Depression, Burn Out and Writing Code - <AUTHOR> http://muddylemon.com/2011/05/depression-burn-out-and-writing-code/ <comment><USER3> _I've always found it hard, if not impossible, to "join" groups. It feels like everyone already has the friends they need. I don't know how to fix that._

This has always been a problem for me. I used to think it was a sides-effect of the dysfunctional home that moved, on average, every three months that I grew up in. I knew I developed coping skills that put a wall between me and others. You can only say good-bye to friends so many times before you stop getting close enough to care that you are saying good-bye.

Then I had kids and saw much of my own personality reflected back at me, but in different ways and degrees. At that point, I realized I probably always would have had difficulty making friends and would probably only had a couple friends. My upbringing made that worse, but wasn't likely the entire cause.

Now, I find that I don't know how to get around that. Articles everywhere say, "meet with people", but I feel more lonely in those situations because I don't know how to break into the conversation. Depression makes it worse, because you are constantly asking yourself, "why would they even want to know about me?" There's only so many times you can go to the entrepreneur meet-up and not talk to people (even after presenting) before it starts doing more harm than good.

I agree with the article that connecting with other people is of number one importance to fighting depression. I would really like to find the guidebook for doing that. :/

<comment><USER4> Odds are your last sentence was a figure of speech, but I will go ahead and post this as a reference: "Intimate connections" by David Burns is a well regarded book on the somewhat related subject of building relationships.

[http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Connections-David-D- Burns/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Connections-David-D- Burns/dp/0451148452)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the pointer. I've ordered it and will give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to hear more people's thoughts about his "Just Say Yes To Drugs". I'm at the point of considering drug treatments, but intellectually, I'm very biased against them. I avoid illegal drugs, and rarely take legal ones. I'm not absolutist, but I'd go out of my way to avoid coffee and ibuprofen. For his example, yes, I would feel the same way about blood pressure and cholesterol, and would work very hard to change my lifestyle before relying on the drugs. On the other hand, something needs to change.

I'm scared of both the dependency and the effects. I think my basic fear is that if I find something effective, it will be suicide-light, that I'll be killing off too many parts of my self that make me who I am. It's hard for me to trust the testimony of the treated --- I presume that there are many satisfied frontal lobotomy patients as well. So oddly, I guess I'm more interested in second-hand accounts. My personal experience with treated friends is mixed. A few seem to be more functional versions of their previous selves, others are much closer to zombie shells.

It's a hard subject to discuss, though, and I don't understand whether the differences are chance, personality, or drug regimen.

How do you feel about your newly drugged up friends? Specific treatment details appreciated.

<comment><USER6> You can use medications in a temporary way to boot-strap. The difficult thing about depression is that you don't/can't do anything that would help your depression. Medications are an unideal, but quick & easy, way to tamp your depression down to levels where its realistic to do other things that help, like therapy or lifestyle changes. Once you've made progress with those other methods, you can start weaning off of the medications. Basically, you use them to break the vicious cycle and start a virtuous one, and once the virtuous cycle is self-sustaining you don't need them anymore.

<comment> steve-howard Medication is absolutely not quick&easy. It takes 4-6 weeks to take effect, and 80% of its effect is ascribed to the placebo effect. Incidentally, the only time an antidepressant had any effect on my mood (I've been on 6) is when it launched me into a manic episode. The withdrawal from some of them is also excruciating.

<comment><USER6> You are absolutely correct medication is not a trivial solution to your problems. The ramp-up time is significant, and if you're unlucky you'll have to re-adjust dosages or switch medications a few times. My point was that popping a pill in the morning is easier to get yourself to do than dragging your ass across town to see a therapist, or getting out of your apartment to go running for an hour.

<comment> steve-howard I had done both for some time. To be honest, seeing my psychiatrist made me feel like a petri dish, whereas my therapist is one of the most understanding and caring human beings I've ever met. Psychiatric medicine has terrible side effects, and popping pills has made me feel more horrible than depression at times. (especially considering they actually did nothing for me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Drugs don't have to be the only tool you use, but they can get you to a place where you're healthy enough to think clearly about alternatives.

This bears more emphasis. I was on medication for a very long while and whenever someone asks me how I got to where I am now, I'll jokingly say a very lengthy and close relationship with various different anti-depressants.

Of course this ruffles feather in people in all the wrong ways, but its the truth. Anti depressants and psychotropics aren't going to magically cure you, but they are going to help you get to that place where you can figure out what's wrong and work towards getting better.

</comment><comment><USER8> There seems to be some deep intuition that anti-depressant drugs will adversely affect something essential about who a person is, how they will function, or how they will experience and perceive the world. I absolutely share those feelings and concerns. A therapist gave me great advice: let's be empirical. Instead of basing decisions on supposition, let's try a few things, gather some data in terms of how various options affect you, and base decisions on that accumulation of information. The only risks I could see with this strategy were (1) going on a drug and then stopping it would permanently damage me in some way or (2) I would become dependent on something.

The other thing that has really influenced my thinking is how it is for people I love to live with me. Doing something to treat depression might have a noticeably positive impact on them. So even if my preference was to not receive treatment, based on a sense that the joys I love about life might become muted, or that I might not be able to think as well, or whatever, there are other people to consider.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a strong urge to rebuke most of these "We're programmed to be like this, low status in our tribe etc etc" type lines of reasoning as outright ridiculous, however after considering it a little deeper it seems to me that's simply one interpretation of what actually happens.

My desire to socialise atrophies, I do not feel like leaving my house, I want to focus harder and harder on creating things, learning, etc and I have less and less time for "normal life". It's possible to focus on what I'm drawing away from and characterise it as a loss, but to my view it is simply a sacrifice I choose to make of my own free will for something that I find more valuable.

To my view removal from the tribe is not terrifying, it is not even undesirable. You lose some things, but you gain others, as with any narrow focus. There is no single right interpretation of what that actually means. Until you add in the subjective values of the interpreter, it's just a set of occurrences.

</comment><comment><USER10> What strikes me is that you consider the need to fight against your depression. Consider the possibility that you are really exhausted as if you ran a marathon. Obviously, you'll be slower and slower and probably hardly running in the end. There may also be a reaction of your body to force you to slow down so that you don't exhaust you to death.

I also found out on myself that one may become tired for some type of activity, but I could switch to another type of intellectual activity giving a rest for the other. This is like switching to an activity using your arms when your legs are tired.

Every depression or burnout is different by its cause and they way we react to it. One should be carful with popular advices. I believe in the need to rest and get a break from what is exhausting. Then work out the small positive steps, etc. Or switch activity. Checkout vitamins, B especially.

</comment><comment><USER11> >He mentioned that the brain interprets social isolation as a sign of low status.

That might be the case, except most of my social interactions are failed social interactions, which make me even more depressed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Stay active. Do something cardio intensive, and a lot of it.

<comment><USER13> Though I agree this is a good idea, I've had the experience of doing a _lot_ of cardio exercise and having it _not_ improve things, which was crushing given I had assumed it would make a big difference. In the end I crashed out of training after several months and have found it hard to re-engage ever since.

So definitely do it, but don't have expectations going in other than you'll get that nice runner's high [1].

Deep depression is unfortunately a horrible bastard which doesn't allow you even the relief of things which are reliably great for the mild variety, and simply requires other people to help you. So if you find it doesn't shift, go out and get help. That's the hardest thing I have found from my own experience.

[1]:<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runner%27s_high#Runner.27s_high>

<comment><USER14> While I feel that cardio activity helps clear my head, I've never felt a "high" from it. What it does is makes me sleepy. After a run the thing I want to do most is take a nap. So I'm not sure everyone can even expect a "high" from exercise.

<comment><USER13> Hm, well after reading the wikipedia article (link in my parent post) actually I am not sure as to whether it's been demonstrated scientifically that it is always there, so perhaps then one should go into it with no expectations whatsoever :) - but don't get me wrong on this, I do think it's great advice, and for the majority of people it'll do wonders. Just be careful not to place too many expectations on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great article, and some good insight. Like many others I have found that doing a little bit of exercise every day really helps.

I used to (and need to get back to - been slacking off for a month or so now) do burpees. They are relatively quick, with a mix of cardio and some strength training, and hardly take any time at all.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Burpees>

I usually do the "pyramid" that is start by doing 11, then a minute break, followed by 10 all the way down to 1. It takes me roughly 15 minutes, but I end up feeling really good after that.

Also, taking a break from arduous mental activity is a good thing - <USER2> movies, read fiction, step outside with a point and shoot camera and take pictures. Anything that let's your mind relax for a bit.

Finally, I have found that meditation really helps. It helps to slow you down, improves focus, and the world really seems different once you get used to it. Just concentrate on your breath, for 15 minutes a day (or twice a day) and everything seems a tad fresher and clearer.

Of course, this article (and the comments) have got me thinking about a vacation. I don't take enough time off and I should.

</comment><comment><USER16> Second that emotion on the exercise. And diet is equally important. While the Red Bull, pizza, and caffeine swilling stereotype is prevalent, a well-thought out and balanced diet can make your coding more productive. You'll be creating fewer bugs, thinking more clearly, and feeling more positive about your progress if your (exercised) body has the fuel it needs, too. And reducing the number of stimulants you're ingesting will help with that whole sleeping thing too.

<comment><USER17> agree with diet...i think that "you are what you eat" saying is drastically underrated

i am currently try to adhere to the "Paleo diet"...this may a bit too much for a lot of people (and also hard to do in western society) but eating healthy whole foods and cutting out sugar, dairy, grains, caffeine...makes a huge difference in terms of overall health.

<comment><USER14> I've been doing a paleo-style diet for about 7-8 months now. I basically cut out the sugar, grains, and most dairy. I still drink coffee (with whole cream) and my other dairy intake would be butter and occasionally cheese. I've lost a lot of weight but otherwise I don't feel any different, i.e. thinking not noticeably clearer, energy/motivation not noticeably higher, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "I always hear people beg off trying medication for mental health because they 'don't want to rely on a drug for the rest of their life.' I never hear that statement when someone is talking about blood pressure medication or cholesterol pills."

Then I take it you haven't been paying any attention to the news this past week.[1]

There are literally thousands of academic studies on depression. Is it really too much to ask that people learn something about the major findings in the field before giving others advice? Sorry, but it's extremely irresponsible to start taking drugs (or recommending them to others) without reading up on the academic research on what they do, whether we're talking about smoking crack or taking something your doctor prescribed.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan- june11/cholesterol...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan- june11/cholesterol_05-27.html)

<comment><USER19> _Then I take it you haven't been paying any attention to the news this past week._

Huh? That only reinforces his point. _Millions_ of people are on cholesterol medication. People have an irrational, negative reaction to medication related to mental health, yet cholesterol medication is socially acceptable. He wasn't discussing efficacy, he was discussing willingness to use medication.

<comment><USER20> There's a growing body of evidence that statins are actually net harmful to the body. Millions of people are on medications that are helping them, and other millions of people are overmedicated.

<comment><USER19> ...which still has nothing to do with the author's original statements regarding the social bias against medication for mental issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure which of these factors contributed most to getting out of my bad spot, but in no particular order:

1\. Running. (Strength training is good for many other goals, but frankly handling heavy objects isn't safe when you're severely fucked up and can't see straight. I can run even when I'm pretty deep in the hole and it has an almost curative effect.)

2\. Making friends.

3\. Starting a project I was actually successful at.

4\. Learning not to tie my self-worth quite so tightly to my performance. The notion of "human dignity" -- the idea that all people have worth, even the ones who have personal flaws or make mistakes -- is really important.

<comment><USER22> Get a dog. Change my life. Really. I picked up a 95 pound black lab/dane mix (more lab.. and she's a BIG lab) on the advice of my therapist. Not seeing the therapist anymore.

The dog got me out of the house. Where I met people and other dogs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This recipe worked for me:

\- first thing, check for physical causes (thyroid, etc)

\- listen to motivational/inspirational speeches by people who made it

\- get out of your house! Be among trees as much as you can, and get as much (indirect) sunlight as you can.

\- work out: both cardio and strenght training. Regarding strenght training, bodyweight exercises are fine. Regarding cardio: do not run! Unless you have proper technique, you can injure yourself. Fast-paced walking is OK. Other favourites: stair-climbing, biking.

\- watch what you eat: avoid high glycemic-index foods

\- avoid consuming too much alcohol

\- don't be alone all the time

</comment><comment><USER24> Something that has helped me a lot recently is to hit the gym every day. This has knocked a couple of hours per day off my working hours, but surprisingly I am more productive than before, because my mind is clearer and my mood is more positive. What I actually do in the gym is not that important - at the moment my focus is on cardio and abs. A second important point is to stay away from IT work on weekends - that way I start the week fresh and eager to do the job.

</comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone found a working environment where they're able to balance social interaction with the isolation and focus needed to code?

I've only been happy at two jobs. At one, I shared an office with an awesome guy, and our personalities and senses of humor meshed well. We had a significant overlap in musical tastes, and enjoyed sharing music and witty banter throughout our days of work.

The other was a startup where five of us worked in an open room, regularly taking breaks for coffee and lunch together. We had a bat-shit insane CEO, which really gave us something to bond over. :-)

Looking at job postings is overwhelming. 50% claim a "work-life balance!" and a "work hard, play hard!" attitude, where I'm betting the work is harder than the play. The rest talk about "entrepreneurial spirit" and other codes long hours and isolation. It saddens me that listing hobbies and interests (more like passions) on a resume is considered unprofessional.

<comment><USER25> Yes, every now and then in my life (and i've been fortunate for this), I've worked on teams that were just incredible. No other way to describe it, but you'll know it when it happens. It was just work hard, play hard and there was a lot of satisfaction to be had at the end of the day from what was accomplished. Everyone moves on with their lives though, and the older we get, the tougher it is to create those situations. For me it was college and then my first startup (which I did with my buddies from college. it was a success, all things considered; but man there is something to be said about riding a train on one rail with people that have your back).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> He did a better job of addressing this issue than Noah Kagan, who was talking about mild fatigue rather than real depression (yes, there's a huge difference). Let me add:

6\. Exercise, with a mix of activities: swimming, running (outdoor is better) and strength training. He mentioned that the brain interprets social isolation as a sign of low status. It also interprets physical activity (or the lack thereof) much in the same way. Using your body (running, swimming, hiking) tells the brain that you're an alpha and that it needs to step it up a notch. Mild depression is when the body and brain go into gamma mode (more severe depression is a biological dysfunction of that system) which would be a form of hibernation, as observed in medieval mountain communities during winter, but society isn't tolerant of that, so it leads to misery. (Some mild depressives would be fine, aside from the loss of time, if they could sleep 11-14 hours per day.)

7\. Avoid cigarettes at all costs. Use alcohol sparingly: one drink is fine, but it takes a week to recover from a night of serious drinking... and if you're coding, you actually notice the loss. Avoid drugs like cocaine and heroin like the plague. Jury's still out on occasional use of LSD or shrooms (but people with _any_ history of mental illness need to be very cautious) but they certainly shouldn't be a habit.

8\. Relax. Sometimes it's necessary to spend time in the woods and just (sorry for sounding hippy-dippy) be mindful. 24/7 Internet connectivity is not always helpful.

9\. Read novels and watch movies. There's something healing about narrative that isn't provided by (as much as they are enjoyable to read) books about formal semantics of programming languages.

10\. Music. It helps. I have a lot of friends who say they never would have gotten through their teenage years, or a bad turn of business, without music.

11\. Go somewhere new, do something different. It doesn't have to be an "exotic" or expensive vacation; if your goal is to heal, it's better that it not be. Just a trip to visit friends 50 km away can help.

12\. 2 weeks of real vacation, as an absolute minimum, per year. Take unpaid leave if you need to. Four weeks is best. Total productivity is maximal at 3 weeks of vacation and per-day productivity is maximized at 7-9. Europeans have it figured out: you need _two_ types of vacation: exploration vacations to new places (Alaska, Cambodia, Andes) where difficulty and stress are OK and relaxation vacations where stress levels are low and variation of activity is not required. Unfortunately, Americans get stuck having to choose one or the other, and generally do only the first kind of vacation when they're young and only the second kind when they're old.

For the record, if you only get 1-2 weeks but can take unpaid leave without it hurting your career, you probably should. A 2% pay drop for an extra week of vacation is worth it IMO.

13\. Fruits and vegetables. The casual arrow is unclear and probably goes both ways, but depressed people tend to eat a lot of white carbs. Americans tend to get dieting wrong, as if it's some set of religious prohibitions that have to be followed to the letter, when in reality there are few foods one should _never_ eat. Instead of dieting negatively ("I won't eat X") it's better to diet positively and replace unhealthy foods with better alternatives (e.g. 70+ percent of your desserts should be fruit).

14\. "Don't fuck crazy". High-power programming/technology, as a career, is only 10-20% more time-intensive than the average job-- you haven't seen bad hours till you've worked on Wall Street-- but it's 200% more energy-intensive. You need a supportive and decent partner who will be your rock of stability, not someone who will drain you.

<comment> X-Istence Regarding number 7, I disagree with the alcohol statement. At least for me I tend to over-think and never commit to anything, but after a beer or two I can sit down and just start coding and I will be more focused and have less distractions, I will get more accomplished after those two beers than when I am completely sober and awake.

With those beers I finally just let go and put what I have been thinking down on paper, I can finally concentrate. Now I haven't been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD but I have a hard time concentrating mainly because my thought processes are already 100 steps ahead of where I currently am and are thinking about things that are completely irrelevant for now.

If anyone else has experienced this, or knows what I can look for in myself/and start improving please let me know. I really would love to be like my co-workers who can just instantly dive into a task and have their mind focused. I always feel like I am not able to produce the amount of work they produce because I am so easily distracted.

That is not to say that what I ultimately produce is not good, no it is fantastic, it is well thought out, takes care of the little details like memory management, but it takes me a long time to get it done.

<comment><USER27> I was diagnosed with ADHD predominately inattentive in Jan 2010. After some education and reflection, I decided to try the medication route. My psychiatrist had first suggested EEG biofeedback therapy, but my location was 1000km from the nearest facility, and the costs involved were prohibitive at the time. Mindful meditation was also suggested, but I couldn't get into it. I started Adderall in July, but the PNS stimulation was too great, so I switched to Dexedrine 4 months ago. Since starting the stimulants, my productivity has gone up 300%. The only side effects I have noticed is having an increased drive where I sometimes take on more work than I should, and that even a small amount of alcohol will make me feel ill/off for 4-5 days.

This questionnaire [http://easydiagnosis.com/cgi- bin/expert/start.cgi?mod=Attent...](http://easydiagnosis.com/cgi- bin/expert/start.cgi?mod=Attention%20Deficit%20Disorders%20\(ADD,%20ADHD\)) is reportedly quite accurate for the adhd diagnoses.

<comment><USER28> _This questionnaire[http://easydiagnosis.com/cgi- bin/expert/start.cgi?mod=Attent...](http://easydiagnosis.com/cgi- bin/expert/start.cgi?mod=Attent..). is reportedly quite accurate for the adhd diagnoses._

Wow, 86% probability for me. Sounds high enough to seek medical advice I suppose? And I thought I'm just an average persone like everyone around me. ADD though, not ADHD. Edit: apparently they are the same thing according to Wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> have a hard time accepting the Yes to drugs.

have friends that take antidepressants and are ok. while others became totally disconnected with other peoples feelings, like they are small kids again. zero emotional intelligence, even tough they themselves seem happier.

<comment><USER29> think that occasional recreational drug does much better to fight depression than daily legal drugs.

btw, recreational drugs are better understood by medicine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Christ, it's a job, you're writing computer code. If it's that bad do something else. Nobody will die (or even care) if you leave the project, I know it feels like the world is on your shoulders, but it really isn't.

<comment> steve-howard Please, please, please learn more about depression and try to understand what people go through on a daily basis. Depressed people are often confronted with attitudes like this that fundamentally misunderstand the issue. People with major depressive disorder, bipolar affective disorder, or their cousins can be miserable and hate their lives even when they have everything they've ever asked for. It's not their fault.

<comment><USER3> One of the 5% of articles that I think would benefit from seeing points. This GP's attitude makes it so difficult to get help. I've got a great job, wonderful wife, amazing kids, beautiful house, cute dogs and cats, and yet I can't pull myself out of bed in the morning.

The problem is me, not my environment. I have to change.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Escape from Immoral Mazes - <AUTHOR> https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/01/16/how-escape-from-immoral-mazes/ <comment><USER2> > Young people starting out in the labor market often have The Fear that they > will never find a job or never find a good job or another good job.

Young people fear it. Older people know it.

> Quit.

Not everyone is a 20-something silicon valley kid with companies falling all over themselves to throw money at them.

Hiring is effectively broken these days - especially in the software world.

If you're not from a top-flight university, maybe a little older, or in any other way less flashy/attractive in the job market, it can take months or sometimes years to get decent job interviews.

You can't just walk away from a decent income because idealism.

<comment><USER3> I thought older people are more valuable since they have more experience. There isn't much physical difference between 20, 40 and 55 year old people unless something like alzheimer kicks in, especially in our field where the job includes reading stuff and pressing button.

<comment><USER4> That logically makes sense, but the reality is agism is a huge problem in tech hiring.

<comment><USER3> Reasons?

<comment><USER5> The often cited reason is that young people are easier to manipulate and exploit (overtime, passion, kool-aid about the company "mission" etc.), or more charitably phrased are more "adaptable" and less set in their ways. They have fewer responsibilities, no family etc. They are more idealistic and don't have the same cynical/sour/realist/seeing-through-the-bullshit outlook that older people have.

<comment><USER6> They're also easier to negotiate down on salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > What do you do if you find yourself inside a maze?

> Quit. Seriously. Go do something else. Ideally, do it today.

That's it, right there. The whole article could have been replaced with just that.

I've heard people express the opinion that they have absolutely "no choice" but to work at McKinsey, or some random hedge fund. I don't understand how anybody can reasonably come to that conclusion. The worst case for people like this is making only _medium_ six figures.

<comment><USER8> That's practically poverty level after you factor in the Manhattan apartment rent, yacht, private schooling, etc...

<comment><USER9> One way to avoid poverty in that case would be to not buy a yacht, for example. Any amount of money is nearly poverty level if you spend it all on luxuries.

Edit: I am dumb and completely missed the joke. Poe's law in action!

<comment><USER10> That's the joke

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am convinced that people who write things like this don't believe intelligence is genetic. You no more earned how smart you are than you earned your race.

Wisdom? Determination? Scars? You can claim to earn or learn some of those.

Don't get me wrong, I am not aligned with the hnn society of smart idiots who think Harrison Bergeron was a how-to manual. The genetic dice roll can be cruel. I don't look like Clooney nor am I built like The Rock. But them's the breaks. The only thing worse than that unfairness is the unfairness well meaning and smart idiots would create trying to rectify the inequities.

Still, I am empathetic enough to be amused by rantings of the intelligent regarding economic options when they seem to have not seriously considered some other people are less intelligent and may really have less options.

In the abstract I will side with those who declare no one is trapped. But there is a continuum.

You pretty much have to get me to Vichy France or San Francisco levels of disgusting society before I advocate a waitress with a 6th grade education just decides that supporting the evils of Cheesecake Factory is beyond the pale and worth joining the resistance, the kid's be damned.

Seems to me some of these smarty pants could create a utopia for the lesser folks who feel trapped by mortgage's, child support and other meaningless pursuits instead of wasting their horse power on blogs.

<comment><USER12> There is a genetic component, but nobody is born looking like Clooney or the Rock. At the movie star level it is basically your full time job to look that way with personal trainers, nutritionists, steroids, whatever you need.

<comment><USER13> I don't follow the Clooney example. Wouldn't he still look more or less the same if he had become a pickle salesmen rather than an actor?

<comment><USER12> He'd probably be fatter, you know from all the sandwiches he'd have to eat taking out pickle clients on sales calls

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Minimalists and anti-materialists are fond of pointing out that your possessions can end up owning you instead of the other way around.

What they tend to neglect is that when your possessions begin to own you, so too does your boss.

Kids, medical problems and bad luck can all contribute, but we generally have a very low degree of control over those situations.

<comment><USER15> > Kids, medical problems and bad luck can all contribute, but we generally > have a very low degree of control over those situations.

Bad luck sure, but kids are an entirely deterministic and preventable outcome. Most medical problems are arguably preventable as well.

I agree regarding the link between possessions and employer leverage.

<comment><USER16> That's not how it works with children. Unless you have abortion easily available for poor people and sterilisation easily available for folks that don't want children... you might not have a choice. If you are male, you can't force stop an accidental pregnancy. Luckily, though, male sterilisation is quite effective. It is generally more difficult for females to get sterilized (especially if you aren't married and/or don't have children), it has more risk of failure, is more invasive, and is more expensive. All other birth control methods can fail - people get pregnant on the pill. Condoms break. And so on. Your employer might not even cover birth control.

And these things don't even begin to cover things like rape, incest, and underage pregnancy where a guardian doesn't allow abortion.

 _Children are not always preventable_

Other folks have already addressed the medical problems, so I'm gonna pass on it.

<comment><USER15> Unless we're talking about rape which is not how most children are produced, sex is a choice with the predictable potential outcome of children.

<comment><USER16> It is a ridiculous expectation to expect folks not to have sex, and as such, not included. This is a basic urge of people, and while some folks choose not to, most do not. If it were that simple, abstinence only education would include coping skills to avoid rather than shaming and would have a much better track record.

Not having sex is simply not a viable option for most people - especially so within the confines of a committed romantic relationship. In fact, it is an easy way to void such a relationship in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _How to Escape from Immoral Mazes_

Keep to the Right at all times?

Or else Left works, too.

Just don't vacillate.

:)

<comment><USER18> unless... you run into a moral loop

<comment><USER19> Well, then you weren't in a maze to begin with. Escaping immoral labyrinths is a whole other problem!

<comment><USER20> Immoral labyrinths come with immoral minotaurs... how do we escape those before they eat us alive?!

<comment><USER21> You don't escape the minotaur, you slay it.

<comment><USER18> unless the Minotaur is the moral one and you're unlucky being in its labyrinth

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So after 3 or 4 clicks, I ended up on an amazon.com page with the book on moral mazes. Can anyone offer a short summary of what a moral maze is?

<comment><USER6> The article links to this page, which offers a definition near the beginning:

[https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/01/12/how-to-identify- an-i...](https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/01/12/how-to-identify-an-immoral- maze/)

FWIW, this author seems to use the terms "moral maze" and "immoral maze" interchangeably, which makes their writing harder to follow than it needs to be.

EDIT: On rereading, that page only offers an implicit definition of the term.

Basically, it's an organization that is steeped in perverse incentives. Most individuals are incentivized to behave in ways that are detrimental to society and to the long-term profitability of the organization, and the corporate culture implicitly accepts this.

<comment><USER22> Thanks. I got to that page, clicked the "moral maze" link, and did not read further (which I should have).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article touched on something that's always bothered me about the "effective altruism" movement: some of its adherents seem to think it's OK to work literally anywhere as long as you contribute enough of your income to worthy causes. That has always seemed incredibly dubious to me: make the world a worse place so you can make it a better place!

<comment><USER24> It just comes from a focus on marginal effects (my replacement at evilcorp will probably do roughly as good a job, and probably not give a large fraction of his/her income to charity) and caring about actual outcomes for the people you're trying to help, rather than your own personal purity.

Like everything, the approach can be abused (I feel fine about taking this high-paying morally dubious job, because I'm earning to give... but oh wait, now I have a family to support, and the cost of living is surprisingly high here, and I've got to wear good suits and drive a decent car or my professional reputation might suffer...) but a lot of people are sincere about it, and it does make sense.

<comment><USER23> It makes sense only if you're already a convinced utilitarian. Not all of us are.

<comment><USER24> It's consequentialist reasoning, not necessarily utilitarian. And you don't have to be a thoroughgoing consequentialist to agree that in a world full of preventable misery, it's best to focus on actually preventing it, rather than on keeping your own hands as clean as possible. (And realistically we're talking about working for an oil company or a casino or something, not being a Nazi prison guard.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Worker-owned co-ops are a cure for all of this.

<comment><USER26> Do you think that, for example, a worker-owned Intel could ever be a thing? I think this model works only for simple businesses.

<comment><USER27> Huawei is/was worker-owned.

<comment><USER28> One could argue that Huawei, and all chinese companies, are effectively state- owned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> or, you know.. be the change you want to see.

I'm also cynical enough to think that taking all the "moral people" out of one workplace / school / whatever and forming a "moral maze / company" will still not be a utopia...

People are what they are...</comment>


Ask HN: Fault-tolerant database for small datasets? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What sort of faults and how much tolerance?

What levels of consistency, availability and partition tolerance?

How small is 'small?'

Or to put it another way, what are you trying to do?

What latency is acceptable?

<comment><AUTHOR> Storing information about users. There won't be many 1000-5000. The data should be replicated on at least two small servers.

<comment><USER2> All the other questions are still relevant. I mean if the latency is acceptable, Amazon S3 could store the file and is probably more reliable for handling replication as a backup strategy than anything most developers could implement themselves on hardware under their control...actually, I'm thinking a 'cloud' approach is probably the most robust generic strategy and a service like AWS provides good documentation and self-help support and has a rich third party ecosystem.

Pay for what you use pricing can be issue, but at a small scale it's often cheaper than alternatives because usage is low and there's no minimum.

Anyway, absent information facilitates absent specificity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazon's DynamoDB. A small instance of DynamoDB can cost about $10 a month but is fully replicated and managed. It is "scalable" in the sense that a small instance is cheap but you can turn the knobs and pay more for a bigger system that can handle a higher workload.

</comment><comment><USER4> What about sqlite?

[https://sqlite.org/](https://sqlite.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that it's an embedded database storing data on a single server. I was thinking about using it and do frequent backups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Biggest

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to avoid configuration headaches.</comment></comment>


Outline Your Favicon - <AUTHOR> https://jahed.dev/2020/05/20/outline-your-favicon/ <comment><USER2> Just use SVG for your favicon, it supports media queries so you can change the fill color when dark mode is detected.

</comment><comment><USER3> Alternately: don't use transparency in favicons.

</comment><comment><USER4> Worth noting that modern browsers support favicons up to 64x64</comment>


Neovella: Instantly co-author stories with your friends - <AUTHOR> http://neovella.com

<comment><USER2> It's a great idea, but they need a new landing page. Rage faces are okay for Reddit, but using Y U NO guy is borderline racist.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks interesting. I wonder if it will have any influence on NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.)

Link: <http://www.nanowrimo.org/>

On a slightly different note, I did NaNoWriMo this year with a friend. I would have loved a way to quickly give/get live feedback with my writing partner. If there was a community of other writers who also wanted to take part, that would have been incredible.

I suppose that I could have used Google Docs, but something geared towards writers would have been amazing.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, a friend of mine and I both did NaNo this year and there were plenty of times when we would have loves something to give/get live feedback on sections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So... they own the stories we create? I was going to say, this would be a great way to write open source text books but not if Neovella owns the content.

"2. Copyright. The content, organization, graphics, design, and other matters related to and created in Neovella are protected under applicable copyrights and other proprietary laws, including but not limited to intellectual property laws. The copying, reproduction, use, modification or publication by you of any such matters or any part of Neovella is strictly prohibited, without our express prior written permission."

<comment><USER6> Well we won't sue anyone, but the idea is that once the site becomes competitive, we can start pushing the top neovellas through Amazon Singles and then use the percent share calculation we have to distribute a share (more than our own) of royalties back to the authors in proportion to their contributions to the entire collection of short stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing on this page except a login form, without a button. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER8> Wow I'm sorry that happened. I guess the traffic is killing our sever now (shared hosting). I just re-uploaded the the index file and that seemed to give it the kick it needed. AIM me at thesiedlecki if you run into anymore errors I can fix for anyone!

<comment><USER3> Why does the app need permission to access Facebook chat?

<comment><USER6> Legacy feature from the idea days. I'll remove that now. Thanks for the reminder!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gah I don't mind using Facebook Connect for sites but when they ask for everything and the kitchen sink in the permissions dialog I balk and drop out of the funnel.

Why does neovella need access to my facebook chat? Sure there might be a legitimate reason but they certainly haven't explained it to me!

<comment><USER6> Back in the olden days, we figured we'd just plug facebook chat in this to give us the chatroom functionality. Then we realized people detest facebook, which means not every user could chat. So now there's a non-facebook login. We're going to remove the permissions once we have some low traffic time to do it--too much server load right now to crash everyones' stories temporarily.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough, I would advise going for the bare minimum of basic information and email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this a lot.

However, I question whether or not making it realtime is the right way to go. I could be wrong, but it seems that stories like these would work best on a more laid-back timeline. I was about to start writing a story, and then I saw there was a "duration".

I set it to "no limit", and noticed that I can't write anything without someone else. Why? It's valentine's day, and most of the other folks I know who'd be interested are all busy. So I'm stuck unable to use your site. I should be able to do SOMETHING by myself.

I love the idea, though.

<comment><USER6> If you want to write something alone, why not notepad, or google docs, or microsoft word? The idea is that it wouldn't be a level playing field if you could compete on the rankings page with something you had more direct control over.

As for duration... I can't really see it being used over a long span of time. Even the 2 minute duration is too long if it's more than 2 or 3 authors in there. 1 minute really gets the creative juices flowing and instantly makes it immersive as you always can't wait for the next line--and you don't have to!

<comment><USER7> Well, because then I wouldn't be using your product. The fact that this is BUILT for writing stories means I'd be more likely to try it for that reason. I'm on the west coast, and my friends are all on the east coast (who'd be interested), but I KNOW they would love to collaborate on something short and funny. It just wouldn't be realtime.

Sure, we could use google docs collaboration, but that isn't as fun. I'd rather click a button and have an email sent to my friends that says "Dave wants your help writing a story!" or something.

The fact that it's ranked seems...excessive. You could be on the right track, I admittedly know nothing about this space. Maybe I'm not the target user. But I suck at writing, and I wouldn't use this to compete. I'd use it because it would be fun.

<comment><USER6> If we can scale up to a point where people know about us, I'm not again allowing lone writing. You raise a very good point, and I'm going to admit I know nothing of the space except my own joy from writing. I misread your previous comment--allowing users to write at least one entry when alone in an unlimited turn book was something I thought was in there, but I was careless not to doublecheck that it was in the release. (Why would we have unlimited without that???) I'll get that put up soon for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone remember "Yarn"... Amit Gupta (of PhotoJojo, The Daily Jolt) made it way back in the day (like '00 I want to say). It was a really cool app along these lines.

Doesn't seem to be any evidence it ever existed on the web, but it looked awesome, and as I remember had some cool interaction design.

</comment><comment><USER6> Any thoughts on the Browse page? The books on the shelf are representative of a few attributes of the books. Width represents page length, height represents view-count, rating in stars is displayed, number is of authors, and letters represent the genre of the neovella.

<comment><USER3> You can only see the browse page when you are logged in. Most people glancing at the page probably didn't create accounts - I plan on playing around with the service and _I_ still haven't created an account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's an absolutely hilarious website xD Very nicely implemented too!

After a minute of poking around: when you "hide chat" or "hide info", they lose their mouse-over which would probably be "show chat".

</comment><comment><USER12> the service description on the front page pretty much sounds like Reddit comment thread behavior</comment>


Things I wish someone had told me about fundraising - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lawnstarter.com/post/79004033200/things-i-wish-someone-had-told-me-about-fundraising

<comment><USER2> This came in really handy as the startup I am currently working on is currently looking for fundraising.

If anyone has any other valuable tips to share please do so. I'm very keen to hear other experiences.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.paulgraham.com/fr.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/fr.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/convince.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/convince.html)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/herd.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/herd.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couple of questions for the original poster -

1) Were you already profitable or had revenues when you started fundraising?

2) How did you manage to get intros to Angels?

<comment><AUTHOR> ^ 1.Yes to revenues, we did an alpha test at the end of last season that was very small, read 10k. Built out technology, serviceable area, and started preselling. Keep in mind we are a seasonal business.

2\. What we found were the best intro's were from Founders of companies they had funded. We are well ingrained in the Blacksburg community and were able to go through local angels who we had developed relationships with over the past months or get intro's from community members farther along the startup lifecycle.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. Good advice on getting intros.</comment></comment></comment>


Detailed Course on Achieving the Tyndall Effect by PS Skills - <AUTHOR> http://4-designer.com/2014/06/detailed-course-on-achieving-the-tyndall-effect-by-ps-skills

<comment><USER2> I usually refer to these as "crepuscular rays", "god fingers" or "sun rays."

The Tyndall effect is similar to Rayleigh Scattering, applied to light scattered by wavelength-sized particles rather than sub-wavelength molecules, and has nothing to do with crepuscular rays.

(and why this is on Hacker News rather than Digital Photography School or similar site is anyone's guess)</comment>


Michelle Obama Doesn't Want Her Kids Using Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/09/michelle-obama-kids-facebook/ <comment><USER2> My kids (9 and 11) aren't going to be allowed to use Facebook at 13 either.

It bothers me a bit --- it's something I've considered Asking HN --- that what meager writing ability I have, I gleaned from dialup BBS's in the early '90s; my kids lack a similar forum.

This is a big deal. Holding everything else at a low constant threshold, the ability to write and to take tests practically guarantees a B average. On a single day, no, hell, between build cycles! we write comments on HN that'd pass muster as a middle school essay. I've tried to communicate to my hemming and hawing son that I write stuff of similar length for enjoyment, and he doesn't get it.

<comment><USER3> Your kids will have an account, if they don't already. No special software is needed, just a browser and the ability to remember a password. School, library, friend's house...in this war it isn't you vs. them, it's the smartest, most motivated kid they know vs. the dumbest, most apathetic adult they know.

<comment><USER2> An account on Facebook, is what you're saying? No, they won't.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Facebook. If they ever go to a friend's house and they have a computer, or go to school...kids in my church get on Facebook at school all the time, either with no effort or I hear them talking about how to get around blocks with proxies, and these aren't the geeks, these are the "normal", average tech knowledge kids.

<comment><USER2> My kids are in an especially unfortunate (for them) situation vis a vis their ability to circumvent parental controls. Sure, they can try to use a Facebook account entirely from their friends house, but why bother? There's so little value in doing it that way that the cost of slipping up just once demolishes it.

<comment><USER4> > There's so little value in doing it that way that the cost of slipping up > just once demolishes it.

The average child doesn't do an in-depth cost-benefit analysis before deciding whether to disobey his/her parents. With the right mix of peer pressure and childlike impulsiveness, your children will have Facebook accounts in no time.

<comment><USER2> Yes, and by that logic, will also surely be smoking, drinking, smoking up, and whatever else they've made after school specials about. Human trafficking? Overly-leveraged options speculation?

My point here is just, unlike a lot of parents, I'm pretty well situated to control my kids use of the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With the amount of vitriol thrown around in American politics these days, I wouldn't want my kids directly exposed to a public forum like that if I was in the Presidential family.

<comment><USER6> Well there's also a significant danger of security leakage if the girls talk about what their family is doing, I guess.

<comment><USER7> I doubt Mr. Obama tells them national security related things, they're a little young for that. I have no doubt they would be subject to well organized and foul trolling if anyone could locate them online.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that's what he meant. Even simple things like "We're going to Disney World tomorrow" could be dangerous in the wrong hands, especially if the trip wasn't publicized beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since children under 13 are not allowed on Facebook it's a moot point regarding Obama's daughters.

And if they did get accounts, they'd be reported very quickly: <http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=underage>

<comment><USER9> Maybe that's true if your last name is Obama, but both my sisters had accounts before they were 13 (hell my youngest sister still isn't 13...).

<comment><USER10> Right, but they're not really allowed. They're breaking the TOS and they haven't been reported yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can you imagine:

"My dad said he wasn't going to sign that FTA with [country X]"

"No, I heard him say he really can't stand senator [from state X].

"My mom and I will be going shopping at [some store] at around 2."

"Yeah, I actually saw the King of [country] in the oval office --It's supposed to be a secret."

Not saying their daughters would have loose lips as exemplified above, and the example are highly unlikely as they would be trained to avoid such statements, but you could imagine people mining what they say to try to infer from what they post and extrapolate as well.

It would be a profitable mine for the opposition as well as for any wrong- doers.

<comment><USER12> doesn't this mean though that you'd have to keep them off the internet in general? It's not like (no pun intended) Facebook is the only forum for expressing one's opinions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a big fan of young kids on Facebook either, but I do think that having a "safe" social network for the under-13 crowd would be good, and because of it's ubiquity, Facebook isn't it.

I'd prefer something owned and operated by the schools themselves. I've had a feature in Appleseed for a while now which lets you block or allow social networking domains based on regular expressions.

In the US, since all schools get a domain, a junior high in Wisconsin could block all domains except *.k12.wi.us, so that only other students could connect.

<comment><USER14> "I'd prefer something owned and operated by the schools themselves."

I strongly disagree. Part of the point of these things would be to not be the school, to _emphatically_ not be the school. My BBS days would have been much less interesting if everything had to be sanitized for school authority consumption.

At some point children are no longer in school. It would be nice if they have some miniscule amount of experience in being in a not-school environment, what with that making up the majority of their lives. If schools are anything they are already too large, in terms of the footprint they leave on our children's lives.

<comment><USER2> In fact, there has already been legal drama with schools objecting to what students write about their classes and teachers and seeking to punish them for it. I agree, affiliation with the school system is a liability, not a benefit.

<comment><USER13> Older students would have their school profile, and their non-school profile, just like they have their school email address, and their non-school one. It's really not much different.

As to the litigiousness of school administrators around free speech issues, that's something that will have to be worked out with social networking whether schools run their own networks or not.

But when you're dealing with the pre-teenager crowd, I don't think it's as much of a legal issue.

<comment><USER2> The _teachers_ at my kids schools don't all use their school email accounts. None of the students I know of do. No, not super interested in waiting for the schools to figure this out, or helping to push them there. I don't know why this should have anything to do with schools; in fact, getting outside the little social circles inside a school is one of the major wins to this.

<comment><USER13> That may have more to do with the lack of interest in email that most kids have, than any anti-institutional preference of 8-12 year olds, though.

<comment><USER2> No it doesn't. The teachers use email incessantly. My kids use email regularly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised bullying hasn't been mentioned in this discussion. That's one of the main reason I plan to keep my unborn children off the internet as long as possible.

It's interesting though, when I was 13 my parents took TV away from me during the weekdays, but I still got to use my computer and AOL account. I think I'll be limiting my kids use of the internet for non-school purposes. This reminded me of the chinese-mother article from the other day--sometimes we know what's best for our kids before they do. Getting on facebook at age 13 is not good for kids in a society filled with obesity and online bullying. If anything severely restrict and monitor. I intend on requiring the password to all my kids social networking profiles--there is no way a 13 year old can have a reasonable expectation of privacy from their parents!

<comment><USER16> Our home has no broadcast TV. We do Netflix and Hulu for some (mostly advert- free) entertainment. My 12-year-old son can only go online via the living room PC (mostly because he doesn't have a PC in his room) and my 15-year-old daughter has mostly free-reign to do what she wants online via her netbook. I'd _much_ rather have my kids reading and writing stuff online (even if some of the correspondence was questionable), as opposed to drooling in a trance while watching the boob-tube.

Call me a parent with weird priorities, but I'd rather my kids hold their own on places like Reddit and (yes, even) 4chan over watching much of the crap on TV (extreme left/right hate politics on CNN/FOX/CNBC, Hanna Montanna, reality TV, etc.). Not that either of them know of Reddit or 4chan yet (that I'm aware of), but I assume you catch my meaning.

Of course, the 'net does have a lot of TV-like mindless crap that can be just as (in my opinion) soul-killing as TV; things like Farmville and other pointless drivel. However, the kids don't seem to get hung up on stuff like that. Yet. We'll see, I guess.

This brave new world of parenting is always a mixed bag, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Club Penguin is the go-to place for the tween set, no?

<comment><USER18> Yes, for the younger side of the tween set. There's an unfilled gap, though, between Club Penguin and Facebook, at least according to my eldest daughter, who went on Facebook the minute she turned 13, literally-- she sat there with the form filled out, the mouse hovered over the "submit" button as the clock struck midnight. For her, Club Penguin lost its shine around age 11, and I was a hard-ass in terms of sticking to the Facebook TOS-- according to her, _all_ of her friends were already on Facebook, and I tend to believe her, as it took her less than 18 hours to rack up more "friends" than I have.

<comment><USER19> I'm 17 and grew up on Halo CE with xchat back around 2001 to 2003. A large portion of my teenage years (and most of my friends') was spent on Halo 2 as well...4chan was all the rage 2005-2008. Early 2008 until now it's been supplanted by HN and Reddit.

When I wasn't playing Halo, I spent a lot of time reading and editing Wikipedia, which might be something for kids to try out now. But Wikipedia's barrier to entry has risen significantly...one of the reasons I've quit the community there.

Eventually, it'll turn into a war between time spent on "productive" sites and activities, and time masturbating to porn, in my experience.

<comment><USER20> Children read 4chan? I can imagine >= 15, but really, younger than that?

That's a pretty disgusting thought.

<comment><USER19> 4chan isn't just /b/ and /b/ isn't all of 4chan as the saying goes...

Most of my time there was on /g/ /w/ and a few other boards like /mu/, but I first got hooked because of the raids on Wikipedia. 4chan is a fascinating place, not just full of CP as some would think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Right, they should use Internet instead, an open library to the world knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER22> Good.</comment>


Show HN: Hypewatching – crowdsourced, geolocated trends around the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.hypewatching.com/feed/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey there HN!

I completely redesigned the website with a login system, up/downvoting, discussion forums per trend and a reward system so people get points when they're good at predicting hypes.

I'm looking for some feedback on whether this is something you would personally find useful – whether I should continue working on it or not :) Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> I assume this is something @est would like to use. :D</comment>


HitBliss - Solving the Problem of Monetizing Hollywood | VentureFizz - <AUTHOR> http://venturefizz.com/blog/hitbliss-solving-problem-monetizing-hollywood#.UT32xsVKZeY.hackernews <comment><USER2> Instead of focusing on monetizing crap, why not focus on producing high- quality content? I may be alone in thinking this, but there have been fewer really good movies/TV shows in the past few years.</comment>


Hyperbolic VR using Raymarching - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mtwoodard/hypVR-Ray <comment><USER2> Took a bit of clicking to find the demo: [http://h3.hypernom.com/](http://h3.hypernom.com/)</comment>


Ask HN: Friend-sourcing actual work (not just asking advice) - <AUTHOR>

I have some grand and ambitious ideas for a new service on eMusicTheory.com, to really add some fire to the normally tedious process of learning music fundamentals.  But to build this thing, I need help from music teachers (among my customers and friends already), people who've studied music pedagogy in depth (among my friends), fiction writers (I'm married to one and have lots more among my friends), and probably some development help (again, excellent resources among my friends and colleagues, and hello hackers).
I can get advice and feedback for free -- that's super.  But what I want to do is write up my plans in detail, then invite friends (and friends of friends) to come look at it, give me feedback, and claim chunks they'd like to do in their spare time... for which work I'd overpay them once the minimum viable version is launched and bringing in revenue.  ("Overpay" because of the delay, and the smallish risk... worst case it would flop, and I'd pay them very slowly out of the normal site income).  Fortunately, the work involved is primarily fun and interesting; I'll do most of the boring coding aspects myself.
So: has anyone tried this?  (Is it a good idea?)  AND how best to organize it, coordinate the work, and lay out the framework in a way that people can comment on it easily?  I'm also torn between making it invite-only (to avoid random not-really-qualified people showing up and wasting my time) or just making it open (and easiest to use!) and figuring obscurity will protect me from the hordes.
[I should also add -- I will ask my accountant about what's involved in paying people, 1099s, etc. but suggestions about handling that simply are also welcome.] <comment><USER2> I'm sort of missing the question, but basically I gather you just want to get feedback on an idea and don't know how to start ?? Its really difficult to get any good advice from people you know, because everyone will say its super. You need to build a really crappy mvp, and get people off of craigslist to use it and give you feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want my friends and contacts to claim chunks of work, and I'll pay them for their work after launch.

I'm looking for advice on how to organize the work, for one -- if they were all developers, I'd set up a wiki, but I want something easier to annotate and edit for non-technical people.</comment></comment>


Maybe Better If You Don't Read This Story on Public WiFi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter/heres-why-public-wifi-is-a-public-health-hazard-dd5b8dcb55e6

<comment><USER2> An interesting read, but sparse enough on details to be basically useless. Additionally, there's nothing that I can discern to be new here. The following is demonstrated, all of which are known (and in fact obvious) to people with even an elementary understanding of how wifi and TLS work:

* That wifi probes are public

* That wifi devices, by default, expose reasonably reliable evidence about their type and origin via their MAC address

* That many OS's automatically connect to 'trusted' wifi networks, regardless of their apparent physical location

* That many websites don't have TLS by default (or at all)

* That, if a user connects to a network you control and requests a URL not beginning with "https," it is trivial to present them with a fake page looking like the one to which they thought they were browsing (of course they won't see a lock)

* That, is a user transmits unencrypted plain text over a wifi network to which you have access, it's trivial to glean the content of their transmission.

None of this is news, and it's all that this article seems to point out. Even more bizarre is that, almost without exception, it merely leaves these items implied, failing to describe the mechanism of action.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like he had a WiFi pineapple in his backpack. [https://wifipineapple.com/](https://wifipineapple.com/)

<comment><USER2> Agreed. I thought (although I'm not very well schooled on this) that I detected one at the Stumptown on Division St in Portland two days ago. There were 10-12 people there with laptops, and all but one that I was able to see had some kind of code reading or editing on their screen (it's a developer hangout, for sure).

I announced what I believed to be my discovery, and someone else agreed and said that they had just browsed to an apparently spoofed amazon.com.</comment></comment></comment>


CFIA: Bottled water smelling of 'old socks' and 'urine,' poses no health risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bottled-water-inspections-cfia-smells-1.5015242 <comment><USER2> >The cause of smell in the bottles likely came from a compressed air filtering system in the facility that produced the water, according to CFIA files. The air tank was replaced with a new system later in 2015.

Which means no one checked or replaced any of the filters for so long that the system got so badly damaged it needed to be replaced. Water and air filters in compressed air systems start looking like old cigarette butts after about a month and need to be changed regularly.</comment>


AWS Cloudfront down? - <AUTHOR>

Status page says all is okay, none of my cloudfront domains resolve.<p>https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=cloudfront&src=typd <comment><USER2> Doesn't seem global - the CF domains I hsve in us-east seem fine

</comment><comment><USER3> west-1 down, but intermittently. receiving monitor alerts from Sydney, Sao Paulo, Singapore, London, New York and SF, but never experienced issues locally (Boston).

</comment><comment><USER4> It is down for us as well....</comment>


"She doesn't deserve to be alive" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/doesnt-deserve-to-be-alive.html <comment><USER5> The problem I've found, and I know this is true in me, is that people have a gated view of success -- they only consider the people that are more successful than them in their self-evaluation. People look longingly at the friends that went to Harvard Law and have made millions, but don't seem to give a glance to the friends who are having tough times emotionally or financially.

Even Julius Caesar reportedly, upon seeing a statue of Alexander the Great, realized with dissatisfaction he was now at an age when Alexander had the world at his feet, while he had achieved comparatively little.

The point is, if we are looking to find someone better than us in the areas we want to succeed, we will easily find them. It's only upon reflection that we might find that the areas we give no credit to, the areas we have already succeeded in, might be just as important as the things we strive for.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-weakest-of-the-great- me...](http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-weakest-of-the-great-men-of-all- time)

Pretty interesting to ponder one's life from this perspective. "Keeping up with Augustus", I suppose :)

<comment><USER7> wait...do people really buy Sebastian's shtick?

<comment><USER6> Is it self-evident that we shouldn't?

<comment><USER8> yes.

<comment><USER6> Care to indulge a fool?

<comment><USER8> He's clearly either a narcissistic egomaniac or a troll.

I prefer to think the latter since I like to assume the best about people, but I suspect the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _That's the problem with "success." After so many years of climbing your mountain, it's not until you reach the top that you realize the next step is down. And the next mountains after that are lower. What could DHH do that would surpass the thrill of creating Rails or hitting the New York Times best- seller list?_

Who's to say that a focus on "success" is what got Heinemeier Hansson to the top of this particular mountain? One way to be effortlessly successful is to just do what you love and thus do it really well; that and a lot of luck can in fact get you a race car.

This perspective that life is a narrative with upswings and downswings can itself be treacherous. Your life is not a prewritten narrative with defined story arcs. You should try to make sure you're happy with what you're doing _now_ , and o do what you can to mitigate future risks and pay down your retirement. But I'm not sure there's much to be gained from explicitly plotting your ultimate success.

<comment><USER10> > This perspective that life is a narrative with upswings and downswings can > itself be treacherous.

Is this not certainly true?

> Your life is not a prewritten narrative with defined story arcs.

It seems to be that someone could believe in the statement before this and not this.

<comment><USER9> No? It's definitely not true? It's The Gambler's Fallacy?

<comment><USER10> Ah, now I understand. You're saying that it's fallacious to believe that an upswing will necessarily have a downswing, and vice versa, is that correct?

What I understood (due to hastily coming to conclusions) was it is dangerous to believe that life has lows and highs.

<comment><USER11> That's right, but it's also important to realize that, in fact, there is no grand narrative[1].

Humans are compulsive pattern-recognizers and can turn any arbitrary independent sequence of events into a story.

That doesn't mean the story is _wrong, per se_ , but it does mean you cannot presume to know where a story "is leading up to". Because the only "complete" story is the one that is told afterwards.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_narrative> (lots of "blah" btw)

<comment><USER10> Ah, yes, thank you for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nobody deserves to be alive. Use of the word "deserves" in that context is one of those subtle abuses of the capabilities of language that verge on indoctrination. If you unpack it, you'll see that it implies the existence of some form of universal scoring system that everyone is a part of whether they want to be or not. Which is of course very far from the case, despite the existence of large groups of very missionary-minded folk who would like you to subscribe to that irrational belief.

This is one of many forms of what we might call adversarial grouping - <USER2> common when you see words like "we" and "should" showing up in sentences - <USER3> which the writer tries to place people, often the readers or listeners, into a specific memeplex without their consent. Given that the placing is usually happening at a level below the active topic, it is often surprisingly successful.

In this it shares a lot with the art of propaganda and advertising, illustrating that these things are points on a spectrum of abusive linguistics both grand and small. But all worth trying to keep an eye on as they arrive at your doorstep.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't even bother arguing these points anymore. I've started just saying "pale blue dot" to people (and to myself) whenever stuff like this comes up.

Try it, its fun. The next time someone complains about the rich being too rich, or the unfairness of 'the system' just shrug and mutter "meh, pale blue dot". The quizzical looks will make you feel better.

<comment><USER14> For anyone else feeling quizzical, Pale Blue Dot is the name of a photograph of earth taken by voyager in which the earth is nothing but a pale blue dot.

<comment><USER15> And to save everyone else the time, here is the picture on wikipedia

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png>

It looks like lens dust 1/2 down the right side of the picture.

<comment><USER16> I'd never seen this picture before, so thank you. I'd imagined it differently before viewing. Seems more like a pale blue speck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author, as it seemed to me, opened the topic of three semi-related issues -

      people who've done an incredible amount,

      social media and how he reacted to growth,

      and how life is after you've reached (what seems to be) your highest point

\- all of which are fascinating, yet did not wrap any one of them up.

<comment><USER17> All story's only have one ending.[1] As long as it's entertaining there really is no need to try and wrap things up.

[1] And then after a while, everyone died.

<comment><USER10> I strongly disagree, for entertainment is not the only reason I read things.

<comment><USER17> The internet is filled with bad advice walking around as anecdotal just so story's. If you are looking for more than entertainment, I suggest you avoid anything that shows up in 'story' format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> More and more I feel like this the most important truth I can teach to my 5 year old son. I think the earlier you grasp the concept of the journey being the reward the better. It changes your perception about so many life events. School being one of them. I want my son to realize that learning is the goal, living and doing what you love.

</comment><comment><USER19> _What could DHH do that would surpass the thrill of creating Rails_

Sorry for overlooking the rhetorical point, but one of DHH's biggest dreams seem to be racing at Le Mans and he's doing it this year.. so winning that, perhaps? :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Why is it that people won't accept that life simply isn't fair?

Usually nobody disagree when you say that life isn't fair, but then they go ahead and pretend that it is. They will even go so as far as to invent religious concepts like karma do explain how this supposed "cosmic balance/scoring system" can work.

<comment><USER21> It's just modern day religious conceptualization.

In the past, people hoped in "God" to handle the very obviously unfair world they could observe around them every day. The idea that "you'll get yours in the end, and it will be grand" is the basis of pretty much every religion on the planet.

Recently, the modern western world has fallen away from religion; a drive through the American Bible Belt notwithstanding. The problem is that people have not been able to adjust to the concept of living in a world that is not only unjust, but without purpose. It's a very difficult concept to reconcile with and maintain a sense of sanity - but this is what religion had been providing to us all these years.

Accepting life isn't fair by default means that you must accept that you have very, very little control of things. Humans _hate_ not being in control; we're programed that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A very poignant piece and a reminder that pursuing goals by doing what you enjoy is more important than actually reaching the goal.

<comment><USER23> I agree with the above commenters but I also like your crisp takeaway. I sometimes like to remind myself: there is no destination. You're always just on your way to somewhere, better enjoy the ride.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This sort of reminded me that code is the new currency, not all currency is equal and blogging and social media is only marketing. Now matter how you want to play it. If you play your hand just right you might hit the jackpot. Vehement whining about how I didn't get to be dhh is beyond this point. Game of making money does not depend on your feelings but your actions and in long view strategy - everyone is unique and no one should be DHH. Yes DHH was in the right place and right time. He played both hands, rails his brain child however was quite a mess for some time. Documentation was missing, errors led you to wrong places and still do.

Perhaps you can look at his and learn something, from afar not too close - <USER4> to see who he dines with and maybe get some of his own philosophy and make it your own...

</comment><comment><USER21> _It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end_

-Ursula K. LeGuin

</comment><comment><USER25> "Well look at her, she's beautiful, she's rich, she's smart, she's an amazing cook, and did it all with with kids. No one should have all that."

She also watched her husband and father of those children, John Diamond, die a long, slow lingeringly horrible and miserable death from mouth cancer.

In life, _no one_ gets off scot-free. And no one deserves to be on the receiving end of stupid, sour, ignorant, sweeping statements like this.

<comment><USER26> >In life, no one gets off scot-free.

That statement borders on cosmic woo-woo, but you make a good point about comparing your insides to other people's outsides.

Not everyone is as happy/perfect as they appear in their well-groomed public profile.

<comment><USER27> We all pay for the gift of life with death. All living beings suffer.

Perhaps it is how you deal with that truth that limits you.

<comment><USER26> No one here gets out alive - that's a truth.

Every good thing is balanced by some bad thing, or vice versa - that's mystical bollocks.

I wasn't sure which side of the line the OP was coming down on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CMS.js – Fully Client-Side JavaScript Site Generator - <AUTHOR> http://cdmedia.github.io/cms.js/ <comment><USER2> I know there seem to be two rather large groups on HN, one for proliferation of JS and one against, but at the very least if someone from the latter visits your site, please show something better than _an entirely blank page_.

(I'm speaking of the demo, not the actual site describing it --- although I thought it would be hosted with itself.)

As for the idea of turning static content sites into client-side JS-rendered apps, that gets a strong disapproval from me. _Why?_ It's needless complexity (instead of generating the HTML once and storing it on the server, every single visitor has to regenerate it on their machine), bad for accessibility, and very much against the principle of the Web that information should be easily linkable and retrievable. I can understanding using JS to do "app-ish" things that wouldn't be possible with static pages, but this is reinventing the wheel and making it square.

<comment><USER3> > an entirely blank page

That's only true if you use 'view source'. If you open up dev tools, all of the elements are rendered in full and live updated as they change.

Client-side rendered apps are quickly becoming every-where rendered apps. They can now work isomorphically, on the desktop, and on mobile.

> every single visitor has to regenerate it on their machine

This is a false premise. For server-side view rendering, the view is tightly coupled to the data. The majority of the payload will be made up of dynamically generated (and non-ideal for caching) HTML structure. When all the user really needs is data.

Rendering apps on the client-side allows fetching partials and content data piecemeal, which is ideal for caching. Views can be cached at the HTTP layer, directly in the app, or both. This will be especially useful once HTTP/2 (ie connection persistence) are in common use.

\-----

We're moving past the days of the static web. Especially, now that it's trivial to pull data from many different sources on the client-side.

What really never make sense was rendering the view on both the server-side and client-side (often times using 2 view template engines). Fortunately, that practice is becoming less common.

<comment><USER4>
      > They can now work isomorphically, on the desktop, and on
      > mobile.

So can plain HTML. Without any needless scripting.

      > We're moving past the days of the static web.

We are not. Maybe you are, we can wait till you come back.

      > Especially, now that it's trivial to pull data from many
      > different sources on the client-side.

HTML is even more trivial.

<comment><USER5> HTML (or more specifically HTML+css, and how they interact with and render in the browser) are anything but trivial. javascript (the language, not the JIT) is relatively simple in contrast

client side rendering + json apis on the server are the holy grail of openness (esp with an MIT licensed client)

<comment><USER6> Building a webpage node by node from within Javascript does not lessen the complexity of HTML and CSS, it simply adds to it. You're doing the exact same things - creating DOM nodes with attributes - but with yet another level (or 5) of indirection.

<comment><USER3> The point is, generate views ONLY on the client.

Excess layers of indirection come when you try do view generation on both the server and the client.

Many server frameworks currently follow this approach. Generate the view scaffold using templates on the server-side. Then request partials asynchronously on the client and generate additional views client-side using a completely different framework.

Shifting all of the view generation to the client frees up the back-end devs to focus all of their time/effort on the important part. Building and scaling the data infrastructure.

Not to mention, shifting the view layer client-side reduces resource requirements on the back-end.

The previous generation of front-end SPA frameworks frankly sucked in terms of performance, leading to a bad user experience. There were 2 primary reasons why. All data persistence/binding happened directly on the DOM, and all execution was handled on the main execution thread.

The latest generation greatly improves the experience by using new techniques such as data persistence/diffing via the virtual DOM, and handling all non- rendering logic on a background worker thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't want to discourage you, but I also don't want to encourage the proliferation of websites (web apps---as an alternative to actual desktop software---excluded) that require JavaScript to function at all.

Sites using JS only cannot be parsed by standard tools---I can't cURL the page, use wget, use a text-mode browser, etc. This fundamentally breaks interoperability, and limits users' freedom to use the tool/browsers they want to use the web. Users who wish to disable JavaScript to browse the web---be it for security, privacy, philosophy[0], or all of these things---are forced to either enable JavaScript or not read your website (I fall into the latter).

I write more JavaScript than any other language. I understand the community, and the rationale. But I know enough to know that I should disable JavaScript when browsing the web (except for select cases, and the software must be Free), and I still use command-line tools aggressively, even for the web. Please do your best to respect those who use the web as it was intended.

Keep hacking, but consider fallbacks, too!

[0]: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript- trap.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html)

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure there's no "intended way" to use the web. The developer of the website dictates this. If he wishes to use JS-only, that is his choice. He may lose you as a user/reader, but he certainly is using the web "as intended".

The choice to block JS seems a bit weird to me. JS, to my eyes, is very different to binary code running in userland. It is a sandboxed language with very clear restrictions to what it may do, it is easily read and verified (view source, pass it through a prettifier, and all that's left to fix is the variable names), and even hackable (we get a JS console in browsers).

What is it that makes JS so dangerous it must be blocked 100% ?

<comment><USER9> Many browser exploits that break out of the sandbox take advantage of javascript. Disabling it prevents entire classes of exploits. Also, a lot of ad networks use javascript as a tracking tool.

<comment><USER9> After about 20 seconds of googling

chrome: [https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2011-1186/](https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2011-1186/)

firefox: [https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2015-4509/](https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2015-4509/)

<comment><USER10> I don't think most people would consider 2011 recent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well how is this intended to be 'content manage'd? Through pr's on github?

I think CMS is a poor choice for a name, when there is no interface to 'build' the site's pages. I'd call it something like 'website generator backed by github'.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess this technology is promising in a way that it delivers websites to be read by humans only, not the bots. I fail to recognise the practical use of it unless building the most unknown blog in the world, since obviously site on cmsjs is not going to be indexed by google like your ordinary wordpress blog. But, there is something to it. Something important. Blog for humans, readable only by humans, kinda timely in the modern days of senseless content aggregators.

<comment><USER13> You could use something like casperjs ([http://casperjs.org/](http://casperjs.org/)) for a bot (I did this to scrape a proboards forum, worked quite well).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this project is cool but it's all of the problems of dynamic sites with none of the benefits. It's like if you took the worst parts of Jekyll (having to redeploy to update content) and the worst parts of a dynamic single page app (rendering delay), and took both parts. There is no benefit to this sort of infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good work, but why is client-side JS needed for a simple blog? I thought it was going to be like Jekyll but Node instead of Ruby (so no JS client-side).

<comment><USER16> You probably want to look at Hexo - [https://hexo.io/](https://hexo.io/)

<comment><USER17> You can use Hexo with github pages and have automatic deployments using [https://zammu.in/hexo?invitation_code=HNZAMMU](https://zammu.in/hexo?invitation_code=HNZAMMU)

Full Disclosure: I built Zammu.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Both the name and description are completely misleading. They suggest that this app is a web UI for managing content and doing what Jekyll does from CLI.

But this really is a SPA that can grab markdown files from your Jekyll site hosted on Github or a Apache web server, convert them to HTML and render on client site with JS.

What is the point?

</comment><comment><USER19> Shameless self-promotion:

For easy theming, I suggest you to take a look at the Classless Project, which will be super easy to integrate to in your case and will bring many already made themes with it -- and much more to come.

The ursprung[2] micro CMS is integrating Classless with success to this day.

[1]: [https://github.com/websitesfortrello/classless](https://github.com/websitesfortrello/classless)

[2]: [https://github.com/onli/ursprung](https://github.com/onli/ursprung)

<comment><USER3> Awesome collection. I'll have to find an excuse to use one of these now.

The only thing I'd suggest is, use ES6 instead of CoffeeScript or provide an ES5 copy of the code.

<comment><USER19> There's no code, it's only a collection of themes based on a "standard" template.

The CoffeeScript code you see is for the bookmarklet used on the playground. It is old code, coded in a rush, most for proof-of-concept. I'm slowly rethinking this playground and theme development stuff, so this is going to be replaced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool. I'm actually building something very similar @ [http://evanplaice.com](http://evanplaice.com). I use Markdown/JSON for all of the content. Markdown files can easily be embedded in a page using the <ng2-markdown> directive I wrote. The source is @ [http://github.com/evanplaice/evanplaice.com](http://github.com/evanplaice/evanplaice.com).

I'm planning to eventually extract the good bits, and adapt it to work with Jekyll files. Front-matter support is the last major road block.

Google shouldn't have any issue indexing AJAX-loaded content. On my site it's the Angular2 router that's really screwing SEO. You can test it out using the 'Fetch as Google' tool.

<comment><USER20> You should know that your page was blank for about 20 seconds. I nearly closed it.

<comment><USER21> Took 6 seconds on a Samsung Galaxy S6, Firefox. I definitely would've closed the tab if I hadn't read this.

<comment><USER3> The combined size of the concatenated js/css files was 1.7mb before compression. Now, both combined are 366KB respectively.

The load time should be _much_ better now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> TiddlyWiki[1], which is a wiki more than a "CMS", has been doing something very close to this for quite some time. I used it for years, but eventually switched back to plain text files for notes.

I use Jekyll for blogging and generating my portfolio site too, but right now I can only update my those from my own laptop with my Jekyll install which is not always great. CMS.js would be something else... My dream would be a simple PHP based CMS for my Jekyll install though.

[1] [http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. Thanks for sharing! I never saw this. Definitely going to check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This looks interesting. I'm not in love with the name. That said, I love all static site generators. Unfortunately, hosting a static site isn't much fun, so I created [http://www.statichosting.co](http://www.statichosting.co) to make it easier. It's in beta and we are getting close to launch, but have a few bugs to work out. Would love to have anyone give feedback on it as it develops.

</comment><comment><USER24> Although this is a cute little project, isn't the name rather misleading? Instead of a generator isn't this actually a markdown to HTML renderer?

<comment><USER25> I got rather confused by the title. My first thoughts were:

"A static site generator that runs entirely client-side? How's that possible? Surely it needs to write to the server at some point..."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that was kind of my line of thinking. I wanted to originally call it a static site generator but then got a lot of backlash because it was really "static" because of the Javascript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> does it affect site's SEO?

<comment><USER27> do a view source and take a guess, off course it will affect the SEO

but hey no problem it's JS, so to correct that SEO problem they will probably do a whole render of the page server-side with something like PhamtomJS and serve those "special" pages to bots

which I think is totally insane

<comment><USER28> Google renders JavaScript when it crawls.

<comment><USER29> Source please.

<comment><USER30> [https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/under...](https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/understanding- web-pages-better.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here is why I like this: It makes publishing to the web trivial.

</comment><comment><USER32> i can't get it to run.

it's cloned to danielovich.github.io but then it breaks!

:/

<comment><AUTHOR> Make sure your config has your Github username and repo name. Looks like it's blank according to the console.

<comment><USER32> updated that, still cannot get pages or posts to work.

bummer...

<comment><AUTHOR> ohhh I see what's going on here. since you cloned the demo, you need to use postsFolder: 'demo/posts' and pagesFolder: 'demo/pages' since they are located inside the demo folder. The demo is setup slightly different than a standard setup since it's in the subfolder.

<comment><USER32> You rock! Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cute project I guess, but this is a terrible idea for the web.</comment>


Ask HN: What newsletters are you subscribed to? - <AUTHOR> Subscribed to Next Draft, 500ish. Just discovered LAUNCH Ticker. <comment><USER2> O'Reilly Data Newsletter (data science and machine learning).</comment>


Show HN: Make your app handle going offline - <AUTHOR> http://github.hubspot.com/offline/docs/welcome/

<comment><USER2> > It captures AJAX requests which were made while the connection was down, and > remakes them when it's back up, so your app reacts perfectly.

Is this something I want as a user? If an app seems to be offline, I tend to do various things just to check or re-establish connectivity. Say, hit the Send button a few times, order columns, filter, search, whatever. Stuff, I wouldn't do if I had connection.

Once the app reconnects, all this nonsense would be executed. I'm not so sure if I'd really want this as a user.

This leads to the question: How fast does it notice that the app went offline? Do I get the chance to do stupid things as a user or will I be shown the "you're offline" message soon enough?

<comment><USER3> After the first request fails it will confirm it's the connection at fault, and immediately show the message. Depending on the nature of the connection problem this can be immediate, but there is a small possibility that it can be delayed if the nature of the problem causes connections to timeout. If we get reports of that happening in the wild, there are things we might be able to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You guys have put out some great pieces of JS in the last year and the quality is getting better. I'm a big fan of how this is not jQuery dependent and the code is simple. I've been watching the HubSpot repos since globalMessenger and the code and presentation are far above par.

Thanks for releasing your internal libs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think this is a neat proof of concept. However, you have to be extremely careful to not get out of sync hell.

I see an enormous load of extra complexities for what seems to be very little advantage.

On the other hand, if you list all the queued non-GET AJAX call for the user to resend manually, it could be good.

I'm ambivalent :(

<comment><USER6> Why are you critiquing this script like it's a consumer product? Obviously any developer who wishes to use this will have do some extra work to make sure things run smoothly.

<comment><USER5> Maybe because I've already implemented something like this in the past and I faced a lot of issues with synchronizing multiple states on multiple devices?

And I didn't say the library was bad, quite the contrary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kudos to hubspot: they're pushing out some nice js pieces from their app

</comment><comment><USER8> This comes at the perfect moment for me: I'm building an inventory web app used in warehouses on tablets and I'm faced with connectivity issues (incomplete or fluctuating WiFi coverage for instance).

Making the app less prone to these issues is certainly going to help build something more robust, so thanks a lot!

<comment><USER9> We built Couchbase Lite as a serious embedded database for use cases like this. Our PhoneGap connector might be right up your alley. [http://mobile.couchbase.com](http://mobile.couchbase.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The more I look into HubSpot libraries, the more I am amazed by their approach. To the point, small and flexible. And if the only annoyance people can bring up is a snake game, then you should be proud :)

Regarding this particular module: is there any chance of combining this with a websocket connection (particularly socket.io)? I don't really care much for off-site requests, but notifiying the user of a disconnected socket would play well into this.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Do you mind opening an issue for the websocket support in GitHub Issues? I'm not sure if there's anything we can do there, but I'm happy to talk about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is there a snake game wasting space in the source code?

<comment><USER3> Just my own amusement, I'll make you a build without it.

Edit: It's no longer included in the minified build

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is actually a very cool idea, but I'm gonna raise a minor nitpick which has been growing inside me over the last few months:

> It has a number of beautiful themes and requires no configuration

"Beautiful" is a word that's really getting overused nowadays, and I cringe whenever I see it.

Edit: I anticipated the downvoting

<comment><USER3> I wrote the copy, which word would you prefer?

<comment><USER13> Could just go with "a number of themes".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do you decide when to put `#hubspot-open-source` hashtag to repo description?

<comment><USER3> It's actually used to control what projects show up here: [http://github.hubspot.com/](http://github.hubspot.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a really useful starting point, thanks for sharing

</comment><comment><USER16> This looks neat, has anyone tried it with AngularJS?

</comment><comment><USER17> Cool! This looks really nice and definitely useful!

</comment><comment><USER18> can anyone explain how to set options like i want to disable requests and set it to false. appreciate.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is just what i need!! For my html5,json,localstorage app. But what if the user press Reload ? But what if the browser crasher or closed normally, does the buffer stay ? if not then it's useless!</comment>