Exploding Art: da Vinci Code of Another Sort - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2013/04/12/exploding-art-da-vinci-code-of-another-sort/

<comment><AUTHOR> A quick implementation of cool iOS Blueprint3D in Mathematica. This is the original game:

[http://www.fdg-entertainment.com/en/iPhone- Games/Blueprint-3...](http://www.fdg-entertainment.com/en/iPhone- Games/Blueprint-3D-iPhone.html)</comment>


The possibility of Bernie Sanders as a very 2016 Kremlin-Trump operation - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1089170695773478912 <comment><USER2> Garden-variety politics is off topic on HN. Please don't post like this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Before we go all conspiracy theorist, maybe we need to ask "why are things so fragile that they can be broken by (supposedly malicious Russians|insurgent surprise candidates)".

If a man with negative charisma and negligible name recognition, advertising himself as a Socialist, pulls 40% in the primaries, maybe there's something fundamentally defective about the winning candidate. You can make an argument for interference getting someone a few points in a close race, but you can't bootstrap from zero to serious contender on it alone.

<comment><USER4> Things are not that fragile. The winning candidate simply did not do the work needed to win the general election.

One could also argue the platform was not aligned well enough with human need, want, pain, the future, to prove compelling enough to win, over come campaign, candidate weaknesses.

Fact is, the number of Americans unable to associate their vote to a more positive economic future has been growing for decades now.

The reason the socialist did so well in the primary is his platform, policy vision did speak to a net positive future for all Americans and that proved more than sufficient to over come what many would see as candidate deficiencies.

Going from 60 points down to a near win against a well oiled, effective political machine speaks to the real need out there.

The Russians did not have any meaningful impact on the election when what little has been presented to us is weighed against factual easily observed events.

It is time to reconsider economic policy. Long overdue, and I would cite health care as number one case in point.</comment></comment>


Can a Supercomputing Algorithm Kill Gerrymandering? - <AUTHOR> https://www.top500.org/news/can-a-supercomputing-algorithm-kill-gerrymanding/ <comment><USER2> Maybe it can or maybe not it doesn't matter really. The point the people who are arranging gerrymandering are the same people who are gaining profit from it ... and the same who are constituting the law.</comment>


How To Build Something Real (In Your Spare Time) - <AUTHOR> http://messynotebook.com/?p=1083

<comment><USER2> I built delicious while working a fairly grueling day job.

\- I had a deck of index cards and a binder clip. Have an idea, write it down.

\- I'd sit down and try to do just one thing. Look through the cards, find something easy. Even a little thing. After that it was okay to go to bed.

\- Keep the code chunks small. Make it easy to page in all the state for working on that bit of code. Everything but the file that actually rendered a single bookmark fit on a single screen.

\- Understand that some days you just won't get anything done. Go with it.

\- Get something out there. Feedback is incredibly motivating.

\- Relentlessly cut things back. What's the minimal amount you have to do. What can you remove? What can you get rid of? What's the minimal design that has conceptual integrity? If it's not necessary, get rid of it. I find that lopping off chunks of the ideas mean that other parts of the code and interactions with other parts of the system become less and less complicated.

\- Don't start working on something until it's reasonably complete in your head. It's ok to doodle in code, but don't spend hours building something that is conceptually fragmentary. Sometimes I think about an idea for months. There are ideas I came up with 5+ years ago that I'm still noodling on.

\- Keep an idea log. If you aren't working you aren't generating real ideas.

\- Be ready to abandon an idea for another one if you find yourself thinking about it more.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm so undisciplined sometimes I wish I had my own personal drill-sergeant (akin to that guy from Full Metal Jacket) to kick my ass as soon I start losing my train of thought. . .does anyone else here consider their wandering train of thought a problem?

Usually I spend so much time trying to figure wtf I _should do_ that I either end-up micro-managing some code snippet that doesn't matter or day-dreaming about how awesome my hypothetical startup is, which frankly doesn't do anything at all!

How do you guys manage to do work that really matters on your own time without anyone else there to keep you on task, implement a set constraints for you to work within, or tell you what the problem is? i.e. gimme some tips to self- manage my train of thought.

<comment><USER4> I live and die by lists personally. I will make a list of things to do before I'm done for the day and I try to knock the list out. But I also have a drop- dead end of the day time. Don't pull an 18 hour day unless you're so deep in the zone you don't realize you've done it!

<comment><USER3> You sound like my Dad. . .which isn't bad but I've heard it all before. I don't know why I resisted this list making mantra for such a long time, but nevertheless, I gave in a little over a year ago and started making lists my college course work.

But a list in college is different since the assignment is my constraint thus it is much easier to work within because the assignment or project provides the problem and upstream requirements for me. For some reason reading software requirements, doing a mathematical proof, or looking over case diagrams for pre-existing problems puts me on the right train of thought by forcing me to focus on _how I'm doing it_ not on _what I'm doing_.

<comment><USER5> I often suffer from the same day-dreaming and building castles in the air problem you described in your OP.

I have found that just writing down all these ideas allows me to focus on something else. I think the reason I constantly think about them is that I'm attempting to remember everything. The act of putting it on paper allows me to rest easy on that front.

I also prefer legal pads to everything else I have found, even electronic. There is just something about pen and paper and being able to cross out or annotate that helps me organize my thoughts. I sound like a luddite saying that, I know, but it's true.

I also spend some time every so often to go through my lists and consolidate or elaborate on items. Many times I'll find the reason I haven't been able to start on something is because it's too broad and ill-defined. Thinking about it and turning that one item into half a dozen more actionable (is that a word?) items helps get me started.

<comment><USER6> You're a very ready candidate for GTD. Get the book it'll change your life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since building something is only 10% of the battle (if that) you're going to want to apply the same general techniques to the other things -- web design, marketing, support, etc.

My favorite three words are "Automate, outsource, and eliminate". If neither you nor your customers require your personal attention to X, you should ideally not be X-ing, because you and your customers require your personal attention on enough things as it is.

[Incidentally: Telling your parents and friends about your internal deadlines as a motivational tool is pretty useful. Telling your customers is a great way to get unproductively stressed when life gets in the way. Your parents and friends will still be there later if your schedule slips a week because your girlfriend needed more face time. Your customers, on the other hand, tend to be a little more insistent that when you tell them 2.0 is coming out on July 1st that it is actually out on July 1st.]

<comment><USER8> It depends what your battle is. This guide is more directed to hackers who want to build something cool than someone setting out to start a business.

<comment><USER9> I agree, I don't think the article had 'making a business out of it' in mind.

This is just hacking with a goal to finishing the project. A noble goal, I think. Though in my experience a difficult one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Unfortunately, [basic project management principles] often seem to go > straight out the window when programmers sit down to work on their own time.

Well stated. When you are working on your side project and not being paid/accountable to others, its easy to mismanage your resource (yourself).

Does anyone use the free 1-project version of Basecamp for hobby project management?

<comment><USER11> I tried Basecamp once for a side project, but I quickly found myself not using it. No particular reason. I just didn't feel like I got much value out of it.

Trac is pretty nice because it's lightweight and is tied right into my repository (if you use SVN). It seems to fit my workflow better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This sounds like it would turn my hobbies into yet another job. I understand where it's coming from, but sometimes I _like_ working on things that I don't have to finish.

<comment><USER13> Most of us are trying to create something of value that will allow us to get away from the corporate job frustrations. In the end you might be working longer/harder than that frustrating job, but at least it will a) provide for you and your family b)something you are proud of c) enjoy while doing it

A finished project will help in that direction.

<comment><USER12> Oh, I can definitely sympathize with that position, having been in it myself, and I didn't mean to belittle the efforts of those currently trying to escape.

I was speaking as someone who is already doing a startup. I've made the mistake of trying to have "serious" side projects at the same time... it's not a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At first, some of these items seem to conflict (like "something every day" and "let life intrude"), but these are great rules of thumb. From what I've seen, too many developers just set out on a path without really mapping it out first.

In my own experience I have often used the excuse that my project is so small that I don't need to write anything down for it, but that always comes back to bite me when I have to "let life intrude" for a week or so - I come back and I'm totally lost as to where to go next. Having lots of little milestones makes things go much more smoothly.

<comment><USER15> You can do 10 minutes every day. The important thing is to _feel_ progress every day, or else you get depressed. The same advice is given to writers for the same reasons: write something every day, even if it's terrible. It keeps you feeling like you're moving forward, and that helps you break through any mental blocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd say the number one bit of advice would be "Get people to use it".

Looking back at side projects that are sitting on a disk somewhere, abandoned, they went that way because no one was using them.

Once you manage to get some people using your side project, it's a lot harder to just shelve it, and a lot easier to iterate and grow.

</comment><comment><USER17> ... and leave an easy task to pick up when you resume.

<comment><USER9> I think that's an important point. I tend to have a few recurring ideas that I come back to. The trouble is, I have a bad habit of not keeping each project in a well maintained state. Most times when I come back to something I pretty much start again... ugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You know how I motivate myself? I would subscribe to an oversized slice @ slicehost to remind myself everyday, I'd better get this thing out as soon as possible, otherwise I would end up paying those un-utilized resources as everyday passed by. It works magic, I ended up releasing my beta version within 4 months instead of the planned 8-12 months.

</comment><comment><USER19> For me and my company, my ability to finish things has had a lot more to do with me believing in the project.

In my limited experience, you don't invest your time or your money into a startup. You invest yourself. You sacrifice your health, your relationships, and your political capital to make it work. And you don't do that because you have to or you want to. You do that because you only have one goal, and that's getting your company off the ground.

There's nothing that I've ever invested myself in so fully as my company, aside perhaps from my marriage.

</comment><comment><USER20> First, know when "your spare time" is. After "completing" something (or just calling it quits for the day), go for it. Doesn't matter what gets "built". Just knowing you've done something enjoyable for yourself, whether it's tangible or not, is an accomplishment in itself. Second, if serious about building something others can benefit from, create that list...a plan in action...whatever you want to call it. Then you can measure your progress until it's DONE. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the golden rule here is: build something that is going to be useful for yourself too, for the next years. If you are not an user of your own programs it's hard to get motivated. For example this is how I abandoned the development of hping. Because I stopped doing security for work I started using hping rarely, and I was no longer motivated to continue the development.

</comment><comment><USER22> The "something real" that was created in the article is a mind mapping web app. Clearly there is a need for a really good mind mapping and idea tracking software, since so many people are taking a stab at the problem (myself included).

</comment><comment><USER23> Personally, what I lack the most is that "small amount of external pressure", but I've been trying to fix that, trying to get out of my vacuum and start collaborating with people.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice post. Great reminder for those of us who tend to put big, imaginary barriers between ourselves and finishing anything!

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems like so-called project management is mostly ideas adapted from the the great eastern traditions - yoga, buddhism, zen and eastern way to live in general. You can get almost any old book and you will find something called 'the way' - 'do'. Aikido is a good example, Bushido, and related teachings.

btw, I admire those genius who drawing users-guides and promote projects in anime style. =)</comment>


The mystery doge ad in the Guardian's financial pages - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/07/much-doge

<comment><AUTHOR> Anyone interested in the original print ad, here it's [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bf3U1C7IMAE_MkJ.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bf3U1C7IMAE_MkJ.jpg:large)

</comment><comment><USER2> Ironically -- or perhaps intentionally -- online coverage of this stunt may garner more traffic than a straightforward ad would have.

<comment><USER3> Of course, that's what they were counting on. There's no such thing as too many customers or too much publicity.

<comment><USER4> "We don't really need the advertising anymore, we get enough traffic as it is." What a ridiculous thing to say!

<comment><USER5> Such an lie</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Highfive wants to become the Nest of B2B video conferencing - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2692518/opensource-subnet/highfive-wants-to-become-the-nest-of-b2b-video-conferencing.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Conference calls are notoriously unproductive, and one company wants to fix that with simple videoconferencing. Today, Highfive announced its video collaboration cloud service and purpose-built camera intent on inspiring business users to jump into face-to-face video conferences more often.

Highfive CEO Shan Sinha wants to change this, along with company culture, by replacing conference calls with conference-room-wide video calls integrated with a cloud-based video collaboration application and an integrated camera, speaker, and microphone.

The company has raised $13.4 million from investors such as Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Box founder and CEO Aaron Levie, Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst Partner</comment>


The case for "conditional optimism" on climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/28/18156094/conditional-optimism-climate-change <comment><USER2> According to this article carbon emissions would need to go negative to keep the temperature increase within 2 degrees. Not zero, but negative!

The populations of developed countries don't understand how much it would hurt their quality of life if they do what it takes to solve this problem. Once they have put up with enough pain, the unrest will make the "yellow jacket" protests in France look routine. Who knows what kind of crazy people would get elected by promising to stop the pain.

The "yellow jacket" protests were a response to tax increases on fuel as part of the government's strategy to reduce emissions. They ballooned into a general airing of grievances about inequality, economic justice, the cost of living, and populist anti-establishment sentiment. Policies to limit emissions in other countries would likely have the same result, because the same sentiments exist throughout the developed world and are behind the global rise of populism.

<comment><USER3> Carbon fee _and dividend_ is the obvious response to all that.

<comment><USER2> I don't see how it's obvious, especially since it has never been implemented outside of a small scheme in Canada where the dividend goes to businesses rather than households.

<comment><USER3> All the more reason to implement a large scheme that returns everything to individuals, like the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act recently introduced in the U.S. House and Senate [https://www.coons.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sens- co...](https://www.coons.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sens-coons-flake- introduce-landmark-bipartisan-legislation-to-put-money-in-the-pockets-of- working-families-by-pricing-carbon-pollution)

On how it's obvious response to:

> inequality, economic justice, the cost of living, and populist anti- > establishment sentiment

On the first and third (and I guess second, depending what you mean by it), it's clearly progressive, see [https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/how- bi...](https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/how-bipartisan- energy-innovation-and-carbon-dividend-act-compares-other-carbon-tax-proposals) and on the fourth, when has there been populist backlash against sending all citizens checks, even when it is a gimmick (as in the case of various last minute rebates, IIRC)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's little doubt that electric cars will displace ICE cars in an S curve fashion. First because it's just a much better technology, second because it's cheaper and third because it's low carbon.

The same is likely true for trucks of all familiar kinds.

It's less clear that the same holds for shipping and air travel. Air travel for flights under 400 miles (due to much reduced maintenance costs) are likely to electrify but the others would probably require the push of regulation.

Heat and air conditioning will very possibly electrify only because the combined costs of wind and solar have been dropping so consistently.

On balance, it really doesn't look half bad for S curve substitution for, say, 80% of the fossil fuel industry over the next 20 years.

EDIT: a few typos

</comment><comment><USER5> '"marginal, incremental improvements in energy and carbon efficiency cannot do the job and that what is needed is a structural transformation." In other words, 2 degrees requires radicalism.'

There are such huge opportunities for new jobs and industries and re- organization of society. That coupled with prospect of reasonably predictable doom makes me wonder what on earth goes on in so many people's minds. Why are we not all soiling ourselves in fear? Do all the adults out there really want to leave this world in such a mess? Especially when something can be done now.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are alternatives that can be deployed without reducing carbon emissions: [https://edition-m.cnn.com/2018/11/23/health/sun-dimming- aero...](https://edition-m.cnn.com/2018/11/23/health/sun-dimming-aerosols- global-warming-intl-scli/index.html)

We'd already be over 2*C if not the aerosols that humans released: [https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/img/figure/figure2_1.png](https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/img/figure/figure2_1.png)

These took out much of the heat from greenhouse gasses. And in my opinion you either buy the climate change models (which are very aware of aerosols), or you don't. It doesn't make sense to believe that the planet will heat up more, that it is due to humans, but aerosols are not a part of the story.

We're not as screwed as many people think.

<comment><USER7> Even if climate change is nonsense (it isn't) it still makes sense to get off energy sources that are known to destroy air quality. This should be common sense to anybody, who _likes_ smog?

This said some of the talk that I've been hearing recently has me concerned for peoples' mental well being. I've heard numerous peers and coworkers in the past year express belief that they would not live long enough to have grandchildren because humanity will be extinct by then. That we have 20 years or less of life, that the situation is doomed, etc. None of this is a healthy mindset.

<comment><USER6> Yup, climate change is real - it's evident from computing average temperatures. No point in debating that.

I completely agree that smog is terrible and essentially kills people. My point was the really bad consequences of warming (mass migrations from deserted areas and subsequent refugee crises, wars over farmable land, exodus from flooded areas) can be avoided via aerosols.

<comment><USER8> But the source of the warming should be completely open for debate. I for one am looking at the sun as the source, starting with the sunspot maximum event of 1958 that sparked the US government to create Nasa.

<comment><USER7> Why is that a productive debate? Even if CO2 is not the source, we should still eliminate our reliance on the combustion of fossil fuels because those fuel sources still undeniably pollute our environment in other serious ways. The mining and burning of coal is bad for our environment _even if_ CO2 was a non-issue.

<comment><USER8> For me, it's about the truth and I'm pretty tired of being dismissed because I dont agree with the anti-human narrative that's becoming the mainstream.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Vega-Lite 2.0, a Grammar of Interactive Graphics - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@uwdata/introducing-vega-lite-2-0-de6661c12d58 <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm one of the co-authors of Vega-Lite. I'm happy to answer if you have any questions! ;)</comment>


How do photons experience time? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/how-do-photons-experience-time-30c9bdeae3ae#.90o6f1un5 <comment><USER2> It begs the question, if photons just are and experience no time during their travels thereby arriving instantly, where do they arrive at?</comment>


Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality - <AUTHOR> http://archive.is/xKX1T <comment><USER2> Massive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17977631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17977631)</comment>


Rice University leads $11M effort in big data software analytics - <AUTHOR> http://news.rice.edu/2014/11/05/next-for-darpa-autocomplete-for-programmers-2/ <comment><AUTHOR> "We envision a system where the programmer writes a few of lines of code, hits a button and the rest of the code appears. And not only that, the rest of the code should work seamlessly with the code that's already been written."

I'm skeptical...

'Writing computer programs could become as easy as searching the Internet. A Rice University-led team of software experts has launched an $11 million effort to create a sophisticated tool called PLINY that will both "autocomplete" and "autocorrect" code for programmers, much like the software that completes search queries and corrects spelling on today's Web browsers and smartphones.'

Interested, but very, very skeptical...

<comment><USER2> I've seen plenty of platforms that write their own code from UI-type elements. That code is scary.

<comment><USER3> More or less scary than the code generated by a compiler? The JavaScript you get out of a ClojureScript compiler is pretty scary, but it still runs reasonably well. Though I suppose it would be pretty hard to write additional JavaScript to interact with the generated code.

<comment><USER2> >Though I suppose it would be pretty hard to write additional JavaScript to interact with the generated code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish the people here would upvote more posts by actual researchers and programmers and fewer press releases from university PR departments.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is easy. IDE bot scrapes stackoverflow as you type. Ctrl-space to paste 'best' solution.

<comment><USER6> [http://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/](http://gkoberger.github.io/stacksort/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From this article, I have absolutely no idea what this software will actually do.

Can anyone enlighten me as to what they are actually trying to do, from the perspective of an actual software developer?

Or did they just successfully string together the correct sequence of buzz words to unlock the grant money?

<comment><USER8> > Or did they just successfully string together the correct sequence of buzz > words to unlock the grant money?

This, absolutely. Big data, data mining, and machine learning are really cool topics but the words became overused, overhyped, used out of context, especially by people who don't really understand what these are.

I have an old co-worker who spent a lot of time working with large excel spreadhseets, using some formulas, sorting it to look for things, etc.

He lists "data mining" on his linkedin, and has a ton of people who endorsed him for it.

This became a little off topic, but I hate how venture capital, grant funds, the media, and misinformed people completely butcher these topics.

<comment><USER9> "big data" .... because my Excel spreadsheets were like ... really big ... like you had to scroll down for 5 seconds big.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As usual, the future is already here, just unevenly distributed.

[https://github.com/capitaomorte/yasnippet](https://github.com/capitaomorte/yasnippet)

I do wonder if you gave $11M to João Távora what the end result would be. Probably pretty cool.

<comment><USER11> Grants like there baffle me. Having worked for the university, it is a lot about how you phrase the proposal so you can get the approvers to issue the grant. Someone had suggested ya-snippet and it already solves many of their goals. I am skeptical about the auto-correct feature

<comment><USER12> One of the PIs is a Goedel award winner (M. Vardi). Track record matters in getting funding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I half-remember they tried to do a subset of this with some LISP/SCHEME, but it didn't pan out too well.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a great idea. But, what code base is this autocomplete going to run off of?

If they are thinking of sourcing the internet itself, there had better be some kind of omniscient, all powerful proofreader in place, because there are a lot of people that submit a lot of code that is HORRIBLY insecure, inaccurate, prone to breakage or just plain spaghetti.

I'd hate to be working on a missile guidance system, only to press <tab> to complete a code block and end up getting some Intel Pentium FDIV instructions.

</comment><comment><USER15> The announcement itself is pretty sparse on the proposed approach, but given the research interests of Swarat Chaudhuri [1] and Moshe Vardi [2], I would guess they will attempt to combine recent advancements in program synthesis, program verification, and code mining.

Program synthesis: There has been a lot of interest in the formal methods community to automatically generate programs (for small instances) with the target specification coming from input-output examples (e.g., Excel Flash Fill [3]), program templates or holes (called Sketches [4]), reactive models of adversarial environments, formal invariants etc. Also the solution techniques used vary considerably: from game theoretic solving, SAT solvers, model checkers, to version-space algebras and others. The community has not yet fixated on a specification language, or a solving technology. The industrial nature of the tools being leveraged (e.g., model checkers and SAT solvers from the hardware community) gives hope for promising developments. A Berkeley course [5] covers a good spectrum of the current developments.

If I were to guess, maybe the Rice researchers are approaching the code completion/correction problem as mining for fragments of large codebases that are incomplete/incorrect and applying program synthesis to fill those fragments. Of course that would mean that they would also need to mine the specification requirements for those fragments. All of this is easier said than done, and it would be an ambitious project. Swarat has also done some really cool work on "probabilistic reasoning for programs" and "verification of probabilistic programs", so that might be part of it too. (Of course, I may be completely off-base! After all, we are commenting on a non-technical funding announcement here.)

[1] Swarat's publications: [http://www.cs.rice.edu/~sc40/pubs/](http://www.cs.rice.edu/~sc40/pubs/)

[2] Moshe's publications: [http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/papers/index.html](http://www.cs.rice.edu/~vardi/papers/index.html)

[3] Excel's FlashFill from Sumit Gulwani, researcher@MSR: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/flashfi...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/sumitg/flashfill.html)

[4] The Sketch program synthesizer: [https://bitbucket.org/gatoatigrado/sketch- frontend/wiki/Home](https://bitbucket.org/gatoatigrado/sketch- frontend/wiki/Home)

[5] Ras Bodik/Emina Torlak: Berkeley course material on Program Synthesis: [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bodik/cs294fa12](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bodik/cs294fa12)

<comment><USER16> I put my money on this comment being reflective of the actual research award vs all the other comments complaining that its an $11M grant to build an autocomplete that scrapes the internet for code snippets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Posted just a bit later on HN: [http://codesnippet.research.microsoft.com/](http://codesnippet.research.microsoft.com/)

</comment><comment><USER18> "PLINY is part of DARPA's Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves (MUSE) program, an initiative that seeks to gather hundreds of billions of lines of publicly available open-source computer code and to mine that code to create a searchable database of properties, behaviors and vulnerabilities."

I feel that the reason DARPA is willing to fund this is because of that last part: "vulnerabilities".

</comment><comment><USER19> Hopefully they publish in public jounals!

</comment><comment><USER20> all those millions are given for explaining stuff with that papers and not laughing once.

</comment><comment><USER21> Autocomplete + the Internet already erodes many programmers skills to the point where they can barely write code without help. I can't imagine what this kind of tool would do.

Not that there is anything wrong with autocomplete. I certainly use it, but I've seen a lot of programmers that barely understand the code they are writing.</comment>


Show HN: Atani – All-in-one crypto platform: exchanges, wallets, tax reports - <AUTHOR> https://atani.com/ <comment> Tommy-J Solved my 2 biggest issue as a trader! Forgetting about taxes and trading in all my 6 exchanges from one platform.

</comment><comment><USER2> It says non-custodial. Is it really impossible to hack if I enter my Api keys?

<comment><AUTHOR> The solution is fully non-custodial as API keys are encrypted on the users device and are never shared with Atani's servers.</comment></comment>


HTTPS Everywhere Now Available For Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere <comment><USER2> Securing: HackerNews

Who knew!</comment>


Direct3D 11.3 Functional Specification (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://microsoft.github.io/DirectX-Specs/d3d/archive/D3D11_3_FunctionalSpec.htm <comment><USER2> MS has had a tendency to do things differently for the sake of doing things differently (eg. for instance clip-space range/w from 0..1 instead of -1..1) but I love the candor in this document:

"D3D9 and prior had a terrible Pixel Coordinate System where the origin was the center of the top left pixel on the RenderTarget"

<comment><USER3> There are precision issues with -1...1. 0...1 is actually the right choice IMO.

<comment><USER4> I'm currently updating myself with Vulkan (which is mostly based on modern OpenGL). The Vulkan clip range is 0.0 to 1.0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This document may have been written in 2015 but it was not published publicly until this week. I think the (2015) label is misleading.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is nothing really comparable for OpenGL and it shows, really. Awesome work.

<comment><USER7> sorry... what ? [https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/specs/gl/glspec45.co...](https://www.khronos.org/registry/OpenGL/specs/gl/glspec45.core.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I'm (too) familiar with the document but it isn't nearly as accurate and unambiguous as the DX one.

<comment><USER8> GL specs are generally quite accurate, now that there are real conformance tests for implementations. They can feel imprecise though, as they tend to leave a bunch more as undefined, whereas d3d tends to be more strict, leaving fewer choices to implementations.

Of course, the D3D11 spec didn't used to be public at all.

<comment><USER9> The Fahrenheit project should've been a thing. Just declare Direct3D the new standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This page is incompatible with mobile devices. I think it is causing relayouts on chrome mobile that make it unusable or it is just too long.

<comment><USER11> It looks to be an incredibly simple, static page. No javascript even. Don't we see a "you shouldn't be using a fancy framework/javascript" article every week or so?</comment></comment>


To Reduce VR Sickness, Add a Virtual Nose - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/04/reduce-vr-sickness-just-add-virtual-nose/ <comment><USER2> I feel like such an idiot. I read it like noise, as in added digital noise.

The first image's caption said "note the massive nose in the middle of the game's frame" and I started looking for noise in the middle of each of the screens, as in: comparing the two images and see if I could spot the noise.

"particularly because the participants playing with the virtual nose didn't even notice it was there."

Yeah, that's me not finding the nose.

<comment><USER3> I too read it as noise. This happens to me very often these days , don't know if it's part of some cognitive decline :P

EDIT: Another such HN headline misreading was when I read "The contribution of Cheese to western civilization" as "The contribution of Chinese to western civilization" .

<comment><USER4> Probably part of the brain going 'wait, that doesn't make much sense, let's look for a word that would fit better in context and looks similar.'

I wonder if it is related to optical illusions.

<comment><USER5> Nope, I did "virtual noise, huh? Interesting. Wait, wasn't there an article the other day that added a nose to get rid of motion sickness as well? Hmm, does it actually say noise? Nope :/"

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure that is different. The perception part is still filling in what fits based on context. It takes your consciousness to tell the perception 'read again while suppressing spellcheck'.

Have you ever read the paragraph where every word is misspelled but people tend to be able to read with very little reduction in speed?

<comment><USER5> I guess you're right. I have, yep, it was pretty surprising!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully I'm not too late to weigh in on this one but I've experienced this personally for years.

I am a person that experiences motion sickness from most 3D environments if on a sufficiently large screen. The effect became noticeable once frame rates passed a certain level in the early 2000's and after that I was unable to play most FPS games.

Despite this I loved the Need for Speed franchise. Hot Pursuit on the PS3 ate up a lot of my free time. :) I could only use the game in one visual mode though... "Hood view", where the hood of the car remains visible at the bottom of the screen. That provided my brain with a fixed reference point and as a result I could spend hours in there.

When a following release of NFS for PS came out (I think it was Most Wanted 2012) they removed the hood view option. Five minutes into the game and I get a strong motion sickness headache. After searching a few other titles I found similar issues with all of them and gave up gaming.

I wrote EA and Criterion Games a couple times about this but never heard back. Unfortunately it was a deal breaker for me trying anything further in the franchise. I hope that game developers (especially with immersive VR now) take the time to find and test with someone like myself as tricks like this help a lot.

<comment><USER7> I stopped playing games about 10 years ago, but thought I would come out of the break to play Portal... I did, and was very saddened to find that I just couldn't play it because it gave me _really_ bad motion sickness and headaches. The nauseating feelings kick in after just 60 seconds of gameplay (and no, not just when going in and out of portals -- even when I'm simply walking around without making portals the headaches come in).

I hope more research is done on this, and some solutions are found, because I really want to finish playing Portal. :)

<comment><USER8> I've been playing FPS shooters for most of my life. But I've had to stop.

For some reason HL2 would give me headaches. Really, really bad headaches. I thought it might be the Engine, or me being tired. But I don't get headaches playing TF2 or Dystopia, both of which use the same engine. Surprisingly, Portal and Portal 2 didn't give me as bad headaches.

Later games are hit-and-miss. Bioshock I didn't suffer. Bioshock Infinite gave me headaches within 15 minutes.

And watching any Let's Play of a shooter gives me headaches within a minute.

I've chalked the majority of it up to getting older. My gaming binges used to also give me headaches, but only after several hours. So I've had to switch to strategy games instead. But still, something about certain ways things are rendered or the FoV or framerate is affecting me and I wish I knew what it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They should put a blur on the nose. Having it in focus just seems wrong and perhaps distracting from their goal of giving the brain what it expects. Heck, I just tried right now and I'm now old enough that I can't even get my nose into focus at all anymore (pretty sure I could when I was a child, lenses are getting harder to flex I guess).

<comment><USER10> ...based on the position of where it is in your field of view, the digitally rendered nose might not need artificial blur.

When you view it with a head-mounted display, your eyes might just see it as blurry anyway...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _Whittinghill says this is likely a result of "change blindness," a > perceptual phenomenon that allows our perceptual system to ignore objects > that we see over and over again._

Uhhh, that's not what change blindness is at all. It sounds more like vanilla sensory adaptation. Our visual system has adapted to the presence of our nose in our visual field (since it's always there), which is why we don't notice our noses in day to day life and don't notice a virtual nose placed at the same location.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER12> Now I'd like to know: do people who have lost their nose irl experience more motion sickness?

<comment><USER13> A Chinese friend once told me she can't see her own nose. And the thought of us whites constantly having our nose in our field of view was funny to her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Colour me skeptical.

You decreased sickess by 13.5% by covering up about that much of the screen.

<comment><USER15> Your real nose always covers some part of your visual field, still it doesn't bother you, because your brain removes certain stimuli that persist over a long period of time.

<comment><USER16> Haha maybe it's just me, but I actually dislike having my real-life nose block part of my view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For a second, I thought this was going to be about adding smells to the experience... which would probably be a very bad idea, as nauseating experiences condition strong smell aversions.

I wonder if a nose pincher would decrease motion sickness with VR.

</comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one who never experience any VR sickness at all? Regardless of latency. Is it really that big of a problem?

<comment><USER19> To not experience any VR sickness with the state of today's technology, you must either be using exclusively the tame applications of the technology -- such as garden walk, home tour, etc, and not trying out any FPS games like TF2 or something -- or you have something biologically off about your linkage between your natural balance sensors and how your brain tries to correlate them with what your eyes see.

Either way, that's good for you, embrace the future more easily than the rest of us :)

<comment><USER20> Or they just don't get motion sickness? Why does it have to be a sign of something being "off"?

<comment><USER21> Because motion sickness is a well understood phenomena; the cause of which the previous commenter was discussing.

The usage of the term "off" was probably a poor choice of words, but I didn't detect any negativity in his tone despite "off". eg:

        "Either way, that's good for you, embrace the future more easily than the rest of us :)"

(the last part of this post is also targeted towards _jsprogrammer_ who suggested there was an air of superiority with the former post. Sometimes, it's entirely possibly you can read too much into another persons comment)

<comment><USER20> >Because motion sickness is a well understood phenomena

Sure, one that ballpark-range around half of people get. Neither side is more standard. Is this different, does it affect 98% of people or something? I'm not suggesting negativity, I'm suggesting that perhaps Kiro is not at all an anomaly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It reduced motion sickness by about 13% - and appears to cover about that amount of the screen. Are we sure the effects aren't simply because you are effectively covering up part of the screen? What happens if you cover up 50%? 100%?

</comment><comment><USER23> I've often wondered if it would help by adding retina tracking and adding the subtle shift in perspective it creates.

</comment><comment><USER24> Imagine the possibilities! You can now pick your own virtual nose! With virtual avatars in social apps, you can pick your friends' noses, too! Or their hair, or their ears, or their pets. You can make your friends look exactly like you want.

</comment><comment><USER25>
        shown to reduce the effects of simulator sickness by 13.5 percent.

How do you calculate such an exact value?

<comment><USER26> My students regularly show me how easy it is to calculate extremely precise results. Now, whether they should _trust_ that precision is a rather different question, and one that even the good ones struggle with for a while. (In other news, I wish that more people paid attention to uncertainty propagation. Or heck, even just some oversimplified heuristics for significant figures.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does that mean that path tracing engines like Brigade[1] fit well with VR?

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpT6MkCeP7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpT6MkCeP7Y)

<comment><USER10> This article is about a "NOSE", not "NOISE."

And no, the framerate of Brigade makes it unlikely to work well with VR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting, this article not only made me more aware of my own nose in my field of view, it increased my awareness of the fact that my left eye is my dominant eye (a bit unusual given that I am right-handed). It takes effort for me to notice my nose from the right and after reading this I have a distinct sense of my nose being off-center to the right side of my face. Weird! I wonder if this trick would work by placing the virtual nose only in view of the dominant eye (I suppose that's more complicated to implement, though).

</comment><comment><USER29> I reckon the noses in the examole images are on the wrong side. The images are cross-eyed, e.g. the left image is for the right eye. The nose on the left image should therefore be on the left, and vice-versa for the other eye. You can test that by crossing your eyes so the images match and try focusing (the first try takes a while). If you see a stereoscopic image, the source is cross-eyed. If it were not, The depths in the image would look "weird", because they're inside-out.

<comment><USER30> They are not cross-eyed.

<comment><USER29> I just tested it and it seems I can manage fusion and see the effect both if I switch them and if I don't. Now I'm confused. is there something special about these images in particular or has my perception been all wrong?

<comment><USER31> When I tested it out, I got the proper sense of depth perception when I looked at it correctly (i.e., looking through the plane of the monitor, with left image for left eye) and got no sense of depth perception when looking cross- eyed (i.e., left image for right eye). It's temping to think you're seeing depth as soon as the two images "snap together" when you're cross-eyed, but when I actually consciously checked I noticed that the images in fact looked flat (except for the nose).

As far as why it looked flat rather than inside out, I can only guess that that depth info conflicted with the other depth information you get from vision (parallax, known relative object sizes, perspective lines) and my brain ignored it.

EDIT: Actually, after trying the second view (the one with hands, not the roller coaster) cross-eyed, I saw the inside-out depth. It's most noticeable looking out the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Argh, the stereogram animations on this page are of the "stare into infinity" type rather than "cross your eyes type". The first one is impossible for me due to insufficient interpupillary distance, combined with my inability to diverge my eyes. :)

</comment><comment><USER33> This is something you experience a lot with GoPro sort of footage as well. A trick in that world is to show part of the helmet or bike (or whatever the camera is attached to) to give you a steadying point because, otherwise, the camera appears too shaky and crazy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Original post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9262743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9262743)

</comment><comment><USER32> Would this still benefit someone of East Asian descent who doesn't see their nose?

</comment><comment><USER35> It's called seasickness and known for thousand of years.

You get it or you don't and there is nothing technology could do about it for a long period of time at least.

Well someone could take some medicine before playing VR, but that would be a little bit too much, wouldn't it?

</comment><comment><USER36> Am now conspicuously aware of the nose in the middle of my face.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is... genius.</comment>


Ask HN: Which paid apps and services do you use? - <AUTHOR> Can be exclusively paid apps/services or ones with a free tier available. Examples could be Pinboard, Instapaper, Zapier, PostHaven, Lastpass, anything really. <comment><USER4> Sorted by amount:

        Linode ($20/mo)
        Cloudflare ($20/mo)
        Freshbooks ($20/mo)
        DreamHost ($8.95/mo)
        GitHub ($7/mo)
        FastMail ($40/yr)
        Tarsnap (some bucks/mo)
        Pinboard ($25/yr)
        Amazon.it Prime (10€/yr)
        Instapaper ($12/yr)

        AWS (???)
        Gandi (???)

        1Password ($50 + $18)
        Sublime Text 2 ($70)
        Dash ($20)
        Tweetbot

And I love them all.

Thanks for asking, it made for a good reflection on what I pay for, and what value I get.

<comment><USER5> _what I pay for, and what value I get_

Out of curiosity: How much value do you get out of each of the above services?

(Patrick, Thomas: Please don't turn this into a discussion about Tarsnap being underpriced. I'm asking because I want to hear FiloSottile's opinion about all the other services he uses.)

<comment><USER4> What I look for in a paid service, and what I get from these is a reliable, out-of-my-way, "premium" (I feel that the service is working to make things best for me) solution to _one_ problem I have, with good support that actually cares, if applicable. All of them will never misbehave, or make me think "did it work" or "how do I turn this off, it's annoying!". Usually, I don't have to learn much. _They are tools_.

Linode gets me a box with a clear, clean, full-featured control panel, good specs and network, and every year or so, I'll magically get upgraded, so that I feel I'm always getting the best for my money (even if other services are cheaper). Problem solved: "I need a Ubuntu box".

Cloudflare will cache my site -- making it faster for clients and lighter for me --, handle DNS and get me A+ TLS (and other services I don't actually use) at the turn of a button. Problem solved: "My site is slow" \+ SSL as a bonus.

Freshbooks lets me track my time, invoices and payments with 0 learning curve, I'm busy working after all. Big colored buttons will tell me what to do, and if I can't still figure it out, support will do that for me. Problem solved: "I need to send clients invoices".

DreamHost hosts _anything_ , unlimited. Power-user friendly, I never thought "I wish they allowed/supported that". For small websites, obv. Problem solved: "I need to host this sites/domains/DNS/mailboxes for my clients".

GitHub is how I'm trained to manage projects, for my private ones. PRs, Markdown, clear git views. Also, GitHub Pages is the best static hosting platform I ever used. Problem solved: "I need manage my project" \+ static hosting as a bonus.

FastMail simply handles my mail. Mail is a horrible thing to deal with on your own, but I rely on it, so I want to pay for it. I get my domain with TLS delivery, a support line with devs, and nice power-user tools. It's fast, compatible, reliable and has a nice web interface, I don't need anything else. Problem solved: "I need to receive and send mail".

Pinboard just saves my favorites, and lets me search through them when I need (full-text search). No useless social stuff on top of that. Also, it will store a copy of everything I bookmarked, so that it does not get lost. Problem solved: "I remember reading about that somewhere, let's look it up".

Amazon.it Prime is just the free shipping part, it makes shopping oh-so-much- more enjoyable. Problem solved: "I want that item".

Instapaper... well I don't actually NEED this one, but it's a nice way to read articles and they will store/index them for me once I read them (see Pinboard) and it's dirty cheap.

AWS works. I have 25.000 req/min on my Heartbleed test API? Fine, spin up that Elastic Load Balancer in front of 15 of those EC2 machines, store logs in that S3 bucket, use that DynamoDB as cache. Or, I have this blockchain to analyze, let's spin up that 3 big EC2 machines. Problem solved: "I need to scale this service".

Gandi sells me any domain for a reasonable price, without bugging me with those AwEs0m3 Features!!!1!!1 I could buy for just 9.99$. "No bullshit" indeed. (Maybe they should drop those web hosting offer emails, they are on the edge of annoying, but being plain text and one-off makes them bearable.) Problem solved: "I want that domain".

1Password stores and generates my passwords and identities safely, with a native easy-to-use interface that is not too intrusive. I used Lastpass for a while but I closed those ugly bars that screw up the page layout too many times, and they like HTML too much, the 1P native interface is much more smooth. Also, you can't trick 1Password to autocompile unless I trigger the hotkey, it feels safer. Problem solved: "These bloody password".

Sublime Text is a nice editor with a good community, and I'm a programmer, I spend most of my time inside it, possibly making money. It's a no-brainer to get the best available. Also, it's easy to use to the unexperienced, and you can get fairly productive going on. Problem solved: "I want to write code, TODAY. And be faster tomorrow."

Dash. Oh my God I <3 Dash. Can I pay it more? Double? 5 times more? Programming is looking up docs, some of us get entire vertical screens for that. Dash will get me any docs I want for any language ( _or Go package, since Beta!_ ) with a single global hotkey and blazing fast fuzzy search. Did I mention "offline"!? I would not be programming on this airplane without it and it makes me much more fast and focused (since there is a separate space for docs, I get less distracted) in what I do every day. Problem solved: "How do I use that function again?"

Tweetbot is Twitter done right: 140 characters, images. Simple gestures and good feedback; offline tweets. No fuss, just... tweets. If I have to waste time, at least let's do it efficiently!

Finally, Tarsnap. Tarsnap makes archiving (I keep there old clients' data, too) and backing up data feel as if it was local, with the peace of mind of knowing that it's being compressed, deduplicated (I don't have to figure out what synchronized or incremental means, and I get to backup stuff as often as I want, yay!), replicated on the "cloud" (on S3 I mean) and encrypted at the state of the art, by open source code. Also, key management is so clean: printable text files, tiered permissions and no account management after key generation, I love that. Btw, yes I would pay some more for it, no I like the geek-to-geek feel even if I understand the business fuss, yes I'd LOVE auto- refilling, _please_ take my money if I run low. And thanks for it!

Did I address your question or did you mean something different?

P.S. A problem I'd like to see solved by a single service (instead of HipChat+Hangout+Flowdock+IrcCloud+Skype+Viber) is "I need to chat/speak with this person (that might not use the service already) and I want indexed logs/recordings".

<comment><USER5> _Did I address your question or did you mean something different?_

What I was thinking of was a dollar value, e.g., "I spend $7/month on GitHub, but it's _worth_ $100/month to me". But this was also very informative too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a software consultant. These help me run my business: Freshbooks (invoicing - integrated with Toggl) Toggl (time tracking - integrated with Freshbooks) Dropbox (free doc management across many machines) OneDrive (free doc sharing - more business oriented than Dropbox) Evernote (free, used to be Premium, years of notes and ideas in here) OneNote (free, currently using to manage client notes) Highrise (free tier, currently using to track business prospects) Amazon Prime (fast delivery) Lastpass (password store in cloud) Any.DO (keep me organized - first sustainable todo app) Scanner Pro (iOS scanner app - so i could dump my old flatbed scanner) Google service for business email domain (I forget what they call it) WordPress.com (for my blog, paid tier to have custom domain blog.codingoutloud.com) Skype

These help me stay sharp and up-to-date: Audible (app on iOS, books on tape) Podcasts (app on iOS) Pluralsight (video training on iOS and Surface and desktop) Meetup.com (I run a user group, bostonazure.org, and attend many)

Coding: GitHub (code, mostly free, but use a few private repos at $7/m) Azure cloud (various storage, VMs, Websites, databases, ...) Sublime Text (programmer-friendly customizable editor) PyCharm (Python development environment)

Fitness: Fitbit (paid for device, app came free)

</comment><comment><USER7> Well here is the list:

        Spotify (7 eur/month)
        VPS (12.50 eur/month0
        flickr pro (40/year although I dont use it yet)
        Skype (subscription 6 eur/month, calling Greece landlines ulimited)
        Tarsnap (low amount, ~20 USD in 3-4 months.)

That's the services. Now as for software I'm using a mac and use really a large mount of payware:

        - 1Passwd (both iOs/OSX versions)
        - iCompta (I didn't like v5 that's why didn't upgrade)
        - iWork suite (both iOs/OSX)
        - Littlesnitch (monitoring outgoing connections)
        - ExtFS for OSX (paragon)
        - iStats (display usage mac stats)
        - Acorn (simple photo editor, enough for me)
        - Alfred (application launcher)
        - SpamSieve (spam filtering)

These are the ones I upgrade with each version, regularly. I had a budget about 45$/month on applications max. Now I don't spend that much anymore. As for donations, last one made for Wikipedia, very small one.. about 10 USD.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm only listing the ones which come to mind immediately. There are others (particularly apps with one-off up-front payments) which I don't use regularly and turned out not to be important to me.

One-off (paid or freemium):

      Pleco (Chinese dictionary with paid flashcard functionality)
      Groundwire (SIP client for iOS, including Push notifications)
      GoodReader (PDF reader and organizer for iOS)
      Pushover (trigger iOS push notifications from email, IFTTT etc.)
      MindNode (iOS mind-mapping)
      BubbleUPnp (Android DLNA server)
      SnappyCam Pro (iOS camera)
      Cycloramic Pro (iOS camera)

Regular payments:

      Pandora (streaming radio)
      Several different virtual servers (for web apps and VPN)
      Newsblur (RSS reader)
      DIDLogic (monthly fee to get an inbound local phone number)
      The Economist (print subscription includes online/app access)

Usage-based fees:

      Rebtel (outbound phone calls)
      DIDLogic (outbound phone calls)

</comment><comment><USER9> Evernote Premium, and that's pretty much it.

It has its flaws, but it's made a big difference as a catch-all brain bin for me.

<comment><USER10> Yes, Evernote Premium was the very first thing to come to mind.

I also use RescueTime and OmniFocus. There are plenty of paid apps on my phone / tablet / computer, but those are ones that I would struggle to replace.

The paid app I would love to get rid of: Quickbooks.

<comment><USER11> Have you found the paid experience with RescueTime to be worth it? I've been using it for free for a bit, and I feel like I get just enough data; it's hard to see what else I'd want from it.

<comment><USER10> I have alerts set up to notify me when I have goofed off too much for one day. That feature alone is worth the premium fee for RescueTime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I often revisit my recurring costs to pare the services I'm using down to the bare minimum. Here are the ones I can currently think of off the top of my head:

Hosting/Email:

      Prgmr.com ($8/mo)
      AWS (~$0.60/mo)
      Hover.com (bunch of domains, ~$120/year)
      Fastmail.fm ($80/yr for 2 family users)

Entertainment:

      Netflix ($8/mo)
      Hulu ($8/mo)
      Amazon Prime ($100/year)
      Spotify ($10/mo)

Misc Apps/Services:

      Pinboard.in (~$9 one-time payment)
      Draftin.com ($36/year)
      Backblaze ($100/year for two pcs)

Some that I have used in the past and since abandoned:

      - <USER2>
      - Amazon Cloud Player
      - Google Music All Access
      - Easynews (NNTP)
      - Ghost.org

</comment><comment><USER13> Work:

* Linode - for hosting

* Namecheap - for domains

* CrashPlan - for one layer of our backups (other layers are timemachine, dropbox, and disk imaging)

* Pinboard for links.

* Office 365 - because the £8 per month is worth it for dealing with the MS files that other people send us and expect edits on. No - OpenOffice isn't good enough at conversions.

* Google Docs - for shared editing

* Dropbox - for sharing files + another layer of backups

* ScreenHero - for screen sharing

* Slack - for chat

* Trello - for organising everything

* CloudApp - for random sharing of screenshots

* Buffer - for social account organisation (suboptimal - but best of the bunch that I've played with.)

* Until recently Adobe CS subscription, but our usage dropped so much we've swapped for Pixelmator & Sketch as an experiment...

* Sublime Text 2 - editing on desktop

* Editorial & Writeroom - writing on iPad & iPhone

* OmniGraffle - wireframing, but very rarely used now

* aText - text abbreviation expansion on OS X

* Carbon Copy Cloner - <USER3>

* Air Display - so I can use the iPad as a second screen when I'm on the road

* AntiRSI - reminds me to take screen breaks

* Skype - conference calls

* Transmit - [S]FTP client

* TunnelBear - UK/US tunneling, useful when I'm not in UK for some foolish things

Play:

* Have a subscription to the excellent PseudoPod, EscapePod & PodCastle podcasts

* SMBC comic patreon subscription

* Whatever the amazon streaming video thing is called

* Amazon Prime

* Downcast - Podcasting app for iOS / OS X.

* Steam - games (barely use)

<comment><USER14> How well has Slack been for you as opposed to Hipchat or something similar?

<comment><USER13> Fine - but, to be honest, we've been mostly co-located since we switched a week or two back from Hipchat and haven't been using it much. UI is a chunk uglier than Hipchat, integrations with stuff we use seem fine, but we've not really been using it in anger yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> irccloud.com - For running a few open source projects, I find an always-on connection and getting instant mobile notifications to be totally worth the $5/month.

Otherwise, for fun non-worky-type stuff: Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime are the most prominent ones coming to mind.

</comment><comment><USER16> Off the top of my head--

Services:

Fastmail.fm (for personal email), Office365 (for more legitimate email), Evernote (had a paid account for a few years, although I never use it), 500px (for non-professional photos), DigitalOcean for VPS, Netflix (not sure if you mean consumer services), Amazon Prime (I only use it for the shipping), Hulu+

Apps (a subsection at least):

Mathematica (I'm happy to pay for the Home version), 1Password (although I've stopped using it since iCloud Keychain Sync), Pixelmator, Capture One, NI Maschine, NI Tracktor, Pretty much every audio app for iOS (iMaschine, Figure, iKaossilator, iMS-20, SampleWiz, Lemur, Vogel CMI Pro, Animoog, Scape)

<comment><USER17> You actually use iCloud Keychain? It's great for syncing Wi-Fi networks but it seems kind of clunky for anything else

<comment><USER18> I do and I've found it to work fine.

It can autofill credit card numbers and passwords on my iPhone/iPad.

<comment><USER19> If I remember correctly even Steve Gibson, who sang praises of the Apple security apparatus saw the iCloud as a weak link in iOS security in his three part series (sn 446 through 448) on TWiT.

Thoughts?

[https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0446/sn0446_h264m_1280x...](https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0446/sn0446_h264m_1280x720_1872.mp4)

[https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0447/sn0447_h264m_1280x...](https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0447/sn0447_h264m_1280x720_1872.mp4)

[https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0448/sn0448_h264m_1280x...](https://twit.cachefly.net/video/sn/sn0448/sn0448_h264m_1280x720_1872.mp4)

<comment><USER16> I think products like 1Password, Keypass, Lastpass, etc. are a good idea, in that they're making it much easier to encourage a culture of strong, unique passwords for every application and website. Of those, I favor 1Password, because the people making it have a good track record of making generally good security implementations, and being receptive of feedback when issues are discovered. They've been good about updating the apps when an issue is discovered, and haven't made it a super regular occurrence.

They also allow flexibility of storing the password database, which I prefer over the services that store your passwords with them, as you are now reliant on their own security implementations. If you want to, you can store it in dropbox, so that you can access the web-based version anywhere you can log into the Dropbox website. You're now putting an awful lot of faith in the security of Dropbox, but it's an option at least.

But fundamentally, this is a problem which should be solved by the ecosystem providers. Windows, Mac OS X, Firefox syncing, Chrome (I assume Chrome has a way to sync passwords to wherever you're logged into, I don't use Chrome).

I'm comfortable enough trusting Apple to secure all my login credentials that I'm willing to use the built-in functionality. Much like how I use "Reading List" instead of any of the "article saver applications". It works fairly well, I don't have to mess with it, I don't have to give my data to some other company, it just shows up in all my browsers on all of my devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> DigitalOcean (still on the trial but I'll be paying when it's up)

Netflix

Spotify

AWS (at work)

LastPass (at work)

Alfred 2

Namecheap

Dash

Trello

Destroy All Software (not an "app", but a fantastic purchase)

\---

The most valuable (in order) have been:

Alfred 2 (easily worth 10x the price)

Dash (would have paid double)

DigitalOcean (simplest VPS I've ever worked with)

DAS (still getting value out of this but loving it so far)

Namecheap (great domain service, been with them for years and had 0 problems)

I would cut Spotify but I have a visceral negative reaction to commercials. Can't stand em. I'd cut Netflix, but it's faster than torrenting and the time it saves me is worth it.

This has been a really interesting thought exercise, thanks for posting this!

</comment><comment><USER20> Tuffmail (has been rock solid IMAP hosting provider for my personal email for over 7 years) | Sanebox (helps keep my email inbox under control) | Sugarsync (solid and reliable file sharing and backup. More flexible than Dropbox - can't understand why more people don't use it) |Mynetfone (good, reliable Australian VOIP provider) | Wordpress.com Namecheap | Netflix | Getflix | Spotify

</comment><comment><USER21> Basecamp (2 accounts, soon to be 3), Base CRM, Google Apps, Lastpass, Instapaper, Google Apps (multiple), Quickbooks Online (multiple), an entirely disposable time billing program that plugs into Quickbooks that I won't name because I don't want to be sued for libel, Evernote, Crashplan. Edit: Feedly.

Some of these will not survive the earthquake.

</comment><comment><USER22> Recurring payments: Amazon Prime, Spotify, NearlyFreeSpeech and A Small Orange for hosting, planning to cancel Audible and Wolfram-Alpha because I never use them

Paid for once: Threes, Clear, Convert (for all of my unit conversion needs)

I use but don't pay for: Dropbox, IntellijIDEA, Sublime Text 2

I've also spent a shameful amount of money on Candy Crush...

</comment><comment><USER23> Cross-platform: Dropbox, Sublime Text, Toodledo, Balsamiq Mockups, Pinboard, Newsblur OSX: Alfred 2, Dash, Pixelmator, Clearview Win: ExpanDrive Other: Linode, Dreamhost (legacy)

Funny enough, my home machine is Windows and I spend far more money on productivity tools for my work (OSX) machine. I'm not counting Steam.

</comment><comment><USER24>
      DigitalOcean ($5/mo)
      Gandi.net ($200/yr)
      Tarsnap ($3/mo)
      CrashPlan ($6/mo)

</comment><comment><USER25>
      Services
      </comment><comment>--
      Spotify
      DigitalOcean
      AWS Glacier
      Dropbox
      Evernote
      Mykolab.com

      Apps
      ----
      1Password
      aText
      Airmail
      Alfred
      Bartender (awesome!)
      Boxcryptor classic
      Boom
      Fantastical
      ForkLift
      OmniFocus 2
      Parallels
      Sublime Text

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a Ramnode VPS. Also xbox live, I didn't think about that until someone mentioned it here. I share a netflix account with my roommate. I buy books from amazon and google for my android tablet. I don't own a smartphone, the plans are too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER27> These are all gifts from friends and family, so I don't pay myself. They are all paid monthly though:

Netflix

Spotify Premium (Thanks mom!)

Sirius XM (Thanks dad!)

The only service I pay for personally is Amazon Prime.

I have not bought any iOS Apps (ever).

I have not bought any Mac Apps recently (this year).

The occasional Blu-ray and Nintendo game.

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's an estimate:

        Spotify
        Amazon Prime
        Netflix
        Lastpass
        Wolfram Alpha
        DigitalOcean
        Amazon EC2
        OVH (Dedicated server)
        Sublime Text (not really an app, but I still count it)

</comment><comment><USER29> Cerberus [1] is a must have to keep phones safe.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.ce...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lsdroid.cerberus)

</comment><comment><USER30> At home I've only bought apps for my Android: Remember the Milk (old school, but it's still alive), Sleep as Android, Digital Ocean, Lux Dash.

At work: HipChat, Propane (client for Campfire), Sublime Text, Github.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like a great way to remember what I'm paying for and If I'm getting any value out of it. here's my list:

* Transmit (FTP/S3)

* Sublime Text 3

* HipChat (Team Communication/notifications)

* Dreamhost (hosting)

* Cloudfrount (caching)

* Amazon AWS/S3

* Heroku

* Codeship (CI)

* Honeybadger (error monitoring)

* MS Office for Mac

* Crashplan (backup)

* Steam (games)

* Dropbox (pro for business)

* Asana (project management)

* Sprint.ly (project management)

* Netflix

* Amazon Prime

</comment><comment><USER32> For work: Office365, Adobe Suite, GitHub, Deploy, Digital Ocean VPS, Treehouse, Evernote, Nozbe, Basecamp, Team Gantt, Skype, WP Engine, Dropbox Business

Non-work: Rdio, Amazon Prime, Dropbox Personal, Lastpass

</comment><comment><USER33> Freshbooks, Github, PhpStorm, Sublime Text (for those quick python/node js applications), AWS

Thinking if I should probably get Intellij since I've been doing a lot of Java these past few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER34> Photoshop, Amazon Prime, Pixiv, Eijiro (an online Japanese dictionary), GitHub, Feedly, Blender Cloud (more of donation than service...) Google Music All-Access, Crunchyroll

</comment><comment><USER35> GitHub. I think I pay them the princely sum of $7/month for a few private repositories.

And somehow I forgot Netflix, Xbox music and Xbox Live. Guess they just fade into the background.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried giving Bitbucket a try? They provide unlimited private repositories for free. Its not as easy to use as GitHub but it does the job.

<comment><USER35> Bitbucket is still around?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The ones I actually use are AppCode, IntelliJ, Textastic, Medialoot, Creative Market, Sketch 2, Sketch 3.

I'm still evaluating crash reporting/analytics services for iOS apps.

</comment><comment><USER37> That I can remember:

Netflix

Spotify, used to pay for it before they brought mobile to the free tier

Xbox Live

115GB Google Drive and ~52GB Dropbox that I haven't started paying for yet

Github student account that will expire next summer

BiteSMS

Probably more apps on iPad/iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER38> Instapaper and Amazon Prime are primarily what comes to mind; though also will end up paying for Dropbox soon. Personally, Spotify, as well as Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER39> Off the top of my head... AWS, Linode, Rackspace, Spotify, 1Password, Sublime, Panic Transmit, Dropbox, DNSimple, Github, Harvest, Xero, Google Apps..

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not always intimately familiar with every app - so if you can include a brief description of what the app does - it'd be super helpful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Hosting UpCloud probably DO or OVH later Domains NameCheap All software and services I'm using on mobile or on computer is free or self hosted.

</comment><comment><USER42> I use Sublime Text (and occasionally TextMate). It saves me time so I'm sure it's payed for itself already.

I also use AWS for some personal hosting.

</comment><comment><USER43> Sketch, Ableton Live, NI Komplete, Digital Ocean, Fastmail, Google Play Music All Access, JetBrains AppCode, Adobe CC (not for much longer)

<comment><USER44> Why are you cancelling CC?

<comment><USER43> Sketch is good enough for my purposes and actually much better overall for my main use case which is producing bitmap images for mobile apps and web pages. Exporting assets out of CC, particularly at multiple resolutions, is a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> * MaskMe - $5 (recurring) * RailsCasts - $9 (recurring) * IntellijIdea - $200 * VPS service - $20 (recurring)

That's why I pay for personal use.

</comment><comment><USER46> Anyone know a really easy way to get a list of all apps that I've purchased on both App store and Google play (and how much)?

<comment><USER47> [https://play.google.com/store/account](https://play.google.com/store/account) should give you your purchase history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Adobe Creative Suite, OmniGraffle, PaintCode, Sublime Text, Airfoil, Transmit, OfficeTime, GitHub, Rdio, Basecamp, Skype.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can anyone write code to feed on this post and spill out stats (count) of each service/app? Thanks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This spreadsheet has data from all the current comments as of this moment.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z1mljWkxjTCoj5BfqW40...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z1mljWkxjTCoj5BfqW40VG4DOkBW3xMFmmEK5TQxqAE/edit?usp=sharing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> [http://www.clouddomain.co](http://www.clouddomain.co) for webhosting

</comment><comment><USER51> DigitalOcean

Wolfram Alpha

You can't imagine how much value this services provide for me, they are worth every cent.

</comment><comment><USER52> Top of my list: Linode, Digital Ocean, Sucuri, CloudProxy, Balsamiq and Amazon Ec2.

</comment><comment><USER53> sync.club [1], Gmail, Gdocs, Google Calendar, Gliffy, Videostream, Github, Dropbox, Amazon EC2, Photoshop, Skype

[1] - [http://sync.club/#electronicmusic](http://sync.club/#electronicmusic)

</comment><comment><USER54> Netflix, GitHub, Sublime Text, Amazon Prime + Music cloud, and Adobe Photoshop

</comment><comment><USER55> Linode, Rackspace, Namecheap, plus some legacy Dreamhost and Bluehost stuff.

</comment><comment><USER56> Arq + Glacier, Parallels, 1Password, Ancestry + FTM, 23andme, FTDNA

<comment><USER57> Really, you enjoy paying for Parallels (over and over again)?

That's one product i'm absolutely looking to get rid of - problem is lack of _suitable_ alternatives (i.e. comparable performance in 3D apps)...

<comment><USER56> I don't mind paying a reasonable price for something that works very well and that I use every day. I used to use VirtualBox and after switching it is night-and-day difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Spotify, TimeDoctor, Google Ads, Reddit Ads, AWS, Guitar Tuner App

</comment><comment> dav- LastPass, Spotify, DigitalOcean, GitHub, Netflix, Amazon Prime

</comment><comment><USER59> off the top of my head: backblaze, rackspace email, ynab, mailmate, linode, todoist, divvy, jazzradio.com, amazon s3, 1password, alfred, newsblur, instapaper

</comment><comment><USER60> note taking in the browser: evernote

chat with phone notifications: irccloud.com

hosting personal projects / testing things: digitalocean

music: spotify (seriously, how I lived before spotify is a mystery)

</comment><comment><USER61> Digital Ocean SiteApps Cloud at cost proxy4.us Appengine

</comment><comment><USER62> Cinch, 1Password, Rdio, AWS, Hipchat, Zendesk

</comment><comment><USER63> Github,Posthaven,Pinboard,Flickr and Dropbox

</comment><comment><USER64> FastMail, NewsBlur and Amazon Prime video.

</comment><comment><USER65> Pinboard; bookmark management with archival

Newsblur; RSS feed reader

Spotify

</comment><comment><USER66> Feral Hosting (seedbox) and Amazon Prime.

</comment><comment><USER67> Heroku Basecamp Ghost Github Skype

</comment><comment><USER68> Google AppEngine, Amazon EC2

</comment><comment><USER69> aws pipedrive activecampaign uservoice teamgum

</comment><comment><USER70> In no special order:

Evernote

FeedsAPI.ORG Professional

Yesware.com Team

DreamHost

</comment><comment><USER71> Flattr

</comment><comment><USER72> Deezer, Silvrback, Highrise (keeps me organized), Evernote, and several others I can't recall at the moment.

If I was to pick a favorite, it'd be Deezer. I derive so much use and enjoyment from it. Huge value.

<comment><USER73> What do you think makes Deezer better than other services like Spotify and Pandora?

<comment><USER72> I can't use Spotify or Pandora because I'm in Canada.</comment></comment></comment>


Digital EU chief Goettinger pokes fun at Chinese, gay marriage and ex-chancellor - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/28/eu-chief-pokes-fun-chinese-gay-marriage <comment><AUTHOR> Here is the recording of his speech with CC: [http://youtu.be/RsgbBYrGgSo](http://youtu.be/RsgbBYrGgSo)</comment>