Show HN: Dstask, a Git-powered single EXE taskwarrior alternative - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/naggie/dstask <comment><AUTHOR> After having productively used taskwarrior for about 6 months in late 2018, I decided to write an alternative due to a few fundamental things that I did not like about taskwarrior:

* syncing requires hosting a taskwarrior server

* the task table rendering was (and still is) broken[1]

* I wanted full markdown notes for each task

I wrote dstask[2] in go. I've been using it dozens (hundreds?) of times a day for a year and a half now, maintaining and adding important features as I went. After having used it for such a long time I now feel it's ready to feature on HN!

I've tried my best to make the documentation as useful and possible -- see the readme file for the install guide, tips and screenshots.

It's stable for day-to-day use and has 90% of the features I need. A notable exception is recurring tasks -- coming soon.

For more background on why I wrote it, see: [https://callanbryant.co.uk/blog/dstask-a-taskwarrior- alterna...](https://callanbryant.co.uk/blog/dstask-a-taskwarrior-alternative/)

Thanks for reading and I'd really appreciate feedback.

\---

[1]: [https://github.com/GothenburgBitFactory/taskwarrior/issues/2...](https://github.com/GothenburgBitFactory/taskwarrior/issues/2023) [2]: [https://github.com/naggie/dstask](https://github.com/naggie/dstask)

<comment><USER2> `dtask`-related `dtime` (timewarrior) may be a good idea to bind tasks with time-tracking; perfect for project-tracking. Another huge plus would be its extensibility. Taskwarrior has tons of tools used to integrate/extend beyond its core functionality. Great job. I'll start using it right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had to look up taskwarrior to know what it was all about, and the EXE part made me think it was only for windows at first.

But it looks nice, will check it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. It seems I can't edit the title.... Oops.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How'd you get the nice screenshots of the terminal in the README?

<comment><AUTHOR> MacOS can do that natively -- just press space after the combo: [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201361](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT201361)</comment></comment>


Best Software Solutions for Logistics Startup - <AUTHOR> https://gbksoft.com/blog/top-software-solutions-for-logistics-business/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The global digital logistics market is expected to hit nearly 20 billion U.S. dollars by 2025."</comment>


Head & Shoulders has a dirty secret - <AUTHOR> http://dirtysecret.greenpeace.org/ <comment><USER2> Head & Shoulders doesn't appear to contain any palm oil, at least according to the product's Material Safety Data Sheet.

[http://www.pg.com/productsafety/msds/beauty_care/haircare/he...](http://www.pg.com/productsafety/msds/beauty_care/haircare/head_and_shoulders/Head_and_Shoulders_Clinical_Strength_Shampoo_%2895804498%29.pdf)

<comment><USER3> You can't let facts get in the way of manufactured outrage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The worst 'secret' of Head & Shoulders is that it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER5> It wouldn't be a secret ingredient if it was listed somewhere. :-P

</comment><comment><USER6> I wanted tread the article, but apparently not only can they not get facts straight, their shitty dev team can't present the information without enabling javascript. So...no thanks.</comment>


Homeless kid goes from dumpster living to online business entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/nathans-journey-from-a-road-to-nowhere-to-the-information-super-highway-20101201-18fzg.html

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1960019>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh sorry, thanks.</comment>


Powering the Cell, Mitochondria - stunning new animation - <AUTHOR> http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is possibly a better link:

<http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/anim_mitochondria.html>

This is a sequel to the Inner Life of a Cell animation that came out a few years ago. It shows what happens inside the mitochondria, which supply power to the cell.

A brief explanation:

We see a snake-like molecule go through a couple of holes. This is an unfolded protein molecule and demonstrates that mitochondria mostly don't make their own proteins, they have to be imported. Mitochondria have an inner and an outer membrane so it has to go through two layers.

We follow it through the inner membrane and see the glory of the mitochondrial interior. We zoom past (and through) a bunch of proteins that are involved in oxidizing fuel molecules. There's a double helix DNA in the corner to remind us that mitochondria do synthesize some of their own proteins.

We next zoom in on a piece of the inner membrane. studded with protein complexes and surrounded by glowing molecules. Note that some of the proteins have their bottom part spinning - these are ATP synthase, one of the most amazing of proteins.

[Out of time now, will write more later...]

</comment><comment><USER2> Direct Link (because the video did not work for me on the website):

[http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/Video/Mitochondria_480p.mo...](http://biovisions.mcb.harvard.edu/Video/Mitochondria_480p.mov)

</comment><comment><USER3> This would be insanely more useful if they would just put a few captions in. It's really inspiring to look at, but how do I find out more? Search Google for "the cool molecule in the harvard mitochondria animation that changes the three bump blue thingies into the four bump glowing thingies"??</comment>


The Birth and Death of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript <comment><USER2> Fun talk, I watched this in 2014.</comment>


Google search results have more human help than you think, report finds - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/google-search-results-have-more-human-help-than-you-think-report-finds/ <comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been pretty frustrated with Google lately. Maybe it's me, but they seem to keep skewing their algorithm to ignore precise queries and always show broad matches.

For example I recently searched "US ambassador Germany" on Google News and the top results were all stories about Ukraine and the impeachment hearings. Google completely ignored "Germany."

Similar things happen to me all the time on Google Search. Perhaps I just search too many long tail queries?

<comment><USER5> It's not just you. I find myself increasingly encapsulating words in my queries with quotes because Google outright ignores relevant words in my searches. In some cases it has even lead to queries looking like this:

"us" "ambassador" "germany"

<comment><USER6> It frequently notifies you that it's ignoring a term in your search to give you a particular result: you see those "Doesn't contain: X" messages associated with a "must contain: X" link to override it... which I think just does the query over again but with that term in quotes.

<comment><USER5> Yeah but what I meant was that this is becoming increasingly frequent. I mean you would think that Google would _try_ to include pages matching your full query in the top results and then when you keep moving to subpages it could give some less related hits as well. Now I often see these in the top 3 results.

<comment><USER6> Yes, in general I'd agree with the sentiment that Google trends more toward trying to show you "popular" content and changing your search to fit that, rather than the other way around.

With the amount of stuff that gets shoved into Google search bars worldwide, it's easy to believe that kind of strategy is broadly beneficial, but it does lead to frustration when you're being precise with a query and you're overridden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are three things going on here, one of which is probably bad and the others pretty normal. \- humans ranking results: these are called evals and Google has been doing them for at least 15 years. It used to be that there were a sort of "golden" set of manually ranked queries and results, and any change in the search algo would run against them to make sure nothing broke. My guess is over time, as the algorithm became less heuristic and more AI- driven, these sets are instead used to train the models. \- blacklisting of misinformation or spam: as a user, I appreciate this. As a citizen, I'd rather not trust Google as the arbiter of truth, but I generally think they've made good choices here (vs other tech companies). Until society has solved this problem (through regulation or otherwise) I'm OK with this. \- giving advice or favors to advertisers: this is messed up. And will be hard to argue that if they do it for advertisers they don't also (anti-competitively) do it for their other internal properties.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is the full Quality Raters Guidelines that physical people comb through a website with. [https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, I looked for their policies on misinformation.

I could see some potential risks here but it still seems reasonable to me:

> Demonstrably inaccurate content

> YMYL content that contradicts well-established expert consensus

> Debunked or unsubstantiated conspiracy theories

This part, I imagine, is a bit more controversial:

> pages that potentially spread hate, cause harm, or misinform or deceive > users, should receive the Lowest rating.

<comment><USER10> I think the first few are problematic too. Which conspiracy theories? Moon landing, pizzagate, Epstein? No idea where to draw a line there.

Demonstrably inaccurate? I doubt they remove young earth creationists. It seems easy at first, but it doesn't take long to find a lot of gray areas.

<comment><USER11> This is going to be based on conventional wisdom. The evaluators are a biased representation of general public. What do most people think are conspiracy theories?

Despite all the policy guidelines, in the end it's not just a legalistic decision but more like a survey to see what people think.

If you're running a search engine, you need to track of what people think somehow, or you'll totally miss things like cultural issues.

<comment><USER12> This (and other things about not knowing who the manual raters are, or what cultures they come from and bring to the conscious ans subconscious table)should be of concern.

Depending on what region of the world the publisher is in, and what region his/her readers are in.. and where the raters are from, can make some issues.

Some years ago I sat in a class at a college for building contractors when the subject of burying electrical lines came up, people scoffed at the cost, then the teacher did a survey and found that 90% of the class thought radon gas was a fairy tale conspiracy theory, not real, and not something they would ever consider when building.

Half of those in the class had already been in the building professions for years and some cases generations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"...even though company leadership has said publicly, including to Congress, that the company does not use blacklists or whitelists to influence its results."_

Ummm, isn't that providing false testimony and considered perjury? Why is this shit never, ever prosecuted against a large corporation? It's simple - <USER2> know who lied under oath an it's recorded. You know that person knew what the truth was because they were a high ranking person who's job it is would be to know stuff like that. So either they committed perjury or they are grossly incompetent. And it's not like they didn't know what was going to be asked of them, nor did they state they weren't sure. Can't stand this crap. The two standard requirements are that the person needs to have intent to deceive and that it must be material information to the proceeding. Since the discussion was entirely surround this aspect of search, there logically must have been intent to deceive. Furthermore, being the central topic, it was most certainly of material significance.

<comment><USER14> Google definitely says that they blacklist dangerous and deceptive sites. I don't think anyone would have a problem with that, though.

<comment><USER13> Probably not, but those lists are more than just dangerous and deceptive sites. They also include things that individuals at Google manipulate based on their own opinions which can be one-offs or added to the lists.

From the article: _" The engineer "didn't want a piece of human anatomy or the description of a sex act to appear when someone started typing the singer's name," as the paper describes it. The unfiltered search results were "kind of horrible," he added."_

That has nothing at all to do with web safety or anything fraudulent or deceptive.

Also, just because people wouldn't have a problem with that limited use (if it actually was limited to just those two things), that still doesn't make the statement not technically perjury. If you were in front of Congress and they asked you something like whether or not your business changed the design of the website the user sees based on metrics/tracking that an AI bot determines might generate more user engagement for that user, and you say "no, we don't do that" but later on you tell everyone that you're only doing it for people that opt-in, that's probably considered perjury. And I'm sure you could see why, especially if all users were set to "opt-in" by default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I spent some time rating search results for google just to get a feel for how they rate pages. Not much time though because the pay is low and the criteria just silly.

In essence, they give you search term, a url, and about 30 seconds (at most) to make about $10 an hour or less.

Now, I'm pretty savvy when it comes to understanding what to look for but I found it nearly impossible to provide both an accurate rating and making enough money to make it worth one's while.

The people I knew who were doing this for a living told me flat out told that they take a fast glance, check a rating, and moved on as quickly as possible because they pay for quantity, and quality of the rating isn't a concern for them. So what they're really rating more than anything is visual aesthetics.

If the page looked nice and seemed to fit the description of the search term they'd give it a good rating.

Based on that, Hacker News probably wouldn't be rated very high by most of those who rate for google.

</comment><comment><USER16> Somewhat click-baity. They are not implying runtime / live intervention (which isn't possible anyways). Top bad results are tweaked. That is part of making the "algorithm". Who says that is immoral or illegal?

<comment><USER17> Not immoral or illegal, but using human raters to seed an algorithm can make the results worse. For example, it could skew to favoring websites where the rater is familiar with the brand. Which might rank mediocre branded content over less well known sites with much higher quality content.

That seems to match what I've seen over the last 10 years with Google.

<comment><USER18> I worked for Leapforce for a while doing this sort of rating work using Google's guidelines. The guidelines were linked elsewhere in this thread and, at a glance, they are the same ones I used:

[https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)

If you're doing something that would skew the results to favour a certain brand, you'd be going against Google's guidelines and your contract would be terminated quickly. I found the review process of my results to be fairly stringent; they were reviewed frequently to ensure I was staying within the guidelines, and I was told even about slight deviatiations.

<comment><USER17> I'm not suggesting it would be on purpose. Trust must have some subconscious effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've heard that historically all the major search engines have used a lot of hand-tuned results (ordering, exclusions) across the highest frequency searches. IIRC Microsoft bought Powerset in '08 just before the launch of Bing specifically to shore up their human tuning. That said, I expected humans to play less of a role by 2020.

</comment><comment><USER20> I was thinking this was going to be about human moderation in search filtering, but it actually is about engineers implementing manual input into the algorithm to force certain results to never appear or certain results to always appear.

I wonder what the consequences of no-filter algorithmic search results in. Google had to tweak its algorithm to avoid disinformation campaigns from spam in the past. Now we're dealing with another sort of disinformation campaign and I don't know a reasonable way for google to tackle it the way it is now.

<comment><USER21> What is the new sort of disinformation campaign?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The algorithms are also written by humans. Even those are not guaranteed to be unbiased.

</comment><comment><USER12> The HN discussion on MSN's reporting of this report has many aspects to consider: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537)

much less HN discussion on the wall st journal's thread.

There are important issues, especially lack of transparency and censorship that warrant more discussions imho.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't know, I think there is a _lot_ so it would be scary if there was even more than I thought.

</comment><comment><USER24> It should be based on public protocols/networks running as a decentralized system rather than relying on a private for profit entirely. It may be possible to have businesses run on top to provide added value, but the core should provide transparency and auditability.

</comment><comment><USER25> I feel like some of the objection to "human intervention" comes from the fact that things that society at large used to determine was true or false, black or white, are now less so. There is now so much misinformation that a huge portion of the population now screams "censorship".

I mean, factually, there is 0 evidence vaccines cause autism, and it was shown that the guy who started this conspiracy theory did it basically as a scam to make money. So am I supposed to be upset or something that Google is tweaking their algorithm to not push falsehoods? Same thing as the suicide query. I say this as someone who has and still periodically suffers from deep depression, who has searched for suicide methods in the past: am I supposed to have a problem that Google is "pushing" results that try to keep me from killing myself?

</comment><comment><USER26> Clickbait headline. How does the report know what I think?

</comment><comment><USER27> Google censors and manipulates their queries, political too. They're heavy censors.

I recommend to get off of their search engine, go to DDG

</comment><comment><USER28> Everyone with half a brain should at least block google from taking their content and boxing it in their page.</comment>


Ask HN: comment downvote sniping - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone ever experienced their comments being down-voted in a systematic fashion. I just checked my threads link to look to see if anyone has responded to any of my comments and responses to comments, when I noticed that a bunch of my post's have been down-voted for no apparent reason. They are not controversial posts at all, and most of them are just friendly advice. Has anyone else had this happen to them? I am not really worried about the karma but it's a pretty uncool thing to do to someone who tries hard to contribute to the forum, if it is indeed someone sniping comments of people that they disagree with. Just thought I would see if it is happening to other people because this is the second time I have noticed the pattern on my comments. <comment><USER2> I've seen this is a problem on Reddit, though I've never really noticed it myself. Someone decides the dislike or disagree with you enough, or perhaps they were just pissed off with the way you responded to them and they go through your history down-voting everything they can.

I'm just curious can you even down/up-vote old comments. Seems like they should lock after a few days to prevent this sort of behaviour.

<comment><AUTHOR> To my knowledge comments do not lock, I know that I can go back several pages in my history and upvote responses to my comments. You cannot downvote responses to your comment's so I don't know if downvote get's disables at a certain point.

Edit: According to brudgers comment downvoting does lock after a few days. He has a comment below on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> For those seeing this thread for the first time, the above comment was down- voted shortly after I posted it, another HN member must have up-voted and I think that is testament to the great nature of HN. But I request that if anyone sees my comments down-voted either in this thread or in my history please do not up-vote them. I did not post this to rectify my karma, but rather I am genuinely interested in finding out if this is an issue or if I have somehow become trapped in some kind of automatic down-vote mechanism (Though that would not explain post from several days ago all of the sudden dropping to 0) but I am more interested in finding out if this is a real issue (comment sniping) than I am about a few points of Karma. In saying that I do appreciate the effort to help.

<comment><USER3> Karma does not get rectified, it gets balanced. So don't worry. If there is someone down-voting your comments out of spite, karma will get them, and you will find joy and unexpected abundance when you least expect it.

<comment><USER4> This should be printed on a piece of paper and put into a baked pastry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Though sometimes downvotes are used to express disagreement, downvotes should be considered editorial feedback - either you didn't make your point clearly, or your comment is considered likely to derail the discussion.

Use the "edit" and "delete" links, respectively if you are concerned about the karma score of a particular comment.

It is bad form on HN to complain about downvotes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not think I was complaining about them, I just noticed that several of them drooped to 0 all at once. This has happened to me twice so it seemed like their may have been a pattern which is why I asked if other people had experienced it. It does not usually happen to my comments so it was out of the norm, especially given that some conversations have seen no action in the past few days. It could very well be coincidental, which is why I asked. If it conveyed as me complaining about being down-voted then I apologize it was not my intent.

<comment><USER5> Going to zero is always more likely with one point comments than with those deemed worthy of an upvote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure but I had 5 or 6 of them drop in the course of a few seconds. If I posted them in a row then I would assume that I am just having a bad day and not contributing value. But these are spread out among post that have died off, which seemed strange to me, many have sat for a few days with no activity and then they all dropped in a short period of time. It very well could be coincidence I don't rule that out. Which is why I asked if other people have seen the pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if data is kept to check who is downvoting what. Then pg could tell you.

</comment><comment><USER7> > They are not controversial posts at all, and most of them are just friendly > advice. Has anyone else had this happen to them?

If you think that this is dick behavior, why do you care?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is more of a curiosity as to whether this happens on HN. There is a cultural norm on HN that I believe goes against such behavior, so I was curious if it is actually happening, given that this is the second time I have seen this pattern. That being said, if it was truly happening and became widespread, I would consider leaving HN, which is why I am so concerned about it. One of the reasons I came to HN was the reduced amount of such activity. Please don't take that as a threat to take my ball and go home, it is not meant as that, rather I am just stating my values in a online community, and I would take that as a signal that much of that value has died. Given the value that HN has been I would hate to see such.

<comment><USER7> > That being said, if it was truly happening and became widespread, I would > consider leaving HN, which is why I am so concerned about it.

Why? Karma points are meaningless.

Suppose that you thought that a lot of BMW drivers were jerks. Would that affect your decision to buy a BMW?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not the points, rather it may be an indicator of a trend among the demographic of individuals. For example say I participated in a car club, where all members where experts at vehicle technology and then over time said BMW jerks took over more and more, the information would start to reflect their preference (BMW tech) and thought process and at some point there will be a event horizon where it seems like all car club members are jerks and all information was being presented by jerks who think so little of opposing viewpoint that they would disable your car, for something as petty as making a point that maybe a particular Mercedes technology is superior. I personally don't like information that is biased by ego. I am not saying that HN is close to that, but it was not long ago that the thought of someone systematically down-voting another member in HN would be unheard-of. My point was not that I am on the cusp of leaving but rather I share the concern that with HN's growth we have to be aware of possible decline in quality and discuss ways to ensure the quality that HN provides.

<comment><USER7> > am not saying that HN is close to that, but it was not long ago that the > thought of someone systematically down-voting another member in HN would be > unheard-of.

Oh really? When was this time?

I ask because I saw it the first time I noticed points. Is that because I'm a newbie?

> I share the concern that with HN's growth we have to be aware of possible > decline in quality and discuss ways to ensure the quality that HN provides.

And the relationship between HN quality and "inappropriate downvoting" is?

<comment><AUTHOR> _I ask because I saw it the first time I noticed points. Is that because I'm a newbie?_

I only noticed it twice and that is the reason I asked about the issue. It may very well have happened before, that is what I was inquiring about, to understand if it is widespread.

 _And the relationship between HN quality and "inappropriate downvoting" is?_

I think you are looking for something empirical which is not what I am basing my view on this subject on. Rather I hold some core values and that is what I am basing it on a value system as such it is internal to me. To me a widespread demographic of people who downvote out of malice compromises that value system, I would not want to participate in such a system. In saying that, I am not saying that HN has come to that.

<comment><USER7> > Rather I hold some core values and that is what I am basing it on a value > system as such it is internal to me.

And you're not going to tell us those "core values".

> To me a widespread demographic of people

What definition of "widespread" are you using? Would you say that an instance of malicious downvoting almost every day would qualify?

HN probably has 5-10k regulars, so let's go with 5k. 1% of 5k is 50. If 1% maliciously downvote 6 times a year, that's an incident almost every day.

I don't know about your "core values", but 1% doing something every other month doesn't strike me as widespread.

<comment><AUTHOR> _And you're not going to tell us those "core values"._

I apologize I thought I was clear on it, I would not want to participate in a forum with people that's conduct is below a conduce standard that I hold myself to, If I felt that such conduct had reached a threshold of my tolerance for such behavior.

 _I don't know about your "core values", but 1% doing something every other month doesn't strike me as widespread._

I don't know if my case is even a true case of it or if it is widespread hence me asking if other people have seen the pattern, therefore the exact value of when it would send me over the edge is unknown. I do know that if it where happening to me once a week or so, I would probably give serious consideration to not participating in posting comments at the least. And I would also tend to view contributed news as having the possibility of being posted by such people that have little regard for the quality of the site.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


OVH KS 2013 Clarification - <AUTHOR> http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6791

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary of the situation - OVH is a large data center company with a good reputation. They launched a series of servers for €2.50 a month.

\- Almost all orders by Paypal in the past 10 days by Paypal were frozen without communication. They were cancelled today, without communication about a refund.

\- Due to lack of parts, orders from the past 10 days by credit card will be delivered, but may wait up to 5 weeks.

\- The specification of the servers has been downgraded. It is unclear whether customers whether ordered at the higher spec will receive the lower spec, but this seems likely.

\- OVH will no longer communicate with customers that bought the first 4 levels of server (up to $150 a year) by email. Even for billing. They must communicate via a public forum, which is not reliably monitored by staff.

This is the worst customer service I have ever seen. Clearly, OVH has had terrible issues delivering, not helped by supply chain issues and relations with resellers. I think there are lessons to learn here for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER2> My order from the 26th is finally showing on the invoice (the link to which you get by email) as installed in "Western Europe Datacenter (GRA)". Just waiting for the OS install ("To do").

For £3/mo you can't really complain. Pushing 30,000 cheap-as-chips servers online with next to no support is a really interesting business model.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh I agree, for the price you can't expect great service, but I think from a customer relations perspective, lack of communication from OVH has done a lot of damage. The forum they run is pretty angry.

This is interesting because I think the root is that the company core is french speaking, and has not reached out to speakers of other languages. But from a British/American perspective, I'd guess we do that all the time.

<comment><USER2> > The forum they run is pretty angry.

I don't think I've ever seen a web service community forum that wasn't angry.</comment></comment></comment>


Why $2B startup GitHub is apparently in crisis, again - <AUTHOR> http://businessinsider.com/github-identity-crisis-2016-2 <comment><USER2> I must be missing something here. Why exactly is focusing on sales to enterprise causing a crisis at GitHub?

Is this a development team that doesn't want to prioritize that feature set? Or something else? And if so _what_?

The closest the article gets to saying is a "suit-and-tie salesforce culture" pitted against "GitHub's meritocracy with an informal management structure." But what does the sale's team's culture matter outside the sales team?

Are they suddenly making the entire engineering team into sales engineers rather than just having sales drive software requirement priority? It sounds like it's that, or what a lot of management teams do when they want to change focus, but don't have a clear idea what they want or how to accomplish it: throw micromanagement at the problem.

<comment><USER3> Well, we might make some deductions from the stasis of GitHub.com's features, whatever they're doing, it's not e.g. improving the ability of projects to handle their bug lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At my previous job I had a meeting with a senior salesperson at GitHub trying to see if we could come up with some ways to help better serve some of our joint customers and you could feel this kind of animosity bubbling up then. Both of us had a strong programming background and were commiserating about how hard it was to make time to write code with all of the other things we had to due.

They told me that most of their new salespeople didn't have a practical real world background using VS technologies and were more of a traditional IBM/Oracle style salesperson. You could see that "coffee's for closers" mentality was at odds with their hacker roots.

I hope they work it out seemed like an amazing place to work</comment>


Ask HN: When will the React trend fade away? - <AUTHOR> I'm surely not an expert coder, but I've work with the web since setting up BBS in the 90s. I've dabbled in react a few time only to find myself annoyed by it's complexity. I have a deep feeling that this type of framework is only a trend. It is changing the way we think about the web, and will surely inspire better way to code the web, but I feel the fad greatly surpass the usefulness of this new paradigm. I wonder how HN feels about it? <comment><USER2> I think you're very wrong on a couple levels.

First, React has spread the concept of composable component-based UI development. Angular has adopted many of the ideas, Ember has adopted many of the ideas, and there's a whole bunch of other libraries that have been inspired by ideas that React has helped popularize.

Second, React's popularity is continuing to grow. I'm pretty biased, but I don't see React as a "fad", and I definitely don't see it going away any time soon.

Third, the point of React itself is to _reduce_ complexity so that you can look at components in isolation and understand how they behave. Yes, yes, "Javascript Fatigue", tooling, libraries, etc, etc. Most of that is not React- specific, but rather a factor of trying to build complex web applications that live in a browser.

If you have any specific concerns or complaints about learning or using React, I'd be happy to answer questions. Just for kicks, I'll toss out my standard advice for learning React:

The article "A Study Plan to Cure Javascript Fatigue" ( [https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure- javascr...](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-study-plan-to-cure-javascript- fatigue-8ad3a54f2eb1) ) is a great place to start. It gives an excellent series of steps for tackling modern Javascript concepts one piece at a time: Javascript, React, ES6, and state management.

On that note, definitely don't over-complicate the learning process by trying to learn many different things at once. Some people will say you should use a "boilerplate" to learn React, and they're wrong - boilerplate projects almost always come with too many pieces configured, and are confusing for beginners.

Instead, the best advice is to focus on learning React itself first. Once you have a good understanding of how React works, you will better appreciate why a state management library like Redux can be useful, and you can learn about other tools later.

You should start out by reading through the official React docs and tutorial at [https://facebook.github.io/react/](https://facebook.github.io/react/), and I'd encourage you to use the official Create-React-App tool ( [https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react- app](https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app) ) for setting up projects. It creates a project with a solid build setup, with no configuration needed on your part. There's an excellent post called "Simple React Development in 2017" ( [https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development- in-2017-113b...](https://hackernoon.com/simple-react-development- in-2017-113bd563691f) ) that gives some more specific instructions on the actual steps to follow.

Past that, I keep a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at [https://github.com/markerikson/react- redux-links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics. It includes links for learning core Javascript (ES5), modern Javascript (ES6+), React, and much more. I also published an "Intro to React (and Redux)" presentation at [http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation- react-...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/02/presentation-react-redux- intro/) , which is a good overview of the basic concepts for both React and Redux.

Finally, the Reactiflux chat channels on Discord are a great place to hang out, ask questions, and learn. The invite link is at [https://www.reactiflux.com](https://www.reactiflux.com) .</comment>


Wireless electricity enables next generation of annoying packaging - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2011/01/28/wireless-electricity-enables-next-generation-of-annoying-packaging/

<comment><USER2> The advertisers will not stop until every person on the face of the planet has some sort of attention span deficit disorder just due to the sheer amount of flashing, screaming, annoying crap that's all vying for your attention on a constant 24/7 basis so that you buy their products. Futurama's 'prediction' of advertisements beamed directly into your dreams isn't a far cry from something that an advertiser might do.

<comment><USER3> If flashing screaming crap becomes the norm, I will be busy working on a pair of Adblock Plus Glasses.

I'm not quite sure how they'd work, but were there's a will there's a way!

<comment><USER4> _I designed two counter-technologies to help people defend their personal space from unwanted electronic intrusion. Both devices were designed and prototyped with reference to the culture-jamming "Design Noir" philosophy. The first is a pair of glasses that darken whenever a television is in view._

<http://www.ladyada.net/pub/research.html>

<comment><USER5> Yes, then offer those glasses for free; sponsored with ads shot straight in your retina.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> OK, I'm going to put my hand up here and say I don't know what I'm on about... but hear me out.

Cereals have iron in them, literally iron shavings are put into cereals to ensure that the population receive a good portion of the RDA.

Iron is particularly susceptible to induction (all metals are, but iron moreso), and iron when exposed to an electrical magnetic field then magnetic hysteresis is going to occur resulting in the iron in the cereals taking on a much stronger magnetic field than is currently natural.

Has this kind of effect been investigated such that this kind of packaging is known not to have any negative effect on the consumers of magnetised food?

Additionally, my second thought concerned the use of RFID for stock check, and whether a shelving system laced with induction systems is going to interfere with RFID in any way?

Basically... I'm trying to invent reasons this might not appear on a shop- shelf soon. I really don't want to enter a supermarket and be presented with something that looks like Vegas.

<comment><USER7> Nope.

Hysteresis is a short term effect, measured in seconds. Full on magnetization won't happen to microscopic particles of iron at room temperature and atmospheric pressure in a tiny, rapidly changing, magnetic field.

And even if they became as magnetized as they possibly could, (which isn't very, because these are _small_ particles) they're still going to be digested, reduced to single atoms, and bound to transferrin/ferritin/hemosiderin/hemoglobin proteins. Metallic iron doesn't naturally exist in the human body. The only people NMR imaging is contraindicated for are metalworks and such who are routinely exposed to high velocity metallic iron fragments, (via angle grinding, etc) that mechanically embed themselves in the skin, fingernail beds, eye orbits, etc. Completely unnoticeable in everyday life, less so when you climb inside a superconducting magnet.

Also, they're not _shavings_ ; they may be produced that way, but food-grade iron is milled down to a fairly fine mesh. It's a powder. There's no sharp edges.

Mild aside: Iron was so rare in the ancestral environment that humans never evolved a mechanism for excreting it, and it's heavily recycled. All ingested iron is metabolized, which means iron poisoning is fairly easy. This means that breakfast cereal, which is popular with children, who tend to have very low body weight, doesn't contain _much_ of iron. The box of corn flakes I'm looking at only has 108 milligrams of iron in 340,000 milligrams of corn flakes.

<comment><USER6> Ah, interesting.

Although, now you've removed my ability to create a real objection to this packaging beyond "Ah, the goggles, they do nothing".

<comment><USER8> Well don't despair too much, there's still plenty of good reasons to avoid the heavily processed organic matter that is "breakfast cereal"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, I feel bad enough about the waste I create with a regular cereal box. Now I will have to seek out an electronics recycler to dispose of every piece of food packaging.

<comment><USER3> You could always switch to oatmeal. The non-packet kind, instant or steel-cut, has much less packaging, and it's almost certainly healthier for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I saw this at CES. Some of the more interesting applications the company had in their booth:

* Charge your Tesla simply by driving it on top of a pad in your garage. They claim it's only 7% less efficient than the current plug charger.

* Soup in a self-heating container. Place the container on your inductance charging pad, press a button on the container. The container itself contains a heating element.

<comment><USER11> You can charge mobile devices by placing them on a pad. The Palm Pre had this out of the box. You can retrofit other phones like the iPhone to have this ability also.

<comment><USER12> The Pre has inductive charging? That's very interesting... I wonder if I can buy a pad for my Desire HD.

<comment><USER7> Kinda. The Touchstone charging system is an optional-- and not terribly cheap-- (US$50) accessory.

I use it, it's pretty neat. There's an advantage beyond the obvious: the charging puck is always stuck to a surface[1], and the phone should always be stuck to the puck, (using magnets built into the back of the phone) so I tend to lose the phone a lot less often. The OS can also tell if you're using the induction charger, if you pull it off the puck while the phone's ringing, it'll automatically pick it up, and switch to speakerphone if you put it on the puck during a call.

There's also disadvantages. It can't transmit as much power as the USB cable, and it's quite inefficient, getting fairly warm in use. If induction chargers ever became popular, presumably the hippies would get upset about the pointless waste of electricity.

[1]: There's double sided foam tape on the bottom of the puck that's actually the first application I've ever seen of the gecko setae "superglue" that various tech sites have been banging on about for the last decade. It never loses its stickiness, but also gets dirty astonishingly easy.

<comment><USER12> I see, thank you. Too bad about the energy waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> EL films, coils, micro-controllers? MMMmm parts. The "toy surprise" just got a whole lot geekier.

</comment><comment><USER14> Do you think these boxes will have a cereal port?

</comment><comment><USER3> Guys, the future _is here_.

And I'm not just being facetious. I mean, good lord.

<comment><USER15> Next thing you know, the cereal boxes will be telling us about the new life awaiting us in the off-world colonies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That is fantastic.

Annoying adverts? Sure, but countless cool shit, too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone needs to hack together a cereal-box-b-gone, similar to tv-b-gone[1].

[1] <http://www.tvbgone.com/cfe_tvbg_main.php>

</comment><comment><USER18> What a tremendous waste. In one corner of the mind-sphere, we have a renewed focus on green technology, and the other, we have glowing cereal boxes.

One step forward, two steps back.

</comment><comment><USER19> One tic less annoying that the gumball machines that holler at you in the grocery store.

We will need a logarithmic scale of ad intrusiveness?

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't wait to have the AC EMR from the coils of the shelves mess with my cellphone and my VISA's magnetic strip etc. as I walk up and down the aisles to find my son's favorite cereal brand.</comment>


Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project - <AUTHOR> https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ <comment><USER2> I saw somewhere "As a frontend developer, I cannot be happier that the Flash is going to die. As a person raised on Newgrounds, there are tears of nostalgia."

Speaking of Flash, I miss the most this game... or rather, meme-focused experience (IMHO it is a true masterpiece): "Reimagine :The Game:" by Nicky Case: ([https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/569281](https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/569281), video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG1gh5l1YLM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG1gh5l1YLM)).

Two other things I really liked were ported by their developer: GemCraft (turret defense) and Velocity Raptor (a special relativity game, [https://testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html](https://testtubegames.com/velocityraptor.html)).

And you, what do like the most to see back?

<comment> mr-ron Well I never played these games before, what I miss the most is exactly that. A plethora of games that had no monetary reason to make them. Simply because it was possible for a solo non-skilled person to put a inspired idea in Flash in a relatively quick amount of time. I don't think we have any equivalent in the web today

<comment><USER3> > A plethora of games that had no monetary reason to make them.

I don't know for Newgrounds but actually many website paid quite a bit of money to sponsor games. Gemcraft for example was sponsored by Armor Games and I believe they were in the 10k ranges. The ECPM was also not bad, I believe some were able to reach 10$ because of video ads.

MochiAds, which was one of the most used ads provider also had a distribution platform which was quite useful.

Once I made a game during a boring math class, I was able to get 500k views out of it (sadly mostly from China which had an ecpm of like 0.01$, it wasn't a market that MochiMedia was developing much for ads, they tried later on but Flash killed them before they were able to increase it enough). I made a bit over 100$ over that game made in an few hours. I was able to reproduce the experiment a second time, with similar result, less views, 300k I think, but much more in the US, a bit under 100$ that time.

I was hoping that Unity would bring that back, because they came during the crash of Flash, but while they still push toward faster development, they were going toward a different market.

<comment><USER4> IIRC, Tom Fulp paid hosting out of his own pocket for a long time, but eventually he started turning a profit and paying out cash prizes for well- received flashes. Also, including your own monetization was always allowed. Ads on the loading screen were the most popular, but some later games even included micro transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For Linux and Mac, there some experimental builds available as well [0, 1]. And they are looking for Mac and Linux testers (and developers).

[0] [https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Mac_Support](https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Mac_Support)

[1] [https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Linux_Support](https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Linux_Support)

</comment><comment><USER6> I downloaded it last month. There are a lot of addictive puzzle games that have the potential of being huge on mobile if someone remakes it for android/ios.

<comment><USER7> I'm keen to learn game development. I have experience with web & react native but would be willing to go canvas/unity if required. Any ones that stand out that you think would be a good starter game project?

<comment><USER8> The replies talk about engines, but you asked about which Flash game would be good to convert, right? Or did I misunderstand?

<comment><USER7> Yup, I was hoping for some game titles that would be easy to introduce. I'd pick the stack/engine based on the game. Grateful for the other advice still.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Next, Flash emulation running under WebAsm?

<comment><USER10> I don't think Adobe ever open-sourced the Flash codebase, right?

The attempts at building something compatible like shumway have all been rather unsuccessful.

Even if the code was available, porting it to WASM would probably be a pretty big task.

It would be great to retain access to the huge amount of flash content out there though.

<comment><USER11> I wish Adobe would start making publications though, they know Flash has been end-of-life for ages yet there's a lot of earlier internet media still in that format.

<comment><USER12> Flash is now Animate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I made 8 flash games back around 2009 that were profitable. Sadly, they're completely broken now because all of the web services they depend on are gone. Although the main game play is uneffected, it still attempts to load leaderboards and ads, which make them look horrible.

:(

<comment><USER14> What is considered profitable? How long did the games take to make, how much did they cost to make, how much did they make?

Are free-to-play browser games still possible in this day and age? Or has it all moved to mobile?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The trajectory of Flash has been one of the great disappointments of the 21st century. Initially it democratized animation and gaming for a whole generation... Then Adobe bought it and moved it higher and higher up the shelf out of reach of young artists through cost and anti-piracy measures. At the same time, its nimble little plug-in became worse and worse, becoming synonymous with security problems and endless patching... And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end.

For indie game development, unity is a worthy successor Flash... But we never really saw anything win out for animation.

Who is the new Homestar Runner?

<comment><USER16> > And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end.

I don't think they _failed_ to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms.

<comment><USER17> > I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do > so by the people building the mobile platforms.

I don't think they were not invited to do so - I think they were not paid for the work or licenses

<comment><USER16> I'm not really sure what difference you're trying to highlight there.

The point is that the people building the platforms didn't want Flash, so they didn't invite Adobe/Macromedia or whoever it was at the time to port them across, and yes since they didn't invite them to do the work they obviously also weren't going to to pay for it.

Saying they weren't paid for it makes it sound like they were asked to do it but not paid or something like that. I think the reality is it was never wanted.

<comment><USER18> Didn't invite is a silly way of putting it. Jobs went to war with Flash, and at the time Adobe was making progress integrating iOS as publishing targets, and today it would have been a moot point as iOS hardware is surely powerful enough. Creative Cloud is heading to the iPad Pro and it is a real shame that Flash isn't part of that.

<comment><USER16> > Jobs went to war with Flash

He just ignored it. It was redundant on the iPhone, with native apps and the rise of web applications.

Completely ignoring something seems like the opposite of 'going to war' with it.

<comment><USER19> He took the unusual step of publishing a letter, "Thoughts On Flash" ([https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on- flash/](https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/)), published under his own name, which said that "Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content."

That's going to war.

<comment><USER16> These seem like dispassionate technical observations to me? His argument is that it's obsolete.

It's 'we're ok without that thanks' not 'war'.

<comment><USER18> It wasn't obsolete in the slightest when Jobs published that letter. It was a piece of software worth billions, powering games like Farmville worth billions, powering video like YouTube, advertising, and it had remained a popular creative platform for two decades.

There is more information about it here - in addition to Jobs going after Flash so publicly they added an app store rule specifying which languages developers could use to publish apps, and excluded Flash, after Adobe had made substantial progress publishing native iOS apps from Flash.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder about iOS game preservation, I guess thats going to be a lot harder than old 8-bit games or PC games etc.

<comment><USER21> It's already happening, there's a ton of games that aren't on the App Store any more because their creators stopped paying a hundred bucks a year. A lot of them won't work on newer versions of iOS even if you still have a copy.

<comment><USER19> Or they were written as 32-bit apps, which became _verboten_ on iOS not long ago. I had a bunch of games I had paid for and enjoyed for a long time vanish suddenly because their creators didn't deem it worthwhile to go back and recompile them as 64-bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dagobah.biz was an amazing collection of flash based games, videos, and tools. Highly recommend archiving from there

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't care about flash games, but I really hope the "Badgers Badgers Badgers" and the "I'm a Cow" animations are preserved for posterity. (I'm sure they are on YouTube but it's just not the same)

<comment><USER24> I got my start in animation releasing stuff at the same time as Mr Weebl, Joel Veitch and others. In fact my first ever animation was in a Joel Veitch cartoon on his website. I remember releasing stuff onto Newgrounds and seeing the view counter tick up. It was super exciting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ah, Backlot. Many hours spend faffing around in it.

</comment><comment><USER26> So they ONLY provide a ~275GB torrent zip file???

Lame.

Why not allow the DL of only certain games?

I don't need 38,000 flash games... nor does my laptop have 500++ GB free to fiddle with this.

Poor delivery decision IMO.

<comment><USER27> Check the Downloads Page and download the Infinity version, which allows you to download games as you play them rather than the whole lot at once.

<comment><USER26> Thanks - regardless though - really really poor explanation on whats going on here, on their part.

Of course I know how torrents work, but to have a single zip is just stupid practice.

<comment><USER27> No worries. Yeah that was the first thing I looked for when I first looked at too.

In any case... if you did download it... I'll recommend two of my favorites. If you like tower defense style games, try out Ghost Hacker. If you like strategy a bit better, try out Pixel Legions. Both are really fun.

<comment><USER26> hehe tower defense was the reason i wanted this!

Can you dropbox just those recommendations to me?

<comment><USER27> I can't unfortunately because of sitelocks... part of what Flashpoint does is in Man In The Middles the Flash Player so it thinks it's on a certain website, which allows the games to be played offline. You can play these games on Kongregate and Newgrounds if you have a flash enabled browser though. Sorry about that :/

In terms of tower defense, here's some recommendations:

Ghost Hacker (the original one, which is better than the 2nd one)

Defender's Quest (trial version, complete game on steam)

Kingdom Rush (also available on your phone)

Cursed Treasure

Demons v Fairyland (feels very much like Kimgdom Rush)

Onslaught2

Dungeon Defender</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Nation's C.I.O.: Government Needs a Dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/the-nations-co-government-needs-a-dashboard/ <comment><USER2> That's a relief. For a second, I thought we might be trying to save some money. Instead we're creating more overhead on top of the government overhead.

Please read "The Systems Bible" <http://generalsystemantics.com/SystemsBible.htm>. There really is no way to tame the bureaucracy.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy"

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Making more information available is virtually always a win. It often causes organizations to moderate their own behavior, for fear of looking bad. When this does not happen, it makes it easier for those outside to know what needs to be improved and where to apply pressure.

All without actually mandating any change in behavior beyond publishing some data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "the biggest complaint he's gotten so far is the pace of reporting"

That's funny, I suspect they are weary of reporting on a monthly basis because it would show that nothing is really being accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER5> Coming out of past experience, the term "dashboard" automatically sets off my b-llshit meter. I've never seen an honest implementation and use of one.

In brief, in corporate settings there seems to be a strong inclination to "teach to the test", to mix metaphors. The dashboard influences how things are reported, more than it influences underlying behavior or generates true net improvements.

As for the government initiative described, if they want to produce some rolled-up summaries, fine. But I am looking for public access to the raw data, as much as this is possible. There will always be members of the public (and media, if they can get their houses in order) willing to put in the time and effort to produce their own, independent analyses. It's the data we need, and not (solely) some bureaucrat's summation, subject sooner or later to political influence and manipulation, whether at the top or in the inputs.</comment>


Our most recent startup venture did not just fail, it deserved to fail - <AUTHOR> http://willthisfly.net/blog/2013/we-failed-then-something-snapped/

<comment><USER2> One warning.

It is very easy for people to have bad experiences, decide that they know what went wrong, then proceed to act on those theories. However hindsight is not 20/20, it is just speculation in the absence of being able to be proven wrong.

Therefore until you've either had feedback from people you trust, or have a success under your belt, it is wise to temper all "lessons learned" with the provisional, "I suspect" and the emphatic "I was wrong before, and may be again." This is difficult, but it is only when we keep track not just of what we think we know, but how certain we are that we know it, that we truly put ourselves in a position to actually learn from experience.

Now feedback on the new platform, WTF. Any site which seeks to offer users feedback from other users, needs to do some careful thinking about how you're going to attract people who are worth getting feedback from. Else you won't attract a pool of people giving feedback who are worth listening to. That is why _Ask HN_ can work - there are a lot of people already here who can offer good feedback and sometimes do. But they are not here _because_ they want to offer that feedback 24/7. And if this site became nothing but Ask HN, then they wouldn't stay.

I can't tell you how to get the people you want involved. You'll need to form your own theory. I believe there are multiple possible successful strategies. I also can't tell you how to monetize it. From what I've seen discussion forums tend to be popular but don't monetize that well. (Though if the feedback you get allows you to launch a successful parallel startup, maybe that is good enough for you?) However if you aren't constantly trying/testing your own theories around those central questions, I guarantee that you'll not find workable answers.

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr - author had a bunch of startups that didn't work because they did not do customer development. (hindsight bias?) author creates site "willthisfly.net" which is a site for vetting ideas.

this was a rather long-winded post to ultimately plug a project you created. also, I feel like we get one of these a month, it would be helpful if the post explained why this one is better than any of the existing and/or failed attempts to do something like this.

Also, for some real advice, the reason these sites generally do not take off is despite the chorus of "ideas don't matter", people don't really believe that when they have what they think is a good idea. If someone has what they think is a million dollar idea they are apt to keep quiet and not want to tell anyone about it publically like this, and reveal it only insofar as it provides tangible benefits to them. Customer Development does not mean shouting your idea from the rooftops, anyway. There's a gradient between "I will tell you nothing unless you sign an NDA" and "I will post my idea to the public on the internet complete with a full explanation as to why it will work."

<comment><AUTHOR> First of all, thanks for taking the time to provide feedback: Exactly what WTF was built for.

I agree that there is a gradient and I can tell you that if someone wants you to sign an NDA then WTF won't really help them but for everyone else, getting feedback as early in the lifecycle as possible is worth a lot: It could save you a lot of time and money.

We designed WTF for ourselves in a way. We wanted somewhere we could test out an idea before committing too much time and resource to it. Somewhere we could show-off our idea, get feedback, change it accordingly and then re-show it and so on.

WTF is a guide; It will not be 100% accurate but it might just stop you from wasting months of your life on something you thought people wanted.

The other side of that coin is that you may find that your "Facebook Killer" application isn't a total flop: There may be something you could salvage from it, maybe a particular set of features, and that is what WTF is designed to help with.

<comment><USER3> WTF = What The Fuck. Just sayin!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post but author really should have said up-front that this text was a way to promote his new project "willthisfly.net". Probably doesn't affect the value but it does affect the credibility. Is an outsider's opinion valuable for startups? Maybe, but as founder of an outsider-opinion-service, you're biased, which is fine, but I would want to have that in mind reading the article.

And some feedback to willthisfly.net:

For it to have a chance to fly it need (more obvious) incentives for people to comment. Something along the lines of having to comment on three projects before you can submit your own perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem I see with sites like willthisfly.net is it is unlikely that the audience going to that website will represent your target audience.

Example: I'm working on an PDF replacement to support marketing automation. The people looking at this website may or may not be my target audience. Thus, the feedback may or may not be useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

You are right in that not everyone that comes to the site will be representative of your audience but "outsiders" can have their own insight into something that you may not have considered.

All the mechanisms we will be putting in place (comments, voting, project questions etc.) are designed to help you decide if your project is worth pursuing: They will not be 100% effective but they will be much more effective that creating your project in total isolation with no feedback from anyone.

These mechanisms will evolve over time, for example, we may find that straight up comments may be useless but a scoring system, where other commenters can vote some up or down, could provide far more value...

WTF is still evolving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of <http://thepitch.co/></comment>


Some rightwing pundits call Patreon "hipster welfare" - <AUTHOR> https://mic.com/articles/152700/liberals-are-making-bank-on-a-site-called-patreon-the-right-calls-it-hipster-welfare#.8PeS9iILx <comment><USER2> " In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes and the wealthy have provided to artists such as musicians, painters, and sculptors." (Wikipedia)

I spent a lot of years around musicians. It is painfully obvious that to make a living at music is hard. People who make music for a living generally do it not because "it is what I do" but because "it is what I am". There really is no choice (similar to some programmers).

When I was at my career income peak I decided that I would send a monthly check to my favorite musician. There was no expectation that I would get anything in return, it was "patronage". His music made me happy and his talent needed support.

Patronage is not a form of welfare. It is "voting with dollars" in some sense. More important is the idea that art enriches the world much more than it enriches the artist.

If you have enough income to afford it, write a check for $100 a month to your favorite artist. Don't expect anything in return except knowing that you are giving the artist more time to enrich your world. That money will pay for gas and food to get to the next gig so more people can enjoy the music.

Patronage itself is a lost art. Bring it back.</comment>


ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf - <AUTHOR> https://www.sharelatex.com/blog/2017/07/20/sharelatex-joins-overleaf.html <comment><USER2> I'm somewhat bummed about this - I am a _big_ fan of ShareLaTeX, and have been using it for quite some time. I absolutely love that the whole thing is built on an open-source engine (not just the latex part - you can self-host if you want). Overleaf has a lot of also-interesting features, and probably a more robust revenue stream, but it's always a bit of a bummer when the open-source player in the market gets bought out by the closed-source one.

Hopefully that last bit in the announcement remains true: _" Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be actively developed."_

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the kind words about ShareLaTeX! It's always great to hear that people have enjoyed it.

The open source nature of ShareLaTeX isn't just about being good internet citizens, it's also been core to the ShareLaTeX business. As far as we can tell, it's only helped us to grow, from community goodwill, publicity, and onboarding for our onsite enterprise offering. We're very much bringing two thriving businesses together here, to get to where we want to get to quicker, without duplicating effort. And the open-source aspect is a strength that we plan to keep.

\- James, ShareLaTeX co-founder

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey, James from ShareLaTeX here. We're very excited about what this means for ShareLaTeX and Overleaf! The blog post says most of what we wanted to say, but all four founders from ShareLaTeX and Overleaf are around this evening (we're in the UK) to answer questions if you have any. Give us a little while to reply though, since we're all trying to have dinner too! :)

<comment><USER4> I just did your survey, but forgot to mention a feature idea. I recently finished a typesetting a master thesis, which I converted with pandoc from docx to tex. Together with the Harvard Thesis template it was a bliss and took just ~6 hours to set the ~80 pages.

Maybe a document converting feature (via pandoc!?) would help the merged product :) (And I would totally pay for that :D)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the suggestion! We have played around with pandoc as an option in the ShareLaTeX compiler, but we weren't able to get it working smoothly enough for us to be happy with it. But it's definitely on our radar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Yes. Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the > open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be > actively developed.

That's a fairly disengenous answer to the question. The code is AGPLv3+ licensed and they are not the sole copyright holder (it is true that that have a CLA[1] but from a quick reading the CLA says that they "agree to also license the Contribution under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission Date").

What people want to know is whether ShareLaTeX is going to just become a tiny free software part of a larger proprietary platform. It appears to me that this is likely going to be the case, which is a real shame since I've always respected that the entireity of ShareLaTeX was AGPLv3+.

I hope ShareLaTeX doesn't become another victim of "Our Incredible Journey"[2].

[1]: [https://sharelatex.wufoo.com/forms/sharelatex-contributor- li...](https://sharelatex.wufoo.com/forms/sharelatex-contributor-license- agreement/) [2]: [https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

<comment><USER6> Overleaf founder here: We're going to make sure that there is still an open source version that you can download and run yourself. We're still working out the details of how we'll do that, but if that involves open sourcing parts of Overleaf, then that's what we'll do.

<comment><USER7> Almost all of my team has individual subscriptions to sharelatex because we felt it was better from a books perspective to show there is more individual interest in an open source solution than corporate interest. We specifically chose sharelatex instead of overleaf so we could host our own instance. We've largely moved away from using sharelatex but still keep our subscriptions active as a form of support for continued development.

I hope what you say is true about the commitment to open source.

<comment><USER6> Thanks storrgie -- I'd like to echo James' point (in his reply to pfooti) that this is very much two teams coming together to build on each others strengths, and we see the open source aspect of ShareLaTeX as an important part of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope that the documentation for ShareLaTeX stays online; of all the resources on LaTeX available, their documention stands above the rest in terms of clarity. The other day, I wanted to know how to do a proper quote, made a quick Google search, and I was happy that the first result was ShareLaTeX and I found the answer to my question.

<comment><USER3> Yep, there's no way that we'd remove all of this! It's taken us a long time to build up that documentation, and it will continue to be maintained and updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally much prefer using a local setup (editor+plugins+instantaneous compiling, etc), but of course collaboration is painful that way, especially given my collaborators much prefer web-based/shared work-flows. Just few days ago, however, discovered that I can use an overleaf project as just a git repo, then push/pull as I see fit. That is an amazing feature!... everyone get to work how they want. Hope that it stays included with the free version.

<comment><USER10> Oh really? I used the web editor once but then switched to a local Git workflow. I'll look into Overleaf again then.

<comment><USER11> Yes. It's a feature "hidden" in the "share" button. I didn't know it first until my prof told me.

I think overleaf should publicize this feature more prominently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sharelatex changed my life in the world of LaTeX editors. With normal LaTeX I installed 10 GB of stuff, had no collaboration tools and no spellchecker, no good folder structure thing.

It's those small GUI aspects that really made me appreciate ShareLaTeX.

<comment><USER13> My MiKTeX installation is under 1 GB (MiKTeX pulls packages on-demand, so there aren't gigabytes of unused packages on your disk) and the excellent TeXstudio editor has a spell-checker enabled by default.

ShareLaTeX is excellent for collaboration, but I much prefer a local setup when that's unnecessary.

<comment><USER10> I'm running the same setup. TeXstudio is absolutely fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've used both Overleaf and Sharelatex quite a bit, and think both products are great and have different strengths. It was frustrating to have to choose and have my Latex files split between the two, and this niche does not feel big enough to merit two competing great products, so I was pretty happy to hear about this.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm pretty excited for this. Overleaf is awesome! I've used it for a few years and have over 50 projects on my dashboard, but I checked out sharelatex a few months ago and was pretty impressed by some of their features. I didn't feel like switching because I feel a bit invested in overleaf with the number of projects, so I didn't investigate further. I hope that this can merge the best features of both programs and make latex more accessible than ever.

Side question for the overleaf team: do you have any plans to make overleaf truly ios compatible? Yes, I know I can open it in the browser just fine (and kudos for that!), but when it takes 3 taps for every backslash or brace I need, it really doesn't work to do much more than minor modifications to existing documents. There really needs to be an easier way of typing the punctuation needed.

<comment><USER6> Hi Pitaa -- thanks for this, great to hear you've been a regular Overleaf user and have enjoyed it! :)

On your side question: it's a tricky one, as although we do try to keep pace with the different browser updates to keep in the in-browser experience ok on ios, I agree it's not ideal. Long term we do want to do something better, but it's not an immediate priority (given that mobile use of Overleaf for editing is still relatively low, and we find that a lot of tablet users use separate keyboards). Hope that helps clarify, even if I don't have an immediate solution!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never used Overleaf, but for several years I used ShareLaTeX as my primary LaTeX editor. I've since switched to using LaTeX through emacs but I still regularly use ShareLaTeX's great documentation and if I didn't carrying my Linux laptop around everywhere, I'd probably still be using ShareLaTeX. Hopefully this new partnership won't ruin it.

<comment><USER17> Eh, I've used both and have to say that overleafs interface is way better... So no, it won't ruin it.

<comment><USER18> Overleaf has its advantages (e.g. better git integration) but I haven't heard much praise for their editor. In my own experience, the Overleaf editor is slower and more cumbersome to use than ShareLaTeX. It's much harder to rearrange files and compile time to PDF is much slower. You also can't set your main doc to be in a subdirectory of the project.

I hope this partnership means we'll soon have the ShareLaTeX frontend on top of the Overleaf backend. That would be a truly powerful combination.

<comment><USER13> That seems to be what they're aiming for: "The ShareLaTeX editor will be at the core of the new platform, on top of the Overleaf ecosystem."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really hope that the ShareLaTeX UX will survive. If I had to use Overleaf's UI, I might seriously consider canceling the subscription. The dark theme is nothing you want to use on a daily basis. Otherwise, ShareLaTeX also worked much faster and had way better example snippets, I think?

I'm optimistic that you do the transition, with Open Source.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why it is better than offline editor (like TeXnicCenter) and code repository (like Git)?

<comment><USER5> I've used ShareLaTeX before, and it's sort of the same reason why Dropbox is (sometimes) better than using rsync. Yes, I would prefer to edit everything in Vim but personally LaTeX environments have always been more pain to setup than they've been worth, and ShareLaTeX just works.

Also they support collaborative editing and adding editor notes to a document.

<comment><USER21> Sharelatex has vim bindings that are quite good.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but I find that nothing really matches the real Vim or Neovim. Especially since I have a lot of macros and mappings configured that make editing documents in "Vim-like" editors feel more painful because my muscle memory tries to use macros that aren't defined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've used both Overleaf and Sharelatex for my senior work and this move is worrying. I started with Overleaf but had to migrate over to Sharelatex due to the raw size of my file, which overleaf limits (at least in their free tier). Note that i'm not talking about data storage per user account, but a maximum document size. I hope the new platform adopts Sharelatex's file size limit.

</comment><comment><USER23> ShareLaTeX is such a joy to use. I used to write a lot of LaTeX, but don't anymore, so don't even have it installed on my laptop. Whenever I need to typeset anything, I just pop it into their web interface, do some light editing and off I go.

It's clean, fast, not clunky, it just does what it's supposed to. I wish you all the best, guys.

</comment><comment><USER24> DAE keep finding their eye drawn to this headline because their brain sees it as a story about Shia LaBeouf?

I mean, I don't really care about Shia LaBeouf, but I'm unfamiliar with ShareLaTeX and Overleaf so I keep pausing on this headline as I parse it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Okay so instead of two competing products we now have one.

</comment><comment><USER26> Huge fan of ShareLaTeX, looking forward to see the rest

</comment><comment><USER27> I love ShareLatex. What is going to happen to existing customers?

<comment><USER28> That does seem to be rather explicitly spelled out in the post :)</comment></comment>


Where is the silicon in silicon valley? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324025

<comment><USER2> Maybe not explicitly silicon, but it has it's own superfund: [http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CA...](http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CAD982463812)</comment>