Ask HN: What's the Different Between a Senior and a Regular Developer? - <AUTHOR> I am into web development (Front-End first then I'll jump to the Back-End). I am curious what could give me a significant competitive advantage?
How do you categorize Senior, Junior or Regular developers? Is it production-experience, languages/frameworks knowledge or knowing best-practices?
Looking forward to hear from you guys. <comment><USER2> The software industry is relatively young and there are no standardized job titles with well defined skill/experience levels. Based on my own experience over the last 25 years, working with many programmers, is to ignore the official title and bucket people according to the following observations.

Junior Developer \- Needs to be managed everyday or at least most days. \- Has a narrow view of their job, its all about the code. \- Spends most of their time thinking about how to write code at the level of individual functions. \- Regularly gets stuck and needs technical input.

Regular Developer \- Needs to be managed once per week. \- Writing actual code has become automatic. \- Thinks about designing whole modules of code. \- Considers trade-offs/code patterns/best practice. \- Occasionally gets stuck and needs input.

Senior Developer \- Only needs managing occasionally. \- Thinks about the business problem being solved. \- Managing expectations and requirements is hardest part of job. \- Helps solve problems of Junior/Regular developers.

<comment><USER3> Great response. As someone trying to make the jump to the senior level, this also works on the systems side as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the medieval analogy for masons:

First, the apprentice learns how to use the tools to build something.

Then a journeyman can use the tools and a team to build anything.

Finally a master can build the tools, build the team, and build anything including their own workshop.

<comment><USER5> A well-known example to Mason's of this is the Rough and Smooth Ashlar:

"Speculative Masons use the ashlar in two forms: one rough, just as it came from the quarry, representing Man in his ignorant, uncultivated state; and the other, finely finished and ready for its place in the building, represents Man, educated and refined."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think there will be perfect answer for this, but i will give it a try.

A senior dev is someone who should have good (hands-on) experience and can give hints/inputs on the way junior/new developer should write the code. you can even become senior by staying in 1 company for long time without learning anything new in terms of tech, so sometimes junior/new dev knows more than senior person. good environment should have mix of talented and average developers that way they all will learn.

or sometimes its just a title (in some orgs. a fresher right out of college is given sr. analyst title :) )

</comment><comment><USER7> 18F has what I think are pretty good descriptions of junior-to-senior level developer expectations (related to their pay scales). See the section titled, "Selecting a grade level."

[https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/pay- grades/](https://pages.18f.gov/joining-18f/pay-grades/)

</comment><comment><USER8> You can have junior developers with 10 years experience, you can also have senior developers with only 18 months experience. I wouldn't lend too much to a title, it is particularly annoying when one hears people pigeon hole themselves with these titles. That's not to underrate years of experience and mistakes a long the way, but call a spade a spade 'developer with several years of experience'

</comment><comment><USER9> Take a look at Jocelyn Goldfein's software engineering career ladder chart:

[https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/a-very-very-rough- approx...](https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/a-very-very-rough- approximation-of-the-software-engineer-career-ladder-bcd6ef339156)

</comment><comment><USER10> 2-30 years experience makes you a senior developer. It's basically a way to avoid paying people for their experience.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior- engi...](http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Hopefully a senior developer has learnt from some expensive mistakes made before (preferable on a prevpous employers dime)...

:-)</comment>


Google proposing DNS extension for improved server locality - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/01/proposal-to-extend-dns-protocol.html

<comment><USER2> Synopsis: Allow the top three octets of client address to be sent along with the query so the resolvers can try to suggest "closer" answers while preserving some anonymity.

Thoughts: Your resolver, or the DNS server you speak to will need to be updated to add a new RR for this. The ultimate authority will need to do something sane with it. Caching will be complicated if you have clients in multiple locations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the implications of IPV6 would be on this proposed approach. I see that Comcast is opening up the ability to get on their early list of IPV6 users.

</comment><comment><USER4> I find myself wondering if this is something djb already put in tinydns. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I think Google is harming Net Neutrality, it expands the last mile problem to the several last miles. This will led to more 'This video is not available in your country' shit.

I somehow wish IPv6 allocation is hashed, all neighboring IP are randomly unrelated.

<comment><USER6> _This will led to more 'This video is not available in your country' shit._

This won't have any effect on it, actually. Servers that are targeting users by location use the IP sent with each request to do localization, rather than which server was chosen by DNS. Otherwise it would be trivial to choose a server in the appropriate country and add an entry to your hosts file, bypassing these restrictions.

You could try to argue that making it possible for global companies to make their content arrive _faster_ is bad for net neutrality, but given that this doesn't adversely affect other servers (and possibly benefits them by reducing congestion), that would be a hard argument to swing as well.

Edit: and for your second comment, I have no idea how routing algorithms would work if that were the case.</comment></comment>


How I Became a Data Scientist Despite Having Been a Math Major - <AUTHOR> http://stiglerdiet.com/blog/2015/May/11/how-i-became-a-data-scientist/ <comment><USER2> Read as: how I became a data scientist after taking an appropriate and helpful major

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with not having a math background is that you will succumb to all the people who throw around buzzwords but don't know what the hell they're talking about. You need to be able to recognize (and assert authority over) someone whose first thought is that "support vector regression and a bayesian net" is the right way to go. Or, to put it nicer, refine their thought into something useful.

The problem with not having a software and "grungy coding skills" background is that you aren't able to efficiently reproduce/check/verify claims being made which are often wrong or misleading. A recent example I had of this is someone studying how an algorithm behaved on a subset of interest of a particular population, and they didn't even bother to check that the subset of their data was statistically large enough to draw any conclusions (only 17 records out of thousands). Needless to say this example also failed on the reproducibility and reuse fronts.

The problem with both in academia (even at polytechnic non research schools) is that they don't know enough about each other.

</comment><comment><USER4> Question for the data scientists out there: is it more straightforward to become a data scientist from a software engineering background or from a math background? Data science is a varied field, but from what I've heard a lot of the work is munging data (which is a fairly easy task for a skilled software person).

Also, I'm glad the author added the twitter endorsement to the article --I've been considering creating a twitter account, and the fact that the author found it so useful helps with my decision to devote time to creating an account.

</comment><comment><USER5> The perfect data scientist -- imho is great at massaging data and has a ton of real life experience with real data; So somebody on the interface of statistics and computer science is best.

Computer scientists mostly don't know about sampling and make easy problems hard. Statisticians mostly fail at simply getting the data in a format they need.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps PhD math programs don't hold your hand through teaching data science, but it isn't a horrible way of preparing you for a (first) job in data. Color me impressed when a history major picks up data science!

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I confess I only read the title, but I don't understand the "despite".

I mean, surely, you need a good background in mathematics to model and extract meaningful information from the data, so I don't see how it is crazy to do that with a PhD in mathematics ...

<comment><USER8> I think his point was that pure math can be very devolved from real world as I found when i tried to go from a Engineering to a HNC in Maths Stats and Computing.

Back then it was virtulay all Pure maths with the computing side being shall we say Antique - most of my course mates where working at Tier 1 RnD workng at the bleeding edge, my employer hired the first non academic knowledge engineer in the UK

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Begin with Andrew Ng's mooc at coursera, to get the basics and the feel of it.

I've completed the very first his course in December 2011.</comment>


Ask HN: Hacking/Coding/Programming for Good? - <AUTHOR>

I've been looking around for hackers (coders, etc) who also do socially good/conscious activities as well. I've come up short so I was hoping the HN community could help out. It's probably just me but I rarely see articles on hackers doing good (although a lot of startups have socially conscious messages, etc).
I know there's Code for America (making Gov't efficient), Taproot, and Catchafire but I've had a tougher time finding other like-minded initiatives or individuals.
And I'm not asking for any particular reason other than just to know. <comment><USER2> I used to work for a company, the Chicago Technology Cooperative, where we focused on building websites (and apps) for non-profit organizations. Maybe you could start a company with that intent?

</comment><comment><USER3> Links for organizations OP mentioned:

<http://codeforamerica.org/>

<http://www.taprootfoundation.org/>

<http://www.catchafire.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Social Innovation Camp: <http://www.sicamp.org/>

Bethnal Green Ventures (inspired by YC): <http://bethnalgreenventures.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the Social Innovation Camp. Hopefully one will start that in the US if it hasn't already been started. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ive recently began doing this as well. Would be interested in talking to you about possible projects and causes you find interesting. What is a way to contact you?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that open source and GNU projects can contribute to the common good, for the most part. You help many more people that way.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.hackersforcharity.org/>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.torproject.org/> ?</comment>


Tree Tabs – A faster and more feature-rich alternative to Tree Style Tab - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/ <comment><AUTHOR> I saw Tree Style Tab posted a couple of days ago. I used to use it but IMHO Tree Tabs is a much better alternative, and I don't seem to see it mentioned in that post.

At least you may want to give it a try. I never looked back since.</comment>


Microsoft's latest "scroogled" advertisement - Chromebook: Everything you need? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wAgB5J1gSQ#t=26

<comment><USER2> As much as I don't particularly like Microsoft, based on my experience of using a ChromeBook, they are absolutely right. I fear this will be taken as an affront to everything non-Microsoft rather than a serious point.

I genuinely couldn't honestly recommend one to anyone. MacBook yes, windows laptop yes, iPad yes, ChromeBook no.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5181974/why-is- microsoft-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5181974/why-is-microsoft- scared-of-chromebooks)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why doesn't Microsoft understand that they are actually validating fellow behemoth Google as the underdog?

Google is arrogant enough to create their own backlash in due time, just as Microsoft did in the 90's, but Microsoft is actually slowing down that process.

There's a lot of valid criticism in the scroogled campaign, but as long as it's coming from MS the general public will side with Google.

This is just playing straight into the hands of Google and their cultish marketing strategy.</comment>


Show HN: liblorgnette – a dlsym for alien processes on OS X - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rodionovd/liblorgnette

<comment><USER2> That's nice. I did something similar a while ago, together with mach_override, to hook into some functions, like ___NSAutoreleaseNoPool or ___THE_PROCESS_HAS_FORKED_AND_YOU_CANNOT_USE_THIS_COREFOUNDATION_FUNCTIONALITY___YOU_MUST_EXEC__, for debugging purpose.

Example: [https://github.com/albertz/music- player/blob/master/app/mac_...](https://github.com/albertz/music- player/blob/master/app/mac_sysutils.mm)

See FindSymbol and install_breakpoint_handlers.</comment>


Azure Machine Learning: A Brief Introduction - <AUTHOR> https://projectbotticelli.com/knowledge/brief-introduction-to-microsoft-azure-ml? <comment><USER2> I think there is a big craze with regard to ML. Most people just draw a black box call it ML/Brain/"hire data scientist" without realizing that for most nontrivial problems its not going to work like magic. Some of the things that I see people underestimating is; a) how hard it is to make the magic black box b) amount of data you need c) how clean the data needs to be d) at times, you need lots of human annotated data -- cost and time to collect it e) how much it's a art than a science. Moreover, people don't have a good understating of the technical challenges and cost when you need to scale to n (features) * m (customers) * p (products). Maybe Azure solves some of these challenges but quickly looking at the pricing -- it seems like its a bit too costly.

<comment><USER3> I agree that making the magic black box is very hard. Automatic model selection, at scale, requires a lot of processing power.

My take is that Azure "just" makes it easier/quicker to run ML experiments, and to deploy models. It's not entirely black box since you have to pick an algorithm and parameters. I expect that once you've run your experiments and found what works best, you should be able to get similar results with an open source implementation of your chosen algorithm. But then you'd still have to deploy your model somewhere — maybe using a platform like yhathq.com which makes things more transparent?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course Azure is a __much__ more complex service, but I am currently working in a _somehow_ similar project:

[https://www.datapal.io](https://www.datapal.io)

The main goal of this project is to make it easy for people without knowledge in predictive analytics to use their stored data in order to make predictions.

__It is still a very early prototype__, therefore the "predictive power" is not great yet, and all kind of bugs are expected.

I have a lot of ideas on how to improve the service and your feedback would be really appreciated in order to prioritize the next steps!

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Sounds very exciting! This space is getting a bit crowded though (see [http://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-main-competitors-to-the- Goo...](http://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-main-competitors-to-the-Google- Prediction-API/)). How would you differentiate Datapal from competitors such as BigML, Predictobot, etc.?

<comment><USER4> Hey, thanks for your interest! Well, the market is very big and I think so far all the competitors use different approaches. DataPal will soon include a number of features that will make it more different. Stay tuned! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think saw a couple of differentiators from Google's prediction engine. Would someone happen to have a more comprehensive view of how this is different from Google Prediction API?

<comment><USER3> The main difference between Google Prediction and Azure ML is that the former doesn't require any knowledge of machine learning algorithms, whereas the latter does. Google Prediction automatically selects the best algorithm based on the data you uploaded. In Azure ML, you have to choose an algorithm (and its parameters) yourself.

Other differences are that Azure also has a data transformation component, a built-in text analysis tool, it can perform clustering tasks, and it makes it easier to expose your trained models as APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If any YC startups are interested in checking out Azure, note that Microsoft grants $60k in usage credits (as well as architecture and engineering support). Shoot me a mail at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll help you out!

<comment><USER7> Hey Felix, any chance that that offer is open to researchers as well? One of the groups I'm involved with at UW needs a decent amount of compute power and would love to move some stuff off our homegrown cluster of spare hardware.

<comment><USER8> Maybe this link can be useful for you:

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/azure/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/azure/)

<comment><USER6> That's exactly the right approach!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some real world examples here.

[http://blogs.technet.com/b/machinelearning/archive/2014/07/1...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/machinelearning/archive/2014/07/14/how- azure-ml-partners-are-innovating-for-their-customers.aspx)

There's also the Azure Machine learning university program with videos etc., but looks like it's for partners only, perhaps will be available to all once it's out of preview.

[https://readytogo.microsoft.com/global/_layouts/RTG/Campaign...](https://readytogo.microsoft.com/global/_layouts/RTG/CampaignViewer.aspx?CampaignUrl=https://readytogo.microsoft.com/global/campaign/pages/machine%20learning%20university%20\(global\).aspx&WT.mc_id=Blog_MachLearn_General_DI)

<comment><USER10> You can access the videos here:

[https://readytogo.microsoft.com/global/_layouts/RTG/Download...](https://readytogo.microsoft.com/global/_layouts/RTG/DownloadCampaign.aspx?campurl=https%3A//readytogo.microsoft.com/global/campaign/pages/machine%20learning%20university%20%28global%29.aspx)</comment></comment>


Some coronavirus patients haven't gotten their senses of smell or taste back yet - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-patients-lose-senses-of-taste-smelland-havent-gotten-them-back-11591007522 <comment><USER2> I lost my sense of taste a few years ago, from a combination of extreme stress and the flu. Lasted about a week, and it was utterly terrifying. I first noticed it when I tried to eat, iirc scrambled eggs, and couldn't stop gagging on the texture. Once I figured out what was going on, it took a couple days to figure out what I could eat without retching. I ended up being entirely vegetarian - meat without taste is a horrible experience, and only ate milk and eggs as ingredients.

Overall, 0/10, do not recommend unless you have to go vegan but don't have any willpower. When my sense of taste gradually returned, I practically cried I was so relieved.

<comment><USER3> Years ago, I also lost my sense of taste for a few days (toothpaste burned my tongue)... I would also describe it as terrifying and immediately depressing. The next day I had pizza and cake with tons of frosting, but everything tasted like soap. I was really concerned that the damage to my taste was permanent. I was in disbelief for a few days. As I ate my regular meals, I just reminded myself that they were things I enjoyed. I can still vividly remember the pink frosting and the texture of the cake, and the burning sensation on my tongue that I thought was just a really effective oral hygiene move

<comment><USER4> How does toothpaste burn your tongue

<comment><USER5> Yes, ceedan says that somewhere in the world there is a toothpaste that if you use it, it will burn up your tongue and you will loose your sense of taste... yet doesn't provide the name of the toothpaste. WHY?

<comment><USER6> I actually read it not as:

Toothpaste burned my tongue, therefore I lost my sense of taste.

but as:

I lost my sense of taste, therefore toothpaste burned my tongue.

which might not make so much sense as an affect of the losing taste, but does explain why they don't name the toothpaste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had Covid-19 (confirmed antibodies test, wife had confirmed PCR) in early March. Lost my sense of smell and taste _completely_, almost immediately. I've lost some smell before with bad allergies or a congested nose. This was otherworldly: no smell, at all. Not solvents. Not strong fragrances. Nothing. And this, with a perfectly clear nose. It freaked me out.

It lasted for about 2.5 weeks. Around week 3, it started to very, very slowly come back. I went from literally 0.0% to about 10%-15%. I could smell traces of things if I inhaled very deeply. I was super paranoid it was gone forever. I can't tell you how joyless eating becomes when you have ZERO sense of taste or smell.

Finally, around the end of week 4, I was probably close to 75%. I'm _finally_ back to 100% today. This virus sucks.

<comment><USER8> For a medical reason not related to Covid in any way, I've lived my entire life not being able to smell anything, whatsoever. I'm getting a surgery in two days that should give me a sense of smell. While I'm over the moon excited to be able to smell... I didn't even think about how it would affect taste...

<comment><USER9> What surgery? I know someone with no sense of smell and didnt think there was any hope of fixing it.

<comment><USER8> Nasal Polypectomy as well as severe deviated septum

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Losing your sense of smell, while painful, is nothing compared to what other things can happen to the surviors. 50% of ICU patients have clotting problems. In fact it's so common that _all_ covid patients are now put on anti-clotting medication, immediately, no questions asked. Would you mind losing your leg (getting that clot stuck in lower limbs)? Or getting a stroke (getting that clot in your brain), and losing a significant part of brain capacity, such as the ability to speak? Then, 30% have serious kidney problems and require nephrologist care or outright dialysis [1].

And we're still learning. Never forget the unknown unknowns. It's ridiculous to quote some survival statistic and call it a covid-barbecue.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-hijacks-the-body- fr...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-hijacks-the-body-from-head-to- toe-perplexing-doctors-11588864248)

<comment> GuB-42 And about 30% of ICU patients die. If you get to that point, it is really, really bad, worse than most cancers.

The thing with losing the sense of smell is that it seems to happen mostly to mild cases. Cases where you wouldn't even call yourself a "survivor" any more than you would call yourself a flu survivor or a common cold survivor.

That's the scary part, we are not talking about a few percents, most of them elderly people. This is about middle aged, healthy people, who may not even be part of the statistics, and therefore more likely to be underrepresented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am congenital for anosmia (that is, I have never had a sense of smell) so I always find discussions about anosmia interesting.

As a contribution: the experiences of never having smelt is very different from the experience of loosing it later in life. The former is something that dawns on the person sometime in their youth when they realise they really can't smell farts. The other is a crushing loss of joy from their lives when they lose the wonderful taste of food, fresh flowers, and "new car smell" (whatever that is!). I never _lost_ these things, I love food, and I like looking at pretty flowers. I am jealous that I don't experience smelling, but I do not miss it because I never had it in the first place.

As a side note, living with anosmia is mildly inconvienient for most. I am paranoid about food going off, and working with flammable gasses is always a little unnerving. Apparently the rates of depression, dysfunctional relationships, and early death are somewhat higher in my cohort. I personally have little trouble with it, and find my condition a useful conversation starter at social events.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the insight. I can appreciate the paranoia about not smelling important cues. I once worked in a bio-lab with somebody with anosmia. One day they accidentally split a very noxious chemical without realising until somebody else walked into the room, hit the extraction system into overdrive and pulled them out of the toxic air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So much emphasis is placed on the fatality rate, but there's a _lot_ of middle ground between asymptomatic and dead.

<comment><USER14> This. I had it. Literally every symptom except loss of taste and smell (but had some other rarer symptoms like the pink eye thing). Also had a cough for like a month, and loss of energy and breath for about a month and a half. Only just recently feel 100%.

While it was shitty and lingered a while the worst of it wasn't actually that much worse than a flu for me. Somewhere between the flu and bronchitis on the scale of how sick I've been in my life.

<comment><USER15> I had the worst cold I've experienced in a decade or more. Absolute loss of energy. Terrible aches; temperature all over the place. This was followed by two months of bronchitis that is still ongoing and failed to respond to two different kinds of antibiotics (the implication being that it's not bacterial). I never got tested because testing was not easy to get in early March; serologies aren't being done yet where I live. I'm so curious: did I have _IT_?

<comment><USER11> There is finally a decent assay for serology so maybe you can get tested soon. It's not one of the "fast" assay kits (those suck) it is a proper laboratory assay (an "ELISA") that requires trained staff or at least an expensive machine to run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The thing that people don't realise with virus infections is that it can mess you up for a long time, even if it's not lethal. I've had a human parvovirus B19 infection last year(apparently it's incredibly rare in adults, but hey ho), and yeah, I felt like absolute shit for about 2 months, really high fevers, no appetite, basically like a very bad flu that lasted nearly 2 months, but then once it finally went away, I started having massive issues with my joins, widespread inflammation of knees, elbows, shoulders, fingers - like a bad case of arthritis. Was told by rheumatologists that it's a relatively common thing to happen after virus infections, since your own immune system was in high gear after the virus, so now it attacks your own joints instead. Unfortunately it doesn't really have a cure as such, I was given a few steroid injections that settled it down for now but it's still not 100% fine. Or I can go on a long term(1-2 years at least) treatment with methotrexate, but that has a whole lot of its own side effects as well so I'm not very keen.

So yeah, virus infections SUCK, even if they don't kill you.

<comment><USER17> Epstein-Barr virus (mono) fucked me up for weeks and I have never been the same since then.

Jumpstarted hypothyroidism as well which is now autoimmune/Hashimoto's. Virus infections can really really mess you up.

<comment><USER18> I also had a very rough ride from mono. I was in bed for over a month and came out some very unpleasant side effects. I developed a tic disorder (suspected PANDAS) which has lasted the 6 years since and my immune system was so weak I caught the common cold about once a month for 2 years. Also launched me into depression which took a couple years to climb out of. It is no joke, that's for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a lot of evidence for this occurring during the 1918 influenza pandemic. See [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/22/pale-rider- lau...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/22/pale-rider-laura- spinney-review)

<comment><USER11> Flu and common colds are known to cause anosmia. I guess the scale of it is different when its something novel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> We may be entering a new phase of this disease soon. Treatments are coming along.

Stanford is testing interferon-lambda.[1] Known drug, used for treating hepatitis. This has to be given early, within 2 days of testing positive for the virus. A group in the UK is testing interferon-beta.

Eli Lily is testing an engineered antibody.[2] This is new technology, an antibody specifically targeted to this virus. Testing in humans just started; no results yet. Lily is putting this into production in advance of testing, to get the production scaleup problems out of the way, in hope it works.

There are other drugs in development; these are all in human testing now.

Early stage treatment options change things. Advice will change from "stay home until it gets serious" to "get tested and treated as soon as there's any suspicion." Instead of overloaded ICUs, front-line medical care gets overloaded. It really starts to matter than the US doesn't have enough testing capacity.

[1] [https://med.stanford.edu/id/covid19/lambda.html](https://med.stanford.edu/id/covid19/lambda.html)

[2] [https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/eli-lilly-abcellera- coron...](https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/eli-lilly-abcellera-coronavirus- antibody-drug-first-trial/578980/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Hi there, dutch male, just under 60, overall good health, healthy way of living. Halfway march I noticed light Covid related stuff like higher temp (for just 1 day), headache (longer period, not every day), no energy (6 weeks) and then a loss of taste and smell (not very suddenly as I recall). After 7 to 8 weeks taste came back lightly (like smelling toiletcleaner and strong things) and now after a recovery to +- 25% of smell and taste, it is again getting less (10%). And all the time a totally free breathing through the nose. I can taste salt and sweet but for Instance no garlic. And one other noticable thing, both sides under the back of my tongue feel like they are a bit irritated, lightly swollen salivary glands (for what it is worth).

</comment><comment><USER22> For older people loss of smell seems to indicate a higher probability to die within 5 years. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182669/#!po=0....](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182669/#!po=0.877193)

<comment><USER23> Food poisoning will get ya. That's why we have this chemistry lab in our heads, taking up a bunch of useful space in the center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My mother (73) had Corona in March. She had a throat ache, headache and loss of sense of smell and taste. The symptoms passed after a couple of days but her sense of smell did not come back. Even today, almost 3 months later, it has still not fully recovered.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, that truly sucks. COVID-19 is going to cause long term problems for this generation. I'm glad I got over it without issue, but I have to wonder what's in store for my future.

<comment><USER26> I'll be surprised if over time a few million people in the US don't end up with blood clot related complications from having mild cases of Covid. I suspect the healthcare industrial complex will wave their hands at the notion that Covid caused the damage (they do this with anything inconvenient to their interests, like the millions of people damaged by Cipro, a drug they've handed out like candy to millions of people for decades), it'll largely get buried/lost in the outsized cardiovascular & other health problem numbers in the American population.

<comment><USER25> I'm not so sure. We're already starting to see people publish studies on how nasty this is an long term issues. This is too big for it to be ignored down the road.

Time is all it will take for us to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interestingly, not exactly COVID-19 related, people that lose their sense of taste return to eating normally, but people that lose a sense of feel in their mouth never seem to fully recover their appetite.

I mean, not to say I want to lose my sense of taste, just that losing feel in your mouth seems probably worse.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, texture is a surprisingly large part of what people enjoy about food. It's honestly weird that we consider it a separate thing from taste, since you take it into account almost as much as flavor when you cook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A friend of mine lost his sense of smell some years ago from the flu

<comment><USER30> Are there any published statistics on how common that is? I wonder what it inflames or irritates that can't come back after the body recovers from the virus.

<comment><USER31> That's also what I am wondering about. Could it also have a psychological component? (Not making it any less terrifying.)

<comment><USER11> Not sure why you are being downvoted. Negative placebo effect is real and anosmia (smell blindness) has been making headlines with the 'rona.

To answer the original question: "Postviral olfactory disorders usually occur after an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) associated with a common cold or influenza. With a prevalence between 11 and 40% they are among the common causes of olfactory disorders."

From here: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16733337/?from_term=anosmia+...](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16733337/?from_term=anosmia+influenza&from_pos=3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Slightly offtopic warning. I temporarily lost my sense of smell when I was on a zinc supplement (lozenges). It turned out this is a known effect of zinc lozenges. Zinc supplements should be swallowed immediately. Stay away from nasal sprays that contain zinc.

More information:

[https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc- Health%20Professional...](https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc- Health%20Professional/)

(search for "anosmia", the medical term for loss of sense of smell)

</comment><comment><USER33> I lost my sense of smell for about a mo th which was my primary Covid symptom. I think I am now back at least 75% after two months (I was in the early wave of NYC).

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://archive.md/OaNuq](https://archive.md/OaNuq)

<comment><USER35> Thanks!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually why I just posted this [https://gizmodo.com/this-lickable- screen-can-recreate-almost...](https://gizmodo.com/this-lickable-screen-can- recreate-almost-any-taste-or-f-1843609903) "This Lickable Screen Can Recreate Almost Any Taste or Flavor Without Eating Food"

I wonder if the process outlined could be used in therapy to bring back taste.

</comment><comment><USER36> I had some flu thing in the beginning of February and I had this weird symptom where anything that contained vinegar (like ketchup) had this terrible acetone-like taste -- I almost brought back the bottle to the store for a refund.

</comment><comment><USER37> Okay... so? This is a symptom of many viruses. My sister got Bell's Palsy from the flu a couple months ago and still hasn't recovered.

What are the _relative rates_ of these issues with nCoV-19 over Rhinovirus, normal Coronavirus, and Flu A/B?

Any neurotropic virus can cause this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosmia#List_of_causes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosmia#List_of_causes)

Examples of such viruses:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotropic_virus#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotropic_virus#Examples)

 _Influenza_

</comment><comment><USER38> This is what worries me most about being a mid 20's person during the pandemic.

I know its unlikely I'd die if I contracted but if it left me with significant long term health problems, that's what keeps me inside.

</comment><comment><USER39> I remeber I was always happy when I lose my sense of taste and smell because of flu, this will help eat more, I don't eat a lot, and my options are limited because of high sense of smell and taste,

<comment><USER40> That... doesn't sound typical of influenza, to put it mildly.

Blunted senses are the last thing on my mind with persistent nausea, dizziness, sweating buckets, and having to lean on the wall on the way to the kitchen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I know someone who is in the age range most vulnerable to covid-19 who always says she has no sense of smell, but my impression is it's a long-standing thing, possibly related to allergies or something.

</comment><comment><USER42> "some"

</comment><comment><USER43> Apparently that's a very small number, so that anecdote is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER44> Taste is highly related to smell, and smell is related to congestion symptoms that are typical for respiratory diseases.

Taste and smell loss happens with cold and flu as well, since they are also respiratory diseases: [1]

> The exact mechanism behind post-viral anosmia [smell/taste loss] isn't yet > understood, but it is clear that the various viruses that cause the common > cold, including flu, somehow damage and interfere with the olfactory > epithelium

Let's not get carried away with the Covid fear hysteria. This is just an example of a risk that already existed that was never on society's collective radar.

Moreover, it's only been a few weeks or months. It's entirely likely that the taste/smell loss is temporary.

[1] [https://www.fifthsense.org.uk/post-viral-olfactory- loss/](https://www.fifthsense.org.uk/post-viral-olfactory-loss/)

<comment><USER45> The article is literally talking about how loss of taste and smell can profoundly affect someone. It's the exact opposite of "fear hysteria." From the article:

> Out of 417 patients who suffered mild to moderate forms of Covid-19 in > Europe, 88% and 86% reported taste and smell dysfunctions, respectively, > according to a study published in April in the European Archives of Oto- > Rhino-Laryngology.

> Most patients said they couldn't taste or smell even after other symptoms > were gone. Preliminary data showed at least a quarter of people regained > their ability to taste and smell within two weeks of other symptoms > dissipating. The study said long-term data are needed to assess how long > this can last in people who didn't report an improvement.

Right here it is saying that about 25% of patients recover their senses of taste and smell. That means that probably 75% do not. The article spends the entire rest of its word count on explaining the terrible effects this has on those people.

Can you explain to me how that would be considered "hysteria" given how contagious this disease is? That just seems utterly dismissive of these peoples' suffering to me.

<comment><USER46> Thank you. As someone suffering with this disease long-term (75 days and counting) it's really nice to see someone unaffected speaking the voice of reason and compassion.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple finally admits Microsoft was right about tablets - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/19/21186500/apple-ipad-pro-vs-surface-pro-trackpad-mouse-inputs-history <comment><USER2> Classic case of execution over strategy.

I owned a surface pro 3 and wanted to love it, but god, it was just awful. Short battery life, crappy eMMC-based storage, weird foldable keyboard you couldn't use on your lap, display that wasn't so bright, rarely if ever came out of suspend properly, the pen required two different kinds of battery (!?) and perhaps my personal favorite, the display sometimes rotated sideways and wouldn't de-rotate.

Pretty sure the iPad will have _zero_ of these problems when it ships, and that makes all the difference, even if it's two years "late".

<comment><USER3> > Pretty sure the iPad will have zero of these problems when it ships, and > that makes all the difference, even if it's two years "late".

i personally find that a bold statement. my iPad lasted a whole year as an apartment-only tablet before just outright dying, whereas i have the original surface, a surface pro 4, and a surface laptop that have been heavily used inside and outside and still work flawlessly. and before it died, the software issues on the iPad were endless. on top of that, my macbook pro is useless due to mac os x updates, a dead network card, and a few broken keys (that broke all on their own through normal use, no drops).

personal experience is what it is, but you shouldn't make sweeping statements based upon it.

anyway, i find windows 10 to be the superior os. i run fantastic windows apps and a linux os all from the same computer rather seamlessly.

<comment><USER4> >anyway, i find windows 10 to be the superior os. Why would you compare iOS to Windows 10?

The better comparison would be Mac OS X (Microsoft I noticed couldn't _wait_ to get to 10, won't be long before they're calling it windows X I'm sure :))

I find Mac OS X to be the superior OS to Windows, since for yeeears I can run fantastic Mac apps and build and run fantastic Unix apps all on the same fantastic hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The things that keep me from liking tablets are the software-enforced limitations that _do not need to be there_.

Why, for instance, do apps _insist_ on controlling the size and layout of everything? There are so many times when a simple pinch-zoom, pane-resize or font-increase setting would make _everything_ easier. It's certainly possible to do, it's just that software _won't allow it_. That is a huge strike against productivity on tablets; I refuse to be fiddling away in the arbitrary regions of the screen that you have rationed for me, while you waste screen space on things like gigantic sidebars I rarely use.

Similarly, only the system gets to decide what "tasks" I may move between, or even see at once. That has _never_ made sense, and decades of bouncing between overlapping windows with complete freedom should not have been thrown out so easily. Worse still, one is usually punished in some way for having the audacity to switch tasks at all! When you switch back, the app might have been killed. If by some miracle the app wasn't killed, it's certain to at least lose your focus, fail to save the last thing you typed, or enter any number of other unsatisfying half-states (none of which are "exactly where I left off 10 seconds ago").

<comment><USER6> Yeah, this is why I hate tablets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like iPads are beaten on both sides of the device size spectrum.

iPads got their lease on life because of the tiny screen sizes of the original iPhone line. Once iPhones got bigger, iPad sales growth flatlined, and for good reason. They're the worst of both worlds - too clumsy of an interface (I'd say even with this new trackpad bolted on) for real work, and not pocketable.

When I want to do something trivial and immediately, the phone with a big screen does it just fine. When I need to do real work, a tablet interface is a miserable experience, so I use a laptop with all the normal tools an engineer needs.

I picked up an iPad Mini 2 and used it for a good year, but once the plus-size iPhones came out it went into the drawer and never came out.

<comment><USER8> I think you summed it up perfectly. I was an early adopter, but the iPad never worked for me. I'm more likely to crave a MacBook Pro I could put in my pocket than a constrained oversized iPhone with a big screen and a keyboard.

I recognize that the security story is more challenging with a Real OS, but so is the power and potential. I don't like where this is heading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Finally admits" sounds like clickbait to me. Apple likes to innovate. They often take a burn-the-boats approach. Eventually if customer preferences don't follow Apple's lead, Apple backpedals. Microsoft is pretty much the opposite. Then they meet somewhere in the middle. I've also seen this same pattern play out with iPhone and Android (big screens, for example.)

<comment><USER9> czzr shared this insightful article which makes roughly the same point, but much better: [https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/ipad-pro-gets-a- trackp...](https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/ipad-pro-gets-a- trackpad-a2d232689a97)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Surface Pro is PC trying to be a Tablet. iPad Pro is a Tablet with _additional_ capabilities to be use as a PC.

I dont see how one is right or one is wrong. It is a different take. Although I much prefer iPad Pro.

<comment><USER11> Have you used a surface? It's more of a production machine than a regular tablet will ever be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think Sidecar was the real admission that Microsoft was right, and it's more expensive and more limited than a detachable touch screen. If Apple made a Surface Book with macOS it would be superior to the iPad Pro in every way even if the software wasn't optimized for touch.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not convinced. Apple rethought how the pointer works in the context of the tablet. iPads have keyboard covers for a couple releases now and were always capable of using one - since the first version, which had a keyboard-cradle accessory. The trackpad is not a mouse replacement as it is on PCs, just like the pen is not one either (as it has always been with PCs)

<comment><USER14> The pointer that's being touted as so revolutionary... doesn't seem that different. Okay, it snaps to UI elements. But fundamentally, it still works essentially the same way as any other pointer, right?

<comment><USER15> Indeed -- as far as I can tell the changes are not behavioral, only aesthetic.

That said, they do look really nice, and are (IMO) some of the best-looking hover effects I've seen in years, so kudos to Apple on that! Microsoft can't even seem to get its hover-effect strategy aligned within built-in Windows 10 apps...

<comment><USER16> I can see it being incredibly frustrating in actual use though. If it's anything like how the Apple TV's remote works, I expect it's going to screen record as looking very intuitive, but in practice it's going to be all about inertia and how to break out of the current selection.

I personally absolutely hate this feeling. Tactile feedback is useful for things like knowing if you've drilled into a stud or just drywall... not for moving a cursor around screen.

QUICK EDIT: It's the same reason we hate scroll jacking. Let me do my inputs as it feels natural, don't have the app dictate how I should motion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As an iPad Pro user, I don't feel that it needs a trackpad. It needs better software (and better keyboard hardware — which is coming along with the trackpad, thankfully).

I want to be able to use it to type long-form essays and develop apps (it also needs an escape key!). I want a command line and full file system.

I think they are adding trackpad support not because the iPad inherently needs it, but because it helps their initiative of convergence between Mac and iPad apps [0].

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/mac- catalyst/](https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/)

<comment><USER18> Why do you want an iPad instead of a really thin laptop with a touch screen? Just wondering because what you're describing sounds like that.

<comment><USER17> Ah yes, life's biggest questions. Do we have free will? Is there an objective reality? Why have a tablet instead of a highly portable touch screen laptop?

Instead of answering that, I will just say that I am only suggesting improvements on systems the iPad already has. I want better versions of existing hardware accessories and more liberal App Store policies to allow for fully-fledged development environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Microsoft was absolutely not right about tablets. They were right about touch screen laptops.

</comment><comment><USER20> Anecdata, one of the devices I have been more happy with (for portability/usability/etc.) has been many, many years ago, the Compaq Concerto, i.e. basically a notebook with detachable keyboard and touch (with the specific pen only) screen.

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

Some more pictures here:

[https://www.ebay.it/itm/Vintage-Compaq- Concerto-2840A-Laptop...](https://www.ebay.it/itm/Vintage-Compaq- Concerto-2840A-Laptop-Tablet-Portable-Computer-1993-RR-/323987928035)

The detachable keyboard made it very comfortable to use when on a table as you could place the screen further from the keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER21> A much better take on this: [https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/ipad-pro- gets-a-trackp...](https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/ipad-pro-gets-a- trackpad-a2d232689a97)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's giving a decent laptop a somewhat passable tablet mode (Surface) vs giving a great tablet a passable laptop mode (iPad). Personally I'm banking on the latter winning out.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a software developer, I can use a Surface device (I even use a Surface Go). I can't as yet effectively use any iPad/Pro.

</comment><comment><USER24> Microsoft tried to convince people to try tablets in 2002? Wasn't Pen Windows introduced in early 90s?

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what Jobs would think if he saw Apple products as they are today.

<comment><USER26> I am a commited Apple user but every time someone asks this I always think of the time he staged a whole press event to announce...an iPod dock. A product that probably sold 100 units (or the apple equivalent) and sank never to be seen again.

The lesson isn't that he's some sort of idiot, just that he had iterations and flubs just like anyone else; his hit percentage was simply a bit higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Outside of the "cult of Mac", people aren't really convinced on a $1000 laptop-ish device, on which apps are only allowed to run after passing an anal probe from the app store review team.

Which is why Apple stopped reporting unit sales on devices

<comment><USER28> I for one am grateful for the extra scrutiny iOS apps get. I resent that desktop apps can basically reach into any part of my computer, take 20 seconds to close when I tell them to exit, prevent my computer from shutting down, hog all my resources when I'm not using them, actively steal focus if they decide, fail to run because of some "missing dependency", and do a half-assed job uninstalling themselves.

<comment><USER29> I completely agree, I want all apps on my platform (linux) to work like this, at the mercy of the rules of the operating system.

However, app review isn't a needed part of it, and I want to be the one in charge of the operating system, as I'm clearly not on iOS.</comment></comment></comment>


Members of US Military targeted by debt collectors 2x civilians: solution - <AUTHOR> https://www.civilizeit.com/military <comment><AUTHOR> Any questions on how this works?</comment>


Google Authenticator 2.0.1 fixes the bug of not displaying old accounts - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/09/07/google-authenticator-returns-to-the-ios-app-store-restoring-accounts-the-previous-version-removed/

<comment><USER2> Yep, accounts are back for me. Glad I didn't actually need any of those other accounts for the few days that I didn't have access...</comment>


Oracle's Ellison considers netbook market foray - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUKTRE5516AE20090602 <comment><USER2> Oof. From the article:

 _"I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun," said Ellison, who runs the world's third-largest software maker. "There will be computers that are fundamentally based on Java."_

My first reaction: the Java environment will attract more enterprise devs than consumer devs. These netbooks won't be popular with consumers.

My second reaction: enterprise netbooks? Sounds like a lot of money to be made, and the margins could be lifted by support contracts, bundling with expensive software, etc. Oracle netbooks as remote consoles for DBAs, for example.

<comment><USER3> And once all those corporate dudes have those JBooks around all the time, you have a market for consumer apps. Like when PC gaming established itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to finally see a visionary in charge of Sun.

<comment><USER5> Visionary? That's a nice way of putting it. I'm wondering what the hell's he smoking to give him this vision of Sun flogging the lowest of low end, low margin commodity PCs. How are they going to make any money and what good will it do for the positioning of the Sun brand?

<comment><USER6> Well for a start, they could really champion Java on them. If they won with that, that would be a fantastic move - and it makes quite a bit of sense.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense in what way? I don't see any special synergy between Java and netbooks, certainly nothing that needs championing by Sun. If you need Java on your netbook - and most people don't - it's there already.

<comment><USER6> It makes sense in terms of having a stable platform to deploy apps to. Java has worked pretty well on mobile phones.

Imagine a netbook which just runs a java O/S. Maybe it has a java app store with all the apps you could ever want, and a kick ass browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Actually a netbook package with just enough smarts to connect to Wifi, plus VPN + Sun Ray software, would be great at expanding their Sun Ray installed base. Sun Ray users who use them at home say everything is zippy even over 256kbps connections.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do either Sun or Oracle have the design know-how to pull this off?

I get the feeling they're making products that are as sexy as a boxy volvo. Reliable but... boring.

<comment><USER8> Not at all. The Sun netbooks will be beige, with purple corners!

And they will run on Java [http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/4841/4841.htm...](http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/4841/4841.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: My Olympics side project - LondonOlympicsBlog.co.uk - <AUTHOR> http://www.londonolympicsblog.co.uk

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

I have had this domain for a few years (since the announcement that the games would be in London) and I never had the time to setup and get writing myself so decided to build a sort of open blog that people can share to with Facebook and add an Instagram image.

At the very least it has given me a chance to dip my toe in the API waters of Instagram and Facebook and it was fun to make over a three week period.

Some constructive feedback would be welcome</comment>


Larry Ellison Will Step Down as CEO of Oracle, Will Remain as CTO - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/09/18/larry-ellison-will-step-down-as-ceo-of-oracle/ <comment><USER2> Interesting that they name Co-CEO's in Catz and Hurd. I wonder how that will work, especially given Hurd's "tough to work with" reputation.

Interestingly Ellison will be the CTO. This could be a shit show with 3 people trying to run the show!

I mean does anyone really expect Larry Ellison to start taking marching orders. Will be interesting to watch the short interest on this company!

I think the two headed CEO is what the street expected all along as Catz has been around for ever and alot of people thought that Hurd, the former HP CEO, was promised the CEO title when Ellison resigned.

It looks like they, Catz and Hurd, will split the running of day to day operations as Hurd gets sales, marketing and strategy reporting to him, while Catz will continue to have finance, legal and manufacturing.

Its down about a dollar after the close on about a third higher trading volume than normal. So it doesn't look like anyone is "spooked" by the news.

<comment><USER3> The thing that is weird to me is that Ellison is CTO. I don't really think he's a highly technical person, or is he?

<comment><USER4> Not to dwelve too far into Oracle hagiography but,

>During the 1970s, after a brief stint at Amdahl Corporation, Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation. His projects included a database for the CIA, which he named "Oracle". Ellison was inspired by a paper written by Edgar F. Codd on relational database systems called "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks".[10] In 1977, he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) with two partners and an investment of $2,000; $1,200 of the money was his.

It's really not clear from the first few hits off Google what his role was in _developing_ Oracle, the application, but he's not like, _untechnical_.

<comment><USER5> Relevant Quora question:

[http://www.quora.com/Was-Larry-Ellison-a-good- programmer](http://www.quora.com/Was-Larry-Ellison-a-good-programmer)

Also, apparently Bob Miner programmed the bulk of the original product and ran engineering, but the Quora link above says Miner considered Ellison a good programmer.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to read about Larry Ellison's personality and his management style, you should read - "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation; God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison". ([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181369.The_Difference_Bet...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181369.The_Difference_Between_God_and_Larry_Ellison_))

It's one of the best books written on him and the way he managed Oracle right from it's beginnings. He was damn good at selling things.

<comment><USER7> Very good book.

He will be revered, but he was behind some scandals back in the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not really sure what to say about this. I don't know Ellison, nor do I own Oracle stock, or have any particular interest in Oracle per-se. But nonetheless, I've always seen Ellison as an important character in our industry, and after reading a biography about him, I felt a sort of kinship with him based on some shared interests.

At any rate, it definitely feels like the "end of an era" in a sense. I got my start in this industry in the mid to late 90's when Oracle, IBM, Novell, Microsoft, Borland, etc. were duking it out for supremacy, and - for better or worse - you've never really been able to escape Oracle's shadow to some extent. And Ellison was Oracle, in so many ways.

Edit: It's been a while, but I think this[1] was the biography I read. I'll just say this: regardless of what you think of Ellison, he's an interesting character and reading about the history of Ellison / Oracle is quite fascinating.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison- Orac...](http://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison- Oracle/dp/0743225058/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411072380&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure that you want to be finding kinship with sociopaths.

<comment><USER8> I don't really buy that line of thinking. Nobody is perfect, and I don't see denying "a certain sense of kinship" with a fellow human being, which is based on certain shared interests, just because I might dislike or disapprove of other aspects of that person's character.

That said, I don't think I'd _like_ Larry Ellison if I knew him (although I could be wrong). I'm just saying that there are things about him where I can see some overlap in thinking and interests. It doesn't mean I want him sainted or anything. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm guessing he wants to spend more time wringing extortionate license fees out of his family?

</comment><comment><USER11> Demonstrating once again that tech companies really don't "get" succession planning :-) I'm kind of half joking, if you look at a bunch of 'old school' BigCorps, the progression is (CEO->Chairman, SVPx -> CEO, VPx -> SVPx) and then the Chairman of the board retires and the CEO takes on both roles Chairman and CEO, priming the pump for the next cycle.

Co-CEOs have so far been an experiment in disaster, something about not having an ultimate authority seems to really crimp organizations. I wish Oracle well but they have a lot of challenges to overcome, if I were a share holder I wouldn't be all that pleased with this arrangement as it seems to basically leave all the same people in place with all the same problems (Amazon/Google EC2/GCE, MySQL vs NoSQL vs expensive Oracle, Cheap Clusters with High Reliablity vs Expensive Servers, Etc.)

<comment><USER12> Larry Ellison may "get" more about running a Fortune 100 tech company than you give him credit for.

<comment><USER11> You misinterpret my comment. He is _masterful_ at running Oracle, the problem is he is mortal. Successions are all about building institutions that are _immortal_. Which is to say they continue to exist even as humans come and go. That is one of the key differences between a democracy and a dictatorship. In the latter when the dictator dies the country goes into civil war until another dictator arises, but in a democracy the 'people' in the system are constantly replaced by the country continues. Same is true for corporations. Technology companies tend to be driven more by one or two individuals who don't design an institution so much as they just run the business. I am fascinated that places like Ford and IBM have been as durable as they have been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone in The Verge's comment section noted that this Forbes list will now need to be updated:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/forbes- releases-2014-list-o...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/forbes- releases-2014-list-of-most-punchable-ceos,35694/)

</comment><comment><USER14> _The final Larry Ellison scorecard: Oracle stock is up 89,640% since he took the company public in March 1986._

[https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/512700128801464320](https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/512700128801464320)

</comment><comment><USER15> Co-CEOs? I only know one company that had co-CEOs, and that didn't work out well for them.

<comment><USER16> Yep, it's like Hurding Catz.

Ok I'll show myself out.

<comment><USER17> 120+ points, and who says HN has no sense of humor :)

<comment><USER18> hahah, apparently the people that down-voted my positive response to his comment. sheesh.

<comment><USER18> And the guy that downvoted that ^^

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are there any more details into why he's doing this?

<comment><USER20> Maybe it has something to do with him being 70?

<comment><USER21> Wow, I never knew that he is 70. I thought 40-something. But he looks really young. In this picture he is 69! [1]

[1] [http://www.channelweb.co.uk/IMG/834/272834/big- ellison.jpg](http://www.channelweb.co.uk/IMG/834/272834/big-ellison.jpg)

<comment><USER22> His face looks great. I think you can see his age in his arm skin.

<comment><USER23> Well he's obviously had some "work done". Which I think is great, why not? Money is surely not the problem, life's too short to look crap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Oracle's stock has already dropped 2.5%.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/18/oracle-stock- drops-2-5-on-n...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/18/oracle-stock-drops-2-5-on- news-that-larry-ellison-has-relinquished-his-ceo-title/)

</comment><comment><USER25> The end of an era for Oracle that existed as a software (licensing) company. I think that Ellison stepping in as the CTO is probably more important than him stepping down as the CEO.

This move will perhaps will lay the groundwork for the next tens of billions in revenue for Oracle, in cloud based software and infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER24> Will Oracle then become better? Maybe as good as Sun used to be?

just dreamin'...

<comment><USER26> I doubt this'll happen. I wish this would happen. But I sincerely doubt this will happen. Sun really felt like a once in a life time company. I think the best thing we can hope for is board room infighting will just kill Oracle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What is with the capitalization on the headline on Recode? I read it and thought, who is "Will Remain"?

It should be: Larry Ellison will step down as CEO of Oracle, will remain as CTO

Headline capitalization is pretty easy: Capitalize the first word, then any proper nouns. That's it.

<comment><USER28> It is correct according to most commonly used guidelines for headline capitalization. You were describing how to capitalize stuff in a paragraph, not a headline.

[http://www.grammarunderground.com/capitalization-of- headline...](http://www.grammarunderground.com/capitalization-of- headlines.html)

<comment><USER27> Well, I stand corrected. Dang.</comment></comment></comment>


As Bitcoin Bubble Loses Air, Frauds and Flaws Rise to Surface - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/technology/virtual-currency-regulation.html <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16313925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16313925)</comment>


Prgmr is down - <AUTHOR>

I'm on the west coast, Washington state. VPS provider prgmr is down for me. The main site at http://prgmr.com and also my server and web sites. Is it down for anyone else? <comment><AUTHOR> Aaaaand it's back up for me. Must have been a very temporary outage.

<comment><USER2> So don't post down messages.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Keep, an app that helps you love how you spend every dollar - <AUTHOR> http://m.trykeep.com

<comment><USER2> Based on my experience at least, YNAB (You Need A Budget -- [http://www.youneedabudget.com/](http://www.youneedabudget.com/)) is the best budgeting software out there. It's a lot more complex than this, and unlike something like Mint it does require you to manually enter transactions.

However, it is really the best interface I've found for setting a budget. Probably the best feature is that it can naturally incorporate overspending. If you set your grocery budget to $200 and you spend $250, YNAB isn't just like "yo, reduce your grocery spending." It remembers that you overspent by $50 and encourages you to incorporate that into next month's budget in a flexible way.

Unless you're a multimillionaire, you can probably benefit from using it. In fact, even if you are quite wealthy, plenty of celebrities have demonstrated repeatedly that it's still possible to go broke in just a few years.

<comment><USER3> My wife and I were discussing this a few weeks ago. If YNAB could automatically grab my bank transactions like Mint, I would be sold. I love their philosophy on budgeting.

<comment><USER4> The whole point of YNAB (Rule #1 of their program) is that you need to proactively allocate every dollar you have. Every dollar has a job, and then you need to manually enter when that dollar is doing its job so you feel when that money actually gets spent.

I tried for years to use Mint, but it's too passive. Too easy to ignore. With YNAB, every purchase goes in when we make the purchase, and I found it keeps us more honest about our budget estimates and also helps to curtail frivolous spending.

To each his own, of course.

<comment><USER5> To be most useful, YNAB should know my passive spending, and then harass me about all the dollars I am not reporting. Otherwise, I can just leak money and not talk about it.

<comment><USER6> I fully agree. It seems a little silly that if you have a busy period at work and forget to pay attention for a few weeks, that's just a black hole (short of going through credit card statements and trying to remember every cash purchase). This happens all the time with Mint, and I can just go back and categorize all the purchases that need doing so, with the only loss being that the cash purchases I forgot about show up as non-specific cash spending (through the initial ATM withdrawal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One trick I found really helped me curb thoughtless spending in the past was calculating the cost of purchases based not on the sticker price, but on the sticker price + whatever the compounded interest would be for the same amount of money on my mortgage. (At the time our interest rate was 5% with about 27.5 years left on our mortgage, so it effectively doubled the price of everything.) The thought was that if we spent that money vs. putting it on the mortgage, we were essentially locking those dollars in to being charged interest for the life of the loan. It doesn't take into account re-financing, etc., but it was a lot easier not to buy $10 smoothies vs. $5 ones. :-)

<comment><USER8> Thinking about interest and growth does help put prices in perspective. Using mortgage interest rates doesn't work as well these days, since they've fallen so much, but you can use the standard market growth rates instead: either 7% or 4% depending on whether you take inflation into account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm finding the terminology a little strange for this one..

"Helps you love how you spend every dollar"? While I get the gist of what you're saying, it makes my head hurt a little bit.

Am on Android (Moto G) and every time I tapped the goal amount text box, it requested me to "Rotate device to portrait" despite my portrait lock being turned on, so was unable to add a goal amount.

I like the idea of this app but not quite sure it works for me. I need more than a pretty picture to keep me motivated to save! :) Good luck with it though.

<comment><USER10> Agree completely, this current trend of slapping "love" and "beautiful" on every start up product is watering down the word a little bit. I love my family, not paying rent.

<comment><USER11> Simple.com's homepage used to say "Beautiful banking, handcrafted in Portland." <gag>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a good choice for a name. Google Keep has been around for a while and does something similar: organization.

<comment><USER13> Immediately what I thought of as well, I use Google Keep for everything notetaking / todo etc and would really have a hard time adopting this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love it! A big part of my financial philosophy is based on a similar thought exercise:

 _Before you make an impulsive decision, imagine a stranger walks up to you. In one hand, he has the thing you 're about to buy. In the other hand, he has the amount of money you are about to spend. He will give you one or the other for free with absolutely no catch. Which one do you take?_

Besides that, I like the "hold to add cash" interface and I like that it's a mobile web platform (although I hope an Android widget is in the works). Hopefully they can get their server problems ironed out soon.

<comment><USER15> Why do you like that it's a mobile web platform?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love the sentiment!

I'll try this out when I have more time later, but I think it's worth noting that, of course, saving is only part of the equation. There is so much you can (and should) do to reduce expenses outside of the mundane day-to-day, as well! For great advice on pursuing financial independence or betterment, much of which has changed my life and habits, see: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/) "Financial Freedom Through Badassity"

<comment><USER17> I read that blog yesterday as it was mentioned on a different thread. It seems most of his advice is don't buy anything you literally don't need to survive. What's the point of living if you can't enjoy your life? You'll be a rich corpse, who cares?

What am I missing?

<comment><USER16> I think the point is that your middle-class life is an "exploding volcano of wastefulness" and you can make a lot of decisions that reduce your expenses without sacrificing much, if any, quality of life. For example, living closer to work and riding a bike or walking instead of driving a car everywhere—makes you fitter, happier, and saves you cash.

Sure, he takes it to an extreme not all could stomach, but there is practical advice in there for almost anyone in my opinion.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, Mr. Mustache himself may carry it to extremes that most people wouldn't want. But it seems he himself and his family are actually happier than they were when they were spending more. Plus they're retired (or semi-retired) and they have no money worries.

I think the optimal spending for most people -- i.e., the amount of spending that would maximize happiness -- is far lower than the amount that most people actually spend (in large part b/c people work at jobs they don't love to earn money to buy stuff they don't need). Much of it is wasted on mindless luxury that people come to believe is necessary and that doesn't really increase happiness because of hedonic adaptation: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_adaptation) Here's Mr. Money Mustache's piece on hedonic adaptation: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/what-is-hedonic- ad...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/22/what-is-hedonic-adaptation- and-how-can-it-turn-you-into-a-sukka/)

<comment><USER19> And MMM considers himself to be fairly "non extreme" compared to other big names in the space(Early Retirement Extreme being the most prominent contrast...that guy was harrrrrdcore)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20>
        $ telnet m.trykeep.com 80
        Trying 22.214.171.124...
        telnet: connect to address 220.127.116.11: Connection refused
        telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

</comment><comment><USER21> I opened this on my iPad expecting to find an app store link at their m.trykeep.com. I did not find one, instead I found a web page that kept asking me to touch and interact with it, but that barely wanted to react. I had to tap and hold 7 times to get the first "example" to work, and then closed it and gave up after 5 attempts on the second.

I could not find it in the app store either, so is this a browser based solution? If so, I highly recommend getting the touch sensitivity worked out on chrome on the browser.

I do realize this may be load based from your servers getting hit and so if I remember I will try again later.

Also, I get the impression this might require requires server connectivity, if it does then you're excluding so many people without data plans.

I like the idea, just couldn't get the execution to actually work for me in a way I'd consider using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> We haven't built a native app just yet but we're thinking in that direction. If you have a chance to try it again open it up in safari or chrome on your phone. Thanks for being patient!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it's great. I love the simplicity and the UI. A lot of times we over complicate things. This is a great example of getting back to basics. I'd argue that this is not budgeting software, nor should it be. Instead, it's a way for users to stop and think about what they are buying and ask themselves if they really need to make the purchase.

I know someone who buys two drinks at Starbucks every day. To them, this was about $7/per day. No big deal. I quickly did the math and showed her the result, $2555 per year. Sometimes, perspective is a huge motivator.

Also, nice job on the design and web based app. I'm happy that I simply needed to navigate to a URL on my phone. I didn't have to install another app, grant permissions etc. etc..

Great work! Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER23> Pretty neat. I'm also working on a side project in the same vein. The key to improving spending behavior in my own household has been to focus on and evaluate decisions. [http://www.spendlight.com/](http://www.spendlight.com/)

My approach is a bit broader in that I find it useful to record both the good and bad decisions with a view toward improvement.

I also prompt users for a bit of self-evaluation. When you goof, you are asked something like "What could you have done without in order to stay within your limits?" When you do well, you are asked something like "What was the key to making wise choices today?"

I'm not a big fan of the input mechanism. It's novel and fun, but I'd bet that the fun wears out quickly.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've made something to track spending on a weekly basis. I've found that most budget apps are too heavy, and most run on a monthly cycle. I can easily calculate rough figures for fixed income and expenses, I just need something to track spending money. Doing a budget by week is much easier to track and plan, and makes it easier to answer the question "Can I afford this?". Anyway, here is the Android app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewoven...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewovens.weeklybudget)

And the mobile app: [https://budgetapp.azurewebsites.net/](https://budgetapp.azurewebsites.net/)

</comment><comment><USER25> The app is clever, but as somebody with long-time interest in personal finance, I feel the premise is a bit on the wrong side. Avoiding bad buys doesn't mean the same sum is now somehow free to spend. You need to _both_ avoid bad buys _and_ have a sane budget with money allocated for your needs and wants - which should come out of real money you earn, not imaginary money you "saved" when not buying what you didn't need anyway.

Otherwise it reminds me a joke about a man who brags to his wife that he saved money by running after the bus instead of taking it and paying the fare. The wife says - next time run after a taxi, you'd save more! Unfortunately, savings don't work exactly like that.

</comment><comment><USER26> I really really like it. I see the value and have signed up and added to my homescreen. Truly a great interface compared to typing out numbers.

Also I really want to turn this into an iOS app! There's some cool stuff you can do with it natively, like add a buzz + sound when you save a buck, which sure would feel satisfying (ever used the task management app Clear?). Let me know if you wanna go that way and I'd be happy to put a weekend towards it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, I'm glad to hear you've found value in Keep! We're thinking about making it native and will be sure to let you know if/when we do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A direct input would be nice. It took me five seconds to keep eight dollars by holding, but it could have taken only one second with direct input. Any particular reason that it's limited to this mechanic?

Also, it seems to be stuck on the eight dollar screen. It keeps asking me to hold to $8, but never shows me a new photo. This is the stock Note 3 browser.

EDIT: Now I can't even get it to register $3. Perhaps we are hugging the site too hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmmm... We've been optimizing for safari and chrome. Maybe give it a try in one of those?

<comment><USER27> Yup. Chrome worked well. Nice work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> FYI, it looks like the mobile site has some issues in IE on Windows Phone. The white text is a bit hard to read with the background image [1], and refreshing the page results in this [2]. Looking forward to trying it out though!

[1]: [http://imgur.com/vtp2PnZ](http://imgur.com/vtp2PnZ)

[2]: [http://imgur.com/3iEI4kw](http://imgur.com/3iEI4kw)

<comment><USER29> I also had the problem that when I selected an input box, the keyboard would open and the app would think that I had flipped the phone. It then showed me the black screen prompting me to flip it back which caused the browser to lose focus of the now nonexistant input box causing the keyboard to collapse again.

<comment><USER30> Thanks for the feedback, we'll push some fixes for the orientation bug tonight

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a cool idea. My bank recently introduced a similar feature in their mobile app. You can move a small amount of money from your current account to your savings account in a couple of clicks (no need to log in): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xjelPXqWo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12xjelPXqWo)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome video, thanks for sharing! Looks like we aren't the first ones to build something for saving in the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really like this idea for more than just money. I think having a habit like this to get rewarded to focus on long term goals over short term rewards would be awesome to have.

It will be interesting to see if they can create a reward system good enough to be effective.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think its very clever. I really like how your example takes me through the steps first, then asks to sign me up for an account.

Much better than asking to create an account first, then walk me through the app.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the feedback! As you use the app, please let us know if there is anything we could do to make it better for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> it's really annoying that you wont allow me to open m.trykeep.com on my desktop.. without even telling me why I can't .. simply redirecting to the not-mobile page where I was before is asking the end-user to go away, like I did

<comment><USER36> For anyone who doesn't want to pull out their phone, reduce the width of your browser to about the size of a smartphone and then click the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> On windows phone, keeping on holding opens a right-click menu and I cant go ahead.

</comment><comment><USER38> Do all of those services process emails w/ your online purchases?

</comment><comment><USER39> mint.com, while not really innovating...at all...anymore... is still pretty nice for tracking your various accounts, including investments and debts (student loans, etc)

<comment><USER40> The email address is @intuit.com, so I'm guessing it's related to mint.

<comment><USER41> [http://moments.intuitlabs.com/](http://moments.intuitlabs.com/)

You would be correct.

<comment><USER30> Yep, this is a side project that a couple of us are working on but it has no integrations with the Mint product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> nexus 4: goal amount: this will cost put cursor in field keyboard opens window registers as landscape due to width/height problem keyboard closes repeat.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a really neat piece of interaction design.

<comment><USER34> Thanks for the feedback! What about this works for you? What could be even better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> non-mobile link: [http://trykeep.com/](http://trykeep.com/)

</comment><comment><USER45> is the link dead?

<comment><USER34> It doesn't seem to be. Are you running into an error?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Wow. You've taken a key insight and created something that directly hits the emotions of your users. You're engaging their feelings, passions, and desires. It will be nice to see how your website, communications, and even your product evolves!</comment>


What's New in Bootstrap 4 - <AUTHOR> https://scotch.io/bar-talk/whats-new-in-bootstrap-4 <comment><USER2> I literally just asked myself that question yesterday but couldn't find any good information on it. Nice write-up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of everything in this article is taken from their blog posts, their new docs, looking through the source, and checking out the Bootstrap 4 pending Pull Request [1].

Really just wanted to test all the new features and see what was what with it. Decided to make some demos to compare some stuff too.

[1] [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/17021](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/17021)

<comment><USER3> What's the advantage of @media (min-width: 48em) { ... } over @media (min- width: @screen-sm-min) { ... }

is the only benefit the additional media query? @media (min-width: 34em) { ... }

But users could have already specified it in bootstrap 3 if they wanted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad they're supporting Bootstrap 3. The switch to Sass is unfortunate. I never had a problem with compile times and being able to pick and choose the bootstrap I needed in my own less build was really nice. I don't think I'll be using newer versions of Bootstrap. Once they stop supporting 3 I think I'll move on to a new CSS framework. I just think they shouldn't change builds like this on frameworks that are already widely used. I'm sure Sass developers were making use of Compass or other Sass frameworks if they needed to integrate the framework with their own builds.

<comment><USER5> I find it way easier to install less with node & npm, than it is to setup ruby & sass. If I'm developing with a "mean" stack, its kind of a nuisance to have to set up ruby instead of just using something node based.

None of the bootstrap stuff works with Angular out of the box anyways, and I always thought it was very verbose. Honestly all I like was the grid system anyways, so I don't see much need to upgrade.

<comment><USER6> Ruby's not required. The article doesn't mention Ruby but it mentions libsass (why Ruby is no longer required):

"This is great because Sass tends to be more favorable by front-end developers. It also compiles faster thanks to Libsass."

[https://github.com/sass/libsass](https://github.com/sass/libsass)

<comment><USER4> > This is great because Sass tends to be more favorable by front-end > developers

I don't understand what this mangled sentence means. How do they know what's favorable to front-end developers? Nobody asked me what I think. They did a valid random sample?

<comment><USER7> You know, they could always check relative watchers and other marks on GitHub for example.

Doesn't have to be an exact science. How do we know Knockout is less popular than Angular? And yet, we do.

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/less/less.js](https://github.com/less/less.js)

12k stars, yeah throw it out, it's done.

[https://github.com/sass/sass](https://github.com/sass/sass)

6k stars, definitely more popular, if less stars means more popular. Obviously more front-end developers love sass! The evidence has spoken.

<comment><USER7> I didn't speak for any of them, so the sarcasm doesn't apply to me. Actually I've only ever used LESS.

That said, don't be so quick to just what's popular just by the relative size of the numbers. I'd also check which had a headstart and by what margin.

A 3 year project with 12k stars for example is not necessarily more popular NOW than a 1 year project with 6k stars.

That's why I advocated for several metrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I will never be able to understand why the grid class names are abbreviated. It's borderline unreadable and it's one of the primary reasons I avoid bootstrap when I can. Foundation is much better in this regard class="large-6 columns" makes much more sense than class="col-lg-6".

This is a good article though. I've been wondering what changed in the new version.

<comment><USER9> Seriously? Col is too difficult to understand as an abbreviation for column?

<comment><USER8> It takes longer to parse. The same way "Wht r u talking abt" takes longer to parse than "What are you talking about". The former requires my brain to do several extra lookups before I arrive at the meaning. I would rather just type the extra characters for the words Column and Large.

<comment><USER10> After you've typed a thousand of these things your brain will just be doing a single lookup. From a newbie perspective, your opinion has merit but for long- term use it makes less sense.

<comment><USER11> Long term, making sure people use proper names for things is a great to make sure people are writing code for others to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "It seems though that if you need Internet Explorer 8 support, you'll have to stick to using Bootstrap 3."

I'm kind of surprised. No doubt some user bases have user bases running newer browsers, but with IE 8 still sitting at ~13% market share[1] I suspect this will prevent many people from using Bootstrap 4, including myself.

[1]: [https://www.google.com/search?q=ie8+market+share](https://www.google.com/search?q=ie8+market+share)

<comment><USER13> I don't know where Net Market Share is getting their data, but that's _way_ off compared to literally everyone else who's reporting. The tip-off for me was that they report all of Firefox+Chrome as ~10%. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers) \- the IE share reported on that site is being overestimated by at least 2.5x and more likely around 4x.

Or everyone else is getting it completely wrong, I guess.

<comment><USER14> I'm at a fraction of a percentage for IE 8 as of yesterday in a sampling of over 100,000 sessions. If the sample is from desktop only users, that numbers moves up.

That is still a large enough number to matter for a startup where those make or break growth & retention numbers matter. It would be insane to throw out 1% of your visitors while other employees are doing cartwheels in A/B testing for 2% improvements.

The general principle I follow is drop support if a platform no longer receives security updates. The second part of that is to continue to produce a simplified version of your site that should work on all browsers. This provides big benefits for disability access, low bandwidth users (which is all of the developing markets), and edge cases.

<comment><USER15> Probably depends on a site's audience. I know in the financial industry that an unfortunately large amount of people still use IE8 as many vendor websites require it (long live Active X). But I imagine the visitors to many B2C websites no longer use IE8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> chao- Flexbox and Sass-first is a nice surprise, but the switch to rems steals my attention. I know that backwards-compatibility goals kept them on px, but that has long been my one complaint with Bootstrap (as a regular user, not as that guy who _" would use it except [minor reason]"_).

<comment><USER16> I stayed away from Bootstrap 3 for that very reason in my front-end work.

I would keep my own REM _and_ %age-based "starter grids" (1, 3, 4, 6 and 12 column grids), along with a more simplistic <!--[if IE ]> pixel-based grid (IE = rounding problems), on a USB stick which I would carry around from project to project - allowing me to quickly mobilize from site wireframe to initial mockup with a very short turnaround. For anyone who wants to waste the setup time that I did, I used calculations by-hand along with the "Responsive Grid Calculator"[0]

The other thing selling me over is the _opt-in_ flexbox support as well. If your client has _only one_ big user who is on IE8, and this includes more non- tech companies than I'd like to acknowledge, you will undoubtedly have to support IE as well.

[0][http://www.responsivegridsystem.com/calculator/](http://www.responsivegridsystem.com/calculator/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Thanks for the post! very useful

</comment><comment><USER18> So, much ado about nothing

<comment><USER19> Actually, there's a lot of stuff in there that I'm going to find useful. The flexbox integration is great, and hopefully will lead to wider adoption of flexbox in general. Cards are something I've had to implement myself, and the core one looks much nicer.

Perhaps it's not going to be useful for you, but for me, I'm grateful for all the work put in by those involved in this open source project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously I love that they added cards and dropped Panels and Wells. I used to have to create something like cards on nearly every project and used Panels/Wells maybe once.

<comment><USER20> Agreed! What I like about Bootstrap's development is giving people the flexibility to jump into something new like panels/well & then look for other plug-ins/hacks to customize the experience. Once those trends become more mainstream, they do us all a favor and incorporate them more cleanly. Cards are such a natural extension for a responsive layout.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


1 Year development plan for Straight, a Bitcoin payment processor - <AUTHOR> http://straight.romansnitko.com/1yeardevplan.html

<comment><USER2> While I understand well how Bitcoin works, I do not understand what are practical ramifications of going with Straight instead of Bitpay.

Selling BTC manually on some exchange? Some AML/KML stuff?

<comment><USER3> _Selling BTC manually on some exchange?_

Yeah, Straight exposes the merchant to a lot of currency risk. It's probably only appropriate for merchants who also want to invest in BTC.</comment></comment>


Firefox 3.0: 11,000 Bugs Fixed, and Counting - <AUTHOR> http://www.crn.com/software/203102260 <comment><USER2> Have you ever talked to normal people about software bugs? Its kind of funny. They think all the known bugs in software are fixed its shipped.

</comment><comment><USER3> Still on 1.5. Never should have upgraded that far.

<comment><USER4> haha... me too.

<comment><USER5> Something else might suit you guys better than stale versions. Konqueror, for example.

<comment><USER3> "Stale". I have the newest version at work. It blows. I refuse to upgrade to an inferior product. Keep downmodding me, though, if it makes you happy.

<comment><USER5> I understand you don't like the newer versions. That's why I suggested you try other browsers. Using a browser that doesn't get bug fixes, standards updates and security patches is bad for you and the internet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: I Love You - <AUTHOR> Ive been a controversial member of this community for a loong time, here daily...
I fn love all of you.
I hope we can collectively build something that actually "make the world a better place"
((And I really want to encourage all the yipper-snappers)) <comment><USER2> HN is great, but the thanks must surely go to the moderators. Not sure of their names, but surely something along the lines of Sysiphus and Hercules. Many thanks for your diligence and judgment.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Youve made me smarter more curious more ambitious and a better human.

Its the most healthy nerd community that i am aware of [citations needed]

But as @dang can attest - this forum is digital mental health.</comment>


Ask HN: Review our iPhone App - quiQR - <AUTHOR>

quiQR is a real-time QR code scanner and creator for the iPhone.  Try it out and let us know if you have any feedback. Thanks
http://bit.ly/quiQR
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Do you see a red pill or a blue pill? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3018215/Facebook-says-world-ILLUSION-one-day-live-Matrix-like-reality.html

<comment><USER2> On the aforementioned image, on none of my monitors do the pills look anything except an identical shade of grey.</comment>