Goodbye, Eastern Europe - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/goodbye-eastern-europe/ <comment><USER2> > Go to Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava, Wrocław, Debrecen, Timișoara, or > Tallinn. Walk the streets. Visit the malls and cellphone kiosks. How would > you know that you aren't in Bremen, Charleroi, Newcastle, or Fargo?

As one who actually lived or traveled to several of those places, I'd submit that the answer is quite a few things.

There's surface level resemblance between the two lists when you're in a shopping mall or a shop heavy district. Outside of the latter, however, Western cities and countryside stand out as much wealthier in all sorts of ways. In particular less places that look like they're in shambles.

The contrast is comparable what you can encounter in the US countryside (which at times is borderline 3rd world-ish) vs e.g. major US metropoles (which compare to major Western European cities in sophistication and wealth).

<comment><USER3> Maybe for the most part, but as a Belgian with a Slovak girlfriend, I can say I would pick Bratislava over Charleroi any time.

<comment><USER4> As a Brit living in Vilnius I'd also agree. The city is much tidier and cleaner than anything in the U.K., people are friendlier and the shops seem of a higher quality (there's no high streets full of Poundland and 99p Store here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Eastern European here.

Yes, the heritage of the iron curtain is slowly disappearing, but I would not say that it is happening as fast as the author thinks it is.

As an example, there is still a serious division between the "nationals" and "occupants" (Russian speaking people) in Latvia. We have different politicians, celebrations, churches, companies and neighborhoods for people speaking in either the Latvian or Russian language.

Youth still tries to get away from the country since the working conditions are not the best. I'm lucky to be working in IT, where it's much better than the for the rest of the population (developers tend to make more than our politicians), but that's due to western countries looking for cheap IT labor (cheap for them; but good money for locals).

<comment><USER6> As another Eastern European, can I just say good riddance. At least good riddance to the defeatist depressive attitude that followed the collapse of the communist experiment. Our actual traditions and culture don't seem to be in any danger of disappearing _cough_ excluding the immigrants _cough_ and with the influx of western capital the ones interested in preserving them have the means to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've lived in the US for a while now, but I'm still also Eastern European (Bulgaria) and I completely disagree that it's "disappearing".

Romania, Serbia, "Macedonia" (yes, the quotes are intentional, and yes, I know it's not cool, and yes, this is pretty typical), Bulgaria - they're all on a completely different level of human development, corruption, values, etc.

Part of the reason is 500 years of Ottoman rule, another part is the close proximity and close relations with the Russian Empire/USSR/Russia, but someone who's Czech or Hungarian or a Croat is _much_ closer culturally with someone from Germany/Austria than someone from Bulgaria is.

Being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and part of the Ottoman Empire _completely_ changed how those countries developed, and the situations they're in now, even though countries are sometimes only hundreds of miles apart.

Hungary, Czechoslovakia had _revolution_ s, in '56 in '68 respectively, to attempt to escape the iron grip of Mother Russia while a large portion of Bulgarians _to this day_ are Russophiles and nostalgic about those days, not to mention EU- and NATO-sceptics.

Props to Western Europe for literally _dragging_ countries like Bulgaria and Romania and Serbia away from the clutches of the Russian Bear and into Western Civilization, but I'm not convinced they'll be successful.

<comment><USER8> I find this kind of history fascinating. Do you know of any books or articles that go into more detail on these differences and the history behind them?

<comment><USER9> Not sure if it's exactly what you're asking for, but an american acquaintance of mine is doing a podcast "hardcore history" style about Bulgaria ([http://bghistorypodcast.com/](http://bghistorypodcast.com/)) and since most of that land was actually Bulgaria a long time ago, it should cover a lot of the region.

<comment><USER10> Bulgarians are actually the oldest nation in Europe and the country has preserved its name since its founding in 681 AD. Medieval Bulgaria has had a long and glorious history before the Ottoman invasion in 1396. During the 500-year lasting Turkish yoke we managed to preserve our traditions, language and religion. Only a very small percentage of the population was converted to Islam.

<comment><USER11> The country is independent since 1908, and before that no one wanted to convert the local population, because non-Muslims paid higher taxes. Can we please stop it with the internet patriotism?

<comment><USER10> Are you one of these proponents of denying the horrifying Turkish terror and atrocities against our predecessors, and of rephrasing it to "a peaceful and enriching coexistence with the charming Muslims"? And that the blood bath of children and women in Batak was just a manifestation of an odd cultural trait from the Turkish bashibozuks?

That kind of morally relativistic BS happily doesn't ring true for the majority of contemporary Bulgarians who haven't been a subject of liberal brainwashing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Enough with the stereotypes..."

And then some more paragraphs of stereotypes.

People here are complex, just as they are everywhere. The washing-over of several different empires has added even more layers to the cultures of Eastern Europe, but to paint it as uniformly bleak is to miss the humor and wit and diversity of this place.

The trappings of modern consumer life are just a varnish on this place. Only a shallow reading would mistake them for anything else. Master a Slavic or Baltic or Turkic language and then dive down the rabbit hole. It's fun. It's weird. And it's definitely not dead.

</comment><comment><USER13> Beware: historian R. J. Evans is known and controversial for having weird theses about Central/Eastern Europe and supporting them with misrepresentative, cherry-picked arguments.

The essay quoted in the article is a prime example:

He compares the humanisic philosophers of Austria to the natural philosophers of the West, while ignoring the significant actual scientific output of the Empire (things like Auenbrugger's invention of percussion as a diagnostic technique, Semmelweis' introduction of antiseptics, Loschmidt's groundbreaking work on ideal gases). He also deliberately mixes events from different time periods into a confused narrative: for example, Baron Chaos' Austria was the massively German-speaking southeastern part of the HRE, which does not fit the description of "too many nationalities, too many fractious nobles and rebellious provinces" more representative of the late, sprawling empire (which, by the way, also had scientific output comparable to the West).

</comment><comment><USER14> I for one am happy that we can buy (the same) clothes, do the same things and almost live the same life in Eastern Europe as in Western Europe.

Maybe foreigners increasingly miss out on a good laugh as the horse carriages disappear from the Balkans. Maybe a westerner is disappointed that his long weekend slumming in Prague is spoiled by normalty. Maybe an intellectual's romantic dream of Eastern Europe is ruined.

But for those of us who live here, it's better this way. Maybe not for many people in the older generations, though.

<comment><USER15> I am always irked by the people (usually well-to-to Westerners, though it doesn't matter too much) pining for "authenticity" and shabby chic of some place being "spoiled by capitalism". People have to live there, you know, they are not your theme park. So if they want to drive nice reliable cars and wear nice comfortable and beautiful clothes, it's great, even if those are exactly the same cars and clothes you find at your place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a common mistake that everything behind the iron curtain is considered "Eastern Europe".

Say this to someone from Bratislava, Prague or anyone else of that region, and they will correct you that they live in "Central Europe".

While we (Western Europe and probably US) associate those countries with the Soviet influence, they themselves consider themselves 100% European, and didn't understand why Western Europe never came to rescue them. They want to forget the Soviet influence as fast as possible.

<comment><USER2> It's not that clearcut though. My wife (Hungarian) and her friends, who grew up before the Berlin Wall fell, tend to identify as being Eastern Europeans (because Soviet block). I imagine it's a generational thing, though, with elders and youngsters being cognizant about being from Central Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author touches on something I've often thought about - the crazy ethnolinguistic diversity within the Austro-Hungarian empire and the fringes of the Russian one.

Consider Lviv - Polish, Austrian, and Ukranian; Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish. Or, Bratislava: 40% German, 40% Hungarian, and 15% Slovak. The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof wrote of the conditions in Bialystok which inspired him:

        The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Białystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies.

In the aftermath of WWII, the populations within the former Austrian empire became extremely stratified, with the notable exception of Yugoslavia, which retained it's multi-ethnic character.

Now that we have an open Europe, the once-strict are starting to become less meaningful again. I wonder to what extent the populations of Europe will again intermix. Sadly, seeing the Balkans subdivide in to smaller and smaller states does not give one hope.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm only half Polish, but I live in Poland and I drive a miniature Fiat.

So don't worry. Everything is still fine.

<comment><USER18> My wife (American) lived in Poland with her family during 1989-1990. My in- laws still talk about their big family getting rides in a "mały Fiat".

<comment><USER17> I bought mine for 2000 PLN, in cash. I had only wanted to buy one for the novelty value, but when my friends asked the seller if he'll miss his Maluch, he said "well, I'm 86 now, and I can't drive anymore."

I was heartbroken, so I just gave him the money and took it off his hands. Here's my little baby: [https://www.instagram.com/p/BHKiB4Qg3pi/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BHKiB4Qg3pi/)

<comment><USER18> Lovely car, lovely story :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Curiously few mentions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia in the first half. You'd think they've produced enough literature to be mentioned, but no.

Then this gem:

> A haphazard construction, held together by little more than dynastic loyalty > and a touch of baroque magic, the realm of the Habsburgs had an essentially > comic nature. Its chief sins lay less in violence than in needless > complication, an endless and pointless elaboration of court ritual and > bureaucratic protocol.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not sure where this essay is headed; it starts off by noting the increased cosmopolitanization of contemporary Eastern Europe as affected by peacetime capitalism, while pointing that the psychological stereotypes live on in fewer and fewer places that are more rural and further from the malls and thoroughfares of second-tier cities. But then it winds through a retrospective of many decades of literature defined by different circumstances of the time: a multi-ethnic hodgepodge of people living in alternating periods of peacetime and war who often dipped down to dry humour to maintain some semblance of normalcy and sanity in spite of the political, military, and economic conflicts hanging over their lives.

Perhaps more so than in any other part of the world, Eastern Europe's people have been more acutely defined by economic inequality than anywhere else: whether from the Empire days when one's ethnicity was secondary to one's status as a serf or civis or nobility until it came time to kill each other in someone else's war, or from the Eastern Bloc times when socialist governments handed down a bureaucratic and unremarkable forced egalitarianism that applied only to the masses but not the ruling class, even if it gave them affordable housing and education and healthcare and womens' and workers' rights, or today when middle-class people in Timișoara and Debrecen can buy world-class consumer goods but good jobs are few and far between, and lucrative opportunities lie in few fields, or on the other side of the continent, or in remittances.

Yes, perhaps the stereotype of Eastern Europe is dead, and its cities are more lively to the untrained eye. But plenty of problems still exist; they're just hidden beneath a veneer of disposable spending of South Korean goods to absorb people's momentary desires while being unable to cultivate lasting wealth. It's still a deeply troubled place, albeit in ways that the banlieues of France, the run-down districts of Brussels, the declining Midlands, the small towns of America can relate.

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, the same can be said about Western Europe. When did you last see a person in a national costume in Austria?

<comment><USER22> That doesn't mean they aren't Austrians anymore though.

There is a big difference between the facade, "there is American stores everywhere", and the deep culture behind, which clearly still is very present.

<comment><USER23> none of the stores listed in the first part of the article are American.

<comment><USER22> Ah ! I thought H&M was American, I stand corrected, thanks :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good that my country (Russia) stays the same and we keep our own culture and everything.

<comment><USER25> And everything? Presumably not a life expectancy for males of 64.7, females 76.3 and total life expectancy of 70.5 giving Russia a World Life Expectancy ranking of 107.

<comment><USER24> Obviously any country has problems. Good job, you found one

<comment><USER25> Sorry I only found a trivial one! Will try harder. Seriously though - this is a dreadful statistic isn't it? I've marked you up - feeling better?

<comment> guard-of-terra You've just highlighted the sort of reward that you get for the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove the Soviet regime and freeing the world from Nuclear War fears and offsetting the Doomsday Clock by full 11 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Looking at a physical map of Europe is an interesting way to visualise how arbitrary the split into Western and Eastern Europe used to be: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#/media/File:Europe_topo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe#/media/File:Europe_topography_map_en.png)

When I grew up in Western Germany, the world seemed to end at the Iron Curtain. Would be great if this is indeed changing now.

</comment><comment><USER27> I once referred to Czech Republic as part of Eastern Europe to a Czech and was swiftly corrected. He felt it was Central Europe. I was grouping it as 'formerly Communist', but I'm sure Kafka would find more in common with Germany than Serbia. These definitions shed little light. Reading Hasek, even concepts like Austria-Hungary are nearly useless beyond knowing where the taxes go.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a poorly timed article...with Russian aggression given implicit license by Trump's election and the rising tide of far right nationalism in Western Europe, the author just might get their (very bizarre and offensive imo) wish of a return to "a shared experience of occupation and exclusion, the permanent-seeming weight of economic backwardness, treasured memories of defeat".

<comment><USER25> It seems that HN is an acceptable political platform mostly if Trump's in the firing line. Does a statistical analysis of comments support my contention. No, it's just an impression. If I've got this wrong, I'm sorry.

<comment><USER28> I don't think my point is very political - Trump has made his sympathy with Russia and Putin, and his preference for foreign non-intervention (except in the Middle East) abundantly clear. I mean, yea the tone of my comment indicates that I don't think it's a good thing, but are you really going to argue that Trump and the other ascendent right wing leaders in Europe are going to decrease Russian expansion and aggression?

And as far as your comment, I think you are wrong. There are plenty of centrist and right wing voices on HN. I get push back on a lot of my leftist political comments. I mean we're making competing anecdotal arguments to take it for what it's worth, but just look at this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13663629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13663629) The top comment is claiming to find the ideal of a globalized community is "deeply cynical".

Don't be a snowflake who worries that everyone's biased against you because of your politics, just make good and good-faith arguments.

<comment><USER25> Have you done the statistics? If not then should we not agree to disagree? I guess we both have other things to do than read HN all day. One could write a scraper I suppose.

On your snowflake accusation (wow - I've never been accused of that; usually the other way round! I don't recognize the concept of being 'offended' as anything other than a triviality so I'm mystified by the present turn of events in the West) I will add that my comment was not political. Any neutral observer will note the animus (irrespective of its level on HN) against Trump. That's not taking a side.

On the other hand I'm a snowflake insofar as understanding that political views are not welcome on HN and it's nice to relax into another world where politics are largely absent unless closely connected with an IT issue. That was my point. You might think that I didn't have to read your comment and you'd be right! I'll have to get over it. Thanks for the response. Making good and good-faith arguments - I'll go with that!

<comment><USER29> This brings up an interesting value that is part of HN community. That politics and IT are separable. I personally believe they are not and that it is a fantasy to think so. But we try anyway.

<comment><USER15> It depends on actions. If people try to politicize technology, they'll succeed. If they try to avoid it, it'll likely succeed too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't know about our neighbors but us Slovenes consider ourselves as Central European. Even Wikipedia says so [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe)

</comment><comment><USER31> Go to rural areas of Ukraine and Belarus. Eastern Europe is still kicking there hard.

</comment><comment><USER32> An amazing fetishization of the "psychogeography" of what is colloquially called Eastern Europe. Borders which represent a bastardization of cultures and partitions for empires long past.

It starts off by playing on stereotypes of dirtyness, grit, and sanctuaries of sexual promiscuity whose location changes by which first world country you ask. Before diving into existential questions and nuances of a variety of cultures in the former second world. A term whose meaning is largely erased from the collective conscious and lost for a colliqualism of first and third world ambiguity.</comment>


Patent on the Apple store - <AUTHOR> http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85036990&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

<comment><USER2> This is a trademark, not a patent.</comment>


Show HN: Station, Tumblr analytics that supports charity - <AUTHOR> https://www.getstation.com/

<comment><USER2> You're stating different prices in these two pages. [https://www.getstation.com/](https://www.getstation.com/) [https://www.getstation.com/home/faq](https://www.getstation.com/home/faq)</comment>


Show HN: Companiesmarketcap.com Similar to CoinMarketCap but for Stocks - <AUTHOR> https://companiesmarketcap.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice work, any plans to expand beyond 300 companies and calculating more metrics?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are actually about 700 companies tracked, I want to extend to the 5,000 biggest.</comment></comment>


Twitter account creator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BatuhanK/twitter_account_creator

<comment><AUTHOR> hi,

you can create accounts with easily with this tool. There is a twitter's secret rest api endpoint ( accounts/create.json ) and this tool using it with official windows api keys.</comment>


Woman Follows Google Maps "Walking" Directions, Gets Hit, Sues - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/woman-follows-google-maps-walking-directions-gets-hit-sues-43212

<comment><USER2> Is this ever ridiculous. She made the choice to follow the directions. Once she noticed it was a highway with no sidewalk, why would she keep walking?!

<comment><USER3> Well, I've certainly done it a lot since I don't drive and since 1991 have lived in pedestrian unfriendly locations, but I certainly wouldn't sue a mapmaker or Google if I was slow/unaware/unlucky/whatever enough to get hit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the problem here that the legal system in the US allows for such "made up" cases?

I mean, like suing someone because you burned your tongue on coffee, which is a hot beverage. I just don't get it.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people say the problem is in a lack of feedback.

The English rule AKA "Loser pays" requires the loser to pay the other party's attorney's fees and it really dampens frivolous lawsuits.

<comment><USER4> True, but take this case as an example, would that case have even the slightest chance of winning anywhere else in the world?

It's a major problem that they allow such cases in the court, but that such a case can win? That's just crazy?

<comment><USER3> The points here about feedback are:

Would she sue if the downside is paying Google's lawyers upon likely loss?

If she's not paying for the litigation (likely), then would a lawyer take this and many other cases on contingency for the chance at one jackpot when he has to pay the house so much more for each roll of the die?

There's a strong case to be made for restricting lawsuits by this method instead of having the legal system be even more restrictive about what it lets people sue for. In the latter case, there's a tremendous pressure for capture of the court system to prevent legitimate lawsuits from ever filed. Bribing judges will frequently be a lot cheaper than paying out legitimate damages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fucking lawyers.</comment>


We increased (SaaS) signups 175% with an email remarketing hack - <AUTHOR> https://chatwhale.com/email-remarketing-hack/ <comment><USER2> "We've sent out personalized spam, and it works"

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. Listen I hate getting spam, but my Gmail does a pretty good job of filtering. I feel a little more open to cold emails within a b2b environment if they're relevant. What I found interesting was the potential for displaying personalised images to website visitors, onboarding customers, event invites and FB remarketing ads.</comment></comment>


"Like A Rolling Stone" – Interactive Video - <AUTHOR> http://video.bobdylan.com/desktop.html? <comment><USER2> I was beyond skeptical when I saw this link earlier, but this is outstanding.

The commenters on RollingStone and other sites, seem to have wanted some magical rose-colored nostalgia trip to 1965, but the whole point of contemporary Dylan is that you can't have 1965 back (and even if you could, you don't want to).

The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop.

There are so many little easter egg mashups you can find as you click through: the CNBC styled wall-street guy ("threw the bums a dime, in your prime, didn't you?"), the QVC home-shopping girl's deadpan delivery ("take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe"), reality TV girls desperate for attention ("how does it feel / how does it feel/ to be without a home/ like a complete unknown").

I think this is really the only video this song could ever have :)

and Danny Brown shows up

<comment><USER3> "The lyrics to this song are like the anthem of Holden Caufield... a wry, disillusioned, antisocial, anticonsumption, post-war love song. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, is a turd who only loved this song because it was Top 40 and reminiscent of some lost High School dance, despite the fact that the song itself is completely anti-pop."

I sorta hate to break it to you but we knew all that back then. I don't think any other point of view was even considered.

<comment><USER2> You're preaching to the choir on that one, but maybe we should tell the commenters on RollingStone.com, HuffPo, etc? They seem confused (I like to read their stupid in an MST3K styled riff off; you can be TomServo, dibs on Crooow though).

"It's just a bunch of commercials. Bah" / "This is totally lame and does no justice to a great song" / "I grew up in the 60's and this is not the Dylan I know" / "I found the word VAGINAS in the video" / "This is a vapid mess. It's sacrilegious to give such lyrics this treatment!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks like there are many 1-second long .flv (Flash Video) files for each channel.

This is second 37 on channel 3: [http://content.interlude.fm/video/dylanLive/rc2/ch3/c3s37.fl...](http://content.interlude.fm/video/dylanLive/rc2/ch3/c3s37.flv)

Here's second 125 on channel 6: [http://content.interlude.fm/video/dylanLive/rc2/ch6/c6s125.f...](http://content.interlude.fm/video/dylanLive/rc2/ch6/c6s125.flv)

and so forth.

You can run this in your terminal to download all of the files for a given channel:

      curl -O http://content.interlude.fm/video/dylanLive/rc2/ch6/c6s[0-284].flv

FFMPEG should be able to join FLV files but I haven't tried it yet.

Interestingly enough it seems to pre-cache the channel immediately above and below the channel you're on, so if you're on channel 11 it will download the next couple seconds of channel 10 and 12, so you can switch channels without having to re-fill your buffer.

<comment><USER4> The instructions under "concat demuxer" on this page work for the video but no so much for the audio:

[http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/How%20to%20concatenate%20...](http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/How%20to%20concatenate%20%28join,%20merge%29%20media%20files)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a lovely experience. Took me a moment to get into it and then I smiled the whole way through. I just love the different feelings you get from the different channels.

</comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely beautiful - I love the history channel in particular

<comment><USER7> Yeah this was the first channel I really stopped on and it was hilarious when I realised the bearded chap was mouthing along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Easy instructions on How to Hack and Download Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' Interactive Video: [http://www.cyberculturegallery.com/how-to-hack-bob- dylans-in...](http://www.cyberculturegallery.com/how-to-hack-bob-dylans- interactive-music-video/)

</comment><comment><USER9> You can't help but smile and ⇧⇩

</comment><comment><USER10> This made my day - thought of this clip from the Pennebaker film: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4HtQ- XJQE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4HtQ-XJQE)

</comment><comment><USER11> This looks awesome, and I love Dylan and this song... too bad my internet is way too slow to keep me from enjoying this, it buffers every 5 seconds and it kills the effect.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there a blog that explains how this works? I'm assuming they either have a ton of video that is instantly available and use the closest match or some magical CG...

<comment><USER13> Seriously?? It's just a few fake TV show clips they recorded specifically for this video. And for me, the channel buttons do nothing but bring up a description of the current "channel."

[edit: the channels do change after a delay]

Aside: I'm sure I've heard it all throughout my life, but it was only a few days ago that I looked up the lyrics and backstory behind this song. For a song written just shy of 50 years ago, it blows my mind how good it is.

[http://rock.rapgenius.com/Bob-dylan-like-a-rolling-stone- lyr...](http://rock.rapgenius.com/Bob-dylan-like-a-rolling-stone-lyrics)

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

<comment><USER14> How long did you stick with it? It cycles through the same few channels at the very beginning and starts you on the same channel (food channel?) each time, but after that I think you're in control.

EDIT: OK, so I messed with this some more. It does appear to change channels on its own from time to time, so it doesn't seem possible to see whether they recorded the entire song for each channel. Also, it didn't start me on the food channel this time. Nevertheless, it's not the same each time you do it. I suspect that each channel only contains portions of the song and there are enforced channel changes as a result

<comment><USER15> I think once you change the channel once, it let's your stay on a certain channel for the entire song. I was able to watch a single channel for the majority of the song. And the first channel that is chosen for you seems to be random, it's been different the 3 times I watched it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I enjoyed that a lot - well done!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is just wonderful. On so many levels.

Steve Jobs is smiling down from wherever he might be. As we all are.

And wow, comments on HN that all agree with each other. No bashing. No hate. What a wonderful thing.

Beautiful

<comment><USER18> Steve Jobs? Wut?

<comment><USER19> It's well known that Steve Jobs was a huge Dylan fan. As well as the Beatles. I don't know if he'd be smiling though. This is flash based after all.

<comment><USER17> _This is flash after all_

That was great. Insanely great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is fantastic. I like the VH1 channel.

Just watched it a second time. This is legitimately beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Rolling Stones (which names themselves after this song) also have an innovative video for their cover:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziRR5h3b4YU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziRR5h3b4YU)

It's 183,000 photographs, morphed into each other.

<comment><USER22> Citation needed. The Rolling Stones started in '62\. Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is from '65.

Wikipedia attribute the band's name to the Muddy Waters song, "Rollin' Stone".

<comment><USER21> I didn't say Dylan's version of the song was original, just that the Rolling Stones are named after it.

>> The Rolling Stones (which named themselves after this song)

> Citation needed.

Sure. Here are two, from the wikipedia article you just read:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones#CITEREFNelso...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Stones#CITEREFNelson2010)

\- Jagger, Mick; Richards, Keith; Watts, Charlie; Wood, Ronnie (2003). According to the Rolling Stones. San Francisco, California: Chronicle Books. ISBN 9780811840606. p42

\- Nelson, Murray N. (2010). The Rolling Stones: A Musical Biography. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood. ISBN 9780313380341. p3.

<comment><USER23> Like A Rolling Stone is most definitely an original Bob Dylan song. Dylan may have been inspired by Muddy Waters at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Running flash is a terrible security risk.

I won't do it even for Dylan.

Bummer. Someone should've told his dev team that the times, they are a-changin'...

<comment><USER25> How do you watch youtube videos without flash?

<comment><USER26> Thanks to mobile devices, most are available with HTML5 video.</comment></comment></comment>


Kel: An Open-Source, Kubernetes-Based PaaS Built in Python and Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.kelproject.com/ <comment><USER2> I want to like this, but I can't figure out what it actually does. The intro just says it provides "an API" without saying what functionality it provides, and there seems to be zero usage documentation.

Maybe someone who's looked at the code could explain what this is for and what value it adds to the existing Kubernetes API?

(Protip: if you have six projects with six identical README files, the README probably isn't adding any value.)

<comment> vhost- How can you want to like something if you don't know what it does?

<comment><USER2> There are conveniences that a proper PaaS could provide on top of Kubernetes, e.g. Heroku's deploy-on-Git-push feature. I just don't know if that's the kind of thing this project is targeted at.

<comment><USER3> Tsuru.io is an open source PaaS that provides heroku like deployments and other features!

<comment><USER4> Lots of services, easy to try (just one command: [https://github.com/tsuru/tsuru-bootstrap](https://github.com/tsuru/tsuru- bootstrap)), support docker clusters(pools), auto scale, metrics, in production using docker since the beginning (about 2 years).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish these kind of shops would get an outsider to write their landing page spiel. It is incredibly hard for insiders to get that right, sea they swim in, woods for the trees kind of thing. Try to remember that the world you live in is yours only, and if if you try to entice someone standing at the gate to get in you really need to up the spruik.

Reading the page tells me little about whats actually going on inside, apart from the fact that its "Awesome, great, etc." and a bunch of irrelevant implementation details. And I'm not picking on Kel or Gondor here, its par for the course.

Techs take note: You need to up your ken on spruiking your shit. We are all special little snowflakes. Aquire customer empathy.

</comment><comment><USER6> I literally have no idea what this does. It doesn't make any sense. Even guessing, adding hidden complexity on top of k8s doesn't seem a good idea.

<comment><USER7> The docs are a little sparse but reading between the lines it's a set of tools for configuring k8s clusters at a higher level of abstraction than gcloud and kubectl. If you've built out automation to deploy k8s services then you know that there is still quite a bit of manual configuration needed to define the clusters, repl controllers, services, ingress, persistent disks, etc. If you wanted to build a PAAS on top of k8s then you'd begin pretty much as these guys have, I think.

<comment><USER6> I'm very heavily working with k8s and while what you say is definitely true, I'm not too bothered by what I have to configure (aka stuff I can control directly). What I really dislike is stuff on which I have no direct control and that's the main problem with k8s. Lot of stuff "just works", with little- to-no documentation on what are the pieces concurring to make it work nor how it is configured.

The 'it just works' approach might be great with simple scenarios, but it's horrible for complex use cases where you need to have detailed control over the pieces that will run in production and - once they are properly setup -, you would anyway automate accordingly your specific usecase.

Hence my: "Additional hidden complexity doesn't seem to be a good thing in this case".

Beside that, I really have no idea about what they specifically mean with "Kubernetes-based PaaS". What is it? Abstracting kubernetes cluster setup? If this is the case, i remark that I need more fine-grained access on the internals rather than additional abstractions that internally do "god-knows- what".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serious question, why would you use Kel/Kubernetes over DC/OS [https://dcos.io](https://dcos.io)? DC/OS is feature mature, the web interface looks rich and beautiful, and it has a track record of scaling.

<comment><USER9> For Kubernetes vs Mesos vs Swarm vs other container schedulers you should pick the one that has the maturity, reliability and operational overhead that your team is comfortable taking on.

An important dimension is the data store. These all depend on a HA consensus based database: Etcd, Consul, Zookeeper. Set up, automation, monitoring and scaling is different with each.

Aside from this schedulers are undifferentiated technology. Tell it what you want to run and trust it'll fulfil your request.

User Interface is generally going to be a matter of taste. A beautiful web app doesn't matter if your team wants a CLI tool or a fully automated CD flow.

I don't have first hand experience by my research shows that Mesos is the most mature but is pretty heavy to set up and manage. And that DC/OS is a very polished interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to be a project for building and deploying kubernetes clusters.

Looking at the code, only GCE is supported.

As the others have mentioned, documentation is not great.

<comment><USER11> Are you saying that Kubernetes only supports GCE? AFAIK, Kubernetes could run on many (any?) cloud or even bare metal machines.

Disclaimer: I used to work on Kubernetes and its related projects.

<comment><USER12> He is obviously saying this project only supports GCE. K8s supports other environments, yes, but this project could use K8s in a way specific to GCE (e.g. managing machines with gcloud ssh related apis)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _" Kel helps DevOps professionals manage their application infrastructure through a layer of tools and components that make Kubernetes accessible and easier to use."_

I'm not sure if the OP is a project member but it would be helpful to see more details in the docs covering how exactly the project aims to or already makes Kuberenetes easier to use.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is this mesos/dcos alternative? Hard to tell what this project is actually doing.

<comment><USER15> From what I can tell it looks more like continuous delivery on top of kubernetes.

Mesos on the other hand is a data center management. You actually can run Kubernetes on top of it as you can run chronos (distributed cron), marathon (containers such as docker) etc.

<comment><USER16> Do you know of any sites actually running kerbernetes-on-mesos? I've been using that as a talking point for a while too, but have yet to hear of it actually being used anywhere. Not trolling here, I just don't know.

<comment><USER15> I know about it, because my company is currently evaluating it. Running it on Mesos, gives us ability to also use other Mesos applications such as Chronos.

<comment><USER16> cool - I'm interested in hearing how it works out for you. We're running mesos (not DCOS, but still mesos) with a couple of other frameworks, but I haven't had any time to try running kubernetes on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So it is not clear what it is doing and judging by use of crusty django, I will pass on that one...

<comment><USER18> Because only an idiot would choose an actively maintained battle-tested technology whose lifespan is measured in years not weeks... wait, what?

<comment><USER17> You sound like someone who would have used a pen to make company business cards.

<comment><USER7> Yeah that would be dumb. He should use card-o-matic.js 0.0.12. It's going to change everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks similar to Deis, at least from the title

<comment><USER20> Two projects doing the similar things should mean the idea is good :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering I spend $5 a month on my digitalocean droplet that runs docker 1.11 and a bunch of containers (nothing consequential though), and Gondor wants $100 for their entry-level "dev" tier...

<comment><USER21> Presumably if you're looking into Kubernetes, your workload demands require more than 512MB of memory and single-core processing.

<comment><USER5> Of course. But you may also correctly presume that I'll question why this would cost US$100/m for a "dev" offering. Considering what I can get for that from the other incumbents.

<comment><USER21> You're referring to the pricing on Gondor ([https://gondor.io/](https://gondor.io/)) which is not the same as Kel linked in the OP.

It appears that Gondor is a _managed_ PaaS, which can justify the additional cost for businesses with capital. It is likely not intended for hobbyists.

<comment><USER22> Kel is a sort of replacement for Gondor, as far as I can tell: [https://gondor.io/blog/2016/04/21/goodbye-gondor-hello- kel-e...](https://gondor.io/blog/2016/04/21/goodbye-gondor-hello-kel-eldarion- cloud/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Some more background info here regarding Kel and it's relation to Gondor by Brian Rosner, the main dev of both Gondor and Kel as far as I can tell: [https://brosner.com/blog/2016/05/05/kel/](https://brosner.com/blog/2016/05/05/kel/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Can I Take My Coding Skills from Intermediate to Expert? - <AUTHOR> I started coding about 4 years ago but I feel like I'm in a bit of a rut lately. I understand the basic building blocks perfectly, but higher level concepts, for example, abstracting the database away through an interface layer so that we may achieve proper unit testing in Go, are much harder for me to figure out. I understand WHY I need to do this, and I understand what is going on on a high level, but I get a bit lost when it comes time to implement. All the unit testing examples out there show examples of how to unit test a function that squares an integer. That has zero real world benefit to me. How would I unit test an http handler func that is the entry point for a RESTful API? I need to do authentication, database access, and return some JSON data. How do I keep the test as one "unit" when I need to do all of these things?
I feel like there are some intermediary steps or knowledge that I am lacking, where a more senior engineer would be able to figure out how to do unit testing in a real world app based on the squaring function alone. Again, this is just a singular example, but the theme is pretty consistent across any higher level programming challenge I come across.
There are plenty of tutorials out there about how to learn PHP (yuck) or JavaScript for newbies, but there are surprisingly few resources for people interested in becoming experts. I'm the only technical person at my job currently, so asking senior engineers for help really isn't an option. Where do I go to fill these gaps in my knowledge? Are there other engineers out there that felt the existence of a "skills chasm" that they had to cross? How did you do it? <comment><USER3> First, I find the inclusion of "PHP (yuck)" to be in extremely poor taste. You would be surprised by what you could learn from that community that would apply to every other problem you would face in whatever language you like more. If your goal is expertise (whatever that is), don't close yourself off to other languages or their learning resources. In general, don't close yourself off to any opportunity to learn anything.

Second, expertise in our field comes from years and years of practice. Mentorship helps to an extent, but you'll still have to put in the time.

Third, read as much code as you can.

<comment><USER4> I agree.

OP, when you stop saying things like "PHP (yuck)" and start to appreciate each language for the one (or more) things it got right, you'll be well on the way to taking your coding skills to expert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Build many things.

While you are building them, do it however you can make it work (you may learn some things noone else has done).

But look up things you get stuck on.

Use the things you build. So build things you want to see happen.

While you use them, you will make them more reliable and see the pain points. In future projects you will avoid those/have solutions you instinctively go to because you experienced it.

Write some libraries along the way to help with the pain points you solved yourself. You will learn what makes a good interface and documentation for 3rd party libs which you will probably be using a lot of, even if it's just the main framework or standard lib of the language you are using.

Lastly, all of this will help guide you in your evaluation of new languages, frameworks, and libraries, which you will be doing a lot of during your career when you build/rebuild/extend.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you considered contributing to an open source project that you respect?

Picking a side project is a great way to learn and grow.

If you learn from books, I would recommend Test Driven Development by Kent Beck, Clean Code by Robert Martin, The Philosophy of Software Development

</comment><comment><USER7> I find high level abstractions more practical, and easier to understand, when I work on larger projects. I would recommend looking at larger open source products or picking up a few books on enterprise software design. You can skim through the academic theory, if you're already familiar with it, and concentrate on extending their code examples.

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - by Martin Fowler Domain Driven Design - by Eric Evans

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the responses ladies and gents. At the risk of upsetting some of you further, I fully stand behind my PHP comments. I'm only kidding (sort of). Thanks again.

</comment><comment> rc-1140 Hi OP, I had the same problem you're having, still do to an extent. I was the only dev at my first job and had no one in the real world to turn to. I learned several things from a friend who was already in the industry for years before I got into it when I was searching for my second job, and I'd like to share them because your question will get slathered in the typical HN well- meaning yet empty responses:

> How would I unit test an http handler func that is the entry point for a > RESTful API? I need to do authentication, database access, and return some > JSON data. How do I keep the test as one "unit" when I need to do all of > these things?

At this point, you're ready to ask "real" questions on places like StackOverflow, Reddit boards, and chat rooms (Discord, Slack, Gitter, IRC, etc). You have enough understanding of the technical jargon to postulate questions to the community at large. I asked a question on SO about how unit testing in Android works because I was getting a NullReferenceException - <USER2> know, the type of problem that gets badgered with the standard and huge SO answer about NullReferenceExceptions[1] - and I got a really nice answer that taught me a fair bit about the Android ecosystem. Put enough thought into your question, include code and links to stuff you've done, and most of these resources will bear fruit for you.

Another benefit of joining these communities is if you get into the chat room ones and become a known face, people will genuinely want to help you. I learned about the history of delegates and how to write extension methods because I was chatting about going through "C# 6.0 and the .NET 4.6 Framework" and had some questions about delegates, and one of the members set aside some time over a few days to give me a small challenge for writing an extension method, explaining delegates along the way.

> Again, this is just a singular example, but the theme is pretty consistent > across any higher level programming challenge I come across.

This is the time where you can also start reading books like Code Complete and get something out of reading it. Pick up some of the usual suspects like Clean Code, Code Complete, Working Effectively With Legacy Code, etc. and get crackin'. You can treat Code Complete sort of like a manual that you peruse the chapter list and see if it has a relevant chapter to your problems and give it a read, or go through it cover to cover.

> "skills chasm"

I know I just told you to spend money on books, but a resource that was REALLY good for building skills was Pluralsight. For me, since I was working in C#, I perused the C# Path and learned about equality, LINQ, etc. Some of the courses get really specific and deep into it; for even more depth, you might have to turn to books. Actually, there's an intermediate course on Pluralsight called "Creating Well-tested Applications in Go" which might benefit you immediately but YMMV.

It's the go-to that just works for building skills so everyone spits it out immediately, but yeah, as much as I dislike people who just go "projects help you grow!" and drop the mic, projects are gonna help you out a lot. If you can't do big things because of work or time constraints, do small things. An example I can provide was learning about reading/querying .sdf files, which meant I had to do some digging into deprecated libraries and tech. I did a little playing around with some sdf files in LINQpad by connecting to it and simply reading some values. Small things build up.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/a/4660186](https://stackoverflow.com/a/4660186)</comment>


This winter break, I built a python-powered robot telescope. - <AUTHOR> http://substack.net/posts/87bfa7/Robot-Telescope

<comment><USER2> Nice. I wish I could have done that sort of thing when I was 11. (Without going to jail, of course... :-P)</comment>


Some TikTok stars leaving platform for rival app over data privacy concerns - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-07-28/creators-leave-tiktok <comment><USER2> A lesson on how to shape public opinion.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps a lesson for both sides. TikTok is furiously reviewing all the options, even as their user base is leaking away.

We may never know if the spying risk was significant in any way, but we definitely know the anti-TikTok propaganda is indeed having an impact.

Given how powerful smart phones are getting, and how cheap memory and storage is, I naturally assume we will eventually have a container system that puts actual controls on this sort of access, thus making this whole attention diversion tactic a moot point.

Is TikTok that much of a privacy killer in comparison to every other app installed on those same phones? It feels like picking one poison over another.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I get rid of the Google background image? - <AUTHOR>

Particularly, in Chrome. <comment><USER2> Don't use google.com, particularly in Chrome (and most over browsers, epiphany for example) -- just typing anything in the URL bar leads you to a search engine.

Edit: but thanks for the pointer, I would have missed it.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a white background image you can select

</comment><comment><USER4> What Google background images? I haven't seen one in any of the four browsers I used today ...

</comment><comment><USER5> Wait a day.</comment>


Video: College Student Builds Paintball Tank - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=74223

<comment><USER2> I was waiting for him to chirp an alarm system key-chain at the end. Great job though!

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this more of a Reddit post?

</comment><comment><USER4> So Star Simpson from MIT gets arrested as a terrorist for wearing a jacket with leds on it to a Boston Airport, but this guy just gets sent home by the cops for driving a _tank_ down the roads in his neighborhood in Michigan?!

[http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student- arrested.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student- arrested.html)

Methinks the Boston authorities are wound a bit too tight, or that Michigan is one _laid back_ place.

</comment><comment><USER5> Non-linkjacked: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5eYCdheLw>

<comment><USER6> It's syndication, not link-jacking. All those newspapers that use the AP aren't really linkjackers.

<comment><USER5> I looked it up, you're right. Thanks for pointing it out :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's hilarious, nice job!

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen I must have one.

</comment><comment><USER8> GREAT!!!!!</comment>


UIs that accidentally preserve memories - <AUTHOR> https://www.metafilter.com/174152/UIs-that-accidentally-preserve-memories <comment><USER2> It's interesting how you can almost completely forget about something that or someone who used to be such an important part of your life, and yet it doesn't take much for you to suddenly remember all about it/them.

Here's an excerpt from a letter written by Marcel Proust in 1913 that I came across not that long ago.

 _" So we don't believe that life is beautiful because we don't recall it but if we get a whiff of a long-forgotten smell we are suddenly intoxicated and similarly we think we no longer love the dead because we don't remember them but if by chance we come across an old glove we burst into tears."_

<comment><USER3> Wow. That is so well written. In a few words he's completely captured the sensation of nostalgia that I often chase after.

<comment><USER4> Good news! There are 4200 more pages where that came from.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Between TFA, and this thread I remembered I needed to check up on my gaming buddy, I hadn't heard from him in a few months. He hadn't been answering his Steam chat, texts, nothing. After not getting any response, I did a little digging and came across his obituary and reached out to some common friends and confirmed the news.

I also found out, the reason he still shows as online is his coworkers found his Steam profile on a company desktop. They left it plugged in and online so he'd stay with us.

Rest in Peace, Dave.

<comment><USER6> There was once this copy-pasta thread or may be it was a capture on 4chan a few years ago where a user remembers a player from an fps (don't remember which). He was a player from Egypt and being 4chan they thought his broken english and odd words regarding the fps fighting in game was entertaining so the author befriended him and added him to his Steam contact list. Around the time of the Arab spring, the friend told the author about the unrest, and that he might not come back in real life. I think he might have made an allusion to the "fight" in game matches as similar to this real fight. The conclusion of the article was the "last online: 3 months ago" tag line at the bottom of the chat box, or some other time period like that.

EDIT: found it[0]. Got the bit about the allusion to the fight in game wrong.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/6EB2lPJ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/6EB2lPJ.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The reason that we need a right to be forgotten is encoded in this 'UI-forced' remembering. Forgetting the awkward moments is one thing, but it _is_ natural to be born, grow, and change. In those earlier centuries, it was only the remembrances encoded in our cultural practices and personal intent that governed what remained. Even the organic, compostable material of everyday life (like wood and leather) would decay to nothing. Liberation by time and forgetting can be a lonely thing, especially considering the ultimate ends of _all_ our endeavors. By comparison, the memoria we maintain today is akin to plastic floating in the ocean, we don't need it, it will outlive us, and periodically it collides perfectly to bear the fruit of a poignant nostalgia.

In the previous ages, we buried our ancestors and in turn were buried.

<comment><USER8> I think this is especially true as more apps depend on machine learning (or 'AI') to provide a useful experience. Opening a weather app and seeing an old home (and triggering the memory) is one thing but there is absolutely nothing malicious about an app that saves a preference so you don't have to search for it every time.

More insidious is with those more clever services because they seem to become weighted to your earlier choices and your present self has little influence over what the machine has decided to learn. So you have Spotify where the first few hundred songs and artists you listen to have pretty much defined your taste in music and due to the amount of data collected to identify who you are across the internet, you're unlikely to get a fresh start by creating a new account.

The fundamental problem with this kind of memory in tech is that it doesn't appreciate that people change. It won't forget, it won't let go and move on, it won't adapt the same way a person will, it'll probably discount much of that change for being anomalous after some time. Or at least, that's what my fear is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 9 years after he passed, I still cannot bring myself to delete my dad's name and contact details from my phone.

My wife went one better. Her mum passed within months of my dad (she was ill with cancer), and my wife spontaneously recorded the last few conversation they ever had on Voice Memos on her phone, and I know she still listens to them every now and then. I've backed those up off her phone as well, and kept them safely archived.

</comment><comment><USER10> In my younger days I wished for more of this so that cell phones would automatically save the initial date/time/location that a number was added.

Would have made it easier to remember the context of meeting some lady friends.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some of the user comments share poignant memories of relationships and people past and passed.

You might find it worth your while to scan past some of the earlier more casual and naive posts to find the more poignant ones.

<comment><USER11> I joined Metafilter in 2002, and although I no longer use it as my main source of content discovery, I do love to go back now and again. It's always been a top notch community, and if you haven't ever spent some time on the site, I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER12> I still read it and scan through maybe five comment threads a week for insightful perspectives, but I no longer participate because the community is toxic and mind-killing these days. To me, at any rate.

Edit: IB4, "Metafilter: Toxic and mind-killing, these days."

<comment><USER13> Do you mind explaining why you think so? That's a pretty surprising perspective; the community often has intelligent discussions about a range of topics.

<comment><USER12> Yes it does, as long as the discussion doesn't veer into political questions, which can happen in surprising and dismaying ways at times.

<comment><USER11> But I find that to be true of every online forum I can think of, HN is no different.

<comment><USER12> No, explicit personal attacks are generally frowned on, here.

<comment><USER11> I haven't found that to be generally acceptable on Metafilter, but again, I haven't really frequented since the mathowie days.

<comment><USER12> That was a long time ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I strongly believe that over time, all information would be modeled with an expiration timestamp. The fact that I use to visit a coffee shop 5 years back is neither useful for me or the advertisers.

<comment><USER15> Right, but nostalgia is a powerful thing. I'm sure if advertisers knew you watched some movie 20+ years ago they would target you even harder to make you watch the unwarranted reboot/sequel.

<comment><USER16> That seems like a case of something I would want to be advertised though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've written about it before, but AIM until the very end showed my friend who died six years ago as logged in on his dumb phone because his phone never sent an explicit logout signal.

I never had the heart to remove him. The day AIM shutdown was very emotional for me. It felt almost like he died again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh man. I wasn't expecting that thread to make me cry. It's worth reading, but get a Kleenex.

<comment><USER18> [Disclaimer, drunk and using a small phone]

A few years back one of my old irc buddies reached out to me with a simple 'hey man what's up' on gChat. Because my schedules were all over the place and whatnot I just looked off and left it. Checked on a old podcast I used to listen to (HPR) and the boys had put together a memorial episode after he lost his battle with cancer. Cancer, I didn't even know. For a year he was the one unread chat off in my Gmail inbox (because who the fuck uses gChat?) and I didn't give it a look, or notice the growing away time. You ever try talking to the dead over XMPP and wish there was a time machine setting?

Wherever you're at LordDrachenblut, give em hell, I'm sorry I didn't reach out. I still go over your old episodes and feeds every now and again bud. That's the weird part, the leftover breadcrumbs from life.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the nicest thing you have ever done? - <AUTHOR>

I was chatting to a friend the other day who told me the most unbelievable story.
To cut a long story short he told me how he met a person at the airport who was grief stricken - his mum had just been in a major accident and he had to get home from Barcelona airport to his home in Oxford. His dad had already died and he had no other family to speak of.
This man also had no money.
He was at the airport pleading with them to give him a flight for free so he could get home to see his mum, maybe for the last time. My friend over heard what was going and offered to buy his flight. The man accepted this gracious offer and my friend got talking to him on the journey home and tried to allay his worst fears.
The two of them landed at Gatwick together and as if my friend had not done enough, he then drove this man to the hospital in Oxford where his mum was. They swapped numbers and 2 weeks later my friend got a phonecall - the mother had survived and was expceted to make a full recovery. The man (Paul) and my friend (Mitch) met yesterday in London for a drink - I am confident they will become lifetime friends.
This was the same day as when all the newspapers were filled with the henious scenes of the London riots and the awful acts that man was doing to its fellow man.
I get annoyed reading nothing but bad news. That got me thinking - why don't I create a monthly online newspaper. A monthly online newspaper that only cotains good news stories and shows the great in people and the great things they do.
So I am asking you to contribute to the first edition! What is the nicest thing you have done?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I have often picked up hitchhikers or helped people on the road when their car was broken down. I also spent quite a bit of time mentoring people in some of my skills, but that actually also helped me become better myself in those fields. Probably the best way to help people was my Open Source project: OpenDomain. We give domains to groups for Free to support open source, such as Drupal.Com, Oscon.com, FosDem.Org, and OpenAjax.Org Unfortunately, I have also seen the other side: I have given money to people with a similar sorry as yours, only to find out they we just scamming me. And I have helped people for more than 12 years with OpenDomain, only for Google to steal my domain <http://Schema.Org>

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a lovely story. I think you should go to Reddit to find more stories.</comment>


Introducing Consul Template - <AUTHOR> https://hashicorp.com/blog/introducing-consul-template.html <comment><USER2> confd author here.

I'm glad to see this idea validated, and I think consul-template looks pretty awesome and well integrated with consul. consul-template takes advantage of consul specific features such as the consul services API and datacenters, which is really great for consul users. These are things I did not want to add and maintain in confd, since I'm supporting consul, etcd, and environment variables as backends I felt those would be one off features, which really belong in a consul focused tool like this.

Some will ask why did Hashicorp not just contribute to confd? Well they did. They added initial support for consul to confd almost a year ago and have been very helpful with my questions around consul ever since. The contributions go both ways too. I've been a contributor to Hashicorp's Packer project -- I added Ansible and GCE support and various bug fixes.

This is just how opensource works. I'm actually pretty happy to see one of my projects get so much attention and now inspire another project. That's the whole point right?

</comment><comment><USER3> It's neat! Where I work we are about to use Consul and this is great news for us as we were looking for something like Consul Template.

I really like that they are simple Go templates :)

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks great and glad HashiCorp keeps releasing Opensource software!

Anyone have a good end to end example of Consul, Docker, Service Discovery? Nginx example is good to get started, but just need some of the basics to point in the right direction.

<comment><USER5> > Anyone have a good end to end example of Consul, Docker, Service Discovery?

There are a few floating around. Here's mine: [https://github.com/kanzure/docker- basenode](https://github.com/kanzure/docker-basenode)

Here's something useful for end-to-end: [https://github.com/hashicorp/consul- haproxy](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul-haproxy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am not so sure that every possible update can be performed with those go templates, so I wrote a python version of confd (pyconfd) that uses polling and python plugins that do whatever they please: [https://github.com/kanzure/pyconfd](https://github.com/kanzure/pyconfd)

What would be really neat is some way of having consul initiate an event instead of having pyconfd (or confd for that matter) sleep and check every n seconds. This may already be implemented in consul upstream but I haven't been paying very close attention...

Edit: dry run is very neat :-)

<comment><USER2> Again not to take anything away from consul-template or pyconfd, but confd supports "real-time" updates from both consul and etcd, the watch support was added about 2 weeks ago on the master branch.

confd also has dry run support: [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/blob/master/docs/no...](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/blob/master/docs/noop- mode.md) It was apart of the initial release of confd.

These distributed K/V stores are designed to offer a minimal feature set, and the watch support is a perfect way to deliver events to clients. While HTTP call backs would be nice, I think you have to draw the line somewhere. Since these types of systems, consul or etcd, sit at a critical point in the infrastructure lets keep them lean and focused. But that's just my opinion.

<comment><USER5> Hey that watch stuff is pretty neat, I might have to switch back in some of my containers :-)

[https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/commit/16d6b347c3d3...](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/commit/16d6b347c3d335f6b26ce7422c608a7141f85b86)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hashicorp continues to kickass.

However, I wonder why this isn't built into consul directly?

</comment><comment><USER7> For scenarios where I felt etcd/gconf/consul is overkill I wrote goconfd ([https://github.com/niko/goconfd](https://github.com/niko/goconfd)). Features:

* reads config from a json file * GET requests with deep links into the json tree * POST request with template as body and deep links (using the go template engine, too) * long polling (response has to be triggered explicitly by a PUT request)

I also made a simple docker container running HAProxy - configured by goconfd - to orchestrate docker containers.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems like there are a lot of similar competing projects in the service config space now. I was interested in trying this out last year: [https://github.com/coderanger/etcd-chef](https://github.com/coderanger/etcd- chef)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wrote a script to auto-reload HA_proxy if nodes change in consul, now I'm glad I can now retire it and switch to this!

</comment><comment><USER10> Probably the biggest feature over Confd is the ability to run arbitrary commands when a template update completes.

<comment><USER2> Not to take anything away from consul-template, but that has been a feature of confd for a while:

[https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/blob/master/docs/te...](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd/blob/master/docs/template- resources.md#example)

<comment><USER10> My bad, I misspoke.</comment></comment></comment>


The New Untouchables - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "As the Harvard University labor expert Lawrence Katz explains it: 'If you think about the labor market today, the top half of the college market, those with the high-end analytical and problem-solving skills who can compete on the world market or game the financial system or deal with new government regulations, have done great. But the bottom half of the top, those engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas or recombining existing technologies or thinking about what new customers want, have done poorly. They've been much more exposed to global competitors that make them easily substitutable.'"

Does that make sense? Is it "engineers and programmers working on more routine tasks and not actively engaged in developing new ideas" who are faring worst among engineers and programmers? What kind of education reform would have to happen to increase the likelihood that most working engineers and programmers are actively engaged in developing new ideas?

</comment><comment><USER2> Overall, the opinion touches on many subjects, but I agree with some of the comments on the NYT Site: not everyone can be an entrepreneur.

Perhaps the inflation of the idea of being an entrepreneur is the next bubble?

For example, before, anyone can own a house and, now, anyone can own a business. (A transformation of "why rent when you can own?" to "why work for someone else when you can be the boss?".)</comment>


Graduated with a Major in Startups - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/2011/02/graduated-with-a-major-in-startups/ <comment><USER2> I graduated from CMU about two years ago. Here are some of the things my peers from CMU have worked on (playing significant roles) based on what they learned in classes like OS, compilers, and algorithms.

\- Facebook's PHP compiler.

\- VMWare's ESX network kernel.

\- iPhone hardware and firmware.

\- Qualcomm's Linux distribution.

\- Citadel's trading algorithms and execution platforms.

I constantly draw on my coursework in compilers, programming languages, and OS in my work on the Palantir Finance platform.

CMU's CS program prepares you work on problems that are truly technically challenging -- problems that require deep technical knowledge and that often take a large investment to implement. Small startups rarely have the staff and time horizon to invest in creating systems that require technical skills beyond the ability to use an API. So if you work at a small startup that doesn't have the capacity to invest in custom low-level solutions, don't be surprised if your CS skills are not utilized.

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to CMU with the author; in fact we worked together on one of the semester projects he mentions.

There's no doubt that CMU prepares students for the corporate world. In fact some programs are expressly tuned for this.

But this is exactly what the market demands, so why are we surprised? Industry wants employees that integrate well and work in teams. Students want to be hired by industry. How can we be surprised that the curriculum is tuned for turning out cogs for corporate machines?

The demand just doesn't exist for startup education. It's the nature of the beast. How many hardcore entrepreneurs do you know would have been content to take classes on it and be told how to do it? That's the exact opposite of their natural character. :-)

<comment><USER4> CMU as well. Same class year as you guys but I was MechE.

I also adore CMU because of it's absolute fundamentals teaching that allowed me to teach myself web development in such a short amount of time after leaving nuclear engineering.

The one thing CMU taught me was how to work and learn anything. That's what I do and being a startup guy was a good fit for completely unrelated reasons (mainly my problems with authority).

In my undergrad course load, I had very little time to work on the projects I already had, let alone starting something cool on my own. However, that course load was so much tougher then normal employment life, that once I graduated, I could learn so much more while being very underemployed. This underemployment led me to the one place where I could learn everyday and solve cool problems => startups

<comment><USER5> well said. i didn't think of that perspective.

my own experience was more along the lines of feeling a disconnect between classwork and how it applied to the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an undergraduate at a school, Brown, that has a somewhat decent entrepreneurial mindset. What I've seen is that it is not necessarily something you can force.

You can't from top down try to make someone do a startup.

But what you can do is create an environment which has the culture and attitude that promotes it.

That said, I think telling someone or a group to go and come up with a good business idea - then helping it develop and become viable, is perhaps the best way to promote it in a school setting.

</comment><comment><USER7> School is about indoctrinating certain ways of thinking, not teaching the specifics. I've done a CS degree (admittedly at a crap school), an MBA and am about to finish a law degree (at a non-crap school) and none of these bear direct relevance to what's out in the field. Indeed, part of the reason I put myself through the agony of so much higher ed is to gain experience thinking in different paradigms, not merely so that I can now write an algorithmic description of the rule against perpetuities.

With that in mind, and having written code for both startups and large companies, I don't think that CS programs are generally all that much like the real world in either situation (unless of course you're talking about somewhere like PARC). You're absolutely correct that learning to "build cool stuff" is pretty important, but I think it's equally important for larger companies, so I'd say that's more of criticism of CS in general than a failure to prepare people for startups.

<comment><USER5> i agree with most of what you say, but i think a key is more balance between the two. not purely "real world", and not strictly "academic world". somewhere in between.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Stanford, perhaps anomolously, has a number of startup-oriented classes. The one with which I'm most familiar (and probably the one most of interest to HNers) is CS210: <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs210/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Great points!

Most educational institutions prepare students for the average life style.

However, to go beyond just comp sci curriculum most businesses classes don't focus on the true skills that matter in running and starting a business. They, just like in computer science, focus on what the majority of the population will probably be doing after graduation.

When I decided that I wanted to do a startup and not join the masses in the corporate life, I did not have much experience or course material to leverage.

These institutions should try and find a balance between offering courses for both types of peoples. Even those going into the corporate world could learn and use a bunch of the skills entrepreneurs use everyday. Most executive leaders of these big companies have the same qualities as entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER10> I go to Penn State and major in Political Science and Telecom.

I'm pretty comfortable with web development using Rails, and other than an introductory database course, everything I know about programming I learned outside of the classroom. I've put that experience to good use, as I've worked on a startup for about 1.5 years.

Despite some pretty notable startups coming from Penn State (eg, Weebly), there is not much of a startup culture here. The School of Information Sciences and Technology seems mostly interested in landing jobs for its students at companies like Boeing, Ernst and Young, and Lockheed. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'd like to see faculty and the administration take more interest in startups.

</comment><comment><USER11> CS departments might not be good at turning out startup candidates because the people running the departments are more interested in the academic side of CS.

Where I've been learning comp sci (Pomona & Harvey Mudd) the teachers' interest in CS is more academic and less practical. It's a reflection of what they're interested in - they probably turned down jobs in the industry to work in academia and teach students.

Almost all of the marketable skills I've learned have been self-taught outside of class.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, there totally should be a class on how, as an slightly above average programmer, to use open source projects representing man-decades of work by geniuses and millions of dollars in corporate investment to avoid any technical challenges and slap together a website in a few weeks.

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, that's the mentality of a many start-ups. A couple months ago I was posed the question "Why don't you apply to work at Facebook?" by an interviewer. [To give him the benefit of the doubt, he didn't appear to be versed in how to conduct an interview.] It was a pointless question with an obvious answer, but the wording he used to pose it gave me the feeling he had a chip on his shoulder. The rest of his questions had the same undertone. It would have been better for him to ask "Why are you interested in working here instead of Google, Facebook, etc.?"

I got an offer from his company, but turned it down because I didn't want to work with people who were combative instead of cooperative.</comment></comment>


A good book on data representation (UI, charts etc.) - <AUTHOR> Starting a new job where my initial task will be to build a UI that does "analytics".<p>Although I have experience with building this kind of things, I have never read any meaningful theory on the topic and this time the task is quite challenging, so I'd like to educate myself. <comment><USER2> [https://www.manning.com/books/visualizing-graph- data](https://www.manning.com/books/visualizing-graph-data) Mannings books are always a great ressource :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh, this seems to be too narrowly focused on visualising graphs, and I'd like something broader.</comment></comment>


12 Years Ago Today, Bill Gates Showed Up at a Stevenote [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgizmodo.com%2F5331578%2F12-years-ago-today-bill-gates-showed-up-at-a-stevenote

<comment><USER2> Thank you, I had a great laugh starting at 2:23.

The audience reaction is just priceless. "Since we believe in choice"...

</comment><comment><USER3> Those were very desperate times for Mac.

<comment><USER4> I always wondered if Bill got nostalgic and decided to spare Apple specially when it was lying on the ground nearly dead. Maybe he decided to give a chance to is old foe? (Maybe I am just crazy)

<comment><USER5> It was politically the best move for Microsoft. As Jobs states, Apple + Microsoft = 100% market share for desktops. If Apple were to go, as start ups enter, Microsoft's shear size would be an easy target for monopolistic practices. Propping up Apple enables Apple to potentially share that burden, all the while having a very public act to ward off the litigious.</comment></comment></comment>


The state of Linux graphic design tools in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.com/article/19/4/linux-graphic-design-tools-professionals <comment><USER2> I use Gimp a lot but I still think Photoshop is way ahead. For example I don't know why the author thinks Gimp has tight typography controls.

I always struggle with typography in Gimp while in Photoshop it's so easy.

And I never understood why they use layer bounds in Gimp. Sometimes I think this is more a technical reason than a UX reason. It just always gets in the way.

And why should I create a layer from something I paste? I never understood why someone would need this extra step.

Gimp is great software. I am very happy it is available. But I'm not sure it you can call this A grade professional software.

<comment><USER3> I'm not too experienced with GIMP, but I noticed that all the transformation of a selection in GIMP is done with a tool. In Photoshop if I quickly want to scale, rotate, and reposition a selection then I can do that with the controls around the selection. With GIMP I have to select the scale tool, scale, then select the rotation tool, rotate, then select the move tool and move it. Have I just not found how to turn those controls on? Because it feels inconvenient.

I do love that the undo history is in a prominent position on the UI.

<comment><USER4> I think what Gimp is lacking is a monthly subscriber fee, and a lack to buy the software outright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I found Scribus to be virtually unusable last time I tried it (early this year on Ubuntu and version 1.4.6 I think); it compared very badly to Microsoft Publisher in the pre-2000 era.

It wasn't very intuitive - as far as I remember you couldn't edit text on page, you had to go to a modal dialogue and font editing was distinctly funky. I don't think it was possibly to flow text between multiple text boxes in the layout. Stuff like that.

I often see it recommended so I guess I'm missing something - would anyone like to sing its praises to me?

<comment><USER6> I haven't found Scribus intuitive at all either, _but_ if you have to create an image-heavy multi-page publication, I can't see any open source tools that would do nearly as well.

LibreOffice gets sluggish when you add too many images, and sometimes the images start to dance around a bit. Inkscape doesn't do multi-page. With GIMP you'll have to faff too much with image resizing and it's easy to end up with a result in sub-optimal quality (because the editing is destructive), whereas with Scribus you can leave the images in their full-quality, resize/move around and afterwards just export it in the DPI you want when done. Scribus will even warn you if one of your images is in too low resolution, when exporting, which makes it harder to _accidentally all the pixels_.

Scribus is incredibly light on memory (as it is easy to decrease the _preview_ quality of images) and has good tools for alignments and guides (unlike LibreOffice, but similar to Inkscape).

Scribus may not be exactly what you need, but if you find yourself fuming at one of the other graphic design tools, it might be time to fire up a Scribus tutorial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is extremely generous towards open source, to the point of sounding disingenuous or just pure shilling

</comment><comment><USER8> Not even a mention to Krita?

<comment><USER9> Or MyPaint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >GIMP's interface is so thoughtfully laid out

Many good ideas have been used in the interface but it ended up being complex and inconsistent. I haven't seen anyone else praising GIMP's interface. From comments I've read not even the people actually using GIMP professionally.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, even the UX of creating a new image from clipboard with the canvas at the right dimensions. Or entering and exiting a selection. In Photoshop, Ctrl+D simply deselects my selection. In GIMP, I have to jump through hoops. Need to select a tool to transform, Ctrl+T just doesn't do it.

In fact Ctrl+D duplicating the current buffer instead of deselecting is the worst UX I have come across.

<comment><USER12> Hmm?

> creating a new image from clipboard with the canvas at the right dimensions

Creating an image from clipboard: Ctrl+V. Makes an image the size of the image on the clipboard. Cut to taste.

If you want to paste the image on a larger canvas, Ctrl+N, select the canvas size, fill it with color or leave transparent, Ctrl+V to paste from clipboard, move the pasted layer around.

I don't see how that would be more efficient in PS.

<comment><USER11> In Photoshop, doing Ctrl+N while you have an image in your clipboard sets your initial buffer dimensions to the dimensions of the image in the clipboard. I just tried the Ctrl+V straight before creating an initial buffer and worked like you described. I'll use this shortcut for sure, just a matter of breaking the Ctrl+N habit there.

However my point stands about transpose and deselect being much more cumbersome than they need to be. Ideally ENTER should finalize the transpose/resize. Ctrl+D is also quite sensible to deselect. But neither work as expected on GIMP.

I guess GIMP to a certain extent could use alternative modes for its key bindings, akin to what many IDEs offer.

When you first start IntelliJ, it will ask you which set of shortcuts you are more used to. You can pick between OSX Default, Emacs, Windows Default, Linux Default, Visual Studio etc.

It would be great if I could pick between at least "GIMP-native" and "Photoshop-expat".

Otherwise, GIMP is more than capable to do what I am doing in Photoshop. Which is pretty basic stuff. Basically the Paint.NET subset of features are what majority uses it for anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use Pecil([https://pencil.evolus.vn/](https://pencil.evolus.vn/)) to create ui/ux feature mock-ups and app wireframe, it might not be powerful as SketchApp but it gets the job done. Some FOSS linux design tools are simple and easy but can be worse or a problem for larger teams because someone needs to manage who can access the designs and how to deal with collaboration. I believe this is what SAAS design tools are solving, they focus to ease the collaboration, access management and to version control process of designing.

Tbh, I struggle on using GIMP, Photoshop is easy to use.

Does draw.io count ?

</comment><comment><USER14> Tha Author (Jason Brock) probably never tried using Inkscape for anything else other that "test" it for his article. Buggy software that it's even worse that CorelDraw for Windows.

Btw, I'm using CorelDraw since 1994 (Corel 3). Even now (Corel 2019) it crashes when you try to Import some EPS files or just randomly crashes...

My 2cents: If you want to start as a Graphic Designer, Adobe is the only way to go. Windows or Mac, doesn't matter. Start with a PC with any crappy Monitor (they are all crappy) and then when you have the money, buy a Macbook Pro or an iMac.

Finally, the state of Linux graphic design tools, it's exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. They just don't work properly for professional work and there is a perfectly good reason NOBODY is using them and will probably never will in the future.

cheers .-

<comment><USER6> I've used Inkscape professionally, and found it helpful.

How did you find it inadequate and what bugs got in your way?

<comment><USER15> For me, no GPU acceleration. This makes it extremely laggy and choppy (e.g., line tearing when scrolling... but not like brief; the tear is persistent until you move the screen and it re-renders that bit of the canvas). And it's at the utopian extreme end of their roadmap last I checked.

<comment><USER12> I haven't seen this bug occurring for a looong time. Is it still reproducible? (If so, sad.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This guy could not locate a prototyping tool for app design for Linux?

He has never heard of Figma?

It is hard for me to take this article seriously if someone writing a review of available graphic design software is not aware of the existence of Figma.

<comment><USER17> The point is open source. Figma is not open source and their "free" version allows for only 3 products? Please don't suggest trashy SaaS apps in the future.

<comment><USER18> Being closed-source and having a limited free tier does not justify insults ("trashy"). You could have made your point politely, for the person you answer to and the software itself.

<comment><USER17> Given the person I replied to just comes in "insulting" (by your standards) the OP's article all for not having included their favorite insert-random- webapp-of-the-day, making sure to repeat the apps name so we all see it oud and clear, his comment reads to me more like someone being paid to post about it -_- And secondly, considering again that the app he is pushing so hard completely contradicts the spirit of the original article, I think my rhetoric is just fine, I'm sure they will get over any tender sensibilities. Perhaps if they had suggested another app, such as Krita, which aligns more with the article, sure, but not when he comes in telling off OP for not posting hot garbage SaaS apps as a response to an article on open source like they didn't even bother reading it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The coming U.S. population boom will bring new economic vitality - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704509704575018990188917592.html#mod=todays_us_weekend_journal

<comment><USER2> Population ponzi a sustainable productive economy does not make.

<comment><USER3> Although I mostly agree with you, what are some examples of economies that suffered as a result of overpopulation? China and India seem to be doing fine. I mean, it seems obvious that the wave has to break but I just don't think we've seen it happen yet so it's hard to predict. (Not a history buff so maybe I'm missing something obvious.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: BlackstarCMS API-first, headless CMS built for developers - <AUTHOR> http://demo.blackstarcms.net/ <comment><USER2> I checked the homepage. There is no obvious information about the type of license for this, price if any, etc.

"Private beta soon" says (to me) that it will be proprietary, and the fact that the "first class" clients are JavaScript and .Net makes me think the backend is .net based also, which pretty much implies running on Windows server.

This of course is all speculation, but without information what else can we do?

<comment><AUTHOR> The license and price will be decided before the product is released, which will probably be around July or August.

I will provide clients for JS and .NET as well as any others that are worthwhile, but they are thin wrappers around an HTTP API.

The server is a node application with a Sqlite database. I intend to provide a quality installation experience for windows, linux and osx.

Thanks for taking a look.

<comment><USER2> At the very least I would recommend you _allow_ it to work with a full RDBMS like MySQL/compatible or PostgreSQL. SQLite means you can't have online replication, which means you can't make it HA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More info:

* [http://blackstarcms.net/](http://blackstarcms.net/) * [http://withouttheloop.com/articles/2016-04-27-headless-cms/](http://withouttheloop.com/articles/2016-04-27-headless-cms/)</comment>