Show HN: A new way to consume the social web - <AUTHOR> http://tawlk.com

<comment><AUTHOR> So I made an overnight prototype of this about 2 years ago as a side project from my day job. It has since grown into a startup and I'm proud to be associated with a great team. We have been working very hard the last few months to build a beta search and analysis tool and to show off a good public sampling of the capabilities of the platform we have developed. We hope to gain some exposure to secure second round funding for upcoming offerings and some commentary we need to improve.

It still has some rough edges which we very much hope you all can help us work out. As we obviously want to monetize parts of our platform in time, we want to listen to the community to create the best tool possible. To that end, we have already open sourced some of the libraries behind Tawlk via <http://github.com/Tawlk> and we welcome any contributions or forks. We very much believe in the "Open source -Almost- Everything" model.

Also worth nothing about this demo, is that to make good use of our current limited server resources and to avoid hitting API and CPU limitations, we are utilizing many relatively new techniques including combinations of WebSockets, HTML5 localStorage, HTML5 App Caching, and direct browser-side data collection to make it work.

I hope you find the beta interesting and intuitive. I look forward to your comments or questions.

If you find bugs, please screenshot them with steps to reproduce so they can be taken care of quickly and please be nice to our servers :-)

EDIT: If you see connection errors you can dismiss it with the "x" in the top right. Search should still work, you just wont get any of the websocket supported sidebar stats (which i very much encourage you to try out on another network). We are working on some fallback connection methods to resolve this for firewalled and otherwise unable-to-connect users.

In the mean time, here is a reference rendering: [http://dumpon.us/media/uploads/TAWLK_GUI_HORIZONTAL_V18_1.jp...](http://dumpon.us/media/uploads/TAWLK_GUI_HORIZONTAL_V18_1.jpg)

<comment><USER2> Hey Irvick, I think the timestamps on some content is coming out wrong. I saw a facebook update which had timestamp 42 years ago. I'm guessing Unix timestamp of 0 seconds. Also, I saw another tweet which showed 'a few seconds ago' but was actually posted a few days ago. Great product BTW.

[Edit: Added a missed word]

<comment><AUTHOR> That date conversion mainly happens here <https://github.com/Tawlk/hyve/blob/master/hyve.js#L208-211> which is fairly straight forward. I will have to do some more poking around to see whats going on. If you find any specific items that trigger this, please let me know so I can debug them individually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I keep getting this

        Connection Failure: This is probably due to the fact
        your browser does not appear to support a technology
        called "WebSockets" which Tawlk relies on. We are
        working hard to bring full compatibilty with a wider
        range of browsers soon. In the interim please consider
        using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox or Safari

Yet I am using Chrome (16.0.912.63) on OSX.

<comment><AUTHOR> This also happens when chrome simply drops the connection even if it is "supported". Chrome 16 and 17 have switched to a newer websocket standard which apparently does not deal with packet loss as well? For now compare with Firefox as well as its Websocket implementation seems to handle a bit better than latest chrome builds in some situations. At the very least we will push out a messaging change for this soon.

Once the load spike dies down a bit we will be working to push out some protocol updates to help provide fallback support for browsers that for whatever reason can't maintain a stable websocket connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about some kind of video demo for us that are getting the "connection failure" error?

I will probably check it out when I get home from work but as of now I am a little annoyed that I cannot try it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> A video demo is in progress.

The connection errors happen when there is limited websocket support due to browser or network. We are working on a migration to sockjs so we can have some flexible fallbacks just in case. If you dismiss the error the main search should still work, you just sadly wont get any stats. Probably best to wait till your on a direct connection for now.

<comment><USER5> fwiw i got the connection failure error but dismissed it and it just worked (using chrome 16)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the left to right scrolling content is really disorienting for me -- it forces my eyes to go right to left to find new content, which is the opposite of how english speakers read. This makes me feel as if i'm going backward rather than forward. i think if you were to flip the direction of the scroll it would be a far, far more pleasurable reading experience. Looks nice, regardless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Never considered that. Perhaps there could be an option to reverse it, Or even an option for vertical scrolling in the future too so people can have easy to change sticky preferences. Thanks for the input

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Didn't understand how the sentiment analysis works, since results look quite not what I expected. I did a test search on 2012 presidential candidates:

Obama: 44% positive ("barack obama" is 62% though)

Mitt Romney: 67% positive

Michele Bachmann: 50% positive

Herman Cain: 71% positive (?)

Ron Paul: 71% positive

Rick Perry: 81% positive (??)

I am not sure the sentiment calculation is just based on Positive/Negative dictionary comparison or something else. Is there a logical explanation of above percentages? Do results vary for other people?

<comment><AUTHOR> So currently this is based on taking a sizable rolling window of textual posts for each topic then running it through our synt library (<http://github.com/tawlk/synt>) which does sentiment classification with a NaiveBayes classifier trained against iterations of a couple million samples. This setup averages about 80% accuracy against new labeled sample sets.

We however only have the server resources to have a large rolling window for a limited number of topics (currently the ones in the side bar).

When you searched for "Barack Obama", it based the sentiment score on just what your browser collects live on the fly, whereas when you searched "obama" you got sentiment calculations based on our server collected rolling data set which is far more stable.

Both are fairly accurate, however they differ in how large of a window they are averaging against.

As topics become more popular and as server limitations allow we automatically migrate them server side for more aggressive collection to provide more reliable sentiment.

We also only provide scores and reach assessments for topics we posses enough server-side data for to justify it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm interested to see how this product will grow and how you can eventually capitalize on the idea to generate revenue. Many companies today are already experimenting with the idea of content analysis to gain insight about what the social web is saying about their company and/or to profile their customers using lifestyle based analytics.

One question I have is do you plan on filtering out the noise? There seems to be some content that I would consider spam or highly unrelated to the topic that I choose to search.

<comment><USER9> Yes, our next phase in development and design will be focused on relevancy. We will work on filtering out unrelated results and show those that are the most popular first.

We have developed a strong revenue strategy around social data and sentiment analysis. Feel free to shoot us an email for more info. In the meantime we are just looking for people like you to enjoy the product and have fun with it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So this pretty much polls Twitter, Digg, Picasa, Youtube and Flickr for the search term you enter, then updates in real time?

I like the interface a lot, and it certainly seems well architected (in that I've had it open in three tabs simultaneously and not noticed any lag whatsoever).

However, to use an idea from the Intercom.io blog[1], what job would I hire this app to perform?

[1] <http://blog.intercom.io/when-personas-fail-you/>

<comment><AUTHOR> It searches others, as data is available. Most of the results your getting are from the open source hyve library we have been developing to help manage load and API limits. <http://github.com/Tawlk/hyve> . If a service you like is not included, please add it to hyve, and it may well also make its way into our back-end analysis platform.

Well currently it could be used by brand managers to see how popular or unpopular a given topic or person is, or to have an easy way to digest overall stats about the topics social presence.

You could also do things casual like just seeing how people feel about Obama compared to Justin Beiber or android phones or use it while watching a live event to see what people are saying about it. Live results are one of the ways this stack really shines.

As far as where we are going to take the platform, we have some strong ideas ready to implement provided we get the right investment group interested. Lots of things that would be more interesting to those wanting to hire this to do a "job" for them or their company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Will Talwk be restricted to social media? Latest news/articles/blogs can add a lot of value to the feed, especially if one wants to follow a live event. Also, if user can integrate their facebook/twitter account to Talwk, the site can then highlight and prioritize the stuff shared by people in the user's network.

Also, Just to check the buzz about Talwk, I visited tawlk.com/#!/tawlk and witnessed the oh-so-tragic condition of the enlish language on the interwebs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well we use social media to do harvesting, however we will be indirectly supporting a wide range of news and content. If 50 people all tweet the same article from techcrunch, that mentions the word android, then that is a pretty good indication we should call that out specifically.

We will be implementing a lot of features like this soon to give a far more relevant and diverse range of data based on its social media popularity for a given topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nothing loads in the main panel.

Console is full of errors: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/533753/Screen%20Shot%202011-12-15%20...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/533753/Screen%20Shot%202011-12-15%20at%208.17.43%20AM.png)

It also took me a long time to figure out how to close the about modal...

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Never seen this behavior. That error should really only happen if some reason the Jsonp APIs were not responding properly for some reason. Is it possible your network blocks some major social media APIs like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook etc?

Tawlk communicates with all the major APIs directly from your browser on your side of the network.

<comment><USER12> I bet there's AdBlock involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone currently unable to view the sidebar stats due to work firewall restrictions or web-socket issues please have a look at the reference for now: [http://dumpon.us/media/uploads/TAWLK_GUI_HORIZONTAL_V18_1.jp...](http://dumpon.us/media/uploads/TAWLK_GUI_HORIZONTAL_V18_1.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> I had a chance to see the tech demos for Tawlk, as lrvick is a member of our local hackerspace, and I have to say I was blown away. This thing is amazing, and the way the infrastructure works is pretty sick too. Definitely worth saving the link and checking back when you have more time.

</comment><comment><USER14> This looks super interesting and useful, really quick too. Most of the bugs I've spotted have already been mentioned.

I noticed you've open sourced a bunch of your modules in Javascript and Python. Out of interest what does your technology stack look like? (framework choice etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was really hoping someone would ask this. Now I get an excuse to share my neat flowchart! <http://dumpon.us/media/uploads/tawlk_8.png>

The only thing not really detailed here is that the whole stack runs on a set of redundant servers with Round Robin DNS at the helm to randomly distribute between them.

Also "caching proxy" should really just be called "routing proxy" as that is all that we are using it for. If websockets go to Tawlk app, if else go direct to nginx static serve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some of the sites polled, like Reddit, usually have fairly active comment threads. But I can't click through to the comments, only directly to the thing that Reddit is linking to.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is reasonable. I will look into finding a tidy way to resolve this. Perhaps with the number of comments next to the post which when clicked lets you skip directly there?

<comment><USER15> That could work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting a connection failure. Chrome 17, OS X Lion.

<comment><USER17> I had the same, but dismissing the error seemed to let it work just fine. Hard to see given the minimal contrast between the "X" and the modal header

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I missed the X before I saw your comment, but still, nothing comes through for me when searching in Chromium 17.0.950.0. Firefox nightly works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I get a 405 not allowed on searching for iphone.

<comment><USER20> Same here

Opera - OSX 10.6

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The horizontal scrolling with touchpad is jumpy and, at times, not even usable. mac w/ chrome 16.0.912.63

</comment><comment><USER22> X to close a model was difficult to find. No link to Flickr source. Reset TAWLK doesn't work. Chrome 16.

<comment><AUTHOR> The X is difficult. It will be changed in the next front end push.

For Flickr that is a very fair point, we need a way to link to the original Flickr URL. That is a UX oversight we need to resolve.

Where are you seeing "Reset Tawlk?"

<comment><USER22> the header logo, top left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Needs activity indicator for main content area. My first search appeared to just hang for a few seconds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Others have mentioned this as well. We will try to work this into our next push of changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting concept, but I'd want it personalized to my stream. Filters out a lot of useless content :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Coming soon ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So.. click Movie Stars, Natalie Portman, and then click Image, and then enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER26> You are displaying 'undefined' instead of time for Youtube videos

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like I might of had a regression there in hyve. I see that now. I will look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was hoping for a humorous cookie recipe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to disappoint, but there is plenty of fun stuff about cookies ^_^ <http://tawlk.com/#!/cookies>

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> very interesting concept. Very neat UI. A quick way to get what people are thinking on various social nets.</comment>


SEC approves fundraising from unaccredited investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2015/03/65007-the-reg-a-bombshell-50m-unaccredited-equity-crowdfunding-title-iv-takes-center-stage/

<comment><AUTHOR> Good reddit discussion as well [http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/30clrk/regular_ame...](http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/30clrk/regular_americans_can_now_invest_in_startups_sec/)</comment>


Ask HN: What back end skills do I need to become 'fullstack'? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm a 'frontend' web developer. I've been working with web apps for the last 3 years and I'm fairly proficient with my stack. I have a good understanding of how the backend works in a general sense too. I've worked as a freelancer and am currently working with a team building a product with react.
I want to become a fullstack developer, at least enough to be valued in a backend role as well. I'm trying to come up with a list of concept/skill checkpoints based on what I would need to typically do as a 'backend' developer.
Here's what I've put together so far, in no particular order:
> Data modelling and using a database: simple e-commerce site on Postgres
> Building an authentication system: implementing a server-side google oauth2 login
> Building & deploying an API service of 3 different types: db interaction, using auth, using 3rd party APIs (nodejs/python)
> Serving static files (nginx)
> Deploying and putting a simple CMS site together (wordpress)
> Deploying a full app with a domain name
> Building and deploying a batch job to create reports from the database
> Migrating app + data from one VM to another
What do you all think? Something I should add/remove? Should I take a completely different approach? <comment><USER2> Different approach. The whole idea of full stack developers is a corporate wet dream; they managed to reduce the developer role into something that looks more like a janitor, someone who takes care of everything that no one else wants to deal with. It's been proven over and over again that mastery is what really drives motivation and satisfaction, being really good at what you're doing; but corporate a-holes couldn't care less about humans except as means for more awesome profits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm...I guess.

But don't you think getting a basic idea of all the different things happening on the backend (by doing them once since that seems to be the only way to really know something) would help when I focus on specific area again.

Things move so quickly that having a detailed understanding of different moving parts would seem to help. It's kind of how I grew into doing interactive stuff from just HTML/CSS too.

<comment><USER2> Having a clue about how it all fits together is definitely a good idea, always was. But this is more about pushing the software developer profession further into mediocre generalist land, where those pesky computer magicians are reduced to convenient corporate building blocks.</comment></comment></comment>


Scheme vs Common Lisp: war stories - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/41045/scheme-vs-common-lisp-which-characteristics-made-a-difference-in-your-project

<comment><USER2> Rather than close these sorts of "not constructive" but clearly useful questions, it would be a lot better if they created a place for them. Something like knowledge.stackexchange.com, where the utility of public questions and upvoted answers could be applied to more subjective, as well as more advanced topics.

They really limit their own usefulness by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

<comment><USER3> I think the main problem is that the site format is _very_ focused on a single sort of interaction: questions with at most a few specific answers. This is what makes them great Q&A sites, but also makes them relatively ill-suited as discussion sites.

Creating a good site for discussion would be quite a bit of work, paramount to creating a different platform. I could perhaps see them expanding to that style of site and reusing the StackExchange brand in the future, but it would essentially be a separate sort of product. For now, it makes the most sense to focus on what they're already great at: Q&A sites.

These sort of questions are much better suited to places like HN and Reddit, although those also have their own problems. (Mostly, discussion tends to be short-lived: almost nobody looks at HN comments a day after they've left the front page, and Reddit isn't all that much better in that regard.)

<comment><USER4> _I think the main problem is that the site format is very focused on a single sort of interaction: questions with at most a few specific answers._

That gets said a lot, but the truth of the matter is that it works just fine for this kind of thing, too. Stellar case in point: The linked article. It even has (or at least had) features which are specifically designed to support this kind of scenario. Remember the Community Wiki feature?

The site is absolutely littered with great resources on topics which a small number of the site's moderators have deemed too subjective to be of value but which the site's users have upvoted into the stratosphere or provided extremely useful, thoughtful answers which other users proceeded to upvote into the stratosphere. Oftentimes they were around since near the site's beginning, enough time to become top Google results which are often linked by blogs, and generally done quite well for themselves - all a testament to how excellent a job Stack Overflow's format does at producing _extremely_ high- quality content on these topics. Only to get closed anyway within the past year or two, in the service of trying to force this bizarre reality-deaf Pronouncement from Above that, regardless of what anyone's actual experience may be, you are mistaken and Stack Overflow can't actually do that.

In summary: If the people who run Stack Overflow were in charge of Apple, there would be a ban on music/podcast player apps on the iPad justified by nothing firmer than condescending lectures about how Steve Jobs prefers audio players that fit in his pocket and has therefore pronounced that the iPad is fundamentally unsuited to the consumption of audio content.

<comment><USER5> Mind you, this question wasn't even posted on SO. It was posted on programmers.stackexchange.com which begs the question, on which stackexchange site, if any, would this be a valid question?

<comment><USER4> Heh. I'm old school; I think it all belongs on SO and P.SE should be merged back into the mother site.

As far as I can tell, the only practical consequences of having them as two separate sites are that you have to set up different user accounts to use them, and the SE.com is less discoverable because search results depend on what subsite you search on. Not exactly a great win for usability.

Having separate sites for completely separate topics (like most the others on SE) makes all the sense in the world. But sticking a Berlin wall between the categories of "programming questions" and "other programming questions" is just goofy.

To my mind, the original once-sentence statement of how P.SE is different from SO (Paraphrased, "SO is for when you're sitting at the keyboard, P.SE is for when you're standing at the whiteboard.") makes it clear that the idea was fuzzily-conceived from the get-go. And it only got more muddled when the maintainers of the site, which had originally been specifically envisioned as a place for subjective discussion as per the very first sentence of the (original) site FAQ,* came out with a decision that it was absolutely not a place for subjective discussion, no how no way.

*Those with long memories will catch me out by pointing out that the very next paragraph of the original FAQ started by making a sudden one hundred eighty degree turn and specifically admonishing people to not ask subjective questions. I must concede that this is absolutely true. But I would counter by saying this fact doesn't make P.SE look any more well-conceived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are all the interesting questions on programmers.stackexchange.com are closed for being "not constructive"?

<comment><USER7> Because the mods set up a bot that automatically closes questions that get over X amount of upvotes.

Or at least thats what it seems...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The accepted answer is an excellent post. In it is this gem:

 _> Scheme's syntax-case is far more subtle and complicated than any one thing in Lisp._

While syntax-case seems complicated at first because it involves a similar mind-bending to that first time when you learned about lambda, it is my number one power tool that keeps me coming back to scheme (the other being a small 'surface area' that I can keep in my head without having to keep skipping between library documentation and code).

</comment><comment><USER9> And closed. Thank you for playing.

<comment><USER10> \-- closed 2011 Nov 28.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting nobody mentioned CLOS. From an outsider perspective of somebody who only used R5RS Scheme, it seems like the one huge difference between Scheme and CL variants.</comment>


Microsoft Joins The Party, Buying Internet Advertisement Firm 24/7 Real Media for $1 billion - <AUTHOR> http://startupmeme.com/2007/05/01/microsoft-joins-the-party-buying-internet-advertisement-firm-247-real-media-for-1-billion/ <comment><USER2> Wrong; the article only claims they are one of two potential buyers. And that's only if you trust an exclusive from the NY Post. Any Internet news that only the Post knows is probably wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't knew New York Post has such a great reputation, but alot of people are jumping on it <http://www.techmeme.com/070501/p26#a070501p26>

<comment><USER3> And they cite the Post. That's how bad information spreads...

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be "Thats how the rumor mill works" :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Six Habits of Highly Effective Mentees - <AUTHOR> http://ben.casnocha.com/2008/04/six-habits-of-h.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Also there is an essay: [http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2...](http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you- need/)</comment>


Ask HN: I'm looking for an objective-c/iOS development tutor. - <AUTHOR>

It would likely have to be over skype or something of the like.<p>Any experienced tutors out there in this area? Thanks. <comment><USER2> A friend of mine does this. My email is in my profile if you would like an introduction. He actually moved to Hawaii so it would probably have to be via Skype. Not 100pct sure he is still taking on students but it's worth an email.</comment>


Mathematical Notation in Emacs - <AUTHOR> https://ekaschalk.github.io/post/prettify-mode/ <comment><USER2> Is the example they show intentionally hyperbolic? Most of the notation is used incorrectly.

* "returns" being |--> is awkward and out-of-line with the meaning of that symbol. |--> is usually read as a transitive verb "maps to".

* Using the calligraphic F for "def" is extremely weird and unhelpful.

* Having None be the empty set symbol, which is not set(), is strange.

* Blackboard bold F for False is weird, usually that means a finite field.

* Blackboard bold S for string?

* The dissonance between what the blackboard bold characters mean is jarring. Sometimes it's a type, somethings it's a particular object.

* Whatever the notation is for list and dict types (fraktur) is extremely non-standard and overly frilly.

The Greek/AND/OR/comparisons/not-equal/etc stuff is pretty OK. It's actually truly in-line with their meaning in math.

I am only saying this because the author points out at the end in a serious fashion that it's a useful thing to do for readability.

Don't be fooled. Just because you can make your editor look kinda-sorta like math, doesn't mean it actually is math.

<comment><USER3> The use of \mathbb{R} for floats acts to obscure things for me I'm afraid. It loads up dusty old stuff in my brain about the reals that is not true of floats from the slow tape archive storage in my skull, and _doesn't_ load up stuff in my brain about floats like, say, where the first integer gap occurs[1]. A side note is that \mathbb{Q} would be a closer match to float.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3793838/which-is-the- firs...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3793838/which-is-the-first- integer-that-an-ieee-754-float-is-incapable-of-representing-e)

<comment><USER4> I think we should view them as what we are trying to represent, not what they really are. Besides, with the same logic int32 or int64 isn't really an integer in a sense that it can't represent 2^64.

<comment><USER5> It's still 'an integer'^, it's just that the set {i | i \in int64} is a _proper_ subset of \mathbb{Z}; so using the latter to denote the former is inappropriate.

^i.e. for all i \in int64, i \in \mathbb{Z}.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it looks great. Elegant and concise. Programming was never mathematics, anyway. That hasn't stopped the butchering of notation ("=" for assignment, functions with side effects), why is everyone suddenly a mathematical purist, now?

It's a fine theme.

<comment><USER7> Nothing wrong as personal shorthand - but the multiplier effect of understandable notation should not be underestimated.

Non-conventional notation strips away the benefit of shorthand notation in collaborative environment - nobody actually can tell what the meaning is just by looking at it without learning it first. If applied generally to software development, using an exotic notation _just because it looks nice_ is risky and of questionable value. New notation is always a huge burden and should be taken into use only if there is some actual benefit other than aesthetics.

<comment><USER8> Unless I'm missing something, this is just an emacs style, equivalent to a syntax coloring theme. Collaborative environments have nothing to do with it - it will be checked into SCM in the normal way, and the guy running this emacs plugin is the only person who will see the symbols.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> torrent-of-ions This looks nice but, as others have pointed out, it's mostly wrong to a mathematician. Yes, programming languages are already wrong (assignment should be <-, equality should be =, functions should be called subroutines etc.), but at least they're mostly all wrong in the same ways.

The main problem I have with it is I want to edit the _text_ , not some pretty rendering. I use some display rendering in emacs, in org-mode to be specific, but none at all in programming modes, even in Lisp where one doesn't need to edit S-expressions directly. I guess I've been bitten by software where the display doesn't equal the underlying data too many times.

</comment><comment><USER9> Note that if you use a variable width font (and so you don't care much if >= has different width than ≥ ) you can simply use font-lock-add-keywords and map what you need. For example in JS you could use

        (font-lock-add-keywords 'js2-mode '(
        				    ("=>" (0 `(face nil display "")))
        				    (">=" (0 `(face nil display "≥")))
        				    ("<=" (0 `(face nil display "≤")))))

EDIT: It seems that HW doesn't really like U+27A1 ... :-)

<comment><USER10> Are you coding javascript in a variable width font?

<comment><USER9> As strange as it may sound, yes. It took some time to get used to it, but now I find the code easier to read. There are a number instances where the missing vertical alignment is a drawback, for example ASCII art, boxed comments or comments on the right of the code, but since I don't make use of them it is not an issue for me.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure I could ever write code in a non-fixed-width font. Maybe if I wrote every line perfectly and never had to navigate back a few lines to make adjustments. But then again, I spend a non-trivial amount of time lining code/variables up and making things just right before moving on that a variable-width font would probabky drive my OCD (Obsessive Code Disorder) levels up to 11.

I don't even want to see what happens when you mark a region and call M-x align in a variable width font.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Better idea: since Python accepts UTF-8 input, let me actually enter the Greek letter lambda in place of the word "lambda". On a Mac it's close to trivially easy to switch between Greek and English keyboard layouts.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find this an interesting diversion back down the path of cweb. Specifically to introduce some more notations for things such as Null, and the boolean operations.</comment>


GameDVR: Is Windows 10 recording my screen, at all times, without permission? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/765763690742288385 <comment><USER2> Windows is now this mysterious, malicious entity that lurks between the user and Google Chrome.

I've been asking this since 2000 or so: What extensive invasion of your privacy needs to happen for you to give up Windows? Will this latest revelation be the tipping point for you?

<comment><USER3> ...and google chrome is the mysterious, malicious entity that lurks between the user and facebook.

Users. Don't. Care. Computers and smartphones are devices most people use exclusively to put personal information onto the internet. Banking, social media, health care information, all of it. The battle isn't over -- it never even began.

<comment><USER2> Upvoted for truth. A small minority, such as myself, care about user privacy. The vast majority are willing to sell themselves into bondage for the chance to use the newest, shiniest technology.

This is why, now that I'm the BOFH, I force my politics on my users.

My company bans microsoft products connected to (W)LAN, and intentionally breaks our intranet sites on anything but Gecko or (Gtk/Qt)Webkit browsers. Chrome redirects to a blank web page with the word "no" on it, as does any browser identifying with a Microsoft OS on it. All outbound traffic is routed through a Tor proxy by default.

If they're too complacent to switch, I can stop their herpes from spreading to networks I control. The effect has been wider adoption of Firefox, and the occasional question about why Google is in Dutch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this is kind of...overblown? Maybe I am wrong, but in any case, here's the general gist of what GameDVR is: [http://support.xbox.com/en- CA/xbox-on-windows/social/record-...](http://support.xbox.com/en-CA/xbox-on- windows/social/record-game-clips-game-dvr-windows-10)

It basically enables a hotkey to activate screen recording.

So, it's not recording your screen all the time, without your permission? Even if it was, how is that data managed by Microsoft? That's a LOT of data...so it doesn't seem believable that MS would be that stupid.

Disclosure: I am not connected to Microsoft in any way (they'd never hire me), but I am pretty attached to my Windows system. I have used Ubuntu and Debian for a fair bit, and frankly, there are just too many rough edges. It annoyed me. Windows on the other hand, has just been getting smoother.

For me, the biggest reason why I couldn't stand Linux OSes was because I had trouble finding a PDF reader that did all the nice things Adobe Acrobat Professional does. I have to read through a lot of PDFs for work.

I also do a lot of scientific computation, but it is pretty OS agnostic as I am not tied to C when using Python+Numba(I am a huge Numba fan).

Appealing (but not something I use) "killer apps" like Vim or Emacs are also OS independent now, so yeah.

No motivation to go back to Linux.

Even if Microsoft was spying on me, I couldn't really care less, because I am a no-name nothing. Life's good.

<comment><USER5> Tried Wine? Or Foxit?</comment></comment>


India's Telescope Detects Crack in the Earth's Magnetic Shield - <AUTHOR> http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/31155/20161104/india-telescope-detects-crack-earth-magnetic-shield.htm <comment><USER2> God, what an awful site.

Here's the paper, in PRL: [http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117...](http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.171101)

<comment><USER3> Advertising has been getting stupider and more insulting, almost aggressively so.

I don't really want to use ad blockers, but I have to, this stuff is nauseating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this something that would happen every time there's a solar storm, or did something else temporarily weaken the earth's magnetic field around the same time, making the effects of the storm worse?

<comment><USER5> This is something that could happen anytime there is a solar storm depending on the details. The solar storm throws off huge amounts of electrically charged particles. As these particles hit the Earth, they create electrical currents in the atmosphere (after all, electrical currents are just charged particles moving). Electric currents induce magnetic fields. If the flow is large enough, the magnetic field can be locally much larger than the Earth's thereby canceling the Earth's field out, changing its direction, or even reversing it. This is why compasses can jump around during an auroral storm (during the northern lights).

The "crack" in the magnetic field is nothing novel. That cosmic rays were allowed in follows naturally. The (mildly) interesting thing is that it was then detected by this muon tracking telescope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions that the study "...may hold clues for a better understanding of future superstorms that could cripple modern technological infrastructure on Earth,...".

What kind of crippling of modern tech infrastructure are we talking about? Electrical interference? Radiation overdose that leads to... data loss? Could someone more familiar with the topic enlighten me?

<comment><USER7> Stuff like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm) or worse - e.g. EM waves knocking out satellites - having the GPS system vanish would have quite severe impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A crack has been detected in the Earth's magnetic shield, which allowed > deadly cosmic ray particles to seep through into the atmosphere.

Deadly in general or deadly this time? If this time, how deadly?

<comment><USER3> They're way worse than UV rays since they're far higher energy, so if this is as bad as the ozone hole it could be pretty bad.

<comment><USER9> ok, but their flux is vastly lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I use AdBlock on this page and the ads keep popping. Have they a way to bypass AdBlock? (maybe with websockets I dunno). I can't really read the article.

<comment><USER11> I got nothing with uBlock.</comment></comment>


We built CockroachDB on top of RocksDB - <AUTHOR> https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/cockroachdb-on-rocksd/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this counterintuitive/plain risky? Cockroaches should sit under rocks not on top of them. Otherwise there's a risk of a crush.</comment>


The Disney Lion King Disaster (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/01/04/the-disnesy-disaster/ <comment><AUTHOR> Since the title isn't too informative, this is a 2013 blog post about how The Lion King for Windows 3.1 led to the creation of DirectX.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm assuming this was prompted by the top comment on [https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/490mjr/not_sure_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/490mjr/not_sure_the_original_source_but_im_31_years_old/) which was on the front age of Reddit earlier?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Encarta... Bore people

What is he on about? Encarta was the Wikipedia of its time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Article refers to the Windows 3.1 "blu- screen". But was there even a blue screen that was shown due to a serious error in Windows (not NT) 3.1? [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140909-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20140909-00/?p=44123/)

<comment><USER5> Yes. I recall one in particular that I got on the family's computer back in the day that got my sister and I a right proper screaming to by my mother. We had just gotten a brand new multimedia package, including a Voyetra audio tool -- the one that tried to look like a component stereo system. Well, we recorded a sample of some song, and proceeded to hit the double speed button, because things sped up sound funny. We waited, and waited as the 386 SX/25 worked on this task, creating a massive 30+ megabyte file, at which point the computer bluescreened, with windows gasping and flailing with all kinds of errors related to not being able to find files, corruption, etc.

Now, the hard drive itself was about 130 megs. Not huge, but not terribly tiny either for a computer bought the day the LA Riots started. However, the action to speed up the song created a new file which filled up that hard drive, and once at the end of the disk, Windows did the most logical thing it could do. It started writing from the beginning of the disk, paying no heed to what was already on it. Over the partition table, over system files, over c:\windows, everything. I'll spare you the details of the righteous fury we were subjected to after, but suffice to say, it was non-fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time a post by Alex St John gets shared I start geeking out. He's one of the principles involved in the creation of DirectX and has written tons about it.

If this piques your interest, I would recommend diving in. He's got great stories.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is about the Lion King Storybook CD game, not the beloved, official, "The Lion King" game.

<comment><USER8> According to the wikipedia article it is in fact about the actual genuine Lion King game, the in-article picture is incorrect: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King_\(video_game\))

> The Windows 3.1 version relied on the WinG graphics API, but a series of > Compaq Presarios were not tested with WinG, which caused the game to crash > while loading.

> The crashes caused game developers to be suspicious of Windows as a viable > platform and instead many stuck with MS-DOS. To prevent further > hardware/software compatibility issues, Direct X was created.</comment></comment>


Who Should Engineers Be: Generalists or Specialists? - <AUTHOR> https://adityarohilla.com/2020/06/11/who-should-you-be-technology-generalist-or-specialist/ <comment><USER2> I'll just leave this quote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. __Specialization is for insects. __" Robert A. Heinlein</comment>


The best way to get smarter fast - <AUTHOR> https://www.pawelniznik.com/blog/2017/1/13/the-best-way-to-get-smarter-fast <comment><USER2> Feedback

When your title makes a promise you should deliver on that promise as soon as possible if you can then expand on it below.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, good feedback.</comment></comment>


Video Game Consoles Up 26%; iPhone Killing Portable Gaming Devices - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2008/11/13/video-game-consoles-up-26-iphone-killing-portable-gaming-devices/ <comment><USER2> "However, portable gaming consoles (like the PSP and Nintendo DS) fell 14%. This clearly is an outcome of devices like the iPhone which are now full gaming systems in their own right"

This is not clear at all. The blog author is simply asserting it without providing any supporting evidence.

<comment><USER3> Because there isn't. There are 40M PSP, in spite of being _4 years old_ there were 193k sold in October. Nintendo DS 84M and almost 500k sold last month. There are only 13M iPhones so far, and it is an order of magnitude away from any significant real share for mobile phones sales. And never mind the _apples and oranges_ pathetic comparison.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone>

[http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081114-october-npd- sa...](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081114-october-npd-sales-the- console-market-is-all-about-pricing.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi Kimboslice/Ryan Spoon.

It seems you submit every entry from your blog, and IMHO there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to admit it, you rarely get votes. Maybe it would be more successful if you change a bit your strategy looking for _higher quality_ posts with more information and analysis and less opinion, in _less_ posts.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=kimboslice>

My $.02

</comment><comment><USER4> Alternate possibility: current handheld game console generation is mature. Everyone who wants a DS or PSP has one.

<comment><USER5> Also, the author doesn't look at actual portable game (software) sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Console gaming died because you can play little games in your DVD menus.

The iPhone is not killing portable gaming devices. My God, look at Monster Hunter in Japan. It's a lack of good software.</comment>


Apple responds to "I'm a PC" - <AUTHOR> http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple_getamac_beancounter_20081019_480x272.mov

<comment><USER2> When did advertisments become about putting your competitor down? Heck even the Coke v/s Pepsi wars didn't stoop this low.

If Apple can't market it's products on their own features and has to rely on this kind of negative adverts I'd say it's really hitting a low-point. The ad kind of pisses me off actually.

<comment><USER3> You know, I'm starting to agree with you.

I've had Vista since it came out and am completely happy with it. I thought the Apple commercials were cute, but off-base. They were funny, and they emphasized Mac good points, so I liked them.

But now it just seems mean. Hell, computer commercials are getting like political commercials, and we've all had enough of that lately.

<comment><USER4> I am sure not a full-time Mac evangelist (I use Linux myself), but have you tried to use a Mac for a month or so?

I was perfectly happy with Windows (XP then) when I decided to check the greener grass on the other side of the fence (Red Hat, first, then Debian, then Ubuntu) and I never thought about going back. Linux is so much more refined under the hood that more than compensates for the lack of software in several niches. I recommended my then girlfriend (now wife) to buy a Mac when she wanted to upgrade her PC and she loves it. I wouldn't recommend Linux for her because the added elegance under the hood would not compensate the limitations in dealing with complex (read quirky) Office documents.

Now, we both cringe our teeth because our employers issued Windows running Dell laptops for us. Argh.

<comment><USER5> ...and I had to use a Mac at work for 12 months and hated every minute of it.

For every person with a convert story to the Mac, there's another person who is quite happy to stick with Windows. I'm not sure why so many people consider the prospect so crazy.

<comment><USER6> With respect to your story, I'm fairly certain there are more convert stories among people who have used the Mac than there are stories of people disliking them.

<comment><USER7> Really? You're certain? How certain are you?

Both me and my wife have had the displeasure of using Macs in the past. I even owned one for about 6 months, a mac mini. I replaced it with Vista and Vista's Media Center pretty much owns Front Row (pfft, don't even get me started). The dock sucks compared to the task bar, you can't even see what's running on the dock. Oh and it's slow.

<comment><USER6> I've never used a Mac Mini, so I don't know how slow it is, though I'd guess that it's not in the same league as Apple's higher-end products.

Out of curiosity, what makes Front Row worse than the Media Center? I rarely use Front Row, but I'd like to know what Vista Media Center does better.

The dock absolutely is better than the task bar. The TB is cluttered - why do I need a box for every open window when I can just see the windows (hence Expose)? The Dock shows you running applications (though not background processes, though that's okay since neither does the task bar), it shows you minimized windows, and it shows you your set launch applications. I've argued before and I still believe that the presence of the dock is what makes OS X the superior system. It focuses on efficiency. The fact that it houses the Trash and the new Stacks system makes it even better: it removes a hell of a lot of clutter.

I've never had a speed problem with my computer, though to be fair I use a MBP with 2 gigs of ram. That said, I can run multiple intensive processes at once and still do casual tasks like browsing without a speed hit.

And despite what you've said, I'm still fairly certain. Meaning no disrespect to you, I've had such a wonderful experience with my computer that I can't possibly imagine people liking Windows more once they get into OS X. Again: your existence shows that I'm not entirely correct, but I'd still believe that of the people who've used both OSes noncasually, more people like the Mac over the PC.

<comment><USER7> I'm not going to get in a back-and-forth with you about what I hate about Macs.

The point is that there are a LOT of people out there that absolutely can't stand Macs. As a matter of fact, besides me and my wife EVERY single person in my office hates them (most of us are programmers and YES, we've actually used them before).

<comment><USER6> Back-and-forth? I asked you a few questions about what you said, and made a few statements of my own. You act like this is a hostile conversation.

I don't understand the sort of mindset that doesn't like the Mac, but I acknowledge that it exists. I would still guess that that mindset is in the minority, however: as a casual OS it is vastly better than Windows. Your office experience is not indicative of the majority of computer users.

<comment><USER7> Oh and I find it amazing that you think you know what the majority of people are thinking.

I'm going off of actual experience talking to actual people that don't live in a bubble. What are you going off of? Your imagination?

<comment><USER6> Most of the products I use are built by people who use the Mac. That's why I looked into getting a Mac in the first place.

37signals. The Big Noob. The Tumblr team. Paul Graham once wrote an article on using the Mac. The Omni Group and Panic and Delicious Monster. Coudal. Rososo and Vimeo and NowDoThis. Facebook. Everywhere I looked, people told me that the Mac was wonderful and they were _fanatic_ about it. So I gave it a try and found that I was equally fanatic.

I'm going off of every designer whose opinion I like and respect. You're going off of people who work in a single environment. If we wanted to be logical, we'd work off of user statistics, where Apple's rated as one of the most satisfactory companies in the nation. They blow competition away. Hence my confidence in my statement. Now, can we drop it, or are you going to continue to make arguments in a debate that's convincing nobody on either side?

<comment><USER7> "I'm going off of every designer whose opinion I like and respect."

For the record, I'm not JUST going off of my peers at work, I happen to belong to a number of user groups and I also happen to visit many, many real working people in corporate workplaces around the world and I'm quite confident that it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a list of awesome web 2.0 developers that absolutely adore ASP.Net...

Anyway, sure, I can drop it as soon as you can drop it :)

<comment><USER6> Sure. Let's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is pretty ironic considering how Mac ads far outnumber Windows ads. Maybe next time around Apple can pull a few of the spots and get Java up to date sooner than a year after an OS release.

<comment><USER6> But do the Apple ads cost as much as this Microsoft campaign? (Disclaimer: I don't know if they do or not. I'm curious myself about this.) Because with Microsoft the cost of the ads kept popping up, especially in regards with Seinfeld. I'm guessing their current campaign is pretty vastly expensive, and I don't know if Apple's campaign is or not.

<comment><USER8> It's just that, regardless of cost-effectiveness, an advertisement that criticizes another company for spending money on advertising is pretty hypocritical.

<comment><USER9> To be honest, Leopard is a lot better than Vista.

<comment><USER7> To be honest...any version of Windows is better than Leopard. Especially if you value choice and flexibility.

<comment><USER6> Leopard's plenty flexible. By choice, do you mean being forced to pay extra money just to get an operating system that hasn't had features removed? Because I know Leopard only costs $80, but it's full-featured and that's what I care about.

Or do you mean the choice to tinker with every little aspect of your computer? Because the system's entirely moddable. I mean, I would never voluntarily hack my computer, because I cherish it the way it is, but I remember there being a lot of buzz about the Gaia Suite, which is a complete redesign of the OS.

Do you mean the lack of programs available? Because you can get MS Office if you _really_ don't like iWork (though iWork is wonderful, in this user's opinion), and you can get replacements for every single iLife program. It's just that most people don't, because iPhoto and iTunes and Mail and GarageBand are really all excellent programs. (The one program on my entire system that I dislike is iDVD, and I feel like one bad program is a small concession to make.)

If by "flexibility" you mean a non-unified system, then you might have a point, but I like knowing that the same keyboard shortcuts work for every single application I have. I like knowing the menus work the same. Hell, I like having a system-wide spellcheck. You've still got choice - I'm sure you _could_ make a new spellchecker - but really, what's the point if it works?

If you're going to diss an operating system in a community of people who really are enthusiastic about the computers that they use, at least make a good point, like the guy who mentioned Apple's Java fark-up. You can't come in blindly making insults and expect anything good to come of it. So how about you come up with some good criticisms, and in return I will try to be _fairly_ critical of your operating system in return.

<comment><USER7> Really? Kind of like the point that I was responding to? The one that made all those good points about how great Leper'd is?

Oh, but since you mentioned it...no I didn't mean any of the things you mentioned. I value the flexibility of being able to do what I want to do, the way I want to do it.

For instance, Apple is always trying to lock you into: their hardware, their iTunes store, their AppStore, their ONE way of doing things (see the pattern here?)

I can buy a Windows laptop that becomes a tablet. I can buy a Gyration (wii style) remote for my Media Center. I can get a CableCARD tuner. I can buy any graphics card under the Sun. Can you do that with Apple? No, instead Apple locks you into two choices: "somewhat expensive" and "really expensive".

Besides hardware, I also have flexibility in how I can build programs. You got xCode and Objective-C and that's all Apple will really help you with. Sure, they let you build programs in other languages like Python but since it's not part of "the ONE true way", they won't really help you much.

Microsoft OTOH supports C, C++, C#, F#, VB.Net and VB classic and they'll actually help you out with any of those (yes, even VB classic if you ask them nicely). Besides all of the officially supported languages, you still have every single language that's popular on *nix right now (Python, Perl, Ruby, etc.). Oh and the environment libraries are simply the best (.Net, WPF, DirectX, etc.) but if they aren't good enough for you there's a billion dollar market for third-party components that you can use. On the Mac? Not so much.

Then we come to user experience. I'm a power user and I could go on for days about how bad I think the Mac user interface is. I simply don't want to get into that with you, it's a very, very long discussion.

Suffice it to say that Apple is very opinionated about the way they think YOU should work and if you can't see that, you're blind. I'll take Windows over OSuX any day thx.

<comment><USER8> From my point of view, Vista could be very secure and usable, but at the end of the day I need to be on a Unix box, and Cygwin doesn't quite cut it.

This isn't in response to any particular comment, but it's based on a personal preference so I'm burying it here.

<comment><USER10> I don't mind running Linux in a virtual machine or PuTTYing into another host. If you have gigabit access to it, does it really matter if you must use two OSes to get the job done?

<comment><USER8> Good point. I'm actually considering the opposite: Linux running XP or Vista virtualized (mostly for browser testing, but also for Photoshop). Right now, I run Leopard with XP virtualized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Now if apple would only realise that quicktime on the net has lost out to flash I would be able to wacth this. Quicktime reminds me of realplayer: buggy on PC's, runs lots of processes in the background I didn't ask for and requires me to install itunes which I don't want.

<comment><USER12> "Slimming down the bloated iTunes 8 installer": <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=554>

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the link, but my point was more that Apple should really watch their step here. They're creating a crappy product that pushes stuff you didn't ask for to potential buyers. And it inflicts heavy damage on their otherwise good reputation.

<comment><USER6> Is it possible that Apple's blind to the Quicktime problem because it's working on the Mac so well? I remember loathing Quicktime on the PC, but since I've moved over to OS X it's moved very quickly at all times. It's possible that its reliability on OS X makes Apple less quick to move and fix things, which is a tad disappointing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's actually pretty hilarious. Ever since the Microsoft "I'm a PC" ads came out I've wondered what it meant for the Apple ads, I guess now we know. Apple has them coming and going, there really isn't much they can do.

Gizmodo had a similar reaction to many of you, that it's a pissing match and normal people don't care, but actually I think it's the opposite. People LOVE the Mac ads, even people who don't use a Mac think they are funny. This is another instance of the Techie echo-camber getting in the way, so what if some hardcore techies don't like them because Linux is superior, btw it's not, the market at large loves the ads and it's getting them to take a better look at Apple computers, end of story.

</comment><comment><USER14> MS and apple... It's kind of cute, like watching kids fight :)

<comment><USER15> I'd say the same thing about the presidential debates. The problem is that these cute fights represent a power struggle of unthinkable magnitude and influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These ads lack class, which is what Apple has always tried to stand for, in design of their products and their company image - anyone remember the Think Different campaign?

I'd rather they work on reducing the difference in price between the pc world and the mac in laptops. It used to be a couple hundred dollars difference, which I'm ok with because that, to me, is the price of OSX, but its getting increasingly harder to justify the expanding price difference.

If/when the OSX86 project gets to the point where their ISO is a no-brainer install of OSX on cheap dell/acer (etc.) laptops then Apple will have to reconsider its pricing.

The irony here (like rain on your wedding day!) is that it's actually Apple with that big pile of cash spending it on advertising, while MSFT goes back to the drawing board to come up with an O/S that more people like...

</comment><comment><USER17> These ads are getting more and more lame. As a fulltime programmer and xp and vista user - I never felt the need to use macs but for their unix base and cool design. Considered buying one recently but settled for a vista pc with much better configuration at half the price. It has been running great for me with not a single issue in past 6 months. For any need of unix system, I run ubuntu or freebsd vmware appliances on my vista.

If apple cannot convince a frugal programmer like me who would love to own a mac - I do not know how even these ads can help them much in the general pc market. I think they will remain limited only to folks who really appreciate their commitment to design and would pay so much extra just for that.

<comment><USER17> And a crazy apple fanboy wants to vote my opinion down - why dont people like me just get it already.

I guess these ads have an audience after all. But then it is a waste of the apple advertising dollar to preach to the choir.

<comment><USER18> One very cynical view is that Apple is mostly in the business of selling 'Taste'. As such, confirming to customers who purchase many, many Apple products over the years that they are somehow better than those who lack their refined sensibilities is not wasted money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the escalating bumper sticker wars between the Jesus fish stickers and the Darwin fish (with legs) stickers... recently I've started seeing "Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish" stickers. I'm still waiting for "Darwin fish eating a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish".

I can't wait to see Microsoft's meta-meta-response.

</comment><comment><USER20> Apple couldnt go any lower these days with thier ads.

The desperation is starting to seep through.

</comment><comment><USER21> As dirty as it is, Microsoft was asking for this.

It's not polite to tease, but when the head of the pack shows they're susceptible to it, it's going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Advertising is the price you pay for being unoriginal."

</comment><comment><USER23> Hilarious!

Ad reflects what differentiates Apple from MS. Original, highly creative and perfect.

<comment><USER24> This confuses me-- what does Apple spend on advertising? It's surely enormous.

<comment><USER25> Apple invests in advertising. There is a difference.

<comment><USER25> Apparently I should have spelled out the difference. Apple sees more than a dollar back from every dollar it invests into advertising. Microsoft will have a very tough time tracing back more than $200 million in revenue to this ad campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder what proportion of Vista users think it needs fixing?

I don't understand the new Microsoft PC adverts either. What does having glasses have to do with anything?

<comment><USER27> I don't think Apple is trying to target users of Vista, just people that are considering moving off XP.

<comment><USER6> Why can't it be they're targeting both?

<comment><USER27> Anyone that has already decided to use Vista is unlikely to change their mind because of the Mac ads. IMHO someone considering an upgrade to Vista is much more likely to be influenced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> low&lame

<comment><USER29> I'm reminded of what Charlton Heston said to Bill Maher. Charlton had taken out full page personal attack ads blasting Barbara Streisand for her anti-gun activism, and Bill Maher asked him if this was really appropriate.

Charlton considered for a moment, and then responded. _I was unkind_ , he admitted, _Not unfair, but unkind._

Now as to lame, is it there some factual error? Is Microsoft actually spending more on fixing Vista than advertising it? My feeling is that if the ad is correctly representing Microsoft's strategy, there is nothing lame about depicting it. The un-lame thing about the ad is that it never says Microsoft is wrong, it shows you the facts through a skit and lets __you __decide what to do.

I wonder if people would react differently if these ads were SNL skits. I have a feeling that some people are so emotional about one company or the other-- which is odd, these are companies, after all, not religious edifices--that they simply cannot sit back and enjoy a good laugh.

<comment><USER30> If you look at Win7 as "Fixing Vista" --> which in some/lots of ways it is - then I'd guess that MS are spending more on "fixing" than on advertising.. Certainly nothing near that ratio though..

The reasonably insightful comment on reddit was that this isn't just a pissing contest between MS and Apple - it's a pissing contest between Crispin Porter and TBWA (the ad agencies)...

<comment><USER29> _The reasonably insightful comment on reddit was that this isn't just a pissing contest between MS and Apple - it's a pissing contest between Crispin Porter and TBWA (the ad agencies)..._

I think one has the more appealing product to market, the other has the bigger budget and the defensive position. It's a fairly textbook marketing battle between the entrenched number one and the upstart niche player.

<comment><USER6> And Crispin is a company that's known for taking pretty daring risks. There was an article that said it was ironic that they're running Microsoft's campaign, because they're a very "Apple-like" company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I liked the ad anyways!!!

</comment><comment><USER32> Brilliant. I love the look on Macs face when he swoops the ad money towards fixing vista and PC swoops it toward advertising.

This is like boxing. Mac ads have had pc's reputation on the ropes in the collective unconscious. All the sudden, after getting beat on barely throwing a punch, PC comes out swinging. Even lands a blow on macs chin, shakes him up a bit. But before PC can land another punch, this uppercut takes out 3 of his teeth and drives the cartilage in his nose into his brain.

Now, everyone who sees both ads will think "Why is microsoft spending $$$ on this without fixing vista?" This ad, and it's partner on censoring vista, just short circuited Microsofts 300 million dollar campaign. This is microsoft being completely outclassed by people who just get it.

<comment><USER33> "Mac ads have had pc's reputation on the ropes in the collective unconscious."

Do you mean Microsoft? If so, it sure as hell hasn't scratched the business world. It's only knicked the consumer world a couple percentage points. I'd reconsider your position.

Further, this is kind of old and becoming a nonissue in today's world. With the migration towards non-platform-specific consumer usage of systems (ie. internet) I don't see as heavy of a need for some bloated consumer operating system.

I'm no huge Windows fan. I've used countless operating systems; C64, Cisco IOS, HP-UX, AS/400, Solaris, Mac OS, Windows 3.x-Vista, Server NT-Server 2k8, Linux derivatives galore, BSD. While developing/working on them and I can say I'm not really impressed with what Apple offers.

Apple is just a gimmick in the world of computing systems. You can claim that consumers aren't nerds that love command lines, but what do you think drives the media infrastructure that panders to all the fun-filled music and video that Apple users love to waste time on? It sure as hell isn't Mac OS.

Computers primarily run the world's business. Steve Jobs' goal is not to get Apple tangled up with "boring" business stuff. Hell, look at the stupid hipster getup the "Mac Guy" wears in the comercials. Jobs put the noose around Apple's neck when he set the goal of being consumer-orientated instead of business-orientated if his plan is digital world domination.

<comment><USER34> There's a lot more to it than just "Apple is just a gimmick..." OS X is unix and unix is the real rising star here. Apple just had the good sense to catch a ride on the bandwagon of that rising star and the competence to do a very good job of it. Apple's market share is still small but it's been growing steadily for years. Today's rate-of-change is tomorrow's level.

<comment><USER34> "bandwagon of that rising star..."

Good grief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ads are really funny, unless you are on the microsoft side.

<comment><USER36> if you are on either 'side,' then you either own stock in one of the companies, or their is something wrong with you.

But that's just my opinion.

<comment><USER6> I'd call myself on Apple's side, mainly because where they go there's an emphasis on polishing things till they shine and really caring about users. I've had a marvelous experience not only with Apple products but with Apple designers. Not so much on the other side.</comment></comment></comment>


Drop out of uni and go freelance? - <AUTHOR>

So here is the question, I hate Uni I'm not a education person, can not revise to save my life and don't enjoy it. Is it the right move to drop out and go freelance? While teaching my self JavaScript, PHP and ruby? There's no point doing something you dont enjoy? Right? <comment><USER3> A few things to think about. This isn't advice, they are questions that might help you think about the right things.

If you can't apply yourself to studying things that you're not totally fascinated by (but which might be useful in ways you can't yet imagine) what makes you think you'll be able to deal with the tedious parts of freelancing, like finding clients, tracking your time, invoicing, bookkeeping, tax returns, documentation, and half a hundred tedious other tasks?

Where is your portfolio? What are your skills? You talk about teaching yourself JavaScript, PHP and Ruby, what is it that you can do already?

Where are you going to get your clients from? How much will you charge them? What is your expected cash-flow? How will you support yourself while looking for you first 20 gigs?

There's more, but I'm certainly not going to offer advice or opinions until I know more about who you are and what you can do. Even then, why are you seeking validation from a group of strangers? I would guess that you've made up your mind, and are asking the question of people who you know, _en masse,_ to be anti-formal education.

Or have I got that wrong?

So my suggestion is this: write a proper blog post outlining your plans, and pointing at work you've done. Then let people critique that.

And yes, sometimes there is a point in doing stuff you don't enjoy. I don't enjoy invoicing, bookkeeping, or doing my tax return, just to give three examples. In truth, I don't much enjoy eating either, but that's a different story.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason i am thinking about dropping out of uni isn't because i don't enjoy it as such its more that the education system isn't for me. I am not someone who does great in exams and don't enjoy the british education system.

My portfolio as the moment is one humble website.. <http://breakanycontract.com/>

Its not great but its a start, and everyone has to start somewhere right?

The reason i ask because i wondered if other people maybe have been in the same boat as me and could offer some insight.

I also have my site which is a WIP.. www.joshhornby.co.uk

<comment><USER3> What are you studying? What Uni are you at? How are you spending your spare time? Are you already learning Ruby? PHP? Python? Do any uni departments offer service courses in these subjects?

Uni isn't for everyone, but there's a _lot_ to be gained if you use your time well, far, far more than you think. If you want to be a freelancer/entrepreneur/business person then you need to be able to think laterally, and make the most of every situation. Uni can be expensive, but there are more opportunities there than there are outside.

And speaking entirely for myself, you'd make a better impression if you correctly put apostrophes in "it's" and correctly capitalised "I". These things make a difference if you want to impress people and get them to give you money. The impression here is that you don't pay attention to the sort of nit-picking detail that makes a difference in a web site.

And if I sound harsh, wait till you get your first real client from the wild. And in the interests of full disclosure, I got a PhD and did enjoy my time at university, but I did a _lot_ of stuff outside my coursework/studies, and the benefits from that are still being felt 30 years later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Multimedia Internet Technology at Salford Uni. I am not currently working on any of these no, but i feel these will be important for future success?

Outside of uni i am trying to understand how websites are build and the skills needed. And i take on board your comment on the small details, this is something i do need to work on.

<comment><USER3> Sounds a lot to me like you're on the wrong course, and you're not learning about what you want to be doing.

I strongly urge you to find a lecturer in the department and tell them that the course is nothing like you expected, that you're not really interested in the material being presented, and that you'd like to be challenged more, and see what they say. If you're intended to drop out anyway then you have very little to lose from this, and possibly everything to gain.

Tell them that when studying stuff you find interesting you have no trouble putting in the work and time. Ask if it's possible to design your own course of study.

If you go into freelancing, these sorts of negotiations will be essential. If you can't do it now, you need to learn. If you don't want to bother, what makes you think you'll be able to make a living freelancing? Studying something you're not really interested in is nastily similar to finishing the last fiddly bits of a web site before getting paid.

Leaving now is a potential waste of a great opportunity. Look to exploit it before you discard it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for you advice. But the point still remains that exams and all the education learning side aren't for me. Teaching my self and learning on the job so to speak sounds much more like me.

<comment><USER3> That's fair enough. It sounds like you've made up your mind, so I wish the the very best.

There are people here on HN and in other places who can help and offer advice. My advice now is to do stuff, lots of stuff, to show that you've done the work and are willing and able to take advantage of advice they offer.

Remember, 90% of everything is crap, so you need to do 10, perhaps 20 or even 30 times as much work as you want for your final output.

Volume, along with introspection (so-called "deliberate practice [1]) and "taste" [2] will be your friends.

[1] [http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Do_Lot...](http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Do_Lots_of_Deliberate_Practice)

[2] <http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> To all of the above, thank you for your feedback. My plan is to try and get through the next month of term and pass the exams. I then have the whole of summer to work on things and see if I can gain some experience. I need to give my self as many 'open doors' as I can. Thanks again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you in the UK?

There are significant financial implications to dropping out; especially if you might ever want to go to university again.

You'll also need to explain the gap to potential employers, but I guess some solid freelancing would be okay on your CV.

I suggest you start talking to people at your University and explain the problems you're having. They should be able to provide some help.

There's not much you can do about hating it. But there are things you can do about revision. There are many different systems for revision and note-taking.

Cornell Notes: (<http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/cornellnotes.html>)

Study Skills: (<http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/study.html>)

Doing something you don't enjoy shows employers that you have the ability to grind through unpleasant experiences. It prepares you for work - <USER2> jobs are great, but often there are irritants.

How many hours are you doing at Uni? Now include the extra hours you spend at home / library. Now include some free time for social activity. Now include some time for paid work. Do you have 15 - 30 minutes left per day? That's time that can be used for learning Javascript, PHP, and Ruby.

In my opinion discipline is a learned skill. It's a good idea to learn it early, if at all possible.

Having said all this, if university is actively making you miserable, and you think you're at risk of depression, then you need to get better advice. You could defer, or you could drop out.

And please, don't think that dropping out is bad. It's certainly a valid choice.

Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Consider the experience at Uni as a challenge. Try and do your best to make it through, it is valuable and it gives you the confidence to make it through something your not particularly enjoying (which will happen again either in the work place or freelancing) but it will also keep your social network quite large and give you a qualification which in the UK does matter. See if you can transfer onto a course that is more interesting to you, or at least some modules. The uni probably has an advisor you can speak to about it. What year are you in?

I struggled with exams, but I found that at uni a large percentage of the assessments was based on assignments and projects. This meant I did not have to worry so much about the exams and was able to get good marks.

Enjoy uni, it really is a good experience and I wish I could go back (I am aware that technically I could, but age wouldn't be on my side this time)!

</comment><comment><USER6> Freelance without a portfolio of completed projects or strong skills sounds like a recipe for hard times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes this is a worry. How do I get the experience though?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Freelance while at Uni? I did that and I was studying a Chemistry degree...

</comment><comment><USER8> I also dropped out of Uni, in my case because I was hiding my real orientation behind copious amounts of alcohol, and went on to freelance and did quite well.

I'm still wish I finished though, I still get uncomfortable when I have to share that I didn't finish Uni, I still defend myself when the issue comes up and I still wonder what my life would have been like if I did finish.

I always told myself that I was smart enough to finish but just didn't want to. Recently a friend said to me that if I _really_ was that smart, I would've finished it anyhow, which really hit home.

So my advice, if you're really _that_ smart just finish it next to all your other stuff. If you're not really _that_ smart, just grind it out and become a stronger (and smarter) man through it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It bores me to death and the time taken learning about pointless stuff could be used learning something useful in my eyes anyway. My only worry is if I go freelance I'll drop off the radar, my plan is freelance then go to some design studios show them my work and say please please please hire me!!

<comment><USER9> What's stopping you doing that now in your free time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stay in UNI, and do freelance at the same time. That way, by the time you finish, you'll have a decent client base from which to do freelancing full- time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, and looks like i will be heading that way.</comment></comment>


How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive, Again - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-learning/how-to-be-the-luckiest-person-alive-again-662e80cd9954#.d5xxji4j3 <comment><USER2> I thought this was going to tell me how to become Eric Schmidt.</comment>


Maybe Normalizing Isn't Normal - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001152.html

<comment><USER2> That 6 join query is wrong, and the rest of the article follows from that incorrect join.

Why would you ever want a query that returned the user data multiple times, once for every combination of screen_name and phone_number?!? No real site would ever want to do that.

If you need phone number, you get phone numbers, if you need screen names, you get those - but why would you need every possible combination of phone number and screen_name?

He's simply wrong. Speeding up joins is never a reason to denormalize for the simple reason that it doesn't!

A valid reason to denormalize is to precalculate data, which he touches on very briefly. But you always write that twice: once normalized, and that's the primary data, and then again, the "cached/precalculated" version. You should always be able to regenerate that from the normalized data.

OK, one final reason to denormalize which he didn't even write: if you need to do a where clause from one table, but the order by from a different table, you need to denormalize because you can not create a combined index from both tables. (Databases with function indexes might be able to but that's pretty complicated.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Firstly, he has misunderstood database design. The design that the system analysts product will be in 3NF because their job is to understand the data in its most abstract sense. They will also specify - again, fully normalized - the main queries that will need to be run. Then it will go to the implementors who will transform the tables and the queries for performance. Denormalizing too early is a premature optimization. Not denormalizing at all is inexperienced.

Secondly, if you need to scale you are most likely using a query cache (e.g. Tangosol) between your RDBMS and your middle tier, so you can preserve a far cleaner data model now then you could back in the day.

<comment><USER4> I think a lot of people also completely miss the fact that there is more then one way to have a normalized DB. Much like OO design, there's a big gap between smart,good, efficient implementations and the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Signs, of a certain type:

1\. A post about relational databases where the word "relation" is never used. Resulting in...

2\. Missing the whole idea/point of relational databases--that relations are logical data structures, not physical data structures. Resulting in...

3\. Thinking that normalization applies to the physical table structure, rather than the logical relation structure. And...

4\. Not realizing that there are only 3 relations being represented by the 6-table representation. Resulting in...

5\. A lot of writing about an absurd false dichotomy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not a db expert, but I can't imagine joining tables is much of a problem. At least in theory, the db should be able to handle the tables internally as if it was only one table. Not sure if all db engines would be good enough at optimizing, but it is probably one of the easier approaches to performance tuning. Therefore I would expect that most db engines already handle that nicely.

I think it is OK to cache some things, like aggregated values (for example how many friends does a user have). But those cached values (or views) I would not consider part of the actual base data model. Even though those values might be stored in the same db, I would consider them to be another layer in a way.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what you mean by "handle the tables internally", but as a really rough exercise, you can think of just raw table reads.

If you have 6 tables that need joined, you're going to need to "look through" each to find the ones with a matching id. If it's all one table it's essentially just one read.

Now, there are many many caveats to all of this (how indexes are setup, relative sizes of tables, etc. but in general it is more computationally expensive to do more joins).

<comment><USER6> In theory the db could keep the separate tables in one table internally. But granted, probably it won't always do so.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this is called a materialized view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not mentioned in the article, but I think the advent of services like Amazon SDB and Google App Engine's datastore (ala BigTable), where traditional joins are not possible is effecting application design.

It's probably a worthwhile exercise to think about how you would model your data if you needed to port it to GAE/AWS SDB, just to figure out where the faults in your original data model were.

</comment><comment><USER9> Indexing your heavily used queries and page/view caching are also good alternatives to denormalization.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Duplicated data and synchronization problems are often overstated and relatively easy to work around with cron jobs._

Yikes, I hope he's not actually doing that!

</comment><comment><USER11> Normalization is not an either/or proposition.

You can have one table, normalize all the way 4th normal form, or stop anywhere in between, depending on the requirements of your app. You can use multi-values within fields to simplify your schema. You can also write your own processes to extract data, without using just pure SQL.

There's more than one way to do things, all with pros and cons. Naturally, in the early phases of your project, you're probably best off insuring the integrity of your data (that is, normalize) and worry about scaling later.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yea, I think this article is just flaunted stupidity.

The author assumes that all times where _any_ user information is needed, that _all_ the information about that user will be needed. That is silly. Secondly, they completely ignores the billion and one problems he will now have.

For example, how do you ensure that the same AIM username is not used on multiple accounts? With the normalized schema, this is trivially done via a unique constraint on the user_id, screen_name, im_service triplet (probably the 3 make up the composite primary key of the table anyway, so viola, consistent data is ensured).

With the de-normalized schema, you are hopelessly fucked. All data consistency would be forced into some kind of ugly trigger.

Finally, joins are really-really-really fast for things like this. Frankly, the real thing that bites you is inconsistent data that violates basic assumptions your application makes, leading to unintended behavior of your application, most often exceptions that are not handled reasonably. In this case, for example, you might have a way to find your friend via AIM login name, but your app blows up when 2 seperate users are returned by the query due to there being 2 results (or you or your orm only get the first result, making finding the actual friend impossible).

And on and on. It is better to have slower fully reliable data than faster bullshit.</comment>


Cellphones on planes within a year? - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7050576.stm

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope not. Then the jerk talking loudly on his cellphone in the row behind you will keep it up the whole flight.</comment>


Entrepreneur Fortune Cookie - <AUTHOR> http://www.EntrepreneurFortunes.com

<comment><USER2> I like the idea.

It's slow to load in 3rd world connections (ie. Silicon Valley), so change the design to use static images with future expires and use text/css for the fortune text.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For sure, this was a rough prototype. code can be cleaned up / CDN, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you guys have any suggestions :)</comment>


Ask HN: Who is already sick of all of these "Like" buttons plastered everywhere? - <AUTHOR>

I hope a less evil alternative emerges shortly, because it's already starting to get ridiculous even just a couple days after being introduced. <comment><USER2> I completely ignore all that social networking stuff; my brain sees them as ads and blocks them subconsciously.

<comment><USER3> I'm the same way. I often read articles that I would like to share with people, but since I'm more interested in the ensuing discussion, I'd rather directly link a person during a conversation (or as a way to start one) rather than throw it at my Facebook page or similar.

I consider sites like HN quite different, as that is their sole purpose :)

<comment><USER4> Yea that stuff is totally blocked out of my mind. I use Facebook to connect with my friends and family, and will share a link occasionally if it really pertains to me. For the most part, though, I don't like spamming mass amounts of data to friends. The only benefit I see to things like delicious and other "social bookmarking" tools is the fact that they're "up in the cloud", aka, backed up somewhere away from my browser config folder.

Has anyone noticed the new Mahalo-esque stuff they're doing? All of your hobbies, movies, music, etc... that they're making part of this social graph is now linked together a lot better.

Example, one of my interests (for fun) is "underwater basket weaving" which now links to a page like this, [http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Underwater- basket-weaving/1...](http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Underwater-basket- weaving/111910742153434)

"Our goal is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic. If you have a passion for Underwater basket weaving, sign up and we'll let you know when we're ready for your help."

Pretty crazy.

<comment><USER5> Do people really use the whole "social bookmarking" part of Delicious? I mean, I've tagged a few things for:whomever, but 99% of my usage has been bookmarking stuff for myself, or looking for stuff I've bookmarked.

<comment><USER6> I use it pretty heavily. It's one of the main ways I share links with friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can we re-phrase the question in less of a reddit-style way?What's the discussion we want to have behind this?

<comment><USER8> I can't agree more. Look at the first comment: 20 karma points, and no real substance, hackerish or otherwise.

I'd like to see a discussion about (a) what it actually means to "like" something, (b) what demographics currently use the "like" buttons (c) are there any startup ideas to revolutionize the distribution of information etc.

<comment><USER9> Clicking "like" is like saying I have nothing to actually contribute but I want to feel like I'm participating. Also, I guess it stops the thousands of comments that would just say "I agree," "Yeah" or whatever?

But what good is a "like" button if there is no "dislike/hate" button?

<comment><USER10> > But what good is a "like" button if there is no "dislike/hate" button?

That's how HN is if you're under the karma threshold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Poor digg, that was supposed to be their trick

<comment><USER12> People may end up preferring liking to digging (though who knows at this point), but when it comes to actively looking for interesting content, digg's still got something to hang onto. It begs the question, however, whether facebook will ever make an attempt to organize all of the outside links users promote so that such content becomes discoverable by topic and not just incidental lines on the newsfeed?

<comment><USER13> On some pages, the number of affiliate aggregator upvote links takes up some significant portion of the page (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.). It would make sense for somebody to aggregate the aggregators, a meta-aggregator if you will, and just have one button on the page that sends it to all of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can't say I've noticed one yet. :(

<comment><USER15> Surely you mean ":)"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I added the following rule to Adblock plus:

       * facebook.com/plugins*

The iframes disappear seamlessly.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is "Who else" a legitimate question that you can "ask HN" nowadays? I've been gone for a while.

</comment><comment><USER18> Simple solution: Complainbook.com. The web is viewed through a frame that that adds Dislike buttons to every piece of content. It aggregates what people are disliking and recommends things to the user that they will be sure to hate. It will instantly gain a high market share amongst content degregators, and Facebook will see everyone disliking their Like buttons with the Dislike button and be less evil.

It would also include _location based_ features where users upload geotags of places they've never been, nor would want to go to.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not only are they bad, they slow down the rendering speed of the pages they're on.

<http://twitter.com/SlexAxton/status/12663859611>

<comment><USER20> We use it via FBML and JavaScript SDK and the slow down seems to be minimal. We load their script right before </body>.

Biggest annoyance is that it doesn't degrade very gracefully when FB has availability problems, you get a white square in the page in Firefox.

<comment><USER21> I think they can solve it when using Javascript SDK on modern browsers. IFRAME could be loaded offscreen and when it finishes then it does postMessage to notify the parent window. Javascript SDK injector then unhides the IFRAME.

Easy to do, but they are probably busy doing other stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _"I hope a less evil alternative emerges shortly"_

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

</comment><comment><USER23> You can block them in Firefox by using the RequestPolicy plugin. At least, I assume that you can, because I am not actually seeing any ;o)

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9727>

At first it seems like overkill, because it blocks sites from accessing data from other sites, but you can enable certain sites (either globally or on a per-site basis) and it remembers those, so after a little playing around, sites you visit frequently look quite normal.

It's also very interesting seeing how people assemble sites these days...

</comment><comment><USER24> I thought things were getting ridiculous with all the buzz, digg, sphere, reddit buttons already. From what I can see, those are being replaced with a single option (though I admit, I haven't seen many of the facebook implementations yet).

It is nice to have a 'standard' rather than voting for multiple items. At the same time, how much is liking something really doing for ya?

I don't think it has the benefit of a community like HN, so Facebook doesn't have it all yet.

<comment><USER25> Do you think reddit (or twitter or digg or stumbleupon) users will start liking the "like" and prefer it to replace other buttons? Completely agreeing about the ridiculous aspect of so many buttons though.

<comment><USER24> I don't know that it has to be an if/else situation. I do suspect sites will start putting only the 'like' button, as it is cleaner, likely loads the page faster, and has such a larger audience.

At the same time, I suspect people will still visit digg, reddit, etal to find new articles, and up vote them there.

However, I wouldn't be surprised to see sites like Digg get significantly less posts added.

I hope we don't see the same suspected decline here on HN, as my friends on FB aren't HN types.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I haven't noticed this yet. Would someone kindly point me towards an example?

<comment> j-g-faustus <http://techcrunch.com/>

Every story has a Like, a Buzz and a Retweet button.

<comment><USER27> The first story I checked had 422 retweets and only 10 likes. Maybe FB is not taking over the internet yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm just seeing a lot of broken iframes because I've now blocked facebook & their subdomains on my personal machine.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why do we need all these buttons to do things we already all have our own specific ways of doing?

If you want to bookmark something, bookmark it in the way you know how (in browser, Delicious, etc). If you want to tweet about something, go tweet about it in the client of your choice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't care for the unnormalized "number of diggs/tweets/karma" etc.

I'd actually use the "like" buttons if they _learned_ what I liked/disliked, rather than just being there to show off an unnormalized and somewhat meaningless figure.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's the new "tweet this" -- a stupid trend people will wonder about in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER31> Or any kind of sharing widgets, for that matter. If only web admins would trust visitors to have their own bookmarklets or extensions, so that pages wouldn't have all the cruft.

</comment><comment><USER32> I actually like them.

But someone could make a quick userscript to hide them :-)

Edit:

      // ==UserScript==
      // @name           I-Dont-Like-The-New-Facebook-Like
      // @namespace      I-Dont-Like-The-New-Facebook-Like
      // @description    Hide all Facebook 'Like' buttons
      // @include        *
      // ==/UserScript==

      (function () {
      	var i = document.getElementsByTagName('iframe');
      	if(i) {
      		for(e in i) {
      			if(i[e].src.match(/http\:\/\/www.facebook.com\/widgets\/like.php/gi)) {
      				i[e].style.display = 'none';
      				i[e].style.visibility = 'hidden';
      			}
      		}
      	}
      })();

</comment><comment><USER25> "food and shows"- that's what the masses want, unfortunately

<comment><USER33> I think "bread and circuses" is more standard :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have iframes globally disabled with only few websites allowed to use them. Try it.

</comment><comment><USER35> <\--- What, you mean like that?

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish there was a "Like" button on this post.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wish this topic had a Like button!

<comment><USER37> Try this one; <http://youlik.es/l/4f> (this site lets you create a like button things on the web)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What do you mean by "less evil"? The whole point of the "Like" button is that it's universal. Something being mildly annoying is not "evil" by any stretch of the imagination.</comment>


RSkit, responsive UI framework online - navid-taheri Http://rs-uikit.nailfashionsweden.se <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like their site has some responsive issues itself. If you scale down the width of the browser, the menu appears overlaid on elements at a certain point.</comment>


Free Speech - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/07/08/lefties-hate-on-liberal-open-letter-on-free-speech/ <comment><USER2> > Our position as beneficiaries of the open society requires us to serve as > guardians of it.

The failure to live up to that ideal reminds me of this prescient Dune quote:

 _When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles._</comment>