Proper use cases for Android UserManager.isUserAGoat() - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13375357/android-usermanager-isuseragoat <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the "isUserAMonkey" thread: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7792123/strange- function-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7792123/strange-function-in- activitymanager-isuseramonkey-what-does-this-mean-what-i)

That turned out to refer to automated testing harnesses as opposed to live users (see: <http://developer.android.com/tools/help/monkey.html>). Unfortunately, <http://developer.android.com/tools/help/goat.html> 404s.

The Android API is known for lots of little hidden references and Google jokes. The SensorManager for example has a bunch (i.e., GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I and SENSOR_TRICORDER: [http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Sens...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/SensorManager.html)).

According to the Chrome team, the "Goats Teleported" reference in Chrome is just a random number: [http://www.quora.com/Google-Chrome/How-is-the-number- for-Goa...](http://www.quora.com/Google-Chrome/How-is-the-number-for-Goats- Teleported-determined-in-Google-Chromes-Task-Manager)

So, it appears that isUserAGoat is most likely just an engineering joke that shipped.

<comment><AUTHOR> The code responsible for enumerating goat teleportation (on very low contrast page): <http://100-geek.net/articles/goats_teleported>

<comment><USER3> kNuthMagicNumber?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like golden ratio (phi, about 1.618) * 2^30. Maybe something to do with Knuth's Surreal Numbers? (<http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/sn.html>)

<comment><USER4> Maybe the answer to this question sheds some light on that: [http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/9639/how-did- knu...](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/9639/how-did-knuth- derive-a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You all laugh, but when I finally build my new app GrssTrckr (track the amount of grass you eat + social integration) this will be super handy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Returns True on LL Cool J's phone: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.O.A.T>.

</comment><comment><USER7> So I've created a shim for iOS. You play a gentle, low sound, not unlike goats bleating. Then you check the accelerometer[1][2] for the unique pattern of sound waves rebounding from the hairs of theuser's beard. (Remember, the iOS accelerometer is amazingly accurate. This technique really works!)

If you're interested, drop me a line at 1.800.GOAT.API and I will license my patent for your app.

[1] Cf. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13248493/detect-ipad- mini...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13248493/detect-ipad-mini-in- html5#answer-13377929) [2] Also relevant: <http://xkcd.com/378/>

</comment><comment><USER8> in every app I've written since 2008, I've added an interface named "ICanHazCheezburger", it has a single property "CanHazCheezburger". I don't actually have any classes that implement it, it is just a nice little easter egg for the next dev that works on the code :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Using Chrome 25.0.1323.1 dev-m and I don't see Goats Teleported. Anyone else?

<comment><USER10> @shocks: you only get this on certain OSes; it seems this is on *nix systems, but the teleporters are currently unable to get through gates / into windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So, uh... What happens if the goat counter overflows?

<comment><USER11> It can't

[http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromium.git;a=blob;f=chro...](http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromium.git;a=blob;f=chrome/browser/task_manager/task_manager.cc;h=ad46354259ec8687c8665820f9f53bf89ccc715d;hb=HEAD#l599)

(link found on some other page, can't remember where)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looking for a polyfill - anyone?</comment>


Apply HN: Bandhub – online music collaboration community - <AUTHOR> Bandhub (http://bandhub.com) is an online music collaboration community.
We provide easy-to-use software for asynchronous, video-based, music collaboration.  We make it easy for you to get to know like-minded musicians around your interests, develop relationships with them over time and stay connected on an ongoing basis by regularly making music together and sharing with the overall Bandhub community.
PROBLEM:  99% of the world's 500M people who play an instrument or sing do it recreationally, as a hobby.  For people like us, it is very hard to get to socialize meaningfully around music ( forming a band, playing in gigs ).  Yet those meaningful social experiences around music are what we aspire to the most.  Making it easier to get those experiences is in our opinion the #1 problem in the musical products industry.  The internet hasn't done much yet to help solve this problem.  You can publish your performance in YouTube or Soundcloud but nobody will pay attention to it ( only the 0.1% of musicians will get attention ).  The average recreational musician will be ignored.
INITIAL FOCUS:  Our current product is good for the subset of people that are REALLY active in their hobby of playing an instrument/singing.  That is people who play/sing for 2hrs every day when they come back from work/school.  Bandhub users now spend those 2hrs using Bandhub instead, as the workflow is the same to what they use to do before Bandhub ( i.e., meticulously learning & practicing songs ) but now they get super meaningful social experiences by being part of "collabs" in Bandhub, which are multi-instrument online video-based collaborations.
MARKET:  $30B/year spent worldwide in Musical Products ( e.g., guitars ) and Lessons.  We believe meaningful social experiences around this hobby are the most valuable experiences people are looking for and whoever succeeds in providing them will capture a big portion of this overall market, and maybe also grow this market 10x. <comment><USER2> This is a really neat idea. I know a lot of musicians who struggle to find other musicians to jam/start a band with. Generally, they find people who say they're musicians and willing to dedicate time, but those people turn out to be flakes.

How are you going to vet your users to ensure that these are the more "serious" hobbyists, i.e. the people that are playing/singing for 2 hours every day?

One last frank question: how do you plan on making money?

<comment><AUTHOR> The community self-regulates who connects with who like any other social network/community. When you first logon you can explore/search for collabs and musicians and you will quickly identify people you'd like to connect with. If you are somewhat active the first few days you will quickly develop relationships with the type of people you are looking to connect.

Another important aspect is that the collaboration happens asynchronously. A lot of the frustration with forming bands is the synchronous nature of it. (1) all have to be together at the same time in the same place (which we know is very hard to do since people have their own schedules/priorities) and (2) all musicians have to actually perform perfectly in sync at once - any minimal screw up by just one of the band members and you have to start over. It's very frustrating. Asynchronicity solves those 2 problems.

For revenue, we have a freemium model, users subscribe to Bandhub Pro and get additional features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you see a synchronous collaboration solution in the future ? is it feasible technologically - due to latency ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is technologically feasible today within a distance radius of 200 miles or so if the internet infrastructure around you is solid[1]. But as I mentioned in another comment, synchronous collaboration has a lot of friction, so I think while this is really cool, it's sort of an icing in the cake type of experience more than the most used scenario. Asynchronous is more convenient. And Bandhub has a sort of "live" feel since it has video and most tracks are recorded in one take (so there could be some slight mistakes or imperfections that make it feel very "real"). If you haven't tried it yet you should. The "live" feel to it was a pleasant surprise.

[1]NOTE: Most of the latency is actually in the audio processing components (internal audio device, driver and application buffers). There is some specialized hardware that minimizes this latency, making it work well across <200miles distance (or so). After that, speed of light + internet router buffers add way too much latency and it starts to not work so well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please please PLEASE authenticate over https.

Currently you're just SHA512'ing your users' passwords and sending the hash over the wire in the clear. This is INCREDIBLY insecure and you're putting your users at risk.

I don't know a good resource off the top of my head to best practices, could someone else provide a link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We will get it fixed.

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

Looks like a great idea and I will definitely check it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Let me know if you have any questions/comments as you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does a Bandhub user satisfaction story look like? How do you measure it?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's very high. We are not doing anything scientific around it but talk to the users constantly and I can tell you they are very very happy. The phrase "changed my life" is recurrent.

<comment><USER5> I guess what I'm getting at is what do they mean when it says it changed their life? What is fulfilling to them?

Where I'm going with this is what part of that can be increased and applied to a wider audience?

<comment><AUTHOR> The ability to connect with other people and develop deep relationships around something as intimate as profound as music making is very powerful. Making new friends is life changing.

When you say applying it to a wider audience do you mean (i) to people who are not musicians or (ii) to musicians not in our focus segment ( e.g., people who play less frequently/more casually)

<comment><USER5> I mostly mean group (ii) at this point.

I'd want to talk to the current focus segment in depth, find out what makes them happiest about what they're doing with your product and look for ways to both increase the opportunities for those things and make them more accessible.

Is that making sense?

I think your current focus segment knows there's a rewarding feeling in return for the effort, and maybe group (ii) isn't as aware, or doesn't know how to get there...

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there is a lot of truth in what you say. Most of our users in our target focus segment ( i.e., people who already play 2hs a day ) feel very confident in learning, practicing, playing/recording songs. Making music is hard after all, requires a lot of dedication. A lot of people aspire to get there, but they are not confident, or know how to get there. That's why lessons are so important in this hobby.

Since our initial focused segment is big enough for us to get traction, we are not currently focused on expanding, but we will do so in the future and asking ourselves/our users the questions you suggest seems to be a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you talk a bit about the technology behind it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feature-wise Bandhub can be thought of as a combination of Facebook and YouTube with added specialized features for music collaboration.

(1) COMMUNITY FEATURES: Each user has a profile, you can follow/be followed, there is a news-feed, etc. The "posts" are exclusively music collabs, so you stay up to date on collabs your Bandhub friends are making, what's new, etc; you can comment and so on. You can search for collabs ( e.g., artists/styles/etc ) and create/share playlists. Also, there are interest groups ( e.g., "punk rock style covers" ). And there are added features specific to music collaboration ( e.g., "my list of collabs to participate" )

(2) THE MUSIC COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: There are two parts to it

(a) A collaborative GarageBand with video. When you open a collab in "STUDIO MODE" you get to a web-based multitrack audio/video editor - with many of the features of a DAW, but way simpler to digest. You can send/receive individual audio-video tracks, set the audio mix, enhance it with effects, determine which tracks stay/go, etc.

(b) Bandhub Recording App: when you want to record a part (called 'tracks') for a collab (e.g., the bass part), you use our Bandhub Recording App ( native app available for PC and Mac ). You connect your mic or instrument to the computer and using the computer's webacam you record audio+video through it. While recoding, you will hear the other parts of the collab (e.g., the drums and guitar) as backing tracks so you can play on top of them and stay in sync. When you are done, the track gets inserted in the collab in draft mode. You don't have to edit timelines for synchronization or use complex audio/video editing software at all. It's actually super super easy to use.

Here are a few screenshots:

collab "post": [http://i.imgur.com/2nmc5J1.png](http://i.imgur.com/2nmc5J1.png)

studio mode: [http://i.imgur.com/VEKqHKe.png](http://i.imgur.com/VEKqHKe.png)

news-feed: [http://i.imgur.com/d2aytQH.png](http://i.imgur.com/d2aytQH.png)

Recoding App: [http://i.imgur.com/xhbc3Xo.png](http://i.imgur.com/xhbc3Xo.png)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whatever Happened to Internet Forums? - <AUTHOR> I remember when I was a kid in the mid 2000s to early 2010s there would be all sorts internet forums where you would find all sorts of information. Console hacking, programming, school life, etc.<p>Now it seems like a lot of that is gone. What happened to it? Did everything just migrate into a Big Tech platform like Reddit or Facebook? <comment><USER2> Some still exist, but you are right, most people moved to Reddit, Facebook, Discord, etc... If people can't one-click log into a site using FB/Google or their existing Discord account, then it will be a tiny community at best. Forum software is still actively maintained however. They might regain traction if there were simple ways to integrate them into Discord [1] or FB with SAML auth. Link below is not quite on topic, but you can see some are interested in Discord integrations.

[1] - [https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2532591](https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2532591)

</comment><comment><USER3> Some forums have such a hard time with spammers that they end up blocking VPN access. For example: [https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/cant- acc...](https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/cant-access-with- vpn.2084696/)

Since I have to turn off my VPN, I rarely visit these forums anymore. It is a shame because the content there is much better than reddit, etc...

</comment><comment><USER4> While I'll say that I do use Reddit quite a bit, there are still plenty of niche forums if you know where to look. I myself enjoy [https://www.airliners.net/forum/](https://www.airliners.net/forum/) and [https://forums.macrumors.com/](https://forums.macrumors.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: restrictive employment contracts- IP rights for side projects - <AUTHOR>

I am employed at XXX large tech company. I was hired as a "manager",but as of right now, I have been given nothing to manage. I work less than 5 hours a week for a full salary.
I would like to launch a niche-market site with user-created content that I am hoping will be profitable through google ads. But, when I was hired I signed a very restrictive contract, and now I'm not sure what to do. I am afraid I would be violating the intellectual property clause of the contract. (not the non-compete)
I would really like to hear about other HNers experiences, since it seems like these kind of broadly restrictive contracts are very common in the industry. -Any specifc advice in my own case is helpful too! ;)
What do you do in both the hiring phase (refuse to sign the contract?) and also afterwards, when you've realised you've signed an over-restrictive contract?
:Also: I posted before, and was asked about the specific language of the contract, I wasn't sure I wanted to post it, but here is what i think is most relevant: (this is in the US)
I further agree that all copyright, ownership and intellectual property rights in any work of any nature carried out by me during the course of my employment with the company shall vest with and remain wiht the company, customer or vendor as the case may be. I agree that i will not be entitled to claim any right, title or interest therein, including moral rights. in the event it should be established that such work does not qualify as work made for hire, i agree to and hereby assign to company all of my right, title and interest in such work product including, but not limited to, all copyrights, patents, trademarks, and other proprietary rights. I further acknowledge and agree that the company may, in its sole discretion, assign to third parties all such intellectual property rights. <comment><USER2> IANAL. It is a tightly written contract which on its face restricts your rights arising out of any extracurricular activities as well as those performed in the course of your employment.

State laws about the enforceability of such provisions vary, and your situation might be more complex again if you and the company HQ are based in different states. Your employment contract will say which jurisdiction applies in the event of dispute. I would suggest calling your local bar association and requesting a referral to an attorney knowledgeable in employment law, even though your actual question is about IP. Some attorneys will offer a free or fixed-price initial consultation, otherwise expect to spend maybe $300. I would not discuss the issue with your employer until you have done so.

You probably know this already, but basically any more specific advise you get via the internet won't be actionable - even an attorney will only feel able to speak in the most general terms so as not to risk a charge of malpractice.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, I realise that I'm not going to get any very specific leagal information, which is why I was also really curious about other people's experiences- not just with for-profit side projects, but also open-source. What are the practical implications of all this?

Do you just have to quit and find an employer with a more liberal contract?

<comment><USER2> I honestly don't know - no first hand experience, and the stories I've heard are all over the map with a variety of good and bad outcomes. The only more specific thing I can think of besides getting professional advice is to search online for past legal cases involving your employer to get an idea of their historical policy.</comment></comment></comment>


Avalanche visualisation using satellite radar [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://aron.mjuk.is/avanor/widforss2019avalanche.pdf <comment><USER2> Very neat. An online demo of it is here: [https://avanor.se](https://avanor.se)

</comment><comment><USER3> Off-topic, but the layout is really great! what did you use?

<comment><AUTHOR> I started using this template and evolved it from there. :)

[https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/thesis/chalmers- univers...](https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/thesis/chalmers-university- of-technology-master's-thesis)</comment></comment>


Why Interview Coding Tests Prove Nothing - <AUTHOR> http://securityblog.howellsonline.ca/2013/02/why-i-despise-the-interview-coding-test/ An overview of why a coding test during an interview prove nothing and an argument for a different solution. <comment><USER2> I agree with a lot of your points. I recently posted about my experiences here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145319></comment>


Show HN: Handwriting for the web - <AUTHOR> http://handwriting.se/ <comment> brian-armstrong I would advise people not to click this for now. Right away it opens an alert generated from user content. Hard to say what other JS is being run from user inputs but best not to risk it.

<comment><USER2> Especially stay away if you're mobile! I thought I had entered a time warp back to the 1990s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So uhh... seems like some XSS happened. I would advise take this website down ASAP, and fix your bugs, and sanitize your database.

<comment><USER4> It looks like someone injected a redirect to example.com, so that's nice to mitigate issues for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I click the link, I see some handwriting, and 4 images of an owl moving around. Then a second later, it redirects me to a site called debsys.com, which kind of seems to be a q&a site, or a demo of one.

</comment><comment><USER6> lol @ sanitize user input

</comment><comment><USER7> This is way funnier than it should be, it is great to share simple schematics fast.

</comment><comment><USER8> Was the site hacked?

BTW, I little of topic about the site, but on topic about handwriting. Is there any research about using handwriting on mobile as password?

Not just put your choice word and type on the keyboard, but writing using your fingers.

</comment><comment><USER9> 502 Bad Gateway for me :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, for some reason the site is a bit unstable. It's up now again.

<comment><USER10> it is unstable because you didn't sanitize your user input before committing it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_sanitization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_sanitization)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How interesting!

My tabet comes with a pen, and my new Windows laptop does too. Tried it with the tablet and it worked well. Maybe there is something there?

At the very least it would drive the screen scrapers nuts!

<comment><USER12> A shame that screen scrapers includes anyone with visual impairments, and that our current "text-based" web is already struggling to accomodate them.

<comment><USER13> You should tell that to Michelangelo. He shouldn't have painted anything that wouldn't be possibly perceived by anyone with visual impairments.

<comment><USER12> There's a difference between saying no non-accessible media should exist and making changes to media which add very little and simply serve to make it less accessible than it already is.

<comment><USER14> > making changes to media which add very little and simply serve to make it > less accessible than it already is.

If that's what you think this fun little project is, you have lost your grip.

<comment><USER12> Where do I say that I think this applies to the project in the OP? I'm talking about the idea of "driving screen-scrapers nuts". To implement the project just for that purpose _is_ anti-access, which doesn't reflect on the project itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Holy fuck that is a lot of penises.

</comment><comment><USER16> the idea is very interesting, really very interesting, but unfortunately the implementation is not the best

notice: simple xss possible

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TIL:

* people loves to draw penises (don't know any good way of preventing this, except require accounts)

* never be lazy with xss

</comment><comment><USER17> Fun!</comment>


The reason for the demise of technical education in Andhra Pradesh,India - <AUTHOR> http://gxpe.blogspot.in/2013/09/the-reason-for-demise-of-technical.html

<comment><USER2> Its the same problem among students of gujarat India. Here all rich brats opt for TFW (Tution fee Waiver scheme) and so the poors don't get the chance for the same.</comment>


The best way to shorten the sales cycle - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/resources/sales/articles/20070801/jthull.html <comment><USER2> I'm really interested in learning more about this. I've been making sales calls lately (for the first time in my life), and one of the biggest sticking points I have come across is when someone tells me they have a problem (that my business solves), but that they are happy with spending time and resources to solve it in house.

I've been playing with a lot of numbers, and I'm almost certain that I can solve their problems a lot cheaper than they can. I've tried to convey this in a couple of different ways.

1\. Telling them straight forward "I can solve this for cheaper than you can right now." 2\. Asking them if they would consider using an outside tool to solve the problem and explaining more about how my product works.

Neither approach is really working for me. Does anyone have some solid advice on how to guide the customer along so that they come to the conclusion that they have a condition that needs to be fixed?

<comment><USER3> Make sure you communicate a clear understanding of their problem. There is a strong temptation to leap to your solution, try more focus on making you sure you understand their problem and that they know you understand it. Then offer proof that you have solved similar problems for firms like theirs. Here is where case studies, testimonials, references can help. Finally, try and determine a trigger for action: is there a date or event where their situation will get worse? For example, April 15 for taxes, summer vacation driving trip for oil change, adding a new employee for a payroll service.

Jeff Thull's website is <http://www.masteringthecomplexsale.com/> and the 2nd edition of his "Mastering the Complex Sale" is on Amazon at <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470533110/>

<comment><USER4> Definitely: customers aren't thinking purely about cost, but instead about cost:benefit ratios. Saying "we can do it cheaper" implies not only less cost, but—through an intuition that you're charging what the market will bear— _less benefit_ as well. Instead, prime them by first telling them of a greater benefit ("we've solved your problem 1000 times for 1000 companies, while you've only solved it once; we know more about your problem than even you do" etc.) and only _then_ cancel out the intuitive expectation of greater cost.</comment></comment></comment>


Scooters Wouldn't Be So Dangerous If You Just Wore a Helmet - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/05/electric-scooters-safety-gear-head-injuries-helmet-cdc-data/588544/ <comment><USER2> Stop trying to just convince people to wear helmets because safety, it's not going to happen.

Instead, make affordable helmets not look ridiculous. I'm wearing a helmet (while biking), but I totally understand why people that are fitted with more vanity have a hard time, especially kids who are even more pressured to fit in.

Solve that, please. Explaining it will increase adoption rates as much as it has ended smoking, poor diets and sedentary lifestyle.</comment>


Anyway, stop recommending bazookas to kill flies in programming - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@arieldi/anyway-stop-recommending-bazookas-to-kill-flies-in-programming-65f13439be3d <comment><USER2> Are you asking on reddit (or some other site that is structured to pass quick thoughts on a subject)? Are you giving no more information on your questions than - OP: I have an issue with SEO in my current Vue project how can I do this? \- Community: Have you tried nuxt?

Context and details are important on both sides of the fence, Explain enough about your apps architecture and reasoning to convey that you have considered other structures before you expect to get answers that take more time than simply pointing you down a path that resolves your issue without any details.

Pointing you to NUXT is equivalent of a longer sentence: "You don't tell us what you have tried or considered, what your application architecture is or what problems you have run into based on your previous design decisions -- therefore we recommend using something like NUXT which has boilerplate design decisions baked in that resolve your issues."

\- OP: I have two components, I want to share data, how can I do? \- Community: Have you tried vuex?

This seems perfectly reasonable to me, vuex, while being one option for sharing data/state between components is IMHO almost always the best option for doing so. It has a little more boilerplate than event bus or data reference passing, but for almost every non-trival need I have come across vuex has been a better choice. So much so that I have found myself reworking to modular vuex stores in _every_ circumstance where I have used event bus or other slight of hand to accommodate shared data/state (hoping to avoid the setup work of vuex).

</comment><comment><USER3> Where are you seeing this happening so often? I've only seen this kind of thing in help-communities where the emphasis is on quantity over quality, and giving the quickest and most answers, and where it's not necessarily important that they're correct.</comment>


Perspective, a first person puzzle game I am working on [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.seewithperspective.com Would love to hear your thoughts :) <comment><USER2> There's not a lot to go on on the website except the trailer.

Which platform will you support? Do you have an idea of the price range you'll target? Will you offer an SDK to allow people to design their own level/maps as you can do in Super Meat Boy for example?

Anyway the trailer gives a good idea of the type of gameplay you can expect. The problem will be to use the "gimmick" of moving the camera to change the "level plan" in a lot of different ways to avoid too much repetitions. It reminds me of something but I can't put a name on it yet ! But it seems as fun as trying Portal for the first time so that's encouraging

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a student project at DigiPen, so it will be released for free. We're currently only supporting Windows since we're using DirectX 11.

We have a custom in-house editor that we will release at some point. We're still not sure if it will be at release or at a later date when we can make it more usable / add documentation / have hosted user generated content support.

<comment><USER2> Ok you might want to add this kind of info on your website as I guess a lot of people might have the same questions.

You should also add the possibility to register for the launch by email if you want to ensure people interested in your trailer know when you launch!

<comment><USER3> I'd like to second this; I'm going to forget about this, but I want to play it when it's released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would be glad to take your questions / feedback :)</comment>


Calif. Wealth Tax Proposal Likely Faces Constitutional Challenges - <AUTHOR> https://www.law360.com/tax-authority/state-local/articles/1305258/calif-wealth-tax-proposal-likely-faces-constitutional-challenges?nl_pk=c77c92e6-f8f8-4382-aa3a-3f2fb4bc4021&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tax-authority/state-local <comment><USER2> Four of the twelve the homes on my little street here in Texas are owned by people that used to have substantial businesses in California. They relocated to Texas to escape California bringing hundreds of jobs with them.

</comment><comment><USER3> The state of New York is also known for pursuing high value individuals after they leave the state and trying to tax them.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/tax-collectors-chase-rich- ne...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/tax-collectors-chase-rich-new-yorkers- moving-to-low-tax-states.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> There are so many easier ways to do this, starting taxing dividends and other income progressively and at normal tax rates. I don't get why they are even trying this, it creates massive problems and is not a solution.

As well as tax inheritance at 25% or progressively.

<comment><USER5> A wealth tax directly targets wealth inequality. No other tax can do that. It is also extremely predictable, as wealth doesn't necessarily disappear when the economy has a downturn. You need a war to destroy wealth.

Wealth lasts for generations, and you don't pay inheritance taxes on family connections or a top tier education. New taxes that make the accumulation of wealth more equal, i.e. progressive income taxes or capital gains as income taxes, will not erode the existing wealth disparity within our lifetimes. Just look at how the policies up until the 80s resulted in white Americans owning all the property, which subsequently appreciated due to monetary policy.

If wealth inequality is a problem, which I believe it is, you should tax wealth because it directly reduces the gap in absolute terms.

<comment><USER6> A good way to destroy wealth is to tax it.

<comment><USER7> Another way would be to print lots of money and redistribute it until you've satisfied your equality threshold.

<comment><USER6> The market/price system is the world largest information system. Printing money distorts that system and make it function poorly and throughout history has been disastrous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When it comes to taxation, only the currency issuer (the Federal government) can really tax income and wealth denominated in its currency. Currency users, like states or counties within a currency union really can only tax the land and property within them. Everything else has a habit of moving to lower taxed areas. Other states will end up passing laws saying the Californian Wealth tax cannot be collected or enforced in their area. I'm surprised they aren't teeing that one up in Texas as we speak - given all that lovely IT business they could attract.

Purity of tax theory is what ended up as Poll Tax riots in the UK. Eventually local taxation reverted to property as it tends to once pragmatism and reality reasserts itself.

California could get what it needs using a volumetric hut tax - unless it fancies going independent and setting up its own currency.

<comment><USER9> Where does a bank account or stock portfolio reside? Is it at the physical location of the banks server hall (assuming only a single server is representing the location of the account), or is it the location of the local representative bank where the customer is said to be located according to the bank? Is it maybe the central headquarter of the bank or maybe the location of the server for the bank online interface where the customer interacts with his account? Alternative, can it be the registered address of the customer, or maybe the actually location for where the customer physically resides.

It seems reasonable that a argument can be made that property exist in one of those places rather than none. Maybe the Federal government should simple dictate where that is and then let local government handle the actually taxation.

<comment><USER4> It is done where the person has a tax residence.

The USA is one of only 3 countries to tax you no matter where you live. Which is really painful for Americans not living in the USA. They need to fix this...

The rest of the world taxes you as part of a territorial system, ie, where you live and have tax residence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> paywall, details? curious about which constitutional aspects they look at

</comment><comment><USER11> Do the proponents of these heavy tax burden schemes think the benefits of lower wealth inequality and higher extraction rates will outweigh the loss of incentive to work/invest, allocation efficiency and capital (from more capital flight and less capital influx)?

<comment><USER12> Yes, they really do.

<comment><USER11> Even the difference between 1 and 2% per capita GDP growth per year is the difference between per capita GDP growing 35% and 82% over 35 years.

It's hard to imagine the benefits for the masses of an additional 47% in per capita productivity growth not outweighing the benefits of the higher tax rates on the rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does the California government need this for? Their budget is insane already. Seems like cleaning house is the first thing you should do.

<comment><USER14> "Insane" how? Its budget is $5,430 per person, 33rd in the nation. The highest is North Dakota at nearly $20k per person. California falls between Nebraska ($5,024) and South Dakota ($5,575)[1].

It's big because it's a big state. If it were a country, it would be in the top 50 in the world by population, and 5th by GDP. It's got issues of its own, like any other large organization, but there's nothing particularly out of line about its budget.

They're doing this not because the budget is in deficit (it was going to be in surplus this year, before the pandemic, and had been in surplus for a while) but because it wants to shift the burden of its budget to those with wealth (and away from the middle class, especially the lower-middle-class). It may or may not be a good way to do that, but it's not because it's desperate for money. Quite the reverse: it's got so much money that it gets to choose how it funds itself.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets)

<comment> ISO-morphism Fun fact, North Dakota is also the only state in the US to have a state-owned bank[1]. Also throw in a grain elevator/flour mill for good measure[2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_North_Dakota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_North_Dakota) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota_Mill_and_Elevator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota_Mill_and_Elevator)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's also unethical. Taxing people based on how much money they have left over after paying all of their other taxes is just wrong, regardless of how much money the person has. As far as I know there's no basis for this ever having been done in human history. Not to even mention California's proposed plan to keep collecting taxes after the person flees the state. I can't imagine this bill has a chance of doing anything but helping useless politicians pander to their disaffected political bases.

<comment><USER16> > As far as I know there's no basis for this ever having been done in human > history

Two seconds of googling. The Wikipedia article for progressive taxation[1] suggests that the Roman Republic had a form of wealth tax:

> The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% of property value, and could > sometimes climb as high as 3% in situations such as war. These taxes were > levied against land, homes and other real estate, slaves, animals, personal > items and monetary wealth

Then we have the wealth tax Wikipedia article itself[2] that lists 8 instances in recent history of wealth taxes.

Then you say:

> Not to even mention California's proposed plan to keep collecting taxes > after the person flees the state

How is this any different from how taxes are owed today? I'm pretty sure all back taxes you owe a state remain even if you move states. Otherwise you could just rack up a huge tax bill & move states to escape.

Even federal US tax liabilities are applied on world wide income & has treaties with many countries to enforce these laws for expats.

> It's also unethical. Taxing people based on how much money they have left > over after paying all of their other taxes is just wrong

Aside from stating a personal tautology you haven't really elevated the discussion much & then everything else flowed from this premise rather than evaluating the argument on its merits. I'm sure there's a compelling argument against this that could be made against a wealth tax independent of constitutional issues, but you haven't made it.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax)

<comment><USER17> The problem with a wealth tax is that it's essentially retroactive. Instead of taxing income and capital gains at the time they're accrued, you tax them later - long after the individuals who accrued them have had the chance to make rational decisions based on that tax rate. This seems inherently unfair to me, a form of bait and switch, especially combined with the intention to hunt down former California residents up to a decade after they've left the state (thereby further denying them any opportunity to make rational decisions).

<comment><USER16> How is it a bait and switch? Seems like that kind of framing would apply to the introduction of any new tax which seems immature to me.

I do hope the 10 year thing takes into account how long you've been in the state and how much you earned within the state.

Remember. You're only getting taxed on the amount over >30mil in assets (first 30 million isn't taxable). That's quite a lot of money before a very small tax begins to be levied.

I do hope there's also allowances for income tied up in illiquid investments (eg private business investments). I would also worry about taxation on net worth that hasn't been realized (eg private company that does a valuation that suddenly puts you over the 30 mil threshold). These seem like important nuances that could quickly torpedo any benefits.

<comment><USER18> What can look like a very small tax is not at all small when applied repeatedly (annually).

As an example a popular "Just two cents" plan takes a third of the value of a taxed base in 20 years and by 35 years, the government has received over half.

<comment><USER19> Does your example assume the asset will grow in value? Wealth taxes get big as they compound, but that also shows the compounding value of assets.

<comment><USER18> That is simple math assuming no change of the taxed wealth value (which could go up, down, or stay the same).

IMO, "small" wealth taxes "get big" because they take repeated bites at the same apple.

Government take [via wealth tax] in the example above is the result of 1 - (1 - taxrate) ^ years.

      1 - (1 - 0.02) ^ 20 = 0.3323 ; (20 years => 33%)
      1 - (1 - 0.02) ^ 35 = 0.5069 ; (35 years => 51%)

<comment><USER20> Assuming no change to taxed wealth value is a huge assumption. A better baseline assumption would be a conservative mix of index funds, IMO, which would result in 3-4% return IIRC.

<comment><USER18> Assuming 3.5% growth (the midpoint of your proposed range) on all funds, the government share after 20 years is 27.3% and after 35 years is 36.7%.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_k6sFrBAjwpJbXKHmpNA...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_k6sFrBAjwpJbXKHmpNAbEIfewuUCfEt3pNS5ksqDOU/edit?usp=sharing)

<comment><USER20> Okay, this is interesting. Let's play out a scenario.

Take a 45-year-old who's worked hard and gotten very lucky. They've earned $50 million from an IPO and are retiring early. How much money can they spend per year, before and after the wealth tax?

Just to keep it interesting, I'm proposing this scenario _before_ running the numbers.

Assumptions:

1\. Death at 90, no money left over.

2\. Money invested very conservatively with 3.5% return.

3\. No income, so no income tax or capital gains tax [1].

4\. Inflation is 1.76% (average of last 10 years [2]).

5\. Wealth tax is 0.4% applied to wealth in excess of $30mm.

 _With_ the wealth tax, our lucky devil can spend $1,509,000 _every year_. That's inflation adjusted, so when they turn 90, they're spending $3.3mm per year.

 _Without_ the wealth tax, they can spend $45K more: $1,554,000 per year (inflation adjusted).

I don't know about you, but if I had $1.51mm in spending money per year, I wouldn't be sweating the extra $0.05mm. It seems like a reasonable cost to me, and _very_ low compared what you'd pay in income tax.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fV9pip51Z-qqRUG3pDEc...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fV9pip51Z-qqRUG3pDEcSIcNUKPjLDNrxYq2Gvzv4ow/edit?usp=sharing)

[1] I may have misunderstood how capital gains are taxed when you have no other income. I don't think it detracts from the overall point, though.

[2] [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current- infl...](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation- rates/)

<comment><USER18> Good math. Note that this scenario is using the 80% lower CA wealth tax proposal, not the "just two cents" wealth tax that was proposed during the DNC primary race earlier this year that I was using (as openly/clearly disclosed).

<comment><USER20> Sorry, I missed that. I think it's a bit disingenuous to use a year-old proposal from a failed primary candidate, though, rather than the actual wealth tax under discussion.

However, if we were to use Warren's proposal, our lucky millionaire would be unaffected, because it doesn't kick in until $50mm. (A happy coincidence.)

If I run the numbers again, using a _very_ lucky millionaire with $100mm in assets, it comes out as follows:

1\. Warren wealth tax: $2,613,000 yearly spending power

2\. CA wealth tax: $2,939,000 yearly spending power

3\. No wealth tax: $3,104,000 yearly spending power

Warren's proposal is much more aggressive about leveling wealth inequality, especially considering that it jumps to 6% for billionaires. I'm not convinced it was a serious proposal, though, given that it was part of Warren's campaign rhetoric. I think she's serious about a wealth tax, but I suspect the specific proposal was a starting point in the bargaining process—an attempt to shift the Overton window, if you will—not the expected outcome.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jolla Phone News: Sailfish OS for Android Devices - <AUTHOR> http://reviewjolla.blogspot.de/2014/02/jolla-phone-news-sailfish-os-for.html

<comment><USER2>
      Sailfish OS experience [...] launc[h]er application which can
      be used to simulate the Sailfish OS experience on Android devices

What's the point for a custom launcher?

And on Wikipedia:

      On 16 September 2013, Jolla has announced that its Sailfish OS
      is now compatible with Android applications and hardware.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS)

It would help a lot if Sailfish OS/Tizen would support Android device drivers, all of them are Linux after all, and the major issue are closed source device drivers that prevent more wide spread adoption...

<comment><USER3> that's not how it works. android device drivers aren't even compatible through android releases. i'm talking 4.0-4.1 4.1-4.2 etc.

they could be if we would have access to the binary blobs they link against, but we don't. asking for binary compatibility in device drivers across linux distributions is not really a trivial think to ask for.

<comment><USER4> Somehow a lot of core libraries manage to be major version binary compatible, through things like pimpl. I don't see why device drivers couldn't as well, I think it is a sound compromise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having a new Jolla phone, it's OK... however after calling a couple of people last night by accident, I think any actions that might disturb someone (calling, or playing music) - should not be activated by just a drag.

<comment><USER6> Settings -> Apps -> Phone -> Deselect the optino "Quick Call"

If you have the latest update you should have that option as it was one of the fixes/features included.

And yes I also had that problem initially but after changing this all was fine for me in this case.

Being a early adopters and having an OS with a beta tag we should dissect the changelog when it is available and know all the fixed stuff.

If people are going to say that is not for them or that they want a phone to simply work then they are clearly missing the point of being an early adopter of this kind of phone (a beta OS).

Of course after declaring that it is stable and pushing if for the mass consumer then this kind of stuff should be all fixed.

Relevant changelog of the last update: [https://together.jolla.com/question/21786/release-notes- soft...](https://together.jolla.com/question/21786/release-notes-software- version-1038-naamankajarvi/)

But I could be totally be missing the point you are trying to make. I answering to the specific problem of randomly calling other people when the phone was for example in the pocket :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to me that they're going to be doing an OS/2 - if it can run Android code, that'll be all people will ever write for it, and adoption of it itself won't happen.

<comment><USER8> I'm not so sure. There are a lot of people out there that _really_ dislike Java.

<comment><USER7> There are also a lot of people out there that _really_ dislike learning a whole new platform and API with all its foibles, quirks, bugs/misfeatures, and caveats. Especially when the platform is this new and so will likely change a lot for at least the first year.

<comment><USER8> But Sailfish OS should not require too much learning for developers with Qt experience, right?

For me personally, that is what has put it on my "interesting"-radar. I know that Qt has served me well in the past and that I have some grasp on developing with it, so the potential barrier I have to jump here is low.

<comment><USER9> Keep in mind that this ain't your daddy's Qt. QML is the new thing and it has a slight learning curve. (And the documentation is unfortunately lacking in some parts, like C++ integration.)

<comment><USER4> QML has the lowest learning curve of any visual programming model I've ever used, and that includes using the gui creators for visual studio and friends.

Something as simple as

      Window { Text {text: "Hello World!";anchors.centerIn: parent;}}

gives you a first class desktop Window with text in it. And most of the complexity only comes in when you start adding state and transitions.

And on top of all that the entire thing is 3d accelerated, so it is always hugely efficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I lost track of Sailfish several months ago... are they any better than Android when it comes to privacy and security? Is it feature-rich (some call that "bloated")? What about those Chinese investors?

<comment><USER11> >> are they any better than Android when it comes to privacy and security?

Privacy +1: the company behind Sailfish OS (Jolla) doesn't generate its revenue through ads.

Privacy/Security -1: Sailfish OS currently doesn't have any real privacy/security framework, other than POSIX file permissions. But they're working on it.

>> Is it feature-rich (some call that "bloated")?

The Sailfish OS ships with a good set of features. It really does leverage a whole range of technologies from the Linux/FOSS ecosystem: Linux kernel, glibc, Qt, Wayland, Pulseaudio, Connman (think NetworkManager), oFono. There are still some important features that are missing (e.g. LTE, MMS, Wifi tethering, Caldav -- but all of them are being worked on).

>> What about those Chinese investors?

What about them? What's your question? :)

<comment><USER10> >What about them? What's your question? :)

Well, do they intend to do something like Huawei, i.e. bug the devices? My trust for some countries (US included) has been suffering a bit as of late. Otherwise thanks for the answers. (for some reason paragraphs I see when writing (or editing) a post aren't carrying over to the post itself :(</comment></comment></comment>


Slackcat – Pipe command output to Slack from your terminal - <AUTHOR> http://slackcat.chat <comment><USER2> Fun little tool. Could maybe find it handy.

But STOP overriding scroll. It's annoying. Even if it's to make a "smooth" scroll: don't do it. Atleast detect that I'm using a Mac where it's already butter smooth. Don't override that native scroll with a large javascript scroll.

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't realize it was so obtrusive; I've removed it now. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> It's greatly appreciated from many on this site.

<comment><USER4> How many users actually find this "smooth scrolling" welcome? Perhaps I'm just used to always setting my mouse and trackpad scroll speeds to my exact preference, while other people tend not to, but I've always found every form of scroll hijacking to be extremely irritating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tried to read the website, but it just decided to scroll in ways I didn't intended it too. The tool itself seems nice.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to use this but `slackcat --configure` apparently requires granting Slackcat developers ~full access to my Slack. Isn't there any way to set this up so that it only uses a private access token stored in my file system?

<comment><USER7> `echo "your-token-here" > ~/.slackcat`

<comment><USER6> I saw this too but where do I get the token?

<comment><USER8> You should be able to generate one per-team at [https://api.slack.com/web](https://api.slack.com/web) (scroll down to the bottom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool! I guess I'll be remapping /dev/null this April 1st.

btw, that sleek scrolling plugin blocks two finger gestures (page back, forward) on my macbook :(

</comment><comment><USER10> I could actually use something like slacktail -F. Does this exist?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure how many people would find it useful, but I have been working on a feature branch to add streaming. We'll aim to include it with the next release.

<comment><USER11> could be very useful for tailing audit logs to a "security team" channel or something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the vote; I've created a Github issue to track implementation of a streaming feature here: [https://github.com/vektorlab/slackcat/issues/9](https://github.com/vektorlab/slackcat/issues/9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Piping output from Slack into your shell program would be a _lot_ more fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is: [http://multivac.chat](http://multivac.chat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great job, looks like a nice tool! Have you got any examples of what you've used it for? I liked the terminal animation at the top; made it clear what it does to me.

It's frustrating most of your comments are about the site scrolling with no other feedback and aren't even in the same thread. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It has really come in handy when troubleshooting with a group of developers, during a unique deploy or migration - instead of one person trying to focus on the task and keep everyone updated at the same time, output of each step is shared for review/comments. I've also used it quite a bit to share the results of a database query or a listing of environment variables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> awesome tool. definitely could've used this a few times. it doesn't seem there's a way i can DM users rather than posting to groups. is this functionality possible and/or planned?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There's a feature request here: [https://github.com/vektorlab/slackcat/issues/10](https://github.com/vektorlab/slackcat/issues/10) and DM should be possible in the next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately, Slack is not truly developer-friendly and cannot have the terminal in its full glory!

</comment><comment><USER16> I like it! But not sure if it is significantly better than piping in to pbcopy on a Mac.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sadly have to agree with the other commenters here that site broken on mobile....

</comment><comment><USER18> The v0.7 release binary for OS X appears to be missing.

edit: fixed, thanks!

<comment><USER19> Indeed. The link is broken, and it isn't listed here: [https://github.com/vektorlab/slackcat/releases](https://github.com/vektorlab/slackcat/releases)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sorry, but not having find control over scrolling is really annoying.

</comment><comment> saiko-chriskun Please stop controlling user scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why.... why would you want to pipe output from your terminal to a third party service like slack to store and analyse at will?

Who gives a shit about security, let's throw everything at Slack, because Slack!

<comment><USER22> Ya! I mean, when would it ever be useful to share a log file from your server with your team?

<comment><USER21> Because nothing confidential _ever_ appears in logs, right?</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk spending big to stop A.I apocalypse - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x <comment><AUTHOR> I love Elon Musk but I never understand why he is peddling this conspiracy. I don't see any proof at this time that A.I can become sentient.

<comment><USER2> If natural intelligence can be sentient why can't artificial intelligence? I can't see any laws of physics explaining why a bunch of cells should be able to do it but man made stuff not.</comment></comment>


Our fixation with maths doesn't add up (OpEd) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/10/fixation-maths-doesnt-add-up-targets <comment> dugite-code I would say higher maths is important in schooling primarily because almost no child "knows" what they are going to do for the rest of their lives.

Given how important each field of maths is to many different technical and non-technical careers and how long it can take to cover and understand them all you don't want to hamstring anyone who might need it, either when studying for a STEM career or when changing careers.

Do politicians and school administrators go gah-gah for easy measurement metrics? Sure, but I would argue focusing on maths is one of the few instances where it's not really a bad thing.</comment>


Is it just me or do others completely balk at signing into sites with Facebook? - <AUTHOR>

For some reason my survival instinct kicks in - sort of a combination of fight and flight simultaneously. I wrestle my way around it.
I just went to http://gtrot.com and it asked before running the search on my city if I wanted "Friend-powered personalization."
Happened with Trip Advisor too a couple of days ago.
It's total submission.
People on Facebook are not automatically my friends, they're just Facebook friends. But that's just a side point.. I'm put off by sites that are only, or compel a Facebook login. I don't know or even trust what is or what will happen behind the scenes. <comment><USER2> I agree with you on that. I would rather not use my Facebook account to log in somewhere. I don't mind if it's an option, but if it's forced or you're pressured to do it... I am turned off.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not at all happy with this trend and will not use a site that requires it!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to see a list of Facebook free sites, and what they can substitute.</comment></comment>


Wolfram Launches a New Computable Document Format - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wolfram_launches_a_new_computable_document_format.php

<comment> eric-hu My first reaction is that you'd basically be able to do what a webpage with javascript could do.

On further thought, I realize that having tools like this lowers the learning curve for publishing interactive or formula-based documents. Hopefully this should lead to people producing documents that convey knowledge better.

The main roadblock I see to this becoming more popular is how aggressive they are about keeping the format and viewer(s) proprietary.

<comment><USER2> They say the format is open, but the spec is nowhere to be seen. And they could have wrote an HTML+JS exporter for Mathematica instead of creating yet another format that requires yet another viewer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> html + js is already a computable document format, and it runs everywhere, not in a proprietary viewer.

Pretty sure this won't catch on.

<comment><USER4> html + js doesn't have a standard way to be shared outside a website. Additionally, the skills to produce an interactive cross system compatible diagram in html/js is outside most people's abilities. Additionally have you seen the horrible code that most wysiwyg editors produce? I think this will have a niche purpose, but I doubt it will succeed without some big player picking it up and running with it. (MS Office, Apple?)

An additional thought, could probably take these documents (haven't looked at the spec) and generate an html/js representation easily enough.

<comment><USER5> Well, yes. You bring up good points. However, engineers like ourselves caught up in the goal of creating a One True System often run into the dilemma of pursuing the "MIT way" of doing things.

I remember hearing that there was an MIT project that had many common goals with Tim Berner Lee's implementation of the World Wide Web. It never saw the light of day because the engineers were worried to death about how documents would appear if there was a connectivity problem. Lee sidestepped that whole mess by showing the good old 404 page. Premature optimization is the devil.

The prevalence of html + js today is a testament to the fact that the ["worse is better"](<http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>) design philosophy has its merits. I don't think this common document format will take off b/c of the same reasons that every other document format that isn't html + json has failed. I believe that if the browser wars have taught us anything, it's that iterative approach is the only thing which will move us closer to realizing some of your goals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, but requires a browser plug-in? No thanks.

<comment><USER7> It requires flash.

<comment><USER8> It requires a proprietary plugin that is 166MB (Mac).

<comment><USER9> And takes 550MB of hard drive space, unpacked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2789062>

</comment><comment><USER11> what about sagemath.org ? it uses python on the backend, and rst for the document format. and it's opensource.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting concept right there.</comment>


Your Calendrical Fallacy Is - <AUTHOR> http://yourcalendricalfallacyis.com <comment><USER2> A weird thing is that these intermix contemporary civil timekeeping issues with historical and religious calendar issues. If you're writing software or making statements about present-day civil time, you presumably don't feel contradicted by the idea that there are also other calendars in which your assumptions don't hold. Perhaps your software and statements won't apply when people want to use those other calendars. For example, it's easy to accept that GNU date doesn't claim to state the Jewish or Islamic month or year, nor the Japanese imperial regnal year, nor the Julian date that some Eastern Orthodox Christians continue to use for some religious purposes, nor the Roman year ab urbe condita.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your calendrical fallacy is ... not just using unix timestamps.</comment>


Architecting Websites for the HTTP/2 Era - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/architecting-websites-http2-era/ <comment><USER2> > HTTP/2 actively discourages the use of compression for secure websites. HTTP > compression (gzip, deflate, ...) has been known to compromise the SSL/TLS > security in the "breach" and "CRIME" attacks.

This is a patently wrong statement in an otherwise good article.

There are no known security vulnerabilities with HTTP/1.x's style of compression That's because HTTP/1.x only supports compressing response bodies. During SPDY development, the same compression algorithms used for compressing HTTP responses (gzip/deflate) were applied to compress request and response headers. This is what lead to the CRIME vulnerability. The solution was to still use compression, but use a different compression scheme, HPACK, which (glossing over a ton of technical details) allows compression while avoid CRIME because it "[uses] separate compression dictionaries are used for each source of data." HTTP/2 uses HPACK.

Use of TLS compression is not recommended, but that has always been a performance best practice, since TLS compression is not context aware.

For the love of god, keep using compression with your websites, whether HTTP/1.x, TLS + HTTP/1.x, or HTTP/2

<comment><USER3> > There are no known security vulnerabilities with HTTP/1.x's style of > compression That's because HTTP/1.x only supports compressing response > bodies

You are completely wrong. The BREACH attack showed that you can be vulnerable to a compression oracle by merely compressing response bodies: [http://breachattack.com/](http://breachattack.com/)

> For the love of god, keep using compression with your websites, whether > HTTP/1.x, TLS + HTTP/1.x, or HTTP/2

You can continue compressing files such as CSS that don't reflect any attacker-controlled content, but compression of dynamic HTML pages is likely to be insecure.

<comment><USER4> It's quite depressing that we can't have both compression and encryption at the same time - text is very compressible - particularly HTML markup...

<comment><USER5> Theoretically, you can, as long as any secrets within the response body are represented as a "literal" (that is, uncompressed) within the compressed stream.

In practice, there isn't a way I know of to mark the relevant parts of the response body so that the compression, which is usually done as a separate post-processing step, will know to avoid compressing these parts of the stream. And it would be very fragile; forgetting to mark a secret as "do not compress this" would work perfectly fine but reintroduce the vulnerability.

<comment><USER6> Simply enough in HTTP2: lift out the relevant parts of the response body—turn them into separate resources and refer to them in the original object by their URL. When the client then requests those dependent objects, deliver them uncompressed. (And server-hint/push the dependent objects if you can, of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Protocol Relative URLS are now considered an anti-pattern

Sorry to sidetrack, but what's wrong with protocol-relative URLs? The only info I've found is a quote from Paul Irish relating it vaguely to the China/Github DDOS incident...

I find protocol-relative URLs very helpful for running without HTTPS in my local environment.

<comment><USER8> The "problem" with protocol-relative URLs, is that it's possible to include HTTP content if the parent was HTTP.

Since HTTPs is preferred for both security and privacy, we should give as little options as possible to use the insecure HTTP protocol and force HTTPs everywhere.

As you mention though, in dev-environments it's a convenient hack to use plain old HTTP. However, in production, preferring HTTPs would be considered the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hehe the "adblock detected" popup on this page is witty

<comment><USER8> It generates mixed feelings, some appreciate it, others think I'm a complete ass for asking. :-)

<comment><USER6> I would suggest only asking the _second_ time people land on your site. The first time, they're probably not going to do it, because they just came in via some article link and are thinking they probably won't see your site again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thought I had while reading though this is that HTTP2 really isn't just a hypertext transfer protocol anymore, it's going to be used for everything.

<comment><USER11> > One thought I had while reading though this is that HTTP2 really isn't just > a hypertext transfer protocol anymore, it's going to be used for everything.

That's not any different from HTTP/1.1.</comment></comment>


Apple Further Refutes Bloomberg Report Suggesting Spies Tampered with Servers - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/04/apple-further-refutes-chinese-spy-report/ <comment><USER2> It seems hard to believe that Bloomberg would publish this article if it's completely untrue, but it's also hard to believe that Apple and Amazon would both issue comprehensive denials of pretty much every single claim of the article unless the article was in fact untrue.

At this point I'm leaning towards believing Apple and Amazon, because it seems more likely that Bloomberg got it wrong than for Apple and Amazon to blatantly lie about this. But I'm really curious why Bloomberg went ahead and published this article if Apple and Amazon told them for months that it was wrong. What was their source and why did they trust it so much?

<comment><USER3> The specificity of Bloomberg report (BMC controller at the right location, details of the subcontractors, details about the people involved in sabotaging the supply chain, the details about the chip's color and similarity to a coupling cap, etc.) is also important to consider. They have put in a lot of details however elementary it may seem to HN crowd.

Apple and Amazon has more at stake than Bloomberg but the incentives are stronger for Apple and Amazon than for Bloomberg. For once, _why_ would Bloomberg post a story that is completely false!? The details they've provided suggests that it wasn't just a couple of people contacted them anonymously and they decided to post a huge story about it. There are so many anonymous individuals cited in the Bloomberg article. All stars align to indicate something has _actually_ happened on these servers.

<comment><USER4> The NYT published many false stories about WMD in Iraq because they believed their anonymous sources (edit: or rather sources granted anonymity) ... who were making assertions far stronger than the raw intelligence supported. Hopefully that's not happening with Bloomberg.

<comment><USER5> You may be misunderstanding how anonymous sources work. The NYT knew who the sources were, it's the public who did not (see [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the- public-e...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the-public- editor-weapons-of-mass-destruction-or-mass-distraction.html) for NYT's writeup of some of their mistakes)

<comment><USER4> I read that article already, and I do understand how anonymous sources work. It seems like Bloomberg may be making a similar mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course they refute the evidence. It would make them look like their 'secure' servers weren't as secure as they thought they would be. Its marketing 101

<comment><USER7> Believing in conspiracy theories degrades you as a person, puts your immortal soul at risk, and what's worse, demeans the noble art of posting on internet forums.</comment></comment>


CS 10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing (login as guest) - <AUTHOR> http://sage.cs.berkeley.edu/course/view.php?id=21

<comment><AUTHOR> With all the talk about learning programming and the article regarding CodeAcademy's shortcomings, I thought this course was a nice introduction for the non-programmer.

For the education-minded out there, this also serves as Berkeley's pilot course that they're hoping the College Board will approve as the model for a new AP Computer Science offering at the high-school level.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way of marketing iOS apps? - <AUTHOR>

My friend and I are developing an iPhone app and were curious, for those of you who have submitted to the App Store, what methods of marketing have you tried? What's worked and what hasn't? If it helps, it's a basic camera app aimed towards the "hip teenager" demographic that uses Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Buy your way into the top lists with augmented downloads and ratings. Because that is what the competition is doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, it's sad that's what it's come down to these days. Any tips if we don't have a large budget for that?

<comment><USER3> Tell lifehacker or other popular blogs about your app?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CopyPaster – let's make web forms copy/pasteable - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/treenotation/copypaster <comment><USER2> Hi, Breck.

I found your Tree Notation in this post and read through the website and the papers on the Github repo. It seems like a tool for creating a new DSL (or language). But I am not quite understand how to do it (even though I watched the YouTube video).

Could you write some document for how to create a DSL using the Tree Notation?

Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It seems like a tool for creating a new DSL (or language)

Yes.

> But I am not quite understand how to do it (even though I watched the > YouTube video).

I'm sorry for the poor documentation. This is helpful feedback, thanks.

Any suggestions on how to improve? I'm thinking about doing a live 1 hour office hours each week on YouTube or Twitch, where I'd be available to help people create new Tree languages, and then could record those sessions, and learn what the common problems are. Do you think that might be helpful? I do that in person a lot, and seems to be very helpful, so perhaps could scale that.

> Could you write some document for how to create a DSL using the Tree > Notation?

I started a document here: [https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/blob/master/languageCh...](https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/blob/master/languageChecklist.md)

It looks a tiny bit out of date (the older version of Grammar allowed you to not specify the "keyword" that matched a word, so you now need to specify that). The bulk of it is correct. In general, I like to start by writing sample programs, and then working on the Grammar file after that.

In the Tree Language Designer ([https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/](https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/)), you type a sample program in the right box, and then click "Infer Prefix Grammar" for that class of grammars, and it will generate the start of a Grammar for you. That currently only works (partially) for prefix grammars. If you want to design a postfix language, or omnifix language, or something more esoteric, then it probably won't be so helpful.

Can you share some more about the language you want to create? I could help you get it started.</comment></comment>


Show HN: EffortLESS – a tool for your LESS variables - <AUTHOR> http://www.itseffortless.com/

<comment><USER2> What an awesome tool. Love the share option. Great for working in teams.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad you like it :)</comment></comment>


Anonymous Hacks NATO: Claims over 1GB "Restricted" Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/anonymous-claims-it-acquired-gigabyte-restricted-data-nato

<comment><USER2> The sad fact is nothing in this can be believed. All this is strategically too complex.</comment>


What is the PDF format good for? Nothing (2006) - <AUTHOR> https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/why-not-pdf.html <comment><USER2> PDF is good for creating documents which are decently accurate at preserving the form of the content, both in print and on paper, while being accessible on a wide range of platforms.

Sure, there are formats better for print presentation. There are also formats that are better at on-screen presentation. But PDF offers a decent tradeoff and can be opened, dare I say, on any device.

The article is being simplistic. It completely fails to address the main advantage of PDF, which is access on all platforms.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it's fair to say that preserving page structure and formatting is never a good idea. For example, at least one good use for PDFs is sheet music/tabs. Formatting is obviously important here as it tends to lose meaning without it, but equally as important is the page structure and per-page nature of reading vs scrolling. As a (hobbyist) musician, when I'm playing an instrument, I don't have any free hands to scroll with, so it's important to me that I don't have to do it very often.

</comment><comment><USER4> I happen to work in an industry (intl shipping) where we scan billions of PDF daily, and I have no clue, how would we share docs with all the parties involved ... 'sanely' ... if it were not for PDF, TIFF isn't good either .. PDF docs are like 3kb-10kb ... other than physical scan of papers ... however 'generated PDF docs' are 5kb at best.

<comment><USER5> It's scary how differently PDFs can be output depending on the exporter. I have some Word docs for user and installation guides that can be 100% larger depending on whether the content writer saves it as PDF, exports it as PDF, or prints the document to a PDF.

<comment><USER6> Not really. Each of those PDFs has a different intent and thus a different amount of metadata embedded it in.

<comment><USER5> For the purposes of what we're doing with them, we don't care about any of that, however. The real answer would be to automate the process, so people don't have to think and have the opportunity to do it wrongly, it just happens, but it's hasn't been high enough priority to bother with getting right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems that the post was written in 1997 [1], with some parts added in 2005 [2].

The author is generally a computer science professor with some idiosyncratic (at least for the current time) opinions. Though I enjoyed the classes I attended with him a few years ago and some of his points I found quite convincing.

For example, in the class on stack based languages (forth & postscript mostly) he also showed how using PS instead of PDF allows him to put results from the analysis in the source code of papers and generate the plots from them. I try to mimic this in my PDFs by adding shortened links to the source and data for each plot (example: [3]) as I've often been annoyed with figures in papers that omit crucial information on what they show.

[1]: [https://web.archive.org/web/19971016211209/https://www.compl...](https://web.archive.org/web/19971016211209/https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/why- not-pdf.html)

[2]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20051231210211/https://www.compl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051231210211/https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/why- not-pdf.html)

[3]: [https://i.imgur.com/CfuYeOO.png](https://i.imgur.com/CfuYeOO.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a widely used _standard_ : The more people who can open and use PDF files, the more people who will prefer to create and distribute PDF files. Whether the PDF format is better or worse than the alternatives doesn't factor into people's decision to use it.

</comment><comment><USER9> 21 years after, nobody cares about postscript.

This ends up being a good example of how decent tech fails if not backed up by reasonable commercial strategy. In the world we live in, it's not enough to be good - heck, you don't even need to be good at anything, just be good at marketing it.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure. "Decent tech" failed because it wasn't made available on different architectures in a decent form. Then one architecture took off, and left Tex behind (DOS/Windows). There was another in an area where typesetting mattered (Mac OS X) and that one, too, did not have "Decent tech" support. Even though the open source movement probably put in way more total effort in screen readers and typesetters than Adobe ever did into Pdf ... there was never a coherent strategy, and everybody did what this article tries to advocate :

let's make one tex distro that's a bit better at screen reading. One that's a bit better at math typesetting. One that can also contain C programs, along with text. One that has graphs.

Let's all make them with zero integration and each of them only working on one distro, one platform (because that one's the best).

Despite what this article claims, nobody ever tried to do the minimum necessary to make the suggested solutions succeed. Instead, there was infighting and perfectionism in tiny details with zero care for the global picture.

This is the issue with academici. Call it "depth first" development vs "breadth first" development. If you want large scale uptake, commercials success and usefullness for many people, obviously the correct strategy is breath first : well-supported few-problems many-usecase easy-to-use kinda- basic software. Then, over a LOT of time, make it less basic.

The way to succeed in academici is to go depth first. Make the state of the art neural network for distinguishing left-handed pomeranians from mostly- left-but-sometimes-abidextrous pomeranians by 0.005% ? Guaranteed publication ! 20 followup papers ! Great hero ! Speaker invites across the globe ! Who's ever going to use it ? Let's nod politely and say "many other academici".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This post - and every technical post on the internet - needs a date stamp.

Please never blog or post anything without putting a date on it.

<comment><USER12> In counterpoint: please look at Last-Modified headers.

<comment><USER11> Because they are not always present, not convenient, and don't necessarily reflect the actual date when the content was written / updated. Maybe a file was copied and the modification time changed although the content on the page didn't. Maybe the author fixed a spelling mistake 10 years later but didn't update anything else.

I want a human-decided, human-readable date on the page for the same reason I want a human-readable headline. For a technical post, they're about equally important, and should not require examining protocol headers to determine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "...Acrobat reader for DOS that I have is dog slow..."

We're done here.

<comment><USER14> Adobe reader was always dog slow across all platforms, compared to alternative PDF readers.

And his other points are still valid, even more so now that smartphones are everywhere. Platform should be able to adapt content to best utilize resources (screen size). See how e-books are not published in PDF format. E-book readers mostly support PDFs, but it's painful experience to actually read through them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I think the author makes some good points about the PDF format itself, this article is painfully outdated with many complaints about Acroreader and Netscape which are no longer remotely relevant.

Though the article does serve as an interesting time capsule. Kinda shows you how the more things change the more stay the same.

</comment><comment><USER16> So one of the common uses for pdf is filling in digital forms, typically published by your government. I didnt even see this addressed in the gigantic rant by author.

Instead they complained about Actobat Reader for DOS is slow and other random anecdotial evidence, none which imo supports his claim that pdf is good for nothing.

<comment><USER17> What's the benefit of PDF forms over HTML forms? Other than being able to share the "digital" and dead-tree designs, which may be an advantage for someone, but not for the person filling it in.

<comment><USER18> The benefit is you can print the pdf form and fill in with paper (such as handing out the printed doc at the reception), or you can fill in on your computer and print the result, preserving page layout.

<comment><USER19> Also, you may need a signature on the document which you would do by hand, while filling out the other fields sith keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> PDF is mostly a subset of Postscript. It improves on Postscript in terms of speed and security.

In contrast to Postscript, it is not a Turing-complete programming language. What's left is a bunch of commands placing graphics objects on pages.

That means PDF viewers cannot be DoSed in an obvious way by placing infinite loops in the document.

It also means that any page in a document can be directly rendered, without rendering the rest of the document first. That's not possible with Postscript, because Postscript documents are programs that need to executed from the start.

<comment><USER21> PDF allows Javascript, making aspects of it Turing-complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Math! Math typesetting is still a huge problem -- same as back in 1997 with a few improvements here and there.

I do remember the days when postscript was far more of a default, or dvi -- there were people who refused to use pdf format at that time. Almost no one has stuck with that battle.

Standardized, high-quality math typesetting in html has still just not quite happened although it's improving continuously.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pagination is better that scrolling on mobile devices. I often prefer it on a desktop screen as well.

I read PDFs all the time on my iPad Pro. They fit the form factor perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Acrobat Reader is dog slow on...DOS? When is this published? The title should have [year].

<comment><USER25> The Last-Modified header says 2006, some of the links date to 1998

<comment><USER26> Archive.org has the first snapshot of the page in 1997

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can we get a title update to 1997? (First published year)</comment>


Ospriet: an audience moderation app built on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.github.com/ospriet/

<comment><USER2> I would like to see something like this that is not built on top of twitter. A more general one.

I don't know if you have seen the one Google uses on their talks. That one also looks cool.</comment>