After neighbor's death, first-time filmmaker declares war on suicide - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2013/07/08/issues/driven-by-regret-over-neighbors-death-first-time-filmmaker-declares-war-on-suicide/#.Uka0T4ZtjRg <comment><USER2> >>> an old woman approached Duignan and said, "That's not a movie, that's a weapon against suicide." <<<

It's amazing what a compelling movie can do. It's a delicate act, but when done correctly it encourages people to use their compassion and empathy as weapons for a cause. We're so attuned to human faces and voices that movies directly and emotionally engage us in ways that are far beyond mere paper.

My friend attempted to do something like this with homelessness. He actually found a camera, went out there, and just tried to talk to homeless people and helped them to get off the streets while chronicling their journey. Although it sounds simple and, well, uninteresting, what he captured on film ended up being a fascinating, compassionate look into this complex world. I really recommend it;

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/but-for-the-grace-of- god/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/but-for-the-grace-of- god/id469930988)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the shout-out. The film is also available on Amazon. The main web site for the film is here:

[http://graceofgodmovie.com/](http://graceofgodmovie.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The suicide rates by nation in the article are likely higher than reported. I lost a sibling to what I believe was suicide but it was recorded as an accident. I also think under-reporting happens more in countries where there is a stigma against it. Nations with a high Catholic population in particular may under-report (my parents being Catholic would never accept suicide as a cause of death for their daughter). Suicide is viewed as a sin and many Catholics believe it leads to hell.

Also interesting is that many of the countries listed as having the lowest suicide rates are also the most Catholic according to wikipedia (Phillipines, Brazil, Mexico and Italy).

<comment><USER5> Good point. On the other hand, I would say most places have a stigma... I know China does. The major difference with Japan being, people don't tend to live alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The actual documentary is here: [http://www.saving10000.com/](http://www.saving10000.com/)

<comment><USER7> THANK YOU!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately, suicide will never be stopped. And what is suicide anyway? People later in life that are disease ridden and in pain would sometimes like to end their lives in peace without causing someone else to automatically become a criminal. Depending on who you talk to this is either a natural right or absolutely off the table.

These are not simple subjects and every case is as different as people are different.

<comment><USER9> It will never be _completely_ stopped without some seriously dystopian measures, but it can be very much decreased by disseminating information, investing in preventive measures, etc.

<comment><USER10> Careful with disseminating information - there's a theory that if you provide a complete model for suicide that it will be emulated:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm probably still very uninformed about Japanese society (it's complex), but they are probably more prone to suicide than others. From what I understand there is a huge emphasis on obligations to others, perfection, and the shame of failure. Traditional Japanese culture frowns on entrepreneurship, preferring obligation to a large corporation (who is in turn loyal to you), where it can sometimes be hard being so disconnected from the value you provide to society.

Most of hacker news will be lucky in this regard. Despite the occasional existential crisis, as entrepreneurs we're self selected eternal optimists. Sadly not everyone turns out so lucky.

<comment><USER12> Did you just suggest that Japanese are committing suicide because they can't be entrepreneurs? (o_O)

In general, if you're wondering what causes high suicide rates, it's a lot more useful to look at societal motivators than race. As everywhere, there's a strong correlation between depression and suicide, and it's not hard to find the main causes. In Japan's particular case, the largest group committing suicide are the elderly, who have devoted their lives to their company and feel they have nothing left when they retire. The second-largest group is the unemployed, particularly those who have fallen into debt traps that very often ensnare family and friends as guarantors, with life insurance providing an "easy" way out. And the final group is students, who commit suicide to escape bullying or the immense pressure of their final exams.

<comment><AUTHOR> What I find shocking is life insurance companies paying out the family of the insured if he/she commits suicide. As far as I know, there is no such clause on life insurance contracts in the Europe (and I believe the U.S. as well).

Surely , as one of the first steps towards reducing the suicide rate in Japan, insurance companies should stop incentivizing suicide.

<comment><USER13> In Canada and the US, it is common to not payout in the case of suicide within two years of creating the contract (the same as Japan).

<comment><USER14> When I was going through a dark period financially and emotionally, I specifically looked for life insurance policies that did not exclude suicide and had only a two year exclusion period. They do indeed exist in the US; I hold such a term life policy at the moment.

<comment><USER5> Don't do it!

As a quote I read yesterday illustrated: _Be thankful for what you haven 't, for it's less worry_.

<comment><USER15> > Don't do it!

I get why you're saying this, but it bugs me when people tell those with an inclination to commit suicide to not do it.

It's not your life, and your judgments about its current and future value are meaningless. The person living the life, and that person alone, can meaningfully judge the value of continuing to be alive. It's arrogant and dickish to tell a person about the value that continuing to live has, even if well intentioned, and doubly so in the case of a person you (likely) do not know.

<comment><USER5> Naturally, you are correct, when taken to logical extreme. However, the bread and butter of communication is assumption (shared meaning of words, etc.). It's probably fair to assume that most people within this community can look forward to some relative happiness and achievement in life, and I don't think it's bad to support one another in "powering through" bad times. I'm no hard- line pro-lifer: if my grandma asked me to help her suicide, like she quietly mentioned she might many years earlier as the two of us watched her mother die, I'd certainly consider it.

<comment><USER14> When things were not...going well, I took inspiration from Winston Churchill: "If you're going through hell, keep going."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Somehow, I feel it is within people's right to self-determination to be free to choose suicide. And yet, I think I'd be very sad if a close friend committed suicide.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that most of the times suicide is not a rational decission taken by someone with terminal cancer to stop their fisical suffering. Most of the times is the reaction of a malfunctioning brain. Most suicidals wouldn't have taken the decission in a normal situation (not depressed) , and those who failed to kill themselves are happy to be alive. That's why it's so important to know the factors that trigger suicide compulsions, and the measures to better fight them.. A depresed person suicide brings a big suffering to the family and friends of the deceased, who most of the times don't know of the intentions.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't have to be a terminal cancer. Sometimes it's just the loneliness, or the facts that led to it - for example unwillingly hurting people I care about because I'm a bit ... deficient when it comes to social skills and no matter how much I fret, I will, eventually but invariably, say something stupid that will make someone hurt. Stuffing me full of antidepressants won't solve the underlying problem Neither will a chat on a hotline - you hang up and the soulcrushing memories of those hurt people are back right away

<comment><USER17> But comiting suicide is not a logical decission in that situation. I don´t know you, I don´t know your case nor how to improve the situation. But being dead will not resolve the problem, and it will hurt the people you love much much more than any harsh comment you are able to do. There is always the possibility to find a way out, and then realice that that dark hole you where in, was just a solvable problem. You seem a techical guy, don´t use your analytic capabilities to rationalize and confirm your feelings, use them to get new information that is able to help you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Heartening story, but I can't get over this line they stuck in at the bottom

>• Blue lights installed at train stations have reduced suicide by 80 percent at those stations. How or why this works, nobody knows.

I can't stop thinking about this. I've tried to puzzle out some type of reason, but I'm just not getting anything.

<comment><USER20> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/6578256...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/6578256/Blue- lights-installed-in-Tokyo-train-stations-to-stop-suicides.html)

"Designed to soothe and calm, the specially-designed blue LED lights have been suspended above the platforms of dozens of Tokyo railway stations in order to stem the nation's spiralling suicide rate."

<comment><USER21> I'd guess that there is a distinct possibility that they work because people are told that they work.

<comment><USER22> That's what I thought of.

It is a sort of a societal placebo. Or maybe the subconscious message is "someone cared to put these here for me to prevent me from killing myself, someone cares at least, maybe today is not the day".

In other words I wonder if the color of lights would have been violet or yellow but some "research" had been disseminated that yellow lights are calming and prevent suicide, that combined with the action of someone to install them, then I suspect yellow lights would have worked just as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is an unusual and insightful post for HN. Thank you for it.

"The power of regret," what a powerful force. It's not often that we are able to use it in such a tangible way. The filmmaker's attempt to make amends may help us all to stop ignoring our neighbors.

<comment><AUTHOR> This really is the driving force of the filmmaker and I really can't blame him for ignoring his neighbour after having listened to her on so many occasions... It's not like he was insensitive towards her but as humans we all have a threshold that determines our capacity for empathy.

Still I wonder what kind of problems his neighbour had to justify putting an end to her life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hofstede conducted a study in the 60's 70's by submitting questionnaires to IBM employees all over the world in order to compare the responses for cultural differences.

Japan ranked highest in the world for masculinity, [masculinity-femininity (task orientation versus person-orientation)]

Assuming Hofstede's reflect reality. Could this have something to do with the high suicide rate?

Another musing,

Could it have something to do with Confucian cultures and a great deal of pressure to fulfill one's filial piety?

<comment><USER5> _Could it have something to do with Confucian cultures and a great deal of pressure to fulfill one 's filial piety?_

Precisely. China, Japan, South Korea are all seriously Confucian influenced. Chinese suicides are often young people with poor families who fail to enter university. SK was the most depressing place I've ever been. Vietnam's another place that's historically a heavily Confucian society, I wonder if they collect realistic suicide statistics? (Last visit, last year, the mood in Hanoi seemed to be very strong compared to, say, 10 years ago.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My Grandfather completed suicide when I was 13 years old. It was an awful experience for our whole family which includes his wife, their children, and their children's children.

His suicide was caused by extreme depression, something he fought his entire life. In my opinion, now, its not different than losing a battle with cancer, except that outwardly it appears he "chose" to end his life. Having experienced depression myself, I know it was not really him who made that decision. Tools like this will hopefully help us find new "cures" or at least support structures for those who are seriously mentally ill.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been grieving two years now. She was "brutally murdered" by a Greek student, in Hamburg, Germany.

I had nightmares for 3 months. Insomnia and loss of love for code ensued, as I created barriers with the world.

All my community could say is "it happens to anyone." And I take things too literally, perchance. I doubt I could live through this again, in a world where we are killing everyone from autistics to Jewish peoples to student tourists with cameras.

But what is more I am now hyperaware. I long for sincere eyes. Some see it, others simply attack. Others notice this of me as well, and they must discover the mystery...with all sorts of tests. Yes, so I have sensitive hearing and I rock when hungry. Does that make me a predator? I want the staring to stop. But the basic fear: it could happen to anyone. Now I am reminded quite frequently here in Austin that random and bad people are simply picked up off of the street and killed, randomly, when all I have is a broken heart.

Until they run me off with that one last death or racist joke that makes upper society's configurable moral compass quite unappealing, and its fascination with tastelessness and unchecked chauvenism as the lingua franca of capability.

People are often too ugly inside to warrant participation in this "fear market."

<comment><USER27> I couldn't help but notice an apparent contradiction. You complain about racism and chauvinism, and yet, you identify the murderer as a "Greek student" instead of as a "deranged student".

<comment><USER28> This is ridiculous. If he had said that the murderer was a male student, would you be complaining about sexism? Identifying someone's race is not racism. He didn't imply anything about Greeks in general.

<comment><USER27> > He didn't imply anything about Greeks in general.

I suspected an implication. Please read the comments he made later on.

<comment><USER26> "Greece's economy" is a non-racism. Am I thereby attributing a cause simply by mentioning its state of affairs?

You are forcing a racist interpretation where there isn't one. You are not giving benefit of the doubt. No one is saying "boy those greeks sure screwed themselves." And even if one were, that's an assessment of their political and economic dealings, though we all know Greece is embedded in a complex arrangement with the EU and the US's pig-headed foreign policies.

"X's ecomomy is crumbling" can be said without racism. And "madness" can be similarly used I hold this true of any peoples subject to the human condition with an economy so described. Look at Morocco, etc. Sometimes environment is the cause, and when the environment is arbitrarily caused.

Again, as the commenter noted, nothing was said about Greeks [in general]. Economy of country and that as an alternative explanation to an individual of that country, yes. The articles on the story state that he is Greek so I figured I should as well.

In fact by saying "look at the economy" I am even further emphasizing the arbitrariness of a cultural explanation, which psychologizing does not do but rather lends to something about Greekness or Greek social thought. I'm saying "yes, he happens to be Greek, and he is from a failing economy that may have caused his distress." And so, "How did this happen to the economy in question that might cause people subject to it to respond in all of these ways?"

Again, I don't know about the verdict on the man. I withhold opinion. I don't think he'll be able to enjoy life given a majority of the options allotted him. He's deprived of life either way, and this too is saddening. So there's nothing to say about his "manipulating the system in his favor." He is in a bad spot regardless, but I think saying that he is deranged is an intuitive response, rather than a critical one. How did he become deranged? He clearly was at some point not deranged. I'm saying the state of Greece's economy, embedded in a global economy, is where we should look.

<comment><USER27> > The articles on the story state that he is Greek so I figured I should as > well.

I believe you.

> I'm saying the state of Greece's economy, embedded in a global economy, is > where we should look.

This is where I think you're jumping the gun. There are insane people everywhere. Sometimes some of them do brutal things. That's a sad fact of life. Implicating his Greek-ness will, I believe, lead to unnecessary bitterness against Greeks.

I'm sure you've come across Grice's Maxim of Relevance. Going by that, I tend to include "Greek" if his being Greek led to some racially motivated action, I'd include "male" if his being male led to some sexually motivated action, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Link to the documentary he made: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo0SHLxc2d0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo0SHLxc2d0)

</comment><comment><USER30> Actually to be quite contrary, and just to hear people's ideas, how can anyone judge whether death is right or wrong? Or in a different light, how do you say that the promotion of human beings is a good thing? I'm a human being, and all of us talking are, so perhaps we're inclined in that sense to believe that human life is precious. But can one prove what death is? Is it always better for someone to live, is it always better for someone to die? Death in my poorly conceived view is just a moment in which we choose to no longer accept this world, but I don't believe that I'll cease to exist. In fact no matter how large or how terrifying the experience may be, it will still pass. Yes, in a sense I'm making a relativistic argument, but it's interesting to me to hear people's views on death.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's a noble quest.

It seems to me that the intelligent, sensitive and wise are the ones who kill themselves.

The blockhead, self-entitled, criminal, etc. never seem to.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Japan suicide rate is an enigma"

Not so much.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Rene Duignan is passionate about life"

No, he's passionate about control.

Where do people get off telling others what they can and can't do with their life. Who better then the ACTUAL PERSON to decide when and if it's the right time to call it quits (for whatever reason - once again it's nobody elses business on the why).

With 7 billion people and counting, why are people making such a big deal when someone decides their time on the ride called "human life" should be over. For most, there is little choice, you live, then you die. For some, they would rather take personal control over the when. Why is that a bad thing?

The world has turned into a huge nanny - butting into the smallest of things that should remain completely in control of the individual.

Over the last 12 years, twice I've fought with cancer and won (or at least had it declared a tie) but you can bet that I have a exit plan in hand (and yes, that includes taking care of the people I'll leave behind). Withering away in excruciating pain is not for me (does that make me weak? a coward? or just prudent in deciding how I WANT to end MY LIFE).

<comment><USER34> On the other hand there are plenty of people who are depressed, tries to kill themselves, survives and are later happy to be alive, in those cases it would be a bad thing if they had succeeded. It is such suicides that most people try to prevent when they are talking about preventing suicides.</comment></comment>


Debugging Distributed Systems With Why-Across-Time Provenance [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://mwhittaker.github.io/publications/wat_SOCC18.pdf <comment><USER2> I've been working this year on exactly this problem. I "inherited" responsibility for one of our vendor's Windows MFC codebase which makes gratuitous use of threads and every obfuscated/side-channel form of nonfunctional data flow known to C++. It's like a mirror universe rendition of Erlang created by a sloppy idiot savant using nothing but Windows messages and public class member variables.

(For example _reading config values from the INI file_ gets its own CWinThread-derived custom message pump, so that both the initiator of the read and the handler of the result value can be different threads in different .cpp files. I found one CWinThread which was merely being used to RAII one unrelated member variable and whose constructor constructed a 3rd unrelated object two stars (pointer dereferences) away. _Its run loop was empty_ (for gosh sake).)

The reason for this monstronsity was that the program was written by a fresh college graduate from the peak of the era when CS professors were saying "OMG concurrency/threads/cores every processor of the 2010's is going to have 128 and doubling weak cores and if you don't multithread all your code you're part of the problem not part of the solution." Then this fresh college graduate was thrown into a hardware company whose software department still parties like it's 1999 with MFC / Win32 in C++. And he created... this cosmic horror.

As you can imagine, stack traces are useless to me here. Logging is nearly useless (because the app is always doing more than one thing, even when it has < 1 thing to do). Breakpoints are useless to me (the args mean nothing; public members and global variables hold all the relevant state - but they could be anywhere).

What I ended up doing was adding Sqlite to the codebase, and created "causality log" database. It's sort of like a call tree, but not. It's sort of like a flow chart - but not. And it's sort of like a UML chart, but not. It combines aspects of all of these; after testing a feature of the program I run a post-processor on the log data to turn it into a dotGraph file so I can render it as a graph.

For example it might tell me that thread object A created thread object B which then was given pointers to the following 3 global objects by assigning B's member variables ex post facto. Later, a windows message came from dialog X and B handled it in event handler B.h() and passed the data onto dialog Y.

That's the goal anywhere - I have 2/3rds of the above paragraph implemented; what I have left is figuring out how to pass a "causality" tracker value to shadow windows message sends.

The way I created this causality logging system is that my log-to-event- database functions return an id to a row, and I (had to) change the code to pass these ids (parent_id) through constructor calls and function calls, etc. I find the non-local destructive assignments of public (should be private) class member variables, and manually log those occurrences. All of these ids provide a chain of provenance for causality and reachability. Because they are database ids rather than call stack frames, they survive the return of any one call frame.

<comment><USER3> You just reminded me of an application for SNMP communication on HP-UX I had to maintain in 2005, the amount of threads per action was so complex that we had a couple of A4 papers glued together for the fluxogram of the actions triggering threads being started, joined and respective synchronization. :\

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would be very grateful if someone could spell out how an implementation of this may look in a more concrete sense. I don't parse the math very well myself.

My gut-feel has been that a 'message trace' of some sort would be useful in debugging a distributed system. For example, every message contains the ID of the message which cause it to be sent, if any (or a list of message IDs giving the full causality chain). This is something I'm considering implementing in Lightbus [1] using Python's contexts.

Is the proposed wat-provenance system here somehow different? To quote the abstract:

> Given an arbitrary state machine, wat-provenance describes why the state > machine produces a particular output when given a particular input.

So is this more akin to static analysis rather than runtime debugging?

[1]: [https://lightbus.org](https://lightbus.org)</comment>


'A weapon of mass destruction was found in the U.S.' - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1356645/A-weapon-mass-destruction-U-S--Shock-confession-Customs-officer.html?ITO=1490

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course I had to come across this on a foreign news site and then several others. Did anyone else miss this interview? I watch and read several news sources everyday and didn't see this.

The idea for the interview seemed to have stemmed from a report that was in the Wikileaks cables leak.

I know this isn't real "hacker news", but as many in the community are in CA, it may be of interest.</comment>


Where Did China Get This F-22 Raptor? - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a19485/china-f-22-raptor-model/ <comment><USER2> Not sure how they can make the difference from a J20 with a blury image

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-20)

<comment><USER3> looks more like a raptor in the front section I would say?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does a "HN Monthly Digest" Service Exist? - <AUTHOR> hndigest.com is nice, but I would like to get an e-mail only once a month with the best HN threads <comment><USER2> [https://hackernewsletter.com](https://hackernewsletter.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> How many items would you like to see in it?

<comment><AUTHOR> 10</comment></comment>


Show HN: Devknox – Free Security Plugin for Android Studio - <AUTHOR> https://devknox.io/ <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. Is there anywhere a list of all the flaws that it can detect? I couldn't find it on the website.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just updated our blog. The list is here: [https://blog.devknox.io/devknox- autocorrect-for-security-iss...](https://blog.devknox.io/devknox-autocorrect- for-security-issues/)

<comment><USER2> Wow, to be honest I didn't realize this would be so amazing. I'm going to tell all my co-workers about it as well. I upvoted you on Product Hunt as well: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/devknox](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/devknox)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Plenary – A privacy focused RSS feed and offline reader app for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.plenary <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

We've created an RSS feed and offline reader app for android that doesn't show ads/track your activity. The app is a combination of a feature rich RSS reader, minimalist podcast player and an offline article downloader (similar to read it later apps). The app has novel ways to add RSS feeds and has an offline first strategy.

Please try out the app and let us know if you have any questions or what you'd like to see in coming versions!

<comment><USER2> Freely/Palabre/Flipboard user, and long time feed consumer. I've used Plenary for about an hour, some thoughts...

1\. Needs an option to use Firefox as the browser, rather than using Chrome. And an option to open externally or a within the app. 2\. Needs an option for the article title link to take me straight to the article. Yep, I could click the link icon, but it's a smaller area and clicking the title is intuitive. 3\. When there's no thumbnail, the large placeholder with two letters and a garish background colour feels like wasted space. Either remove the placeholder, or improve the algorithm to insert an image. 4\. A zoom slider for the front page grid would be nice. On a tablet there's plenty of layout optimization that could be done. 5\. Duplicate link removal, and across different sites/domains/social networks 6\. Some trend analysis to determine what's most important to read out of thousands of articles daily

Overall, it's already better than most of the existing feed readers out there IMO. But if you want my money, you gotta have every one of those feature enhancements checked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thank you for trying out Plenary.

1\. Plenary doesn't use Chrome as the browser (it uses Android WebView that uses chrome engine internally). We didn't go with custom tabs as we wanted more control on the interactions with WebView. You can open links externally or within the app (If you have premium, you can open your preferred domain urls externally as the main action).

2\. Are you talking about opening article externally as the main action?

3\. Sure we will improve the algorithm to find the image and also look into removing the placeholder if image is not present.

4\. It would be great if you can elaborate more on "zoom slider for the front page grid". Yes, Plenary is currently not fully optimized for tablet experience. That is one area we need to work more on.

5\. Because of the way Plenary is designed, everything it does; from fetching, combining and storing feed data to showing it to the user; is done on your mobile device. Catching duplicate content links is hard to implement in this case because that logic will also have to reside on the user device.

6\. Same as point 5. Trend analysis is not possible because everything is done on your device. We don't have any server to store any user data.

Thanks again for your detailed feedback. Really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the in-app purchase one can make, according to the Play store?

Also, just noting that Feeder is open source and pretty good. Does not play podcasts, but I have AntennaPod for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can purchase Plenary premium to support the app development. Premium will give unlock many features such as

\- Pure black theme

\- Automatic cloud backups

\- Ability to directly open specific links in another app

\- Unlimited feeds

\- Quick actions in notifications

\- Internal YouTube player

\- More accent colors

\- More fonts for reader screens

You can be get premium features by purchasing Plenary lifetime premium or subscribing to any of the subscription plans (monthly, quarterly or yearly)</comment></comment>


Last Call for Delicious Users: Transfer Your Bookmarks - <AUTHOR> http://www.avos.com/transfer-your-bookmarks/ <comment><USER2> When I got this email it reminded me I still had a Delicious account as I had stopped using it last November when the news first broke. Makes me think I don't need to save as many bookmarks as I use to since I never did find a replacement. Thanks Yahoo, you simplified my life.

<comment><USER3> I found pinboard to not only be an adequate replacement, but superior. It's faster, has a better UI, and ties into more of the services I use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From upcoming Delicious TOS, "What Not To Do" section:

> \- Attempt to access or search the Service or Service Content or download > Service Content from the Service through the use of any engine, software, > tool, agent, device or mechanism (including spiders, robots, crawlers, data > mining tools or the like) other than the software and/or search agents > provided by AVOS or other generally available third party web browsers;

So, they're telling me that I can't even write (more precisely, use) my own client?

No way I'm going to transfer my data there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From a "LAST NOTICE" email I just received:

Dear Delicious User, This is our final notice to let you know that Delicious is transitioning to a new owner, AVOS. To continue using Delicious, you must agree to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks and Delicious account information to AVOS by September 23, 2011. After your bookmarks and account information have been transferred, you will be subject to the AVOS terms of service and privacy policy.

[Yes, Move My Bookmarks]

Details:

Delicious has been acquired by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. As creators of the world's largest video site, Chad and Steve have enabled millions of people to share their interests and experiences with the world. Delicious will become part of their new company, AVOS, and retain its own brand and website, Delicious.com.

Reasons to let Yahoo! transfer your bookmarks and account information

• Continue uninterrupted use of Delicious.

• Keep your Delicious username, account information, and all your bookmarks.

• Enjoy innovative new features that enhance your Delicious experience.

What happens if you do not transfer your bookmarks and account information

• Delicious in its current form will be available until September 23, 2011.

• After September 23, 2011, you will not be able to access your existing Delicious account, including all bookmarks and account information.

About AVOS AVOS is a new Internet company led by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who founded YouTube, the world's largest video site. Before YouTube, Chad and Steve were early employees at PayPal, a leading online payment service that is now part of eBay. AVOS is based in San Mateo, California.

<comment><USER5> Does this mean they may not preserve all the heavily tagged content available to the public (not just members)? I wish more sysadmins felt a sense of responsibility for the stability of the parts of the web delegated to them. Link rot is completely avoidable.

<http://www.delicious.com/tag/w3c+cool+urls>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't recall a similar email when Yahoo! acquired delicious in the first place, why they should want permission now is beyond me.

Hurley & Chen surely can do a better job and it strikes me as though an 'opt- out' would have been better in this situation, or at least a process that would survive the actual transfer of assets between the two entities.

Yahoo! has a long history of losing their users data through shutdowns (geocities!), to see them lose user data on the spin-out and sale of a company they acquired a few years ago is probably just another 'snafu' for them.

<comment><USER7> Yahoo's TOD prevents this. Delicious Inc's didn't, as the acquirer isn't a third party as it acquires the new company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a shame they're not sharing more details about what these 'innovative new features' will be though _before_ asking people to commit to a new company. The NY times article mentions browseable "stacks" but it would be nice if Avos could elaborate a bit more on their plans:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/technology/youtube- founder...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/technology/youtube-founders-aim- to-revamp-delicious.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> What's the plug-in situation?

I read comments for Delicious apps on Android Marketplace and they seem to indicate they don't work since they were for the original Delicious.

Are any Google Chrome, Chromium and Firefox plug-ins which are shown as Delicious OK to use?

It's confusing.

</comment><comment><USER10> My delicious email is not a current one so I would never have found about this without this post on HN. This short transfer window will likely lose avos a lot of users.</comment>


Show HN: Videoloupe for Mac – A new video player and editor for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.videoloupe.com <comment><AUTHOR> Developer here...

Two years ago, the Hacker News community helped kick off my indie-developer "career" with Fileloupe for Mac. Now I'd like to share my second app, Videoloupe for Mac with everyone. If you're a macOS user and do anything with video, then Videoloupe probably has some cool features you'll find interesting.

I've "soft launched" the app this week and would love any feedback. There's a free trial, but if you'd like to purchase a copy then please take advantage of this 50% off coupon code: VLHACKERNEWS

[https://www.videoloupe.com](https://www.videoloupe.com)

I've benefitted so much from reading the stories of other indie developers here on Hacker News. Hopefully my story helps encourage others. Thanks so much.</comment>


Show HN: What's hot on Hacker News? - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/hohn/

<comment><USER2> Just wanted to say that I think your Heatmap.js plugin is awesome and I've used it extensively in a school project last semester. I have one question about it. Is there a feature to remove some data points, or perhaps keep only some max number of data points in the heatmap so that the older ones are removed as new ones stream in kind of like a queue? Or is the only way to clear points redrawing the heatmap? I think something like this is important because it allows for seriously real time heatmaps without getting too big and slow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonderful work.

Frankly speaking, I have some similar idea the other day, what i thought then was to collect the top news.

I have the habits to read HN news everyday, mostly through my smartphone. News with more comments (>100 is hot) usually get more attentions. And I will bookmark news with more than 100 or 200 comments.

So thank you for your nice work, it will certainly make my life more easy~

</comment><comment><USER4> Look cool, two comments:

\- The heatmap is sometimes off some pixels, see <http://imgur.com/FyqOG>

\- It's not possible to click links any more after applying the heatmap. This basically makes it useless, as you have to refresh to page in order to click a popular link.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback, I should probably gather the row height of HN dynamically instead of having a hardcoded value that seems to work for my devices _g_

You should be able to click on the links again after closing the heatmap (there's a little x on the right upper corner of the heatmap control that makes the heatmap disappear)

<comment><USER5> I really like the idea. It's a nice way to go to what "probably" are the most interesting topics when you don't have much time.

I think that being able to click directly on the heatmap instead of having to close it first, and therefore not losing your visual aid, will be a big improvement.

Anyway, nice job.

P.S. I also have a problem with the height of the rows, tested both with Chrome and Firefox on W7.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice concept, unfortunately you get some strange results if you apply it to the new page (where I think it would have a much better use): <http://i.imgur.com/afSPm.jpg>

Is there a reason it seems to highlight at random?

<comment><USER6> It seems it pulls data from the HN homepage no matter what, so it's not analysing the contents of your current page. It then decides on the heat locations based on that data.

Script is here (hope that's OK to link to!):

<http://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/hohn/hn-heatmap.js>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't seem to work for me. I see an 500 error in the Chrome console.

[http://api.ihackernews.com/page?format=jsonp&callback=hm...](http://api.ihackernews.com/page?format=jsonp&callback=hmap.jsonp)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you find this interesting, you may also like this Chrome extension:

<http://github.com/wuzhe/social-hotness>

</comment><comment><USER9> What does it do? What does "hot" mean? I think it would be great if you could answer these questions in very briefly on the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, the description on the site is not very helpful, I'll add that.

TL;DR It's just a visualization layer above the HN frontpage. Hot means a post has either 'a lot of comments' or 'a lot of points' (configurable with the filter dropdown). It's not much but I was wondering whether anyone would be interested in having such a way of looking at HN. If there's someone who found that useful I'd probably develop it further

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So how does it work?

<comment><AUTHOR> drag the 'HN heatmap' link to your bookmarks bar, go to HN frontpage, click the bookmarklet, enjoy. It's basically just the visualization for now.

<comment><USER11> Love the site design, has some serious impact. Any tools/software used when doing that design or was it just notepad?

By the way, your heatmap download contains a .png that takes up 99% of the size. I'd suggest taking it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate you're liking it, the only tool I used for it was vim. Thanks for the hint, makes sense to remove that from the archive</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sex and Politics at Google: It's a Game of Thrones in Mountain View - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/09/20/sex_and_politics_at_google_it_s_a_game_of_thrones_in_mountain_view.html <comment><AUTHOR> This article is interesting enough to submit but I will note one annoying thing: it says "Past the veneer of primary colors, inside the walls of Google's Mountain View campus, Google is a hotbed of sex and political infighting."

Any time one examines a large group of adults, or really any post-pubescent people, many of them will have sex with each other... because it's fun. Why this should be a surprise, beyond simple salaciousness, is beyond _me_.

<comment><USER2> It's not a surprise, it's a story angle. Sex sells, attracts pageviews. The writer knows this, we know this, and he will write using this narrative, and we will read it anyway.

<comment><USER3> at least we've moved beyond, "hatching new employees from their Swedish exercise balls." Like asexual alien predators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Business Insider, like Gawker and Valleywag, is best ignored if you want to learn anything substantive about the way the tech industry actually works, let alone learn anything about how tech actually works (God, their reviews of gadgets and descriptions of startups are horrible). Not to say that the actual events mentioned in this article didn't happen, but the linking of them into some sort of narrative about how "power really flows" at Google is specious and most obviously a not-so-subtle ploy for impressions.

tl;dr: Google = pageviews, sex = pageviews, Google + sex = PAGEVIEWS

</comment><comment><USER5> The part on Vic Gundotra reminds me of the real name fiasco on Google+:

[http://slashdot.org/submission/1778830/google-is-gagging- use...](http://slashdot.org/submission/1778830/google-is-gagging-user- advocates)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3161469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3161469)

</comment><comment><USER6> Too much politics, not enough sex.

</comment><comment><USER7> I enjoy Slate, but: What is this, ValleyWag? Bravo TV?

I care about technology. If I want to hear about a character drama I'll watch TV. The intersection of both is boundlessly boring to me.

NOT. INTERESTED.

</comment><comment><USER8> Once again, another sensationalist piece about Google. Human beings are political creatures. Human beings are also sexual creatures. Is this surprising? No. Then again, it is Slate...

</comment><comment><USER9> Despite the salacious title, this is more about politics in the plex, and it's quite interesting.

</comment><comment><USER10> "There's another about a pair of Googlers, each married to other people, secretly having a child together."

How is this possible? Are they adopting? It seems like if one of them is a woman and she is bringing the child to term, her husband would notice. Unless she just doesn't see him for ~5 months (which I suppose is another possibility)

<comment><USER11> By claiming it's her husband's? Anyway that whole rumor part turned out very annoying.</comment></comment>


Half of TSA's 30,000 Employees Accused of Misconduct - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160716/12015834995/half-tsas-30000-employees-accused-misconduct-nearly-third-multiple-times.shtml <comment><USER2> This article misquotes what the report says. The actual content of the report is sufficiently damning by itself.

Claim: "nearly half of the TSA's 60,000 employees have been _cited for misconduct_ in recent years."

Actual: 27,000 had a _complaint of some form_ made against them (the current employment is roughly 60,000, but the total number of unique employees over the period is not stated that I can find). The number of those complaints that warranted any action is not stated.</comment>


Circum,provide a local mobile anonymous sharing space for every crowded area - <AUTHOR> http://circum.me

<comment><USER2> like yik yak?

<comment><AUTHOR> same type,but there are many differences in the products.</comment></comment>


On the Shoulders of Giants: The Growing Impact of Older Articles - <AUTHOR> http://www.openrev.org/paper/on-the-shoulders-of-giants-the-growing-impact-of-older-articles

<comment><USER2> This adds no more information than what's at the primary source, at [http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.0275](http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.0275) . Neither this site, nor PubPeer at [https://pubpeer.com/publications/40BDF254870D52E1549E219D05B...](https://pubpeer.com/publications/40BDF254870D52E1549E219D05BE44) have any comments.

If someone is interested in comments, see the HN discussion from 2 days ago, at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8612723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8612723) .</comment>


FaCT: A Flexible, Constant-Time Programming Language [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~dstefan/pubs/cauligi:2017:fact.pdf <comment><USER2> The language is actually called ConstantC, and its implementation has just been made public on GitHub: [https://github.com/PLSysSec/FaCT](https://github.com/PLSysSec/FaCT)

</comment><comment><USER3> FaCT was good work. The other one in this space is Jasmin for high-assurance, constant-time programming.

[https://acmccs.github.io/papers/p1807-almeidaA.pdf](https://acmccs.github.io/papers/p1807-almeidaA.pdf)</comment>


Can HN Talk about Eric Garnier? - <AUTHOR>

I searched for "Eric Garnier" on HN, and got about 7 or so results, all of which had at most, 2 comments, I think. I'd have thought the Eric Garnier story is the kind that would be discussed exhaustively on HN, so I was fairly surprised to see, based on the search results, that it got so little attention. How come? Is it potentially ugly, the HN discussion that would ensue? Sure, but since when has HN ran away from controversy? It's the sort of thing that I'd expect to bring up, in the comments, a lot of interesting historical and philosophical bits and digressions and what nots. Can we talk? <comment><USER2> If only few people upvoted Eric Garnier stories it tells me a lot of people were simply uninterested in reading about or discussing it. We can't force a discussion. Me personally I come to HN to get away from everyday politics and sports.

from the [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

There are always exceptions. Ebola was discussed, ISIS, gay marriage, Berlin wall, taxes and education but overall it's still (and I'm glad) rare. [https://news.ycombinator.com/best](https://news.ycombinator.com/best)

<comment><AUTHOR> Rosetta was covered on TV news, hardly off-topic. I'd expect racism to be on topic in the wider context of minorities in tech, but what do I know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope not. It's a wildly fascinating story, and I've spent a lot of time reading about it and talking about it. But it's not what I would personally consider on-topic for HN. For myself, I want _less_ general news and politics here, not more.</comment>


Nmap team releases 5 gigapixel favicon map - unix-junkie http://nmap.org/favicon/ <comment><AUTHOR> How did some of these websites end up so big:

[http://mywebsearch.com/](http://mywebsearch.com/) <\- dead site [http://www.babylon.com/](http://www.babylon.com/) [http://www.conduit.com/](http://www.conduit.com/)

Above is just a sample of sites which have very large logos, and I think they should not, because they are either dead, or can't be possibly as popular as say, the BBC site.

Other then that, it looks like it's time to start learning Mandarin, from the looks of it it's quickly becoming the number 2 language on the web. I got English (1) and Russian (3) covered :)

<comment><USER2> fc2.com is almost as big as pinterest? Yeah, not sure about the accuracy here.

<comment><USER3> fc2.com is really massive in Japan, it shows up in my (japanese language) google search with a very high frequency. And since it's Alexa data we're talking about here, it probably makes a difference that IE usage is still relatively high in Japan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OMG! The porn!

Just a few icons away from news.ycombinator.com is incest-dream.com - don't go there! There are plenty of other porn sites surrounding the Hacker News favicon, call me naive, but I didn't think there was that much porn out there on the interwebs these days. Someone told me it was hard to monetize because you cannot compete with free. Plus you don't get a screen full of pop-ups of porn, 1998 style. Seems I will have to re-evaluate what the internet is used for.

<comment><USER5> The internet is for porn, and everything else amounts to a rounding error.

<comment><USER6> Actually, this is not as true as it used to be[1] - streaming video of the regular kind is a really big deal.

[1][http://www.tomsguide.com/us/netflix-internet-bandwidth- media...](http://www.tomsguide.com/us/netflix-internet-bandwidth-media- streaming,news-13027.html)

<comment><USER7> Bandwidth isn't necessarily the best measurement of "what the internet is used for", for example porn may stream in lower quality on average, maybe more people hoard porn (download once, watch many times) as it's probably easier to remember the name of your favourite film than which random site to find your favourite porno on, plus the porn category includes pictures as well as video.

But I guess what the best measurement would be is subjective anyway, plus it's not so easy to measure anything like "amount of time spent doing X" or "number of people doing Y". Alternatively it's a valid opinion to have that bandwidth is the best metric, it's just not my opinion.

<comment><USER6> The thing that is interesting to me is that for a very long time, "Adult content" was what the vast majority of internet bandwidth was used for, by a tremendous margin. I remember in '01, one of my co-workers streamed CNN, after the twin towers disaster; In spite of working in the industry for several years, that was the first time I saw someone use streaming video over the Internet for anything other than demos (and pornography)

The fact that non-adult streaming video has surpassed adult streaming video (in terms of bandwidth used) is interesting because it means that the Internet is now a mainstream distribution channel for mainstream video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. How the mighty are fallen.

Slashdot: [http://nmap.org/favicon/?search=slashdot.org](http://nmap.org/favicon/?search=slashdot.org)

<comment><USER9> I think that's just further proof that you cannot afford to go on autopilot once you've become successful.

<comment><USER10> Slashdot wouldn't be slashdot if it had kept growing for the past ten years; there are only so many nerds in the world.

Anyway, Slashdot's icon is still bigger than ycombinator.com's. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah Babylon.com, how I hate you so. May your stupid toolbar burn in hell.

</comment><comment><USER12> It would be great to see this as an animation showing growth from say...the day google went live to present.

</comment><comment><USER13> Map? What determines the positions?

<comment><USER14> Looks like the color determines the position, and traffic the size.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you ever find yourself complaining about the amount of time wasted on HN, just look at all those millions of hours wasted on facebook, then write some bloody Python.

</comment><comment><USER16> YCombinator: [http://nmap.org/favicon/?search=ycombinator.com](http://nmap.org/favicon/?search=ycombinator.com)

</comment><comment><USER17> Some of the "Top Losers" items don't make sense:

* YahooJapan: (down arrow) 1.5 to 3.5%

* Microsoft: (down arrow) 1.2 to 3.4%

* LiveJasmin: (down arrow) 1.2 to 2.0%

<comment><USER18> (points changed) to (new percentage).

e.g. 1.5 to 3.5% means it dropped 1.5% from 5.0% to 3.5%

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can you calculate the average of those icons? I wonder if there is a pattern.</comment>


How to Destroy the Web 2.0 Look. - <AUTHOR> http://www.snap2objects.com/2007/11/20/how-to-destroy-the-web-20-look/

<comment><USER2> I dunno, these designs feel very "2001 ad agency microsite" to me. Nothing post-web-2.0 about them, more like pre-web-2.0.

This is what happened when you take your best print designers and set them loose on the web. How do you suppose those sites render once you much with text size? Usability/web standards did not suddenly go out of vogue, did they?

Ooo, the original presentation has much more actual content:

[http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/archive/2007/destroy-the- web...](http://elliotjaystocks.com/blog/archive/2007/destroy-the-web-20-look- future-of-web-design-new-york/)

<comment><USER3> Looking at a couple of the examples and screwing with the text size a bit, everything seems to work fine except extremely big text (which makes any page look bad).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The design elements he wants to see replace the web 2.0 look:

        * Retro-Vintage
        * Warm Dark Color Palette
        * Rich Textures
        * Grunge-Retro Fonts
        * Rough Edges
        * Ornaments
        * Stains
        * Rich Full Layered Headers

I can't stand most of these. And boucher is right, they're a lot harder to do anyway.

I think the designs that appeal to me are minimally dressed up stuff, like Hacker News and Socialmoth. And the appeal is not just the high data-ink percentage, but the fact that it doesn't take that much coding to achieve, and so is elegant conceptually as well as visually. It does take some thought and skill though, as my own forays into web-design have shown me.

<comment><USER3> >Grunge-Retro Fonts

I was actually thinking a lot of the examples had an almost steampunk vibe to them. Others remind me of some of the music videos that came out in 2002 - 2005, when emo bands started playing with goth themes. I can't say I'm a fan of the cluttered clip art look or the 'stains' / Rorschach inkblots, but a lot of the other stuff I could really get behind. Reading dense text on bright backgrounds really sucks after a while, and having a few rough edges or variations in texture and colors keeps the eyes awake. I'd even be happy if more sites went to having a slightly darker background in the areas where text is like news.yc does (instead of solid white like Reddit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think one of the reasons the "web 2.0 look" is popular is that it is fairly easy to design. Basic photoshop skills and a little bit of aesthetics go a long way.

retro-vintage, custom fonts, crazy edges and textures. These are all pretty difficult for a novice. I tend to think most startups don't have a lot of time or money to become or hire photoshop/design experts, and probably the majority of hackers aren't experts either.

<comment><USER6> Yeah...but the "geeks are bad with Photoshop" excuse doesn't explain the proliferation of cliche design elements.

For example: it takes more work to generate a glossy bubble button than to _not_ generate a glossy bubble button...but that doesn't seem to stop people from overusing them.

<comment><USER5> Well, there are two contributors to this. One, there are online tutorials on how to generate glossy bubble buttons, and similar effects (mainly, anything Apple has ever done). And two, now there is a ____ generator for pretty much ever element.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.ajaxflakes.com/web-20/top-100-online- generators-w...](http://www.ajaxflakes.com/web-20/top-100-online-generators- web-20/)

I challenge someone to create a "web 2.0 generator generator". Or a generator that uses these generators to generate a "web 2.0" site without any interaction from the developer.

Not unlike the CS research paper generator that these guys wrote: <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/> Some of the papers were actually accepted into conferences.

<comment><USER8> _I challenge someone to create a "web 2.0 generator generator"._

Psh easy. Just use some Lisp macros.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The web was not crowded "in the beginning" as the author says. Most of the sites I visited used a lot of text with minimal markup and few images. Here's a page I stumbled across that was obviously from the mid-90s (I was searching for the URL in one of the links on this guy's site)

[http://www.rett.org/about/oldsites/rettsitev2/pages/links.ht...](http://www.rett.org/about/oldsites/rettsitev2/pages/links.html)

Good page design has _always_ been clean and focused. It doesn't have to look like Web 2.0. <http://www.homestarrunner.com> is clean and focused. But it doesn't look like Web 2.0 at all. Penny-Arcade looks cluttered at first glance, except it's a gaming fansite and the flashy advertisements are part of its style. Once that is considered, the site appears very clean and focused. It's also not typical "Web 2.0" style. (<http://www.penny- arcade.com/2007/11/21> "Facebookery")

Avoiding gratuitous decoration is just good design. Feel free to add as much complexity as you can, just don't let it detract from the purpose of the site.

<comment><USER2> That first page you linked to is from the "export bookmarks" function of (I think?) Netscape 4...

<comment><USER9> I'm not surprised. The point is that the web wasn't all cluttered like the author implied. Most of it was just text. <http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-faq/index.en.html>

Much of the content I looked for were actual text files, maybe with some ASCII art: <http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff4/info/ff4_monster.txt>

(incidentally, the original version of that ff4 file was not double-spaced.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, these vanity web sites are pretty but don't get carried away with splattering the page with _design_. Remember that the average web surfer has the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel and if you carpet bomb their visual cortex with too much stuff, no matter how pretty it all may be, if a web surfer doesn't immediately understand what they are looking at, they get confused and turn away.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is interesting but not really accurate. If "A trend always appears as the result of the opposition with another." was true, we'd be caught in a loop between one extreme and the next.

It's partially right though. When it comes to "taste" there often seems to be a severe reversal in a short amount of time. I like to think of it as a correction. We're getting to the point now, where the web 2.0 look has reached the extreme. It's time for a correction in "taste". The leading edge of "taste" will snap back to something far from what's currently fashionable (I say far because anything else wouldn't seem fresh) and the rest of us will eventually follow.

Then it will happen all over again.

I think it's partially correct to say a new trend is "opposite" but more accurate to say it's a reaction to how stale the current trend is.

In short, the Web 2.0 will certainly change (isn't that a given anyway?), but I don't know that "grunge" is where we're headed.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not going to get behind any design trend that seem to want to replace more and more text with images of text.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't know about you but I like the minimalistic look.

And then again I thought that ncurses is a great UI :)

</comment><comment><USER14> All of this and more would be feasible if there were better cross-browser support for vector graphics.

These whimsical designs might be ok for niche markets, but they require tedious Photoshop skills and they don't scale.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree that the sites shown are prettier but I'd argue that they are much more of a visual work out. I think content is paramount, everything else is secondary. Anything that gets between you and the content begins to grate and should be removed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fools. I think that blogger ought to watch this...

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=Isk88nT0sRY>

</comment><comment><USER17> "Mr Stocks also noted that what makes a site part of the web 2.0 is not its looks, is the way it works."

The article should have ended here.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, the rest of the article seems to contradict the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> sounds like someone got a hold of this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Web- Standards-Creativity-Innovations-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Web-Standards- Creativity-Innovations-Scripting/dp/1590598032). It details how to develop websites he's referring to, particularly DirtyPrettyThings.com done by Sam Collision.

A lot of the elements are all pre-Web 2.0. Go to any Border's or B&N and find a web design book printed in 99 and you'll find the very same styles he so loves. The point of this article should have been: "How to determine if you have taste?"</comment>


Python 3.8.0b1 is available for testing - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-380b1/ <comment><USER2> * f-string debugging.

* `python -m asyncio` gives a async repl that supports top level await statements.

* unittest.mock now has AsyncMock that can mock async for, async with and other async related code.

* math.comb to compute binomial coefficients. math.perm and math.isqrt were added.

* unittest gained support for async test case.

* importlib.metadata got merged providing API to access package metadata.

* Threading module now has an API to get native thread ID.

* multiprocessing.parent_process got added.

PEPs merged. 4 PEPs were merged in a single day with a week before beta release.

* [Runtime audit hooks got merged PEP 578]([https://bugs.python.org/issue36842](https://bugs.python.org/issue36842))

* typing related PEPs were merged : Add final qualifier (PEP 591), Literal types (PEP 586) and TypedDict (PEP 589)

* [Python embedding got better with PEP 587]([https://bugs.python.org/issue36763](https://bugs.python.org/issue36763))

* [Vectorcall for functions got merged PEP 590]([https://bugs.python.org/issue36922](https://bugs.python.org/issue36922))

* [New pickle protocol with performance improvements PEP 574]([https://bugs.python.org/issue36785](https://bugs.python.org/issue36785))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The beta is now out. The big incompatible change is probably PyCode_New() (in order to support positional only parameters). At least Cython is broken by this change, probably other extensions. Hopefully it will not be long for that to be fixed.

Lots of other neat changes. The f-string debugging with '=' will be handy. There are a number of minor speedups and so this should be the fastest Python yet released.</comment>


Startup ideas are like kittens, I'm giving 'em away - <AUTHOR> http://almoststartup.com/

<comment><USER2> And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you present an idea. Seriously Justin, this was a great presentation.

You probably have several ideas already, but maybe you would like to take a look at this spreadsheet:

[https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag- R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWR...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ag- R_ZlGO21NdE9HSWRkbjNyUGRxS2JIV3NxYVdiaXc&hl=en)

It's chocked full of ideas, maybe you could pick what you consider the best ones out of the bunch and elaborate on them as you have done for Oregato? Either way, thanks for the wonderful inspiration!

<comment><USER3> Is there some trick to editing Google Spreadsheets? I've never edited a shared document before. I signed in, clicked an open row, started typing, and ... nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, and like kittens, there's no such thing as a free one ;)

I love the idea, I really wish we had the time to build something like that. I'd be a user too.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this is great. One thing that I've been thinking about recently is that all my startup ideas are very technically sophisticated. That is, while they might indeed have the potential to make a big impact, they also involve a lot of detailed technical work and focus in computer science. I think part of that is that I'm simply exposed to systems far more than most other fields, so it's interesting to see the kind of stuff other people come up with. I would never think of Twitter, for example.

</comment><comment><USER6> You know, this is an idea I had too, and then sat on (much like the author describes). Not Oregato, but a hub for sharing ideas and generating new software projects; I have a tonne of things I'd like to implement, and nowhere near enough time to make them.

Some sort of centralised idea repository (a wiki is almost fit for purpose, but makes it hard to categorise, rank and index ideas) where anyone can throw their thoughts for others to comment on, and still others to pick up, would be awesome.

<comment><USER7> It seems like there is a lot of interest in the "idea hub" concept. I actually first envisioned Almost Startup this way, but never found time to execute it. It began as a wiki, then a Wordpress MU installation, and then I finally decided to just ship it as a Posterous blog. The "idea hub" could start out as simply as a group blog and then transition over to something more substantial if there is interest.

<comment><USER6> I think it's something that not only has legs in terms of scratching our (collective, it seems :)!) itches, but has the potential to be pretty big. I've started hacking on it in Django a few times, only to be waylaid by other stuff and having to set it aside.

I might write up a big blog post when I get the time detailing how it'd work in my head, and see if it can be expanded from there.

I'll keep an eye on Almost Startup too; I really like the concept and it looks like an interesting hub :).

<comment><USER7> If you (or somebody else) can manage to pull together a proper "idea hub", I'll happily contrbute!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's funny that people try to show that ideas have no value by giving theirs away, when the value of an idea could probably be quantified by how inclined someone is to not give it away.

<comment><USER7> It's not my point to show that ideas don't have value. I simply don't have the bandwidth to execute on a lot of ideas and I think there's more value to putting them out than keeping them to myself.

If I thought the idea didn't have value I wouldn't take the time to write it out and post it.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also something interesting that happens when you try to fully write out an idea. When I do it, I usually only finish writing about the good ideas. Sometimes when you sit down and take the time to think out something you realize its not that great half way through writing it. Ideas are rarely very original anyway so you might as well write them out and if you get feedback then maybe you're on to something and can revisit it later. If anything, writing alone is an interesting filter mechanism for the idea hub.

In the meantime, keep making Mugasha awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's funny, I've had a LOT of ideas for video games lately, mostly just small game mechanics ideas. I really, really want to write a game that incorporates them, but I'm finding that I just don't have time. I've been considering starting a game ideas blog and putting them all out there for anyone to use.

Don't get me wrong, some are good and some are bad... But I think some are REALLY good and the bad ones could probably be improved. Sometimes just sorting good from bad depends on perspective, too.

I haven't quite given up on the game yet, though, and I'd like to be the first to implement some.

Apparently this guy is past that stage and has decided to just give the ideas away.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I know the feeling you're talking about. There's still some ideas that I'm not ready to let out for free yet.

Oregato is one I've had for quite awhile. I like the idea, but I'm not so passionate about it that I can envision working on it full time for multiple years. So it's easier to put it out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good post, it reminded me of this one:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1649260>

</comment><comment><USER11> What if a boxing promoter said "I know this guy, you fight him and we'll share the money?" Pay squat for an idea, and you've paid too much.

</comment><comment><USER12> I want to do something awesome but haven't hit on a good idea yet. I think about code not business stuff.

I would use this. :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Or like cats - recycled.

</comment><comment><USER14> No, please don't! I have so many ideas already, they torment me, all crying out in the middle of the night, saying things like "why won't you do me?" and "remember how excited you were when you thought of me!" and " I guess you really DON'T want to be a billionaire!"

They clog my days between sprints on my main product with distraction, making me eager to get the next sprint done so I can work in something REALLY good, when what I need to be doing is relaxing and recovering so I can do my best work in ten next phase if my real product. The one that is shipping and making money.

Please don't let this idea giveaway become a trend!

How how I long for the day when people demanded you dignity an nda before telling you their idea.

Seriously, though, whittling down ideas seems to be half the work, and I am tormented by coming up with a great idea at least once a day. Only about %50 of them are obviously unfeasible which leaves way too many... It is really a burden because they do distract me.

I think this giving away has merit, now which ones to give the boot to?

</comment><comment><USER15> well said than well done (:</comment>


Ask HN: What are the recipe websites to beat? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In terms of what? Quality of recipes, discoverability of recipes, or curation of recipes? For curation it's hard to beat the Paprika app (offline use is essential, which websites don't provide).

</comment><comment><USER3> In terms of a high-volume, crowdsourced site, allrecipes.com is definitely up there, but their UI definitely leaves something to be desired.</comment>