Show HN: Nuclino – a lightweight and fast real-time wiki for teams - <AUTHOR> https://www.nuclino.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, co-founder of Nuclino here!

After having tried countless knowledge management tools that were either too bloated and slow or focused on single users, we set out to create a lightweight wiki optimized for teams.

Some of the main features include:

* Everything is shared in real-time

* Instant fuzzy search

* Markdown commands

* Easy linking of pages using "@"

* Automatic tagging based on page titles

* Graph visualizations of tags and pages

You can think of it as an nvALT + real-time collaboration + rich content.

We've been dogfooding and testing this with a few startup teams over the past few months and would be happy to get your feedback and to answer any questions!

<comment><USER2> I'm not joking: much of the light gray text on your site and your screenshot becomes literally unreadable when my LCD monitor is viewed at certain angles, not far off perpendicular; it becomes the same color as the background. My monitor may not be expensive, but it's not a cheapo, no-name one either.

I absolutely detest this current fad of thin, light gray text on white backgrounds. Instead of using high-contrast, easy-to-read text, people are using gray-on-white, white-on-gray, even gray-on-gray, and always with thin, narrow-stroke fonts and enormous amounts of whitespace.

And if it's hard to read indoors with no glare on a full-size screen, imagine trying to read it on a mobile device, outdoors, with sun/sky glare, or indoors on a reflective, glossy screen with fluorescent lights' glare.

I mean, look at the bottom of your page. One of the most important links on the page, the "Contact" link, is _very light_ gray, thin text on white. When the cursor hovers over the bottom of the page, the links become _slightly darker gray_. And when the cursor hovers over a link, it becomes an even darker--wait for it--gray. You've effectively made the "Contact Us" link invisible.

And the screenshot of your product exhibits the same problems: the UI fades into the background to such a degree that it is difficult to see. This is bad enough when talking about a web page whose primary purpose is to look stylish, but your product's primary purpose is to be a usable tool. Are you trying to make the wiki equivalent of Das Keyboard?

Where do these fads come from?

For a good illustration of the problem, I just discovered this web site (which also lists HN as an example of the problem): [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback. We didn't test the landing page under lots of different conditions yet, but we'll continue to make improvements. For example, I just deployed a new version with an improved contrast of the footer.

Regarding the product, themes and customizations will most likely be the best option to maximize the usability for each individual user. This way, users could choose high contrast themes if they are not happy with the default.

As for the general design question you are proposing, my opinion is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach that pleases and maximizes the usability for everyone. For example, making all text larger might increase readability for people with below average eyesight, but will punish users with normal eyesight by decreasing the information density. I think that adaptive design, which software can uniquely offer to some degree, is the only hypothetical solution. However, this is obviously limited by the context-awareness of systems in that it doesn't help that a system could automatically adjust it's font-size if it does not know the state of the users' eyesight.

<comment><USER2> Well, the footer is slightly improved, but what is arguably the most important link on your page--the one that lets potential customers contact you--is still at the very bottom of the page, on the fourth (4th) screen. According to the Nielsen-Norman group[1], anything below the first fold gets less than 50% as many eye-tracking hits, and by the time you get to the fourth screen, you're at basically 0%.

So the most important link on your entire web site is effectively still invisible. What message does this send to your potential customers? It's the Internet equivalent of leaving a message on an answering machine without leaving your phone number.

I don't understand how you can post this screenshot[2] and talk about information density. The information density of your current product is very low.

But the worst problem is the incredibly low contrast of your UI. Look at that screenshot again. Look at the links on the right side of the screen. They are barely readable on a full-size, matte monitor indoors. Now imagine someone using a glossy monitor facing a window during daytime. Imagine someone using a laptop with a glossy screen on a desk with fluorescent lights overhead. Imagine someone using a tablet outdoors. Might as well try to read a cloud floating overhead! The NN Group also has an article[3] about this, and your screenshot looks as bad as or worse than all of their examples of what-not-to- do.

Where are these professional "designers" learning to make these horrible mistakes? Why are they still employed in the field?

1: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold- manifesto/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/)

2: [https://www.nuclino.com/img/screenshot.png](https://www.nuclino.com/img/screenshot.png)

3: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/low- contrast/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/low-contrast/)

<comment><USER3> I am sorry to hear that you are upset with our current experience.

> So the most important link on your entire web site is effectively still > invisible.

Where would you like the link to be and how should it look?

> I don't understand how you can post this screenshot[2] and talk about > information density. The information density of your current product is very > low.

What would you like to change exactly regarding the information density?

> But the worst problem is the incredibly low contrast of your UI.

Would a high contrast theme solve the problem for you?

In general, I am more than happy to offer you a Skype/Chat session, where we could discuss the design in more detail. Feel free to drop me a line at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really love the idea, we have been struggling with this issue quite a bit in my office.

For me the one killer feature that I would want is comments. The commenting feature is the main reason our team uses Google docs, despite the major issues with it as an information hub.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear that as we have comments on our roadmap. We're not sure yet how the best experince for commenting would look like.

Would you prefer inline comments, that appear directly inside the page or comments that appear on the side like in Google Docs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems really cool - would love to see a demo app I can play around with before handing over an email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input! We might add an open "Test Team" to the landing page. Until then you're free to use a spam address to convince yourself of the product ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love that markdown editor, very fast and easy to use. Well done! Although they could improve the contrast a bit (or maybe my screen just sucks).

Probably will give this a try with a few colleagues and see if it scales when you accumulate a larger amount of documents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! It's always hard to get contrast right on all the different screens, but we'll look into it.

I can say that we've reached about 500 pages in our team and it's still working great. Nevertheless, we definitely plan on introducing more advanced organization and visualization features for teams with large amounts of documents.

<comment><USER7> The product is sweet. Enjoyed the UI/UX. However I think the landing page needs a little bit more love (pricing, team, contacts, use case, features lists) what about importing from existing Wikis or plain documentation text files (e.g. markdown, asciidoc)?

<comment><USER6> An export/backup feature would also be nice. Don't wanna have to trust your average SaaS provider keeping your important stuff backed up properly. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, we have export on our roadmap. (Of course we use replication and perform daily backups to S3, but I understand your concerns nevertheless)

What kind of export would you like to see? Exporting the whole content of a team as HTML, generating PDFs for all the pages, generating Markdown files? Any preferences?

<comment><USER6> Probably something more semantically structured than HTML. Markdown could be an option. Maybe something that could be reimported for a 'rogue employee gone mad' scenario?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks really neat! Any details on pricing? Will there be a free plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> We plan on charging a monthly fee per user similar to the premium offerings of products like Slack, Trello, and Asana. We're also thinking about offering a free version with a limited feature set, but have not decided how this will look exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wish we could use it on our servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, we are generally open to that, but we still have to see how much demand there is for a self-hosted solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do you add a link? - like a hyperlink to external page

<comment><AUTHOR> There's currently a bug that forces you to hit Space after pasting a link, for it to be recognized as a link. We'll fix this soon, but for now you can just hit Space after the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just deployed a new version which fixes this! You can now just paste a link into the editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does after release there are will be free version?

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't decided on this yet. We are still evaluating how a free version might look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pretty neat</comment>


A note I sent to YCombinator - <AUTHOR> First, I guess I should say that I have started five companies. All were successful; two had successful NASDAQ small-cap IPOs.  I have also had a few books published, and spent a number of years as a widely read computer columnist in the 1980s.  Meh.
Of late, I have been doing medical technical writing for large medical companies. I'm pretty financially secure, so I only work on short-term contracts, and only when I feel like it. But it does put me in the world of highly skilled contract workers, which is interesting, and the reason for this note.
First, I agree with 99% of what you say about entrepreneurship. The one thing that I would add is that people who want to be successful had better be nice people.
Smart talented people don't want to work with jerks, no matter what the compensation. Here, of course, we come to Steve Jobs. Steve asked me to come to Apple to write one of two "first books" about the Macintosh. (the other was written by Cary Lu, much missed.). So I spent 1983 at Apple, hanging around, being nosy.  And got to spend quite a bit of time with Steve. That made me want to start my own company…to see if I could do it and succeed. More importantly, it made me want to start a company and not be an asshole, and see if I could succeed. The answer was yes.
So it was with some interest that I looked at the job postings for the companies that you are involved with. Of the 12 companies listed, 10 of the openings were for programmers. No surprise.
The humor, to me, is in the consistency. They all want really really really really good programmers. Not one company is willing to put forth a salary number, but they all say they offer excellent compensation.  In the bay area, that must be a lot of zeros!
And most wave their hands about how hard they work. Get the code?  We intend to work you like a dog. To enrich the founders, of course.
And most offer the added incentive of equity. Although only a fool or a recent graduate would fail to realize how easily one can be washed away in later rounds.
So here we have greed and capitalism operating in its purest form.  You want to make a lot of money by funding startups. The start ups want to make a lot of money by making things.  But…as you so correctly state, the wealth will primarily be created by the programmers. And they don't have programmers! Or at least not the really really good programmers they need to make a really really big bunch of money.
If Marx were alive today...you get the idea.  It is obviously hard to exploit the working class, when the workers you need are so rare and so valuable to your aspirations.  Hence all the frenetic handwaving in the job postings on your site
I have a friend. A young man who has an international tea distribution company, which services bubble tea shops, owned by his father and other investors.  He wants business advice. I keep saying: dude, you have an international tea distribution business!  Run with it!
But I really like the guy. So I dug deep, to come up with the best business advice I could offer. I finally arrived at this: make sure that everyone who works for you, and everyone who works with you, makes a ton… an absolute boatload of money. Do that, and make sure that they really do, and you will do fine.  No worries. And you will become a better person in the process; which is the only justifiably selfish reason to be in business in the first place.
Maybe some of your companies could take those notions into their efforts to hire ditch diggers?
Doug Clapp
ps -- All this we work really hard bullshit? As if it is a merit badge or something? Your fundees should realize that the very best code written in this century was written for the space shuttle. And the folks who wrote it, without going into too much detail, worked 40 hour weeks. And were not allowed to work more than that. Period. It is no fun to win if you don't play by the rules. A 40 hour week is a good rule. I suspect that a 36 hour week is a better rule. :-) <comment><USER2> A lot of the job postings to me from YC startups seem absurd, since a lot of them seem to be looking for "expert"-level roles. For example, a lot of them are looking for a "growth engineer." My interpretation is that they're basically saying, "We have a cool product and anyone that hears about us seems to like us, so we need someone that can write code that will help more people hear about us."

Or, more generalized: "We have some huge thing we want to do, and can't do it ourselves, so we're looking for someone that can pretty much just come in and do it for us."

And all the postings offer in terms of describing/selling why such a immensely talented individual would work for them is: "We're reinventing the future of everything, we work hard and play hard, we can offer competitive salary and equity."

The OP seems to feel this is borne out of some sort of maliciousness, but I really think this is mostly just cluelessness. When you get a little bit of traction and you have a little bit of money in the bank, and you're trying to go even faster and you have 20 major initiatives you want to do and you can only work on like 2 at a time, it's easy to conclude, "We need to hire! We love our company, this is so much better than working at some corporate stuffy job, why wouldn't anyone think the same?"

Most of these companies would probably just be better served forgetting about hiring and building out the core product until they have more product-market fit, so they have enough revenue/funding to compensate employees closer to their talent level, and have a "popular" brand that people would want to actively work for.

Unfortunately this would mean delaying that 3rd party API, or porting your applcation to iOS, or started using SEO/SEM to drive some traffic, which all have huge learning curves that are tough to navigate while you have a ton of other things to do. But if they were THAT critical, I would suggest those startups prioritize them over those other things and doing it themselves.

<comment><USER3> _> The OP seems to feel this is borne out of some sort of maliciousness, but I really think this is mostly just cluelessness._

I agree with you there, but not necessarily on your second point (that they shouldn't be hiring).

I think the "work hard, play hard" line is so thoroughly seared into most founders' ideas of the "startup game" that it doesn't even occur to them that a normal working schedule is possible -- and for founders and CEOs, it often isn't. But if you're asking employees to work to their very core, then you either need to either pay them a crazy amount of money, or look for a another co-founder.

In terms of hiring positions like a "growth engineer" as a fifth employee, you're absolutely right. Often times, buzzwords can get the best of people: maybe what you actually need is just a _marketing guy_ , but, you know, you've been reading all these Growth Hacks articles and maybe if you find a marketing guru who can code and also mock up your UI/UX and-- and then, all of a sudden, you're trying to hire some superman to do all of the things your organization needs. It's better to hire people in positions for which they're qualified and pay them well to work their 40 hour work-weeks than it is to try to find the one Super Expert Growth Hack Architect Team Lead Manager, try to bribe him or her with equity, and expect 120 hour work-weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These are some great insights, and well worth the read.

I think that at a core level, many of us -- especially in the managerial world -- understand that working people to death, especially technical people, never works out well.

The adage of "work smarter, not harder" is absolutely correct. Just like it's better to write five lines of algorithmically beautiful code than a hundred lines of obfuscated spaghetti, it's also better to work reasonable hours in an atmosphere that is comfortable and enjoyable. Working less is often _exponentially_ more productive. Will there be a crunch time, especially in the world of startups? Of course there will, and anyone who would promise otherwise is just plain wrong. That said, it shouldn't be crunch time _all the time_.

There needs to be a balance. Everyone needs to take their job seriously, and needs to get their work done in an acceptable amount of time... but stressing people out to the point of misery is counter-productive. My engineering team, for example, allows flexible work hours. I lead the team, and usually get into the office around 9:45am. I am rarely in the office before 9:30am, and I'm only in before 9 if I have an important call or meeting. I usually stay until six or six-thirty at night, because that's when I start to feel my productivity slipping. Some of my guys are early risers, and work 7am - 3pm. Some of them sleep later than me, but then go home and work until 3am. As long as their work is getting submitted on time, I don't mind at all: I want people to be comfortable, and not sit in a desk chair for the sake of keeping it warm.

Different companies work in different ways, but I agree with the points that Doug is putting forward in his post. The trend of "we work 18 hours a day to get anything done!" might sound super enthusiastic to a potential investor, but think about the message you're sending your potential talent. Founding a company is one thing, and it's going to require longer days than working on the codebase (unless that's what the founder does at your organization...), but there _needs_ to be a balance. Hopefully, we'll get there soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you call crunch time is what I call poor project management. I started out as the managing editor of a daily newspaper. We shipped an entire product every day. We never slipped, we never missed a daily deadline… Just like every other daily newspaper. And there was never a OMG OMG crunch time as the daily deadline neared. If you manage a project correctly, when the deadline arrives you'll be sitting around telling jokes and admiring your work. I've done it many times. It can be done and it is not that difficult.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, making the average daily newspaper is a different kind of project than how most software is made. Print is mostly a fixed process with few creative unknowns. You know how long it takes for something to get through editorial or advertising, how long it takes to lay it out or drop in a replacement, what time the printer needs the layouts to be able to get the final papers to distribution, and what price and time are involved in special features or changes, like spot color or losing some number of copy inches at the last minute. But much of software is something new, the automation of some process or creation of efficiency. Software projects, almost by definition, have some of the players doing something they've never done before. Parts of the processes are similar, but software and daily print projects aren't really comparable for most of the cycle.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been a manager in both businesses. of course there are differences; but there are also many similarities. the big idea is that if there is a firm, inflexible deadline, you will meet it. You may not ship the product that you really wish to ship, but you will ship. and, to be honest, feature X that has to be in the product, probably can just as easily go in the next release. Don't let the best be the enemy of the good. Be realistic about your capabilities.

<comment><USER4> Then yes, if you limit it to the subset of software projects that can cut features and still be considered to have met the deadline, then you can meet inflexible deadlines in software projects. You've defeated technical unknowns and external dependencies with the escape hatch of "Feature x, or whatever ship-worthy part of that you can have done by date y".

In that scenario, I think you're implying that meeting a deadline is the most important metric. I consider that far more likely in periodicals than software. For the common varieties like commercial software, contract development, and in-house development, the only one likely to permit that idea is the commercial product. Contracting and in-house projects will adjust the ship date or renegotiate requirements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's kind of ridiculous that some mod or admin must've hidden this post because it's now missing from the front page.

<comment><USER6> Anyone figure this out? Can't find it in new nor in the first 4 pages.

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on emails, I'd say it was a person, who I won't name, at ycombinator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always found job postings by YC companies surreal. The ideology espoused by YC is to be a founder of a startup. If you are a talented engineer, why would you work for 1-2%(if your lucky) equity and less salary than google/facebook/etc.

<comment><USER8> _If you are a talented engineer, why would you work for 1-2%(if your lucky) equity and less salary than google/facebook/etc._

If you are a sufficiently young engineer (I am neither young nor an engineer, but I know people who are both), you might want to work at a startup before launching your own because

a) the startup might hit it big enough to make you rich enough to have a lot of runway for your own project,

and

b) you might learn something about the process of founding and running a startup if you get enough personal interaction with the founders.

So it's not always a dumb choice to work for a startup as one of the early employees. It's rare for an early hire's equity share to turn into serious money, and it's commonplace for startups to fizzle out and leave their early employees looking for a new job, but some young people like that atmosphere and think it provides learning opportunities that more "secure" jobs don't provide. There is also, of course, a case to be made for working at Google, Facebook, etc., but I am attempting to answer your question.

<comment><USER9> As a seasoned startup engineer, it's bad advice, every time.

Mark Zuckerberg controls 28% of Facebook's voting equity.

Think about it. You're getting totally fucked, kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To add insult to working like a dog, most companies now say "they don't track vacation" and paint it as an incentive trying to imply employees can take as much vacation as they want. The reality is because of peer pressure no one takes a vacation. I for one stay as far away as possible from such companies.

</comment><comment><USER11> Funny, but I just moved to the Bay Area and I've thinking about exactly this subject for the past two days.

I am looking for the following in a company, in this order:

        - A culture of morality
        - A culture of respect
        - A culture of good listening
        - A modicum of intelligence and talent

If a company has all of these, with just a bit of luck, they will succeed, and do it by truly generating value. Lots of companies headed by jerks will also succeed, but I'd rather not be in them.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm honestly not really seeing the fuss here. Doesn't every company want "really really really good programmers"? Don't most companies offer stock options? Am I really supposed to see a lack of info about how hard they work and assume the worst?

If there were some inside knowledge from people who have taken these offers and lived to regret doing so, then maybe this would have some substance. To me, without more info and being willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, it just seems like speculation and pessisism.

</comment><comment><USER13> > A 40 hour week is a good rule. I suspect that a 36 hour week is a better > rule.

By saying "36 hour week" instead of "35-hour week is better", you're showing a bias that better working hours means working less days or taking longer weekends (i.e. 9 days every two weeks), rather than less hours per day (i.e. 7 hours a day). Certain types of people (including you I guess) would prefer the extra day as reward, other types prefer the extra hour each day. Don't forget about the latter types of people.

<comment><USER14> In the Netherlands, where a 36 hour work-week is pretty standard, it usually means 4.5 days, so one day you work half and go home earlier. Another common scheme is to alternate 4x8 and 5x8 work weeks. But I suppose most bosses would not mind if you want to keep an even different schedule as long as it adds up and doesn't inconvenience the rest of the team.

<comment><USER13> I didn't think of the 6x6 work week when I wrote my first comment, just the 35-week used in France. I guess the 6x6 is what I was promoting (i.e. less hours per day rather than less days), but taken to a greater extreme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > I suspect that a 36 hour week is a better rule. :-)

According to a lot of sources, including Tom DeMarco's PeopleWare, 35 hours a week is the only sustainable pace for intellectual work. Plus or minus a few hours, maybe.

But that was about stable companies. I'm not sure that startups are trying to be sustainable.

Arguably a startup is really exploring a space of possibilities, searching for a profitable niche. So probably delivering crappy code that delivers three features is better than producing one solid thing. I've been on the cleanup crew for a couple of acquired startups, as well as products that were developed in 20% time at large corporations and grew into larger teams. My impression is that code quality barely mattered to their initial success. So I'm not sure what the optimum workload in a YC-style startup should be.

Also, we have to modify DeMarco et al's advice for a team composed of two or three twentysomethings. It seems likely that their stamina is going to be well above average and their knowledge and experience is going to be well below. So perhaps they are playing their cards right to bet on stamina.

</comment><comment><USER16> > ps -- All this we work really hard bullshit? As if it is a merit badge or > something? Your fundees should realize that the very best code written in > this century was written for the space shuttle. And the folks who wrote it, > without going into too much detail, worked 40 hour weeks. And were not > allowed to work more than that. Period. It is no fun to win if you don't > play by the rules. A 40 hour week is a good rule. I suspect that a 36 hour > week is a better rule. :-)

This is a bad example. The Shuttle code is a extremely narrow, well-specified piece of functionality where they had many years to work on and refine it using formal methodologies like Z specifications (IIRC) and I don't even remember how many millions of dollars the _Fast Company_ article said was spent developing the code over the years.

Every single one of those qualifiers and adjectives is likely to be false in a startup context.

</comment><comment><USER17> Your Advise reminds me a Quote from the movie God Father Part-II. "Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners. One by one, our old friends are gone. Death, natural or not, prison, deported. Hyman Roth is the only one left, because he always made money for his partners. ". Anyway good Advice.

</comment><comment><USER18> Doug I know I'm just a silly fanboy -- but I'd be curious about what else you got to see at apple during that era, and any other insights you have on startups...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Michael. I think that Apple in those days is a field that is well-plowed. folklore.org is a particularly fun site.

Start-ups? Business is business. it can be as high-stress or as peaceful as you decide to make it. Software development, these days, is often dysfunction practiced as an artform. :-) Give SCRUM a shake, and waterfall drops to the floor, quivering in embarrassment. Add your examples here. My best development advice is solve the hard problems first, not last. If there are no hard problems, look again. If all parts of the development process are equally difficult, then it should be fairly easy to estimate time to complete...to over-simplify...

This has worked through-out history. Alexander The Great attacked the enemy line at its strongest point, with well-rested, fired-up troops, who knew the battle would be fierce but short. Ditto Patton and Colin Powell. And Karl Rove perfected going at an opposing candidate's greatest strength; a lesson learned by the Obama campaign…thank goodness. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, one last thing. Richard Branson, a business genius, said "Praise people and they flower; criticize them and they wilt." So praise and cheerlead and mentor relentlessly. And, like the best baseball managers, put people in positions where they can succeed. I could go on... :>)

<comment><USER19> My Bangladesh team actually tell me the opposite; they want critique, not praise. If they get praise they will stop working as they feel they over delivered. Guess it depends on where your people are and what culture they are from.

<comment><USER20> I believe there is some subtlety to this. As a Norwegian I notice Americans co-workers often crave more praise and positive feedback than say Northern European co-workers. Americans also more actively give praise. However that doesn't mean that Northern Europeans don't like to be praised. But one needs to feel that the person giving it is honest about it. I try to give praise when I know people have performed better than is normal for them.

I know myself that I find it just irritating if I get praise for mediocre work, which should be plain to see for anybody who care that it isn't anything special.

I don't know Bangladesh culture but I would expect that there would be similar mechanisms at work. They don't want unwarranted praise. They wanted when they have performed well.

I am guessing because from when I lived in the US, there was one thing I could find common ground among all other foreign students whether they were Japanese or Spanish and that was that American optimism and positivism is a bit alien to everybody. Don't misunderstand I think it is quite admirable that Americans are so positive and can-do attitude. The rest of the world could certainly learn a bit from that. But as with most things there is always a flip side of the coin.

Sometimes Americans seem to hit the wall of reality a bit too hard because optimism was running a too high compared to what was realistically possible.

<comment><USER19> It is common here in Northern EU to see Americans as almost 'crazily optimistic'. Like you say (and this goes especially for the very 'sober' people like the Dutch and scandinavians); the first time you run into Americans in real life it's really jikes. You look SOO good, that's SOOO GREAT what you do etc. I (from Netherlands) got more compliments in one week in the US than I ever did in the Netherlands my whole life (that's probably not true, but I felt like that). So as we are very sober, those compliments are rapidly filtered and then they are not compliments anymore. But on the other hand, I do admire it more than the other side of not getting compliments mostly and I like the optimism much more. I do like well founded criticism but I believe that's different than what my BD colleagues want.

It's interesting to see the differences anyway.

<comment><USER20> Hehehe cool I didn't know you were dutch. I lived in Holland for 3 years. It was eerie how similar I found Dutch to be to Norwegians despite living in countries with very different history and physical appearance. I find that foreigners complain about the exactly same thing about Norwegians as Dutch. Being too direct, blunt, cold etc.

Anyway interesting with the BD colleagues of yours. I am most familiar with Vietnamese. I can't remember anything in particular about their view on criticism. But they preferred very detailed descriptions of what they were supposed to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of pointy-hair bosses, especially in Asia (I am now working in China) assume longer working hours = higher productivity. In other words, they are having the 'factory mindset' whereby an hour not working is equal to an hour of productivity loss. However this assumption won't work for R&D, especially anything related to software.

<comment><USER22> Fellow China expat here. I work at douban.com and the culture seems to be closer to US tech companies than what you describe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> jwz said the same thing: [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my- name-to-se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell- a-con/)

> What is true is that for a VC's business model to work, it's necessary for > you to give up your life in order for him to become richer.

Let's get a movement going here.

</comment><comment><USER24> Who says they don't have programmers? I would wager that almost every YC company has at least 1 and generally more than one programmer on the founding team.

I also think you're being far too presumptuous about the comp packages these startups are offering. You seem to imply that they're being too stingy. Do you have any evidence for this?

<comment><USER25> "Not one company is willing to put forth a salary number, but they all say they offer excellent compensation."

The implication being that the salaries offered are low. If they were confident that what they were offering was competitive then maybe they wouldn't be afraid to be up front about it? I've never had to hire someone so I don't know what the reasons are for not stating a salary range are.

<comment><USER24> You aren't going to get uniform applicants. Different applicants will command different salaries. There's not a reasonable way to put a single number on it. It's not just YC companies that do this, it's basically everyone. Go try to find a salary number on google.com/jobs. You won't find one, and yet Google is known to pay quite well.

When was the last time you saw a salary number for any programming job?

For that matter seeing a salary number in a job add for any high skill professional job is extremely rare.

<comment><USER26> Almost every job add on the IT sido of jobserve.co.uk has a salary number and that includes job offers made directly by companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting take on how many businesses and startups are being run by the founders these days. Doug, I have one question for you: how do you feel the sales and marketing (or the neglect of them) affect how the founders are able to treat their staff?

<comment><USER19> I'm interested in that too, but I guess it depends on the type of company probably and the type of sales? I know some commission driven sales in a services companies definitely killing people rapidly by selling insane amounts of work and then throwing it over the fence. You need a very strong account/pm to counteract this if you want to not die and keep clients happy at the same time.

For products I have seen sales guys adding features because the client asks and the doing this with the founder's permission because 'that big client we cannot miss'. Resulting in misery for the rest of the staff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you just have to say no. if your business works for clients, the clients will always kill you if you let them. insane demands, low ball bids, etc. this is as old as capitalism, and particularly found in advertising agencies... and printing companies. I am sure you can add examples. If you want to run your business like a third world country, you obviously can.

<comment><USER19> You have to say no, but not like that or you won't be servicing clients in hard times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent stuff, Doug!

Tim McClarren

</comment><comment><USER28> I had an interview with a YC company. They were going to bring me on board with a low salary, lots of equity, and a seven day work week, with what seemed to be 8-10 hours a day. But hey, they have a cool office and free food!

<comment><AUTHOR> While I realize that the plural of anecdote isn't data, this is pretty much my point exactly. The venture capitalists take a large position for a small amount of money... minimizing the risk and maximizing their potential profit. the founders try to play a similar game with their highly skilled employees. Welcome to capitalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I want to work for you.

Coming out of two startup sales, I have to say if you want to make money you shouldn't be an early employee anyway; you should join when the company is willing to pay good money.

<comment><AUTHOR> The way to get good people to work with you is to be the kind of person people want to work with. Seems obvious to me. I have worked with jerks, and with people I continue to love and admire to this day. Like many of you, I'm sure.

Since I am sadly a shitty programmer, I had to take my inspiration from baseball managers… people who did not play the game, but tried their best to make sure that the team won. you don't win by leaving your best pitcher in for nine innings. (Usually :-). You try to put people into situations where they can succeed, day after day.</comment></comment>


Google Wave, Reincarnated - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38804/page1/

<comment><USER2> This is us (LiveLoop). If any HNers are using PowerPoint 2007 and need to collaborate in Wave-like realtime with colleagues, email me at email@example.com and I will set you up with a free account.

<comment><USER3> _something that 750 million people already use: Microsoft PowerPoint._

Millions, certainly, but 750 million? What's your source for this? (I ask because it exceeds similar estimates I've seen for Excel.)

<comment><USER2> Source: [http://blogs.office.com/b/office- exec/archive/2010/08/12/the...](http://blogs.office.com/b/office- exec/archive/2010/08/12/the-olympians-of-microsoft-office.aspx)

<comment><USER3> I see it. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny how few comments there are on this one. As much as MS isn't the hotness right now, this is a cool product to retroactively add third-party collaboration feature to a complex app. Hats off to you guys as that seems like an impressive feat for such a mature project.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps because there are not that many PowerPoint users or people that need a feature like this? LiveLoop seems like a last resort if sitting together in the same office isn't a possibility. I've never had to collaborate with many people on a presentation, though, but I have used the chat on Google Docs with great success ... once or twice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> See previous discussion on Stypi: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2865014>

</comment><comment><USER7> I get the feeling that many of the ideas in Wave have diffused out into products/services like Google Docs and Google+ Hangouts. (Think of the live editing and internal chat features within Google Docs.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Stypi is phenomenal! Looking forward to the vim plugin. I see a tremendous number of use cases, especially as it starts to be integrated into more and more apps.</comment>


Crash Chrome 70 with the SQLite Magellan Bug - <AUTHOR> https://worthdoingbadly.com/sqlitebug/ <comment><USER2> The offending WebSQL statements are as follows:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ft;

CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE ft USING fts3;

INSERT INTO ft VALUES('aback');

INSERT INTO ft VALUES('abaft');

INSERT INTO ft VALUES('abandon');

SELECT quote(root) from ft_segdir;

UPDATE ft_segdir SET root = X'0005616261636B03010200FFFFFFFF070266740302020003046E646F6E03030200';

SELECT * FROM ft WHERE ft MATCH 'abandon';

Source: [https://github.com/zhuowei/worthdoingbadly.com/blob/master/_...](https://github.com/zhuowei/worthdoingbadly.com/blob/master/_posts/2018-12-14-sqlitebug.html#L64-L76)

</comment><comment><USER3> OK, so, if this is what it is, then my question from earlier can be answered, I suppose. It is with FTS3, and the new defensive mode should be able to prevent it (there are also bug fixes to prevent it, even if you do not use the defensive mode). I have not used any of the FTS extensions, but in future I might. Now I can know what is the vulnerability.

(I do not use Chrome or Chromium, although this article is good to me anyways since it explains what the vulnerability is, since I do use SQLite.)

</comment><comment><USER4> Still no CVE assigned, and no-one has requested, not even via [https://iwantacve.org/](https://iwantacve.org/)

</comment><comment><USER2> isn't WebSql deprecated and will be removed from chrome?

<comment><USER5> WebSQL was replaced as a specification by IndexedDB, and Mozilla and Microsoft publicly opposed implementing it. Google has said in the past that they have no plans to remove it from Chrome, although given that they're shutting down Google+ due to vulnerabilities, I am curious if they are going to change their minds.

<comment><USER6> They are shutting down Google+ because no one uses it and they don't want to spend any money on developers maintaining a pointless product...

<comment><USER7> I think the Google+ shutdown has more to do with the G+ data leaks and increased scrutiny social media platforms are coming under because of fake news and fb political issues.

<comment><USER8> Perfect scapegoat to sunset a product that one one uses.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Redesigning the browser window - <AUTHOR> http://blogg.antrop.se/interaktionsdesign/redesigning-the-browser-window/

<comment><USER2> Regarding the use of horizontal space: This is what the Reading List feature of Safari 5 is for. (Example for comparison: <http://i.imgur.com/x2tkl.png>)

Tabs are really only supposed to be used for things you're actually looking at _simultaneously_ ; any time you're just middle-clicking everything on a page (e.g. the HN frontpage), in order to queue those pages up for reading after you close the index page, you should be putting them in the reading list instead. It's kind of sad that Apple hasn't made a larger push to get people to notice it; it's a much better solution for the bottom-80% of what people use tabs for today.

Things you might not know about the Reading List:

1\. It has quite a bit of accelerator support (you can put any link into the reading list by Shift+Clicking it; you can put the page you're on into the reading list with Command+Shift+D; and Command+Alt+Down is "I'm done reading this; advance to the next thing in the list.")

2\. The reading list (as part of your bookmarks menu) gets iCloud-synced. Your open tabs don't. That alone was worth consciously forcing myself to re-learn my "eh, later" behaviour, because now I can just forget what I had "open" and read the rest on my iPad/iPhone/etc. (I suppose this might be why it hasn't been advertised much as a feature; they might be waiting to use it as part of the iCloud release pitch.)

\---

On a separate note/rant, regarding the use of "tab groups": it seems like the author simply wants to re-invent the Springboard/Launchpad-style application management paradigm within the browser. Why bother? I don't want to have two different ways of managing my applications, depending on whether they're "web" applications or not. I want my applications in Launchpad, and my running applications in the Dock, with notification badges on them. It shouldn't matter that Gmail requires Webkit-et-al, just like it shouldn't matter that an app requires Java.

Safari, just like Mobile Safari, should simply have an "Add To Home Screen" button and be done with it. Apps that have been added as such should perhaps be able to access extra resources. (Their HTML5 offline-browsing manifests should be automatically downloaded, for one; they should have accelerated WebGL enabled, with shader support, for another; and this would also be an obvious place to adopt something like Google's NaCl.) I'm guessing, though, that we sadly won't see any of this support, because anything that integrates with the OS well-enough as a web-app is something that doesn't have to make a Mac App Store app instead.

<comment><USER3> This sounds interesting. I use Chrome. Does somebody know if there is a similar feature there?

<comment><USER4> Interestingly enough, Chrome had this option in the developers page, but they removed it. I believe it was called horizontal side tabs.

<comment><USER5> I have this option with Chrome 13.0.782.109 beta-m. If you right click a tab, the context menu option is "Use Side Tabs". I just can't remember what I did to get that option to appear in the context menu. I thought I used "about:labs", but that is no longer showing anything. Maybe the feature is baked into this build?

<comment><USER6> It's the first item in "about:flags".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get it. Is a single huge browser window seriously considered "good" now? I thought that the _whole point_ of the "useless" green button in Mac OS X was that you should _never_ maximize anything. Two browser windows side-by- side are much more useful than one of twice the size. Are we really moving away from multitasking on the desktop?

<comment><USER8> I think most people moved away from it before they knew they had it, when their copy of Microsoft Works for Windows 3.1 opened up in a maximized window.

Apple is heavily promoting use of gestures, multiple desktops, and other OS features to promote fast switching and passing of data between running full screen apps. It's different than the pile-of-windows approach of the last few decades but the intent is still to have a ton of user-opened programs running and interacting. I think casual users genuinely prefer full screen apps, even after 20 years of pro users trying to lecture them and slap their wrists over the potential they're ignoring. Lion seems to be trying to give them their full screen, while also teaching a "safe" feeling way to multitasking and present a bunch of apps.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure gestures are ever going to be more than a power-user feature. They are the keyboard shortcut of touch devices. My girlfriend still uses the browser scrollbar even though I've showed her the awesomeness of two finger scroll many a time.

<comment><USER10> The ipad disproves your claim about gestures. Gestures work just fine, as long as you do them on the screen itself and make them tightly correspond to real- world behavior. The usability problem occurs when the display and the touch interface are decoupled. The intuitive aspect of direct manipulation hinges on the manipulation actually being direct.

The trouble with mice is that they are a double proxy. You move the mouse in absolute terms, the mouse moves relative to a surface, and that relative movement is translated to the screen. The mind after a while abstracts away the mouse into a piece of your hand, so touchpads aren't really an improvement over mice, because you're just making relative movements on a proxied surface in both cases. In my experience the big usability issue with touchpads vs mice is that the area for relative movement is too small, requiring frequent repositioning. Apple gets it right by making the touchpad surface huge, so that you reposition your fingers less.

I expect that the current form factor is just an in-between until most computing devices look like ipads with external keyboards, with the mouse reserved for precision work (or perhaps we'll have dual finger/pen touchscreens).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The real problem isn't the browser. It's the screen. Large horizontal 16:9 screens are great for video but poor for text and pages.

In similar iOS style, screens should be rotatable and shift their content accordingly.

Watching a video? Great, put the screen to horizontal. Browsing the web? Writing a letter? Coding? Put the screen to vertical.

<comment><USER12> Except now your fonts are rendered like trash because the subpixel rendering and hinting assumes each RGB pixel triplet is in a horizontal line.

<comment><USER7> [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fonts?action=AttachFile&do=get&#...
See "VRGB".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> it's like this article was written just to prove the relevance of the title text in xkcd.com/934:

"It's fun to watch browsers fumblingly recapitulate the history of window management. Someday we'll have xmonad as a Firefox extension."

seriously, just about everything mentioned in here should be the responsibility of the window manager. why not let the window manager do its job? i can see why chrome wants to implement it's own window manager, because it actually is trying to be an OS. but apple has built a good WM, why aren't they using it?

</comment><comment><USER14> Opera allows you to set the tab bar on your left (with little page screenshots) for years already. Works pretty well on large, wide screens.

<comment><USER15> It's quite buggy though, e.g. with many tabs opened the "open new tab" button disappears or that you can't switch easily between thumbnails/no-thumbnails view, etc. Hope the good guys and girls at Opera will take notice of the OP and will work on some improvements in this area.

PS. also worth noting that Opera allows for easily grouping of tabs in the manner similar to the one described in OP (no naming though, fortunately (in my opinion at least)).

<comment><USER16> > with many tabs opened the "open new tab" button disappear

I just tried it and it seems that there's a sweet spot around 5-6 tabs where the button is partially hidden, but after that thumbnails are removed and you can see it again. A slight problem, but nothing to worry about.

> or that you can't switch easily between thumbnails/no-thumbnails view

Right click -> Customize -> Enable thumbnails in tabs.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I know about the "Right click" way, but it's not the easy one (comparing to the simple middle click on the edge of the tab bar when it's on the top of the window). Don't know hot can they solve it though, quite a challenging issue.

Edit: just checked it again (placing tab bar on the left) and now thumbnails turing on/off doesn't work at all - like I wrote: "buggy" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm already doing this with Opera, and I think Opera has it figured out a bit better, too. The curious thing here is, I guess, that I not only don't have an Apple Cinema display, I don't have a wide-screen display at all, and I even pivot my monitor by 90 degrees (the one I browse the web on.) I've made the experience that having a tall browser window is _much_ more useful than having a wide browser window.

See the screenshot: <http://imgur.com/3lFAN>

I like the big pictures on the tab buttons — gives me a visual idea of what I'm clicking on. I also like the tab stacks Opera implemented a while ago, even though I still have a couple of peeves with 'em.

One thing he's totally right about, though: address bars are largely wasted screen space. I'd like to only see them on newly opened tabs or so…

<comment><USER18> The address bar is the only security indicator you have in the browser. Hiding it to the extent you're suggesting leaves you pretty much defenseless against phishing attacks.

<comment><USER17> One could imagine some sort of indicator on the tabs. Or some sort of indicator around input/form fields, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know the future prognosis of OmniWeb---it's been a while since they've released anything but bug fixes---but they've had side-tabs since they introduced tabs close to a decade ago. The advantages of this are many: they take up no vertical space, they can spread out vertically and show you thumbnails (of the actual page, not a favicon), and they can be in a scrollable pane. After years and years of using this, it's downright painful to use the top-tabs found in any other browser, which are cramped and information-light, and as you get many tabs going, not only are most of them not visible on-screen but the ones that are have just one or two letters and a favicon, making them indistinguishable as well.

All of which is to say, yes yes yes to side-tabs.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like this very much. Safari 5.x suddenly feels aged compared to those screenshots. It also goes a long way showing how the iOS tabbed Safari is awful on the iPad.

In Firefox realm there has been Tree Style Tab, which I personally loathe, but for a take strikingly similar to the article description, there's apparently Vertical Tabs[0] available.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical- tabs...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/)

</comment><comment><USER21> You don't run applications maximized. You just don't.

Sure there are exceptions, such as photoshop and similar but for browsing there is a reason for why the only thing you might miss with a width of no more than 1024 pixels (or even less) are commercials, and for why we have columns in newspapers...

Thats why, even with widescreens, the horizontal real estate is very important and why you can't waste it. Sure, the vertical real estate is _very_ important as well (and boy is it neglected) and sure that has become a real problem with 16:9 but not enough to start wasting real estate just for the sake of it. Buy a 16:10 monitor (or 4:3) and you basically get that adress-bar, tab space and other goodies for free.

Even on a widescreen the browser-window really shouldn't be wider than it's height.

Or maybe it's just me...

<comment><USER22> Maybe it's you and large monitors. On my laptop, I run _everything_ maximized, and Alt+Tab is my best friend. My biggest gripe about OSX is that it's not built for this -- I literally need to define a separate space for _every_ application I use, just so I don't have a horrible jumble of windows. And unfortunately _still_ can't Alt+Tab between windows of the same app... :(

<comment><USER23> I'm sure if you're talking about Windows or OSX ( due to the Alt+Tab ambiguity ) but in OSX you can do Cmd + ` to tab between windows of the same app.

<comment><USER22> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see how most computer screens - even the large widescreen ones are a problem when reading webpages. I sort of like scrolling... It would be weird for me to read from the top of the screen, move down to the middle and then make my way to the bottom. What I usually do when reading is keep my eyes in a relatively fixed position and I just scroll down very slowly. This thing is pretty cool, but it might be a little annoying to have tabs on the side just to save 10-20 pixels of vertical screen.

And while I don't find it difficult to click on tabs (keyboard shortcuts!) I really like the idea of having the url inside tabs - adding that firefox/chrome and then getting rid of the url bar would be pretty cool.

<comment><USER25> it's not about saving 10-20 pixels vertical screen. way more space is needed to make the adressbar readable on bigger screens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Opera has already implemented the ability to dock your tabs on the left or right of the page, as well as the ability to stack tabs into groups. Sure, it may not be all Apple-fied like your design, but it works really well.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've thought for a while that we need to switch to multicolumn views for web browsing:

[http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2006-Novembe...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2006-November/000839.html), "multicolumn web browsers":

> So the solution generally adopted --- in newspapers, dictionaries, and > research papers --- is to lay out the text in multiple columns.

> With Apple's 30-inch-diagonal 100dpi display widely available and > > multiple-screen solutions becoming common, it's well past time to > adopt > this solution for web browsers as well.

[http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2000-August/...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- tol/2000-August/000626.html), "Phone browsers suck":

> On the other front, ever-growing screens on PCs present the opposite problem > --- how to usefully use a screen the size of two sheets of A4 paper side by > side? Interface idioms that worked well on smaller screens --- a menubar > along the top, single-column text filling the screen, icons sized by pixels > --- become clumsy.

I agree that moving tabs to the left side of the screen is a good idea, too. --enable-vertical-tabs doesn't seem to work for me in Chromium. Tree Style Tabs in Firefox gives you both tabs on the left and tab groups.

<comment><USER28> I'm going to use this opportunity to shamelessly plug a hack of Readability that I call Horizontability[0]. It just displays the usual Readability output in multicolumns with some javascript hooks to help navigation. For whatever reason, I can't seem to drag the bookmarklet in Chrome anymore[1].

Chrome's side tab implementation really needs some help. I appreciate being able to read more of the tab title, but they really don't save much space (the window bar is still present but it shrinks by like 2 pixels). I'm surprised it still doesn't work on Linux[2]. I checked out the source earlier and it's easy enough to understand but there's no way I can get chromium to build on my box.

[0] <http://etcet.net/projects/horizontal/index.html>

[1] maybe related to <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12290>

[2] <http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31763>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> That, or use a split-frame browser extension ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/fox-splitter-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/fox-splitter-formerly-split-br/)) ([http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual- view...](http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual-view/))

</comment><comment><USER30> To be honest, I don't like this setup with the tabs on the left side. It is not a good way to make efficient use of the the real estate on your screen. If you have opened only a few tabs there is so much more unused real estate below the tabs, which is just a waste of space IMO.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Reportedly, Google has been experimenting with this [hideable address > bar] as well.

FWIW, Firefox and Opera had this _long_ before google started "experimenting" with it.

<comment><USER31> Both firefox and opera have had it for as long as I remember.

Chrome is making news because they are experimenting with it that way by default.

<comment><USER16> That was a rumor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 2009 called. It wants conkeror and xmonad back:

<http://web.mit.edu/nelhage/Public/conkeror-dir.png>

(In other words, this browsing experience has been available for years. While that's not a picture of my desktop, that's pretty much what it looks like. No tab bar, no window chrome. Just the content and a tiny bit of state information. Emacs has also looked like this for ... 30 years or so.)

</comment><comment><USER33> I was not initially a big fan of vertical tabs. But this article is very persuasive. I'd very much like to see the contextual grouping and this looks like a good way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER34> I find myself using the browser in full-screen mode more and more often. If you want to give me better access to tabs (or other browser ui), how about being able to open (and transfer focus to) a hierarchically organized list when I alt+(tab, `)?

Oh, I guess the alt+tab shortcut is Opera only... Give it a try to see what I mean - it would work.

edit: when I say full-screen, I mean cmd-F, exclusive mode, not just 'maximized'.

</comment><comment><USER35> I totally dig the osx lion full screen paradigm thing when I'm using my laptop screen, in fact I switch to safari just for that, but when I have it hooked up to my main screen, it just feels 'wrong' with safari. The first mockup made me long for this functionality.

Anyone know of a way to make the reading list load pages in the background, so selecting a page shows it instantly?

</comment><comment><USER36> This left hand side vertical tab bar is how I used my firefox with some addons. (well my last installation has that addon. I'm not using it now). And this layout is a real screen saver for widescreen laptops.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like fullscreen Chrome because, unlike Safari, the tabs are above the url bar and thus benefit from the hard edge of the top of the screen. (see Fitt's law)

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe use Google's index for the tab group names? Use the top keyword common to all the sites.

</comment><comment><USER39> Application independent HiDPI would be useful in this situation.

</comment><comment><USER40> this looks sort of like treetabs with a nicer GUI. I suppose that's what I really have been wanting.

</comment><comment><USER41> I was with you up until Tab Groups.

Then I disagreed strongly.

</comment><comment><USER42> i would vouch for a "page-only" browser window with hover controls. like a video player

<comment><USER43> This is probably possible through some extensions and Firefox. The much loved TreeStyleTabs already has an option for "autohide the tab bar". If Pentadactyl/Vimperator don't already have an option for autohiding, it's probably pretty easy to script something up.

<comment><USER44> Pentadactyl/Vimperator do absolutely have that (set showtabline=never).

I use Pentadactyl, and a Shift-B (show buffers) followed by a <tab_number>gt will get me to wherever I need to go.

This is, of course, not discoverable, and therefore not really suitable for the demographic whose problems this article is hoping to solve, but for someone who's willing to put some time into learning a program (or who already uses vim), it's pretty spot-on. I, for one, love it.

I should add that the problems this article is trying to solve really ought to be solved through a thorough integration of the browser tab-system with the window manager. That, of course, necessitates a thorough rethinking of the window manager, also. But that was the problem tabs alleviated in the first place, right?

The WIMP model really is the walking dead.

<comment><USER45> Pressing b also opens show buffer window and you can select tab by pressing tab. You can also filter by title which is not possible in shift+b way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> No way I'm gonna use this. I want to stay with my REGULAR browser interface. I use a 5:4 display and it would suck.

</comment><comment><USER47> Couldn't be Apple-ier.</comment>


Todo list for MicroISV developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.secretgeek.net/microIsv_ToDoOrNot.asp

<comment><USER2> This is a great resource.

I've just come out of the SharePoint world and whilst I'm now in a Java world I've setup a solo boot-strapped micro ISV to cash in on the knowledge that I still have.

The only thing I'd add to that list is that if you're doing anything with the Microsoft stack then you should go and sign up to BizSpark. It will give you all of your software (dev tools, test stack, etc) for free which will help reduce an initial overhead.

That takes time, so do it immediately after 15. and 25.

BTW: I'm already making £3k per month from this and so far I've only sold a few WebParts to existing contacts. I would totally recommend little side projects like this if you do have specialised domain knowledge that you can take advantage of in a way that doesn't conflict with your current employer (if you have one).

The motivation to start the micro ISV was simply to fund my MSc and to cover the costs of the hardware that my project/paper requires. But it's quickly becoming a viable business on it's own so I might keep it up long-term.

<comment><AUTHOR> Capitalizing on you own strengh is a good idea. You don't want to spend month of research if you have a hour a day at most for working. Focusing on the production side is a better use of your time.

I didn't know bizspark. Can you get free licences to visual studio from it ? Do you need to be a real business to apply ?

<comment><USER3> In answer to your questions: Yes. (You can get free licences to almost anything MSFT makes in software. The one proviso is that they'll charge you $100, total, when you exit Bizspark, which is the later of three years from now or when you start making $1 million a year in revenue. It is the sweetest deal you'll ever get for commercial software.)

There are four qualifications you have to make to be eligible for Bizspark. Being a "real business", by which I think you mean incorporated, is not a requirement. All you have to do is promise MS that you're actively developing software or related services which are intended to be core to your business. There are darn few people on HN for whom that doesn't apply.

I have never done development on the MS stack but if you do it is an _absurdly_ good deal.

<comment><USER2> Aside from what patio11 has said, yes you can get Visual Studio through it.

I'm running Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and developing against SharePoint 2010 and Office Server 2007 as well as Microsoft Project Professional 2010 and the Office Web Apps 2010.

My total outlay so far has just been getting the company registered (accountancy fees) and then time on getting things like the bank account in place. I already had the domain and with the domain reflecting the business (even as a one-pager) I've made it through the rather simple BizSpark setup steps and now have full access to the MSDN subscription downloads.

If you touch anythign for Windows or MS products, BizSpark is a no-brainer. You just have to be a startup and have low revenue... which makes it perfect for the solo boot-strapper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm an indie Mac developer (what Mac guys call Micro ISV's), so I scanned down this list and compared it to my checklist for a recent release. Out of the 124 items listed here, I'd say that ~105 of them are either essential or good ideas to have. I don't really agree with the ordering: for example, I can't imagine leaving usability testing to #116.

That being said, the ones that should be in place ought to be in place from day one.

I don't see any point to several. EULA's on first run, asking at the BOS forum, PAD files (though I understand these are pretty important in Windows download sites), various pricing levels, obfuscation, or physical disk shipping.

The one that really bothers me is #88, 'box shot 3d'. If you don't ship boxed software, you shouldn't have a picture of boxed software on your site.

<comment><USER5> > The one that really bothers me is #88, 'box shot 3d'. If you don't ship > boxed software, you shouldn't have a picture of boxed software on your site.

You should A/B test it, shouldn't you? At least a number of years back windows users were more comfortable buying an online product if it had a box shot. Even if they _knew_ there was no box version. It's a question of being comforted by the familiar..

<comment><USER3> I have long thought that, like the Hacker Free logos, favoring box shots is a symptom of a vague distrust of the Internet and all the scammy thieves who are waiting to take your money even though no software exists. A box shot (or screenshots) _proves_ that the software actually exists.

Based on the alacrity with which I'm called a scammy thief if something goes wrong anywhere near the payment process, I'm going to guess that this really does weight on my customers' minds.

"Box shots mean it is real!" is not less rational than any of a thousand things I've heard about software over the years. (Some of them from techies.)

<comment><USER6> Except for sophisticated users who think that showing a box shot actually makes it seem MORE scammy. The gentlebox doth protesteth too much, as it were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how this is simply one bullet:

> build a community

<comment><USER6> Don'tcha know, social software does all the work of being social for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Build an API should be down at the bottom somewhere.

<comment><USER4> He's selling downloadable software. He's got an item on there about plugins, which might be considered the desktop equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of it you repeat from one to the other :)</comment>


Woah that is some wild postgresql - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/rpy/status/622291301002670080/photo/1 <comment><USER2> Whenever the PostgreSQL Mandlebrot comes up, I always show off my Oracle version. It was written independently (i.e., I didn't port the PostgreSQL version; I didn't know about it at the time) and I documented the process:

[http://xoph.co/20130917/mandelbrot-sql/](http://xoph.co/20130917/mandelbrot- sql/)

Of course, it comes with a hefty dose of proprietary functionality. I think the newer versions of Oracle support recursive CTEs -- but fortunately, I don't have to deal with Oracle any more, so it's dead to me ;)

<comment><USER3> > but fortunately, I don't have to deal with Oracle any more, so it's dead to > me

I recently did a project where I got to use Oracle 12c. Bit of a hump getting back into it (last time I used Oracle was 8 in the early 2000s), but, man, it is amazing what you can do with it when you leverage all of its power.

I really hope they adjust their pricing model in the future to be friendly to non-billion-dollar corporations -- I'd love to use Oracle as the foundation for a startup, because the technology is decades ahead of where open source is, but, man, $48k/core... that's rough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The SQLite documentation has a wonderfully titled section "Outlandish Recursive Query Examples" [1], which includes computation of a Mandelbrot Set.

[1] [https://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html](https://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html)

<comment><USER5> And the code from the OP picture is on the PostgreSQL Wiki since 2009:

[https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set)

"This SQL query (requires PostgreSQL 8.4) produces an ASCII-art image of the Mandelbrot set. It is written entirely in SQL:2008-conformant SQL."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought about collecting some of these in the past.

Fun thing to do, put this in a `.ps` file and send it to a printer. Should think for a bit and then print a mandelbrot:

      %!PS-Adobe-2.0 51 .5 551 { /x exch def 111 .5 721 { /y exch def y 521 sub 201
      div x 301 sub 201 div 1 index 1 index 31 -1 1 { /n exch def 1 index dup mul 1
      index dup mul 1 index 1 index add /d exch def sub 4 index add 3 1 roll 2 mul
      mul 2 index add d 4 gt {exit} if } for pop pop pop pop n 31 div setgray x y
      moveto .5 0 rlineto 0 .5 rlineto -.5 0 rlineto fill } for } for showpage

I had a TSQL one as well, not mine though: [https://www.growse.com/2009/05/01/odd-ways-of-making-a- mande...](https://www.growse.com/2009/05/01/odd-ways-of-making-a-mandelbrot/)

<comment><USER7> Ohh I attempted to make one in PDF (it doesn't have any control flow so loops must be manually unrolled), but it turns out that most PDF readers doesn't actually follow the spec when displaying a PDF on a monitor (no you can't just throw the precision away internally just because the end result is going to be displayed with limited precision) - this includes Adobe Reader btw. I have been wanting to write a blog post about it for some time, but have never gotten around to get it done.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure I saw a way of doing it in Latex - I'm guessing that when you call pdftex (or whatever) then that's the point it calculates the output image, rather than letting the PDF reader do it?

<comment><USER8> PGF (LaTeX) indeed has a "Mandelbrot set" shading parameter[1]. Note: this is calculated by the PDF renderer. PDF has function shading and I think one can abuse it enough to render the Mandelbrot set. It certainly looks different in different viewers.

[1] [http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/tex/graphics/pgf/base/doc...](http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/tex/graphics/pgf/base/doc/pgfmanual.pdf) Page 696

<comment><USER7> I did it in PDF by manually writing a custom tint transformation function. I used a 16x16 image with grayscale values from 0 to 255 and split the values in nibbles in the function code (which is a limited subset of postscript without things such as control flow). This worked fine, though a 16x16 Mandelbrot isn't very interesting.

So I tried with a 256x256 image instead with 16bpp, but it turns out that most viewers doesn't give a fuck and rounds the values down to 8 bits of precision before they are handed to the tint function.

<comment><USER8> Nice experiment. Some time ago I bumped into a similar problem when I experimented with SVGs lighting functions. SVG supports Phong shading based on a bump map. AFAIK you have to pass the bump map as the alpha channel of an image. Firefox only uses 8 bits for the alpha channel so the sphere I designed had steps on it.

Also Firefox used the sRGB non-linear colorspace for Phong shading producing incorrect results, but it was a different annoyance.

<comment><USER7> I just found my experiments. Code for the 16x16 Mandelbrot here: [https://gist.github.com/poizan42/71f38038e8d91f91f8b8](https://gist.github.com/poizan42/71f38038e8d91f91f8b8)

Experimentation with creating 256x256 Mandelbrot here: [https://gist.github.com/poizan42/3054232ad7624602a7fa](https://gist.github.com/poizan42/3054232ad7624602a7fa)

<comment><USER8> My sphere experiment:

[https://jsfiddle.net/qb3pjojv/](https://jsfiddle.net/qb3pjojv/)

Apparently Chromium has the same problem as Firefox, however the image doesn't look like the same in the two browsers. The Firefox version is much darker mostly because of the usage of the incorrect colorspace for shading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recursive common table expressions are indeed very powerful! You can even solve the eight queens problem in them:

[http://www.andreas-dewes.de/en/2015/queens-of-the-data- age-a...](http://www.andreas-dewes.de/en/2015/queens-of-the-data-age-abusing- common-table-expressions-to-solve-the-eight-queens-problem-in-sql/)

As others have pointed out there is a really nice section on CTEs in the SQLite documenation as well:

[https://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html](https://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html)

<comment><USER10> With these features that have been added to SQL over the past decades, you could probably at this point implement Datalog in it, or a Datalog-to-SQL translator. Might be an interesting experiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Copy-and-paste version here:

[https://gist.github.com/rupey/3be62b4f511b4d4de8fc](https://gist.github.com/rupey/3be62b4f511b4d4de8fc)

</comment><comment><USER12> I always loved Snowflakes[0] in postgresql. That said though, almost anything could be visualized in postgresql because of the awesome geometric[1] functions that are natively supported. Someday when I'm bored, I might try doing something like the Mona Lisa in postgres.

[0] [http://explainextended.com/2013/12/31/happy-new- year-5/](http://explainextended.com/2013/12/31/happy-new-year-5/)

[1] [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/functions- geometry...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/functions- geometry.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Any sufficiently Turing-complete system will be used to draw the Mandelbrot set.

After that, we move on to Zawinskie's law.

<comment><USER14> What does sufficiently Turing-complete mean? I thought a system is, or isn't?

<comment><USER13> I'm just weaseling out because I don't want to claim that every system that can draw Mandelbrots is Turing complete (not considering pathetic cases like "draw_mandelbrot" keywords/functions/parameters).

I'll leave the proof to interested readers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's the slides of the source for this, including loads of other cool things that can be done with PG:

[https://wiki.postgresql.org/images/0/0b/PGforSmarties.pdf](https://wiki.postgresql.org/images/0/0b/PGforSmarties.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> Another cool thing you can do is solve the 8-Queens problem. There is a great write up at : [http://www.andreas-dewes.de/en/2015/queens-of-the-data- age-a...](http://www.andreas-dewes.de/en/2015/queens-of-the-data-age-abusing- common-table-expressions-to-solve-the-eight-queens-problem-in-sql/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Check out the pie chart...

[https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Category:Fun_Snippets](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Category:Fun_Snippets)

The Mandelbrot is awesome, but the pie chart is some next level stuff. You can even make it colored.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can someone ELI5 this? And what is the image on the right? Thanks!

<comment><USER19> The Mandelbrot set (the image on the right) is a famous example of a fractal, a mathematical shape that gets more detailed the more you zoom in.

The code on the left is SQL, normally used to query databases, but in this case is being used to create the image on the right.

This is impressive because SQL isn't generally thought of as a language for arbitrary computation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still haven't taken the time to grok Recursive CTEs. I think it's mostly my internal set theorist putting up the fight :)

</comment><comment><USER21> very nice, indeed.

it would be very impressive, if postgresql could generate it's own CRUD interface (select option: angular / react)

so much tedious frame-work could be just dropped.

<comment><USER22> You might be interested in this: [https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest](https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest)

"PostgREST serves a fully RESTful API from any existing PostgreSQL database. It provides a cleaner, more standards-compliant, faster API than you are likely to write from scratch."

Sidenote: Anyone had any experience using postgrest? Any good?

<comment><USER23> It's pretty nice to work with for internal CRUD applications and prototyping, once support for stored functions [0] is completed it'll be tremendously more useful.

0: [https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest/issues/114](https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest/issues/114)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> that's nasty!!</comment>


Edgar Allan Poe's Hatchet Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/fall/feature/edgar-allan-poe's-hatchet-jobs <comment><USER2> My favorite Poe book review was the one he did for Francis Glass' "Washingtonii Vita" \-- which was a biography of George Washington written in Latin. In the beginning Poe is quite favorable, commenting on how well it is written (Poe was classically educated like many in the 19th century and could read Latin fluently), but finally in the end he is like "Um, okay, but why?"

[https://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/slm35g01.htm](https://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/slm35g01.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Edogawa Rampo , a famous Japanese writer of mystery and crime stories, named himself after Edgar Allen Poe (pronounce Edogawa Rampo a few times and you'll hear it)

He wrote quite a few essays on Poe and Poe's reviews, here's one on how Poe essentially predicted the twist ending of Dickens' Barnaby Rudge while it was still being serialised and spoiled it in his reviews, and how that book may have been a major inspiration for Poe's Raven:

[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TCpeDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&l...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=TCpeDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT113&lpg=PT113&dq=edogawa+rampo+poe+raven&source=bl&ots=Wp6PItHCeY&sig=7RkgXYGQhyXxs_xtLY9qTw0nfaA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin9f3EwonXAhUCU7wKHR7fDfwQ6AEITzAL#v=onepage&q=edogawa%20rampo%20poe%20raven&f=false)</comment>


Discovery May Help Treat Obesity - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/science/30fat.html?_r=2&ref=health <comment><USER2> Somehow I feel that eating less food and higher quality food, paired with an active lifestyle may be a better treatment for obesity than trying to control proteins which turn on/off cellular fat types.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but your solution doesn't make money, and doesn't appeal to the average fat guy watching American Idol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So will eating fewer calories and whole foods and grains.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was certain that the contents of this article were to be "Diet and exercise."

</comment><comment><USER6> "Treat" obesity? That makes it sound like a disease, or something outside a person's control. Now I understand that some people are more genetically predisposed to become obese, but people treating it like a disease is part of the problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> We've known how to wire jaws shut for a long time. This seems about how to make doctors' wallets fatter more than anything.

EDIT: typo</comment>


Ask HN: Brainstorming project ideas around Bitcoins. Any ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a side project and Bitcoins have piqued my interest lately. One initial thought was a web app that provides (semi) real-time stats on BTC price velocity and possibly some predictions based on historical behavior and such. Another is some sort of command-line tool for interacting with bitcoins or facilitating transactions.
Just looking for some more ideas. I'm open to pretty much anything as far as language and app. The more likely it is to actually be useful to people, the better.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> [http://blog.roguecode.co.za/Netduino-Windows-Phone- Bitcoin-t...](http://blog.roguecode.co.za/Netduino-Windows-Phone-Bitcoin- tracker-Azure)

Maybe you could extend that somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks really cool. I'll have to read more about it. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If your predictions are any good, you do not need the web frontend for your app. Just automatically trade based on them. A good CLI tool already exists, it is called "sx".

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, that's true. But I'd also need a lot of capital that I'm willing to risk... I'll check out sx though. Thanks.</comment></comment>