose obvious! Second, they give context to the timing of events by subtly matching them up with the day-night cycle; despite the advent of artificial lighting, our species is still instinctively diurnal, and this is a great source of intuitions about time. Third, they look really nice without being visually confusing or clashing with the color palette.

Oh, and they also tell you when the sun rises and sets. I guess that's cool, too.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. I've seen a few other apps do this too and always wondered. Well, I think shading the UI might be a better hint, but this is definitely not something I'd thought of before. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like "Greplin team scraps Greplin, launches new calendar app" would be a more meaningful title. As a side note, did they automatically unregister their application from my facebook, gmail, twitter, whatever, or do I have to do that myself?

UPDATE: Greplin still has access to my google account. <http://screencast.com/t/c8mQiZMo> wtf, greplin? I authorized for a specific purpose and you shut down the app; why are you still holding the keys to my google account?

To see google account app auth settings: <https://accounts.google.com/IssuedAuthSubTokens>

<comment><USER6> Greplin is by no means scrapped. All of that search functionality still exists and is an integral part of the app and website. Think of it as adding a new feature ("What's next") and that being the default screen, with search only one tap away.

Also, in what circumstance would it _ever_ make sense for a rational business to revoke your credentials and assume that because they've added functionality you just might not want to use the product anymore? They should just cut off all access and make you go through the whole process of re-enabling it?

That sounds like you're demanding seppuku, and I think you're overreacting quite significantly.

<comment><USER5> I went to greplin.com and was redirected to a cue splash page with no indication that greplin still existed (a link has since been added). Between this redirect _away_ from of greplin.com and the link title "greplin becomes cue," it seemed clear that greplin was no more. It turns out greplin is not scrapped, they have added a link back to it, so you are right I was premature in expecting them to revoke permissions.

That said, if they had in fact replaced a web service with an iPhone app, that would be a fundamentally different product that I did not sign up for, and I would expect them to yield my permissions and start over, or send an email with "click to transfer permissions to the new product." What if they "pivot" to become an email marketer? Would my permissions ride along there? You are right in this case, however.

<comment><USER6> I definitely get where you're coming from. I don't know the full story, but it seems they had an embargo snafu (code for: one of the reporters that was under embargo conveniently forgot they weren't supposed to post until 2 days from now).

It's got to be an extremely stressful situation that was not of their own making, and I think we could all cut them some slack while they scramble to get everything ready 48 hours earlier than anticipated! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The landing page looks nice, but it really doesn't tell me anything about the product.

Only if I pay close attention to the screenshots can I infer that it's a calendar that gets information from multiple sources, and that tries to bring up the relevant information.

But why would I need an app different from the default Calendar app? Sure you get the relevant info for my lunch from OpenTable and from my flight. But really, that doesn't happen very often that I have in the same day a lunch and a flight with info that just a calendar event wouldn't have. For the most part, I can just pull to get the notification center and most of the same info is there.

Side note: I find it more and more common to have that kind of beautiful landing page that are too much about the design and not enough about delivering information.

<comment><USER8> > The landing page looks nice, but it really doesn't tell me anything about > the product.

Agreed. I'd never heard of Greplin or Cue and all I got from this site was 'just some sort of calendar app'. Still don't know what either one actually does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know why the original Greplin product didn't take off?

We have more of our data siloed in cloud services like Evernote. We need a way to search them and Google is too distracted with G+ to enter this space. So why weren't more of us using Greplin?

<comment><USER10> My guess is "location." How do you go to a separate app to search the content of your email, fb, etc... It is counter-intuitive. Greplin, IMO, should have a browser plugin and wherever you searched, be it Google, Email, FB it would give you its results on a sidebar. Heck,give me an additional search button right next to Google's: "SEARCH GREPLIN," or "GREP IT."

<comment><USER11> Greplin does have a browser extension for Chrome:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bjclhonkhgkidmlkgh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bjclhonkhgkidmlkghlkiffhoikhaajg?utm_source=chrome- ntp-icon)

I had it for a while, but I just found I forgot to use it and went directly to searching the services instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Color me disappointed. The blog makes some nebulous claim about Cue retaining Greplin's features, but makes no specific assertations about the future of search. If you're retaining those features, why have you made them inaccessible? The Greplin website redirects to Cue, so I can't search now. If search is indeed gone, so be it, but I can't help but wonder why you've cut me off from your service before the new UI is ready for me to use.

<comment><USER6> Search is still there and still a huge part of the product. I think they've come to the realization that the future of personal search is in making it so you don't have to use search in the first place -- 9 times out of ten the information will already be there in front of you when you open the app.

You might want to perform a search a few times a month, but you'll want to use the new "What's next" view a few times a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure I'm not the only Android user who would be interested in using this. Is there an ETA for an Android version?

<comment><USER14> Correct. Having a web version isn't enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone who never used Greplin, I'll focus on what I do like: I found the layout quite creative. The top images of the iPhone remain fully scaled to your browser width, which means the menu below is only revealed when you scroll down. Thus, no matter what the browser size, you're always only focusing on the photos and features of the service, until you scroll down. Quite clever.

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't comment on the product since I never used it, but the rebrand surprises me...

 _Greplin_ is novel, short, spellable (pick up grepplin.com and greppelin.com just in case), googleable, defensible, and clever. By most standards it's a great trademark.

 _Cue_ is common, heavily overloaded, unsearchable, ambiguously spelled ("like, the letter 'q'?), and you don't even have the domain name.

This seems like a mistake.

<comment><USER17> Hardly. My first impression - brilliantly short name. Equally short URL. It fits the target spot on.

Rather envious actually ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Dang. We were a paying customer of Greplin and loved it. What do we do now? Can I buy / whitelabel the IP?

Email address in profile.

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a blog post briefly explaining it here:

[http://blog.cueup.com/announcing-a-new-name-new-free- service...](http://blog.cueup.com/announcing-a-new-name-new-free-service-cue)

</comment><comment><USER20> I haven't tried it yet, but this has amazing potential. It has become a service that not only searches all your stuff, but makes sense of it and displays it in an intelligent way.

</comment><comment><USER21> Shame about Greplin - I didn't use it particularly regularly, but I loved that it was there if I ever wanted to delve back to something I half-remembered, like a long-lost tweet.

<comment><USER22> Greplin never worked right for me, couldn't find anything not in the inbox.

On the other hand, my copy of "ReMail", the first iPhone Gmail indexer (which got bought by Google, discontinued, and open sourced[1]), is still going strong on iOS 6 with a quarter million emails in its offline index.

1\. <http://code.google.com/p/remail-iphone/>

<comment><USER23> Sounds possible that not all of your mail was accessible via IMAP. Mine seems to work with all my labels.

[http://help.cueup.com/customer/portal/articles/25915-getting...](http://help.cueup.com/customer/portal/articles/25915-getting- partial-or-no-gmail-results)

<comment><USER22> It's all accessible, that's how Remail (not to mention iPhone, Apple Mail, etc) gets at it.

I interacted with Greplin support, they were aware searches weren't finding things that had been auto filed by Gmail rules into labels. I have been annoyed this "for pay" service didn't handle this.

(Note that I do not expose the "All Mail" virtual folder through IMAP because that ends up doubling mail.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What happens to the people who were paying for the premium version of Greplin? Are you providing any refunds? At a minimum, are you unlinking their credit cards and ceasing to charge them?

</comment><comment><USER25> "Greplin becomes Cue" so does that mean Greplin is shutting down? I thought it was really popular. This look like a totally different app. What about existing users/customers?

<comment><USER26> Atleast I can login to "old" greplin when using <https://www.cueup.com/auth#login_>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Saw a presentation by the greplin CTO last year ([http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Distributed-Systems- What-...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Distributed-Systems-What-Nobody- Told-You)) - seemed like were ready to give search a "social side". Now all these millions (billions) of documents just to display "8.02pm sunset"? I'm a little surprised.

Edit: After reading the blog post, I'm less surprised and can imagine where they are headed.

</comment><comment><USER28> The one thing that I think is really missing is the ability to pull iCloud calendars/ the calendar on the iPhone. I stopped using Google Calendar and don't have an exchange account so everything comes through there. As it is right now, Cue just tells me about my facebook friends' birthdays.

</comment><comment><USER29> I would love to see Microsoft Exchange integration -- I know just I alone could pull in a couple hundred users for you with this feature. In terms of aggregation and presentation of data, this is 100x better than any previous offering for Exchange users.

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks really cool! Any way to get it to grab calendar items from the iPhone calendar? Very few of my items are in gcal, I use iCal on the desktop...

</comment><comment><USER31> "Safari cannot open the page because too many redirects occurred." - what I get when trying to go to cueup.com or cueup.com/app on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't connect any of my accounts, it just hangs and or errors out. Shoddy app or just too much traffic right now?

<comment><USER6> It seems like their launch happened 48 hours earlier than expected due to one of the reporters breaking the embargo. I think they are currently scrambling to get everything fully functional, but it may be a bit slow for the time being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This has to be the worst product launch ever.

What happens to the index of personal data they created when I gave them access to all my PII? I can go in and manually deauth Greplin from all my accounts (PAIN IN THE ASS) but that doesn't delete whatever data they stored on their end.

<comment><USER34> An app changes focus and you think they should throw out all permissions? WTF?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So, it's an alternate interface for my calendar?

</comment><comment><USER36> The "get this app" link is broken

<comment><USER37> and there's a type in "Confirmation code" on the airplane ticket on the front page slideshow.

<comment><USER38> And "Administartion". But, hey, the jam looks appetizing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The "Personal Training" portion of the demo screenshots says 4am, but is clearly in the 4pm time slot.</comment>


How the Presidential Candidates Track Their Supporters - <AUTHOR> https://www.indicative.com/how-the-presidential-candidates-spy-on-their-supporters/ <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: Not a political statement, just hypothetical and simplified observations on the use and efficacy of digital technology employed by election campaigns.

\--

The prevailing narrative has been that data and analytics has powered a more effective ground game and digital strategy for recent candidates often giving them the edge (Obama).

It's safe to assume that Hillary Clinton's campaign has the most (winning) experience and resources in this respect as she inherited many of the operatives from the Obama camp.

For this reason, it would be really interesting if Hillary ended up losing the nomination. It would signal what we already know which is that there is some limit to marketing and advertising.

Voters/consumers often discern the difference between the candidate/product as it actually is and the perceptions of the candidate/product that the advertising campaign attempts to manufacture.

Especially for younger generations, people are increasingly immune not only to the content of advertisements but also to the tracking technologies utilized to effectively deliver those advertisements.

It will be interesting to see how these trends play out (increased reliance of campaigns on digital advertising and increased immunity to ads by younger generations).

<comment><USER3> I think this will be a very interesting question even if she ultimately wins as she's certainly had a tough time given her resources.

Personally, I don't believe people are building direct immunity. I think they are updating their self image to avoid cognitive dissonance which leads to identity confusions, like the shocking number of people I meet who seem to think they are in all sorts of long tails when they seem quite average.

As such, I do think quantitative based analytics will eventually win out. But not in terms of direct targeting ads to the correct voter. I think broadcast (or pseudo broadcast) ads are essential and the sophistication will be in analyzing the social affects and trying to do this in smaller tests without "using them up". I.e. eliciting bad defenses from an opponents supporters on twitter is far more powerful than randomly bringing up points privately to the independents you are after. In the first case, we are all forced to cement an argument if only to clarify why we think someone is an idiot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From [http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/11/senator- ted-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/11/senator-ted-cruz- president-campaign-facebook-user-data)

 _"... used Amazon's crowdsourcing marketplace Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to access a large pool of Facebook profiles, hoovering up tens of thousands of individuals' demographic data – names, locations, birthdays, genders – as well as their Facebook "likes", which offer a range of personal insights ... For every individual recruited on MTurk, he harvested information about their friends , meaning the dataset ballooned significantly in size ... users had an average of around 340 friends ... the Facebook data was then used to generate sophisticated models of each of their personalities using the so-called "big five" personality traits and characteristics – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism."_

From [http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2015-11-12/is- the...](http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2015-11-12/is-the- republican-party-s-killer-data-app-for-real-)

 _"... "This is really trying to use psychology to understand why hostile audiences do what they do, and to use this methodology to deconstruct that behavior and then use communication to try and change attitudes and ultimately behavior," Nix says. "Persuading somebody to vote in a certain way," he goes on, "is really very similar to persuading 14- to 25-year-old boys in Indonesia to not join Al Qaeda."_

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting how few are using Twitter advertising, I assume they all have twitter accounts and would otherwise be active there.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if that speaks to the general issue that Twitter has had in terms of being an effective advertising platform - either in terms of targeting capability or demographics of the userbase.

If even the candidates who are spending money like it's going out of style aren't even using it...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you prefer reading or listening? - <AUTHOR> - Do you prefer reading or listening?<p>- In which context would you prefer one instead of the other?<p>- Why? <comment><USER2> Reading, usually. Even if I speed up audiobooks I have to pause them to let my thoughts wander off for a minute with a new idea. Reading happens exactly at the pace of my brain, while audio and video are controlled by something else. I have a fairly wander-y mind and I often zone out when someone speaks at me for more than a minute at a time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I assume you are referring to audiobooks?

Definitely reading as it enables you to go at your own pace, skip back a few words if you didn't catch a meaning, or stop and stare out of the window for a few seconds.

Also the reader of an audiobook imposes their own interpretation of the text whereas if you read there is nothing between you and the author.

You can sort of do these things with an audiobook but it's fiddly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply! How about shorter resources than audiobook such as an article or literature work with a total listening duration of about 10 minutes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading. Always. I absorb information so much more effectively via text. Audio is too slow and too easy to inadvertently tune out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying! What if you were able to speedup the audio a bit?

<comment><USER4> Still too easy to tune out; too difficult to go backwards in; impossible to skim.

Personally I just retain it much more poorly under the best of circumstances, and stop paying attention at all for minutes at a time under the worst.

But other people have the opposite experience. Depends on who your audience is.

But if I'm part of your audience, please provide transcripts or I'll just navigate away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright, thanks for sharing.

Feel free to join the upcoming launch list: [https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/2aud- io](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/2aud-io)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How black people still need to outwit racists in rural America - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/11/green-book-facebook-black-motorists-racist-america-road-trip-pitstops-safe <comment><USER2> I don't disagree with the article but let me give a more positive anecdote. I'm Black and live in Forsyth County GA.

Yeah this Forsyth:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0)

We were looking for a house and were welcomed with opened arms by the builder, I can still go to pick up my son from a teen group where no one knows me and ask any random person have they seen my son and they know exactly who I'm talking about. But I've never felt the least bit of hostility and my son made friends quickly. He's dating a White girl - if he wants to date anyone in his school he doesn't have too much of a choice - and I've met her parents and they are perfectly supportive of it.

I've never experienced anything that I could perceive as racist here and neither has my family. There is probably still some of the old guard around but the county has bern growing fast, and probably is drowning out the old guard.

<comment><USER3> My guess is that your household income is at least $150k? Wealth can be a partial vaccine against discrimination.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe people are discriminating against poverty / class rather than race.

<comment><USER2> No it's definitely both. But, while there are a lot of studies showing discriminitstion, to a point, depending on what part of the country you are in, how well connected you are, status (not necessarily income) and how well you can "fit in", it can be less of an issue.

<comment><USER4> Where I come from in the UK there isn't a lot of racism (that I am aware of) but I do see huge similarities in the way that classes treat each other to the way races treat each other in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One terribly insidious aspect to racism in America is how invisible it is to white people. We are so segregated that most white people will not learn about black people's experiences with racism organically. It's only through articles like this and cell phone footage of violent police interactions that we become aware of this cruel alternative reality so many people live in. The disconnect exists within city-limits, but so much more so across regional divides.

<comment><USER6> You are absolutely right about that. I was brought up that racism was for poor white trash and anyone who is racist shouldn't be associated with. Of course I live my life that way, so all the people who I interact with aren't racist. Honestly, even people on the street I talk with don't say things like that. The last time someone said something like that was some old bumpkin in a truck at a gas station said something about Michelle Obama several years ago.

I know racist remarks were quite casual in the pre-Boomer generation, but they don't seem that way now, but I wouldn't know because I'm not around it.

I assume it is a lot better than the 80s, but I could never know. Of course I want to believe that racism is only a rarity today and limited to offshoots of society, and I assume many others want to believe that too.

<comment><USER7> I think such rose-colored beliefs are dangerous and cause major harm so I do not want to nor do I believe them.

<comment><USER6> You should believe what data tells you and not what I say or what any newspaper says. I was just having a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had never heard of sundown towns before this article and plan to read the book they link to in the article [1]. One silver lining of the last year or so for me, personally, has been a sort of awakening to the real issues that have persisted in the shadows of the US for marginalized populations. There has always been some level of awareness, but the very concrete and contemporary stories that seem to be pouring out currently have forced me to reconcile that much of the US population doesn't live within my progressive, city living bubble, and just how much worse things are in some places. I don't think I'm alone here.

Some other things I've heard that have reinforced this:

Democracy in Chains: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30011020-democracy- in-ch...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30011020-democracy-in- chains?from_search=true)

When the Welfare People Come: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29633687-when-the- welfar...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29633687-when-the-welfare- people-come?ac=1&from_search=true)

[1][https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52444.Sundown_Towns?ac=1...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52444.Sundown_Towns?ac=1&from_search=true)

<comment><USER9> The progressive bubbles are still rife with racism, it's just not as obvious. Think of stop and frisk, school district segregation, gentrification, modern day redlining, etc. "Progressive" people often still hold subtly racist views. The kind of thing you see black people point - say like in "Get Out" and "Insecure" \- is completely common place, where well-meaning liberal people perpetuate racist systems.

<comment> aaron-lebo Poor whites don't have any more power than poor minorities. Was watching a pbs doc about the rise of the klan in North Carolina. One of the big attractions was that the wealthy whites looked down on the poor whites, and by joining the klan they could at least be above someone else.

The wealthy whites condoned and fought the Civil War. The poor didn't own slaves. They were probably racist and bigoted, but it was the kind of behavior learned form their masters.

It's incredibly frustrating to see people with the "correct" views gloat in their correctness and do nothing to actually fix racism or inequality (they are the benefactors of this inequality). I used to attend a small baptist church. One of my dad's friends _loved_ to make off color jokes. That same man is friends with and has done more for illegal immigrants and minorities than some of the most progressive rich folk ever have. They'd probably tar and feather him and make a big show about how good they were for doing it.

School districts are a great example. Rich kids go to nice private cools and their parents often live in communities that don't pay taxes that support public schools. I've met good upstanding Republicans and rabid Obama supporters who do this, and somehow don't see the contradiction.

<comment><USER10> > parents often live in communities that don't pay taxes that support public > schools

how? pretty sure in the US everyone pays property tax (directly or indirectly), some of which is used to fund the school system. you can't just opt out of paying into that system at all.

<comment> aaron-lebo Highland Park is a city within a city that pays no taxes to DISD.

Zuckerberg grew up in Dobb's Ferry, which is just outside of New York City's limits. He ended up at a private high school with an endowment of 1.15 billion. Now he's worth 70 billion. Not to pick on him (just an example), but there are many ways the elites segregate themselves.

<comment><USER11> Highland Park and Dobb's Ferry have public schools though:

[https://www.dfsd.org/](https://www.dfsd.org/)

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

Median incomes in Highland Park are lower than _Detroit_ and the school system there basically failed a few years ago.

I think there's probably a pretty good argument to be made about how schools are funded. Just pointing out that not all properties are inside of large cities isn't it.

<comment> aaron-lebo That's not the same place.

Yes, they do have their own public schools, but that's ignoring how isolated and segregated those schools are that tax base is from the rest of the community.

 _In the 2015-2016 school year, HPISD had a student population of 7,171 people, of whom 2,114 were at Highland Park High School. The areas from which HPISD draws, Highland Park and University Park, have a reputation for being affluent, predominantly white areas. The numbers show that although the student body used to be almost 99% white, by 2015 a lower 86.5% of the District was white. The next biggest sections are a 6% Asian population and a 5% Hispanic population. In terms of affluence, it is true that 0.0% of the District 's students are economically disadvantaged. The rate of violent or criminal incidents at every single campus in the District in 2015-2016 was 0.0%_

Dobb's isn't that bad, but its demographics and income is still well above many nearby areas. Go through the Dobb's high site and count dark skinned people. It's an 80% majority community with a family income well over nearby areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's a great and relevant Radiolab episode published just a few days ago. It discusses the Commerce Clause of the constitution[1].

Something I didn't know is that when the US government ended racial segregation in privately owned businesses they did so not on any sort of human rights or equality basis. Rather they argued that businesses being able to deny black clients service has a depressing effect on the economy, and is thus something the federal government can regulate under the Commerce Clause.

Today there's still people who think that was a bad call not because it ended segregation, but because it gave the government precedent to regulate other things via the Commerce Clause.

1\. [http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-more- perfect...](http://www.radiolab.org/story/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-one- nation-under-money/)

<comment><USER13> The US Constitution is basically obsolete and terrible and you can't run a decent society without stretching it quite a bit. It does not deserve the veneration it receives.

<comment><USER14> I would argue that this means we should fix the constitution through the amendment process, not toss the baby out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER7> I can't imagine a more horrific scenario than a constitutional convention. The day that happens is the day America dies. Ok, probably a few days later when they decide to throw out the current ratification rules out and just rewrite everything. A bunch of un-elected idiots rewriting the constitution. I hope they use a new name. Calling that new country USA will be confusing. Regardless, I will not stick around here for that. Third time around is bound to be an even bigger disaster than the first two.

<comment><USER14> Who said anything about a constitutional convention? The amendment process[0] is not so extreme. We've done it 27 times, most recently in 1992.

[0]: [https://www.archives.gov/federal- register/constitution](https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "I prayed that she'd look white, and she does," he says. "She will be safe."

This is incredibly sad to read. I wish this government would take a zero- tolerance to racism (like they do with 'terroism'), but we seem to be regressing lately.

<comment><USER16> You can't make the law any more strict than it already is without sacrificing everybody's basic rights.

<comment><USER17> It's more about setting the tone. If top figures in the government and legislature take an inclusive stance and stamp out any racists issues, populous tend to pick up on that vibe.

<comment><USER16> What top public figures aren't strongly against racism exactly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting how the msm only reports on situations like these when the victims are non-White. Here is an example of what Whites go through to outwit racists in rural South Africa : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMOmQJCtTek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMOmQJCtTek)

</comment><comment><USER19> I live in Atlanta and have lived in the American south all of my life.

I don't really appreciate the stereotype that people here are more racist and backwards than in other parts of the country. It actually seems to me that in many ways we have superior race relations down here. The amount of blacks living here is much higher than it is in other parts of the country. Most days when I walk to work I don't see any white people at all. You notice that when there are race riots and events of racial tension they never occur in the south?

I think the fear that a black person would have some sort of wild racist encounter down here is misplaced.

</comment><comment><USER20> > They took to heart several recommendations gleaned from the conversation, > including that they should bypass Harrison, an Arkansas town with a long > history of KKK activity.

I live in Harrison, AR - in fact, I just moved back here after spending five years in Charlottesville, VA.

You're far more likely to be harassed for having a Hillary sticker on the back of your car than for the color of your skin.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a white guy that prefers not to travel through the inner city, because of what might happen to me there. Let's stop pretending that this is a one-way street.

</comment><comment><USER22> Are we to infer that racism is less prevalent in urban America?

Oddly, I read not long ago that the most segregated schools in America are in New York city.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The full title is _From the Green Book to Facebook, how black people still need to outwit racists in rural America_.

EDIT: The given title is too long to fit the 80 character limit. And I suck at picking new titles. Sorry.</comment>


Gluten Free Scanner for Android  - <AUTHOR> http://glu10freeapp.com/

<comment><USER2> If it's Android-only, why do you show in iPhone on the landing page?

edit: just saw your About page, it's full of attempted SEO keywords. [http://glu10freeapp.com/about.html](http://glu10freeapp.com/about.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed</comment></comment>


Show HN: Startup Utility – Collection of Startup Resources - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuputility.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been collecting these resources in an excel file and figured others may be interested them. Site is a little rough. I started it yesterday. While yellow pages isn't quite right, it sort of explains the idea. Books, twitter accounts, blogs, tools, etc. Just helpful resources that I have had trouble finding all in one place. I'm open to feedback. It was a bored-friday and two- beers-idea that I thought might be interesting."\ Hopefully you can find something helpful you haven't seen previously! Email is on the bottom of the webpage if you'd like to reach out!

<comment><USER2> definitively useful. i am trying to keep track of all the resources i come by day by day of browsing, but i am failing badly.

some nicer css would help of course, but i guess that's in the pipeline.

a nice feature would be able to select your own startup stack form the tools section - like mean.io for a complete business plan :)

next step: add incubators?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, nicer css is definitely in the pipeline. I'm a mobile & backend developer by trade, but have learned enough css to help me get the job almost done. Still working on the design skills though.

And you can technically 'save' a resource by clicking the star and then going to your profile, if that's kinda what you mean by a startup stack. None of this is real clear at the moment though, I probably need better user-coaching on that.

Incubators would be a great next step! Would love to hear any other ideas.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators](http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators) has a pretty exhaustive and useful list of all the international incubators/accelerators with some metrics. You can point to it as a resource.

This is a good bundle you came up with. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thank you! Glad I could help. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good stuff. A few other suggestions perhaps in different verticals and some that fit within your current categories.

Marketing

\- Inbound.org www.inbound.org

\- Growth Hackers www.growthhackers.com

Research, VC, Startup Data

\- Dan Primack's newsletter ([http://fortune.com/tag/term- sheet/](http://fortune.com/tag/term-sheet/))

\- PE Hub www.pehub.com

\- CB Insights [http://www.cbinsights.com/blog](http://www.cbinsights.com/blog)

Blogs by VCs

\- Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) – avc.com

\- Brad Feld (Foundry Group) – feld.com

\- Mark Suster (GRP Partners) – bothsidesofthetable.com

\- Bill Gurley (Benchmark) – abovethecrowd.com

\- Ben Horowitz (A16Z) – bhorowitz.com

\- Chris Dixon (A16Z) – cdixon.org

\- First Round Capital Blog - firstround.com/blog/

\- Hunter Walk (Homebrew) - hunterwalk.com

My company, CB Insights, is involved in this industry so folks who join our team are given the following on-boarding reading list which may be useful - [https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/tech-reading- list/](https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/tech-reading-list/)

Look forward to seeing how your side project evolves.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, really appreciate the suggestions and feedback. I'll definitely get these added to my list.

Also looking forward to seeing how this side project develops, I wasn't sure it would take off even a little bit. It's been a fun morning!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shameless plug: I built [http://hackertoolbox.herokuapp.com/](http://hackertoolbox.herokuapp.com/) a week ago. One of the goal is that "Any hackers wanting to build some new stuff would better check this toolbox. If there is one satisfying your needs, then don't reinvent the wheel unless you have good reasons." Interested in joining forces? Anyway, I am adding your site to the toolbox :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Shoot me an email and let's talk. It's firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER6> I've been collecting a list and trying to put something like this myself .... maybe worth collaborating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, shoot me an email! email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just updated the main page design. If you saw the original, it would be great if you let me know what you preferred. Thanks!

<comment><USER7> This one. Seems to work better on mobile

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone have a great alternatives to:

Mailchimp -- It seems to fall short in so many ways. It's a broadsword when we want a scalpel. Do most companies end up rolling their own?

GoToWebinar -- Another case where this seems to be the best of the worst.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used Amazon's Simple Email Service to help me out. It doesn't provide the same benefits out of the box though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recommend adding Traction ([http://tbook.us](http://tbook.us)) to the book list (and possibly removing Gladwell -- Traction is much more helpful if you're starting a company).

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I'll check it out and put it on my list! I've read all the books on the current list, that was sort of my starting point. I think I use almost everything on the site, with the exception of a few tools. Some of the books don't necessarily pertain to startups, but I felt they had value in the message they were delivering. Outliers is generally loved/hated and, while the science behind his data is lacking, I still like the message of hope and perseverance it delivers. Thanks for the suggestion though! Keep them coming!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://leanstack.io/](http://leanstack.io/) \-- This also has all tools and useful resources for a startup .. very handy

</comment><comment><USER11> Also, check out [https://rollbar.com](https://rollbar.com) for free error monitoring.

(Ps. I'm one of the founders :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I'll add it to my growing list :) Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You should include [http://www.foundercentric.com/](http://www.foundercentric.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I'll put it on my list. Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Startup class has some amazing content, I don't see the point of Slacker though. What's wrong with a Skype group?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't used Slack personally because I haven't really had a need to. From what I've read, it has some amazing integrations. Seems almost like magic the way it works. If you get the chance to check it out, you really should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any good business plan resources?. I was able to find pitch decks of most startups but not the actual business plan

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. I might have a few buried in my email. I can try and dig those out. In the meantime: [http://www.niacc.edu/pappajohn/business- development/start-a-...](http://www.niacc.edu/pappajohn/business- development/start-a-business/business-plan/) this might be helpful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hi,

Is the source available on a public repo? This will be amazing for a private board. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can try and do that here in the next few days. I'm a little swamped with design and suggestions at the moment. If you could email me at: firstname.lastname@example.com that would be fantastic!</comment></comment>


Xi-Editor – Modern editor with Rust back end - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/xi-editor <comment><USER2> megapreviouslies: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=xi%20editor&sort=byDate&prefix...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=xi%20editor&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't post this, but am happy to answer questions. It's not quite yet at the point where you want to use it as your daily editor, but we are slowly and steadily getting there.

<comment><USER4> Windows?

<comment><USER3> I've actually some nontrivial progress on xi-win in the past month or two. I still consider it experimental, but it offers basic editing functionality now. It's written basically directly on top of winapi, no toolkits or frameworks, which I'm doing partly because I enjoy tinkering, and partly because I expect to be able to achieve significantly better performance than would otherwise be possible.

Syntax highlighting is not working, largely because I can't figure out how to compile onig. But we'll figure that out one way or another (if it's too hard, we'll switch to fancy-regex, which is pure Rust).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm the maker of gxi, a gtk frontend for xi written in rust. I wouldn't recommend trying it yet, it's still in heavy development, but I've been making some good strides lately. I've had good experiences so far with the xi backend.

</comment><comment><USER6> Some of the Xi guys have some really good talks (or maybe just 1, I dunno) on YouTube. I really enjoyed them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Damn. Just when I was interested - a GPL patent-grab license. (Google "implied patent grant") Billions have already been spent redoing GPL software under BSD and MIT licenses that aren't patent-phobic. Do we really have to do this again?

<comment><USER8> The implied patent grant is also present in BSD and MIT. At least that was the consensus in the Facebook licensing issue:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113515](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113515)

The reason I've always seen about companies not liking the GPL is that they want to be able to make closed source versions of software. If there was some risk that once you submit code to a GPL project you've donated all your patents to the world it would be a risk with BSD and MIT licensing as well.

<comment><USER7> That thread is hardly a consensus, and those putting this view forward seem to badly confuse copyright grants with patent right grants.

The 2-clause BSD grants only copyrights in clause one, and disclaims any other grant or warranty in the second clause.

I can't imagine how to get from that clause 2 explicit disclaimer of other rights to an implied claim of other rights.

<comment><USER8> The consensus isn't the thread. The consensus is apparently among those that work on these issues professionally. Here's a better subthread that explains it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113505](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9113505)

<comment><USER7> I see good evidence for my view, contradiction for yours here. And certainly not consensus. Starting with: "For example, it's considered unclear enough that the ClearBSD license was explicitly created to clarify that it doesn't offer patent grants - jttp://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:ClearBSD"

What I find there pro your side is actuallly just the pure confusion of copyright grant with patents. Nobody denied that copyright licenses were being granted.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand what you're saying. Surely the fact that a new license was needed to make sure an implied patent grant exists means that the normal BSD license includes a patent grant. That much is stated in the link I shared:

"The BSD license normally includes an implied patent license."

It couldn't be clearer. You can disagree with him but that's what's being said and is apparently a consensus among open source lawyers.

<comment><USER7> "consensus among open source lawyers." One person claimed that, but provided no source - when answering a contrary opinion with a source.

<comment><USER8> The source is himself supposedly as one of those in that select group. Other people in the thread consider him an authority as well. He states that that contrary opinion is niche and has been at least partially refuted by new events. From my point of view it's a much better source than yours or mine reading of licenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an end user, I don't care what language a program is written in. I care about features, usability, accessibility and many other things- but not how you did it.

Maybe you've got something awesome here, but you had only a few seconds to catch my interest with your subtitle, and you instead used it to tell me what part of it _you_ love rather than what part of it _I_ will love. Don't do that.

<comment><USER8> That's entitled and in my view just plain wrong. I want people to tell me why they think something is technically cool on hacker news. Even if what's cool is how it's built and doesn't matter to the user at all. And when I personally don't care for it I just move on.

<comment><USER10> Exactly! I'm never going to give up Emacs, but I'm sure as shit interested in the technical aspects of text editors.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: good book or resources to get my SQL skills to the next level - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN friends,<p>I'm doing web development for about 3 years now (mainly ruby stuff), used SQL all along and before (I was doing C/C++ and sqlite dev). I know basic SQL, joins and all basic SQL querying. But I'm pretty sure there's tons of post processing code I could write directly in SQL. I mean, I know I can so ... do you have a good book to recommend to get my SQL skills to the next level ? <comment><USER2> I recommend two authors, listed below with Amazon links to their most famous books:

C. J. Date [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Database-Systems-C- Date/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Database-Systems-C- Date/dp/0201385902)

Joe Celko [http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties- Programming/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celkos-SQL-Smarties- Programming/dp/1558605762)

</comment><comment><USER3> Database Design for Mere Mortals

[http://www.amazon.com/Database-Design-Mere-Mortals- Hands/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Database-Design-Mere-Mortals- Hands/dp/0201694719)</comment>


An alternative notification system proposal for iOS 5 - <AUTHOR> http://helloform.com/p/ios5/

<comment><USER2> Got a lot of comments on this. I'm not blown away by Apple's Notification Center, but I don't think this is the right solution at all.

This approach fails to distinguish itself from the existing elements of the OS. It crams more information than the current notification into an even smaller space. Fading the white-on-black text of the status bar into white-on- black notification text doesn't seem like good way to grab attention (and what about when it's not a black status bar?). How do I see what app sent the notification? The app icon takes up way less space than "Message from xxxxx" in the fully expanded notification example given. It's just too easy to miss, and takes away any ability to see what's up at-a-glance.

Tapping the status bar is also a sub-optimal interaction. The minimum- recommended size for iOS touch targets is ~40px (yes, Apple breaks this a lot), but the status bar is only 20px high. The chance of accidentally hitting a button in the current app while trying to view a notification goes through the roof with this approach.

The new banner notifications are a good mix of attention getting and unobtrusive content - I wouldn't want them bigger or smaller.

+1 for Notification count in the status bar though - I hope that makes it into the final version. I'd agree with the cloth background for the Notification Center, but it's the same background we've been used to for folders over the last year, just brighter to make it seem to float "above" the rest of the system.</comment>


The Real Colonel Sanders (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/venessawong/the-real-colonel-sanders <comment><USER2> _When Sanders decided to open a sit-down restaurant called Colonel Sanders ' Dinner House, KFC argued it had bought the rights to his name, according to Adams. When he renamed it the Colonel's Lady's Dinner House, the company argued that it owned the rights to "colonel."_

I don't know what it was called when I went there as a kid, but it was an amazing experience, one of the few I remember from that time in my life. Too many courses to count, it was a family style restaurant. It was a good drive from the Louisville suburbs I lived in at the time.

The restaurant was in the first floor of a house in the middle of a horse farm. Picturesque doesn't do it justice.

<comment><USER3> Claudia Sanders Dinner House: [http://claudiasanders.com/](http://claudiasanders.com/)

Turns out the company couldn't argue that it owned his wife's name. There are interesting arguments that it's a sort of feminist justice in the end given most of the recipes were likely Claudia's to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you enjoyed this, then you might also enjoy 'Grinding It Out' by Ray Kroc, and also 'Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination' by Neal Gabler.

<comment><USER3> Ray Kroc's story is fascinatingly told in recent film "The Founder" with Michael Keaton as the fascinating food franchise businessman and "founder". The film isn't entirely accurate, though closer than many films get, and a fun watch.

<comment><USER5> The Founder was an interesting flick, in a couple of ways.

Managed to basically make me hate every single character by the end.

<comment><USER3> I'm fairly certain that was a goal. :) It's not a pretty story with a happy ending; it's a story of ego versus greed versus ego.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can imagine a Netflix movie about the Colonel with Jack Black playing the role.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure the Colonel is rolling in his grave because they changed the gravy recipe. It doesn't have that nice, peppery kick it used to 30 years ago.

I'm assuming the whole change to "KFC" is partially based on some kind of anti-fried, health-kick campaign.

They're lucky the colonel isn't still kicking. You don't want to piss off that ornery rascal.

[https://gizmodo.com/no-colonel-sanders-never-killed-a-man- in...](https://gizmodo.com/no-colonel-sanders-never-killed-a-man-in-a- shootout-1651797965)

<comment><USER8> I have a theory that corporate food companies slowly remove anything of value in their food. In the next 100 years, McDonalds and KFC will be serving us nothing but fructose-infused sawdust with varying levels of oils and wax to hold it all together.

It's like that old story about the airline MBAs who remove an olive from their onboard drinks every year to save $40,000 - eventually there are no olives left in the drinks!

Pepper is expensive, they probably saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by eliminating that ingredient.

<comment><USER9> Which is why eating in fast food joints is playing russian roulette with your diet. You literally have no idea of what goes into the food. What they call "gravy", a mixture of multi-syllable chemicals, is far removed from what you can make in your own kitchen using simple, understood, ingredients. Pepper is a good example. As you said, it's expensive so the found some pepper-ish substitute at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the taste.

<comment><USER10> > Which is why eating in fast food joints is playing russian roulette with > your diet. You literally have no idea of what goes into the food.

Aren't they mandated to print truthful nutrition information?

<comment><USER8> TicTacs are advertised as having 0g of sugar. Do you want to know what TicTacs are made out of? Sugar. It's pure sugar formed into a small tablet shape.

Yes, they are mandated to print nutrition information. So they print exactly what they are asked to print. No more. No less. If the mandate says "foods with less than 999mg of sugar may print as 0g sugar" then they will follow that to the letter.

<comment><USER10> Fast Google search gives done additional details:

> Tic Tac® mints do contain sugar as listed in the ingredient statement. > However, since the amount of sugar per serving (1 mint) is less than 0.5 > grams, FDA labeling requirements permit the Nutrition Facts to state that > there are 0 grams of sugar per serving.

So? It seems that they're honestly reporting exactly what's required from them and exactly what you need to balance your diet.

<comment><USER8> I got the details wrong, but my point was that nutritional information isn't always "truthful".

Yes, they're true to the labeling requirement, but they are not true to reality - there IS sugar in there. Get a person with diabetes to eat a bucketful and then try to tell me there is 0g of sugar in them.

<comment><USER10> Why would you eat a bucketful of Tic Tacs? A person with diabetes would have no problem eating a single Tic Tac, which is exactly what these markings are for.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Will It Optimize? - <AUTHOR> http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2010/07/23/will-it-optimize/index.html <comment><USER3> Previous submission and discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1540567>

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember learning about compiler optimization at university. Sadly all my colleagues knew(and were taught) was Java and the Sun JVM we used at the time didn't even do most of the stuff we learned, not even the tail-recursion optimization, therefor the opinion of most of the students was that the professor should stop babbling about things that have no application in real life.

This was the one time i was on the side of academia...

<comment><USER5> Thankfully since then the HotSpot JVM has become one of the most advanced VMs in terms of JIT optimization, doing things that are so wild and crazy that other JITs can only dream of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quibbles: the strlen() example is poorly explained. It doesn't hoist it because it's "built-in", it hoists it because strlen() is marked "pure" (i.e. without side effects) in the declaration. Any function can get that attribute.

<comment><USER7> There must be more to it than that. For example, if something in the loop body writes to s, then the result of "strlen" could change and the optimisation will be wrong.

So, it must know a bit about what strlen() does, mustn't it -- otherwise it wouldn't know that it has to ensure that \0 isn't written to s inside the loop body.

<comment><USER8> GCC can statically prove that `s` isn't changed at all in the loop body, just accessed. Thus the analysis goes: `strlen()` is pure, and its argument never changes, so its result never changes, so I can hoist it.

<comment><USER9> No, there is more to it than that. It has to perform an aliasing analysis to prove that nothing that s _points to_ changes. Consider this code:

        unsigned sum(const unsigned char *s, char *t) {
            unsigned result = 0;
            for (size_t i=0; i < strlen(s); i++) {
                result += s[i];
                *t = 'x';
            }
            return result;
        }

gcc can't hoist strlen() in this case, because *t = 'x' could potentially overwrite the null termination of s.

<comment><USER10> Can GCC handle more complicated loops? For example what if I go several functions deep in in my loop with s? What if I call a function in a shared object? Does gcc do this analysis for all cases where a function is marked pure or is strlen a specific case?

<comment><USER6> The compiler can't see inside functions in the general case (because they're opaque binary blobs in a library that hasn't been linked yet), so no. It's limited to optimizing stuff it can "see", which broadly means the current function and anything inlinable into it.

But yes, if all your functions are marked inline and visible to the compiler, there's no theoretical limit to GCC's ability to hoist constants out of the innermost parts of the loop. In practice, there are surely some performance limits to how much inlining will be expanded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, I remember getting upset last time with this "test". For example:

      3. Multiplication by 2 to addition - <USER2>
      Will GCC transform an integer multiplication by 2 to addition?

The statement (not function) x * 2 is shift x left 1 bit on almost all compilers. Shift has a lot less dependencies than ADD/LEA and has better reciprocal throughput. Meh.

<comment><USER12> _Shift has a lot less dependencies than ADD/LEA and has better reciprocal throughput._

Nope. Usually it's the reverse: Atom, for example, can only do one shift per cycle, but it can dual-issue adds.

<comment><USER6> This surprises a lot of programmers. A barrel shifter is a _big_ circuit for an ALU. Smaller than a multiplier obviously, but much larger than a ripple carry adder and somewhat larger even than the fancy pipelined adders used in fast CPUs.

It's the kind of thing that got skimped on in Atom. Lots of stuff runs surprisingly slow on Atom. Another one I find striking is that there are two pipes for ADD/SUB instructions, but ADC/SBB (the carry/borrow variants) are not just single-issue, but apparently unpipelined. Intel lists their throughput at 3 instead of 0.5!

<comment><USER13> > Intel lists their throughput at 3 instead of 0.5!

Agner Fog lists ADC/SBB on Atom as having latency 2 and throughput 1/2. I guess Intel could have made them run with ADD/SUB-level performance in cases where there are no intra-pair dependencies on the carry/borrow flag, but the extra interlocks for handling that were probably not worth the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The comment about tail calls is wrong -- it's not an optimization, it's a guarantee about semantics of your program. Not optimizing tail calls is like making array dereference run in linear time instead of constant: it changes the programs you can write.

<comment><USER15> Irrespective of how it changes the semantics of (mostly functional) languages that rely on it for iteration, tail calling is also an optimization in languages that don't need to rely on it for this, and it is not wrong to describe it as such.

<comment><USER14> There are two things here: an optimization, and a semantics guarantee. Obviously, if your language provides the guarantee, then implementing it correctly isn't just an optimization. But the original article claims that the transformation proves that proper tail calling is "just an optimization", which it doesn't prove at all. It's still an important semantic guarantee which increases the expressiveness of a language. This is true regardless of whether it is the only means of expressing iteration in a language.

<comment><USER16> What the factorial example proves is that the set of recursive functions that can run in constant space is larger than just tail-recursive functions.

You're right to say that TCO guarantees increase the expressiveness of a language. If we could provide the same guarantees for an even larger class of recursive functions, it stands to reason our expressiveness would increase even further!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have a little doubt about number 6. A switch() without a "default:" label has undefined behavior if x is negative or above 5, while nothing would happen in the cascading if's. Wouldn't a correct optimization of that be

      void function(int x) {
        switch (x) {
          case 0: f0(); break;
          case 1: f1(); break;
          case 2: f2(); break;
          case 3: f3(); break;
          case 4: f4(); break;
          case 5: f5(); break;
          default:
        }
      }

<comment><USER18> Why does it have undefined behavior? Switch statement with no match and without the default case has defined behavior: the switch statement does nothing.

<comment><USER19> "If no converted case constant expression matches and there is no default label, no part of the switch body is executed."

Section 188.8.131.52, item 5 of <http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/WG14/www/docs/n1256.pdf> (page 134)

<comment><USER20> how is this different from "does nothing"?

<comment><USER19> ... it's not? I was just providing an authoritative reference for the parent's claim.

(Pedantic note: It's technically incorrect to say that the switch statement does nothing.

        switch(FunctionThatDoesSomethingAndReturns1()) {
            case 2:
                // foo
        }

The switch body does nothing, but the actual statement does something.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thank You for Inviting Me to Build Your App in Exchange for Equity,Kind Stranger - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/thank-you-for-inviting-me-to-build-your-app-in-exchange-for-equity-kind-stranger-a3ec1644cb0a <comment><USER2> I think most all of us have experienced this. I know I have many times.</comment>


Node.js Deployments with Docker, Dokku, and Digital Ocean - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-adventures/438bce155dcb

<comment><USER3> Great article, a couple of comments:

      root@dinospace: wget -qO- \
      https://raw.github.com/progrium/dokku/master/bootstrap.sh \
      | sudo bash

First, if you're already logged in as root, there is no[1] need for sudo. Secondly, I know this is how dokku recommends installing, but a) running wget as root probably isn't the best idea, and b) pulling down a shell script and running it as root is a _really_ bad idea. At least download the script and check that you're running what you think you're doing (in fact, you'll see that the script is just a short list of things, few of which needs to be run as root).

      ana@local: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | \
      ssh firstname.lastname@example.com \
      "sudo gitreceive upload-key username"

Same thing - either give your regular user sudo privileges (and prepare to have to enter your password, unless you specify to not need one -- in which case that should be limited to eg the gitrecieve command) -- or just drop the sudo.

I think docker is a great project, but I would like to see more support for running it under different user(s) than root. Looks like I'm not the only one:

      https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/issues/1121

[1] sudo does some logging, but that is mainly helpful when it can log a "useful" user name, not "root" \-- ie: you can see who broke the server, if more than one person has sudo access.

</comment><comment><USER4> >Docker powered mini-Heroku in less than 100 lines of Bash

Can I use this to deploy Rails application like I do on Heroku, or is it Nodejs only at the moment?

I'm currently in a limbo between WebFaction (VPS with some configuration hand holding) and DigitalOcean (you're on your own).

<comment><USER5> I'm just making the same transition (except to Linode as I'm not ready to trust DigitalOcean with production sites)

May I ask why you're moving away from Webfaction?

<comment><USER4> I'm moving away from WebFaction because I'm afraid of the hand holding limiting my growth when my website hits more users. Why are you moving away from WebFaction?

<comment><USER5> I have multiple accounts on multiple servers. A few of those servers began to suffer from a little bit too much downtime and I didn't get a satisfactory response from Webfaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does it feel like Docker is picking up some steam right now? I like the concept but am still wondering if Docker is a better approach than going straight to the machine. How necessary is the 1GB droplet (vs 512mb)?

<comment><USER7> You should be able to run with just 512 MB, as long as your app can do with that. Docker itself as a tiny footprint, and containers have almost zero overhead :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great read. I could see incorporating this into my stack... In any case, I was happy to learn about each of the tools/projects mentioned within - <USER2> stoked about Docker!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome. These are four technologies that I'm currently learning - good timing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does that mean Ubuntu on DigitalOcean has Docker support out of the box?</comment>


Prototypo: the font generator [video] - <AUTHOR> http://prototypo.io/ <comment><USER2> This will inevitably draw comparisons to Knuth's METAFONT and Computer Modern font family (as it should). It does suggest, to me, one particularly interesting use case: one could automatically measure parameters for an existing font, and generate similar-looking characters that might be missing from the font (e.g., small caps, Greek letters, Cyrillic, etc.). I programmed this once many years ago, using some ridiculously complicated PostScript and METAFONT programming, but I've since forgotten how that old code works.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really wish people would add arrows to scrolling sites like this. Just a simple one at the bottom of the landing screen to indicate that you are meant to scroll. I had no idea what I was waiting for when I landed on that page and I started scrolling as it faded white so I assumed (maybe the title of this post?) it was a video.

</comment><comment><USER4> The twitter logo is outdated.</comment>