Startups, please write better emails - <AUTHOR> http://i.mhj.tc/TzcPze <comment><USER2> People don't write bad emails because they don't care. They really do care, but the emails that come from startups are often written with a mixture of fear of being perceived as spam, and a lack of understanding of how to connect with people.

Before I started an email startup, I would probably have written the same types of emails. It's amazing that once you start to focus on something, you notice the little things.

I taught a class a few weekends ago on how to write better emails (slides: [https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will- rea...](https://speakerdeck.com/sudonim/write-emails-people-will-read) ). I'm happy to help anyone (for free) who wants to do things better than they are now. Contact info is in my profile.

<comment><USER3> Great deck! Out of curiosity, one of your slides seems to say that plain text emails perform better than HTML (i.e. fancy) emails:

 _Plain text: $17,500, Fancy: $4,300._

A bunch of replies in this thread have people saying HTML emails perform better than plain text ones:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4856529>

Am I reading any of this data incorrectly? Is this a case where the answer really is, "it depends"? Or is there truly one format that is better than the other?

<comment><USER2> Hey Mike,

Right now my position is that for the effort, you're better off writing good content than worrying about your template.

We've seen really strong performance from simple formatting (bold, italics) where the focus is on building a relationship with the user:

"Hi, I just saw you signed up and wanted to help you get started". This is meant to feel hand-written.

I saw that thread and rather than make unsubstantiated claims in response, I want to get a better understanding of _when_ you should use a highly-styled layout and gather some data.

Many of our customers like to use our "light" layout ( [https://raw.github.com/customerio/skins/master/Light/light_s...](https://raw.github.com/customerio/skins/master/Light/light_screenshot.png)) for transactional emails and put their logo up top. There's a bit of styling, but it is really subtle.

Multi-column in my opinion is way out. It's a mess on mobile, and you probably shouldn't do it. A great example of a nice single-column, styled email is campaign monitor's newsletter.

[http://campmon.createsend.com/t/ViewEmailArchive/y/78AABCA56...](http://campmon.createsend.com/t/ViewEmailArchive/y/78AABCA56BB82CF8/C67FD2F38AC4859C/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish programmers would also follow this advice when creating their GitHub repositories and project sites because they can suffer the very same problem.

It's pretty often I hear about a library or project, hit its homepage, and I _can't figure out what the heck it even is_ without digging around.

The magic phrase, as used in this article, is "[thing] is [describe thing]". Tell me the name of your thing and what it _is_. Once you've got that paragraph out of the way, you can go to town!

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agreed. Like pointed above by venus, the "best for" format may annoy some people and is not necessary in all cases. Your more generic example works as a better template.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slightly off topic: the introduction the author recommends using, "(name) is the best (product category)", was slightly annoying a couple years ago when I first heard it and is now just a full-blown obnoxious cliché. Whenever I hear a startup type guy talking about how their product is "the best" blah, I automatically append "according to me". You may as well just say "my favourite".

Startups, please don't introduce your company as "(My company) is the best (what we do)" - that's for the market to decide, actually, and for you to just claim it up front is presumptuous, at best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Venus. No I don't recommend that across the board. I did use "X is the best Y" 2 out of 5 times in the examples (both are directly from their value props on the site or on Twitter bio). Personally, I don't find it annoying anymore but I do agree that it is devalued. Do I believe they are the best X for Y? Of course not. Maybe I'm more lenient since think of it more in terms of vision and ambition.

<comment><USER5> I'm all for vision and ambition but there's a difference between aspiring to be the best and claiming to be it already! One is a laudable goal; the other comes across as wishful thinking.

Imagine if you opened a new restaurant and on day one your sign proclaimed it as offering the best food in the world. Or a tiny little brand new startup furniture shop, "X furniture is the best furniture for your home or office in the whole world". Can you imagine the utter ridicule such a claim would invite? Why is a software startup any different?

Claim to be the easiest to use, most elegant, most cost effective, fine. There's nothing wrong with selling your strong points. But just going for broke and all-out claiming to be "the best"? Maybe I'm just a cynic but I imagine some little kid putting on a superman costume and claiming they're the strongest man in the world. Sure you are kiddo!

<comment><AUTHOR> I come from a marketing background, so I guess I'm both numb to and guilty of that kind of text. But I don't see how "most elegant" or other superlatives are different from "best for X" though. Both are equally difficult to prove, both may be completely subjective and contingent.

I like the kid in the superman costume analogy for startups and big ambitions. I'd cheer him on. If he believes it he'll try to act the part, so the more I'll be inclined to believe him, too (though I might stop him from trying to halt a truck).

<comment><USER5> > I don't see how "most elegant" or other superlatives are different from > "best for X"

I've already argued about this way too much but let me give you an example : P

If I asked you what are your strengths, what distinguishes you as a person, what would you say?

Now if you're like a normal person, reasonably modest and yet confident of their merits, you might say you're an ambitious person who's serious about their goals but knows how to have fun, you're an excellent communicator and listener, you're a good friend and you bring a genuine passion to everything you do.

You'd come across as a really cool guy.

Now imagine if you just crossed your arms, assumed a smug grin, and said, "well, I'm the best".

What do you think people would think of you if you did that? Well I don't know about you but I'd grin and nod and think "this guy is a fuckin' douchebag".

I'm not trying to say I think every marketer who ever wrote "X is the best Y" is a douchebag; I'm saying that claiming to be "the best" is a very, very big claim. Coming from a giant of software it would be questionable; coming from some tiny unknown startup it is simply laughable.

Stick to pointing out your merits, strengths and focuses. Don't make a claim to be all-categories, all-uses, undisputed best thing in the world. You are almost certainly not, and to this engineer, it raises questions about what kind of person would even make such a ludicrous boast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He reckons a sentence like "Learnist is the mobile product for curating and following complete learning experience" is worth adding to an email? Good grief! I actually have _less_ idea of what it is than I did before I read that, and I've never even heard of it. If you're keeping track, that's _negative knowledge_. No, I didn't know that was possible either. You live and learn.

Seriously, though: if you have a business, and you can't explain what it's about without making people's brains bleed, perhaps you should go work for Google instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm keeping track. Thanks for the feedback - obviously not a good description for everyone. Would have worked for me, though.

Maybe I should've stayed at Google then? :)

<comment><USER6> My suggestion (which is worth exactly what you paid for it) is this: find someone who has no contact with the IT world beyond, _maybe_ , a passing familiarity with mobile phone apps and Google Mail. Tell them you want a one- sentence description of your own business. Give them as much information as they think they need, explaining everything in sufficient detail so they feel they understand it. Then ask them for their one sentence. Write it down. Do this a bunch of times. Finally, take all the collected sentences to someone who does understand IT but knows nothing of your business, and get them to condense them all into a final description.

I strongly suspect the result will be an improvement!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great suggestion. It will certainly be an improvement. Just explaining it to a wide variety of people can help your thinking about it. If you get outsiders to describe it for you, even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It isn't just emails in particular. Think for a moment about some fancy sites you've come across - say a startup advertising their service/product. How many times after being fed a plate full of bells and whistles, you still don't know what they _actually_ do? It tells you how wonderful their product is without telling you exactly what is that product.

But this does make sense, because if they put things in plain words most of them will be "This is another social platform", or "this is another cloud service", "another image processing tool", "another education software". That doesn't sound very attractive, and they're well aware of it. The trick is to first convince that this is something wonderful, _then_ subconsciously people will perceive it as something different from all existing services - and so willing to try it out.

However, most users are getting increasingly sophisticated and skeptical, and this sensible strategy sometimes backfires.

</comment><comment><USER8> Everyone, please write better emails. Provide me with a single, clear call-to- action (aka next step) so that I "level up" and become more awesome. Side effect: I'll use your product and learn about your company.

Remember Kathy Sierra's advice: Don't buy this because we kick ass, buy this because we want YOU to kick ass.

[http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/06/...](http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/06/buythis.jpg)

<comment><USER2> I saw Kathy Sierra speak at BoS 2012. After her talk, we wrote on our wall in the office as a constant reminder our mission is to: "Help our customers be badass at emailing their users".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Copyrighting isn't easy, much the same as writing isn't easy. There's an inherently different mindset than most technical people are used to: putting yourself in your target audiences shoes and trying to fulfill their wants/needs/questions.

Writing better emails comes with practice and some good ol' analytics checking on user engagement. Also, the title is as important as a blog title. Study up on words that tend to drive engagement and curiosity.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well put. There are many services, like Mailchimp, that allow you to send a portion of your messages before sending out all your invites (basically an A/B test before unleashing ALL your email with one untested subject line). I don't think startups always think through their open rates to the extent they should.

The body copy is a whole different story, but you nailed that in your post.

<comment><AUTHOR> A/B testing is a great thing to do with email. On the point of Mailchimp, they also allow you edit the little preview text box - this is what shows as the preview snippet in many email programs and is a good place to remind the recipient what's going on (very briefly, though).

<comment><USER10> Cool, thanks. I actually don't use the service as of now, but I've been over some of the features. I will probably use that service or a similar one in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This that annoys me the most - it seems a few startups don't know to include unsubscribe links in their emails any more. Two examples from just this morning:

<http://cl.ly/image/0R101l3O101Y>

<http://cl.ly/image/34020b0m3n1m>

Now yes, with ShiftEdit they tell me I can delete my account, and probably in both cases I could email them asking to unsubscribe me - but it's an extra effort I shouldn't need.

I have another service (to be honest I've blocked the name from my brain at the moment) - it was some spammy twitter app that continues to send me emails via a personal account rather than the company - with no way to switch them off - I've emailed them a couple of times asking them to stop, but they don't - so I just mark them as junk now.

</comment><comment><USER12> One thing which worked very well for me is focusing only on one thing per email. Startups always have this conflict of trying not to spam their users too much but still making sure they know everything. The outcome is that every time they do send emails they try to include e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in it. I struggled with it a lot as well, at one point we decided to dedicate each email to one new small feature, asking for a certain feedback, etc. Even when we released a new version we focused only on one thing. I think users find it much easier to read and digest. It also increases the chances your users will understand what you want them to do :)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've definitely experienced this on the receiving end, both with startups and new products, but also with random mailing lists that only send out updates sporadically.

A good rule of thumb for ANY mass email communication is to lead with a short explanation of why they're receiving the email: "Thanks for signing up for updates from Newproduct, a new platform for knitters to connect online."

Remind them 1) they signed up, 2) what they signed up for (updates), and 3) who you are (descriptively).

</comment><comment><USER14> Incredible. This is exactly what I thought when that Cue email popped into my inbox this morning. "What the hell is this?"

<comment><AUTHOR> It was that email that prompted the blog post. For the Cue team's credit, they got in touch afterwards and we exchanged a couple of emails about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> PeoplePerHour I'm looking at you! Your emails are awful, border on offensive, and I can't reply to them. Finally unsubscribed, which means I'll probably forget about their service /even though I actually like it/.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great insights. Need more of that!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought the exact same thing the other day. I have deleted many startup emails recently, only because I didn't know wtf they were all about, and didn't want to sign up just to find out. Example: "Startup X. It was a long way bla bla but.. We have finally released!", like I had been waiting for them all this time.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the key thing: "like I had been waiting for them". No, we haven't been waiting for you, sorry. So please remind me what it was you do again?</comment></comment>


The Importance of Memorisation (mp3) - <AUTHOR> http://kut.org/post/importance-memorization <comment><AUTHOR> podcast by Art Markman and Bob Duke (both PhD) on reasons why long term memorisation of facts is important.</comment>


Does Your Chair Have Your Back? - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903374004576582673310637998.html?google_editors_picks=true <comment><USER2> See also this earlier discussion about attempting to find an inexpensive alternative to the Aeron: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=585693> . About half the commenters appear to say, "There is no cheap alternative." I'm using a Herman Miller Embody right now and keep meaning to post a long review of it, but I haven't yet.

See also: [http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/how-to- choos...](http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/how-to-choose-an- office-chair/245794)</comment>


Idea: sudo goggles (pam module) - <AUTHOR>

Prevent sleepy fingers from breaking production.
blah@core $ sudo \rm -rf .*
110 - 55: 55
4 * 23: 92
41 - 59: -23
Sorry, you need either a pillow or a calculator.
Connection to core.internal closed.
laptop:~ blah$ <comment><USER2> laptop:~ blah$ sudo</comment>


Luma (YC W12) acquired by Facebook and integrated into Instagram video - <AUTHOR> http://luma.io/ <comment><USER2> What did they do exactly? Reading the site was unhelpful.

<comment><USER3> Video capturing app with filters and some social media components. They also had fantastic video stabilization. I'm guessing they're what's powering Instagram's video functionality.

<comment><USER4> It's a shame I hadn't heard of it until they pulled it out of the app store, are there any similar apps out there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is amazing! When I first saw Luma, I thought it was technology too early for common person/user. But integrating it with Instagram's existing user base, everyone can start reaping the benefits. Good job guys!

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, just deleted Luma.

What a sad thing. Last thing I want is to route my vids through FB...

</comment><comment><USER7> This just caused me to look back at a few videos I recorded playing around with Luma. They really are fantastic. It looks like I'm filming with a steady cam, flying alongside my running kid.

Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats to the Luma team - very useful stabilization that I've demo'd to others.

</comment><comment><USER9> Congrats - some really impressive technology from a small team.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congrats, awesome tech from talented and nice guys!

</comment><comment><USER11> Congrats guys!

<comment><USER12> The technology is fantastic, love how good the videos come out. Really looking forward to what Instagram does with it. Congrats to the brothers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice work to the brothers Karpenko! I always knew luma.io was going to have a happy ending.

</comment><comment><USER14> When they say "acquired by Instagram", does Instagram have the authority to do that, or does it just mean "acquired by Facebook to be used for Instagram"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Any detail on the numbers?</comment>


David Cameron's encryption ban is just as ignorant as Emerson's Fox News gaffe - <AUTHOR> http://www.information-age.com/industry/uk-industry/123458853/whos-idiot-now-prime-minister-david-camerons-encryption-ban-just-ignorant-steve-emersons-fox-news

<comment><USER2> And what does Cameron plan to do with people who flout his encryption ban, punish like they do in Saudi Arabia?</comment>


Three Groovy String methods that will make your life Groovier - <AUTHOR> https://e.printstacktrace.blog/groovy-string-methods-that-will-make-your-life-groovier/ <comment><USER2> Some of these I wouldn't want to use outside of a one-off scripting environment.

The double edged sword of Groovy is that on the one hand the kitchen sink approach means just about anything you want to do is built in. But the downside is, achieving a comprehensive knowledge of all its capabilities is almost impossible, and relying on everyone in your team understanding the magic inherent in these methods generates huge amounts of quirky bugs, wasted time and frustration.

I do like Groovy a lot, but I prefer to stick to its core for these reasons and rarely use the exotic enhancements.</comment>


The Tor Project Defends the Human Rights Racists Oppose - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-project-defends-human-rights-racists-oppose <comment><USER2> > But we can't build free and open source tools that protect journalists, > human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world if we also > control who uses those tools. Tor is designed to defend human rights and > privacy by preventing anyone from censoring things, even us.

I feel like this is what cloudflare should have said. I understand they changed their mind after TDS claimed CloudFlare supported them - but based on the internal memos it seemed to be more of a "I was grumpy and they're jerks" decision.

The major problem with that being that once you make one decision like that - even if you're well-intentioned, the next person that comes after you might do it to the wrong people.

Maybe letting racists have a platform isn't great, but it's better than hand- by-hand justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host.

<comment><USER3> > Maybe letting racists have a platform [is] better than hand-by-hand > justification of what is and isn't "appropriate" to host.

Or, maybe it's not? I don't see that that follows. Yes, there's the slippery slope argument that someday a host could make a decision we don't agree with. But (1) hosts do that anyway, all the time, and (2) if _fucking white power racism_ isn't on solid, level ground above the slope, then what else could be?

The solution to private sector choice about hosting and distribution of controversial content can't be a blanket protection for all speech. The first amendment is about public law, because of the reach of the government and the potential damage from abuse.

The solution in the end really can only be a case-by-case determination, individually by every host, as to what they are comfortable seeing on their systems. Which is exactly what we have here, even if CloudFlare's internal process was exposed as messier than we'd like to see.

<comment><USER4> Or, the internet has matured enough that we consider it a public utility and seriously form legislation that protects peoples' constitutional rights even on the internet. I literally don't see how anything TDS says is physically harming anyone. I've never been to the site, I don't give them my traffic, money, anything.. If you don't like them and find them so vile it's causing you mental stress then just navigate away and ignore the vile scum.

<comment><USER5> Works for well-adjusted, rational adults (hopefully). Not so much for children. It's moral pornography.

The idea that public utilities (e.g. public broadcast spectrums) must conform to a negotiated standard of decency is well-established even at the court level. It wouldn't necessarily be protected free speech, even if the publically-accessible internet were a public utility (which it isn't), especially if private alternatives exist (which they do, e.g. tor).

<comment><USER4> This is why well adjusted rational adults are responsible for raising children. You teach a child what is right and what is wrong and then hope beyond all else that when they set out on their own you've given them a strong moral compass. You don't neglect the responsibility and blame the government for not censoring all the bad things on the internet from them when they screw up later in adulthood. Are you really arguing society should be 100% childproof? We can't put anything on the internet that _someone_ might find objectionable to a child.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cloudflare lost in the long run. Especially as a host of DDoS protections, which many websites with significant opposition and threats require. Next time a controversial site decides to find itself DDoS protection, I hope it will think twice before going to cloudflare. Because how will you tell if that when the next internet shitstorm comes and focus on your website, cloudflare will stand there for you. Internet is all about freedom of speech. Every one will have his stage, with or without your help. I would've somewhat tolerated cloudflare if they had never hosted TDS in the first place and just disagreed to do that. But this is just a disgusting populist U turn, led by the current internet trend.

I would write a disclaimer about how I think TDS is horrible, but I honestly have never opened that website once, and I feel like the need to apologize for defending freedom of speech is absurd.

<comment><USER7> I read up on this a little yesterday. What do you think about this site getting dropped from GoDaddy, then Google for T.O.S. violations?

I could just be ill informed, but it seemed like Cloudflare could have simply just done the exact same thing quietly. But instead they at first did nothing, after some criticism in the press did the CEO wake up in a bad mood to remove their protection. His blog and email read almost noble, then I caught up on the days prior and it made me think much less of them as a company, him as a leader.

Feels like you as a company should be able to do business with whoever you want, and will face judgment for it in the public eye, I have no issue with that. I have no idea where I'm going with this so I will stop now.

<comment><USER8> > What do you think about this site getting dropped from GoDaddy, then Google > for T.O.S. violations?

I think it's a little disturbing. On the one hand, I vehemently disagree with TDS and what they are saying. On the other, what if the political tide turns against my religion and my church's website is knocked off the web for being "anti-LGBT"?

I personally would prefer if domain registrars remained politically neutral. I'm hoping this is just an extreme case and that they won't do it on a wide- scale in the future.

<comment><USER9> > what if the political tide turns against my religion and my church's website > is knocked off the web for being "anti-LGBT"?

Yes, what then? Shall we solve that problem when we have it?

Because you can fantasize and theorize until the cows come home about how your religion and your church will be knocked off the web but in the meantime that never happened and it very likely never will and if and when it does you will find a lot of voices sympathetic to your cause, including mine.

Or are we somehow beyond being able to evaluate things on merit?

> I'm hoping this is just an extreme case and that they won't do it on a wide- > scale in the future.

Yes, it is an extreme case. And no, it most likely - you can't deal in absolutes - won't be done on a wide scale in the future.

<comment><USER10> Slippery slopes are alive and well, particularly in this domain. Go back to 2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be getting sued for not catering gay weddings.

It is entirely right and proper to consider the likely future implications of an act before you decide it's a good idea. Even if it feels really good to stick it to $OUTGROUP just this one time.

<comment><USER9> > Go back to 2006 or so and tell them that in a decade, bakeries would be > getting sued for not catering gay weddings.

Why would I do that? I'm fine with bakeries getting sued for not catering gay weddings, that's one of the advantages of living in a normal society: the ability to petition the courts to seek redress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a brilliant response. We must value Privacy and Security above all else. Once we open the door to oppress a group's voice we unanimously despise: we allow our own voices to be oppresssd in the future.

<comment><USER12> Slippery slope fallacies are not a real problem.

You deal with the problem at hand now, not some problem in the far distant future.

Greedy algorithms exist and solve plenty of problems just fine.

<comment><USER13> Why doesn't this also apply the other way?

White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only talk. The few which actually did kill somebody, like the car driver, got arrested. So why not let the police deal with the problem at hand instead of talking about how the white supremacists will kill many in the distant future.

Why is it not a slippery slope to say that allowing marches today will lead to genocides tomorrow?

<comment><USER9> > White supremacists talk about killing jews and blacks, but so far it's only > talk.

Do yourself a favor and open a history book. Regions of interest: Germany, roughly 1932-1945, South Africa, 1948-1991.

<comment><USER13> I was just applying their argument against their own logic.

The world is not what it was 70 years ago.

Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes. The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s, even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be blocked at many levels.

<comment><USER9> > The world is not what it was 70 years ago.

Indeed, it is worse in many respects, better in others.

For instance: 70 years ago it took a couple of days to organize something involving ten thousand people. Now you can do that in 10 minutes with a social media post in the right spot.

> Today when a genocide happens somewhere on Earth the UN quickly intervenes.

You do realize that the largest participant in such peacekeeping missions has decided to abdicate?

> The US is not some weak-ass state like Germany was in the 30s

You are significantly under-estimating the strength of pre-war Germany in spite of having been beaten in World War I. In fact, you could easily argue that it was specifically this kind of under-estimation that directly led to World War II.

> even if Trump would order some sort of genocide today it would quickly be > blocked at many levels.

It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing violence on both sides.

One of my theories about why the GOP does not want to throw Trump out is that they are - rightfully - scared of what kind of backlash that will cause and that they hope against hope that they will be voted out in 2018 so others will be seen as responsible for throwing the lit fuse into the armory.

<comment><USER13> > It would never play out like that. Trump is not going to order some sort of > genocide directly. He'll simply stand aside while others do the dirty work > and he'll lament at how terrible it is that they are resisting causing > violence on both sides.

I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen. That would require the police, national guard, army to stand down and allow it.

So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do. We need to fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest anyone actually planning such thing, but they are not in the category of genocide, especially because in a genocide the killers walk away with nothing happening to them (because they are protected by the state), but in a terrorist attack you either die or are quickly caught.

<comment><USER9> > I think you'll agree that a systematic genocide like the ones you mention > where you go into a city and round people up cannot happen.

Oh, but we already have a small precursor to that, the ICE raids on immigrants. There will always be people willing to ride the trains and to man the guard towers, good Christians too.

Let's hope it does not go further than it has already done.

> So we are left with small scale attacks, the kind terrorists do.

I'm not sure of that. The whole 'unite the right' movement is about connecting all the little dots into a wave large enough that it would be hard to put down without the national guard or the army stepping in, who could very well have sympathizers in their own ranks.

> We need to fight and guard against those, infiltrate the cells and arrest > anyone actually planning such thing, but they are not in the category of > genocide.

Yes, that is _exactly_ what they said in 1933 about Hitler and his merry band of followers.

And then in 1934 the tables were turned and suddenly there was no way back, from that point forward WWII was inevitable.

Edit: I've taken some time to find this article in Der Spiegel, I read it long ago and I found it to be quite informative about Hitlers rise to power:

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-fuehrer- myth...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-fuehrer-myth-how- hitler-won-over-the-german-people-a-531909.html)

edit2: On another note, please note that Germany at the time was _the_ superpower in Europe.

<comment><USER13> I don't think this article gives weight to your fears.

It says he had total control over the media, and that he had huge approval. Neither is true today. The last three presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump), were around 60% (excluding 9/11) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_app...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_approval_rating)

Also, what would be the unifying sentiment that the white supremacists would unite the whole country around, like this:

> For the vast majority of Germans, the restoration of national pride and > military strength, the overthrowing of the Versailles Treaty and the > expansion of the Reich to incorporate ethnic Germans from Austria and the > Sudetenland were goals in themselves

<comment><USER14> > It says he had total control over the media, and that he had huge approval. > Neither is true today.

This was not the case when Hitler first became Chancellor or, even moreso, when his faction first took undisputed control of the Nazi Party.

It was true sometime _after_ he'd done both, and used the propaganda power (and coercive power) of both the state and party to secure his hold on the public. (One clear difference, whatever parallels there might be, is that Trump only really started the fight for undisputed control of the GOP after becoming President; that makes the internal fight much more visible to outsiders, but also wants _if_ he wins it, he won't have as many other barriers to cross to implement his plans as Hitler did after taking over the Nazis.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 In my opinion, it's telling that the Tor Project has decided to post about this.

It's an open secret -- in other words, not even a secret -- that Tor and various other darknet and overlay networks contain, among other kinds of material, content that has been driven underground because of the risks it presents to its promulgators on the aboveground net. Depictions of actual child sex abuse, one of the most widely condemned sorts of material in a way that's nearly universal across societies, has been present on Tor-reachable hidden services for years, and the Tor Project seldom writes about this; it's simply accepted as a risk of the style of technology, much to the chagrin and moral unease of people everwhere.

Clearly they are addressing a recent development about a particular website, with relevance to the United States and its current struggle that was brought to forefront in the past week. The Project sought to publicize their stance to leave no doubts, but was this not something that ought to have been abundantly clear to a sufficiently objective observer? Doesn't the fact that a US nonprofit tending to a piece of networking software decides to weigh in on the matter of a single hidden service currently in the spotlight reveal something troubling about the pressures of public opinion in the US today?

</comment><comment><USER15> It is a poor reflection on tech's echochamber when Tor has to re-explain the principles of free speech for the millionth time. We've already had this debate about Monarchists, witches, real Nazis, Commies, Satanists, Anarchists, blacks, gays, Muslims, and every other group at the center of a moral panic. And EVERY time afterward, when the hysteria ceases, we look back and think how absurd people were for thinking we need to undermine basic liberties in order to prevent the atheists from turning our kids gay or whatever. Yet every few years there is a new absurd moral panic that opportunists jump on to grant themselves authoritarian powers and there is a new set of gullible idiots that are eager to cede their rights to them. The world will be able to function fine with a few racist wingnuts writing on their loser blog. The world will not function when we start arbitrarily silencing people and granting fringe groups the greatest recruiting propaganda they could ask for.

<comment><USER4> I never understood the restriction on presidents being born US citizens until recently. What we've observed of late is a perversion of the basic liberties and freedoms that America was founded on. My hypothesis is that in part this is due to an influx of individuals who were not raised to value those freedoms and liberties within quite the same cultural context. (I'm trying to be very careful here please don't pervert my words.) This is by no means bad but my point is that it certainly is at odds with our own American cultural values. It is also supprising how many Americans I've met so easily prefer personal safety or cater to anecdotal passion and empathy. What's so ironic is ther it's these very values that have allowed us to become what we are today. Why are we so eager to throw those out the minute we realize just how powerful they are? But that's not the point. My point is that it's fine to entertain and exchange all cultures and ideas, but we've built a system of geverning people that depends to some degree on our own cultural identity. The key to true diversity is tolerance--the ability to firmly retain your own identity whilst co-existing with all the other ones. We cannot value freedom of expression if we are not willing to tolerate ideas that are different from our own. There's a word for a shared political/social worldview: uniformity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> People say roughly the same thing about Tor that they used to say about the printing press: bad people can use it to spread seditious lies, pornography, anonymous accusations against upright people. I suppose the defenses are about the same, too.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if they find it in their hearts to denounce the purveyors of child porn who have been using Tor extensively and for many years. One of the reasons I will never run a Tor exit node: it is almost certain to at some point help them access the vilest shit imaginable, with impunity.

<comment><USER18> Obviously people having opinions in an internet forum is much more important.

On a more serious note, Tor was meant to be used by people that want to say something that may run counter to the general, approved, discourse. That was a very ironic statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I support this decision by the Tor Project and also the one made by CloudFlare. This is an excellent example of the need for both profit- driven/corporate software and open-source, voluneteer driven software. They serve different purposes.

<comment><USER9> The Tor project made no decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tor has similar constraints with the design of the TOR service as the US government has with the Constitution. Which I suppose is why you have groups like ANTIFA ready to trade blows and hackers ready to take down sites. You have the right to post the message, but then you have to face the response.

<comment><USER18> You do not have to face the response, if the response is violence or hacking, because those activities are illegal.

Talking on the internet and organizing legal, peaceful, rallies, is fine in my book.

The US really doesn't care about freedom of speech anymore, which is spreading to the internet, and everyone is giddy to deal the last nail in the coffin.

<comment><USER20> As I posted in another response to my comment...

I don't have the right to punch a Nazi, but the law doesn't stop me from doing so. It may be a deterrent and I may get punished, but the law doesn't create a physically insurmountable barrier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Between the title-case and the omitted "that", I had a bit of trouble parsing the title: "The Tor Project defends the human rights that racists oppose."

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks like TLAs will have an easier time tracking racists, I guess. Not that they probably care.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, what are they going to do about it?

<comment><USER23> Why would you expect them to do anything? Racism is one of the least vile things of the vile things that Tor makes possible, and it isn't even illegal.

(Edit: Wording slightly changed to reflect point raised below.)

<comment><USER24> Tor does not _support_ any vile things. It's a freedom platform. A tool. Honor is not in the blade but in the hand that holds it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TOR project announces Tor still works as intended and gives more visibility to themselves and to hidden services.

The fact that Neo Nazis, Journalists and human rights activists all use the same service (though I suspect that all three of them are drowned out by copyright violation and illicit pornography) does not say much about the service itself, especially not when that service has been designed from the ground up to achieve that effect.

Cloudflare as a corporate entity with shareholders and customers is in an entirely different position than a not-for-profit entity such as the Tor project. Both are acting roughly as one would expect given their background.

</comment><comment><USER25> > We are disgusted, angered, and appalled by everything these racists stand > for and do.

Let's back up a second.

What's the mapping of online avatars on that site to human beings?

If it's 1:1 then I should continue reading Tor's statement.

1:1-times-N for any N other than 1 is quite unlikely so we can throw out that possibility.

1-times-N:1 for N = 10 or even N = 20 are likely and cheap. An echo chamber of ten racists doesn't warrant a response from Tor, while an echo chamber of hundreds might.

1:N:1 for N = 20+ is possible especially by state actors. A small group of paid scammers simulating activites of 1000+ racists is enough to cause noticeable social disruption.

So the next question is: does Tor devbase have a way to map medusa heads to torsos?

I think the answer is "no". Not only for Tor, but also Wall Street Journal, Breitbart News, The Guardian, and possibly even Reddit, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.

If I'm right about that, then I read Tor's statement as essentially eating the cost of having no way to effectively separate signal from noise and simply rolling up their sleeves and treating all noise as potential signal. That's as wasteful as it was in the 90s & early 2000s to simply eat the cost of reading everything in the email inbox and deleting the spam manually. But here it's more than loss of productivity-- its potentially confusing a large portion of reality with a simulation. And unlike the widespread cynicism that came with tv broadcast, people seem to have convinced themselves that social media and random sites/comment sections are an earnest and democratic reflection of some meaningful segment of the general population.

edit: formatting</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about Intern JS testing framework/stack? - <AUTHOR>

I am new to unit testing as well as functional testing. In functional testing, we needed - cross-browser testing with chrome/firefox and IE, AJAX tests, file upload test.
We started with selenium which seemed to have all features but the JAVA and complicated setup turned off our PHP & JavaScript team. So at that point I started exploring JS-based testing solutions.
I came across many solutions. The number of solutions confused me more rather than helping me.
This comparison table/page seemed helpful - http://theintern.io/#compare
As part of my habit, I tried to search HN archives to find views about shortlisted solutions.
To my surprise, HN has 3 threads for Intern JS and none of them got a single comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5666938
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7759227
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155898
Surprisingly, other solutions had more discussions on HN. Example: nightwatch.js - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7156162
So I just wish to know if Intern JS is good choice for somebody writing test cases for first time? And can bit get things done without getting into JAVA or Selenium (it's fine if Selenium is used internally). <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

Intern JS comparison table - [http://theintern.io/#compare](http://theintern.io/#compare)

HN threads for Intern JS:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5666938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5666938)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7759227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7759227)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8155898)

nightwatch.js thread on HN - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7156162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7156162)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I promote my Open Source ERP Project? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, we are startup company based in Mumbai and we have developed an web based ERP system in Python. What is the best way to promote this as Open Source to ERP consultants / companies?
The ERP world is dominated by the incumbents and all popular blogs are sponsored or run by existing companies. They have plenty of muscle and its hard for a small company to get in.
Any reviews, ideas would be helpful. The name of our project is ERPNext and you can find details on https://www.erpnext.com. The code is hosted at http://code.google.com/p/wnframework <comment><USER2> Just out of curiosity, how does it compare to Apache OFBiz, aside from being written in Python rather than Java?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi David,

It is a fresh implementation. We also have built our own metadata framework in Python (something like Django but with tight client side integration).

I have not had a detailed look at OfBiz, infact I had a re-look at it right now. Here is what I find

1\. The modules are plenty. We can pick up a lot of ideas from it, though apart from e-commerce we do have many of the features. We do have a lot of depth - just comparing the inventory settings in the Product master, we have a lot more features and validations. But they have more breadth.

Even comparing the chart of accounts, we have a tree structure with a widget to go with it. Ditto with Item, Customer, Territories, Suppliers etc, we have a tree structure.

2\. The code base seems very large, we have a much small code base and our metadata approach keeps our code base much smaller.

3\. I would like to believe that our interface is also a bit easier to use and much more web friendly with Social Networking features... We are also adding social gaming features by giving users points for doing things like booking orders, making payments etc so that it motivates them to use the system better.

We have around 20 companies who are paid users so we are constantly learning from them!

Hope this was useful

\- Rushabh</comment></comment>


New Netflix film crew rules: banned from staring at anyone for over 5 seconds - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6505153/netflix-crew-banned-from-staring/ <comment><USER2> Is there an actual source for this other than an anonymous "on-set runner"?

</comment><comment><USER3> Makes sense. A bit sad that this has to be on paper and officially enforced.</comment>


We Accidentally Turned the Entire Statue of Liberty into a Battery - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/we-accidentally-turned-the-entire-statue-of-liberty-int-1702334758 <comment><USER2> Really interesting story. The galvanic pile described in the article, the first battery, was invented by Volta after he examined the anatomy of the electric stingray and noticed the layered structure: [http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/have-a-scientific- pro...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/01/have-a-scientific-problem- steal-an-answer-from-nature/3/)</comment>


Evolving JavaScript with TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut694dsIa8w

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: Interesting up-to-date (Thanksgiving) Google Tech Talk about everything TypeScript by Anders Hejlsberg (C#, .Net, TypeScript, Turbo Pascal, …)</comment>


Maine to Use Ranked Choice Voting in June Gubernatorial Primary - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/27/paul-lepage-maine-governor-ranked-choice-voting-217715 <comment><USER2> I really like this idea. I'm happy to hear about anything that has a chance at reducing political toxicity, but most ideas are simply ideas. This had already been implemented elsewhere in cities throughout the country as the article states and seems to have done momentum behind it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever you do, Maine, do not do the "top two primary vote getters", regardless of party, win (here in CA that leave us with deciding between two underwhelming Dem choices rather than competition from at least two parties --in other places it might leave you with two underwhelming repubs)

That said, we have that in SF and to me, it makes me diversify my vote, which in principle seems good, in practive, I "upvote" weak candidates too much.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a step in the right direction, but it's been tried in several places and hasn't really opened up the seats beyond the two party system. In order to really make a difference we need to switch to some form of Proportional Representation for the legislative branch. While the governors/presidents get a lot of press time, they don't really have a lot of power on their own.</comment>


The Entrepreneur Bubble - <AUTHOR> http://earlystagevc.typepad.com/earlystagevc/2005/10/the_web_20_entr.html <comment><USER2> Where this guy goes wrong is that he assumes (without realizing it) that there's some limit on the number of startups there can be. But that's probably not true.

No one proposes there's any limit on the number of people who can be employed by companies with thousands of people. Why should there be any limit on how many fragments that effort can be broken into?

<comment><USER3> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaction_cost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase

(if I'm correct in my admittedly superficial understanding of his work)

Although that's probably not what the article's author had in mind when writing it, and I think it's a bit tangential to the feeling that I get too that there is a bit of froth in the market.

I'd agree with you that there's plenty of room out there, but offhand, I'd say the question to ask is whether the "width" of what startups are working on is growing proportionally to the number of startups, rather than simply the "depth" (people working on similar things).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> False Dilemma. The author frames it as if its a choice between starting a startup that has a high probability of failing or doing nothing. However, most people who don't start startups have to work work for big companies, which have all the same problems but worse.

<comment><USER3> There are opportunity costs involved with starting a company instead of working at BigCo, and if there is, as the article says, an "entrepreneur bubble", then some people are doubtless making the wrong choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the writer of the articles compares two unequal things. The 80s with this era... The situation is a lot different. People back then didn't have any other channel to reach potential users, than marketting, which they had to pay.

The web is a new place, and the market is broader and global. You can be next to your grandma in Greece and sell to a client as far as Brazil through word of mouth......

my friends don't let some static minds trick you.

shall the best (lim best -> oo) win ;) ...</comment>


Ask HN: I Want to Build a Simple API-Backed iOS App - React Native or Swift? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a web developer by day with essentially zero mobile development experience. I am familiar with React but haven't used it in any meaningful projects. I have no experience with Swift or even x-code for that matter. I'm looking to build a simple api-backed app and I'm fine with it being only on iOS (not looking to debate that either).
I've stumbled on this site that looks like a good place to start learning Swift: http://www.hackingwithswift.com/
As for React-Native, I figured I could just dive into their tutorial and then start hacking.
The app I want to build should be pretty basic, no crazy animations or heavy asset rendering or anything. Also doesn't need any real-time support or push notifications or anything.
What path do you guys recommend I take? I feel like diving into Swift could be good just for learning a new language for myself. React Native just seems fun to build with. I'm torn at this point, help. <comment><USER2> I recommend working with React-Native for the next month and then work on Swift the following month. Get something working. I think your chances are better starting with React-Native. I've dabbled a little with it. Layout is super easy compared to Swift+IB+Autolayout (although StackViews are nice).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply. That's about where my mind is currently as well, I think Swift as a language looks awesome but I think the amount of time I need to spend on learning all of the tooling in xcode will slow me down quite a bit compared to tackling react native which has a relatively familiar toolchain compared to what I normally use daily.

<comment><USER2> I have done some iOS programming in ObjC and I'm looking at Swift 2.0 right now. The language is just too big for you to start with and the tooling is still bug-prone. I think you'll get more out of one month with React-Native. Hopefully you'll have created something at the end of it. That's really important. And in a month they'll release another version of XCode 7 and the iOS 9 SDK that's less buggy. A month goes by so quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been messing with react-native a bit. The nice part is having a running app after 1 terminal commmand.

Really just hoping its momentum continues, and taking fb at their word that Android will actually get released.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, according to this reddit submission, they have a react native app on google play: [https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/3bmdiu/first_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/reactnative/comments/3bmdiu/first_react_native_android_app_in_the_play_store/)

I'm not sure how they know that, but I would assume it's an accurate statement. So it seems like it might be coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you thought about using Cordova? If you're a web developer you'd be able to get something out quickly as it's all just HTML + JavaScript.</comment>


A Princess makes Google remove ~200 links to her rant about killing muslims - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/889kyv/a-princess-is-making-google-to-forget-her-drunken-rant-about-killing-muslims <comment><USER2> This distresses me a lot. Seems like a well-done cover-up specifically for Germany. Are there other instances where Google decides to ban news locally?

<comment><USER2> Especially worrying is the lack of coverage around her process. I can find nothing. Like she only existed to marry.</comment></comment>


Super Mario Bros. Commodore 64 Fan Port Hit with DMCA - <AUTHOR> http://Super_Mario_Bros_Commodore_64_fan_port_hit_with_DMCA_takedowns.php <comment><USER2> _It's also a move that comes during a period of time where Nintendo is very adamantly shutting down the circulation of its classic games online, to the point of threatening (and sometimes taking) legal action against websites hosting sizable ROM libraries._

 _Around that same time, legal threats from Nintendo prompted the emulation site EmuParadise to remove its entire ROM and ISO file libraries and, more recently, Nintendo was awarded up to $12.23 million in a copyright and trademark infringement case against the websites LoveROMS and LoveRetro._

I can't help but think that it would actually be in Nintendo's best interests to find some kind of way to work _with_ the retrogaming community, instead of making those folks into their enemies. This reminds me of Metallica suing their own fans during the Napster era. It really seems like there must be a better way.

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341284/Super_Mario_Bros_...](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341284/Super_Mario_Bros_Commodore_64_fan_port_hit_with_DMCA_takedowns.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can understand protecting a brand and not wanting sales diverted from your IP or upcoming product. But, how can a port to a dead console be considered a threat?</comment>


iBeacon Pioneers Estimote (YC S13) Raise $3.1M Seed Round - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/10/ibeacon-pioneers-estimote-raise-3-1m-seed-round/

<comment><USER2> Estimotes are nice for production, but we built testing beacons out of Raspberry Pi's

[http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/10/09/how-to- make-a...](http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2013/10/09/how-to-make-an- ibeacon-out-of-a-raspberry-pi.html)

Here's a link the source for an app that we wrote for a Party that we threw recently..

[https://github.com/backofthecup/HolidayParty](https://github.com/backofthecup/HolidayParty)

We built a few D3 visualizations of where users were at the party, and how fast they found hidden iBeacons... kind of like a treasure hunt game to demo the technology.

<comment><USER3> Can you explain how the device works? What does my phone do when it picks up this iBeacon?

<comment><USER2> If you've implemented the location callbacks for a specific region (defined by a UUID), then you'll receive messages with that detail how far you are from the device (within about 70m, depending on your device). Depending on the device, the power settings, etc, this can be very accurate.. to < 1m. The IOS api's also support background processing so the app doesn't necessarily need to be in the foreground to process. You will get called back when you enter and exit regions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats Estimotes! I have their beacons sitting on my desk. I can't speak for the capabilities yet – but the design is _gorgeous_

<comment><USER5> They're sitting on my desk too! :-) [https://twitter.com/SnowPlowData/status/409999490192396289](https://twitter.com/SnowPlowData/status/409999490192396289)

<comment><USER6> Nice! Coded anything yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm excited to see where this goes. I was recently on a team for the Salesforce Hackathon that created a pretty cool rewards and consumer statistics platform. Earn points for visiting, get a push notification when you receive a reward, etc. Awesome for the consumer. The business owner gets statistics based on foot traffic, peak hours, most visited beacons, etc.

We didn't have any iBeacons handy (only 5 days between idea and completion), so we were using an iPad to broadcast an "iBeacon". It was pretty neat. I'd like to get my hands on some of Estimotes beacons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm Lukasz, CTO at Estimote, I'd love to take a look—please drop us a line!

<comment><USER7> Email sent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was reading about how iBeacon will revolutionize contact less payments but when I read about square wallet, I thought this is already done without any need of iBeacon.

Thoughts? Am I missing anything here?

<comment><USER9> Have you used Square Wallet yet?

Experience is awful. It is thought that BLE might be better tech that leads to a better experience.

<comment><USER10> Based on this paper, I'm not sure I'd want to rely on something like BLE for payments: [http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f...](http://0b4af6cdc2f0c5998459-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f.r43.cf2.rackcdn.com/12053-woot13-ryan.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also, here's a short video showing what's possible: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrsHBjzt2E8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrsHBjzt2E8)

<comment><USER6> Nice! Should be in the article BTW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congratulations to the Estimote guys! I've borrowed one of these to test out their signal strength/consistency.

(At a recent AngelHack, I built an indoor-positioning system based on triangulation of signal strength. I tested with a StickNFind BLE device and a couple of homemade BLE(-ish) devices based on nRF24L01 RF modules. I'm hoping the signal strength from the Estimote is going to be more consistent than these.)

<comment><USER12> I got some estimotes and my experience is that the signal strength doesn't change consistently based on the distance. I was planning to do a program using trilateration... but I don't think it would work.

<comment><USER11> My experience was that the RSSI does change reasonably consistently, but that there's quite a lot of noise (so you need to smooth it appropriately). I also get the impression that it's affected by orientation of the phone relative to the beacon, and also by anything blocking line-of-sight (including humans). Mounting the beacons high up could reduce the effect of this last point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats Estimote - We recently got the developer pack and implemented an Android SDK for the same, and the motes are handy. The calibration is a bit off for each mote, and thus location accuracy is a bit compromised. Hope the production version will be better calibrated.

We also have a similar SDK that works over indoor WiFi, though the accuracy is definitely better for the BLE beacon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You may try increasing the broadcasting power of each beacon to get better accuracy. Also, we're working on our Android SDK so please stay tuned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The potential applications are fascinating, but I'm getting a new picture of the thought behind Apple's addition of Control Center in iOS 7: The Bluetooth toggle isn't just there for a modicum of battery conservation. Sometimes you'll welcome iBeacons; other times you'll want to keep them at arm's length.

<comment><USER15> With fine-grained control over an individual app's behavior, do we need an all-or-nothing Bluetooth setting to control how they use iBeacons?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, super curious as to what Apple is cooking in that department, I'm sure they are thinking about it a lot. For now their policy is just to OPT-IN by downloading relevant app and giving it permissions, you will not get spammed by beacons for which you didn't download relevant app.

<comment><USER16> The recent iBeacon update to the Apple Store iOS app may hint at how Apple wants apps to behave. Basically, it's strictly opt-in, with copious information about the benefits, and obviously, possibility to turn the in- store notification off. I suppose in the future, as the customers get acquainted with the technology, there won't be the need to spell out the benefits, but the opt-in and strict user control are here to stay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Placed an order 2 months ago, still waiting...

<comment><USER18> Same here</comment></comment>


Lithography Options for Next-Gen Devices - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/lots-of-lithography-options-for-next-gen-devices/ <comment><AUTHOR> How about high NA EUV?</comment>


Jslint Is Not A Code Quality Tool For 3rd Party Code - <AUTHOR> http://hughfdjackson.com/javascript/2012/02/12/jslint-is-not-a-code-quality-tool-for-3rd-party-code/

<comment><USER2> > * Many people consider JSHint, a fork of JSLint designed to be more > configurable, a better choice.

This bullshit assertion is getting tiring. JSHint is not "designed to be more configurable", it's[0] JSLint with a different (and more permissive) base configuration.

JSLint defaults to enforcing Crockford's style and recommendation, but it also has all the knobs and levers required needed to make it accept pretty much any syntactically valid javascript you throw at it[1].

So when TFAA writes:

> For instance, of the three following if statements, only one is acceptable > in JSLint:

TFAA is not disingenuous, TFAA is _actively lying_. How do I know? Because I read the documentation and I know that setting the `eqeq` option lets you use `==` and `!=` and that setting the `white` option will stop JSLint from caring about how you whitespace-separate your tokens, making all three styles "acceptable to JSLint".

You may not be arsed to configure your tools to match _your personal desires_ , but don't lie about them, that's unbecoming.

[0] at its core, things may have changed and JSHint may have diverged further from JSLint, that does not seem to be the case when superficially checking their respective online demos.

[1] <http://jslint.com/lint.html#options>

<comment><USER3> You can configure a lot of options for JSLint, but not all of them. For instance, JSLint objects to the following:

new Entity(parentEntity);

This can't be turned off without modifying the JSLint parsing process.

(Yes, this is a rather odd bit of code, and it definitely should be flagged up normally. This is from a project where invoking a constructor would add the object to its parent object and trigger a GUI update.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ironic that this is on the home page the same time the article about Bootstrap missing semi-colons is.

Crockford made it to keep himself from falling into traps and lets everyone else use (and configure) it too. That doesn't mean you have to use it religiously, I'm just glad for yet another tool in my drawer.

</comment><comment><USER5> i've had similar issues in java, but have come to a different conclusion.

some context - i worked with java for many years, but more recently have been working mainly in python (with some js, c and clojure). recently i got a chance to work with a great client (and that means so much - a good client is about the best thing you can hope for) back in java. we decided to go with, amongst other things, maven and jenkins, and, as a result, i had some checkstyle reports "for free".

checkstyle is a little like jslint for java. you can configure it on two different levels. on the most basic level, you can simply disable/enable tests globally. i disabled just one test globally (the one that objects to attributes and parameters having the same name, for code like void foo(int bar) {this.bar = bar;}, because the ide works so much better with consistent variable names (auto-gen and renaming)).

more interestingly, the second level of config allows you to define comments that disable tests locally - on, or from a particular line, or for a block of lines. this is great, because it forces me to consider exceptions and, where they are needed, document there (the disabling comment can take extra text that describes why).

i don't particularly agree with everything checkstyle does. but i don't think that affects its main advantage. that advantage is not that it makes my code better, but that it makes it conform to a standard that others are used to, and - even better - that it documents why it deviates from that standard, when necessary. that last part makes particular sense because those deviations tend to be the "interesting" parts of the code - exactly the parts that should be explained in more detail by comments.

anyway, apologies if that seems off-topic. it just struck me that maybe jslint would be improved by a "document exceptions locally" approach (does it do that? all i know of is global config).

</comment><comment><USER6> You have to put things back in context. JSLint was written in 2005 when no one really knew Javascript and there was no well-written open source Javascript.

JSLint was, and always is, a wonderful tool to educate people about Javascript common issues.</comment>


Moving from Gmail to FastMail - <AUTHOR> http://www.matthewbass.com/2015/03/18/moving-from-gmail-to-fastmail/ <comment><USER2> For speed, you can either move back to the HTML version [https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/) or forward to the Inbox interface [https://inbox.google.com/](https://inbox.google.com/)</comment>


Vaping Illnesses Linked to Vitamin E Acetate, CDC Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/08/health/vaping-illness-cdc.html <comment><USER2> Here is a non paywall link with more details [1] also [2]

[1] - [https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/s...](https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe- lung-disease.html)

[2] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904164)

<comment><USER3> Those speak to the illnesses but not to this diagnosis.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. Based on other things I've read (sorry I don't have links handy) the forensics surgeons were seeing extreme inflammation in the lungs identical to people that have experienced chemical fire burns. I don't have the exact terminology they used, sorry.</comment></comment></comment>


Security patch releases to Rails 2.3.x, 3.0.x - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/2/8/new-releases-2-3-11-and-3-0-4

<comment><USER2> * In mail_to :encode => :javascript, they weren't sanitizing email addresses, just catting them into the tag.

* There were using Enumerable#reject (ie, default allow) with a strict filter to decide which controllers/actions to route requests to, but case-insensitive filesystems aren't similarly strict.

* (Worst of all) ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#limit/limit_value wasn't sanitized while building queries (try Foo.limit("1,,0") for the flavor).

I don't know what the CSRF thing was either, but it looks like a headachey fix.

<comment><USER3> [http://code.djangoproject.com/changeset/15464/django/trunk/d...](http://code.djangoproject.com/changeset/15464/django/trunk/django/middleware/csrf.py)

Django released a similar fix. According to their changeset, we'll see a release from them shortly as well. Maybe they'll shed some more light on the issue.

<comment><USER4> Since I have the announcement right in front of me (I'm revising it in preparation for the final post), I can tell you there's not really any more detail in it than in the Rails post.

I don't know yet when the _full_ full disclosure will happen; I just know that right now I'm really not at liberty to do that.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. I guess I'll just have to work it out for myself. :P

<comment><USER2> Sam Quigley says:

<http://twitter.com/emerose/status/35169573590409216>

<comment><USER3> To be perfectly clear, Sam is not wrong. Flash and Java both let you issue requests with that header. However, if you try and make a cross-origin request, they'll both throw exceptions unless you have permission (in the form of a crossdomain.xml file). I assume that's where the redirects come into play, although I can't imagine how you redirect someone's POST request to a different domain.

<comment><USER2> I'm just messing with you both.

Resetting sessions on CSRF failures is going to suck for us.

<comment><USER5> Is there any reason to reset the session on a CSRF failure vs. just failing the request? Seems like you could have fun DOSing people from their sessions on other sites with that default behavior.

<comment><USER3> That's right. Of course, without knowing more details about the vulnerability, it's hard to say whether there's a benefit to ending the session.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious about the technical details of the CSRF bypass vulnerability. Anyone know what the "combinations of browser plugins and HTTP redirects" that lead to it are?

[http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails- security/browse_t...](http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails- security/browse_thread/thread/2d95a3cc23e03665)

<comment><USER3> Same here. Based on the changes made in the patch, it seems like the attack involves being able to make cross-domain requests but not being able to read back the response. I didn't think that was the way Java and Flash behaved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> run 'bundle update rails' instead of 'bundle update'. If you're like me, you'd like to only update the rails gem.

EDIT: If you run bundle update with no parameters, bundler will ignore any previously installed gems and resolve all dependencies again based on the latest versions of all gems available in the sources.

</comment><comment><USER8> These versions are NOT ONLY a security fix, they might contains some bugs. Fully test your applications before going to production. See comments on: [http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/2/8/new- releases-2-3-11-a...](http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2011/2/8/new- releases-2-3-11-and-3-0-4)

</comment><comment><USER4> Cross-posting my comment from the Django thread, for those of you wondering whether anyone else was affected:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2196214></comment>


Ask HN: What would be the unit economics of a near-human AI? - chroem- Given some hypothetical unforeseen algorithmic breakthrough that makes near-human level intelligent agents possible, how would it be brought to market?  Would it be brought to market at all?  What sort of protective moats would exist if the algorithm isn't eligible for patent and can be trivially copied by larger companies with more resources? <comment><AUTHOR> I would imagine that at the beginning, the new AI would require compute resources beyond the reach of most individuals or small organizations. Similar to the recent GPT-3, it would probably be available as a paid service. The really interesting (or scary) developments would come when the compute capacity becomes cheap enough for individuals or small organizations to run it locally. I can't imagine what would be possible when a guy in a garage can spin up a few dozen or hundred virtual employees like we can spin up EC2 instances today. Virtual software engineers, salespeople, phone support agents, you name it working 24 hour shifts, with no sick days or PTO.</comment>


Would like to learn relativity theory - <AUTHOR>

I'am 27 now and i have a burning desire to study math and physics from the ground up and I strongly prefer doing a self study.I want to be a self tutor till i reach certain level.
My question is what is the minimum knowledge needed to read and completely understand the General and Special Theory of Relativity.
As of now my level of math knowledge is basic differential calculus.I also have a basic understanding of Kinematics {One dimensional motion with constant acceleration}
I welcome all possible sugessions,advices and recomendations.
Thank's in Advance <comment><USER2> Math:Start with Khan Academy then graduate to AoPs. Physics:Study Feynman Lectures.There is also a blog :'How to become a theoretical physicist by Gerald T'Hooft</comment>


A Conversation with Clayton Christensen - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201210/jason-fried/a-conversation-with-innovation-guru-clayton-christensen.html

<comment><USER2> Oh, I really like the notion that an answer can't stick in a mind that hasn't asked the question. That is pretty cool.</comment>


3D mineride for JS1k - <AUTHOR> http://js1k.com/2013-spring/demo/1459

<comment><USER2> Wow! Colour me impressed. I can't wait to read the source code to see how that demo is possible.</comment>


How is mailbox any different from linkedin intro app - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yurikoval.com/2013/11/how-is-mailbox-any-different-from-linkedin-intro-app/

<comment><USER2> I think the difference here is that I wanted Mailbox to do this when I signed up. This is no so for LinkedIn.

(I don't use either service anymore but this is a very clear line to be drawn I think)</comment>


Sampa: From Birth to Death (A Startup's Journey) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.calbucci.com/marcelo-calbucci/brave-tech-world/Sampa-From-Birth-to-Death.htm

<comment><USER2> Having worked on something very similar to Sampa, this was a fascinating read. Thank you for posting it.

</comment><comment><USER3> FTA:

'From the get go, the product was not task oriented (as in "I want to upload some pictures and do a blog post about it"), but very object-oriented (an hierarchy of folders, with security, objects, drag-and-drop, etc.).'

This clicked for me. Everyone probably knows it already, but I never got it this crisply until now. There is a spectrum between user and programmer. Depending on what you're building, you can build in a lot of leverage for your users by making your tool _less_ programmable. Apple does this the best.

</comment><comment><USER4> Comment I left on his blog:

I can't imagine how much that sucks.

On the other hand, you go to be your own boss and run with something for several years. Frankly, I don't even see what the point of Sampa was. Geocities was around in 1996. Maybe if you had started early enough you could have sold before the business model issues became so critical you weren't able to ignore them, but realistically that was your only exit strategy, much like geocities and youtube.

<comment><USER5> Geocities WAS around in 1996 - but Weebly was started in 2006/2007, and they're doing quite well, business model and all. The "website builder" space is likely not saturated, and there's definitely room in business areas such as the author was originally targeting. Again, it's all about the implementation.</comment></comment>


Vim vs. emacs – minus the religion - <AUTHOR> http://feoh.org/vim-versus-emacs-minus-the-religion.html <comment><USER2> Except Vim can also execute code in a subprocess and print the output, it can also do debugging via GDB or similar, and it can do things like lint your code and display the results every time you save.

Thing is, there aren't as many people doing that in vim so it's harder to find plugins and writing vim plugins is a pain. But I use it every day for some pretty advanced IDE-level stuff and it works great.

I'm not saying Emacs isn't great. To be honest I don't know it well enough to say. But I do know Vim is more capable than this article implies.</comment>


Google announces Android Wear, a Nexus-like platform for wearables - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/18/google-android-wear/ <comment><USER2> Google didn't used the word nexus during the announcement, then we use Nexus for this release.</comment>


The U.S. Debt Ceiling Expired on March 1 and Nobody Cared – But They Will - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/teresaghilarducci/2019/04/25/the-u-s-debt-ceiling-expired-on-march-1-and-nobody-cared-but-they-will/#a67ac006b3f9 <comment><USER2> Debt is worth it if you think your economy is going to grow in the future. It multiplies growth of an economy. Unfortunately, this multiplier is a double edged sword, during times of shrinkage.

Most modern economies have done well with debt since WW2 because the economy has been growing on average. During times of economic expansion, countries who don't put on more debt get left behind during the boom. The bust hurts those who took more risks, but it seems like on average it has worked out well for the debt takers in the last few generations.

<comment><USER3> Debt that must be repaid by a future generation (or just by other people under a different administration) will _always_ be worth it to the borrower.

This truth can lead to frivolous borrowing that does not in the least benefit those who must pay back the debt.

At least in theory. In practice, I guess things seem to be pretty ok for Japan in spite of their mountain of debt and shrinking population?

<comment><USER4> The thinking about debt being repaid by a future generation is deeply misleading because government debt is an _asset_ to the private sector and those treasury bills are largely owned by US citizens (directly or indirectly, e.g. via pension funds).

So it's not that the debt has to be repaid by a future generation. Rather, the debt causes the government to indirectly cause transfer payments among the future generation, from those who don't own US treasuries to those who do. Put differently, the debt is a vehicle for perpetuating the current social stratification (who's rich and who's poor) into future generations.

If you're genuinely and honestly worried about the effect that the debt has on future generations, then your answer has to be some combination of (a) wealth tax and (b) moving the country's pension systems away from asset-backed pensions towards pay-as-you-go / transfer systems. (Though presumably combining this with a socially owned social wealth fund would work as well.)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this.

I don't think you've told the whole story here - for example, when it comes time for the government to pay the future debt they can do it by raising taxes on one part of the population or the other, or simply by printing money (leading to inflation) and not all of those solutions work out the same way for any given person.

Even so, you've shown me a more sophisticated way to think about this issue and I'll surely end up having different, better founded opinions as a result.

<comment><USER5> Inflation is itself a form of transfer payment - from creditors to debtors, and from people in markets with no pricing power (high competition) to people with high pricing power (no competition), and from cash-holders to asset- holders. You're right that this has very different winners & losers than just paying interest on the debt, but it's the same general principle: government debt and money itself are both fictions, so the only way they can influence _aggregate_ welfare is if they disincentivize productive work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why would markets/buyers of treasuries care? It's been shown multiple times over the last few years that there will be a bunch of political shenanigans, but ultimately the ceiling will be raised again and that T-bills will continue to be highly desirable and safe despite all the fuss.

<comment><USER7> I don't want this to happen. But I think it will.

Debt is not a good thing, especially when it is ignored.

<comment><USER8> You can easily find many articles explaining why the national debt is very different from how we think about personal debt (e.g. [http://money.com/money/4293910/national-debt- investors/](http://money.com/money/4293910/national-debt-investors/)).

And then even in the personal finance space, "debt is not a good thing" is just an incorrect statement, because it always makes perfect sense to borrow money at a lower interest rate than you can make via investments.

<comment><USER9> > You can easily find many articles explaining why the national debt is very > different from how we think about personal debt (e.g. > [http://money.com/money/4293910/national-debt- > investors/](http://money.com/money/4293910/national-debt-investors/)).

Article: _" Things aren't at a boiling point — yet."_

Well I am now definitely comforted...

<comment><USER10> Chris Hayes did a podcast that helps explain the difference. Basically, the government is the sole source of money. If it were to balance its books it would mean the entire economy was zero sum. The government being in debt means its leaving value out in the economy. There's a surplus of money on the not- government balance sheet.

Source: [https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/debunking-deficit- hyst...](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/debunking-deficit-hysteria- stephanie-kelton-podcast-transcript-ncna1003301)

<comment><USER9> Glancing through it I can't find any mention of what's supposed to happen when the country ends up with so much debt that most of the government's income ends up going toward interest... leaving little/no funds for all its other expenses. Or for the rest of the interest it'll accumulate the following year. Is the idea that you just print money and the problem goes away ("what could possibly go wrong?")?

<comment><USER11> The most likely outcome is that interest rates will asymptotically approach zero as debt increases and the theoretical claim that the natural rate of interest is zero will be proven. And obviously a zero interest treasury security is essentially the exact same thing as a normal currency note.

Keep in mind that a 0% federal funds rate doesn't mean commercial banks won't charge interest. Which, by the way, leads to another important point. Something like 90% of the money in use isn't even created by the government, rather it's created from thin air by licensed banks. This is why a banking license is a huge deal. It is, subject to some restrictions, an actual license to create new money.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I don't follow. Zero interest? Are we talking about the same interest? We're paying hundreds of billions of dollars to China in interest. In what world is China going to let the US keep its money and lower the interest it receives in return to zero?

<comment><USER4> In the world where China wants to keep its own currency at a low value in order to continue the export-driven economic policy.

Look, obviously China can sell its US treasuries in exchange for "cash" (electronic balances in a current account). If it did that, the US would only benefit.

If China then exchanged this USD "cash" into another currency, the worst that would happen is for the USD to reduce in value in the foreign exchange markets, which would boost US exports and therefore boost the US economy.

Yeah, US consumers would have somewhat less purchasing power for some time, but that only balances out the fact that US consumers currently have somewhat more purchasing power than they would "naturally" have.

<comment><USER10> That's the most straightforward explanation ive seen yet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article: "Interest rates, already one of the fastest rising costs in the federal budget, will rise as the political crisis builds, because foreign borrowers will demand an additional risk premium."

Wrong. Interest rates will rise if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. They will not if it does not. The Fed controls 100% of overnight rates and virtually all of the rest of the yield curve[1]: "as we went out on the curve the correlations remained very tight (FFR at 100%, 3 month at 97%, 1 year at 96%, 5 year at 91%, 10 year at 86%, 30 year at 87%). Even at the longest duration there is an 87% correlation between the movements of the Fed Funds Rate and the 30 year bond. In other words, the bond market is the Fed's whipping boy. Not the other way around."

What the Fed does not control is the US dollar's foreign exchange rate. So it's entirely possible that debt ceiling worries will cause a weaker dollar. Paradoxically though, they might cause a stronger dollar since the government not issuing debt actually constrains the dollar supply. Sovereign finances are deeply weird, and global reserve currencies are too.

[1] [https://www.pragcap.com/i-want-to-come-back-as-the- federal-r...](https://www.pragcap.com/i-want-to-come-back-as-the-federal- reserve-you-can-intimidate-everybody/)

<comment><AUTHOR> My theory is the fed isn't all powerful with interest rates. They have target rates they wish to achieve and one way is to buy and sell treasuries on the open market. Treasury prices are still up to the results of an auction process. But there is usually a secondary market you can buy from from treasuries that have already been awarded to someone.

The debt itself is not fearful. Being unable to sell treasuries at low costs will be a big change. The fear is that todays political climate could indeed be too messed up to act in time so that congress has the authority to spend. Missed payments are going to be a problem if it happens.

But I'm not a finance expert.

<comment><USER12> Your theory proved correct in the 1970s, things got so messed up "everything" rose, both unemployment and inflation driving a stake into the heart of the Phillips Curve, and what people demanded to buy private or Federal debt. The latter got so bad "Carter bonds" were created, denominated in West German Marks or Swiss Francs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_bonds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_bonds)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. I did not know non dollar deominated us treasury debt exited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I wrong or do USA have an extreme discrepancy between government spending and tax revenue? Isn't it strange that the American Government is spending 38% of gdp, but only collecting 27% of gdp in taxes?

Compare Japan with USA

Japan tax pressure: 35.9%.

USA tax pressure: 27.1%

Japan gov spending: 38.9%

USA gov spending: 38.0%

As you can see to a naive person it might look like Japan has a much bigger government than USA, but they are actually very similar.

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government- spendi...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-spending-to- gdp) [https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-spending-to- gd...](https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-spending-to-gdp)

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

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-gov- spending-g...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-gov-spending- gdp?time=1880..2011&country=DEU+JPN+SWE+CHE+GBR+USA)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's worth noting that the debt ceiling is not a brake on spending, which continues apace. It is a brake on paying back debt. The analogy to personal finance that debt hawks love would be to rack up a bunch of debt on your credit card, and then balk when the bill comes due.

<comment><USER11> It's actually even more ridiculous than that. All the expenditures debt issuance "funds" have already been appropriated by congress, which is to say the agreement to pay has already been made. The debt ceiling is just an accounting gimmick based on the legal theory that the US Treasury's demand account at the Federal Reserve can't overdraw. Treasury could very much just write the checks (and probably is legally obligated to!) and then it would be up to the Fed to clear or bounce them. I don't see any Federal Reserve Chairman personally signing off on forcing a government default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that there's no legal consequences, for the politicians, to raise the debt ceiling.

Is this the same in other countries as well?

<comment><USER16> Are there other countries with a US-like debt ceiling? Australia had one between 2007 and 2013 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_government_debt#Deb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_government_debt#Debt_ceiling)) and the EU stability and growth pact ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact)) limits debt to 60% of GDP, but its measures are a lot drastic than what the US does, and its limit was softened in 2005 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact#Refo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_and_Growth_Pact#Reform_2005))</comment></comment>


Resolving Merge Conflicts from the GitLab UI - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2016/09/06/resolving-merge-conflicts-from-the-gitlab-ui/? <comment><AUTHOR> We would appreciate input on how to improve this further beyond the three improvements already mentioned in the article.</comment>