Show HN: A microservice that makes adding authentication to your app easy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hypebeast/micro-auth <comment><USER2> Never, ever use access tokens as proof of identity the way you are doing it. It makes you vulnerable to token substitution attacks. OAuth2 is not an authentication protocol.

[https://oauth.net/articles/authentication/](https://oauth.net/articles/authentication/)

DO NOT USE THIS in its current state. Stop upvoting this.

<comment><USER3> So how would this apply to using a JWT as a bearer token?

<comment><USER4> JWT is designed for authentication, it's what OpenID connect is based on (in conjunction with OAuth 2.0).

<comment><USER2> No. A JSON Web Token defines a compact and self-contained way for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I applaud the goal of simplifying authentication by wrapping with an easy-to- use service. But it's important to keep in mind that authentication is a subtle process, and a critical security component of many applications!

It's essential to follow best practices, and for developers to understand enough of the interaction to be confident in an implementation.

A few points to look out for after scanning the source for the project:

* if your goal is authentication (helping a user sign in to an app using an external identity) you should be sure to use an OpenID Connect flow (requesting a scope like "openid"), and be sure to convey the id_token back to the app so its signature can be verified.

* you should be sure to create a non-guessable "state" parameter when generating an OAuth authorization request, and to verify this parameter upon completion of the OAuth core flow.

* your design needs to prevent a session fixation attack where a malicious user injects her own token into the callback url (tricking a user into signing into an app using the attacker's account, and potentially submitting data that the attacker can then access the)

* it's best to avoid inserting an access token into a url (where it becomes part of a user's history, gets cached by proxies, etc) -- the OAuth code flow you're using avoids this, but then you turn around and inject the token into your own redirect

</comment><comment><USER6> "It's build with Nginx/OpenResty, Lapis and Docker. This enables the service to be very performant and requires only minimal system resources."

So does this mean I need to have Docker and all of the other things mentioned to use this?

Suggestion: Don't couple your product with dev-ops stuff. Try to keep things separate :)

<comment><USER7> Re: all the other things mentioned — I presume the point of Docker in that list is that the system-software packages mentioned are _inside_ the shipped Docker image. It's an "appliance."

"Ships as a Docker image" might, for a lot of projects, just be a roundabout version of "it's a .zip file; unpack it into /opt"—but I think it's justified if your project is essentially a bunch of distro packages with a layer of policy-glue making them interoperate in a special way. Like OpenStack DevStack, or a NAS server appliance, or an "all-in-one" [L]AMP stack.

<comment><USER6> Fair enough. However, my opinion of this matter still stands. I think something like a library or even an executable/process should try to decouple itself from deployment process; and should be designed as such. Its very opinionated - I must admit - but it tends to take away a lot of friction from adopting. Also, usually, when we add things like Docker to the mix, it is quiet unclear if the said microservice can function without Docker (perhaps it's using something X specific and cannot work without it); if it can, lets mention it otherwise even if it is something I want, I won't spend the time to test it myself (yeah I am very a very picky lad I know but I bet this is something a lot of people do)

<comment><USER8> What are you talking about. Docker is a tool that _positively_ contributes to the deployment experience and _reduces_ friction in adoption. It is one of the tools that directly contributed to the adoption of microservices because it makes dealing with a large number of services (500+) sane and possible.

You should learn more about docker and dev-ops, because with microservices the focus is increasingly towards having developers support their services end-to- end, which means the devs are responsible for deploying/supporting the services they wrote in production.

<comment><USER9> >Docker is a tool that positively contributes to the deployment experience and reduces friction in adoption.

Well its one more things to install for starters. Do I need a specific version of docker to run with this? To me it's just an extra layer of complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nicely done! If you don't mind, I added it to my awesome-resty list ([https://github.com/bungle/awesome-resty](https://github.com/bungle/awesome- resty)).

<comment><USER11> Please see the comment about how insecure this is[1] and do NOT add it to your list.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682682)

<comment><USER10> I added a remark there. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also oauth2_proxy from bitly: [https://github.com/bitly/oauth2_proxy](https://github.com/bitly/oauth2_proxy)

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, personally I prefer using something like [https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk](https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk) which basically API Gateway, and in addition to auth (not only oAuth), also adds stuff like policies across multiple API's and rate-limiting and quotas.

</comment><comment><USER14> OpenID Connect is already almost trivially easy to implement with broad library support.

</comment><comment> duncan-donuts Check out [https://github.com/portier](https://github.com/portier)</comment>


Show HN: An open source music player in the cloud based on Backbone and Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://rdubigny.github.io/cozy-music/

<comment><USER2> Love the idea of keeping the data at home, but 'in the cloud' at the same time. I hope to soon start a project of doing something similar for photo/video management.

A few recommendations for you that I also plan on for myself:

1\. Keep the backend 'database' as simple (and portable) as possible. Files and folders is ideal, with metadata stored in the files (in this case probably as ID3,etc tags)

2\. Have a simple API to the data so 'rich clients' could be developed that are capable of caching limited sets of data for offline usage.

3\. Make the HTML interface somewhat skinnable so people with conflicting tastes to you don't get turned off just because of the style.

4\. Focus on a great _personal_ experience before adding lots of sharing features.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Thank you for cheerful feedback!

The app is developped for Cozycloud which is a personal platform as a service (= the app is independent from the platform). It has been written with an ODM (JugglingDB) so you can switch the data layer at your will. Also, this is a single page app meaning the server is only a REST API Backbone (and everything allowed to) can access.

For the "skinnable" part, we didn't have time to bring those features but it is something I would love to see!

On a side note, we, at Cozy, have developed a photo management app ([https://github.com/mycozycloud/cozy- photos/](https://github.com/mycozycloud/cozy-photos/), demo: [https://demo.cozycloud.cc/#apps/photos/](https://demo.cozycloud.cc/#apps/photos/)) if it can help you in any way! Or maybe you'll like it and contribute to it ;)

<comment><USER4> I just want to stop by and say I have looked at CozyCloud before, a few times, really appreciating something like OwnCloud with a code base in something other than PHP.

My only disappointment was, a full CozyCloud stack VPS, when I emailed one of you guys, required a significant amount of memory (maybe minimum 1024MB, perhaps IIRC 2048MB?) is expensive for VPS, so I am not sure I want to invest in it.

That being said, CC is very cool and I think the future of nerds running their own clouds, and with a hipster environment like Node.js to boot! :-) The CozyCloud guys do solid work, and I want to compliment you for a job well done so far.

<comment><USER5> Thank you 616c for your message! About the minimum hardware required, Cozy made some progress on the memory footprint (lighter framework and usage of javascript runtime instead of coffescript one). Now you can use it with only 512MB of RAM instead of 1024MB. You can make it run on a RaspberryPi (B model) too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would suggest adding a

transition: 0; (plus all prefixes of course)

on

#content #tracks-display table tbody tr.track:hover

At the moment the transition into the hover is making it feel laggy.

I'd also reduce the transition time to something like 0.1seconds, or preferably drop it entirely. It's distracting and fussy.

Apart from that, good job! Everything seems to work well on latest Chrome.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedbacks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I take note.

rdubigny

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A similar concept: [http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp](http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp)

<comment><USER9> Agree, this seems like a prototype of Subsonic. Note that I am not knocking this project. It is a great first effort and seems to fit in fit in with the rest of Cozy very well. Speaking of, Cozy looks very nice, and I will explore it later!

Speaking about Subsonic, it has its warts, even the much better Madsonic fork. However, there is no denying it's featureset, which includes

      * Album art support
      * Fast search
      * Video support, although this isn't great...
      * Podcast support
      * Jukebox mode to play through the server's speakers
      * mobile app with real-time transcoding for mobile networks.

Subsonic is the reason I still listen to my collection at all, since I largely listen in my car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> App seems promissing. Will try it later. The illustration IMHO is both unnecessary and cheap looking (clipart style).

<comment><USER7> ok for the illustration. I take note of your feedback. Thanks!

rdubigny

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank your rdubigny for this awesome application for Cozy. Only the external contributions like yours can unleash the full potential of the platform.

<comment><USER7> Haha! You're welcome. Working alongside your guys is a real pleasure! Keep it up, Web 3.0 is coming!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool project! But could you swap the icon for queuing to a play one and the playlist icon with the queuing icon?

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you like it! I opened a github issue to solve this ([https://github.com/rdubigny/cozy- music/issues/9](https://github.com/rdubigny/cozy-music/issues/9))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did you consider using the doctape api for hosting and converting the audio files in the background? ;-)

<comment><USER3> Hi,

Since the app can be self-hosted the whole point is to do it directly in the application itself (and keeping your data at home ;)). I don't know doctape but if the "media conversion" works well it could be a good addition though! Thanks for pointing this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The project is also based on CoffeeScript. Wish it was JS instead :|

<comment><USER14> Probably heard it all before but spend about 10 minutes on [http://coffeescript.org](http://coffeescript.org), read up on it, and you'll have it down.</comment></comment>


Hacker News London meetup was excellent - <AUTHOR> http://alanhollis.com/hacker-news-london-was-excellent/

<comment><USER2> Yes, it was cool. When it goes up on Vimeo I highly recommend that people listen not to my talk, but to Linda Sandvik's heartfelt and inspirational talk called "Getting Better". Amongst many things she's behind Code Club: <http://codeclub.org.uk>

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to previous talks on Vimeo? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> <http://vimeo.com/hnlondon>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I'd like to thank Dimitiri Grabov, and Steve Buckley for organizing Hacker News London_

Dmitri deserves 99% of the gratitude. I only play a very small part at the moment!

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been to two of these already and they're absolutely fantastic. 500 people regularly show up and it usually fills up pretty quickly. Thanks to Dimitri and Steve for continuing to put this on. Also, a big thanks to the sponsors who provide beer and pizza!

P.S. - I've thought about asking to give a talk about start-ups in the enterprise since I'm probably one of the few here that works in that industry. I'm in the process of finishing up a long blog post on the topic. As it's something most people don't necessarily talk about here on HN, I thought I'd gauge some interest first.

<comment><USER7> You might be interested in <http://www.meetup.com/unsexystartups/> which focuses on B2B and enterprise startups.

<comment><USER6> Nice, I'll check it out! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for the write-up. The next event will be on 22nd Nov, join the meetup group <http://www.meetup.com/hnlondon/> to be notified when registrations open. We also post the videos of the talks online at <http://vimeo.com/hnlondon> . Last night's videos should be up some time next week.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've studied last year in London and attended nearly every Hacker News Meetup there. It is a very nice cross-section of the tech scene and can purely recommend these meetups!

</comment><comment><USER10> Apart from the woman briefly getting trapped in the toilets, everything went swimmingly.

</comment><comment><USER11> We try to attend as often as we can, it's a seriously great event and our thanks goes out to the organisers!

I did my first public talk there (we're Scirra). Although I found it quite frightening (the last time I spoke to more than a few people at once was back at school!) it was very rewarding and everyone was very supportive.

If you get a chance to attend/speak, definitely head on down! If you take away the free beer and pizza, I'd still go - it's that good!

</comment><comment><USER12> Damn, foldable.me (mentioned in the OP) is absolutely brilliant. Such a simple concept but executed perfectly, and so much value created from almost nothing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh the Oxford comma, how I have missed thee. On the other hand, gret post and interesting to see such a quality turnaround.

</comment><comment><USER14> So it's more like a sit-down to listen other people talk or is there still a place for meeting others in the crowd?

<comment><USER15> It depends, I usually listen to a couple of talks and go outside to chat to some people. There's also half an hour at the start to just talk to people and eat pizza.

I went to the pub after and it turns into a slightly more one-on-one setting as only 30 people or so will go. I've been going for a year and a bit and it's definitely worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there somewhere where I could find a list of HNMeetups? I've always wanted to attend something like this.

</comment><comment><USER17> "...having a disastrous experience at PHP London"

Oh, do tell

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a complete failure on my part, I had/have an inability to talk/approach groups of people and ended up sitting on my own guzzling cans of sprite before making a hasty and rather embarrassingly early exist.

<comment><USER18> I have a rather crippling social anxiety, which is usually circumvented by doing a short of vodka just before getting into such situations..</comment></comment></comment>


Optimizing Java: JVM Application Performance - <AUTHOR> https://itbook.store/books/9781492025795 <comment><USER2> Every submit for this site is just a daily ad for Amazon affiliate linked books (tag=itbook.store-20).

There is no "store". Even the descriptions are ripped from the Amazon pages.</comment>


Research engine providing deep crowdsourced information on any topic - <AUTHOR> http://encyk.com <comment><USER2> I like this.

One question though: the "difference" tab on Encyk.com says _Researching topics on Wikipedia gives only a summary of the topic rather than in-depth varied research._

I don't understand why it says that. Wikipedia articles can be quite detailed and lengthy and include references to sources. Encyk.com is neat, but I don't understand how the underlying goal or mission of Encyk.com differs from that of Wikipedia.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, it's not like wikipedia as their articles are detailed sure but this is more like a range of articles on each topic like pdfs, videos, web articles, images etc. Maybe I should reword that to make it clearer. Also the site was empty when you visited, you can see the activity tab some topics have started getting user contributions now. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Warning: Debian stable kernel upgrade breaks most ARM SBC - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=922478 <comment><USER2> Oops: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=922478#72](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=922478#72)

The problem patch is in [http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/linux/linux_4.9.144...](http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/linux/linux_4.9.144-3.debian.tar.xz) (I think)

"Commit 901e325f772f "ARM: bugs: add support for per-processor bug checking" added a new member to struct processor. This structure is always instantiated in built-in code and the new member is only used in built-in code. Therefore we can safely add the new member at the end instead.

Move it to the end and hide it from genksyms. Also hide it when building modules, to make sure they really don't use it."

</comment><comment><USER3> This should be made "sticky", if there was this feature @HN. Strange that ci.debian.net didn't catch this.

<comment><USER4> What % of HN users use an ARM SBC with Debian?

<comment><USER5> We do at [https://fosdem.org](https://fosdem.org) on our custom made video gear. That's 56 boxes in a crucial spot in our operation. We went out of our way to make sure we had plain vanilla mainline Debian stable packaged linux running on the Allwinner A20 based boards that power them, instead of some binary arm kernel with all kinds of issues.

<comment><USER6> OffTopic: At FOSDEM, I was quite curious about those media boxes. Is there any docs to read about them?

<comment><USER5> Here's some info at least:

* a rough diagram: [https://github.com/FOSDEM/video/tree/master/hardware](https://github.com/FOSDEM/video/tree/master/hardware)

* the software running on them: [https://github.com/FOSDEM/infrastructure/tree/master/ansible...](https://github.com/FOSDEM/infrastructure/tree/master/ansible/playbooks/roles/video-box)

Your message also served as a reminder that I should really publish the laser cut box cutting and assembly info. I'll get to that eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> love this note on it: "Sure, maybe. I've suggested kernelci as a useful thing to help here, but we really need to be testing kernels complete with all the Debian patches to..."

so does that mean they test the kernel but not their own patches to it? seems silly :D

</comment><comment><USER8> then it's not a debian stable kernel now is it</comment>


Is there a 10x gap between best and average programmers? - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/180512-is-there-a-10x-gap-between-best-and-average-programmers-and-how-did-it-get-there/fulltext

<comment><USER2> The article talks about differences between "best" and "average" programmers, but none of the papers cited support this. They say _there are 10x productivity differences among programmers._ That's best vs worst, not best vs average. Quoting Spolsky's linked article: _The fastest students were finishing three or four times faster than the average students and as much as ten times faster than the slowest students._

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't met a 10X programmer, so maybe I am one? Seriously, though, I will say there is easily a 3X differences in productivity of teams that are well managed verses teams that are poorly managed. I don't have controlled data to prove it- tickets and lines of code aren't good measures, but the latter one shows more than 3x difference.</comment>


Using machine learning to predict basketball scores - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigopt.com/post/136340340198/sigopt-for-ml-using-model-tuning-to-beat-vegas <comment><USER2> The well known bettors will place bets knowing others will emulate it, moving the odds in favor of their real bet they have yet to place. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the big Vegas books are in on it since they make their money long term on vig, and don't have to worry about short term losses (thus enjoying any increase in bets those schemes generate).

There is an older 60 minutes episode on Billy Walters that is a good watch for anyone interested in people trying to beat sports books.

<comment><USER3> Vegas always gets their cut as you point out. You need to reliably win 52.5% of the time to beat the bet $110 to win $100 edge.

In general, betting schemes tend to stop working in the long term, but can have large gains in the short term [1]. We created this example to encourage people to think about model tuning in the applications where they are domain experts and how it could benefit them (and hopefully the world in return).

[1]: [http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fantasy-sports-wizards- winning...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-fantasy-sports-wizards-winning- formula-wsj-money-june-2014-1401893587)

<comment><USER4> Kind of sort of. The way the Vegas books are made are to make consistent profit while mitigating as much risk as possible. Which means, although not quite like the zero-sum markets which exist in securities, you still have to have more or less need the scales to weigh out.

What you can capitalize on is human emotional -- i.e. the Dallas Cowboys are notorious for being bet heavily in favor of, even if statistically they're not going to win because of sentiment or what-not. Let's say statistically they're underdogs by 10.5 pts. Let's not talk about covering the spread or parlays or anything complicated - just pretend the market is limited to solely 'bet to win'. If it were the Bengals as the underdog at the same 10.5 against the Raiders (just teams where the fan base doesn't skew the book), you might see -170 to win 100 , and conversely if the Raiders win, it might be bet +140 to win 100. (I haven't bet on sports in years, so I'm not sure how the actual numerics work out). Either way, as underdogs, since so many people will be betting on the Cowboys even though they're predicted to lose by greater than 10.5, the line will only be at -120 due to the volume of bets being taken. Vegas has to move the line accordingly to adjust for the contingency that the Cowboys actually _do_ win, paying out 170 on those upsets could bankrupt them.

Being successful at fantasy sports is probably a lot easier than being successful at trading crude oil, because John and his buddies will all throw down 40 bucks each for the Cowboys to win even though the odds are heavily skewed against them. And unlike in Vegas, you can consistently be profitable and not get black-listed. (Counting cards should be legal if you are not colluding with anyone, but I digress).

Interestingly enough, 'betting schemes' might not work for the average player, but there's a reason why the same 10 players make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker. In fact that's how those daily betting fantasy poker gaming sites are in business. It doesn't violate the unlawful gaming act because games like poker[1] and fantasy football clearly have consistent winners and losers, even though those attributes often can't be quantified via any sort of metric, it's enough for judges to rule that certain forms of gambling are games of skill.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2012/08/22/159833145/judge-rules-poker- is...](http://www.npr.org/2012/08/22/159833145/judge-rules-poker-is-a-game-of- skill-not-luck) I've seen the same ruling at the highest circuit of tons of states, and I'm guessing it must be federally recognized as the fantasy daily line-up games are making literally billions off it now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Post author and co-founder of SigOpt (YC W15) here. Thanks for all the great questions and comments, I'll be around all day answering questions. Feel free to ask anything about the post or what we do at SigOpt (or how).

All of the code can be found here: [https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt- examples](https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt-examples)

More about how SigOpt works here: [https://sigopt.com/research](https://sigopt.com/research)

Other discussions here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/3yy0vp/usi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/3yy0vp/using_model_tuning_to_beat_vegas/)

and here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819170)

</comment><comment><USER5> Vegas odds aren't even the most accurate odds to beat. I.e you can already beat Vegas odds by looking at odds pinnacle, 5 dimes, bet 188 and consider them the true odds. It's called arbitrage betting. If you have a model that can truly beat the market, then it is the players I mentioned that you want to beat.

<comment><USER6> Arbitrage betting is utilizing differences in money line payoffs to place two or more bets that cannot lose regardless of the result of the sporting event. These opportunities do exist, however sports books absolutely hate it and some of the offshore ones will either ban you from playing or in some cases simply refuse to pay off your bet.

<comment><USER5> You can do it with single bets to. If the following: bookie X offers you odds x, bookie Y offers you odds y, x > y, you are sure bookie Y is a better punter than bookie X ,then betting on odds x is a free bet which will generate profit in the long run.

<comment><USER4> In college I did extensive research on this amongst Bodog, 5dimes, and another third party vendor considered 'reliable'. I'd scrape sites hourly because lines move like any market will, and I did this for all 17 weeks. I don't think there was one instance where there was an arbitrage opportunity (my algorithm would go 4 game-pairs deep, so it wasn't an exhaustive analysis but rigorous enough). Even if theres large disparity between bookies, the fact that the industry accepts -115/100 as fair would require a _huge_ mispricing by a bookie for you to arbitrage successfully.

<comment><USER5> I'd wager it is harder for sports such as baseball and hockey. But opportunities does happen, at least in football. But ime they are ephemeral so you have to be very quick to catch them. Updating once per hour isn't nearly fast enough. For example if news get out that a player is injured and will miss a game, then the odds will shift but some bookies will be slower to react than others. That can give you a window to arbitrage for 20 minutes or so. You can do it a few times, then the bookies ban you and void all your bets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Baseball feels like a next step up. About 2,400 games a year. More games, data points.. more everything

<comment><USER8> More very old, very dangerous sharks swimming in the same pool. Betting to win long term is not something most people are mathematically or emotionally equipped to do and a toy demonstration showing a handful of results means very little.

<comment><USER3> Great points. This was just a cool demonstration of the underlying technology hoping to inspire people to use it on their models in domains other than prop betting. Potentially it could help those sharks already swimming in these pools, but our goal is to help every expert in every field make better models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not clear from the article what the input data is. I had a look in the repo, it wasn't clear from that either. Is it the normal fare you'd expect?

I've heard of prop betting firms using stuff like "distance travelled by the away team" and other logical things like that.

<comment><USER3> We give a high level overview in footnote #4 of the post, but more detail can be found in the code [1]. We tried to pick a relatively small set of features (and kept those picks constant) in order to isolate the model tuning gains from pure feature selection. You can fork the code and try any other interesting features you think would make it better (there is a ton of data we didn't have the chance to look at).

[1]: [https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt- examples/blob/master/sigopt...](https://github.com/sigopt/sigopt- examples/blob/master/sigopt-beats-vegas/predictor/features.py)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this, but is anyone else a bit put off by someone appending PhD in their name _on a blog post?_

I'm not salty or anything, and it wouldn't have influenced me into reading the article or not. It just puts a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is a TED-talk on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ko_cWSHBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ko_cWSHBU) (The Math Behind Basketball's Wildest Moves)

</comment><comment><USER12> If you can reliably beat Vegas, why not put real money into it and make lots of money?

<comment><USER13> They say it would be illegal and unethical for them: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/3yy0vp/usi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/3yy0vp/using_model_tuning_to_beat_vegas/cyhuxi3)

<comment><USER3> We're also really passionate about building optimization platforms vs betting schemes. We believe in the long term we can have a better positive impact on the world by helping every expert cut the trial and error out of their workflow (like the time consuming and expensive step of parameter tuning machine learning models).</comment></comment></comment>


Could Twitter be "MySpaced"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2011/04/16/could-twitter-get-myspaced/ Could Twitter be supplanted by something new and different? It would be a huge challenge but it's possible. <comment><USER3> It took me 4 years to realize the benefits of twitter beyond self absorbed social micro blogging. Its a real communication platform which allows you to interact with people around the world. For example the first thing that brought me to twitter was real time updates on a ruby conference. Where else was I going to get that? I can get information before its been posted as news. The great thing about it is respected figures in almost all communities are participating. In a few words they can let us in on what they are working on or take the time to answer questions. If you have a problem you can throw it out there on some hashtag and hope one in a million will respond and usually they will. Its completely changed communication and I cant see it dying.

However I believe the micro blogging platform should be treated like email. An open messaging system that can be adopted by anyone and defines an underlying protocol so that we can send messages between all micro blogging sites. I have a gmail account, do I really want to create a hotmail account to email someone with a hotmail domain? If I have a twitter account and someone has an rstat.us account then perhaps I want to message them.

I think anyone who did decides to take on the task of turning micro blogging into an open messaging platform would need to look beyond just integrating sign ons. Think of smtp.

edit: I missed this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMicroBlogging>

</comment><comment><USER4> There is certainly a dynamic with social sites that the 'next generation' want to use something new - just like with music genres - you can't be cool indefinitely.

The next generation may reject social altogether - and not want to be tracked and recorded 24/7.

<comment><USER5> This is definitely an underemphasized point. It could turn out like the radical 60s and subsequent conservative backlash of the 80s.

It will eventually get old, either from a quick death (rejection of social altogether) or a slow death (commodification; Facebook/social media becoming a platform, like email).

<comment><USER6> Except "60s" -> "80s" in around 6 months instead of 20 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > social media users are fickle, disloyal at the drop of a hat

I don't know about this.

Firstly, I would have thought _search_ users would be fickle; but people stick to Google: familiarity is a huge factor for mainstream _consumer_ franchises (Buffett goes on about Coke, Wrigly Chewing Gum etc) as opposed to early- adopter tech folk; Google goes to enormous lengths for good PR and visibility (mainly by actually doing good, which is nice); despite complaints, Google does its job (relevant results; very fast), and keeps improving. If a commodity like _search_ can be sticky, why not social media?

Secondly, a social networking service is intrinsically harder for users to change, because you are connected to other people. Of course, it has to do its basic job well; you have to keep improving it; you need good PR. In other words, it's your game to lose.

I'm not sure why MySpace failed, but I think part of it was targeting teens/young people (who like change, both in adopting the new and in then discarding it), e.g. via bands, which is also hit/fad oriented. I think facebook's uni students are less dangerous in this sense, because they more often want to keep in contact after graduating (compared with teenagers), and facebook have worked hard to grow out of that dangerously fashionable zone anyway.

warning: this post contains _guesses_.

<comment><USER8> i think that utility is different from social. Search is a utility that competitors have offered incremental improvements, that while useful.. to most people don't matter. Example: how many people test search results in multiple engines, to determine which one is giving better results ?. At this time, on any search engine, if you can find what you're looking for most of the time, in the first few results, you just stick with it.

Where as social is just that its whats cool/hip and something your friends are using. I think you underestimate the value of virility. Services like Instagram and Tumblr, are all very good services that are social and could possibly unseat what we see now. People and not just in the tech circle are always trying out new cool/hip social services. If some users think its cool, convince their friends to join and the cycle starts over.

<comment><USER7> > I think you underestimate the value of virility.

Maybe. I think it varies with age group, as I was saying. I think people in their teen's and 20's are more interested in what's cool/hip. Certainly, for social services in that teen/20's demographic, I think you're right.

Older people, people with spouses, people with young children, people with mortgages, people with established careers and groups of friends and clubs and routines. Well, I think maybe the value of virility is less there. I'm not saying it's a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The difference between Twitter and MySpace is that MySpace was a colossal piece of shit. It was ugly, poorly built, and most importantly, lacked the timeline feature that best illustrates what a social networking site is supposed to do -- keep you informed on what your friends are doing.

Twitter is already boiled down to its essence.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sure. Facebook could be "MySpaced", too. The whole point of what happened to MySpace is that it was hard to figure out what it would take to disrupt them until it happened.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to know what will disrupt them. But, it seems there is a formula.

1\. Pick a niche (college kids)

2\. Build what they want

3\. Let it trickle down (high school) or up (grandma) or out (businesses) to gain mass.

So while we can't pick the winner, we know what the winner is going to do.

<comment><USER10> While that approach obviously worked for Facebook, I think this is one of those areas where it's hard to pin down a "formula" that will work in every case without eventually having it be proven wrong in a big way. In this case, for example, it is conceivable (although maybe unlikely) that another major player such as Google or Facebook could disrupt Twitter by starting big. In other words, rather than targeting a niche until they gain mass, they could somehow leverage their existing mass to get ahead.

<comment><USER11> It is interesting that you point that out. I had typed that out and then deleted it. Basically, Google is starting backwards with gmail being used by everyone and then trying to build what a particular niche wants.

I think the problem here is that when you start big and work backwards it's hard to build exactly what a particular niche wants. For example, starting backwards you never would have built the perfect tool for bands (myspace) or college kids (facebook) because you want it to have mass appeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What I don't like in twitter is how non-obvious and inconvenient it is.

E.g. the only way to communicate with someone without polluting your timeline (because who really cares what you @replied to someone) is DMing them, and even that is less convenient than even facebook messages. But no one uses DMs for most conversations so I have to go without following some awesome people just because they @reply massively and I have scroll fatigue already.

Another example – twitter's website has no new @mention notifications, and my SO accidentally discovered this feature when she downloaded Tweetie months after she started tweeting.

No wonder twitter's user retention rate sucks.

<comment><USER13> But @replies don't show up in your timeline unless you are following both sides of the exchange, right?

<comment><USER12> Does not seem right. See <http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman> for example

I see a lot of Shaun's tweets starting with @someuser, e.g. <http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/59266889741905920> <http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/59254473125666816> <http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/59237467353657344> <http://twitter.com/#!/shauninman/status/58999188649807872> and I don't follow him or any of these guys

<comment><USER14> Yes, because it's his public timeline. But you will not see @replies from people you are not following in your timeline.

<comment><USER12> Um, thanks, I'll check that! Still, I think it's unintuitive. There's no way I could figure this out from twitter's UI, if only somehow by accident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "be bloggered" would be more approp

</comment><comment><USER16> Twitter is a seriously rough and immature tool. It has no ability to intelligently handle identity or content types. It's confusing to many people, and generally has a style that will quickly appear dated once a well designed alternative gains critical mass.

A few years ago, the micro-blogging community was not big enough for a second player. Now it is, and Twitter will change or be overtaken by a more compelling alternative.

The simplicity of Twitter was once its strength, but like any technology, it must grow to meet the demands of its users. Facebook added chat, photos, a compelling platform, etc... Twitter is dead in the water right now.

Who wants to remember silly @handles? There isn't even a directory of official Twitter handles for companies.

Private group message applications are sprouting up everywhere - Twitter is just plodding along unaware that this is a huge need.

Who wants to see hideous bit.ly links instead of actual content?

Is 140 characters really the future? I doubt it.

Are third party services really necessary to embed media? Do users really need to figure out how to tape together 10 different services and clients to get a good experience?

Twitter needs to grow up, or it will die. And it will happen quickly - <USER2> than two years from the day a serious competitor gains steam.

<comment><USER17> Has anyone else noticed, in the recent spate of HN submissions on choosing company names and the matching domain name for startups that founders are saying things like, "check to see if the name is available on Twitter; if not you'll need to choose again."

That's amusing, but unacceptable given the large amount of squatting on Twitter. Anyone here have any luck getting a company name from Twitter when it was squatted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a continual internal struggle between two competing thoughts:

1) Internet social media is a young, rapidly evolving ecosystem, heading towards better understanding of consumers, better solutions, and longer product lifetimes.

2) Internet social media is basically entertainment, where sites, platforms, and communication strategies rise and fall in popularity like yesterday's television shows and networks, but on a much, much shorter timeline.

</comment><comment><USER19> If new services will suggest open TOS with clear promise to keep them as is, they have good chance. Developers.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think Twitter could just be a management problem and can be easily fixed. MySpace was poor management and a poor website, Twitter is actual cool. You can talk about how Twitter shuts off alot and can be created better, but in reality normal users dont care what you created it with, if it looks cool and works most of the time, its good to go.</comment>


The Entire History of Steel - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20722505/history-of-steel/ <comment><USER3> For anyone in Europe I can recommend a visit to Völklingen Hütte ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lklingen_Ironworks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lklingen_Ironworks)). I went there last year on holiday in Germany.

It's an old iron factory built into a museum. Most parts are open to public and are left in a 'frozen' state since it was closed in '86 (although maintained and sometimes still fully functional). It's a really nice travel in time and insight into an industry of this scale. I remember how parts of the complex seen organised and architected and other parts are just a big mess of pipes and parts that have been added and shoved in over the decades that this factory ran (24/7, all season, without a roof, I might add).

<comment><USER4> I raise you a Russian city of Cherepovets, the photos don't do it justice, where you see green, yellow, violet snow wherever it isn't just black and the pipes, columns and other stuff of the steel and associated chemical plants go for kilometers along the road and you feel like you're descending to hell. Those moving trains of railroad cars filled with tens of tons of actively burning coals which awash everything around with that red glow...

[https://gizmodo.com/5680577/the-chimneys-of-hell-are-in- russ...](https://gizmodo.com/5680577/the-chimneys-of-hell-are-in-russia)

<comment><USER5> Mommy why are the clouds orange?

<comment><USER6> I think those particular clouds are orange because the sun is setting behind them. It seems unlikely that grey smoke rises up from the chimneys and then suddenly turns orange a bit below the cloud layer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those interested in entrepreneurship I highly recommend the autobiography of Henry Bessemer [0], the inventor of the bessemer steel process. He is one of the few inventors who actually got rich from his inventions.

0\. [https://archive.org/details/sirhenrybessemer00bessuoft](https://archive.org/details/sirhenrybessemer00bessuoft)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting how difficult it is to actually make large quantities of quality steel.

On the surface it seems like an easy process to make steel, but it required hundreds of years of gradual technological progress to get to the point where large quantities of consistently decent steel could be manufactured. So many independent inventions and scientific discoveries where required before we could make steel. It's really a material that's taken for granted.

It would be interesting to make a sort of real life tech tree of the inventions required to get to modern steel.

<comment><USER9> This is true for even very, very simple technology. My favorite example is gunpowder (the smokey kind we don't even use anymore), which requires potassium nitrate, which without modern (c. 19th century) processes you have to a) get lucky and find a cave you can mine/scrape from; or 2) collect manure, pour urine on it for a year, and then scrape off the top and process. It's actually freaking amazing anyone figured out how to do this, even though with hindsight we understand each reaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone who liked this submission will enjoy a new engineering blog called Knife Steel Nerds (should be the top result in a search).

It's run by a professional metallurgist and the quality of the articles is outta sight.

They take Patreon funding to get cool samples and stuff to do testing and analysis. It's the real deal. Recommended.

<comment><USER11> [https://knifesteelnerds.com/](https://knifesteelnerds.com/)

Sounds cool, I'll check it out. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I watched an amazing documentary, Bethlehem Steel, The People Who Built America [1], that went over the history and the processes involved in making steel as well as the sad decline (and preventable) of the American steel industry. And "The History of the American Steel Industry documentary" [2]

If you have a chance, tour a steel plant, they are amazing places. Nearly all of these location should offer tours

[http://www.nucoraccount.com/locations.aspx](http://www.nucoraccount.com/locations.aspx)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QTGiHOZZFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QTGiHOZZFU)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOzvl6KMRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcOzvl6KMRM)

<comment><USER13> Take a look at the steel statistics on pages 5-7 of this report: [https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/historical- statistic...](https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/historical- statistics/ds140-feste.pdf)

US apparent steel consumption was 97.8 million tons in 2012, the latest date available. That's a bit lower than the 106 million tons in 1968. American steel consumption has declined about 40% per capita. The US steel industry would have had to ramp up exports very aggressively to remain as large a portion of the US economy as it was in the 1960s.

<comment><USER12> > American steel consumption has declined about 40% per capita.

I wonder how much of that is from import auto sales? Or an overall drop in civic projects?

<comment><USER13> It's measuring consumption, so I think that imported goods are included.

My top guesses as to causes would be a reduced pace of building/infrastructure construction, reduced steel content in cars, and cars lasting longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those interested in historical steel production, I'd recommend watching this beautiful documentary from 1945, made by the British Council in postwar Britain.

It shows massive industrial steel plants operated entirely by hand - <USER2> trained teams of men spending their days doing what we'd do with computers, pulling levers and operating wheels to control individual parameters of steel- making machines, and turning out steel made with incredible precision.

The narrator, John Laurie, later became famous for playing Private James Frazer in the UK sitcom Dad's Army.

[http://film.britishcouncil.org/steel](http://film.britishcouncil.org/steel)

</comment><comment><USER15> I would really like to learn more about manufacturing. Does anyone know how to do this?

There are books out there on hardware startups, but that's the only thing I've seen. Are there any museums, courses, and or paid experiences people recommend in the US?

<comment><USER16> I work as an engineer in manufacturing, coincidentally to this article I work at an integrated Steelworks. I know our plant has a visitor's center and there is a company that takes tour groups through the site on certain days (mostly school children). I have heard some other sites such as mines and power stations also do tours. Depending on where you live there may be a site nearby that you could visit, nothing like experiencing it first hand.

For books I'd recommend the "Chemical Engineers' Handbook" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry's_Chemical_Engineers'_Ha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry's_Chemical_Engineers'_Handbook)

That's a pretty good general textbook that should give you a lot of fundamentals. We keep a copy in our office and it's well thumbed through.

Anything else I could recommend would be much less general more specialized topic (i.e thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, solid mechanics etc).

Sorry I can't really offer more than that Manufacturing is a hugely broad discipline. To start with maybe consider if you are more interested in primary processing (mining, refining, smelting etc) or secondary processing (turning raw materials into products).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Relevant: [https://www.wired.com/2008/01/nanotech- used-2/](https://www.wired.com/2008/01/nanotech-used-2/)

<comment><USER18> I rarely watch videos all the way through, but this documentary on the making of the premier Viking sword was fascinating. The speculation on how the technology got to Europe and the actual building of an ancient smelter etc. really interested me.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lspB3QhrW_Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lspB3QhrW_Q)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I enjoyed this long presentation of people who smelt iron in a primitive traditional fashion. [https://youtu.be/RuCnZClWwpQ](https://youtu.be/RuCnZClWwpQ)

</comment><comment><USER20> I have to say this is a superbly well written article. My dad owns a steel mill but I was never quite interested in it. This article has definitely sparked up a curiousity.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is totally off. Everyone knows steel comes from giants who stole it from stole it from Crom: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMG- FdCGtM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMG-FdCGtM)

[downvoters: relax, it's a joke. Get out and watch a movie once in a while]

<comment><USER22> Sometimes being told which god you belong to makes life easier...

Thanks for posting the clip. It was interesting to see how bad SFX were in a big budget movie from 1982.

I'm a big fan of mythology and how we use it to explain things about our world.

<comment><USER23> You would probably really enjoy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth)

It is on Netflix. Absolutely wonderfully insightful journey through the different myths of our ancestors.</comment></comment></comment>


Caradoc – a PDF parser and validator written in OCaml - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/caradoc <comment><USER2> for some context, this was released by ANSSI, which as far as I can tell is a French government communications and computer security organization. They've done a lot of interesting work with security and OCaml as well: [http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/agence/publication/lafosec- securite-e...](http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/agence/publication/lafosec-securite-et- langages-fonctionnels/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is another tool written in OCaml that parses and, in addition, manipulates PDF files: [https://github.com/johnwhitington/cpdf- source](https://github.com/johnwhitington/cpdf-source).

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess caradoc forks a lot. ( sorry non French readers. And French readers also)

<comment><USER5> Is a translation possible?

<comment><USER6> Maybe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caradoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caradoc)

<comment><USER7> More like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaamelott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaamelott)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine [1998] - <AUTHOR> http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

<comment><USER2> "For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. "</comment>


Developing for the mobile web is a constant headache - <AUTHOR> https://popmotion.io/blog/20170710-mobile-web-is-awful-and-were-all-to-blame/ <comment><USER2> > I've long held that the web experience can be just as performant and > polished as native.

Recently I've been starting to think the assumption "apps are faster" is wrong when you factor in app start time. Two well known offenders here are LinkedIn and Twitter; opening a push message from either it frequently takes 10+ seconds of staring at their logo (which they use as a launch screen counter to recommendations at [https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface- guidelines/g...](https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface- guidelines/graphics/launch-screen/)) before I can read anything.

For this type of transactional UX, slow-to-load apps are doing a poor job

<comment><USER3> I never even knew that was a widely held assumption...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You know the only thing worse than a mobile website? A website that demands that you download and install their execrable app.

<comment><USER5> Ooof, yes. I was out camping the other day and wanted a trail map of the park we were in. Site called "AllTrails" had a "downloadable PDF" link for it, but clicking it just opened up a "Wouldn't you rather use our app?" popup. No alternative option, despite the wording - intensely frustrating.

<comment><USER6> I ran into a similar frustration with AllTrails last camping trip. That said, their service is really great otherwise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Implementing simple design features like overlays or bottom navigation on mobile browsers invariably involves trawling through blogs and forums to find that special hack that worked for that one guy that one day in June.

Then why do so many bloody mobile sites implement them then? They're terrible for reading and interaction.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming)

<comment><USER8> I think that when this happens in design it's more about _looking normal_ so as to project credibility (so that people will take you seriously/give you money). The important part is not that actual browers/people-spending-money feel this way, but that product owners and designers _think_ they do (and maybe they're right, I don't know, though Kalzumeus' post about the success of the Big Ugly Button makes me think they're at least _sometimes_ wrong). This is what drives web design trend-chasing, when really the old two-or-three- column-header-footer sites of The Distant Past of A Decade Ago were totally fine and often more usable than the "beautiful" crap put out today. But they look "old" so out they go.

<comment><USER9> Surely that's exactly the cargo-cultish part of it? POs are convinced this is _how mobile is done_ to the point of following those principles without actual user input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Modern application development is horrible.

Why on earth do we still design and implement user interfaces by hand? Shouldn't 99% of development be about creating semantic models and let generic clients take care of rendering it properly based on form-factor, context, preferences, etc?

Today, every single app needs to re-implement the _user_ class, authentication system, profile management interface, responsive design, loading indicators, caching and offline support, third-party access, sharing, filtering, theming, localization, accessibility, etc. This is insane.

<comment><USER8> Designers and product owners won't allow it. See also: tons of custom styling and behaviors on mobile platforms that break user expectations and double or triple development time, just so the designer has something to do other than arrange in a grid and choose colors for the perfectly-fine built in UI elements which are, most of the time, more pleasant to use than whatever they come up with.

<comment><USER10> I never asked for branded or fancy UI. I want consistency, and I expect the platform to drive design decisions, not the feature that happens to be packaged as an app. I'm sure most rational people would agree.

Design hubris is one of the world's most important problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Design hubris is one of the world's most important problem.

Probably not, and I disagree entirely besides.

We shouldn't break design paradigms or expected behaviour. But design in UI helps us navigate and create a clear mental model . Have you ever tried orientating yourself in the Barbican?

<comment><USER10> Design is extremely important, hence why it shouldn't be delegated to third- party service providers.

<comment><USER11> In theory you could implement HN and Reddit with the exact same design, but to me each of these hold value in different ways thanks to their differences. That's just one of countless examples.

<comment><USER10> I will build a system that will let you use both Reddit and HN using the same interface.

Will you try it?

<comment><USER11> I'll be willing to try it sure. Just don't steal my login details please :)

You can find my e-mail address through my website which is linked on my HN profile, or you can PM me on Reddit, same username that I use here.

If your system is public already you can simply link to it in a reply to this comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I disagree with the conclusion that we're in this position because of anything designers or developers did. Of the examples the author listed, most are the result of business meddling making things worse - see Reddit and Facebook in particular. I think this is "all you," not "mostly you," or if it is mostly, it's "mostly almost to the point of nothing else."

<comment><AUTHOR> Designers and developers are definietly not blameless. Although AMP is clearly a Business People invention, it wouldn't have been adopted if the web was quicker on mobile networks and CPUs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Reflecting this shift, design guidelines are increasingly recommending > putting app navigation at the bottom of the screen.

IMHO the mobile web is terrible BECAUSE of lost screen real estate due to all these sticky elements. I have started a filter list [0] for uBlock Origin that attempts to fix this by pinning scrolling nav bars that block real estate to a fixed location as well as blocking other annoying web elements.

I also think these items are terrible for web usability on a desktop (and my filter list works well against them on desktop as well) but taking up such a large portion of the readable screen size with a 'download our app banner' and a navigation scroll bar plus a button that scrolls with you so that you can click to jump back to the top of the page is really horrible.

Feel free to subscribe to the filter list [1] by pasting the url into the 'Custom' section under the '3rd-party filters' tab of uBlock Origin and let me know your thoughts.

[0] Project Homepage [https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances](https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances)

[1] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoya...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances/master/ultralist.txt)

<comment><USER14> Thank you for this. Just added it to mobile Firefox.

I agree with you and have found such elements very annoying since I've had a smartphone. When I was on iOS I was constantly annoyed by this and assumed it was a childish attempt to get accidental clicks from ios users trying to access the page navigation. This article doesn't really inspire faith in web devs since they're staking out territory on my device as if they have say in what I do and do not do on their site. Ultimately I find the attempts to fight with apple or Google to do things the way the web dev wants just makes it worse for me. Apple had a functional means of getting around the page on mobile. Scroll bars have told me how far I was on a page since scrolling existed, and for cases where the page extends past the content, I can survive without a reading progress bar. I'm perfectly fine guessing on my own.

I appreciate that web devs do some cool projects but don't just tack stuff on.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for testing it out!

For anyone reading who is curious how to use the list on your iPhone, unfortunately since iOS doesn't actually allow browsers (Firefox on iOS is not actually true Firefox with add-on support) this filter list (and any others) only work for uBlock Origin using Firefox for Android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If any webdev want to convince me that mobile "is working" then please make a layout that will not jump like it's having a seizure during page load. Don't make hovering, floating, overlaying and gesture controlled elements. Basically don't make stuff that makes your site harder to use.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not just ditch js on mobile? What's the big need for sticky toolbars and other such cruft. Juts detect if it is a mobile and serve up good old html (of the non-5 variety).

<comment><USER17> Thank you! Just serve me HTML. Stop messing with scrolling. Get rid of the pop-ups and prompts for me to sign up for your newsletter. Stop permanently attaching buttons to the top or bottom. Throw away your "navigation bar". If I wanted an "app" experience I'd download an app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Biggest reason you see all those prompts to install an app is that native apps get a big icon in your home screen but mobile web doesn't.

It's as simple as that. Everything else is easy to solve

<comment><USER12> At least on iOS, sites can be bookmarked to app icons. but I've only seen that advertised by a mobile site once.

<comment><USER19> On Android websites that fulfill some criteria to be a "PWA" even cause Chrome to ask the user about adding them to the homescreen if they are visited repeatedly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember my first job, where I had to spend hours upon hours hoping that then-new features and technologies that were barely supported in desktop browsers would work in mobile too, and hack around those features if not.

It was hell, still is and that's why I only take desktop or server work now.

</comment><comment><USER21> the web was a mistake. not as a concept, but as an application platform. the question i ask myself is: how do we take the Good Parts of the web and bring them to the native application side? how do we create an ecosystem as free as the web, that doesn't erode user trust with spam, malware, and so on?

<comment><USER22> I keep hearing this and it seems wrong. I think the actual problem is a social one. In a free, decentralized environment, you'll get jackals (tragedy of the commons). In a centralized one, you'll get dictators.

I don't think you can work around this with any kind of technology.

I know that what I'm saying is basically anathema for HackerNews, but I think it's the truth.

<comment><USER23> It's also worth noting that these dictators don't appear out of thin air. They come from somewhere else when they see an opportunity.

The Web was successful because it was decentralized and egalitarian. Anyone could run a server. You could access any site you wanted. Everybody could link to everybody else. People loved this and the Web spread for these reasons.

Modern app ecosystems spread because capital wanted a return. It noticed people were getting rich off of this tech thing, and all that money from the rest of the world came pouring in. The defining feature is control: of experience, sharing, attention, and revenue. Because controlling all these things allows capital to extract greater returns.

There are pros and cons to each model, but let's be clear, one was built from the ground up by financiers looking to make another buck. If it's easier to build a bottom nav bar or something, that's incidental to their plans.

Why do you want a bottom nav bar, anyway? If you're truly building for the users, the first lesson is that they want their information on their terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why was 'web' excluded from the HN title?

<comment><USER25> Maybe because there is no "mobile web"? I mean, there's the Web. There's the mess that smartphones make of it. And there's the mess that devs make designing for smartphones. But that's not a problem with the Web.

<comment><USER26> That sure sounds like a problem, and the problem exists on the web. "Mobile web" is a useful and descriptive name for the bit of the web that suffers most from this problem.

<comment><USER25> Not at all. If I have a small computer, even a smartphone, running Linux, there is no problem. Except that its screen is too damn small, and demand for AR headsets never took off.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple acknowledges keyboard problems with recent MacBooks - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/27/apple-3rd-gen-butterfly-keyboard-problems/ <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure at this point Apple has lost the trust of the professionals community. I personally don't think I would ever buy new equipment from Apple again. At most, I might buy a refurbished iPhone SE downgrading from my iPhone 7 (or spare parts for my iPhone 7) and spare parts for my 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro. It's simply not worth upgrading to new Apple equipment unless you have a lot of spare change burning a hole in your pocket, or you're a visual/graphic designer and your programs are Apple-specific.

This really should concern Apple. Professionals are the ones requiring the latest equipment, purchasing the highest-margin products with the highest price inelasticity (not looking for discounts), the ones most likely to advertise through word-of-mouth, and the ones contributing the most to brand value. Apple should only look at how they lost the gaming community back in the mid-2000s to Windows, and the rise of today's e-sports and streaming industries led by said professional gamers, to see what kind of impact losing just one professional community has in terms of opportunity cost.

I doubt Apple could ever be successfully commoditized because of the strength of their existing moats, but given Apple's discounts of late and inability to successfully innovate in professional hardware, they're heading more towards Wal-Mart and less towards Harrods, and that may lead to additional headaches or intangibles down the line (anti-trust worries, higher support costs and other operational expenses, decreased customer satisfaction), which all gives the impression Apple's golden age has come and gone.

<comment><USER3> Look, this keyboard thing is a huge stain on their reputation. But I think you vastly overestimate all the other vendors in this space.

<comment><USER2> Oh, don't get me wrong. Apple hardware from 2012-2015 was really great, and I recently reversed my decision to "upgrade" to a Dell XPS 15 w/ Ubuntu 18.04 in order to stick to my MacBook because it honestly wasn't an upgrade.

But I think Apple is coasting on its fundamentals and trying to monetize (cannibalize) a bunch of intangibles that led it to meteoric success in the first place, and that would worry me as an AAPL shareholder (I'm not one). At least in the field of package management, Linux is doing some pretty interesting things; 'snap' is pretty interesting: [https://snapcraft.io/](https://snapcraft.io/), so are AppImages: [https://appimage.org/](https://appimage.org/), and this is in addition to the regular updates to 'apt' or 'yum' that are officially supported by distros. Meanwhile, 'brew' still dominates the OSX landscape because Apple can't be bothered to create its own package manager. When was the last time Apple updated native UNIX-like tooling? I had heard it was around OS X Lion (basically when Steve Jobs died).

<comment><USER4> "Apple hardware from 2012-2015 was really great"

You didn't have your MacBook Pro spontaneously reboot because of the NVIDIA problem? I don't know if it was the driver or the hardware but it wasn't fun.

<comment><USER2> Hasn't happened to me. If it did, I might have switched completely already :-)

In fact that was why I returned the XPS 15, the OEM version of Ubuntu 18.04 (which did have correct sleep/hibernate behavior and worked well with the OEM battery) couldn't detect the NVIDIA Quadro P2000 card at all, which I wanted to run CUDA with. That persisted after about three factory resets, so I was like kthxbai.

<comment><USER5> This sort of thing is why I've resigned to just use WSL (after switching from Mac). Works well enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 2012/13 MacBook Pros are still the pinnacle of laptop design.

7 years later I'm still using them (work and personal) with no issues or battery life problems (original battery). The keyboard feels good, the trackpad is amazing, I love the MagSafe charger, and a decent screen.

Upgrade the internals, give me a better screen, and if there is space a bigger battery all in the same form factor and as a professional it would be a no brainer purchase.

They can feel free to experiment/innovate with the MacBook and MacBook Air lines of laptops. But the MacBook Pro should utilize tried and true technology that has been successful on a different MacBook line for a few years.

<comment><USER7> > They can feel free to experiment/innovate with the MacBook and MacBook Air > lines of laptops. But the MacBook Pro should utilize tried and true > technology that has been successful on a different MacBook line for a few > years.

This is what gets me. Yes I get Apple wants to make a super sleek ultra-thin machine. But that's what the "Air" brand is for! In a Pro line you can sacrifice some weight and thickness. It's not as if the Apple of today even cares about SKU bloat anymore.

My pet peeve with the MacBook Pros is the thermal throttling. I run into this ALL THE TIME, and I'm not even that heavy of a user. Start doing anything slightly taxing when charging the battery from zero in a room that's over 25 C ("summer") and the heat from the charging will kick it into throttle-o-rama.

Second pet peeve is battery life. They cut down the battery life from the FAA maximum on the recent generations because hey, "safari web browsing and Pages productivity hits our 10 hour goal". That doesn't help me compiling shit in Xcode! I recently bought an old PowerBook G3 to play with MacOS 9 and that thing almost gets the same 4 hour battery life my MBP 2017 does on a 20 year old New Old Stock battery.

<comment><USER6> Lol yeah Xcode or IntelliJ kill batteries. I'm ok with that tho batteries are for meetings and such.

I agree about thermals. Better venting should be a priority! That is one thing they should improve on the 2012 MacBook Pro form factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given the amount of cash on-hand, and the historical importance of the coding community to the status of Mac, let alone the guts of the OS (it, like almost all product in this space routinely uses free, semi-free, community-involved software elements. I know Apple 'give back' like they did for the FreeBSD community but its a give-take relationship and I think we can all relate to the huge amount of take in deciding to run a UNIX os instead of the homebrew p-system)

I find it slightly odd that the 'money men' would risk the brand value by not gold-plating the apology. Every mac owner should have been sent a willy-wonka ticket good for a replacement in a macstore and the macstore guru's should have been shipped almost infinite supply of replacements.

When Apple stuffed up the powerplug, the regulator forced them to fix it for free, for almost any walk-up. They can do this when made to do it.

The point is: A Rolls-Royce brand would _want_ to do this unforced. _I 'm sorry sir, the walnut burr finish is not up to standard and we have scheduled three appointment slots of your choice to pick from, to replace it, and a free 1000km full service and valet to apologize_ is how you make ex-mac fanatics turn into glued-on-for-life fanatics.

Cheap at the price. Chump change on the bottom line.

Instead? we get nickel-and-dime treatment. Deny, Delay, Obfuscate.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using Macs my whole life and this latest generation of MacBooks and MacBook Pros are by far the worst I've ever used at pretty much everything

<comment><USER10> That is just not true. I bought one and I have a thin laptop which runs OS X and has 32gb of RAM, 1TB SSD and 6 Core i9. Mostly use it for music production and it's genuinely incredible. I can work wherever I am, with a full complement of sample libraries, and never worry about computaion resources. It's a wonder machine.

<comment><USER11> I don't think anyone is seriously complaining about the performance, but the user experience seems to vary a lot. Some people love the feel of new keyboards, others hate them; some have no mechanical problems with them, for others they're unusable broken[0]; some like the touch bar, others feel lobotomised without a physical Escape key.

I think the feel thing is arguable and the touchbar is a matter of taste. Apple has to look at the market as a whole to see what works for the whole customer base, and the fact is a lot of people who don't post on HN hate function keys because they can never remember which does what.

The mechanical issues are really not acceptable though. It just affects too many machines too consistently. Even if yours is fine now, it could have an issue at any moment. They need to bite a Mac Pro sized bullet and fix this properly.

[0][https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its- mac...](https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-macbook- keyboard-problem/)

<comment><USER12> > I don't think anyone is seriously complaining about the performance [...]

Well, I do. It's not even that it's pretty pricey for what's inside. The lone fact that you can't get a macOS laptop with a better CPU or battery life than what it's offered with a maxed out MacBook Pro is a joke.

<comment><USER11> Those 6-core 8th gen Core i9s just not scratching your itch then.

<comment><USER12> Ah, it seems you're right. I've never considered buying 15-inch laptop and I think this is where I got this misconception from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I find weird is that I used a 2017 model for a year and didn't have a single issue issue with the keyboard — and I love the feel of it.

But I bought one of the new 2018 models, and I have recently developed a sporadically repeating key or two, which is driving me up the wall. It's a real shame, because _everything else_ about the machine is amazing. And now I'm soon going to have to take it back and get it fixed – because it doesn't seem reasonable that a £3000 machine should have any issues of this sort.

<comment><USER14> It's not especially weird that you got lucky with your 2017 model for a year.

There are people who didn't have issues with the Samsung Note 7, but I think we all agree that there was a problem.

<comment><USER13> Oh yeah, for sure. I guess I heard _a lot_ about the issue when it was being discussed the first time round, and I figured it was a bit overblown because I hadn't experienced anything – then within a couple of months of owning one of the newer, better models, it's happened a couple of times. It's obviously just luck :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My employee returned his first laptop because of this issue, and now his replacement laptop is having the exact same problem.

He's 2/2 with this issue. The statistical likelihood of that if the issue only affects a small percentage of laptops is very low.

<comment><USER16> The likelihood is modulated by the level of dust and Cheetos in the operating environment.

<comment><USER7> If a keyboard can't handle "dust" then it's not a Pro keyboard. My MacBook Pro Retina 2012 traveled the world in all kinds of challenging outdoor environments and as long as liquid didn't go into the keyboard there was no worry.

I've always adored the MacBook Pro line since they were so solidly built. I've dropped a pre-unibody model where it got it a big dent in the chassis but it kept on trucking for years. Quality like that is worth paying for. "Keep away from dust" is not worth $3000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      Companies like iFixit and Simple Mac might disagree.
      They believe the butterfly keyboard system
      (which allows for very thin yet stable keys)
      is inherently fragile

It's even worse than that, the keyboard is inherently uncomfortable and noisy.

All that pain for negative gain.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if there can even be a "repair" program until they have a new generation with a new keyboard out to just offer a replacement with.

FWIW, I had a 2016 that had no issues until a key suddenly fell off. I now have a 2018 i9 that has no issues. I actually prefer this keyboard to the 2012-2015 keyboards but it's a shame about the reliability issues.

<comment> Spartan-S63 I had a 2016 laptop and the only keyboard issue I had was caused by a repair. I took it back to the Apple Store and they replaced it with a similarly upgraded mid 2017 MacBook Pro, no questions asked.

I, too, like this keyboard over the old one. There seems to be less key-wobble and it feels way less mushy. That's my biggest criticism with the old MacBook Pros. The keyboard was too mushy.

<comment><USER7> I wish I had an Apple store nearby. Instead I have to take to an Apple Authorized Repair center, have them mail it off to Apple, turns out they forgot to report one of the issues, have them mail it off again and then a month later I get my machine back, and it turns out it's still not fixed.

<comment> Spartan-S63 That's a really unfortunate service experience.

The two times I've had to send my laptop in, it was overnighted to Apple, fixed in a day, and overnighted back. The third time that I went to an Apple store, they did a same-day return and replace for a year-old Late 2016 MacBook Pro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I laughed when I read Apple said, "a small amount of users" are having issues with the keyboard.

<comment><USER20> "a small amount of users" is almost verbatim what they use every time. And it's true... for some definition of small.

<comment><USER21> "Compared to the number of iPhones we sold this year, a small number of MacBook Pro users have bad keyboards"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My keyboard has already been replaced once. But the main problem is that it's terrible to type on because of the almost nonexistent key travel. It is the worst keyboard I've ever used on an Apple laptop.

(Oh, and the trackpad palm rejection has never worked properly the way it used to on older models, instead causing the cursor to jump around randomly when you type; software settings don't help at all, in spite of many condescending comments on the internets. Faulty or nonexistent palm rejection is a widely reported issue that there is no reliable fix for, aside from using an external trackpad or mouse. It really is the worst trackpad I've ever had the misfortune of using.)

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't believe Apple has not yet pulled this ludicrously stupid keyboard design.

I bought a 2016 MBP and it was defective the day I bought it. Swapped it out for a new one and that one experienced the issue within a few months. Had it repaired. Now it's doing it again.

I have a 2017 MBP for work. Same issue about a year into usage. All my coworkers have had the exact problem with theirs.

Go into any Apple Store and you'll likely see multiple "geniuses" using compressed air on these machines to "fix" the issue.

I won't be buying another Mac portable computer until they actually admit and address this stupid keyboard design.

</comment><comment><USER24> Razer Blade 15 for me now from my Air instead of a future Pro

<comment><USER25> How do you like it? I'm just changing from LG Gram to Razer Blade 15 Advanced to have more power for programming (and have CUDA programming capabilities), but I don't have the laptop on my hands yet.

<comment><USER24> The shift key placement is the only crib. Everything else is good, no give in the body. Bigger battery than base model, TheUnlocker on YouTube also did a comprehensive battery life test is various modes & turns out the Battery saver one actually performs on par yet delivers 7-8 hours of work.

Even I got it for the CUDA compute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had the entire bottom half of my Macbook replaced twice and a total replacement in the last few years. And the user experience of typing on it is absolutely disgusting.

I'll never buy another Apple machine with the butterfly keyboard. MacOS isn't worth it. And the lack of synergy means I'd probably drop my desktop Mac too. I could finally get something with some graphics grunt.

I really hope Apple realises this keyboard design has to go. Now.

<comment><USER22> It is truly terrible. A thicker laptop with a better keyboard would be vastly superior.

Oh and with trackpad palm rejection that actually works properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is re-reporting of the WSJ piece discussed here yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501341)

</comment><comment><USER27> Got one for work, along with an assortment of dongles. Mainly it was the keyboard that caused me to swap for a PC after three weeks. I still look at my coworker's screens with envy.

</comment><comment><USER28> 3 years of this nonsense. Release a new chassis already.

</comment><comment><USER29> I loved Apple and their products but a series of things made me move away from it. I am now very happy with a much more powerful Lenovo Yoga 730-15 (i7 8Cores + 24Gb-Ram + 1tb SSD) and my new Samsung S10. Until Apple remains just one more in the pack and not the powerhouse in support, design and usability it used to be, I'll stick with Lenovo and Samsung. Farewell Apple, it's been real...

</comment><comment><USER30> [https://outline.com/dr8wpv](https://outline.com/dr8wpv) (I could not get past engadget's/ Oath's wall of option management)</comment>


Will the real RESTful API please stand up - <AUTHOR> https://whizmodo.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/will-the-real-restful-api-please-stand-up/ <comment><USER2> So HATEOS is a requirement of REST? I've been calling my JSON apis RESTful all this time like a fool.

Guess they're simply JSON apis. I don't really care to parse XML so I guess I won't be getting any REST from my apps.

</comment><comment><USER3> In that caee it seems that there is no RESTful API's at all in global meaning :D</comment>


OCZ's Vertex 2 Pro Preview: The Fastest MLC SSD We've Ever Tested - <AUTHOR> http://anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3702 <comment><USER2> I for one am waiting for an affordable SSD based system for my next laptop. (Running ubuntu)

<comment><USER3> Just buy one. Ubuntu is very slim to begin with (~4gb) and it's very easy to configure the filesystem to keep core files on the SSD and other stuff on a magnetic disk, e.g., symlink /home/kristianp/Music to /media/bighdd/Music or even just mount the hdd as /home. (Do they still make laptops with two drive bays? Used to be common but now that I think about it I can't recall any recent models with this. Maybe the Taiwanese brands? Asus, MSI, etc?)

I have a 16gb drive in my wife's netbook that has plenty of room still (no big music collection, though.) Our home computer has an 80gb drive, 70gb for Win7 and 10gb for ubuntu. Just to give you an idea, next time you boot up Ubuntu (karmic) watch the splash animation, the one that says "ubuntu" with a pulsing white progress-bar like thing underneath. The animation only cycles once and then gnome is instantaneously loaded and sitting idle (autologin is on.) Rebooting between Win7 and Ubuntu is like switching between Firefox and IE on my old computer. If you can afford one now, just buy it. If you wait for the "sweet spot" between price/performance/capacity you'll probably be waiting for a while. They'll be a better value in the future, but that will always be a case and it doesn't mean they're not a good value now.</comment></comment>


Walt Disney's MultiPlane Camera (Filmed: Feb. 13, 1957) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw <comment><USER2> Ub Iwerks was a true genius! In addition to doing the work on that camera he designed the original Mickey Mouse and later did some brilliant works with traveling matts. The work done in the early days of Disney really reminds me a great deal of Pixar in terms of combining creative with tech. It's hard to appreciate today but Disney did the first color animated shorts, the first real feature and the first company to really make a cartoon revolve around sound (instead of the other way around). At the very end Disney was fascinated by audio-anamatrobics which remind me a great deal of the early days of computer animation.</comment>


I am new here , how can i find sub categories for this site? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There really aren't sub categories. This isn't reddit. There is just the main site. You can filter out to only see Show, Ask, and Jobs (listed on the top bar), but other than that there is nothing (also those are really just filters, not sub categories, as show, ask, and jobs will show up on the main page).

</comment><comment><USER3> Not 100% sure, but I don't think there is any other than the "ask" and "show" which are official categorized (into each section) by hand and out of the submitters's control.</comment>


This Guy's Marketing Stunt Was So On-Brand That We're Actually Writing About It - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3055118/most-creative-people/this-guys-marketing-stunt-was-so-on-brand-that-were-actually-writing-ab <comment><USER2> So the guy copies a stunt already done by a competitor. How is this original in any way?</comment>


Outline – Self Hosted VPN by Google's Jigsaw - <AUTHOR> https://getoutline.org/en/home <comment><USER2> Someone has tested it in China and it can get around the Great Firewall.

[http://startuplivingchina.com/how-to-outline-vpn-setup- china...](http://startuplivingchina.com/how-to-outline-vpn-setup-china/)

I imagine a multitude of small privately run VPNs will be much harder for the Chinese government to shutdown versus centralized VPN providers.

<comment><USER3> They don't just block based on IP, they also do deep packet inspection so if you use say, the OpenVPN protocol without changes, it can be blocked even on a private server.

<comment><USER2> Outline uses Shadowsocks (socks5 proxy) instead of OpenVPN, which makes it harder to detect.

[https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html](https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html)

<comment><USER4> There were several reports that DPI can detect shadowsocks. For example [http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8048116/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8048116/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this something like Streisand [1]? Where it just configures a server to run a VPN service.

[1] - [https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand](https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand)

<comment><USER6> Looks like it. Interested to know how it compares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds very very cool. Possibly the simplest way for us geeks to support democracy. I with there was a FAQ though because I have questions:

-Can I restrict the traffic? (e.g. I don't want illegal downloads coming from my IP)

-How do people discover your VPN? Is there a central repo which lists all Outline VPNs?

<comment><USER2> It is private and permissioned. You deploy the software on a server and create / send access keys to users you know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Page is blank in firefox 60.0b5

</comment><comment><USER9> I want something that looks this polished but to be a WireGuard client. :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Dan Guido, the author of AlgoVPN ([https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)), says this is basically just a copy of it [https://mobile.twitter.com/dguido/status/976143448624508928](https://mobile.twitter.com/dguido/status/976143448624508928)

<comment><USER4> The claim is bogus. The outline is a just wrapper of shadowsocks, an open source SOCKS5 proxy tool developed since 2012.

However, the outline in its current form may indeed have certain license issue.

[https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks- libev/issues/1991](https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks- libev/issues/1991)

[https://github.com/Jigsaw-Code/outline- client/issues/14](https://github.com/Jigsaw-Code/outline-client/issues/14)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Page displays undefined two times in my browser (not sure what that would be, most likely Android WebView since I'm on Materialistic).

<comment><USER12> On my browser (Firefox 59.0.1), the page displays "undefined" in a couple of places, then, after a couple of seconds, it displays what appears to be the complete, correct page.</comment></comment>


Dyson's overpriced fan and the Coandă Effect  - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/10/dysons-overpriced-fan-and-coanda-effect.html

<comment><USER2> Give it a break.

> The Coandă Effect is very well known, and Dyson hasn't invented something > revolutionary here

When someone does this to a startup, this place is ripe with "screw the idea, it's all about execution" and "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

I salute Dyson for putting simple physics to work in simple, yet aesthetically pleasing fashion.

In other words, if it's so easy, why aren't YOU selling a £200 Coandă effect deskfan?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are reading too much into that statement. The Coandă Effect was well known and all I claim is that Dyson didn't invent it. My other claim is the £200 is a lot for a fan no matter how cool the technology is.

 _In other words, if it's so easy, why aren't YOU selling a £200 Coandă effect deskfan?_

I never claimed it was easy, you also edited my blog post to remove the bit where I say _(although I assume the engineering is very good)_.

<comment><USER3> If the market will support it, £200 is not a lot for a fan ;)

<comment><USER4> Eh? That's like saying, "if the market will support it, $2000 isn't a lot for a pair of jeans." Just because enough people are willing to spend $2000 on jeans to keep the company in profit doesn't mean that they're not expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've made something similar for industrial use. My understanding (given that we only do the machining) is that in an industrial setting they require loud compressors with much larger footprints... so the real engineering feat is probably the motor depending how loud these suckers are ([http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/29/dyson-speeds-up-worlds- fa...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/29/dyson-speeds-up-worlds-fastest- motor-gives-it-some-fancy-pac/))

<comment><AUTHOR> The motor is interesting since it's a "digital" motor called a Switched Reluctance Motor: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_Reluctance_Motor>

<comment><USER6> I think this might be the real story here. Google about and you will find articles from 2003 talking about this nifty 100,000rpm switched reluctance motor and impeller combination that Dyson's people were working on. I think the air mover is just an answer to "so what do we do with it?"

I still want someone to say what the air mover sounds like. 100,000rpm should put all of the sound energy above 1,500Hz, and higher frequencies are easier to damp, so it is possible the thing is quiet. On the the other hand, the ad copy doesn't say "SILENT!!!".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not overpriced, Dyson has to be quick making some money before the Chinese copy it and sell derivatives on every corner of the solar system.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pricing it anythng lower wouldn't tie in with the Dyson brand. Could you imaging if they were selling these at £20, who then would want one? Everyone who needs a fan already has a fan. But if you have one of these £200 toys sat in your house, you're sure to look cool and feel cool with that fanless air blown in your face.

</comment><comment><USER9> My personal favorite reference to the Coandă Effect involves urinals:

[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2450/urinal-101-aim...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2450/urinal-101-aim- for-the-back-wall-or-the-water)

<http://ask.metafilter.com/8204/Urinal-Aiming#160007>

</comment><comment><USER10> The in/famous Dyson branding aside, I'd like to measure the fan's volumetric efficiency per watt compared to a conventional inline blade design.

In other words, how much air is moved at what speed given the electrical energy expended to drive the impeller.

I doubt seriously that it's much better than conventional fan designs given that it has 3 distinct regimes of airflow (intake duct, impeller blade, Coanda foil).

Additionally, though inline impellers can be quite efficient, having these 3 distinct vector flow regimes will bleed energy in de/compression inlet/exhaust artifacts (noise and vibration) so it won't be much quieter than a conventional design.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ok, I found this video linked from their site, and I'm not sure if its a joke. Skip to when he turns the fan on, about 1 minute in.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ZcpCY2O6k&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1ZcpCY2O6k&feature=player_embedded)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think it's false advertising to say it has no blades. It uses an internal fan that you can't see to push air.

<comment><USER13> You're just being overly pedantic. To most people, it has no visible blades, and therefore it has no blades.

Sure, a more accurate wording would have been "no blades that you can stick your fingers in", but you can't expect too much out of marketing people!

<comment><USER14> Marketing people aren't dumb. They just know that consumers _are_. "No blades you can stick your fingers in" is accurate, but buyers want catchy and memorable, even at the cost of slight factual inaccuracy.

<comment><USER15> And that's how a quote like "the greatest piece of sh*t of a movie ever" becomes "the greatest... movie ever" in an ad

<comment><USER14> Yep! You can blame marketers, but that's their job, and it works. Until society becomes a lot smarter and more cynical, people will be paid to make things popular, and they'll do a lot of really obnoxiously cheap things, and it'll all work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>