Natural: Natural Language Processing in Node JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NaturalNode/natural

<comment><USER2> Textbook example of why geeks [0] shouldn't be allowed to name projects.

 _"What's the name of that package?"

"Natural!"

[runs off to Google to find "natural language processing", gets 9 million hits (as of today)]

"Dammit!"_

[0] I'm a geek, too, and my project names also suck.

<comment><USER3> If you're using search.npmjs.org it comes up as the first result. I guess I don't see the issue.

<comment><USER4> Because the only time you try to find a project is on search.npmjs.org?

This is the same problem as "Go". The community has to develop a different term for googling the project than the project's name.

<comment><USER3> Yes. If I need to find a module for a node project, NPM is the best place to find it. Many languages/frameworks have a centralized repository to find modules/plugins/extensions.

NPM's search isn't perfect (I don't think you'll find anyone who would argue that it is). The fact that it's all AJAX and isn't well indexed makes it even worse for the people who are google'ing a project. In a perfect world you'd be able to find projects easily however you want to. We live in a flawed world, and NPM's search does a good-enough job of helping you find a module, especially if you know it's name. You can complain about it not being how you'd like, but there's a workable, practical system in place now that you can use. I just don't understand the complaint.

<comment><USER4> Documentation, examples, and help. There are plenty of reasons to google for a project that wouldn't involve using NPM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why would you need an asynchronous callback-based server to do NL? Seems like a strange fit? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> I think they're just using Node as a JavaScript runtime. It offers a bunch of libraries, an interpreter (V8), a package manager and so on. Additionally, it's more and more likely to be in your package manager, so it's easy to install.

Basically, it's like having an NLP library for Python--it's not just for the language but for the whole ecosystem. The difference is that JavaScript as a language does not provide stuff like modules, so you have to get that from somewhere else, in this case Node.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's great to see more useful libraries like this for node. I recently built a sentiment analysis module for node (<https://github.com/thinkroth/Sentimental>). I think there's a need for more lower-level libraries like 'Natural' as well as higher-level libraries like 'Sentimental' that focus on one thing and work without much setup.

</comment><comment><USER7> Python hackers should check out NLTK, if they don't already know it.

<comment><USER8> Seconded. I'm new to both NLP and Python, but going through the (free) book Natural Language Processing with Python has been remarkably easy and productive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't tried running this, but I just spent a little time reading through some of the code. Looks cool: Chris and Rob have made what looks like a good start using Javascript for NLP, wrapped up to use with Node.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is cool. Only too bad that this only for node. Might also be useful in the browser.

Also, is radii really the plural of radius? Looks odd.

<comment><USER11> Browser-ifying most of the algorithms is something I had in mind. I'd love to find some people to help! Volunteers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool! I'm interested in NLP and might want to help out on this. Do you have a TODO list / roadmap yet?

<comment><USER11> Currently brainstorming where to take it from here. As mentioned above browser-ifying things is in the cards, and I'm interested in beefing up the classifiers, adding clustering & POS tagging.

Also the current inflection functionality is crappy and needs to be rethought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome right here.</comment>


Gandi.net launches Platform as a Service beta - <AUTHOR> http://www.gandi.net/hosting/simple/paas#nav

<comment><USER2> Is it only me or the latest iteration of "Platform-as-a-Service" offerings doesn't differ at all from shared hosting?

<comment><USER3> Also really not a fan of "no bullshit".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've got a few VPSs with Gandi, this looks like a minor extension of that. The VPSs perform well, their control panel is a bit verbose but does the trick....

Where it all falls down is their bizare "pre-pay/top-up" payment system. You have to set your card to periodically to-up your account with the exact amount you need. I really hope they change this if they are going to an even more unpredictable usage plan.

If you opt-out of the pre-pay system, you have to purchase each little component (A vps here, some hard-disk there) as seperate transactions... it's a real pain.

<comment><USER5> I had VPSes with Gandi, but switched to Linode. Executing operatings with the Gandi control panel had become slower and slower and the renewal proces became more painful (I had to renew server resources -> pay with PayPal -> cancel renewal because it wouldn't proceed -> renew server resources -> pay with prepaid account that was just credited via PayPal).

<comment><USER6> I have one VPS there because their bandwidth pricing and that's it. They are a few years behing linode in other aspects.

For instance, you have to create a fixed sized partition and you can't change that number on the setup. You have to login on SSH, google and do the resizing manually. That goes against what I would expect for a "no bullshit" hosting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish they'd figure out how to make their web site work. This morning I've spent quite a bit of time trying to change the settings of one of my domains: every time I chose it, they'd come up with a page with a pink background and an uncanny ability to replicate itself. You could eventually catch a glimpse of a link and follow it, but it was not easy. And forget about doing it with a browser other than Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love gandi as a DNS provider. One thing to be aware of is that they are based in europe and your credit card company my ding you with a foreign transaction fee if you use them.

</comment><comment><USER9> FYI, when signing up the "optional" website address field is actually required.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think that tagline is going to hurt them more than the "ha, these guys are cool" factor will help them.

<comment><USER11> I think their tagline is a perfect differentiator from the market leader in the domain registration business. Blunt is effective, especially when it's what users of that leading vendor are actively trying to get away from "bullshit".</comment></comment>


You've convinced me boss, I'll work with Windev and PC Soft - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clement.delafargue.name/posts/2014-05-01-youve-convinced-me-boss-ill-work-with-windev-and-pc-soft.html

<comment><USER2> Here is a photo from a WINDEV seminar: [http://www.windev.com/img/windev/hd/windev.jpg](http://www.windev.com/img/windev/hd/windev.jpg) (faces blurred to protect the innocent)

<comment><USER3> Looks like a cult meeting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I pity the poor IT worker who receives that at work and has to explain to management why he brought and adult magazine to work. It looks like a Dilbert comic in the waiting.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't really like that kind of advertisement in our workplace.

He brought it there just to share the WTF moments. PCSoft never ceases to amaze us. A very bad language and an even worse marketing strategy, but the company still works...

<comment><USER4> I wasn't thinking this specific case, but just some person in some "big corp".

You sound reasonable, I've witnessed the unreasonable in management. I still shiver at the thought of a manager who didn't understand why his worker who performed emergency support after being woken at home and driving to work at 1AM was not wearing the required suit the next morning. I can only imagine his reaction upon seeing this is some pour IT worker's mailbox.

<comment><USER5> It was sent to my personal address. Which I've never gave them.

<comment><USER4> Wow, that's a bit of evil right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Holy shit, I just had a flashback to _Incite_ magazine and _PCXL_.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wait, what - this is not from the nineties?

<comment><USER7> It looks like it's from france, they tend to do things a little _differently_.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, I've found France to be better than SV in this regard. Thankfully windev is just one company stuck in the 90s.</comment></comment></comment>


The Luxury Homes That Torture and Your Tax Dollars Built - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/12/the-beach-houses-that-torture-built.html

<comment><USER2> This article has substantially more historical and clinical context than I expected, and may of interest to hackers for that reason.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use an app to keep track of all your relationships? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Can you clarify what aspect of the relationship you intend on tracking ?

If it is going to be a "how frequently do I stay in touch with X", I might consider it since it will be nice to get an automated reminder to text/call this person.

<comment><AUTHOR> That will be one of the key features I'm looking at.

The most basic could be birthdays but also about just keeping in touch with people who haven't spoken with in awhile.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly the reason I created [https://touchingbase.io](https://touchingbase.io) for.

<comment><USER4> FYI, your blog is broken: [http://blog.touchingbase.io/](http://blog.touchingbase.io/). I get a "Error establishing a database connection" message when trying to visit that URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would use an app to store/download information about my contacts and then quiz me about such questions as:

\- What is the name that goes with this face?

\- What are some of the interests or conversation topics that this person enjoys?

\- What topics should I avoid mentioning around this person?

<comment><AUTHOR> In a way, helping you try to remember things about your contact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I absolutely would but I haven't seen one good enough that is easy to use and lets me own my data. So it's just markdown files for now. Marcus Vorwaller has some good insight into why things are currently lacking and what features are important in personal knowledgebases: [http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/2015/12/14/personal- knowledg...](http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/2015/12/14/personal- knowledgebases/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Has there been anything that comes close to being easy to use? Would the point about owning your data mean you'd stay away from any cloud-based app?

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

[EDIT: Checked out link] Great ideas and thoughts. I agree with some of the features myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I already do. In Workflowy, I have a section dedicated to people I've met that I work on chronologically. If they're ~really~ special they even make it into my daily diary. Basically I write their name, profession/gig/along with where I met them and maybe a little quip or fact they dropped. It works wonders for networking and building a repertoire with people.

I am fairly social, but I have a _big_ problem with remembering names. This alleviates a lot of this, and I've found that people genuinely appreciate when you remember what they tell you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. I'd love to learn more about your process.

Also, what made you felt like you had to do this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It already exists:

[https://github.com/JacobEvelyn/friends](https://github.com/JacobEvelyn/friends)

<comment><USER9> Do you use this? I'm not following why you would want to track your free time in this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I built an iOS app to tackle this issue: [https://itunes.apple.com/tc/app/butter-contacts- reminders/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/tc/app/butter-contacts- reminders/id966767988?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER11> Id use an app that helps me build few quality relationships. Facebook, Linked or others with thousands of followers are not for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you envision an app would help you to build quality relationships?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, if it did it all in the background like a good butler and then politely reminded me when I was lagging.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the vision!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No, but note that CRMs are widely used.

</comment><comment><USER14> No

</comment><comment><USER15> Not really, no</comment>


Elon Musk: "Anyone relying on Lidar is doomed." Experts: Maybe not - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/elon-musk-says-driverless-cars-dont-need-lidar-experts-arent-so-sure/ <comment><USER2> The take home point here is this:

"But if Tesla ultimately succeeds, it won't be because it's easier to achieve full autonomy without lidar than with it. It will simply be because Tesla began large-scale data collection from cameras long before other carmakers.

In short, the fact that Tesla backed itself into a corner by promising customers full autonomy without lidar doesn't prove that other companies won't find lidar helpful to their own self-driving efforts."

A great summary. The only thing it misses is that lidar is getting more and more like a depth camera. SPADs can sense ambient light and create 2D images that are perfectly correlated to 3D images, making it possible to apply 2D algorithms to 3D data [1].

[1] [https://www.ouster.io/blog-posts/2018/8/31/the-camera-is- in-...](https://www.ouster.io/blog-posts/2018/8/31/the-camera-is-in-the-lidar)</comment>


Beautiful stop-motion engine rebuild [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.howacarworks.com/blog/stop-motion-engine-rebuild <comment><USER2> Great work that evoked a lot of memories for me.

When I was 15, my dad and I bought an Austin Healey Sprite from a junkyard, which in addition to the engine under the bonnet also happened to have a complete spare engine in the passenger seat.

We made a blind guess at which engine was "better", and overhauled that one. It was a great opportunity to learn practical things about cars, but also deeper lessons in patience/gumption (Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, comes across someone who is purchasing an entire motorcycle in loose parts. "He'll know something about motorcycles before he gets those together....and that's the best way to learn, too.").

The only problem was that on reassembly, we couldn't get our newly overhauled engine to start. We tried everything we could think of. We were unfamiliar with the peculiarities of British cars of that era, and it took us more than a few hours to notice and comprehend the words conveniently printed right there on the speedometer: "Positive Earth".

We switched the battery wiring so that the positive terminal connected to the car's ground, and she fired right up....at 2 o'clock in the morning in our suburban garage. What a great memory.

We hadn't yet hooked up the exhaust, so the throaty roar of the engine awakened more than a few neighbors.

Unlike the video shown, we ended up with more than a few leftover parts.

The little 4-cylinder ran just fine without them.

<comment><USER3> Oh yes, the wonders of British automotive engineering. You haven't felt the _joy_ of it until an electrical issue appears. Which is often the case. Did you ever enjoy letting out the Lucas magic smoke? Preferably from behind the dash area... :)

Do you still have the car?

<comment><USER2> Sadly, we sold it before I went off to school.

But I later bought a bright orange '64 Triumph Spitfire ($400!), and spent many interesting hours tweaking the engine (with its infamous twin carburetors), until an unfortunate failure in judgment occurred on the Potrero Grade.

We were able to put the engine into a close friend's Triumph, so it's possible that beautiful little temperamental engine lives on, somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work. Except I expected the music to stop and to _hear_ that engine run in the last few seconds of the clip.

</comment><comment><USER5> At 1:56, it appears that the old motor suffered from the infamous valve-in- piston design flaw :)

If you enjoy hacking, do yourself a favor and get your hands on a small engine with a horizontal crank. They're harder to find than vertical crank motors, but much easier to run on a bench and more closely resemble a car engine. Take it apart and put it back together again. If you're not going to put the engine back in service, there is very little you can get wrong. Don't worry about torque specs or gasket quality. Just get your hands dirty! It's great fun.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had too many people ask me, "What's the point to an older automobile?", or lately, "Why do you like/collect those old watches?"

My answer is usually, "Yea, you're right--I should look into new stuff?"

I then ask about that old Toyota truck with the 22r engine collecting leafs on the street. "Do you want to sell?" Oh yea, if you have any old watches--I buy those too?"

Years ago I got tired of trying to explain aesthetics, or the beauty of a well designed mechanical object.

I tried to put a new stereo in a later model Ford this weekend. I told a family relative, I need to access one of the computers with a scan tool. I think I need a bi-directional scan tool--which I don't have. I put a portable radio on the passenger seat, until I figure how to change the radio?

<comment><USER7> ugh, would much rather work on an older car - more space, less electronics

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just when I was thinking, how is it possible there were no leftovers?

Bravo!

<comment><USER9> I always laugh when I see the ending. I'm still at the ThinkPad mainboard screws level. Soon I'll enjoy car engine screws.

<comment><USER10> We call them "shipping screws", because they're in there when the thing ships, but clearly aren't required for proper function.

Did the bloke in the video ever find out what the missing bits were for? Or were they dupes that he got with the replacement assembly, and he'd already got them from the original assembly (or vice versa)?

<comment><USER9> Well depends on what you mean by proper. It rolls but it might break down at 30mph or even explode at 70.

I didn't watch any of his other videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love this car. It's beautiful and reminds me of the jaguar e-type. I wasn't even born during this time but I always appreciate a good car. Always amazes me how they were able to build all these things back when they didn't have cad software.

The comments on youtube from fedoras tho...

<comment><USER12> Something I always wonder is just how well they were able to produce symmetry in their designs, when it was all sculpted (usually out of clay) .. before CAD, it had to have been done with pure artistic sensibility, and it worked so well .. I wonder if we've lost something of the minor, subtle imperfections that are seemingly observed at a subconscious layer, and which seem to imbue a degree of affinity for those old designs...

<comment><USER13> I was a car nut long before I became a computer guy...I vaguely recollect something about this. I believe they would have created a series of cardboard templates, mirror images for left and right, about one inch apart along the length of the contour, front to back. And then carved the clay to match the templates. Hope this verbal description is clear enough.

<comment><USER12> Thanks - and yes, it does make sense. Amazing that we've come so far to produce, essentially the same thing, albeit with higher technology ..</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python 3 – Function Overloading with singledispatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2016/02/23/python-3-function-overloading-with-singledispatch/ <comment><USER2>
      @add.register(int)
      def _(a, b):
          print("First argument is of type ", type(a))

Is that the preferred style? Won't '_' makes it hard for syntax-based tools like an IDE to implement features like "go to function"?

I know in my case I do C-S or grep "def abc" to find a function starting with "abc". That seems much more difficult if '_' becomes the standard name for this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems to be. That's what I found in the official documentation anyway</comment></comment>


Show HN:  My iOS5 app using CoreImage and Twitter integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.getspookify.com

<comment><USER2> Add a function that shows ghosts are shaded figures/faces in dark spots of group pictures. And explain that there is the strongest XYZenergy the phone cpuld detect. Offer an option to facebook tag the people in the group picture - go viral

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ughh, the link is broken at the moment, stupid EC2 Elastic IP screwed up my instance and therefore my DNS. Here's a link to the app, <http://bit.ly/spookify> in the meantime...

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a well done app, not very original, but that doesn't mean much. If you can position it right and gain some traction, you should be able to hit the top of the charts by halloween

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice!

When I played around with CI I noticed that a _lot_ of filters were still missing, almost all the filters I needed... how are your findings in this regard?

</comment><comment><USER5> What was your experience with CoreImage like? Is the accelerated rendering noticeably faster than compositing with CG?

<comment><AUTHOR> So the rendering is definitely faster but I think the biggest advantage to non-computer graphics engineers is in the available API's over the actual improvement in rendering time, at least with what I ended up doing with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. Another similar app is <http://www.demoncam.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Besides putting it on hacker news, how do you plan to promote your app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, it was just a fun project that let me experiment with the new CoreImage API's, but also make something fun, polished and worth a buck. With the new camera in the iPhone4S and everyone upgrading to iOS5, the photo apps are going to explode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Spookify is like a halloween version of Instagram :)</comment>


Breast Milk Sugars Give Infants a Protective Coat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/science/03milk.html

<comment><USER2> My partner is currently breastfeeding our 14 week old baby boy and despite being born 5 weeks premature he just keeps going from strength to strength.

The benefits of breastfeeding are incredibly obvious and I now understand completely why most women claim that it is one of the most difficult things you will ever do. Despite being incredibly stressed out by the process, my partner, who holds a biology degree, understands the scientific justification for persevering and when she read this article she told me that it was one more fantastic incentive to keep on going regardless.

I simply wish that this form of research could be made readily available in an easy to understand format for new mothers who are debating with the breast or bottle argument.

<comment><USER3> Many women (including my wife) have to be taught _how_ to breastfeed and for some or many it involves a lot of struggle to get right without pain or too much discomfort. From an evolutionary point of view why would the mechanism be so difficult to get right? Shouldn't it be easier and, well, natural? Are modern women somehow fighting against nature in the way they breastfeed? Have the "natural skills" been lost in the modern lifestyle?

<comment><USER4> I've always wondered this too. Most mammals seem to figure it out effortlessly.

Perhaps since the time we've had hands and been able to grind up food for babies, breast-feeding has been somewhat optional so there hasn't been much selection pressure on us for millions of years to keep breast feeding working well.

That's the only theory I've got.

<comment><USER5> _I've always wondered this too. Most mammals seem to figure it out effortlessly._

Most mammals have mammaries that are purely functional and only round out due to filling with milk. Human female breasts are full for other reasons, too full in fact to be baby-friendly. Most other mammals also feed their offspring in plain view of others of their species, which means there is plenty of opportunity to observe how it is done. In human cultures, we debate the morality of -- gasp! -- breastfeeding in public. When it is done in public at all, it is handled very discretely so no one gets a glimpse of someone's breast or, god forbid, nipple. Not exactly a learning opportunity for any other women who happen to be around who might someday have a baby themselves and might want to breastfeed.

Part of my experience with this subject: I breastfed my oldest until he was nearly 2 and my youngest rejected the breast very early (due to lactose intolerance), breastfeeding full-time for only 10 days and part-time until he was 6 weeks old. And I helped my sister address some issues she had with her baby so she could successfully breastfeed.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure others have done this already, but have you thought of putting this information on the web to teach other mothers? Considering that breastfeeding is so important on multiple levels, it couldn't hurt to have one more place for mothers to learn this skill.

<comment><USER5> A) I thought I had posted something to the web about that on someone else's site, but the link from my site to theirs is dead and the internet informs me the domain name in question has expired. So I can't even confirm if I did a breastfeeding story. (I think I did it as one of two contributions -- if I really obsess about it, I might be able to find it in my email somewhere.)

B) I have a parenting site that I want to develop more. I have been thinking since writing the above that I should probably post info about breastfeeding to it as well. It was extremely important to the well being of my oldest child, who has a serious health issue and needed the extra support it provided. That site has languished while I got myself well, started my life over post-divorce...yadda yadda. Thanks for the suggestion/encouragement. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can just imagine the adverts of products containing these sugars now. One bite of some kind of goo containg these "inspired by nature" sugars gives the baby a 5px dashed #eeeeee border.

Of course let us not forget another goo targeted at adults with an amusingly named "new" strain of _Bifidobacterium longum_. Oh wait: <http://whatisbifidusregularis.org/> .

<comment><USER8> Actually, the marketing of formula is a major issue in infant care, especially in poorer countries.

Large forumla companies, like Nestlé[1], have been doing marketing for decades like you are suggesting, when even today, we are just discovering all the things that breast milk does -- as the article closes with: Dr. Mills said. "So for God's sake, please breast-feed."

The World Health Organization (WHO) has created standards for marketing of Forumla and breast milk substitutes: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Marketing...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Marketing_of_Breast- milk_Substitutes)

Which many large corporations still ignore.

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott>

<comment><USER9> When we were expecting parents, attending our birthing classes, one night was dedicated to breastfeeding, and taught by a lactation consultant, basically a nurse specializing in breastfeeding.

She told a story about Nestle and the third world that was rather chilling:

The company, at some point, donated a large amount of formula to some third world country or other. (Sorry, it's been 15 years, so the details are sketchy). Short story: they convinced a lot of very poor women to use the formula. There was enough formula to last until their own breastmilk dried up. Nestle didn't send any more, and these women had no means to get more, and now, no breastmilk either. Lots of babies died.

<comment><USER10> Not that I don't believe the story but it would be great to have a link to this to read more about it. I googled for a bit but couldn't find anything.

<comment><USER11> This would seem to be a good place to start: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott>

<comment><USER10> There is mention of accusations of Nestle giving away free powder for a limited time, but no specific story and Nestle denies the allegations.

Why would someone accept free formula over free breast milk? No one would be dumb enough to think that the free formula would last forever. While I don't deny that Nestle gave out free formula, I'm not convinced that new mothers switched to it en masse only to later realize (after their breast milk stopped flowing) that they'd have to pay to get more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "The complex sugars were long thought to have no biological significance, > even though they constitute up to 21 percent of milk."

Serious, modern biologists still say things like this? Amazing. It is the biological equivalent of proof by lack of imagination.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is why it's so important to breast feed. Every time someone discovers something like this, it gets added to formula in a couple years, but it seems like every month something new comes out. Who knows what formula is missing that we just don't know about yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a lot of anecdotal evidence in this thread. I'll add something to that: I was formula fed and I am fine. So are lots of other people.

Our kids were bottle-fed with breast-milk. I'm not sure where that fits in the breast vs bottle debate, and I of course didn't do a double-blind controlled trial to work out whether there were benefits - it simply suited our situation.

I have always been surprised at how judgmental people get of mothers and how they feed their babies. Some of the nurses in the maternity ward were amazingly self-righteous about it.

Not every mother can breast-feed, for various reasons (eg mastectomy). Fortunately in many countries there is a viable alternative. The mothers can often feel very bad about it, and having someone ram the obvious benefits of breastfeeding down their throat can be less than helpful, or healthy at that time.

<comment><USER15> Very few mothers cannot breastfeed, in the grand scheme of things. The self- righteousness that exists is part of an ongoing effort to turn back 50 years or so of misinformation that existed in North America regarding formula vs. breast milk that caused women to turn away from breastfeeding in droves, mainly under the guise that formula was "better".

Why I agree that the judgments are unwarranted,(in every case) the fact remains that it is scientifically proven that breast milk provides _numerous_ health benefits over formula. If you were fed formula, you have, on average, a higher risk of everything from a childhood cold/flu to asthma to leukemia.

While every mother needs to make the best choice in her particular circumstance, choosing not to breastfeed for the sole sake of some _convenience to the mother and/or others_ is not a responsible choice, in many people's opinions.

<comment><USER16> Full disclosure: I was breast-fed and am perfect in every conceivable way.

"The self-righteousness that exists is part of an ongoing effort to turn back 50 years or so of misinformation that existed in North America..."

Isn't this exactly the point? Nearly everything we've ever known about nutrition has at some point been 'proven' to be completely, 100% wrong. Maybe we shouldn't be so judgmental of people who make different choices?

<comment><USER14> I'm also not convinced the choices are always for "convenience".

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8443904.stm>

<comment><USER15> Sven Carlsen, the author behind this and basically every other study that forwards that breastmilk isn't as wonderful as it is (he's a lone voice) has questionable ties to GlaxoSmithKline.

<comment><USER14> I would agree that there is much misinformation out there.

I would also suggest that very few mothers choose not to breast-feed solely for convenience.

I am not as sure as you that it is a scientifically proven fact that breast milk provides numerous health benefits.

Whilst the recommendation nearly always is to use it (and no modern study suggests that formula is better) the studies are not as conclusive as I would accept as fact.

The confounding and self-selection effects in the studies, and the differences in formula and ethical considerations since the long-term studies were started cast uncertainty on any conclusion.

However, I understand that the majority of the information out there leads people to believe that it is a fact, and agree that the safe option is breast milk.

Edit: "basically every other study...has questionable ties to GlaxoSmithKline". Really? The WHO also says that the benefits are moderate, rather than "wonderful".

<comment><USER15> _I would also suggest that very few mothers choose not to breast-feed solely for convenience._

Are you a recent parent or are you otherwise directly experienced in witnessing the choices mothers make? I ask not only because the statement is little more than random opinion if you are not, and because I'm surprised that someone who is experienced would come to such a conclusion. It isn't the obvious path in a country where women return to work 6 weeks after giving birth.

 _the studies are not as conclusive as I would accept as fact._

Then you are self-selecting to support your own bias. The other link you provided in this thread made pretty clear assertions regarding this topic.

The research is pretty strong. Stronger than most other areas. While that doesn't mean it is perfect, it does mean that all signs point to the fact that formula is not an equal replacement in certain key ways.

<comment><USER14> > all signs point to the fact that formula is not an equal replacement in > certain key ways

That's a much softer position than "the fact remains that it is scientifically proven that breast milk provides numerous health benefits over formula. If you were fed formula, you have, on average, a higher risk of everything from a childhood cold/flu to asthma to leukemia." and one I could agree with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And here I though they meant some kind of external micro-plated armor. I've never witnessed it, but babies with armor? It's cool enough I'd buy it.</comment>


A science committee that doesn't get science  - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/staff/2012/10/editorial-meet-a-science-committee-that-doesnt-get-science/

<comment><USER2> Assignment to the House Science Committee correlates with a -$46,000 drop in fundraising relative to all other committees in the House. Though Science has oversight over important agencies, like NOAA and NASA, they aren't a lobbying target. The result is that the best & brightest in Congress avoid Science, and adverse selection produces the worst possible Committee.

What's particularly aggravating about this is that there are agencies properly in the purview of Science & Technology that _are_ lobbyist targets, but that aren't managed by House Science. FCC, for instance, is overseen by House Commerce; DARPA, obviously, is House Defense.

The fact of Congress is that if you don't play the game, and get the best committee assignments you can, you lose your seat. Each Congressperson can only have 2 committee assignments. Principled pursuit of the right assignments is thus a bit of a stag hunt.

<comment><USER3> Call me a pessimist. When I see guys like Akin and Broun on a science committee, I assume that it didn't happen by accident, and that they probably have an axe to grind. At best, they may be looking to have their ethics represented on subjects like the ethics or morality of subjects like stem-cell research.

<comment><USER4> It's not an accident. It is exactly what tptacek described. Every other smarter/better representative wanted, and got committees which pay them more. And that forced these losers to end up on the science committee.

No accident, but also no "axe grinding" conspiracy. Just simply money.

<comment><USER5> Off-topic: How do you remember your username?

<comment><USER4> I don't. I don't give a damn about karma. This is like my 3rd HN account. Not that I had any reason to create new accounts, besides logged out for some reason and didn't remember credentials.

Now watch everyone else in horror down-vote this, and for someone to post the link to the HN change your password page.

<comment><USER6> If that second h was 3 then you'd simply have 4 triples of inline keys on a qwerty keyboard. Doesn't seem especially hard to remember.

fgh-345-sdf-hr3 : bet that's someone's password.

<comment><USER7> God damn it now I'm going to remember the name of some guy's throwaway account until the day I die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Articles like this always renew my distaste for discussing politics. There are _clear_ problems with the US's legislative process and elected officials, but there seems to be no way to effectively induce change in them, especially as an individual. Not just riding the science bandwagon here either; partisanship in general, etc. are all incredibly frustrating to discuss, and I'll almost always just stay out of discussions on politics as a result.

I'd love to help change these kinds of things, but I don't feel I could give up my job to start some sort of organization against it, nor do I feel such an organization would gain much traction anyhow. Maybe I'm just an a-typical slacktivist.

Any suggestions on stifling my feelings of futility? It seems the only way to affect change in this country is to get enough upvotes on reddit (see: SOPA). So I'm upvoting this.

<comment><USER9> I think the best thing is to cultivate some perspective, and not hold the political system to unrealistically high standards.

We live in a 236 year old democracy of 310 million people. Let that sink in. We have more people than there are lines of code in an entire Linux distribution. Think of the complexity of a human being, over a human being's lifetime, versus a line of code. We're an incredibly heterogeneous, diverse country that has never agreed on anything, not even on our founding documents.* We are, by virtue of our post-WWII status, the de-facto political and military leader of the world. We're the world's largest economy. We're the world's reserve currency. We have all of the responsibility that comes with that status.

We do not blink twice when we hear of a company like Yahoo (14,000 employees) or Nortel (86,000 employees at peak) becoming unmanageable basket cases. Yet we rail on the President for not getting more done than he does! We forgive Windows for being layers upon tangled layers of bug-for-bug compatible code, but complain endlessly about the complexity of a tax code designed to regulate 300m people acting together in a $15 trillion economy.

I am of the opinion that too many people, especially engineers who maybe have a particular love of simplicity, simply expect too much of the country they live in, and as a result become disillusioned with the whole system.

It is my opinion that these expectations are unreasonable and counter productive. The fact of the matter is that the US government is a paragon of virtue and efficiency compared to most others. Some of the western European countries may have better governments, but they also have far simpler and more homogenous societies to govern. We certainly have a better government than most any country in Asia. China, which has no particular love of anything American, has spent the last couple of decades trying to model their legal system after America's. Think about that: something that most Americans consider to be a broken part of our society, is a model for a country looking to cement it's place among the world's great societies.

So if you're frustrated by the system, take a step back and appreciate the fact that it probably doesn't get any better than it is now. As I've gotten older and this realization has sunk in, I have found politics far more enjoyable.

*) The more you learn about the Constitution, the more you realize it's ridiculous to ask "what does the Constitution mean?" The 40 signatories to the Constitution had 40 different opinions about the meaning of the document they were signing!

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. Scandinavia is often held up as an example of a set of ideal democratic states. After a friend moved there, I start poking around for details and the first thing I found was a mild warning that they were xenophobic. Visiting Sweden was the first time I had ever felt visible because of my race. It's not that they're racist (they're not); it's just that they're more homogenous so differences become quickly obvious.

> appreciate the fact that it probably doesn't get any better than it is now

I can't agree with this line, but mainly because you're talking about the future. I agree that it probably _couldn't_ be better than it is now, but we can certainly improve it.

> The more you learn about the Constitution, the more you realize it's > ridiculous to ask "what does the Constitution mean?" The 40 signatories to > the Constitution had 40 different opinions about the meaning of the document > they were signing!

There's an entire branch of government dedicated to answering that question on a daily basis, too. Established _by_ the very thing they're interpreting. How's that for meta?

<comment><USER9> > I can't agree with this line, but mainly because you're talking about the > future. I agree that it probably couldn't be better than it is now, but we > can certainly improve it.

Oh, I'm not saying you can't improve it, even in the present. What I mean is "better" in a fundamentally different way. E.g. within the constraints of our existing society, you're always going to have partisanship, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > They've been put in place when the US is arguably more dependent upon > science and technology than at any time since World War II.

I could say the US is arguably _less_ dependent upon _the government's role in_ science and technology than at any time since World War II. I honestly don't know if that's true, but it would at least be an interesting discussion (I'm thinking of the transitioning privatization of space exploration, for starters); I don't see that it's clearly obvious either way.

<comment><USER12> I think operationally this is getting more true, but not as much funding-wise, so intelligent control over appropriations is still important. For example, SpaceX is a private company, but largely publicly financed: government contracts provide the majority of their revenue, since they don't yet have significant private-sector clients. If their NASA contract were cancelled (e.g. because a committee cut that program), they wouldn't be solvent as a company.

Also common in the private-sector research world, outside a few big places like MSR that are mainly privately funded. A lot of biotech companies depend on public/private NIH research grants, and the SBIR/STTR programs are also a big source of funds for riskier research in small companies (<http://www.sbir.gov/>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is basically a Daily Show segment from last week with some additional details thrown in.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you look at this from another angle, it's not so bad. Would anyone be angry if there were three pacifists on the Defence committee? A certain portion of the American population opposes science, and as harmful as that is to the country, a democratic system means they get their say.

EDIT: For the record, I wish these people had never been elected, and think the American government should increase science funding significantly. It's not my call, though.

<comment><USER10> On one hand, you're right. On the other...

Well, "representation" is not quite what it sounds like. A representative is, by his office, held to a higher (and different) standard than non-elected non- officials. That's why you can say "I wish these people had never been elected".

Effectively, what you're describing here is analogous to a tolerance of intolerance, whereas actual tolerance requires an intolerance of intolerance. The relevant quotation, rather than being "I disagree with what you say, but I would die to defend your right to say it", is instead, "All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I just want to point out something I haven't seen anyone else discuss.

It's politicians like this who push CISPA or the laws in DC attempting to protect the cab industry from Uber's disruption.

While politics seems distant and has totally gone off the deep end these days, this stuff does matter. It helps shape the direction our society decides to take. If everyone in science and tech checks out of politics, politics will move on without and possibly against us. It is unimaginably important for us to continue advocating for science, math, and technology in politics.

</comment><comment><USER16> What would we do without government committees, and how did we ever survive without them?

<comment><USER17> We had kings to make our laws unilaterally without parliamentary scrutiny.

<comment><USER16> Not in the US of A.

About 1.75 centuries elapsed between 1776 (when the US said a farewell to kings) and 1958 (when the predecessor committee was established). I guess science in the United States just progressed without non-scientific scrutiny during that time.

At least for the topic at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why people don't see political campaigns as a system ripe for disruption. People are basically voting for their rulers the same way they vote their favorite movie. Kind of scary how anachronistic the election procedures have remained. Certainly a number of actors benefit from it.

<comment><USER19> Because you can't just say "we're going to disrupt the way people campaign/vote/get elected." It is a staggeringly massive government bureaucracy even at the most local levels, and it prevents that kind of change at every point possible.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that as much as we like to pretend all politicians and millionaire slime balls, they're working people providing for their families. Very few are going to entertain the idea of running their campaign in an entirely different way because chances are they'll lose their job if they do.

<comment><USER18> I don't see a reason you can't. I believe mass media dominate campaigns because of the sheer amount of money thrown onto them.

<comment><USER19> > _I don't see a reason you can't._

I've worked on campaigns professionally from 2002-2010 and I've run local and state races, including my own for borough council and school board.

Why can't we change the way campaigns are run?

Campaigns would be the easy part to change, but even then it depends _what_ you want to change. Are you talking about new technology? The Romney campaign is doing a decent job of utilizing technology in how they're collecting voter contact results from phones and doors, organizing volunteers and managing fundraisers. Obama did an excellent job as well in 2008, especially compared to the CF that was the McCain campaign.

If you want to make changes to the way fundraising works and the influence of money in politics, it will need to be incremental. That isn't something you can just cut off overnight for several reasons, the two biggest being that (A) nothing happens overnight in Congress, and (B) Members of Congress would essentially be shutting down their means of securing re-election.

Why can't we change the way people vote?

For the same reason a PA court placed an injunction on that state's Voter ID law: you can't deprive an otherwise qualified individual of his or her constitutional right to vote.

You want to have internet voting? You better have a plan to give everyone in the country high speed internet access and be prepared for the unrelenting torrent of lawsuits when the server goes down.

I'd personally like to see internet voting someday, but you really need to have massive redundancy systems in place and plenty of checks to prevent fraud. What happens if the server is down all day? What about peak traffic? What if the database gets wiped 30 minutes before the end of voting? Anyone who knows about how government contracts are structured knows that would be an IBM and/or Diebold contract in the hundreds of billions. And it still wouldn't work.

> _I believe mass media dominate campaigns because of the sheer amount of > money thrown into them._

This statement makes it look like you think one is correlated to the other, which I'm not inclined to agree with. Because there's a lot of money in politics, that somehow means mass media "dominates" campaigns, whatever that means?

I'm not sure what your alternative would be aside from information directly from the campaigns themselves (which is almost guaranteed to be skewed, if not incorrect).

<comment><USER18> I was thinking of self-organized citizens, in the way some self-governed open access projects on the net have established hierarchies (i.e. wikipedia). Everyone can be a candidate, people can judge their contributions almost directly, and thus be more informed voters. Politics in much of the west depends too much on who you know, and who pays you to pay old media pundits to promote you. The tech sector has barely touched the way politics is conducted (i believe mainly because geeks detest the way politics is run and opt to escape to libertarianism).'

I don't really think it's a big deal if online-voting servers go down. It's not like you have to pay billions to re-run the elections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Officials not grasping reality? As sad as it is, but I think this stops being newsworthy.

</comment><comment><USER21> This post is partisan and too short on supporting facts. The author claims that a couple of goofy public statements by 3 lawmakers mean they don't "get science". That's 3 members on a committee of 40. Also, the scientific debate over climate change is far from settled.

<comment><USER22> How is this partisan? He explicitly calls out both parties.

<comment><USER23> I assume partisan is being used in place of 'heavily biased'. I can see it is a reasonable substitution in most cases.

The 'Pure Science' people (similar grouping to the militant atheists) are, like it or not, pretty dismissive of any non scientific opinions and beliefs. This makes many religious people take a very defensive (aggressively so) position on many matters.

This is simply a different version of the "two parties facing each other and calling each other dumb" political system.

Edit: I could be misreading though

<comment><USER24> You are correct only in the sense that atheists and science committees are completely dismissive of non scientific opinions.

But I take great issue with the rest of your post. This is not a case of two parties calling each other dumb, nor is it the case that positions of science and positions of opinion are equal. Science does not deal in opinions. There are very specific requirements that need to be met for an idea to be considered a scientific theory. Religious ideas by and large do not meet these criteria. There is no such thing as "non-pure science." This is by definition of the term and process.

Further, your use of the term "militant atheist" is offensive. You call an atheist "militant" merely because she dares to voice her thoughts? This is what religious individuals due daily in church and other places, yet never are they called militant for it. Worse, religious advertising routinely gets away with suggestions that non-believers will _suffer eternally_ or are otherwise evil or immoral. Such rhetoric is a far cry from a logical discussion of what we actually know that you might find from a typical vocal atheist.

Slurs like "militant atheist" are so common you no longer ever recognize them for what they are: insults and a labels intended to marginalize.

<comment><USER25> I think you're overreacting. I'm an atheist and regularly use "militant atheist" to characterize the sort of atheist who I don't want to be associated with--i.e., the douchey ones.

I am no fan of religion, but I'm also not a fan of assholes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We all know it's an awful situation. But what do you do about it?

<comment><USER27> You know, I feel ashamed every time I think this because I know I haven't fully thought it through, but why do we need to share the same country with these bird-brained politicians? I mean, would it really be so bad to let these people secede and have their own country? Yes, there is the argument that we are stronger (in some sense of the word) together than apart, but who really gains from this arrangement? Let them live in their own middle ages like the Taliban and leave everyone else alone.

<comment><USER28> Honestly, the solution here would be to give the federal government less control and allow the states to have more control.

The states were established so that U.S. citizens could move to the state with the laws that best suited them.

<comment><USER29> That's not really an accurate description of why the states were established. The initial states were the consequence of different centers of colonization and the limits of transportation and communication speeds. Their borders were mostly arbitrary geographical boundaries (hey, there's a river!). They developed unique economic and cultural traditions based on what could be grown, produced, or not, in their borders. That people didn't want to join them up into one stronger federal government has stronger ties to the general tribal nature of people and the significantly different economic and cultural needs. Movement between them was hardly the motivation.

<comment><USER10> > That people didn't want to join them up into one stronger federal government > has stronger ties to the general tribal nature of people and the > significantly different economic and cultural needs.

To be fair, one of the reasons _was_ to limit the power of the federal government. But that power was limited partly in order to prevent one state from having power over another; that's why the Senate is so laid out (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise>), and one of the reasons the federal government is seated in neutral territory (Federalist #43).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> doesn't instead of dosen't

</comment><comment><USER31> Now I've seen everything! !Bang!

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeenItAllSuicide>

<comment><USER31> Downvotes? I don't believe it. To that title, I now humbly add: A scientific audience that doesn't get humour!</comment></comment>


A Starter Kit for Emergency Websites - <AUTHOR> https://mxb.dev/blog/emergency-website-kit/ <comment><USER2> What we did for tacticalvote.co.uk:

1\. A static site generator, with markdown as the source input in Github

2\. Data from Google Sheets

3\. A bash job on a cron that would poll both for changes... if changes exist, re-publish the site or data and purge Cloudflare cache using their API

4\. Configure Cloudflare via Page Rule to Cache Everything

Even with a very high change rate and hundreds of thousands of visitors a day and severe traffic spikes... the site was instantaneous to load, simple to maintain and update, and the cache purge stampede never overwhelmed the cheapest Linode serving the static files.

The content editors used Github as the CMS and edited Markdown, or just updated data in Google Sheets. Changes were live within 5 minutes.

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a really nice approach. Out of interest what does that sort of traffic end up costing on the Cloudflare side - presumably that's where the cost ends up here?

<comment><USER2> It's a free account on Cloudflare.

Cloudflare do not charge for bandwidth... and so it's free.

This whole setup is $5 per month for the hosting, though we do use Github personal and that is $7.00 per month.

<comment><USER3> That's a pretty amazing setup for the traffic and press you were sustaining, nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People are missing a fundamentally important point. You CANNOT trust fremium services to prioritize your traffic at busy times because they will always cut back free users especially if it's interfering with the service they are providing paying customers. This includes Google Sheets, Netlify, Cloudfront, AWS, EVERYBODY.

To create truly fault tolerant services you CANNOT assume a fremium service will go out on a limb for you during a critical time.

<comment><USER5> Seriously. A single web server with no dynamic content will handle a TON of traffic.

<comment><USER6> It's really the bandwidth that'll cost you :-)

<comment> yoz-y Most web hosts and VPS solutions have unlimited traffic no?

<comment><USER7> No, most VPS start charging extra if you exceed their limits.

<comment><USER8> I get between 5 and 20 TB out per month, depending on host. That's a loooot of 14kb page loads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or just create a static HTML file and put the damn thing in a S3 bucket behind a cloudfront proxy.

That site is virtually guaranteed to never go down even with insane amoumts of traffic (plus it's edge optimized so a user in new delhi won't be sending requests to your server in los angeles)

edit: The whole setup takes like less than 2 minutes and can be even automated it with 2 aws cli commands.

<comment><USER10> That's pretty close to what Netlify is doing behind the scenes, isn't it? Why would configuring it yourself be better? Netlify has way more experience at that than most people.

<comment><USER11> Netlify likes to go down unless you are paying for the high tier. Also they charge for bandwidth after 100gb's ($20 for another 100gb's which is basically stealing money compare to how much a 100gbs is worth).

I would not recommend Netlify if you have other options.

<comment><USER10> I have more than 30 sites on the free tier of Netlify and I've never known it to be down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The simplest solution is to make a static website of your dynamic one using wget, and then publish that. I did this e.g. for Wordpress sites, works really well and is very reliable. The process can be triggered via a cron script or manually (I wrote a small Wordpress plugin for it). No special hardware, infrastructure or cloud services required. Just make sure all resources are reachable via a link (so wget can find them) or manually point it at a list of otherwise unreachable files (e.g. using a sitemap or .txt file).

The advantage is that you can still use your existing CMS, so your staff won't need to learn a new system, and you also don't need any third-party cloud services.

Actually, if your CMS is properly configured (e.g. correct cache headers) you can also simply put it behind a CDN like Cloudflare, which will handle the caching and scaling for you.

<comment><USER13> Any chance you could share the script / wget settings you are using for wordpress?

<comment><USER12> Normally you can just use

> wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no- > parent [http://example.org](http://example.org)

This should make a full copy of your website (source: [https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2014/05/02/make-offline- mirror-...](https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2014/05/02/make-offline-mirror-of-a- site-using-wget/)).

I don't have the source of the Wordpress plugin anymore unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like the idea of this but the process required to deploy it needs to be more carefully thought out. As it is, this currently assumes that any local agency or whatever contractor it works with will:

* Be familiar and comfortable with npm

* Be familiar and comfortable with netlify

* Be aware of this as a possible option

The bar for these folks is pretty darn low. A _lot_ of organizations end up contracting with individuals or organizations not because they're up to speed on modern web development but because they knew them from somewhere else.

Setting this up as some kind of hosted service would probably be a good next step.

<comment><USER15> I agree, I'd love to see this as a docker container or Makefile where dependencies are automatically pulled in if not present on the host machine.

<comment><USER14> I think even Docker might be a big ask. I mean, my experience so far has been that a lot of the people that this is targeted towards are still using platforms like Wordpress, Drupal, and Magento (all php...). Heck, git adoption still isn't 100% in this market; I just recently received sftp credentials from an agency that works in this niche.

<comment><USER15> Command line would be the only necessity. You can write a script that could download docker & run it. That's what I meant by Makefile too.

<comment><USER16> I'd say CLI access is an even higher bar. Even in most medium-sized companies, the website people would never be able to get shell access in a reasonable amount of time, if at all, as they might be using web or CMS hosting.

Scale this up to a government organization, and the chance of it happening is basically zero, especially in an emergency. And even if they host their own web servers and manage to get access to them, the chances of them being able to run Docker or really anything besides what they were set up for without unreasonable effort are slim at best.

I'm not saying Netlify is a good solution, but it's one that a single creative tech could figure out and set up in a day and would be almost guaranteed to work well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'll add two more points:

\- Remove all non-essential scripts: ads, analytics, fonts, social, liveperson, disqus, truste, foresee, cookielaw, etc.

\- Scale down or omit images

<comment><USER16> Not to be "that guy", as I mostly like modern Web design, but:

\- and after the emergency is over, keep it that way

<comment><USER17> Sometimes I contemplate launching a copycat conglomerate like Rocket, but instead of international copies of American and Chinese ideas it would do fast, minimal bandwidth & js clones with real privacy. The main problem is that network economics are a hell of a moat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As the most bootstrap solution I could think of, a link dump with google sheets as backend -> rendered as static html with a few extra formatting options. Quick & dirty but something that most people are able to edit without needing to get used to a new GUI or create new accounts.

We then have a google form for public submission that feed the same sheet.

The document is 'published to the web' as csv, so there's no need to use the API / register an app.

example [https://buletin.de/InitiativeDeAjutor/](https://buletin.de/InitiativeDeAjutor/) [https://github.com/pax/covid19ro-linkdump](https://github.com/pax/covid19ro- linkdump)

<comment><USER19> Thank you for sharing this project! This could work nicely also for people wanting to move their business online. Multumiri!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I old school if I'm just asking for plain HTML, CSS3 and using SFTP to upload the stuff?

I don't get why it's cool to use NPM, a static site generator and netlify for an emergency website.

<comment><USER16> If you already have a NodeJS person, it would be far better than having to set up a static-optimized web server from scratch. You can't just replace your big fat Drupal (or worse) site's web root with a bunch of HTML files and have it perform as well as a static-optimizer server.

And even if you don't have anyone on-hand, it is, unfortunately, cheaper, easier and _faster_ to learn all this crap and deploy to Netlify, than it is to set up a solid Web server from scratch (or even get good enough "just a folder" web hosting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's wrong with just plain HTML and Nginx or Apache?

<comment><USER22> Same question. Netlify CMS and Eleventy seem like un-necessary complexity here. Apache or Nginx web servers can be setup with a one click install on most web hosts.

<comment><USER23> Well if you are looking at unnecessary complexity, there are simpler static HTTP servers than nginx and Apache. (-:

<comment><USER22> Seeking out relatively unknown and unsupported HTTP servers itself becomes unnecessary complexity.

<comment><USER23> You are making the error of thinking that everything apart from nginx and Apache has to be "sought out". That's simply narrow minded, bespeaking a lack of wide experience, and certainly not at all supported by even looking at Debian's or Arch's package repositories let alone at (say) the FreeBSD ports collection.

<comment><USER22> Yes, being narrow minded is sufficient in removing the complexities necessary to host _a static website_.

It's a non-sequitur to say since I don't endorse using other servers in this instance, I must lack knowledge of them. It's not about me or you, it's about the lowest common denominator of technical person necessary to maintain _a static website_.

Following your path, the complexity becomes contemplating why one should use lesser known web servers instead of what one is more likely to be familiar with.

<comment><USER23> And now you are trying to squirm out of what you said.

You were _not_ not endorsing them, you were claiming that they had to be sought out and that that was unnecessary complexity. It is no more added complexity to install some _other_ Debian/Arch/FreeBSD/Fedora/whatever package than it is to install those operating systems' nginx and Apache packages, and saying otherwise is really looking for any excuse to reinforce an existing narrowminded prejudice rather than a real evaluation of complexity.

<comment><USER22> > Following your path, the complexity becomes contemplating why one should use > lesser known web servers instead of what one is more likely to be familiar > with.

Read what I wrote again. "Seeking out" is not limited to just choosing a different package, it includes the cognitive costs of exploring an option that is hitherto unknown to oneself.

You only think I'm squirming because you are qualifying what "seeking out" means to a narrow view, ironically.

How would one who is unfamiliar with those "simpler HTTP servers" even know the fact without diving into comparing the complexities of Apache and nginx against the other options? Why dive into that complexity if one is already familiar with Apache and nginx, in this use case (I'm sure you'd agree that the average person tasked for this would be more likely to be familiar with those)? This is the point you're missing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been using exactly the same approach for spinning up local COVID-19 support groups around London, one nice example is at [https://holloway.coronacorps.com/](https://holloway.coronacorps.com/). Really like the branch to subdomain mapping feature from them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Let's pretend we are not web developers for a second. How do I build this website if I don't know what static page means?

<comment><USER26> I don't think this is the sort of thing a non-web developer should try to tackle on their own. If you are building something for emergency information, there is a lot of risk (loss of life?) if you can't get your message out.

Hire someone who knows how to build a scalable website. This isn't a horribly hard problem, but it's easy to make a mistake.

<comment><USER25> I don't think a developer should be required. This is the perfect time for the squarespaces and wixes of the world could offer minimal templates that do the job. They already have the infrastructure, and bombarded people with ads for websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > progressively enable offline-support w/ Service Worker

I'm a bit confused about this point. If it's a basic static site why would this be needed?

<comment><USER28> So that you can revisit the information even in the event that you loose internet access

<comment> 867-5309 In an emergency context where vital information is likely to change often, this seems a little strange. perhaps with a little (opt-in?) funding SMS could be used - surely that would be more available than internet

<comment><USER29> A Service Worker would give access to what could be important information vs no information. Given the nature of an emergency site it probably means a heightened chance of people losing internet availability.

If there is an updated version a Service Worker can check for that and pull it in if there is a connection.

Whilst imperfect to have potentially out of date information, that only happens if the person has no internet and the information has changed since they accessed it - I think it is worth the trade off of people not having any information.

For critical things, SMS probably makes more sense, but I'm not sure that is what they are trying to solve here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I mean, call me crazy, if this is for an emergency, wouldn't it make more sense to provide a small archive with the source files in it, no third party at all.

requires an unarchiver, and a text editor.

<comment><USER31> Provide how? From a webserver? Back to square 1.

<comment><USER32> Web seeded torrent?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > When it comes to resilience, you just can't beat static HTML.

We don't actually need HTML for every case. For even more resilience, we could just push text files with markdown-like formatting characters that people might understand to give the content some hierarchy and emphasis. This would be just content and content alone. Obviously, this wouldn't be appropriate for all use cases, but if you're just sharing updates, it could (depending on other factors) be a simpler solution to implement.

<comment><USER34> Modern browsers are really shitty text viewers, especially mobile browsers. They have unreliable scaling, line wrapping, and are generally piss poor at the task. An HTML document with zero CSS will be displayed far better in browsers. A couple CSS statements in a script tag can make that basic document easily readable and even good looking.

With HTML you have the ability to link to other sites, documents, or anchors in those documents. This makes navigation much simpler than shittily displayed plain text. You're also less likely to have your document mangled by the browser like with plain text.

Also remember just about anyone with a smartphone knows how to navigate the web (links, back buttons, etc). If you break those UI paradigms by sending them plain text documents you've made it _harder_ for a good percentage of the population to effectively use that data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> [https://emergency-site.dev/posts/2020-03-22-example-post/](https://emergency- site.dev/posts/2020-03-22-example-post/)

I would provide much less background information here. "What you need to do" should definitely not be below the fold. You should boil it down to:

1\. This is happening 2\. This is what you personally need to do about it.

Then add whatever else you want after that.

I know this is just an example, but it should set a _good_ example.

<comment><USER36> As a technical writer if push comes to shove I would recommend leading off with what you need to do first and foremost, and then going into detail about why as needed. You should optimize your content for the audience that is already convinced and just wants to know what they need to do in order to stay safe. You can follow up with the information explaining why they need to do this for the secondary audience of people who still need convincing.

In other words, if you think about it in terms of the typical inverted pyramid model of journalism (which many here on HN already know about), what you need to do is the most important information, why you need to do it is secondary. That might be debatable to some people but that's how I view it.

<comment><USER37> IIRC (from taking journalism in high school), journalistic standards are:

Tell the most important info in the title as briefly as possible.

Repeat the most important info with a little more detail in the first paragraph.

Repeat your main point and add more details in additional paragraphs. You should be able to cut out the final paragraphs (or not bother to read them) without losing any actually critical information.

Each additional paragraph should add new information, but not be essential to the main point of the piece.

Answer: who, what, when, where, how and why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone explain why I would need a static site generator instead of just writing what I want in html in the first place?

<comment><USER39> For me maintaining common elements across pages is a reason not to use "just html"

It's error prone to make changes in the header and footer for example across all pages if you have lots of pages

</comment></comment><comment> mac-chaffee Wouldn't the people putting out emergency website likely be local governments? If so, wouldn't there be hurdles to using cloud providers like Netlify?

How do local governments usually host their websites?

<comment><USER40> I work with some local governments in cloud consulting. They use different clouds the same as anyone else.

We actually see a lot of local governments (cities or metro agencies) doing things in AWS.

I'd say the likelihood in my experience of them grabbing this kind of thing and deploying it is probably pretty low. The ones I work with would leave that up to a contractor.

<comment> mac-chaffee Great insight, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm a lil surprised at the speed!

also, a little cheap addition would be saying the "you're viewing this page: online/offline, last refresh: now/two days ago" or such, and possibly either a button, or automatic popup for the "add to home/desktop" pwa button...

<comment><USER41> apparently missed the pwa button, that's my bad, initially viewed in a HN wrapper app

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Interesting idea but the complexity here is still way too high with a lot of dependencies. Realistically couldn't we just host txt files in an emergency?

</comment><comment><USER43> Very neat. Those minor details in the spec is probably what we easily forget about. Didn't see a mention of CDN on the front page but that could be another good must-have to add to the list to improve resiliency - even just a free cloudflare setup in front.

<comment><USER44> Well it specifically mentions netlify which is already a CDN, but good idea anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What am I missing?

A highly performant web server like nginx.

Static html content.

Done.

<comment><USER45> A way for government employees who don't know what a command line is to edit it.

Fault tolerance in case something happens to your web server.

A way for people to read it offline when their internet connection goes down (presuming they haven't saved the HTML).

<comment><USER21> I disagree that this approach is any better than your standard static html and nginx. In an emergency situation I would want to reduce the footprint for error and keep everything as simple as possible. A CMS is totally overkill for this. There is nothing wrong with having a developer write HTML based on a word document given to them. If it were a true emergency that developer resource would be dedicated to doing this. Hell Word can export documents to HTML anyway so that is half the battle already won. This article just seems gimmicky to me.

<comment><USER5> It's adding a load of unnecessary tools and services to address a relatively simple process.

People forget how simple the web can be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If it's all client side s3/cloudfront and you're done. Costs pennies.

You can go super jank using s3 only with simple sites but realistically you're going to want TLS at some point.

<comment><USER47> Cloudfront in front of S3 with a free ACM cert. done

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Nicely done. Wish this was the starter kit for most websites.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think this is a great idea, and applaud the idea of bringing a high availability, high-load site template available to others.

The number of times I have thought in the past few weeks that if they had just used some static pages on S3 behind Cloudfront, or some kind of CDN, that much pain could have been averted.

Of course the first thing I did was to benchmark the test site to see how their edge network performs. For reference I'm based in Melbourne, Australia, and have a 100mbps download, 50mbps upload connections:

      $ ab -n 10000 -c 100 https://emergency-site.dev/
      This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 1826891 $>
      Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
      Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

      Benchmarking emergency-site.dev (be patient)
      Completed 1000 requests
      Completed 2000 requests
      Completed 3000 requests
      Completed 4000 requests
      Completed 5000 requests
      Completed 6000 requests
      Completed 7000 requests
      Completed 8000 requests
      Completed 9000 requests
      Completed 10000 requests
      Finished 10000 requests

      Server Software:        Netlify
      Server Hostname:        emergency-site.dev
      Server Port:            443
      SSL/TLS Protocol:       TLSv1.2,ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256,2048,128
      TLS Server Name:        emergency-site.dev

      Document Path:          /
      Document Length:        4836 bytes

      Concurrency Level:      100
      Time taken for tests:   106.534 seconds
      Complete requests:      10000
      Failed requests:        0
      Total transferred:      53220000 bytes
      HTML transferred:       48360000 bytes
      Requests per second:    93.87 [#/sec] (mean)
      Time per request:       1065.345 [ms] (mean)
      Time per request:       10.653 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
      Transfer rate:          487.85 [Kbytes/sec] received

      Connection Times (ms)
                    min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
      Connect:      713  808  30.7    803    1828
      Processing:   230  236   4.8    236     443
      Waiting:      230  236   3.9    236     310
      Total:        956 1044  31.7   1039    2067

      Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
        50%   1039
        66%   1047
        75%   1053
        80%   1057
        90%   1070
        95%   1082
        98%   1107
        99%   1168
       100%   2067 (longest request)

I know there's much better ways of testing load/performance. It's just what I had on hand.

<comment><USER50> > I know there's much better ways of testing load/performance.

such as

[https://github.com/giltene/wrk2](https://github.com/giltene/wrk2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Seriously, if you want something in an emergency- go to somewhere like weebly.com and set up a free site.

</comment><comment><USER52> I searched for terms like IPFS and FreeNet in this HN discussion and surprisingly didn't find them. I think distributing to geographically localized p2p networks should be part of any system for emergency websites. An emergency need not necessarily be natural and unintentional.

<comment><USER53> I love distributed websites, but hardly anyone uses these things. I don't even know of any mobile apps for IPFS, Dat, or FreeNet. They should absolutely be more widespread, but crisis mode website operations need to focus on things the majority of users can access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> The one-click deploy to Netlify worked for me. Have used this to spin up a site listing crisis communications advice around Coronavirus: [https://coronaviruscomms.netlify.com/](https://coronaviruscomms.netlify.com/)

</comment><comment><USER55> A README.md in most Github repo is already a statically published page, easy to author and easy to access. Even most PWA festures can be added to this setup with just Jekyll configs. Am I missing something in the question?

</comment><comment><USER56> a radically simple microblog for single-user laypersons publishing on their own property (yes, one needs to buy some kind of hosting starting with 2 Eur/Month in DE): [https://github.com/mro/ShaarliGo#install-- update](https://github.com/mro/ShaarliGo#install--update)

</comment><comment><USER57> But does it work with Netscape 3 and IE4?

</comment><comment><USER58> Awesome, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER59> Netlify CMS is based on React. In what universe could this be considered appropriate for a basic emergency website?

Edit: I don't really mind if React is only used as the authoring interface. But the consumer view should not require Javascript, and AFAICT Netlify CMS does.

<comment><USER60> Because the CMS is decoupled from the content, and installing Netlify CMS is very fast. I was able to coach an SMB owner into using it for their website in about 1h tops (after setting everything up myself).</comment></comment>


Job 1.0 is deprecated. Job 2.0 is the new standard. Hired is the implementation - <AUTHOR> http://www.cosmomimic.com/blog/?p=8 <comment><USER2> With 7 affiliate links and only praise for hired.com it reads like content marketing. (Affiliates apparently get $1337 for a referred customer and in my opinion it's a shame HN gets marketed to like that).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Given that I found about Hired through product hunt, and actually went through the service to find a job I was looking for, I don't think it's fair to label praise for a useful service as content marketing. The product helped me, and I am promoting it to others. There is also no shame in using affiliate links when you are promoting a service that you have and would use yourself. However, I can see that the existence of affiliate links makes certain readers uncomfortable, so I will post a disclosure of that fact (even though it is evident once you click the link).</comment>


Hack Your Way to Scientific Glory - <AUTHOR> https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ <comment><USER2> Wow, fivethirtyeight is still alive. After the major failure during the last election I thought they were done.</comment>


The Frenzy About High-Tech Talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jul/09/frenzy-about-high-tech-talent/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+STEM+frenzy+Boko+Haram+Midsummer+Nights+Dream&utm_content=NYR+STEM+frenzy+Boko+Haram+Midsummer+Nights+Dream+CID_869a7e4df211b9f2091810c10f23c98f&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=STEM%20Frenzy <comment><USER2> _" A 2014 study by the National Science Board found that of 19.5 million holders of degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, only 5.4 million were working in those fields, and a good question is what they do instead. The Center for Economic Policy and Research, tracing graduates from 2010 through 2014, discovered that 28 percent of engineers and 38 percent of computer sciencetists were either unemployed or holding jobs that did not need their training.2"_

<comment><USER3> The second set of figures are from [0] and the figure of 28% is the smallest out of all majors. The figure for "Computer Scientists" is actually the "Math and Computers" section. From these figures, (non-software) engineering actually looks like the best choice from an employment perspective, but is roughly equal with education and health.

[0] [http://www.cepr.net/documents/black-coll- grads-2014-05.pdf](http://www.cepr.net/documents/black-coll-grads-2014-05.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In these discussions, it's helpful to when you see "talent" to substitute "cheap talent".

<comment><USER3> That's always true though, e.g. in the Irish potato famine there was no lack of food, just food that people could afford.

If STEM talent is expensive, that means there is not enough of it and we should encourage more. It will be bad for the people who would have gone into tech anyway, but good for the people who would have got lower paying jobs otherwise.

We should also be encouraging people to go into other high paying areas like medicine, law or finance. But I think STEM (and medicine) have the highest positive externalities so that is another reason to encourage STEM jobs.

<comment><USER5> _" If STEM talent is expensive, that means there is not enough of it and we should encourage more."_

Who gets to determine whether it's expensive or not? The large tech companies can certainly afford to pay more for tech talent. Apple alone is sitting on a couple hundred billion dollars in cash. Google, Facebook and Microsoft also make billions in profits each year. It's not like these companies are in any danger of becoming unprofitable. The fact that we're creating more STEM grads each year than we have jobs for seems to suggest that we already have too many of them, not too few.

And nobody is complaining about how expensive executive-level talent is. Why don't the big tech companies complain that there are so few people qualified to be CEOs that they need to pay them tens of millions of dollars a year?[1]

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2013/06/18/top- paid-...](http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/2013/06/18/top-paid-tech- ceos/)

<comment><USER3> _> Who gets to determine whether it's expensive or not?_

The real test is: are there people who could be doing this job, but aren't (and are making less money because of this). If this is true, then the market is not in equilibrium and it is appropriate to label STEM employees as "expensive".

High wages are not good in themselves, and neither are low wages. What is good is when markets operate properly and resources (including human resources) are allocated in the most efficient way. That might involve more people going into STEM fields, and tech salaries going down as a result. In other fields, like medicine, people would come up with all sorts of excuses to protect the benefits that their in-group receive, to the detriment of other potential workers. I think that in tech we are uniquely able to go beyond this flawed thinking.

<comment><USER6> I'm not following your logic.

You orginally said:

> If STEM talent is expensive, that means there is not enough of it and we > should encourage more.

(aside: correlation != causation)

Then "greenyoda" said:

> The fact that we're creating more STEM grads each year than we have jobs for > seems to suggest that we already have too many of them, not too few.

To which you replied:

> The real test is: are there people who could be doing this job, but aren't

The answer to this appears to be "yes", for the reason "greenyoda" states and the article presents:

> Teitelbaum stresses a fact of the labor market: contrary to the warnings > from a variety of panels and roundtables, public and private employers who > might hire STEM workers have not been creating enough positions for all the > people currently being trained to fill them.

Perhaps one of the reasons STEM talent is expensive is because there are many which acquire degrees in these fields, yet few which are skilled in performing to expectations?

EDIT: clarified the origination of the last quote.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Need a new domain name registrar - <AUTHOR>

The place I'm currently using raised their renewal fee to $35/year and I have a lot of domain names =/.
I'm looking for a place that's around the average $10/year or lower and has a nice web panel design to manage domain names.
What are you guys using? <comment><USER2> By the way, I recently discovered Google has free private domain registration for $10 a year after talking about this with a friend:

<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/domain.html>

No recommendation here from personal experience, except that I use Google Apps for my email. It looks good on paper and it's goodle, maybe someone else can share their experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been using NameCheap for many many years and they do a great job. There was one outage recently, and the owner kept everyone up to date by constantly posting on the forums and answering individual questions.

<comment><USER4> I have also been using NameCheap for many years. They are a little more expensive than other registrar's ($9.69) and are actually just a reseller of eNom, but they do a great job.

I've never had any issues and their customer service has always been very quick, helpful and friendly.

I also like how they keep their checkout system clean and consistent--I just want to order domains, not buy web hosting, email forwarding, domain parking, etc... (GoDaddy I'm looking your direction).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm using name.com which costs me $6.99 per year for the first year, although I don't know what renewals will cost since this is my first year:

"For a limited time you'll be able to take advantage of $6.99 pricing for new .com registrations by using the promo code TLHF99 when you checkout. This is currently only good for one year registrations."

</comment><comment><USER6> I use <http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/>.

They bill 8.59 for a top level US domain renewal or registration.

Their service is good for anyone that understands DNS - they let you directly edit your DNS records.

</comment><comment><USER7> i just switched to <http://www.gandi.net/>, i wasn't able to find a single bad review.

<comment><USER8> Gandi is by far my favorite registrar. I started moving my domains away from GoDaddy to Gandi after CNET did interviews with several registrars to find out which were the most friendly to free speech: <http://www.news.com/2100-1025_3-6155614.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Become your own Registrar, and buy the domains wholesale for $10/year.

<http://resellers.tucows.com/opensrs/>

/I use GoDaddy

</comment><comment><USER2> I use godaddy. I have used 1and1, NameCheap, ipowerweb, yahoo, etc.

GoDaddy may suck balls for a lot of things, but they are the best that I've found for having multiple domains. I don't have a lot, just a dozen or so active - but the interface is sweet, fast, and very easy to do domain locking/unlocking, nameservers, multiple edits, etc.

Of course, I'm not authority. This is just me saying what I've done, and what I like.

<comment><USER10> I hate how the godaddy UI is packed full of adverts. When you buy a domain you're bombarded with 50 or so offers that you're almost tricked into signing up to. Really not a fan.

I'm an avid namecheap user. The interface is clean and there are no adverts blocking your view. They've also just released their own API for registering domains off-site if that's your gig.

<comment><USER11> Also, the "private domains" feature is reasonably priced on namecheap. On godaddy, it just isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm personally interested now in registrars that are outside of the US. Since the Kentucky ruling seizing those gambling websites, it's become a little bit more important to think about where your registrar is located.

Not that I think that sort of ruling is going to become common, but shielding yourself as much as possible from US court intervention isn't a terrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER13> I highly recommend Moniker.com. They have an excellent record on domain security (more to say about that) and are priced reasonably. I think I pay $8/year for registration and $1/year for name privacy for Social.com. To get this price, check the domain name forums (Namepros.com, DNForum.com) for forum member discount announcements.

I was originally using Namesecure prior to Oct. 2006 when they allowed someone to use some social engineering to steal my domain Social.com. Took me almost two weeks to recover it.

Besides an excellent track record, Moniker just came out with an additional security product that allows you to specify offline verification to further secure your domain.

GoDaddy I would stay away from. I hear nothing but bad news about dealings with them.

I'll have to take a look at gandi.net. Had not heard of them before.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think godaddy is the best. If you are buying\selling then its easy to push names in and out of. The management is simple and the locking\unlocking is very easy. Price is king as many other features are commodities. Also having 24/7 phone support is great.

</comment><comment><USER15> I used to register the domains with yahoo but the renewal price its quite high.

Today i've registered one with google (godaddy) for google apps for domains and everything went ok 10$ per year and google apps for domains set up by default

</comment><comment><USER16> I use both NameCheap and GoDaddy. I would have switched off GoDaddy completely but actually GoDaddy is the cheapest (around $7/yr) when using coupons...

One more tip, hosting with the registrar is usually a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm using bluehost.com, it's $10/year. Their checkout process is very quick. Also see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150561>

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a reseller at opensrs. It works out very well for what I need.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm using GoDaddy (I wouldn't recommend them for any of their other products besides domains and maybe SSL certs), but I hear lots of votes for Dreamhost.

</comment><comment><USER20> Dynadot.com is an excellent choice.

</comment><comment><USER21> DynDNS lets you set very low TTL. It's not cheap, but if that's what you need it's very good.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use joker.com. Have for many many years. No complaints.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use AIT domains and godaddy. Don't love either.

</comment><comment><USER24> nearlyfreespeech.net Have been using for 2 years now. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I second dreamhost.

</comment><comment><USER26> dreamhost does pretty well at $9.95/yr

<comment><USER27> I switched from GoDaddy to Namecheap and haven't looked back. Domains under $10/ea (less with their frequent coupon codes) and a clean ad-free admin console. Highly recommend Namecheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Namecheap!

</comment><comment><USER29> namecheap.com

</comment><comment><USER30> name.com</comment>


Ask HN: What do you look for in a PR Agency? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious as to what you expect from a PR firm? Do you go with the retained option? If so, what do you expect of them every month?
And you don't go retained, what sort of goals are you looking to achieve? <comment><USER2> My goals would guide whether I spent a retainer or not on a publicist. If I needed a reactive, damage-control publicist, then a retainer would make sense to have them at the ready. But if I were planning a product roll-out and wanted media placements it might make more sense to hire someone for a finite campaign.

As far as expectations, for the proactive job I would negotiate goals with the publicist for number and stature of media outlets I wanted coverage from. e.g.(blog coverage, trades, or national TV and newspaper coverage). I would expect them to spend their time understanding the product and then pitching the story to reporters, and then to field press calls and handle logistics (press releases, arranging interviews, etc.)

Expectations for a reactive publicist are not as clear cut. I'd want them to control damage, but I can't think of a concrete metric for that.

In either case, I'd make sure they had news or reporting experience before hiring them. If they don't understand how the media works from the inside, they won't be as effective as someone who does.</comment>