Personal Wiki for Vim - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki <comment><USER2> With wikis or note taking applications, I always find it hard to get into a habit of using them. I think this is largely because too much brain space is taken up with:

        1. When should I write something here?
        2. How should I organize it?

For this reason, I'm currently trying out more of a "journal" model. The answers to the previous two questions are:

        1. Write whenever you have an interesting idea, or you get that
           feeling that something important is about to get evicted from
           your brain cache.
        2. Every note goes in YYYY-MM-DD.md on the day you make the note.
           You can add #tags to entries to track your thinking or progress
           on a particular topic over time.

I've just started this, so we'll see how it turns out. But I'm optimistic.

<comment><USER3> Ugh man I love vim but now I have to be the one to bring it up: this is exactly why org-capture is so useful. Jotting down quick notes / tasks / todos and being able to customize exactly how these get filed or templated is exactly why org-capture exists.

That said after locking myself into Spacemacs to use org-mode and org-capture, I always wish there was a way to make org a bit more independent of Emacs, or at least a bit more collaborative. We use Asana at work for tasks / issues / todos and syncing that between my TODO.org and back again can be tiresome when trying to preserve information and context. I'm definitely better at maintaining my org files, but Asana preserves context in a more clean way because people can collaborate and add information to tickets, whereas they can't do that with org files.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want to put in a good word for zim-wiki here. Its a shame the Windows port seems to be on indefinite hiatus for now. Its by far the easiest GUI-based wiki to deal with, easily handles just dropping in files into a hierarchy and simply working with them after a refresh. Sorry but being able to use a mouse to navigate a wiki beats out a keyboard-based wiki any time.

[https://zim-wiki.org/](https://zim-wiki.org/)

<comment><USER5> Zim has its good points, but the biggest problem I have with it is the inability to wrap lines shorter than the full monitor width. On a 13" laptop, it's usable; on a widescreen desktop monitor it just doesn't work. Other wikis like tiddlywiki, pmwiki, and dokuwiki are able to avoid this.

<comment><USER6> Sorry if I misunderstood, but does changing the window size solves the problem? I never maximize it, so I was not aware.

<comment><USER5> I could shrink the window, but that's definitely not an optimal solution. It also means that I lose much of my screen width. That creates its own problems.

Here's a bug someone filed that hasn't even so much as gotten a response after nearly eight months:

[https://github.com/zim-desktop-wiki/zim-desktop- wiki/issues/...](https://github.com/zim-desktop-wiki/zim-desktop- wiki/issues/954)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I adopted vim-wiki a little while ago and have really appreciated its functionality. I like that all files are plain text and located in a single folder. It is easy to reach from anywhere in vim, providing simple means to quickly make a note of todo/diary items during work.

Also, I greatly enjoy that it allows for making local references in between your wiki files. A simple link towards another wiki- or diary-entry allows you to jump to that note. It is not only nice for navigation, but also to explore connections between your thoughts. To understand those connections better, I create a simple script (vimwikigraph [0]) to draw these connections using the DOT language [1].

In that way it is similar to Roam [2] I think, although I have not used it myself.

[0] [https://github.com/maxvdkolk/vimwikigraph](https://github.com/maxvdkolk/vimwikigraph)

[1] [https://graphviz.gitlab.io/_pages/doc/info/lang.html](https://graphviz.gitlab.io/_pages/doc/info/lang.html)

[2] [https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/)

<comment><USER8> Can you describe what you think vimwiki adds over a bunch of markdown files and `gf` for links?

<comment><USER9> gf?

<comment><USER10> Vim command which opens the filename under the cursor [https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Open_file_under_cursor](https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Open_file_under_cursor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> After originally using vim-wiki, and then slowly progressing through a dozen or so personal wiki software tools ( all FOSS ), about a year ago I settled on Tiddlywiki.

It's also all self-contained within one folder, but I can stick it behind a server and access the files from wherever. Without having to rely on syncing tools like nextcloud.

Tiddlywiki is actively developed and has a healthy amount of plugins, including a mindmap like plugin.

<comment><USER12> I've been using Tiddlywiki, but the editor is nothing short of atrocious. I just wish there was some sort of Tiddlywiki integration for vim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Came back to vimwiki after using it for years previously:

Things I've liked:

* Now supports Markdown, including for internal linking instead of just the Vimwiki markup

* I'd use just straight Vim, but being able to select a phrase, and quickly make a page to that and link them is nice.

* The HTML and link handling is nice, and it will auto hide the long URLs unless you're actively on them

* Outlines, outlines, outlines. I use them for everything, and they're handled well

* I'll even throw in the occational table, and the auto formatting also works for tables.

* At the end of the day, everything is Markdown text files.

<comment><USER14> I've been using Vim as my main editor on BSD, Linux and Windows for > 20 years. I also use Vim extensions in the IDEs I use (Visual Studio, VS Code, PyCharm).

One of the things I love about PyCharm when dealing with Markdown is that you get a nice preview rendering side-by-side with the raw Markdown. Very useful. I'm not sure if VS or VS Code have something similar. At least VS Code, if it's possible, it's not enabled by default. Might be possible with an extension.

<comment><USER15> I use [https://github.com/iamcco/markdown- preview.nvim](https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim) with Neovim (should work with vim >=8 as well) It gives you live preview in browser. It also scrolls automatically to the part your vim cursor is at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using vimwiki for a while now and it seems to fit the way I work the best of all the options out there.

But, I recently dumped all my vimwiki markdown files into Obsidian and have really been enjoying that experience. Same local files with an upgraded visual experience and some neat linking features.

It has basic vim bindings, unlike roam and others, and that makes all the difference. I just wish I could use vim keybindings to switch between panes but I hope they'll address that at some point.

<comment><USER17> I'm curious, did you consider org-roam (for instance on emacs-doom)?

<comment><USER16> I didn't. Sounded like emacs has a large learning curve and that it wouldn't have vim bindings? Perhaps That's the wrong impression?

<comment><USER18> Try Spacemacs, default vi bindings

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been using vim-wiki for years. I'm a satisfied user. It supports alternative syntaxes, and I use markdown. I like that I can link to a folder on my local machine, or a file, or a web page and it loads in the correct application. With thunderlink I can also link to specific emails and have them open in Thunderbird.

I also use github.com/Konfekt/FastFold to make the folding fast enough to be useful, and github.com/plasticboy/vim-markdown to make vim understand the right way to fold.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have been using a single plain text file as my note for 6 months now. I'm using vim mode on sublime though.

Switching to a plain text file that syncs to GitHub feels more permanent.

I've gone through several note apps (e.g. Evernote, Joplin) and I never really migrated the notes to the new app...

Anyway, I have my own apps to share. They might be useful to others.

* I use [https://github.com/tanin47/git-notes](https://github.com/tanin47/git-notes) to sync my note file to a bit repo

* A programmable tooltip on Mac. You can program it to send the selected text on any app to your note file: [https://github.com/tanin47/tip/wiki/Universal-Tip,-a-program...](https://github.com/tanin47/tip/wiki/Universal-Tip,-a-programmable-tooltip-on-Mac-OS-X,-now-supports-executing-an-arbitrary-command)

</comment><comment><USER21> Also take a look at [https://github.com/lervag/wiki.vim](https://github.com/lervag/wiki.vim) which I found to be much simpler and easier to use.

<comment> Maha-pudma What's the difference? When I was looking at using a wiki Vim I couldn't really see the difference between the two, why use one over the other.

<comment><USER22> I created wiki.vim after having used Vimwiki for some years. I wanted to clean up the code and make it less "bulky" \- Vimwiki is a filetype plugin, a wiki linker plugin, a plugin for handling/managing todo lists, and much more. There are a lot of very good Vim plugins for e.g. Markdown filetypes and for todo lists. So, I decided I wanted to simplify and make wiki.vim with a primary focus on the wiki specific features: link and url handling and graph features. I've also included the diary/journal features.

It sort of started as a fork. And at the time, the Vimwiki maintenance was quite inactive and issues were not addressed. I tried to fix things, but the code was quite messy.

<comment> Maha-pudma Wow, thanks for the reply. Never had a direct reply from a software creator before.

I only started using vim at the end of last year so am still very inexperienced. I'm not sure what a file type plugin is and to be honest had a hard enough time I stalling plug to get vimwiki installed. I'll take a look at wiki.vim too. I like the idea of the diary/journal. I use that in zim-wiki all the time.

Thanks again for the reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this anything like "org mode" for Vim?

I am not an org mode user, but I've heard people gush over it.

<comment><USER24> Only in that it uses a markup language that can link to other files/pages in the wiki.

Org-mode: _" Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, planning projects, and authoring documents with a fast and effective plain-text system."_ via [https://orgmode.org/](https://orgmode.org/)

See also: [https://orgmode.org/features.html](https://orgmode.org/features.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> With all the posts on HN about paid personal knowledge bases like Roam I'm excited to see a free and open one leveraging my favorite editor.

<comment><USER26> Check out org-roam.

It does have the emacs string attached but I've been using doom emacs with it (for vim keybindings) and the learning curve is 100% worth it. 3 weeks in and I haven't looked back here.

<comment><USER27> Curious if there's a Vim version of org-roam?

<comment><USER28> There is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I tried Vim Wiki as well as others but they were either clunky or insufficient for my needs. So I jumped to Emacs. Org is truly remarkable.

</comment><comment><USER29> I made a small ruby gem to convert (most) of vimwiki markdown format files into html (using GitHub's markdown conversions). May be of use to some of you reading this.

[https://github.com/patrickdavey/vimwiki_markdown](https://github.com/patrickdavey/vimwiki_markdown)

</comment><comment><USER30> I love vim wiki, but have never been able to use it. Or any wiki for that matter. I can't seem to find the right mind frame to keep feeding the wiki. I do it for a while, and than I just stop, since I am not able to make a good workflow.

I also haven't been able to find a solution that would easily be publishable, with the right format for me to search over it.

(Another meta problem is that every time I try to consistently use a wiki it I seem to fall in the types of thoughts that the previous paragraphs show, and I simply get discouraged and drop the project)

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been using this for years for basic knowledge store. It's great how you can also link to other wiki notes like anchors on a webpage.

On a side note: The 3rd screenshot. Is that really possible? Shifting all done tasks to the done section automatically? Or is this just manually arranged for the sake of a screenshot?

</comment><comment><USER32> Years and years ago I used Tomboy ([https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy)) because it had a decent UI , though it's storage mechanism left something to be desired...

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm a big fan of Trello for life organisation and one of the best bits is being able to view and add on my phone.

Obviously vim isn't particularly mobile friendly. Any ideas on how to view/edit from afar?

<comment><USER34> I have syncthing set up on my laptop and phone. On my Android phone I use Markor for viewing and editing the files, and the changes are then synced back to my laptop.

Admittedly I don't use Markor very frequently, and often just use Evernote instead when I'm on my phone and want to jot down something quickly... This is mostly because I feel the need to organize in folders etc when using Markor and vimwiki, so my mental model of it includes a bit more friction compared to Evernote.

<comment><USER35> I organize my notes the same way, though I have a structure of my documents: every midnight my server creates a new directory with today (06-05-Fri) which I work with. So when I need to create a file with Markor (which is very rare case), I create it there. The only issue I'm having with this system is that Markor does not work with symlinks, which I use frequently. Or maybe it's not Markor but Android, not sure on this part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm looking for something like vim-wiki or org-mode or the like that allows you to both edit and view the content in vim as well as the web, somehow syncing the two. Does this exist?

<comment><USER37> I mainly use the [https://github.com/euclio/vim-markdown- composer](https://github.com/euclio/vim-markdown-composer) plugin for this. Just run :ComposerOpen in vim after installing the plugin, and it should work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If they'd couple this to Git, it could be even more useful (e.g. you'd have backups, syncing between devices, and perhaps even multi-user access).

<comment><USER39> There is nothing stopping you from doing exactly that, and I have.

All you do is go to the dir, do a git init, and then regularly you do an add and commit (and push).

Really simple due to the fact that all files are just plain text with markdown syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> side note: I really want those cpu/ram/network metrics in my shell instance as well. Anybody know how this person does that?

<comment><USER41> I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think they're actually in the shell. I think that's a status bar for a tiling WM, possibly xmonad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> using it for years, great plugin for task/todo list and notes/documentation

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there an entry explaining how to quit vim?</comment>


Microsoft Ponders Major Restructuring, Amid Renewed Wall Street Focus on Stock - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20130603/microsoft-ponders-major-restructuring-amid-renewed-wall-street-focus-on-stock/?mod=fb

<comment><USER2> I think if the judge in the monopoly trial had split the OS and Office into different companies it would have benefited the customers and the shareholders. (eg less network effect and more competition)</comment>


How Microsoft can reinvent itself in the post-Gates era - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/134184/2008/06/ms_billgates.html <comment><USER2> Have a long conversation with Steve Jobs. Steve was in the same situation in 1997.

I still recall the video conference with Bill Gates on the giant screen. All mac users felt that Jobs had betrayed them by signing a deal with Microsoft but it turns out Jobs had other plans

and the rest as they say is history.</comment>


Does Uber Kill? The Real Cost of Ride-Sharing - <AUTHOR> https://promarket.org/uber-kill-real-cost-ride-sharing/ <comment><USER2> I don't see why uber just don't sod off. I am not a fan of their services at all. If you're ever involved in any crime in relation to their cab they will never help</comment>


Ask HN: Next steps in programming for Jupyter data scientists? - <AUTHOR> We've been onboarding a few new people straight out of school who start developing (Python) models in Jupyter Notebooks until they can no longer hold water. I've succeeded in teaching them to at least put repetitive tasks in functions but what I really wish is that they could acquire some more lower-intermediate to intermediate programming knowledge (i.e. how to separate concerns, encapsulate, etc.).
I think this must be a common occurrence by now, so I figured an Ask HN would serve others too.
Any recommended blog posts, books and such? <comment><USER2> Have an experienced person sit down and teach them. The best way for a company to get an employee with an exact skill set is in-house training. This can be as simple as pair programming. It can be as formal as a class with students in desks being PowerPointed.</comment>


Learn CSS Flexbox for free through interactive screencasts - <AUTHOR> https://scrimba.com/g/gflexbox <comment><USER2> This is great! Exactly what I was looking for to learn Flexbox

</comment><comment><USER3> Great. Scrimba is amazing really!

</comment><comment><USER4> Love what you guys are doing!</comment>


Ask HN: review our startup - Tweetsworth - <AUTHOR> http://tweetsworth.com

<comment><USER2> Nice idea but first I'm suspicious when something is "100% accurate", especially when it's done with a made-up algorithm, where accuracy doesn't make sense.

Second, I don't need to be insulted three times: "Do you really have to inform the world each time you sneeze?" "Hopefully you've got more friends offline, though we're not counting on it" "Your retweets are so boring our algorithm fell asleep."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tweetsworth is the world's first guaranteed accurate Twitter account valuator. Unlike the other Twitter valuation sites which talk a big game but never put up the dough, we'll actually purchase your Twitter account for 90% of the calculated value on the spot.

In other words, we're the first Twitter account valuator with a business model!

Please try it out and let me know what you think.

</comment><comment><USER3> It loads and loads and loads and I never get a response back when I submit a twitter username to be evaluated. Too much traffic now?

<comment><AUTHOR> What browser are you using?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm getting a worth of $0.00 for every Twitter username I input. Even when using twitter users with over 1 million followers.

<comment><USER5> Probably because it's intended as sarcastic.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but perhaps we need to make it a little more obvious that it's a joke. Any suggestions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ok, I get it now. :) Why not wait until Thursday to launch, though?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought about it - but wanted to get feedback sooner.</comment></comment>


Entrepreneurs Transform Cities, Not Football - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/entrepreneurs-transform-cities-football-carter-williams <comment> smc- excellent read.. i found it especially interesting how you broke it down by fundamentals to quantitatively compare the two, with the stadium capex as a baseline.

Your thesis makes perfect sense, and in a perfect world governments, and corporate America for that matter, would follow your thesis and invest in job creation through startups. However, human nature has the habit of seeing their name up in lights as 10s of thousands pour into the stadium to watch football.

I think what your article really is getting to the bottom of, and by using football as the foil, is that to drive the US economy as the largest generation on the planet - the millenials - takes the reins. Where the focus needs to be is on empowering the entrepreneur, which in turn will empower the people through employment and wealth creation.

Kudos for your company, iSelectFund, for helping to make that vision a reality.</comment>


Show HN: Real-time application performance monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://dashboard.graphdat.com/landing

<comment><USER2> Congratulations to the team for a beautiful product and a very beautiful site! I look forward to see more support of other platforms and frameworks (I use Django/Python).

I have to think about it a bit more deeply to make a thoughtful comment regarding the product. However, I did catch a few little things that you can fix:

1) <http://www.graphdat.com/pricing>, "Don't need history, than it's all free." should be "Don't need history, then it's all free."

2) I appreciate your tag line: "Remember all servers get all features, always." but I think punctuation would really make it sticks: "Remember: all servers get all features--always!" I'm not sure, but I love it it and I want this to be even more impactful.

3) <https://dashboard.graphdat.com/landing> page, other than signup/login perhaps a "learn more" button/link? I am a paranoid guy, especially when it comes to installing stuff on my server, so I would want to learn more about the product before even hitting the signup button.

As a developer, I love the product and your presentation. <http://www.graphdat.com/images/img1.png> should be replaced with new screenshots from the current look. What graphing tool are you using? Definitely love to learn more about you guys. Perhaps a developer's blog?

Again, congratulations on a great job well done so far and looking forward to seeing and learning more about you guys.

-V.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much, we're busy adding support for more languages right now and Python / Django is at the top of the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very slick landing page. I've not seen that done before (am I clueless?) but I love the text overlay -- much better than a "click here to watch a video intro!" The point is: I watched, and I was engaged.

I'm on an iPad so I'm not sure of the whole experience but one thing that came to mind, especially given the "faded" UI is that clicking outside the presentation should allow the user to shortcut to the end and jump right in, maybe with a message along the lines of "ok, jump right in...to continue to intro, just click here"

Can you share a bit about how the text overlay/intro was made? Might be a cool project in and of itself...

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing too fancy with the overlay, just some good old fashioned javascript + css. Seems like lots of people are interested so we'll whip up a blog post for everyone.

<comment><USER4> Please - the landing page does a great job.

The real time graphs look great.....D3 + cube/node?

If they're cube related, definitely the best i've seen for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The intro text is nice, but is there some way to stop it? I just wanted to click around in the interface and then read about it afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER6> As with most comments, I'd say very slick and straight to the point demo. The typing text did kinda annoyed me abit - it's probably a give or take as I don't have patience reading things - would prefer to let me jump in and play around with it.

Just curious, did you have to write all the graphing yourselves or did you use a library?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, we ended up writing the graphing library ourselves. Due to the nature of the data and frequencies of redrawing the large open source libraries were too CPU intensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks really awesome, nice work, the little walk through was great as well. A few comments:

1) On the walkthrough my browser wasn't quite wide enough so the text was scrolling off the window. Maybe scale the font size down a bit based on window size if you don't want to deal with wrapping?

2) My first thought before giving it a go and having some reassurance on how this will impact the network/cpu on my server. I know the answer is "it will be negligible", but having it called out specifically reassures me it has been thought of. Same goes with security. As a matter of fact having the agent be open source seems like it would go a long ways there. (doesn't seem like those are the crown jewels but perhaps they are)

Anyways, congrats on the launch, super cool. Next time I have a bit of time I'll definitely try installing it on one of our servers and checking it out.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome. Coincidentally, I was looking at various monitoring options and strayed onto HN and found this. I'll be signing up to give this a try.

BTW, your SSL seems to be off. I tried to reach <https://graphdat.com> and Chrome showed me an error saying your certificate was configured for *.graphdat.com and not for graphdat.com.

EDIT: Played with it for sometime and here's another thought. In the How it works page, each step should link to a page showing how to perform it. Same for the various server and OS logos. I clicked the nginx logo expecting to get directions to install the nginx plugin and instead it sent me to nginx homepage.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a really slick UI. Your presentation of data is really good. there are lots of features you could add to this to make it even more useful, but I really like the ability you give now.

Is your retention period limited to three months or is that just the amount of data you have on hand ?

Also configuration seems to be a bit lacking, is there a way I can change the graphs I have on the screen or select different metrics ( for example I want things like Swap or CPU Wait time ) , and I don't see a way to ad din my own devices. Are those just limits of me only looking at the demo or is that work pending ?

Either way great job looks really slick.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're going to stick with 3 months for now, our idea being that we want to keep costs low so the product is pretty affordable to everyone.

We're still debating how the UX for configuration will look, as soon as we figure it out then we can start work on that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is a wonderful introduction. Any tips on making site introductions like that?

<comment><USER12> Agreed, would be nice to get some pointers :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just an FYI, the link to the windows installer on the modal that launches immediately after you sign-up is dead (<http://www.graphdat.com/agent/GraphdatAgent.exe>)

Note, I'm only half done with my coffee so...you never know.

Update: I just came back to the site and launched the model seems like the link is now <http://windows.graphdat.com/agent/GraphdatAgent.exe> which works...

<comment><AUTHOR> we may or may not have forgotten to rsync that binary to a new web server we started up.

<comment><USER14> you might want to consider using git as your deployment model.

Over the past year I switched to using git to deploy almost all of my apps & services and it is just so much better than what I was doing before (various cobbled together crap).

I even have git repos for things like my servers' .bashrc file ... you'd be surprised how useful that is.

Yes there are tools like puppet & chef and whatnot, but I think of those as better suited to dependencies than your actual code with its higher push frequency.

[UPDATE] might as well talk about how we do this:

In order to use "git push" from a development box to push to remote servers (rather than having them pull from a repo, which requires keeping a git repo accessible from your production boxes, which might not be convenient), you need two things:

1\. On the server, run this:

      git config receive.denyCurrentBranch ignore

Otherwise git will refuse your pushes b/c the receiving end is already on that branch

2\. On the server, write a .git/hooks/post-receive and make it executable. Its contents should be:

      #!/bin/sh
      # NB: hooks execute in the .git dir (not the repo root)
      # and GIT_DIR is set to '.'; either one prevents "git checkout" from working
      unset GIT_DIR
      cd ..
      git checkout -f # force checkout the current branch

See [http://serverfault.com/questions/107608/git-post-receive- hoo...](http://serverfault.com/questions/107608/git-post-receive-hook-with- git-pull-failed-to-find-a-valid-git-directory) if you are curious about the GIT_DIR business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks awesome, I'll probably install and play around with it for my personal project.

That said, I'm not sure your pricing is aligned correctly. Check out Patio11's excellent article on SaaS pricing (with a company that is in a similar space): <http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/13/doubling-saas-revenue/>

</comment><comment><USER16> I got:

      Graphdat is a very intense graphing experience and to pull it off,
      we need a browser that meets some minimum requirements.

      To use Graphdat, you need to upgrade your browser

I'm running Firefox nightly. (User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:20.0) Gecko/20.0 Firefox/20.0)

<comment><AUTHOR> We've just patched that up so the firefox nightly will now work. Sorry about that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good work ! But how many people would be comfortable installing an agent on a machine or a plugin on web server. Performance and security concerns. It also causes network traffic to send data from server to your cloud. How is it better than Newrelic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, not everyone will want to install our agent and people using services like Heroku or AppHarbour wont be able to so we're working on a solution for that right now. Having an agent was the best way for us to launch and show off the features we are trying to push like real-time updates and historical zooming.

<comment><USER17> Its hard. One possible thing could be to share the source code of the agent with the customers. Before installing they can view the source of the agent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love it...I found the intro annoying and obstructive though. For something like that I'd want to just jump directly to a usable demo, maybe with some tooltips or other explanation.

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks nice. Are you supporting APM for Java containers (Tomcat / Jetty / JBoss) as well? JavaAgent approach could help get a lot of detailed analysis for JVM apps.

<comment><USER7> Having a Java SDK is on our roadmap, once it's out we will let you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> hey, this is nice! but my impression is it looks "heavy". maybe it's the combination of thick lines/shadows, dark colors and a bit slow responsiveness. on the upside, the "heaviness" makes it look "more serious".

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks great! Any chance this service will support Fedora relatively soon?

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks awesome! Do you support notifications (email, SMS, etc) ?

<comment><USER7> Not yet, but it is very high on our list of priorities. Once we have it implemented we'll let you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> you guys should just provide RPMs for nginx/apache etc. vs having me manually compile then with the required submodule</comment>


Origami-Folded Hydrogel Paper Instantly Generates 110 Volts of Electricity - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/video/biomedical/devices/origamifolded-hydrogel-paper-instantly-generates-110-volts-of-electricity <comment><USER2> _110 volts of charge_

I can see things like that appearing in mainstream media, but reading that from the IEEE is... disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Calling this 3d printed reminds me of how some video games are referred to as 2.5D. It looks like a 2D array of dots without any real third dimension construction other than the volume of the dots. The resolution is also a fair bit lower than even consumer grade 3D printer technology. The current results are already impressive, but it seems they have a lot of headroom to grow into as well.

Also, I wonder if the coloring of the dots is simply to keep track of which type each is.

</comment><comment><USER4> A simple air balloon can easily generate thousands of volts of electricity. Somehow the energy crisis is still not solved by rubbing balloons.

<comment><USER5> I do wonder how insect zappers work though.

<comment><USER6> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly- killing_device#Electric_fl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly- killing_device#Electric_flyswatter)

> _The handle contains a battery-powered high-voltage generator. The circuit > is composed of an electronic oscillator, a step-up transformer and a voltage > multiplier,_ [...] _A capacitor attached to the electrodes discharges during > the spark, and this initial discharge usually stuns or kills the fly._

Follow the links in Wikipedia to understand how each step works.

<comment><USER5> Yea, that is the point of me posting this. The point is that it is pretty similar.

<comment><USER6> They are quite different.

This paper device use a chain of small drops that have different chemical composition that produce a small voltage. Using a chain of them they get a high voltage.

The insect zapper use only one or two batteries (that are chemical cells) to produce 1.5V or 3V and the use a complex electric circuit to produce the high voltage.

(There is some ladder of capacitor in the voltage multiplier that are slightly similar to the chemical cells in the paper device, but I think they have more differences than similarities.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If it's going to be "origami folded", then call it "denki-unagi-inspired" for consistency. :)

[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%E3...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%83%B3%E3%82%AD%E3%82%A6%E3%83%8A%E3%82%AE)

</comment><comment><USER8> Electric eel reminded me of "Electric Feel", which centers around electric eels. So I'm going to risk HN wrath for linking out to this video I really like: [https://vimeo.com/145506579](https://vimeo.com/145506579)

Skip to 1:40 if you just want to hear the song.

<comment><USER8> Consolation link if you don't like MGMT: [https://youtu.be/c75TZAsc11o](https://youtu.be/c75TZAsc11o)

If you can't appreciate her...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it's a battery printed on paper, which completes the circuit when folded?

</comment><comment><USER10> Probably the cutest tech prototype I've ever seen.

</comment><comment><USER11> At what current?

<comment><USER12> Well, current is Coulombs / second. The smaller the amount of time, the higher the current.

I think your real question is, how many Coulombs. Because it isn't very much energy to transfer 100 Amps for a femtosecond.

\</comment></comment><comment>----

Overall, they need to say how many Watts does it generate. There are multiple circuits to arbitrarily convert voltage into current and vice versa. The real difficult part is creating a sustainable source power.

\</comment><comment>---

Now that I think of it, a mechanical paper "compression" that generates electricity would be a very interesting sensor. There are a lot of piezoelectric stuff out there already (crystals and buttons and stuff). But if there's a way to easily create a peizoelectric sensor from a 3d printer, that'd be good news.

Current / power isn't very important for sensor applications. (Detecting whether or not something is bending over or whatever)

<comment><USER13> That would make a truly interesting development, like body movement tracking and other sensing technologies. If that's the direction, then I agree that power generation becomes irrelevant.</comment></comment>


The Blacklisting of Hector 'Sabu' Monsegur - <AUTHOR> http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/13945/sabu-hector-monsegur-interview/ <comment><USER2> I mean, shouldn't he be blacklisted? He's evidently willing to betray positions of trust for the right incentives, and it's easy enough for the DoJ to blackmail a felon. You can't trust him to do security work when the federal security establishment is at least a passive adversary.

</comment><comment><USER3> My card was part of this hack. I remember my confusion when I talked to my card being blocked and they refused to say why. I asked if there had been any suspicious charges or anything and they couldn't say. Finally got the advice to wipe my computer. Thinking I had a virus came as a chock to me and I wondered how I could have gotten it.

Got pretty pissed at Anonymous when I heard it was them behind the hack. Why would they release credit card info? I really thought they were above such stupidity. And now, to think FBI had a hand in it... quite hilarious to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hiring this guy is a huge security risk, there's literally a community of hackers out to get him or anyone who associates with him, and it's been proven that often security companies simply aren't strong enough to deal with that.

Tptacek, would you hire him? In a hypothetical situation where you had no personal qualms with him (don't know if you do) and his skillset matched your requirements? I know I'd be hesitant even if I headed a security firm, even if it could be done in a remote/anonymous fashion.

<comment><USER5> Clients do background checks on consultants.</comment></comment>


Never Trust a Corporation to Do a Library's Job - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a-librarys-job-f58db4673351 <comment><AUTHOR> _" The Wayback Machine now indexes over 435 billion webpages going back nearly 20 years, the largest archive of the web."_

In years to come, people will read these pages at the Internet Archive and thank Brewster Kahle [0] rather than the likes of Steve, Larry and Mark.

[0] [http://brewster.kahle.org/about/](http://brewster.kahle.org/about/)</comment>


World - <AUTHOR> http://aem1k.com/world/ <comment><USER2> Here this is, formatted so it is more readable.

      p = "<" + "pre>";
      for (y in n = "zw24l6k\
      4e3t4jn`t4qj24xh2 x42kty24wrt413n243n\
      9h243pdxt41csb yz43iyb6k43pk7243nm\
      r24".split(4)) {
        for (a in t = parseInt(n[y], 36) + (e = x = r = []))
          for (r = !r, i = 0; t[a] > i; i += .05)
            with(Math) x -= .05, 0 > cos(o = new Date / 1e3 + x / PI) && (e[~~(32 * sin(o) * sin(.5 + y / 7)) + 60] = -~r);
        for (x = 0; 122 > x;)
          p += "   *#" [e[x++] + e[x++]] || (S = ("eval" + "(z=\'" + z.split(B = "\\\\").join(B + B).split(Q = "\'").join(B + Q ) + Q + ")//m1k")[x / 2 + 61 * y - 1]).fontcolor /\\w/.test(S) && "#03B");
        document.body.innerHTML = p += B + "\\n"
      }
      setTimeout(z)

* Edited for formatting

<comment><USER3> Personally, I find your comment _less_ readable than TFA.

<comment><USER4> [http://pastebin.com/P3eXCg07](http://pastebin.com/P3eXCg07)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of the old 1992 winner of the IOCCC by Brian Westley (who consistently entered some of the most impressive programs in that contest). It doesn't spin, but it prints a map of the provided lat/long.

[http://www.ioccc.org/1992/westley.hint](http://www.ioccc.org/1992/westley.hint)

                   main(l
              ,a,n,d)char**a;{
          for(d=atoi(a[1])/10*80-
         atoi(a[2])/5-596;n="@NKA\
        CLCCGZAAQBEAADAFaISADJABBA^\
        SNLGAQABDAXIMBAACTBATAHDBAN\
        ZcEMMCCCCAAhEIJFAEAAABAfHJE\
        TBdFLDAANEfDNBPHdBcBBBEA_AL\
         H E L L O,    W O R L D! "
           [l++-3];)for(;n-->64;)
              putchar(!d+++33^
                   l&1);}

<comment><USER6> There is another program arranged in a similar circular shape that calculated pi experimentally using it's own source code as the circle to test.

<comment><USER7> Found it here [http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~manuel/obfuscate/pi.c](http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~manuel/obfuscate/pi.c) That's awesome.

<comment><USER8> There's a lot of talk about scalable code floating around, but it's rare to see anything as scalable as this code. Do you want more precision in your pi approximation? Then you _literally_ scale the code up. There's few people who can truly claim to have written scalable code like that.

<comment><USER9> Speaking of "scalable code", there is another interesting obfuscated piece of code that can scale itself. akari.c[1] is an obfuscated ASCII art downsampler.

The neat thing is that the program itself is ASCII art, and downscaling the program source code will generate valid programs for 3 iterations![2]

[1] [http://www.ioccc.org/2011/akari/akari.c](http://www.ioccc.org/2011/akari/akari.c) [2] [http://www.ioccc.org/2011/akari/hint.html](http://www.ioccc.org/2011/akari/hint.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That was a wonderful experience of multiple moments of realization. "Oh, it's an ascii globe; it looks like it just scrolls a map through the circle. No wait, it's warping as it shifts across. Wait, is it using asterisks for antialiasing? What is all of this stuff around the outsi- ... oh. Oh."

</comment><comment><USER11> It's spinning in the wrong direction!

<comment><USER12> This is one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen!

... and the top comment is typical negative nitpicking!

Why HN? Why?! There must be a better way!

<comment><USER13> Why do we keep calling it "typical negative nitpicking"? How about calling it "feedback"? Or maybe even "the most useful type of feedback"?

We're encouraged here to post things that add value. But that pretty much implies either criticism or going off-topic ("hey, I've seen something similar here:", etc.). There is no practical value in "positive" comments, no matter how elaborately you can write "I liked it". Yes, it will make everyone feel a little bit better, but it hardly contributes anything of value to anyone.

Not every criticism is a valuable feedback, but every valuable feedback is a kind of criticism. And I think the best thing about HN is that it has lots of civil nitpicking (usually followed by interesting discussions), instead of circle jerks and compliments.

ETA

> _Why HN? Why?! There must be a better way!_

There is: it's to stop taking criticism so personally and instead extract as much value from it as one can, and discard the rest. I find it to be a good attitude for life in general, not just HN.

<comment><USER14> I agree with much of what you said - there is significant value in negative feedback.

But here is where I disagree:

>... but it hardly contributes anything of value to anyone...

>... every valuable feedback is a kind of criticism...

Valuable feedback includes positive as well as negative. Negative is _actionable_ feedback, but positive has just as much value in a different way.

Most people are aware that their own perceptions, thoughts, and ideas may be flawed. Negative feedback points out those flaws and should always be accepted. Positive feedback says that in spite of the flaws, there is something fundamentally worthwhile there.

And while upvotes can certainly serve as a form of positive feedback, words are even better.

I'm not suggesting that we should all post meaningless words of encouragement to everything that comes along. But if you're impressed by something you see, saying so only helps.

<comment><USER13> > _Negative is actionable feedback, but positive has just as much value in a > different way._

I guess "actionable feedback" was the phrase I was looking for.

> _I 'm not suggesting that we should all post meaningless words of > encouragement to everything that comes along. But if you're impressed by > something you see, saying so only helps._

Agree 100%. It's always nice and reassuring to get some positive feedback :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Brilliant.

What I'd love to see is a step by step description of how this was constructed. If I have an end goal in mind, it's simple enough to hammer some characters into something a machine can use to do that end goal while still being readable by a human. But this? It floors me, and I can't even imagine where to start. I can understand the code with a bit of thought, but getting from an empty text editor to that seems beyond me.

<comment><USER16> He gave this step by step presentation at JSConf.eu today. It was really well done... I could almost follow!

I hear there will be video in a couple weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Inspired by "The Qlobe", written in Ruby [http://mamememo.blogspot.de/2010/09/qlobe.html](http://mamememo.blogspot.de/2010/09/qlobe.html)

<comment><USER18> Hmm, that one says, "Copyright(C).Yusuke Endoh, 2010"

The author of this one apparently forgot to give credit.

<comment><USER19> Doesn't look like the code is that similar. Doesn't look like copyright has anything to do with it. Does Endoh have a patent? That would of course be a different matter.

<comment><USER18> I'm not alleging a law was broken -- just that the author should have given credit for inspiration.

<comment><USER17> The author did give credit for the original in his presentation.

<comment><USER18> Huh? Where?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you look closely you'll see that there's a parallax effect, where the lines near the equator move faster than the lines at the top, giving it a sense of depth and motion that you wouldn't expect from any ASCII art animation.

This was brilliant, just absolutely fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER21> Saw the talk by Martin at JSConf.eu today explaining how he did it. Just brilliant! [http://2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/martin-kleppe-1024-seconds- of...](http://2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/martin-kleppe-1024-seconds-of-js- wizardry.html)

<comment><USER22> I have to remember to check their YouTube channel for the talk!

<comment><USER23> If anyone finds the video, post it here please!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain this really simply for me?

I understand that the whole thing is actual source and its manipulating the center commented area. But I am having trouble following the code.

<comment><USER25> > Can someone explain this really simply for me?

Imagine that you had to write it yourself.

First, you would create some strings approximately representing latitudes on Earth and their associated land masses -- one string for maybe 10-20 degrees of latitude, from some southerly latitude to a northerly one.

Nest, you would figure out a way to print substrings of the strings, at specific points within the strings that you would choose.

Next, you would arrange that the substring printer would wrap around to the beginning of the string in the event that it was asked to print a greater length than the remaining characters available from the specific starting point to the end. By wrapping around, you create the illusion of a circle of characters, like on a globe.

Next, you would think of a way to write into a specially formatted executable text file having a roughly circular central section that is commented out, i.e. not executable.

Next, you would arrange that the specially formatted text file be the running program, and the central comment area represent the display of the earth.

Next, just to blow minds, you would print the current form of the program text file on the console, after each animation cycle filled the comment area.

Finally, you would create the illusion that the earth is rotating clockwise as seen from the north pole (the opposite of reality) just to provoke people who know a bit of astronomy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the first animated quine I've ever seen. It may be a first.

More on quines: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_\(computing\))

</comment><comment><USER22> My jaw literally dropped, I had to check the source to make sure this was just it... Really impressive. I love these kind of works of art

</comment><comment><USER27> A heavily refactored version of this code, for those curious how it works:

[http://pastebin.com/uUvDGzrb](http://pastebin.com/uUvDGzrb)

(note that it will not work like the original and make a pretty globe, because it's dependent on the exact character positioning)

</comment><comment><USER28> I see Perl's fashion of poetic source code is being replaced by JS's fashion of animated source code! 8-)

</comment><comment><USER29> My first thought was that's kinda cool.

Then I viewed the source. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Amazing stuff. One quibble; There's a XXXXX in the middle of the South Pacific, midway between Australia and Chile. Whatever it is supposed to be, it's way too big.

</comment><comment><USER31> Kudos, this is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, it even works in Opera Mini!

</comment><comment><USER33> Someone should make a version that spins in real time :O

<comment><USER34> View the source code for that. Just don't look at it for too long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Inspecting the elements in chrome wont let me open the any of the code. Once you get past the body tags the <pre> tags just keep on flashing.

<comment><USER36> Go to the Sources tab and click the || button to pause javascript. If you're wondering where the code is, just curl the URL :) (or, with Web Inspector open, refresh the page, go to the Network tab and select the only request.

<comment><USER37> You can just look at the source (Ctrl+Alt+U in Chrome). It's an HTML document with a single script tag in it.

<comment><USER38> Just Ctrl+U

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's adorable but I wouldn't have bothered clicking if I had known what it was from the title.

<comment><USER40> Take another look. It's not just an ASCII animation; _it 's the source code that produces the animation_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There's a bunch of these globe animations already. But always nice. ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> You made me eval() ... Don't be eval.

Excellent piece of code though!

</comment><comment><USER43> Making the code look like the output!! Super cool.

</comment><comment><USER44> You chopped off the Indian subcontinent

</comment><comment><USER45> it's not an accurate map, showing north america as the same size as Africa :)

</comment><comment><USER46> aemkei delivered an awesome presentation yesterday at JSConf EU.

This was his final slide.

</comment><comment><USER47> Can someone explain this?

<comment><USER48> View the source. Usually there would be a separate script that creates the animation.

In this case, the page is the source. The animation and page are one with the source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is the UK on the map?

</comment><comment><USER50> it hypnotized me to upvote!</comment>


Apple's Tim Cook talks diversity, women, 'the future of our company' - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2015/06/08/tim-cook-apple-diversity-women-future/#:eyJzIjoidCIsImkiOiJfcHN3d2V2aGYyajJxOXhleCJ9 <comment><USER2> > His diversity report shows that just 7% of Apple employees are African- > American, compared to around 13% in the general population.

Why is this a goal? Why is it a failure if the tech industry doesn't have the exact racial proportions as the general population?

The ultimate goal should be to ensure that anyone can find opportunities to learn CS if they want to, regardless of race.

<comment><USER3> It's a company-level social experiment: what if all people are equal and we pick and compensate them based on proportional quotas rather than based on merits.

There was an experiment like that on a multi-country level. We know how it ended.</comment></comment>


ESO (European Southern Observatory) Announcing Unprecedented Discovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann17071/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15483231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15483231).</comment>


Bugged recordings of prominent Turks are appearing almost every day - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/70baf32a-9d43-11e3-83c5-00144feab7de.html#axzz2uLysvx00 <comment><USER2> Meta: It's weird that the 'i' in "Voice" in the title is not actually an 'i', but instead U+0131 (LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS I [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0131/index.htm](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0131/index.htm)). It doesn't appear in the actual article's title, so I guess it's just a typo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dotless i is very common in Turkish. I use both English and Turkish keyboard. When I was typing, I forgot to switch to English ( Shift + Alt) so I typed as ı.

<comment><USER3> I always wondered why they didn't put the dotted i in the same spot as the English keyboard and move the undotted I to the pinky where the i is.

(I've done the same thing.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Turkey it's apparently open season for all sorts of "bootleg" recordings of prominent figures, per this FT article today [0]

> Bugged recordings of some of the most prominent people in national life are > appearing almost every day, although coverage in the Turkish media rather > depends on the political loyalties of the outlet in question.

> Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister for more than a decade, said this month > that "everybody" in Turkey had been wiretapped – he himself, President > Abdullah Gul, executives and journalists – for purposes of blackmail. Rather > endearingly, Mr Erdogan uses 1980s terminology to refer to such recordings, > calling them "cassettes". But the recordings are available on the internet > and are notified to the world via Twitter.

> They cast a striking picture of the prime minister and his business and > political allies: in several recordings Mr Erdogan appears to instruct a > friendly media executive on how the news should be presented (less coverage > of the opposition is the basic message). Others appear to be cuttings from > an anti-corruption probe of government-connected figures that Mr Erdogan's > administration has in effect halted. (All those concerned protest their > innocence; while some say the tapes have been manipulated, the prime > minister says the recordings have invaded his privacy.)

> Tapes have also surfaced of Mr Erdogan's current arch-enemy, an Islamic > preacher called Fethullah Gulen, talking to lieutenants in business and the > media. The leaks are part of a war between Mr Erdogan and Mr Gulen's > movement, which has adherents across Turkish society and in key > institutions.

> On Monday a government-affiliated newspaper published the names of about > 7,000 people – including government officials and media figures – whose > phones it says were tapped at the request of Gulenist prosecutors. > Meanwhile, Gulenists say that new government proposals to boost the powers > of Turkey's intelligence agency – and facilitate wiretaps – will turn Turkey > into a surveillance state.

[0] [http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/70baf32a-9d43-11e3-83c5-00144...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/70baf32a-9d43-11e3-83c5-00144feab7de.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> It will be interesting to see if any governments ever conclude that the only way to win is not to play the game: Instead of trying to play the same game as the Big Boys they decide that they would rather be snooped on less than to do more snooping themselves.

So, instead of going through the exercise of trying to keep their own people in the panopticon while pulling some futile curtain around it all, they give their government, industry, and perhaps even the people tools to avoid snooping.

I'm sure the usual suspects will be here to say this is also futile, but at at the very least it's different from obvious futility.

</comment><comment><USER6> if i were a turk, i'd be very wary about all this.

looking at the fiasco in the ukraine, i can see how some powers are looking to engage the local mob to bring just another government to its knees. as big parts (portugal, spain, france, italy, ireland, greece) are effectively bankrupt, living on wellfare of the rest of the union, the eu is very, very eager to extend its reach into eastern territory -- by all means.

turks, ukrainian fellows and all other potential guinea pigs: don't get sucked into something you'll complain about as not having seen coming.

</comment><comment><USER7> Phone/email/etc are too easy to use -- and to crack when all the resources of freelancers, states and police forces get involved. "All discussions are shallow"? :-)

One problem is an increase in the ability to convincingly create faked photos and phone recordings?

Here, it is obviously parts of a state against other parts. Informative insight.

Is this the future of political "argumentation" in [half authoritarian/corrupt] regimes? And in how business deals will be done -- blackmail? Or, if fakes get impossible to detect, the end of trustworthy recorded history?

</comment><comment><USER8> ... so they're talking Turkey?

Yeah, down vote me, you're just jealous that you didn't post it first!</comment>


Hundreds of sites down for "Chinese Internet Maintenance Day" - <AUTHOR> http://www.danwei.org/net_nanny_follies/chinese_websites_under_mainten.php

<comment><USER2> _"starting with the Tıаnanmen anniversary"_ , and it's renewal kind of behavior. is this a clever way of protesting without getting sent to prison?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, no. It's to prevent people from talking about the event on its anniversary, and to prevent Chinese people from hearing other people talk about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> And it's also a veiled warning: "Don't even think about it". Read the comments below, though, for some discussion on the nuance in the situation, and why it's not really a subject anyone should be getting too outraged about before they understand the environment in which it's happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The funny thing is we don't call a "Maintenance Day", we call it a "Been Maintenance'd Day"

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22%E8%A2%AB%E7%BB%...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22%E8%A2%AB%E7%BB%B4%E6%8A%A4%E6%97%A5%22)

Just like there are two kind of suicides in China, suicide and 'been suicided'.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E8%A2%AB%E8%87%AA%...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%E8%A2%AB%E8%87%AA%E6%9D%80)

<comment><USER5> Do you think this US media talk about apathy and ignorance about June 4th among the Post-80's generation is meaningful? Do most Chinese youth really not know what happened? How many anniversaries do you think it will take before they stop maintaining the internet?

<comment><USER4> > Do you think this US media talk about apathy and ignorance about June 4th > among the Post-80's generation is meaningful?

Yes to you, maybe no to us. Because it's not really some fresh ideas, since 'western' media is full of these things everyday.

> Do most Chinese youth really not know what happened?

on some degree. We all know some shit happened to China, East-Europe, Russia in the late 80's & early 90's. some of us probably do not know the tankman though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I kind of like the idea of a "global internet maintenance day". Sysadmins get to do patches, upgrades, and backups with the sites offline. Sweet.

<comment><USER7> Except in this case it's being used to gloss over any coverage of the anniversary of a horrific event.

<comment><USER6> yeah well, yes, no, sort of...this view of it being a cover-up of a horrific event is not exactly how the majority of Chinese view it IMHO. The Chinese certainly know why the Internet sites are down. The general population are not ignorant of this history.

Do you consider the U.S. Civil War a horrific event? Certainly lots of people suffered; it was a war. But lots of change occurred (still occurring).

I don't consider June 4th in China "as only" a slaughter of innocents. History might show it to be one of the least bloody events relative to the significant change that happened as a result. 2009 China is far different from 1989 in part because this event happened.

Please do not be upset with me for my opinions. My view has come after a very long time of me holding my U.S. views while living in China and coming to understand that most local Chinese do not agree with me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good comment, similar to what I too have experienced.

Perhaps a better comparison to US history is the Kent State shootings, a protest in 1970 in which 4 people died at an anti-war protest. While awful, you would be hard pressed in 2009 to find an American hanging too much significance on the event; it was an isolated incident in a period of intense social change.

The situation, I think, is similar in China, whose own social upheaval is occurring at a far greater rate. It is difficult to think of any precedent, in fact, in which a country of such size and diversity has managed such a wrenching transition without a lot more bloodshed than that.

It's because of this, actually, that my position on the government there has softened, too. Chinese society sits on a powderkeg the likes of which it is difficult for westerners to understand. The govt's actions might seem heavy- handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary.

And if you don't think the US Govt would temporarily pull the plug on a few websites in order to abate what they considered a genuine chance of widespread civil unrest, think again.

<comment><USER8> _The govt's actions might seem heavy-handed, but their stewardship of the change process has undeniably been impressive, even exemplary._

I actually think the Chinese government did the right thing in Tiananmen. They had the fortitude to do what Louis the XVI and Czar Nicholas the II should have done, but did not. Americans forget that most revolutions have had horrible results. And in China in particular, the worst time periods have been times of internal chaos ( the Taiping Rebellion and the Cultural revolution). Order and security are prerequisites of liberty. The Chinese government put down the mob (a mob that did have weapons, btw), and helped ensure that the past twenty years have been the best twenty years in China in a long time.

<comment><USER4> your ideas fit with some of the older-Chinese, they think the CCP did the right thing to keep China from breaking like USSR

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> doesn't the whole banning thing give more exposure to it?</comment>


Rampant Abuse of Push Notifications Is Ruining Them For All Developers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.anylistapp.com/2012/11/push-notifications/ <comment><USER2> I wish spam prevention was a bigger part of Apple's culture.

I get spam robocalls on my iPhone and have no way to block them. I have recently started getting unblockable requests to Facetime with strangers on my Mac -- a service I didn't even know I was logged into. I have an Apple email address that is way behind Gmail on spam prevention. And as noted in the article, iOS notification spam is now an issue.

In contrast, Google has anti-spam as a core corporate competency. They know that where there is a profit motive, there will be spam. They truly think like hackers -- "if I were a bad actor, how would I abuse this feature?" Apple needs to pick this up.

<comment><USER3> For Android at least, there are numerous call-blocking apps. I use (though am increasingly frustrated with the privacy policy and feature-creep of) Mr Number, which can block all unknown numbers as well as specific blacklisted numbers.

What I'd _REALLY_ prefer would be a way to categorize contacts into priority groups. Family/VIP, who can reach me 24/7/365. Friends who can call most of the time. Other contacts who can reach me daylight/weekday hours. And the rest who roll straight to voicemail. Add a schedulable exception (allow all calls in the next X hours because I'm expecting one from someone whose number I can't identify in advance).

Combine this with a visual voicemail (Google's product is good, but they already own far, far, far too much of my life) and I'd bitch a lot less about phones.

Increasingly: voice calls are very distracting and annoying. Unless you've got very good reason to call me, don't. I don't even get to "please don't call me" any more, I'll simply hang up (on the rare occasions an unwelcome call gets through).

<comment><USER4> Agreed. There's a lot more to improve about phones' actual telephony.

>> Family/VIP, who can reach me 24/7/365.

Also: a message like "Hi family, I'm asleep/busy, but if you really need me, press 1 to ring me anyway" would be wonderful. They wouldn't worry about calling at a bad time, and you wouldn't get awakened for something trivial.

In general, "what would a good human assistant do?" is a good question for computer systems. A secretary wouldn't wake you unless it was important.

<comment><USER5> iOS 6's Do Not Disturb feature has an option that lets the caller through if they call twice, which can achieve a similar effect, though not only for a specific group.

<comment><USER3> Still wouldn't have helped for the recruiter who redialed me 6 times while I was attempting to read a 400-page PDF manual (incoming calls dump you out of the Adobe PDF reader and you've got to re-find your place in the document), while attempting to recover a melted down server in the colo (hadn't anticipated this, laptop was at the office).

Solution: tell the recruiting firm never, ever, ever to contact me again.

Second solution: take off and nuke Adobe from orbit.

Third solution: ePub for docs, people. It's multi-form-factor fungible, and the readers are vastly, vastly more functional than anything built for PDF.

<comment><USER5> Fourth solution: use iBooks, it doesn't lose your page. :p

<comment><USER3> Android?

<comment><USER5> Oh... I assumed you were using iOS because you replied to my comment about iOS 6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most hilarious one on my phone is a local transit app, which is sadly very useful so I'm keeping it, with an irate developer who uses push notifications to angrily respond to negative reviews in the App store. I get notifications like "Response to Gregory's negative review."

I actually read them sometimes because they are mildly amusing things like "Gregory's Review: 1/5 stars, didn't work. Developer comments: HOW ABOUT FILING A REAL BUG REPORT SO I CAN HELP YOU INSTEAD OF LEAVING A VAGUE BAD REVIEW."

<comment><USER7> That's tragically funny but it shows another problem with the app store. Years after the app store has been released, Apple hasn't solved a basic need for support and bug tracking. It would be an big help the community (both customer and developer) to give them a transparent and easy way to communicate issues with each other.

Does anyone know if this has been addressed in anyway with Apple saying they are considering it or not?

<comment><USER8> How about app developers add a menu/settings item entitled something like "Find a bug?" that links to or facilitates the developer's own bug tracker?

<comment><USER9> Basically, no matter what the developer and Apple do, people will always use reviews as a place to submit vague bugs.

There have been a few times where I was lucky enough to be able to track someone down based on their username and personally contact them to help them out, but if they'd gone though official channels for support instead of via a review, it would have been much better for both of us.

I actually would like to see the ability for developers to publicly respond to reviews. Sure, some may abuse it by submitting nasty responses to bad reviews, but good developers would provide useful/polite responses, and that would be another signal users could use to determine if they want to buy the app in the first place.

<comment><USER10> > Basically, no matter what the developer and Apple do, people will always use > reviews as a place to submit vague bugs.

Easy fix then: a small checkbox on review page "this is a technical problem", which will forward review and contact details for the reviewer to an arbitrary developer bugsystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's a nice commons you've got there. It'd be a tragedy if something happened to it.

As has been extensively discussed, there are lots of drawbacks to the App Store model. But if they actually enforced limits on push notifications (or maybe even charged developers for them), it'll slow the tragedy of the commons a bit. I agree that individual users could do the same, but the marginal spammy app still has every incentive to be spammy.

<comment><USER12> Charging developers is probably going to result in the opposite of what you want: notifying the user of something useful probably monetizes far less than the spammy notifications instead.

Apple just needs to get a grip and start swinging banhammers, like Facebook did with Zynga. Put troublesome apps in a probation period, where notification strings end up going through an approval process. And punish developers by holding subsequent apps up in the review process.

<comment><USER13> A.K.A. The Cobra Effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The right solution is to have every single push notification have a "Silence this" link on it. That takes you to a screen naming the app and asking if you want to turn off its ability to do push notifications. This fact is tracked across users.

Add a warning from Apple that any app that is turned off by too many people will be deemed to be too spammy, and taken out of the app store.

This would completely solve the problem. In the absence of any such mechanism, all incentives point towards continued abuse of the feature.

<comment><USER15> Had the same thought. It's an annoying additional piece of information on each notification, but considerably less annoying than them being abused.

Also the risk of false positives. It'd be possible for an app to have a high rate of disabling push notifications, but not be genuinely spammy.

Edit: _not_ be genuinely spammy

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember the day Draw Something started abusing push notifications: the _paid_ version was sending me ads for other zynga games. What sucks is push notifications are almost essential for the functionality of the game: without them, you have to constantly check if it's your turn. I and many other people deleted the app as soon as the ads showed up. Talk about destroying a very valuable network effect for a quick profit-grab.

I'm now part of that group who reflexively rejects notification requests. I agree with this article that Apple should take action, but app makers should also realize the cost of abusing their customers.

<comment><USER17> And this is why users don't want to upgrade: the upgrade may be less valuable but out to monetize you.

So we developers can't get rid of our broken stuff because people are afraid to upgrade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently had to disable notifications for Words With Friends (it took two tries). The "nudges" were bad enough (I'll make my move when I have some free time, damn it) but the final straw was when they started holiday spam -- e.g., "Why not celebrate Halloween by playing a word like SPOOKY, WITCH, or DRACULA?"

No, fuck you, Zynga. And Dracula shouldn't even be a playable word.

</comment><comment><USER19> The same goes for Notification bubbles!!!!!!

I have deleted some games from my system because they display notification bubbles above the icon or app folder. That drives me insane. A few examples I can call out are Halfbrick studios. Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja both do this too often for my taste and have been removed from my phone because of it. These are particularly bad examples because of how many taps it takes to actually show and clear the notification. I wish there was an opt out with these things as it disturbs my OCD to have a clean desktop and no notification bubbles.

<comment><USER20> But... you can disable those. They are called "Badges". Turn off the "Badge App Icon" option in the notification settings for the app in question.

<comment><USER21> Not all Badges are moderated through the notification center. Doodle Jump is one such app that manages to sneak badges past it -- they're not push notifications, but are populated upon application close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> First reaction to this: "Wow, that must be annoying, I'm glad I don't have these apps. What were the developers thinking, how do they get away with these shady practices?"

Second reaction: "Perhaps they are doing something right and we should be doing that in our apps. Perhaps younger people actually like such things, after all they get dozens of sms every day and it makes them feel important/liked?"

</comment><comment><USER23> "As a result, users are starting to reflexively reject app requests to send push notifications."

Source? An actual, non-vague stat? Proof?

</comment><comment><USER24> OK, so there is gratuitous use of push notifications, but it's also unfair to compare push usage between a utility app and apps that are trying to convince you to try something new.

How about we compare the pushes to email campaigns by companies?

I for one am constantly amazed at how much users tolerate these emails.

So I say, yes, make it easier to stop the pushes just like it's easy to unsubscribe from email campaigns. It could be as easy as making sure users know that the pushes stop when the app is uninstalled.

But I think outside of other app developers and the tech community, users may not feel as strongly that this is abuse.

</comment><comment><USER25> At the very least they should ban apps that have a way where no matter how many times you check it, the icon always has the little (1) on it. GetGlue was doing this for a while, but it appears they stopped.

<comment><USER26> That always irked me too. Now you can disable those little app notification badges in settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> TaskRabbit was abusing them as well. We should do our best to shame any organization that sends spam via push notifications.

</comment><comment><USER28> The same is true of in-app purchases. How many scammy "buy 3000 mojo points!" apps are out there now? At this point I don't even bother with an app if I see in-app purchases. Shame for those who use them correctly, like Alien Blue.

<comment><USER29> Perhaps it'd be useful if Apple would make a distinction between applications with one-time IAPs (e.g, "upgrade to SurfWriter Plus for $1.99") and applications with consumable IAPs (e.g, "get ten thousand zorkberries for $1.99"). The latter are almost certainly the sort of IAPs that are fundamentally bothering you here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The one that's been killing me lately are the notifications from the new He- Man game for iPhone. I have yet to figure out how to turn off push notifications for this app, it's not in the in-game settings or in the Settings app and I know I never enabled them in any dialogs. I just randomly get random messages about how I'm not doing a good enough job saving Eternia. If I can't figure this out soon the game is gone.

Isn't this the kind of abuse that the app store approval process should be addressing? If notifications are supported, then they should be required to be configurable in the Settings app, no exceptions.

<comment><USER31> They might be local notifications from the app itself, not remote push notifications.

<comment><USER32> And there is no way to turn these off. The app just has to schedule them while its running.

<comment><USER5> If you care enough, I suggest filing a radar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been calling Facebook Notifications the Push Notification of the Web, they are great, maybe just as good as native Push Notifications. But they have also "solved" (it's new and yet to see) the spam problem recently by implementing harsh restrictions on how you as a developer can send them. It would be interesting if Apple and Google copied this behavior. Basically Apps that send > 50000 notifications a week have to maintain a 17% Click-To- Impression ratio. However I find the 50K an oddly picked number which should instead be based on installed user base.

</comment><comment><USER34> The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this is intentional. A big problem with computer security is that people just blindly click "OK" to any sort of authorization prompt. Ever since push notification abuse started to get bad, I've been much more careful about reading the authorization prompts that my phone throws up, after authorizing some apps for push notifications without thinking through the implications, then having to manually turn them off later.

</comment><comment><USER35> The Instacart notifications are just insane. I got into the early beta and never used the app a single time because of the sheer volume of annoying pushes I'd get.

</comment><comment><USER36> Apple needs to start engaging in Pagerank-style ranking of applications in the store, and including metrics like "number of push notifications sent, per user" in the calculation. Please also include "number of applications per developer".

And please revise the guidelines such that if in-app purchases are turned off on the phone, showing the user a catalog or purchases screen is grounds for rejection.

</comment><comment><USER37> Those notifications are the "fucking horror". I uninstall any app (on Android, mind you) that does that.

heck, i even dislike the notifications when the app is on the foreground (specially the apps begging for rating on the market: when i get one, i just go put one star). but the background ones are TRUE EVIL. :P

<comment><USER38> I have no issues with an app asking me ONCE (unless I press `later`) for a ranking. The fact of the matter is that once I install an app, I'm going to forget about the fact that it came from the Play Store and I'm just going to use it. If it weren't for those pop-ups, I would only ever write reviews when an app pissed me off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just tap Don't Allow.

Edit: More seriously, all four of those suggestions are very good, and I'd like to see them too. For #4, a deep link to the app's notification settings would be good enough, and probably more likely than getting a notification settings controller in UIKit.

<comment><USER40> Isn't that the point of the OP?

Apps that are increasingly abusing push notifications means that users are increasingly just choosing "Don't Allow" even when push notifications are a key part of a non-spammy app, because they're wary of later being spammed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hate all notifications except my morning alarm clock. I don't want to be interrupted.

</comment><comment><USER42> I am not for "Provide a feedback mechanism that allows users to report spammy notifications, and crack down on abusive apps." because 'what is' spam is highly subjective, and this can be used against the App to bring down even genuine Apps! I wouldn't agree that we can let the iPhone user remain ignorant of what is all this about Push Notifications! If the user bought the iPhone, if the user 'chose to' install the App, then it falls upon the user to learn how to use it! Is it not? When we buy, say, a new electronic equipment, say a new refrigerator, is it not upon us to learn about how to use it controls?

</comment><comment><USER43> Same is also true for facebook notifications. I recently got a notification that said "Blabla has given you a free movie on Flixster." Now, I am actually down to try a service that gives me a free movie rental. But because of my past experience with fb notifications, I immediately hit 'Ignore' thinking it was another gimmicky spam.

Facebook has focused so much at Games that I think it will begin to hurt them when more well-known businesses in other categories try to use their platform to distribute offers.

</comment><comment><USER44> As mentioned before, Local Notifications can be equally spammy, are impossible to turn off, and are visually indistinguishable from push notifications.

The are also not subject to a strict interpretation of the app review guidelines.

The only limitation is that they need to be set ahead of time when the app is active, or triggered by one of the background modes (geofencing, significant location change, task completion, Bluetooth LE, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER45> I think this could be solved with a simple like/dislike button for notifications.

If that type of notification is unwanted you could, dislike it and it would suppress notifications of that type for ... x days. If you do it enough, it would disable it. If enough of the apps notifications are disliked then the apps notification privileges get suspended all together.

</comment><comment><USER46> I can't for the life of me figure out how to disable Embark NYC's push notification.

My biggest problem now, however, is getting push notifications from Letterpress at 4AM, because the person I play with is on the other side of the continent.

There should be an adittional setting to require permission for a specified window of time like, say, 1AM to 8AM.

</comment><comment><USER47> May be developers should provide the frequency (x) of push notifications at the time of requesting access. And Apple should ensure not more than x notifications were sent to a device? Something along the lines: XYZ App would like to send you push notifications. Freq: 2/day, 1/week, User set [Allow] [Deny].

</comment><comment><USER48> They should take Growl's approach of forcing developers to declare all possible notifications that an app can send, so that they could examine their texts and purposes during review process. It would also grant a possibility for a user to enable/disable notifications individually.

</comment><comment><USER49> I rarely allow apps to send me push notifications. Only very selectively do I allow it and even then my patience is short. For the average user this may be an issue but I've found my approach handles the situation very nicely.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would a simple "stop showing me these" on each notification work?

</comment><comment><USER50> This is the number one reason I find my iPhone irritating (in practice) -- apps keep abusing even local notifications and those should be off by default unless I allow it.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think there are really any good reasons to use push notifications. I have them disabled on all the apps I install and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

</comment><comment><USER52> What I love on android is I can just strike-through any privilege I don't want an app to have, like internet access. This might be a cyanogenmod-only feature though.

</comment><comment><USER53> This, and the crapware problem on Windows, seem like two instances of the same underlying problem. What could a general solution look like?

<comment><USER54> Not buying/installing shitty apps by low rent developers or companys that have poor reputations?

<comment><USER55> Crapware is predominantly a problem on new PCs, where the vast majority of the population just goes along with it. It needs a strong stand from Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> First thing I turn off on all apps. If, after a spell, I find that I miss push notifications on a given app, then I will turn it on.

</comment><comment><USER57> Facebook apps went through the same problems years ago. I don't think facebook ever managed to settle on a solution.

</comment><comment><USER58> i generally say no to notifications. I don't have anything mission critical on email that I need to know "right this second" and twitter and fb updates I only want when I want them, otherwise they're a huge distraction..

</comment><comment><USER59> For all the weird ad/spam accusations I've heard against Android, it shocks me how much this seems to be an iOS issue. I can say I've never, ever had a problem with this in Android, and if I did, most every app that I use that I can think of allows me to enabled/disable different types of notifications (FB/Twitter/etc). It's also a tiny bit amusing that one of the solutions is to make the Settings more sane and make them live inside their application like Android.

<comment><USER60> I wonder if it's a UX difference. I don't use iOS, but looking at those notifications, they seem obtrusive and demanding of your attention. Whereas in Android, the notifications just accumulate in the tray at the top without really getting in the way.

<comment><USER61> But even given that Android notification SPAM would be less annoying than iOS notification SPAM seems to be, why don't I ever see sketchy Android apps even trying that? Am I just not downloading apps from the wrong places?

<comment><USER62> AirPush was one company that did (does?) sell ads as Android push notifications. On the whole, they're really not that widely used anymore, though - partly because Android users pushed back hard against them about a year ago, IIRC, but also because the newest version or two of Android makes it _really_ easy to identify the offending app and disable the notifications.

If I remember correctly, the pushback was before the new notification tray, so it may have been Android's own response to the problem.

<comment><USER63> It is now against the Play store developer TOS to have notifications unless they clearly identify what App it is coming from, I think this makes things like AirPush much more difficult to pull off.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PLT Scheme being renamed to PLT Racket - <AUTHOR> http://www.plt-racket.org/new-name.html

<comment><USER2> I've stated in the past the _only_ thing wrong with PLT Scheme was not enough marketing.

PLT Racket is as evolved beyond standard Scheme as modern man from Australopithecus.

So many rich areas of study are available for exploration. Just some of the capabilities, not toy, but full robust capabilities, include:

\- Lazy \- Functional \- Reactive \- OO \- Macros (powerful, hygenic) \- Delimited continuations \- Module system (dynamic)

Not too mention the basics, eye opening approaches to XML and Web, an IDE, debugger, contracts, typed/dynamic language, jit, Android development, ... and on and on.

The talent of the core PLT group is outstanding. Matthias Felleisen for example was awarded an ACM Fellowship in 2006 for contributions to programming languages and development environments. His academic publications are right up there with the best out there, yet he spends as much time focused on the foundational aspects of teaching kids, and students as high brow papers, and the real world demands of programming. And the rest the core are not too shabby either.

IMHO, there are currently only 2 top tier active hotspots where the cool theoretical meets with the practical and usable in programming language theory, the Haskell and PLT ecospheres.

Scala, and Closure would be next.

Don't listen to the wingnuts comedy central wannabe's cracking poor puns here about schemes and rackets (well laugh at the good ones).

In all seriousness, if you are at that point where you've stumbled onto the fact that there is a whole world beyond Java, Cobol, C and C++ and are having fun exploring Smalltalk, SML, OCaml, Haskell, Scala, Closure et al, do not skip, repeat, do not skip exploring PLT Racket. It is as rich, and deep and mind altering as any of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this some sort of early April Fools joke?

<comment><USER4> No. [http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/plt- dev/2010-February/002...](http://list.cs.brown.edu/pipermail/plt- dev/2010-February/002233.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Gah. now I feel bad. I didn't know about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like a great idea. My understanding is that PLT Scheme goes way beyond R5 (even R6), and with the new "R7" dual standard on the way, better to change the name now rather than later and be potentially confused with the upcoming R7 "big" Scheme.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks to me as though they're opening the doors to extend Scheme beyond RxRS specifications. Or am I misreading their press release?

<comment><USER7> You are. They already have a dialect of Scheme that contains many extensions beyond the RxRS specs, this is just giving it a name so that people stop confusing "PLT's dialect of Scheme" with "Scheme in general".

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the name "Racket", because it makes me think of tennis rather than racketeering. However, I do support the idea of having a PLT "brand" rather than a hodgepodge of names like DrScheme, MrEd and mzscheme.

<comment><USER4> racket n. an illegal or dishonest scheme

Makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER8> Makes sense, but I'm not sure I like the way it's headed. Scheme is so named due to a Lisp system called Planner. "Scheme" and "Planner" (and, I suppose, "Gambit") have mostly neutral connotations. "Swindle", "Larceny", "Heist", and now "Racket" are obviously criminal.

It's not a good direction, PR-wise. You end up with people having to justify to their bosses why they want to use something called Racket for work, or justifying to parents why their kids are learning Racket in schools.

(And then there's the inevitable analogy: Python : Pythonista :: Racket : Racketeer)

<comment><USER9> _You end up with people having to justify to their bosses why they want to use something called Racket for work, or justifying to parents why their kids are learning Racket in schools._

I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why can't they be like clojure and pick a name that isn't overloaded by everything else...

<comment><USER3> 'PLT Scheme' to just 'Skeem'?

<comment><USER11> Say this paragraph out loud:

I don't use Gambit, I use Skeem. Yes, I know Gambit is Scheme. Skeem is also Scheme, just a different Scheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ponzi, would be just too cute perhaps ?

<comment><USER13> That's a winner:-)

Made me think of Risky, but Ponzi is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using Clojure a lot and have been lamenting the fact that Clojure, while great for building applications isn't great for shell scripting. Racket may be just the tool I reach for when I can't write it in Clojure.

2010 looks like it's going to be a _great_ year for Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER15> _Old executables, web sites, mailing addresses, and module names will forward to the new ones. We will work to make the transition as painless as possible and to preserve old references for as long as possible._

So folks using Arc can probably expect

      mzscheme -f as.scm

to still be supported for some time.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't Arc require you to use a version of mzscheme from 2007?

<comment><USER15> not since arc 3.1

<http://arclanguage.org/item?id=10254>

<comment><USER17> Wow. <http://arclanguage.org/install> should _really_ be updated then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kind of like naming something with the word "hacker", it could be something good or something bad. The "News" bit of "Hacker News" adds context that makes it seem legit, even if you initially take "Hacker" as something negative. There is no implicit context for "PLT Racket". Just my $.02, but it's not a good choice of names.

</comment><comment><USER19> Strange name change, but a good programming environment (although I more frequently use Emacs+Gambit-C Scheme because I like being able to effortlessly build small compiled applications - harder to do in PLT Scheme).

I look forward to the Racket release this summer.

</comment><comment><USER20> This makes me sad. PLT folk are great Scheme researchers and practitioners; now I fear their work and conversations will turn ever-more inward.

OTOH I can't blame them for wanting to leave the current Scheme governance story behind.

</comment><comment><USER21> The entire text of <http://www.plt-racket.org/>:

      Expected release date: Summer 2010

Ummm...?

<comment><USER8> There used to be several paragraphs, e.g. explaining the choice of name, but it's been taken down. I guess this wasn't the launch they were hoping for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> why not rename 'PLT' too?

'Higher-Order Internet Technology', 'HIT Racket'.

Not sure if names like Scheme, Racket and Swindle attract the right people...

<comment><USER23> And what kind of people does Stalin (a Scheme compiler) attract? I shudder to think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why not Ratchet instead of Racket. Then you could rename DrScheme to NurseRatchet... :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice move. Names matter. I like it.</comment>


BBC Ends Its Use of RealMedia for Streaming Audio - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2009/10/realmedia_an_update.shtml <comment><USER2> RealMedia: only second to Internet Explorer as the most annoying Internet software ever.

<comment><USER3> RealMedia is worse than Internet Explorer. I downloaded RealPlayer SP. It turns out that it can't even play some old realplayer files.

And a few months later it said that "This version of real player has expired". MPlayer plays Real video files better than RealPlayer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is about time. RealMedia is one of the most customer abusive companies I have ever dealt with.

<comment><USER5> It's far worse than you can possibly imagine.

I have a friend who a while back wanted to make an iPhone app that could play streaming music from various websites (for formats and protocols the iPhone couldn't natively handle). Everything was looking good until they went to talk to Real.

Real didn't even have an implementation for their platform, so like everyone else sane, they simply used the open source libavcodec, from the ffmpeg project, to decode the audio formats they needed (Real, Windows Media, etc). But they figured that since Real Audio is a completely proprietary format, it would be best to get a license from Real anyways.

So they call up Real and ask for a license and so forth. Everything's going great until the guy asks them about the software they'll be using...

... upon which point the guy goes into an almost murderous rampage about how ffmpeg is "stealing the code" and basically tells them that if they _use ffmpeg at all, anywhere in their company_ , Real won't license to them.

And why? Because ffmpeg-- _legally_ \--reverse-engineered Real Audio and Real Video. The latter of which was the primary point of contention--and the great irony of it all is that Real Video itself is actually a blatant ripoff of H.264, and most of the "reverse engineering" consisted of reading early (publicly available!) drafts of the specification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My goodness, did anyone still use RealMedia? Welcome back to 1998.

<comment><USER7> All multimedia websites in Arabic stream crap in Real, except for al-Jazeera.

<comment><USER8> I doubt that could be used as proof that al-Jazeera isn't evil outside of tech circles.

Obviously the common person doesn't understand that Real is about as evil as Nazi Zombies as they still willingly use it, despite it being crammed full of spyware/adware and since I stopped using it (about 10 minutes after I started using it over a decade ago) probably malware too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was a time where RealPlayer was better than Windows Media Player. I switched to the Mac and stopped using both before I found out if that ever changed.

<comment><USER8> Generally now almost everyone uses Media Player Classic if they're in a tech circle. Ironically with the right codecs it can play media smoothly from almost any format. It even lets me push 1080p without killing my processor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh, I'm happy!

By the way, last time I used RealMedia was when I had a desktop computer... back in 2002-2003, I think. Windows 98, then ME, then 2000... still remember RealMedia sitting there.. AGH, pure advertising and crappy software.

... Have they ever done something good for humanity? ... At least they were good at marketing.

<comment><USER11> Their first version kicked ass, for that time. I wrote some stuff using RealPlayer around 1996 and it was truly amazing to have audio content compressed into file sizes that were actually acceptable for the early dial-up modems.

Remember that this was back in the time hand-optimizing GIF's was still an appropriate thing to do.

I guess that after their first version some business guys took over and ran the company into the ground, which is a shame ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Uh, and the replacement is Windows Media and Flash? I don't see any advantage.

<comment><USER13> Have you ever installed RealPlayer?</comment></comment>


The history of the /r/xkcd kerfuffle - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1xdwba/the_history_of_the_rxkcd_kerfuffle/ <comment><AUTHOR> I posted this to HN to demonstrate that there's still room for a Reddit competitor, which is interesting.

People often reference Digg's power users as one source for the degradation of Digg. I think future conversations will also mention Reddit's moderators leading to the degradation of Reddit.

Maybe Reddit is a case of a system working just well enough that a competing system can't gain a foothold, like the music industry. On the other hand, with Reddit's recent actions against the wishes of the community, they may be passing their baton to a future upstart.</comment>