Covid-19 school closure takes toll on expats' mental health in Vietnam - <AUTHOR> https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/city-diary/20200310/covid19-school-closure-takes-toll-on-expats-mental-health-in-vietnam/53398.html <comment><AUTHOR> I have first hand experience living in Vietnam and I talked to enough expats in person to report that some of them literally went to the other side of the world to run away from problems back home. But this article brings up a much bigger issue, which I feel should be discussed, but currently isn't:

Western people define a large part of their identity through their work.

As a result, forcing them to stay at home to curb Covid infections will tear out a part of people's identity and, thus, be stressful emotionally. I predict that'll happen not only with expats, but also with many proud employees back home in the EU or US.</comment>


The epic demise of Realtime Worlds, maker of Crackdown & APB - <AUTHOR> http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_278/8273-The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Realtime-Worlds <comment><USER2> I think they're still confused. They think the 'smaller team' was what made Crackdown better, and in reality was 'better team'. Size wasn't relevant, only the people were. They admit later they had people who enjoyed making a great game, and others who relished the politics. The latter is what destroyed them.

<comment><USER3> " _Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions._ "

([http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail40...](http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail408.html#Iron))

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The story will resonate with anyone who is familiar with "The Mythical Man- Month", but what I particularly interesting about this story is the stark contrast between the company's initial success with Crackdown and then how quickly it screwed it all up with APB.

<comment><USER4> Beware of the dreaded Second System Effect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related: Luke Halliwell's Weblog, <http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/> (Found via: Ex-Realtime Worlds Employee Examines APB Fiasco, [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103563-Ex- Realtime...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103563-Ex-Realtime- Worlds-Employee-Examines-APB-Fiasco) )

</comment><comment><USER6> Off-topic but important to note: Dundee is not a "small Scottish town" but is a medium-sized city in the UK, the fourth-largest in Scotland:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dundee>

</comment><comment><USER7> Moral of this story would be: do not rush to launch with a minimal viable product if you're working on an MMO (or probably any console game).

<comment><USER8> Or perhaps, don't launch with a minimal viable product with plans to improve it later unless you have a financial structure that allows you to stay in business for long enough to actually improve it.

<comment><USER7> I can't help but feel the bad reviews caused irreparable damage. Even if they'd had a few more months to tweak it, I doubt they would have attracted many gamers. It's not the first rushed but promising game I've seen sink on launch (see: True Crime NY). Big budget games are a somewhat different category than (business) (web)apps.

<comment><USER9> Bad reviews are often symptoms and not causes, but I agree with you here. When you're selling a new MMO to consumers, you need to keep in mind that customer trial costs are high, especially for hardcore early adopters. These are people with lots of time and money sunk into their current "solutions," and they're only going to try a new one if it seems like a sure thing. Reviews and pre- release buzz are thus critical. Especially significant is that a good aggregate review scorecard doesn't necessarily make your product, but a bad one can certainly break it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This genius map explains how everything in physics is connected - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/this-genius-video-explains-everything-you-need-to-know-about-physics-in-8-minutes <comment><USER2> Direct links to the video and hi-res image by Dominic Walliman:

Image: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/95869671@N08](https://www.flickr.com/photos/95869671@N08)

Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZihywtixUYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZihywtixUYo)</comment>


On technical debt - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/7bac65edf349 <comment><USER2> One often overlooked feature shared by technical and real debt is discharge via bankruptcy. One of the impediments to understanding technical debt, I think, is that our primary experience with bankruptcy is with personal bankruptcy and it's potential effects on credit score. When technical debt is discharged via bankruptcy, it is more like commercial bankruptcy...it's an organization or a project that dissolves with the debt and there are no direct personal consequences for an individual's credit score.

To put it another way, technical debt doesn't have to be repaid if the product/project/company fails. Even better it doesn't have to be repaid if the company succeeds to a scale where the library/product/project becomes obsolescent and must be replaced for reasons that could not have been reasonably anticipated at the time the first iteration was created.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! One of the reasons I wrote this post was experiences gained working in a team that had in effect become insolvent (in the tech debt sense).

In the end we went for a combination of large re-writes (which we didn't feel good about, heeding Joel Spolskys advice) and Strangulation Architecture.

<comment><USER2> This is all second hand from listening to Spolsky's podcasts.

Spolsky's advice regarding rewrites highlights perhaps different kinds of technical debt. The code for Fogbugz was _well written_ VBscript and the motivation for Wasabi was expanding the market for Fogbugz to Linux...I believe this produced an incremental increase of about 10% of sales.

Wasabi was a tool that supported the product and where the technical debt accrued. We might call the issue with Fogbugz "platform debt" and at the time Fogbugz was written, few people would have anticipated the growth of Linux...and based on Spolsky's description of sales, focusing on Windows was a sound platform choice -- in 2000 Fogbugz would have been unlikely to have succeeded in its market as a web based product.</comment></comment></comment>


CEO Workflows: Joel Gascoigne of Buffer, the People's CEO - <AUTHOR> http://knowledge.startupkit.io/ceo-workflows-joel-gascoigne-buffer-people-ceo/

<comment><USER2> The X minutes remaining widget was so distracting that I couldn't finish the article on my mobile. May want to add a dismiss button or remove it.</comment>


Ask HN: Does FB's chronological sort work for you? - <AUTHOR> I don't love FB's algorithm and often change to chronological order instead. About half of the time, it ends up feeding me very old posts (from days ago) even though it shows me newer posts if I'm in FB-algorithm-mode. I have had this issue for many months, if not years. Do others have the same problem?<p>The cynic in me assumes that FB is aware of this issue, and that they don't mind it being broken because it means more people end up using their algorithmic ordering. But it's possible that I'm one of the only people with this issue, or that there's a less cynical explanation for such a seemingly simple/obvious bug persisting for so long. <comment><USER2> It's completely inconsistent. I would expect to see reverse chronological of all activity of everyone I follow but whatever it is it's not that. I can't really identify how it chooses which posts to display.

</comment><comment><USER2> No, it hasn't worked for years.

<comment><AUTHOR> What behavior do you see? Does it ever work?</comment></comment>


Adobe ID login is down - <AUTHOR> https://status.creativecloud.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of ironic, all services and even support depend on Adobe ID working...

Very quiet on the Adobe forums suddenly ;-)

Twitter feed: [https://twitter.com/@AdobeCare](https://twitter.com/@AdobeCare)</comment>


Sprout Social Gets $10 Million From NEA - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/02/22/sprout-social-gets-10-million-from-nea/?mod=google_news_blog <comment><USER2> I actually work on this site; and I use it for all of my stuff. It's daily getting better and we are constantly coming out with new features. I would highly advocate people to at least try it out, and suggest features and issues.</comment>


Dancing cubes in rhythm (html5 audio BPM + three.js experiment) - <AUTHOR> http://thbar.github.com/playground/

<comment><AUTHOR> A quick experiment I did today while on the train - I wanted to sync some 3D with beats in a music and found that html5 audio is good enough for this.</comment>


Implement cursor-swiping in half an afternoon - <AUTHOR> http://sergimansilla.com/blog/swipeselection-in-an-afternoon/

<comment><USER2> Whoa, this is such a simple, intuitive and straight-forward mechanic, and nobody (i.e. manufacturers) thought about it before!?

I very much hate selection and cursor handling in all platforms. This, or something similar, should definitely become a standard way of moving around text on virtual keyboards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Now that I have it it is SO intuitive and fast, one wonders why no phone makers have gotten creative about the cursor placement/selection UX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of behavior of (mouse- or touchpad-driven) Acme editor: [http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/samsung-copy-paste-bug- aka-n...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/samsung-copy-paste-bug-aka-never- buy-samsung-galaxy-phones/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you jailbreak you can have this on the iPad + iPhone with "SwipeSelection". It is great.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure whether I'd prefer to have this or the swipe-to-enter-text that I've got on my stock(ish) JB keyboard. I suppose two fingers to scroll might be a nice compromise :).

</comment><comment><USER6> Just get a keyboard? (As in are there any tablets with a slide out keyboard. Like on the HTC Desire-Z, or Motorolla Photon Q)</comment>


Sonos smart speaker controller API and CLI written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mlang/ronor <comment><USER2> I'm done with Sonos after they removed the ability to play music straight off the phone onto the speakers. The only way now to play music is via a service like Spotify or if you set up an mp3 server via SAMBA.

They keeping cutting features and making their older speakers obsolete. I'm furious as an early adopter of Sonos that they are essentially bricking my older speakers or making them useless for no reason. I can't Airplay to them either because they are older. I can see in the next year or so them completely rendering my speakers useless, which is unethical. I'm done with them.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why HNers are willing to buy smart speakers when we make such a fuss lamenting the fact that nobody makes dumb TVs anymore. Buy dumb speakers and connect them to a little PC so you can run whatever software you want.

<comment><USER4> Pure convenience here. Sure, 20 year old me would hate me for putting cloud connected smart speakers in my home but I'm not 20 anymore and available time was replaced by available money. I honestly looked and would have paid more for a fully local speech to text hub with basic apps and a nice API but there simply wasn't anything that looked like it wouldn't annoy the living hell out of me. I don't want to setup raspberry pis around my house, maintain and update weird open source stacks and whatnot. I want to stream stuff to speakers, control devices around the house through voice and sometimes use other convenience functions.

Fully realizing the hit on privacy, I understand the thing enough and, more importantly, trust my particular manufacturer enough that it simply outweighs that concern for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At first I was excited because the Sonos software stack frustrates me, but looking at source it just hits api.sonos.com. Would love to control the speakers directly on my LAN.

<comment><USER6> Do you know if the speakers are discoverable locally, and what protocol they use for that?

I know Apple is all mDNS (for AirPlay), I don't know anything about Sonos though.

<comment><USER7> Sonos is (or was) mostly UPnP with some extensions... so for discovery they used SSDP [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Service_Discovery_Proto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Service_Discovery_Protocol).

I messed around with their stack and internals for a while about ten years ago... some remnants remain

[https://github.com/NathanHowell/Sonority/tree/master/](https://github.com/NathanHowell/Sonority/tree/master/)

[https://github.com/NathanHowell/Sonority/tree/core/](https://github.com/NathanHowell/Sonority/tree/core/)

[https://github.com/NathanHowell/upd2](https://github.com/NathanHowell/upd2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder what the point of interest is with this project. Libraries for Sonos access have been available for well over a decade[1].

Is this interesting simply because a device with a well-documented API is now accessible from Rust? If not... what new information is being presented?

[1] [https://github.com/topics/sonos](https://github.com/topics/sonos)

</comment><comment><USER9> This would be a lot more useful with some documentation and a readme.

<comment><USER10> I was about to say the same. Never understood the "read the source" attitude. If the developer wants to gain users or maybe even get help in developing it, at least a simple installation and usage example should be there.

15 minutes work for him, would save every user 30 or more minutes.

Not going to try it because of this. A shame. Did find another interesting cli though: [https://pypi.org/project/sonos-cli/](https://pypi.org/project/sonos- cli/)

<comment><USER11> The project is 12 days old.

Maybe you could contribute instead of complaining?

<comment><USER10> I wish! All I can contribute is expressing my concerns. Don't want to be impolite, don't want to complain. Just express my concerns.

I find it quite frustrating that open source/current company projects have no or little documentation. Even for a 12 days project it is frustrating. It is just good habit that documentation is as important as code. I like to say that if it has no documentation, it does not exist (to the user/contributor). I also think that code is a way of communicating with your future self or future developers. So clear code and clear documentation is important. Code is not important to the computer, the computer does not care about naming things.

<comment><USER12> From another perspective: Whilst I am likely to spend far more time documenting than coding in my work, when I build something at home to fix a problem just for me I'm far less likely because it's for me.

In the case of this particular developer, it isn't just for themselves, but also in a different language, and they've done their best just to reflect an existing API. They've asked for pull requests.

I can understand not wanting to do the enormous amount of work of translating an API that is already pretty-much documented when I won't really see any return at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The funny thing about Sonos speakers is that they run STP amongst themselves. If improperly configured, this can cause unexpected STP behavior on a network, and random ports to be shut off.

</comment><comment><USER14> Have we all started to mention the language now when we write a piece of software?

<comment><USER15> Well, it's Rust! That means it will never crash, leak memory, or be susceptible to buffer overflow exploits. Plus it's fast! You can listen to a 2-minute song in 1 minute 50 seconds!

<comment><USER16> This is golden. (And for those who aren't familiar with rust, it can leak memory and it tends to crash intead of exhibiting undefined behavior... but you could write it to listen to a 2 minute song at a faster pace :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi more than capable of all the automation I could possibly need with my Sonos speakers along with almost any other device you can think of.

[https://www.home-assistant.io/](https://www.home-assistant.io/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Similar project but for Beoplay & written in Swift: [https://github.com/tlk/beoplay-macos-remote- cli](https://github.com/tlk/beoplay-macos-remote-cli) (shameless plug)

</comment><comment><USER19> Docs are here if anyone is looking for what you can do: [https://developer.sonos.com/reference/](https://developer.sonos.com/reference/)

I'll assume not everything is covered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, only the control API is implemented for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Similar project but integrates with Spotify (written in node) [https://github.com/kswilster/bronos](https://github.com/kswilster/bronos) (shameless plug)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've actually built sonos-web [1] a couple of years ago, and started to rewrite it in Rust [2], but didn't have much time to do it.

It should be a good place to start if anybody wants to extend it (:

[1]: [https://github.com/denysvitali/sonos- web](https://github.com/denysvitali/sonos-web)

[2]: [https://github.com/denysvitali/sonos-web- rs](https://github.com/denysvitali/sonos-web-rs)

</comment><comment><USER22> How could I make a LED light show with Sonos? I would need to get FFT data of the audio and synchronize with Sonos. Is it possible?

</comment><comment><USER23> Love this!

If I create a group of speakers, how do I play something on them? If I have 2 speakers that are airplay-capable, Do I just pick one?

</comment><comment><USER24> I never used Rust. Looking at the code, I see a "Cargo.toml" file that reminds me of composer.json and package.json in that it seems to contain dependencies.

Where are these pulled from? Is this the same game as with other dependency managers in that you blindly trust a tree of code written by random people?

<comment><USER25> They're pulled from crates.io. I suppose it works as every other dependency manager, except that you can't have a left-pad because crates can't be removed.

In this specific case, most dependencies are authored by people well-known and trusted in the community. The Rust standard library is pretty well-rounded (not compared to Python sense, but it's not like JavaScript either), so they're not something like left-pad or is-odd.

You have there an error handling crate by the second most prolific Rust compiler contributor (if the counts are correct), an OAuth client, an HTTP one, a interactive line editor (like readline), _the_ serialization library in the ecosystem with its JSON support crate, a TOML config parser, the URL parser used by Servo and a crate for determining user paths on Unix.

<comment><USER26> With cargo (Rust build tool) you don't need to use crates.io _always_ .

For instance, you can target a repository and even a specific commit like this in gour cargo.toml file:

      [dependencies]
      package = { git = "https://github.com/...../something.git", rev = "commit_hash_like_9876541_for_instance" }

<comment><USER27> You can still have your dependencies reference the source cargo packages, but overwrite it in a patch or vendor section.

Don't specify the git repo directly in dependencies unless it's an unpublished crate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Written in Rust". That alone makes it worthy of the frontpage.

</comment><comment><USER29> The speakers are quite smart; the people willing to use them and get their entire life recorded by Google and Amazon - somewhat less smart. IMHO.

<comment><USER11> Sonos sells speakers that don't have any alexa or google integration.

<comment><USER29> Website: [https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/one.html](https://www.sonos.com/en- us/shop/one.html)

says "Google Assistant" and "Alexa Built-in".

<comment><USER30> I own a couple of these. Because it has multiple options for virtual assistants, nothing is running out of the box as it wouldn't know which account to use or what service to route to. You have to go through an additional setup process after setting up the speaker for music playback.

<comment><USER29> Do you know for certain that nothing is running silently out of the box? Or cannot be remotely triggered to run?

<comment><USER31> Do you know something is running / can be triggered? Someone can't prove a negative (X isn't running) as easily as a positive (X is), so the burden of proof should fall on you. Saying "yeah, but how do you know your toaster can't be remotely triggered to record you?" isn't useful.

Maybe your threat model doesn't allow any hardware with a speaker that has updates, but that's not a reason to say it's an invalid setup for everyone's threat model nor to claim that, even without evidence, it's definitely going to be abused.

<comment><USER29> Ah ok, the burden of proof is on me. Your powerful logic has defeated me and now you are safe and sound with your smart speaker which doesn't eavesdrop on you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Find the fastest route via a place - <AUTHOR> http://www.road.li

<comment><USER2> Can it be modified to support more than one "via place"? And what if I don't really care about the order I visit each location, but just want to minimize total length?

<comment><USER3> It's rare that I like something both as a joke and as a real feature request.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6322875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6322875)

<comment><AUTHOR> I reposted because I've made some improvements and open sourced it since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tested going from my house, to a pizza joint, to work with both your site and with google and got the same result. The only difference is that google gave me a straight forward total time, while I have to do the math on your site and its a smaller map.

I think what separates your service from what google does is that it embeds the search in your route - so that I can choose between different places along the route, which is cool. I know I am always wanting to know what is the best place to stop for food along my route home that I haven't tried and it is a bit cumbersome with the way google is set up.

I would make that much clearer up front in how yours is different than google because I got the same "result" after I selected the place I wanted. As it is you are focusing on telling people about the result, rather than the options along the route, which is the real service.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was just testing OsmAnd, this fits in nicely. So I try the same route...

> Roadli currently only supports trips shorter than 300 km

Okay great. So basically you made something that can do less than Google Maps, TomTom and OsmAnd can? Especially if you include the option to add an N number of waypoints.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is cool. I'd love to see via multiple places, since I'm sometimes borrowing a car for an hour and optimizing for running as many errands as I can (e.g., dry cleaners, grocery store, hardware store), and it would be great if they were all close.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can't I just add the destination of a McDonalds or something to my route in Google Maps? I don't see the need for this?

<comment><USER9> This gives you the McDonalds that minimizes the overall distance traveled.

<comment><USER8> But Google Maps, especially Google Now can tell me the closest one.

<comment><USER10> True, but this is useful if you want to stop somewhere along the way somewhere. For example, I've had a few instances where I wanted to stop by a store on the way home from work. This would find the best one to stop at on the way home. Google Maps just shows me the closest one to my current location - I don't really care where it is, or when I stop at it, as long as it is on my way home.

<comment><USER8> Ah okay, I see your point. That does make sense then!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AnimEigo: The AnimEigo Titling System - <AUTHOR> https://www.animeigo.com/about/secret-history-animeigo <comment><USER2> I'm surprised I didn't know any of that story but the biggest nostalgia hit in the article is not about early subs but about how awesome the 90s were (even if they sucked) before the world became connected. Getting an Internet connection in 96 was like the discovery age all over again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouts to the long dead AnimEigo chatroom. I still talk to a few folks from there to this day.

</comment><comment><USER4> VirtualDub is another amazing tool built out of the anime community [http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_history.html](http://www.virtualdub.org/virtualdub_history.html)

<comment><USER5> That makes sense! I never knew, wow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aegisub is how we did it in the aughts. [http://www.aegisub.org/](http://www.aegisub.org/) But fansubs are dead now.

<comment><USER2> In what way are fansubs dead now? I routinely see every show subbed by multiple groups.

<comment><USER7> Yeah I still use fansubs for everything. Unless you're only into shounen you kinda have to go to fansubs for any current shows. Some of the top groups really do a nice job as well, and the translations often feel much less bland than the commercial ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's funny that they praise the voice acting talent they got from NC because their voice acting talent was awful then.

Some of those people stuck with it though for 20+ years and now they do great dubs for "anime related games", sometimes as good as the best Japanese voice actors.</comment>


Wikipedia is being manipulated, you can't trust anybody now - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting/ We are truly doomed.  If this is part of the current problem we are so f'ed.  I mean what happened to all the weapons of mass destructions. And now this - you can't trust Wikipedia how the f am i supposed to do home work much less invest my retirement savings? <comment><USER2> What is the world coming to? If you can't trust information about controversial topics posted through anonymous accounts on the internet then who can you trust?

<comment><USER3> <http://www.google.de/search?q=%22I+trust+*%22>

<comment><USER4> Good find. I trust Severus Snape also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On niche subjects where certain parties have vested interests, this is almost bound to happen. In such cases, Wikipedia is like power up-for-grabs. People who care will take it.

</comment><comment><USER6> 'Byrne has long argued that the press dismissed his views at least in part because Weiss - hiding behind various anonymous accounts - spent years controlling the relevant articles on Wikipedia, the "free online encyclopedia anyone can edit."'

If The Register is reporting this correctly - a long shot by current online journalism standards - then this guy is simply a crank. Who needs Wikipedia in order to get heard?

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call him a crank, maybe he is even right, but this was my thought as well...he could maintain a blog for example, write all his findings there a now everyone could see what he was up to back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The title of this submission should be changed to that of the actual article:

 _Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia's naked shorts_

</comment><comment><USER9> Aw shucks!</comment>


What will kill the cloud? - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/2/1/what-will-kill-the-cloud.html

<comment><USER2> A new buzz-word for the same old idea.</comment>


Voxel Pops: Lexaloffle Show Voxatron Editor - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/21/voxel-pops-lexaloffle-show-voxatron-editor/

<comment><USER2> I love the recent more-mainstream popularity of indie and innovatively-retro games!

I'm sure there was a vibrant scene making these games in the last decade, but I never saw it. It wasn't at all mainstream even in computer programming circles.

In the 90s it seemed possible for any one of us to make a game themselves and somehow get it on a magazine coverdisk and be famous! Making a game was something a dedicated individual could just-about do. Llamasoft, Archer Maclean, that rollercoaster game, etc. Even back to small shops like populous and so on. Fantastic!

And then in the last decade I forgot about that feeling.

And suddenly minecraft and world of love have somehow catapulted that small- time big-fun gaming into the mainstream hacker news!

I guess it might have been the iphone app idea.

Now I want to go make a game myself! It must be mid-life crisis and harking back to our youth...

<comment><USER3> Good timing! The Ludum Dare 48-hour game programming contest is just over a week away.

<http://www.ludumdare.com>

A number of these folks, incl. Notch and Lexaloffle, are #ld48 regulars.</comment></comment>


Pizza Inversion - A Pattern for Efficient Resource Consumption - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/docs/pizza-inv.html

<comment><USER2> I learned about this design pattern by watching folks eat street pizza in NYC.</comment>


Writing iphone music - by the producer Spencer Sternberg. - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedev.net/reference/music/features/iPhoneTunes/

<comment><USER2> The graphics are great, the music is excellent, but the game looks boring! Why? It's slow! Side-scrollers should be fast and dynamic - I don't ever remember playing a slow sidescroller that I enjoyed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Which software are these guys using?

Any recommendations for music composition software?</comment>


David Beazley puts his 1978 Superboard on the Cloud [Pycon talk] - <AUTHOR> http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4878868

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, earlier video from a month or two ago: <http://blip.tv/file/4639616></comment>


Timer-Tab - <AUTHOR> http://www.timer-tab.com/ <comment><USER2> In a pre-app 2007 world, this would have been a killer web app for the v1 iPhone.

<comment><USER3> Not sure why this was downvoted. This is an interesting and perfectly valid observation.

I would go even further:

A surprisingly high number of "apps" could be replaced with web apps, where "installation" of the app means the JS/HTML is cached in the browser, and "upgrade" means a new version is downloaded by the browser (e.g. due to changed ETag identifier, or whatever).

Moreover, these "apps" would have almost no access to personal user data, which may be bad for business, but is more often that not a win from the privacy and customer protection perspective.

<comment><USER4> Upvote for webapps, the sooner we come back to the web, the better we will be.

<comment><USER5> Strange, i'm trying to get further from the web.

As it stands, everything i do is web related in one way or another. From storage to home assistants to note taking and blah blah blah, they're all on the web hosted by someone else.

I know there are a few alternatives, but none of it really makes me happy. Currently, i'm trying to make my own home cloud, with a focus on simplicity.. but i doubt i'll succeed. I just know that nothing seems simple. I'm talking like, single binary "can't fuck it up" simple. Because it has to be stupidly easy to be used by my grandma, even if that means less features.

<comment><USER6> JS/HTML can be run on your own machine without needing any cloud or other external service. You could distribute the application as a single .zip file or something, like binary executables often are. I've seen people sell games this way.

<comment><USER7> Yep, this is not a bad idea but unfortunately browsers do not allow you access to local storage since they do not treat the local filesystem as designated domain paths.. which is completely super annoying & makes offline webapps a very temporal thing since they NEED a domain name cached before you can use them.

Note: based on my experience when hacking around with local app 2 years ago on Chrome and FF so things may have changed?

<comment><USER8> You can use node if you want those kinds of permissions. Or any other general purpose language with runtime.

<comment><USER9> Node is not exactly "can't fuck it up" simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you set a timer for 5 minutes and close the tab for 30 seconds, it continues with 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Very cool. The one thing I don't like is using youtube embeds for the audio notification. It uses more browser resources and data than seems necessary, and adds the minor inconvenience of unblocking the scripts.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you look closely you can see the magic. [http://giphy.com/gifs/timer-timer- tab-eeJNaxWXZGMO4](http://giphy.com/gifs/timer-timer-tab-eeJNaxWXZGMO4)

<comment><USER12> What do you mean?

<comment><USER13> The favicon gets updated.

<comment><USER12> I thought that was the whole point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 503 - Over Quota for me :(

</comment><comment><USER15> It's very interesting in Safari on macOS when you switch to another tab. (I guess) You can see how Safari's power saving kicks in as the counter stops refreshing the tab title instantly after the 10th second and the next refresh is after 10 more seconds and the intervals of refresh increase as time passes.

<comment><USER16> That sort of things was the reason Android was bad at Audio I believe. "logic" first design backfired for time consistent needs. Also HTML5 music toys/apps had a hard time (sic) working when not in focus. It either slows down, has random tempo or just stops altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It saddens me that we're living in an age where a static HTML / JS website ends up hosted on Google App Engine and can go "over quota".

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a fancy looking timer/stopwatch? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER19> I think the updating of the page title in the browser tab is the main feature. Also, the favicon updates. So you can be doing something in another tab and see the timer in the timer tab.

<comment><USER18> Is it terribly difficult to update the page title if the tab is not in focus? I guess browser pauses js interaction with DOM if the tab is out of focus.

<comment><USER20> I use this to deal with setTimeout() slowing down in unfocused tabs: [https://github.com/turuslan/HackTimer](https://github.com/turuslan/HackTimer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is quite nice to throw on a screen in the NOC/SOC. However I would have liked if it was possible to set the alarm clock via the URL.

<comment><USER22> I don't do alarms, just timers, but my site does it like this: [http://5.minutestocountdown.com/](http://5.minutestocountdown.com/)

One nice benefit of doing the number first in the url is that the second time you set a timer you can just type a single number and url autocomplete will fill in the rest for you.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for this simple tool, I'll definitely use it next time.

I broke it by putting in a non-integer number of minutes. Is this even fixable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You can also google a timer or stopwatch, but it wouldn't have any favicon notifications.

[https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=5s+timer](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=5s+timer)

<comment><USER25> I like how you linked to a "5s" timer, but the timer is actually 5 minutes.

<comment><USER26> It looks like a bug! even changing 5s to "5 seconds" doesn't fix it

.com doesn't have this issue

[https://www.google.com/search?q=5s+timer](https://www.google.com/search?q=5s+timer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Neat, there's also: [http://e.ggtimer.com/10](http://e.ggtimer.com/10) minutes

<comment><USER28> try again: your link goes to 10 seconds. (Might be an issue with HN link detection algo.)

<comment><USER29> [http://e.ggtimer.com/10%20minutes](http://e.ggtimer.com/10%20minutes)

Seems they don't support underscores as a separator so you get that ugly `%20` URL encoding of the `space` character in the URL making it look like "20 minutes" (or "10 modulo 20 minutes")..

<comment><USER30> [http://e.ggtimer.com/10min](http://e.ggtimer.com/10min) works fine too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For everyone getting 503 Over Quota error, check WaybackMachine: [https://web.archive.org/web/20161209044611/http://www.timer-...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161209044611/http://www.timer- tab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> In Chrome the Youtube video that is used as alarm sound won't play until the tab is active, so if you are not looking at the browser and catch the tab flashing red, you won't notice.

</comment><comment><USER33> Very cool! I made a similar tool last year that I use for Pomodoro. The favicon tomato changes from red to green when time is up, and it only updates the title time once a minute, but I find that to be less distracting while I'm working.

[https://roche.io/pomodoro/](https://roche.io/pomodoro/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been using this in conjunction with Alinof Timer from the Mac App Store for shorter deadlines (translucent overlay timer).

Pretty effective at keeping me focused when I'm exhausted/groggy.

</comment><comment><USER35> I can't get the timer to function on chrome on android. The focus jumps around and the start button doesn't seem to work

</comment><comment><USER4> If you could do (and you can), do several timers at the same time, some people actually need those things. Just an idea.

</comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps add an option of using static favicon? Favicon flickers noticeably in Firefox when updated.

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone has recommendation for terminal friendly version of timer app?

</comment><comment><USER38> I like it!

</comment><comment><USER39> The moment this page opened, this song played in my mind: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK- NcRmVcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw)</comment>


Ask HN: How to convert a WebRTC stream to RTMP? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
We are developing a streaming web application that needs to broadcast a WebRTC stream to ~5K people.
But we have found that WebRTC has a theoretical limitation of 1000 users per stream. So, alone it will not work for our purpose.
We can either: A) Implement a solution that can increase WebRTC's number of viewers limitation. Do you know any solution for this? B) Use a transcoder to transcode WebRTC to RTMP, and then use a service such as UStream to broadcast to the audience. Do you know any WebRTC to RTMP transcoder service?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Hi,

The solution really depends on the details of your use case and the acceptable delay it would require. You can go for a P2P mesh topology, or you can just use streaming media servers in the backend ; in that case you will use WebRTC from your web app to the server, then the server route/transcode/optimize the distribution of the stream to the clients.

A few resources: \- [https://tokbox.com/platform/beta- programs/](https://tokbox.com/platform/beta-programs/) \- [http://www.streamroot.io](http://www.streamroot.io) \- [https://www.peer5.com](https://www.peer5.com) \- [https://webtorrent.io](https://webtorrent.io) \- [http://www.dialogic.com/en/landing/webrtc.aspx](http://www.dialogic.com/en/landing/webrtc.aspx) \- [https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiVideobridgePerformance](https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiVideobridgePerformance)</comment>


Inaugural release of Apache Lucy, Version 0.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://firstname.lastname@example.com%3E

<comment><USER2> When announcing things with cute names, can people please put a short description in the link?

For everyone else: Lucy's apparently a full-text search library written in C targeting dynamic languages, with Perl bindings to start with.

</comment><comment><USER3> The announcement says: Lucy is a "loose C" port of Apache Lucene, a search engine library for Java -- it is similar in purpose to Lucene, but designed to take advantage of C's unique capabilities.

I'm wondering what these unique capabilities are. Speed? Smaller memory footprint? And I wonder what the reason is behind doing this. I'm all for C project but very curious as to why when Lucene was very well done.

<comment><USER4> I'm one of the developers, although not currently very active. The main "unique capability" is closer integration to the machine. Our approach has been "The OS is our VM".

We use mmap() heavily, and when running on 64-bit systems take liberal advantage of the giant address space. Using the system to do more of the buffering also allows us to have lightweight processes that can start quickly. We think there will be both speed and memory advantages in the long run. The other main difference is that C is much easier to integrate with other languages than Java. We're starting out with Perl bindings, but have plans for Ruby, Python, Lua, Tcl, and others. The goal is to offer a truly native interface from the language of your choice.

The degree of host language integration is wild. You'll be able to seamlessly subclass just about any part of the C library in any supported language. Nothing is ready beyond C and Perl, but eventually you'll be able to have your indexer in one language, and your customized searchers in a couple more, while all sharing the same shared system cache.

As for why? Marvin, the main developer started the project as KinoSearch at a time when Lucene wasn't really ready for prime time. He's been very interested in real time indexing, and at the time Lucene didn't handle this well. I got interested because I was looking for something lighter weight than Lucene, where I could try to blend the boundaries between search and database retrieval. Lucene had too many layers of abstraction for my purposes. A parallel might be SQLite and Postgres. Both have their place, but Lucy is more on the SQLite side of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the Perl binding library in CPAN, in its simplest form: <http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Lucy::Simple>

The synopsis is quite elucidative. Just cpanm installed it and in 10 minutes had a program that indexes and searches a collection of files with highlighting. Looks promising!

</comment><comment><USER6> How much better is it compared to CLucene? CLucene got stuck at 1.9 and now shows very little activity, while Java Lucene is rolling towards version 4. But still CLucene was as less memory hog and faster than Java Lucene at it's active time. They claim it was 2.5 times faster.

If Lucy can deliver the latest progresses in Java Lucene as a usable C library, that should be a very good news for me. Lucene still is the best choice for large data indexing and searching solutions.

<comment><USER4> CLucene aimed for binary compatibility with Lucene indexes, and as a result had very little room to innovate. Lucy started out with the same approach, but decided early on that it was better to take the best parts of Lucene's internals while not being bound to all of them.

Some parts will be leading Lucy, and some will be catching up. There's already increasing cross-pollination between the two. It's a very loose port at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried to get into Lucene (using SOLR) recently but was put off by it's complexity for what was, in my case, a simple use case (searching through a large document set of html, txt, and doc files quickly using proximity search).

After futzing for hours with XSLT and writing scripts to submit content via the REST API, I found out about FTS4 in SQLite, and was impressed by it's relative simplicity. I had something working in under an hour in Python.

<comment><USER8> Wait, what!? You have at least two good options for Solr libaries in Python, neither of which brings you anywhere close to xslt.

\- <http://haystacksearch.org/> \- <http://code.google.com/p/pysolr/>

<comment><USER9> Also, Sunburnt: <https://github.com/tow/sunburnt/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why would apache incubate a competing product like this? And what exactly are the unique capabilities that this project can take advantage of? Lucene is already extremely easy to interface to since its just a rest interface.

<comment><USER11> Solr provides a REST interface. Lucene is a Java library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> clicky <http://incubator.apache.org/lucy/></comment>


Vert.x native: how to run a JVM app in 10Mb of RAM - <AUTHOR> https://www.jetdrone.xyz/2018/08/10/Vertx-native-image-10mb.html <comment> old-gregg I haven't been following Java community in a while, can someone clarify this for me please: so the benefit of "thin" JVM comes from GraalVM or Vert.x? I looked at [https://vertx.io/](https://vertx.io/) and it says nothing to me, I have no idea what a "reactive" application is. Is it an async event loop library? And then there's Polyglot, so now there are 3 new things in the picture.

What do I need to have a simple "hello world" CLI Java app which starts within 25ms and doesn't eat more than 10MB of RAM? Is GrallVM enough?

<comment><USER2> Vert.x is a framework for developing server applications using an event loop (think Node.js but for the JVM, with the ability to fallback to normal threads). If you've heard of Spring Boot or Spark, it's a lighter/faster alternative to those (which are generally based off of heavier webservers like Tomcat or Jetty).

Graal compiles JVM bytecode to native code, so that's the critical factor for your CLI app use case. You'd only need Vert.x if you were writing a server.

<comment><USER3> > Spring Boot

Vert.x is nothing like Spring Boot. Spring Boot combines Spring with autoconfiguration and the ability to run in its own container. Spring Boot can run on Undertow which the other branch of JBoss marketing promotes a lighter weight than Netty.

<comment><USER4> But they're both frameworks for writing a server right?

<comment><USER3> Not Spring Boot. Spring Boot is a framework for implementing a server side application. For example you use Spring Boot to implement a RESTful server side application including persistence and security. You do not use Spring Boot to write an HTTP server, instead Spring Boot uses an existing HTTP server.

<comment><USER5> Vert.x uses an existing HTTP server as well: Netty.

<comment><USER3> I look at Netty as an async IO library. You use Netty to build your own servers. Yes, I know, Netty ships with an HTTP client and server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have recently been trying out Micronaut [1] which is a similar idea. However Micronaut does not use Graal and manages a very similar memory footprint [2]. So I don't think you necessarily need Graal to achieve just that.

I have actually been surprisingly happy with my initial experience with Micronaut. It is clearly engineered as a next-generation framework where all the defaults are set to exactly what you want to build small microservices right from the start. I am using Groovy and it still starts up in ~ 1 second with minimal memory use.

[1] [http://micronaut.io/](http://micronaut.io/)

[2] [https://jaxenter.com/micronaut-framework- microservices-14245...](https://jaxenter.com/micronaut-framework- microservices-142457.html)

<comment><USER3> It looks as if Micronaut is using compile time class generation through annotation processors. This explains a lot as this probably removes a lot of not all of their reflection at startup and runtime.

This seems to be the right way to do things in Java to me since I learned about Dagger [https://github.com/google/dagger](https://github.com/google/dagger)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bitcoin as example. Ugh. Anyone got a more interesting use case?

Using Unifi Controller in Docker right now, uses 300 MB for Java (OpenJDK 1.8 x86-64) and 63 MB for Mongo DB. Haven't compared with UNMS though which needs to run in an Ubuntu 16.04 VM.

<comment><USER8> I sold my UniFi gear because I shouldn't have to install software on a server or buy an accessory to get the full features of my device. Their gear is great, but there are several lines that can't be managed from the same control plane. It was infuriating.

<comment> old-gregg > It was infuriating.

What part? The Unifi controller software is not for "a device", it's for multiple devices, imagine having to manage SSIDs / auth for primary+guest Wifi network across just 5 access points. I don't think anyone would enjoy logging into 5 separate AP UIs. Add your Unifi gateway + switches to that and the need to have a unified control plane is pretty obvious.

If you want self-contained, that's a separate product line, usually prefixed with "Edge". What's "infuriating" about having two product lines I don't understand. Honda makes motorcycles, boat engines, cars and jets and nobody gets pissed about it.

<comment><USER9> GP is saying the exact opposite of what you think he's saying

> there are several lines that _can't_ be managed from the same control plane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Minor typo in the title: "10Mb" would be 10 Megabits.

They really mean "10 MB" as in 10 Megabytes.

<comment><USER11> Its pretty clear from context what it means

<comment><USER10> Megabits is often used in the context of RAM.

<comment><USER12> At the hardware (RAM chip) level, yes. At the software level, basically never.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Vert.x is pretty sweet. It's basically like Node.js but automagically multi- threaded and will also play nicely with fibers.

Performance is usually way better than any Spring-driven app.

</comment><comment><USER14> Was trying to seek akka support(for native-image), but looks it has sadly been left behind [https://discuss.lightbend.com/t/akka-and-graal-s-native- imag...](https://discuss.lightbend.com/t/akka-and-graal-s-native-image- tool/940)

<comment><USER15> That seems more like the work just hasn't been done yet, not that is has explicitly been left behind as your phrasing suggests. In fact, multiple requests to file issues/bugs have been made in that thread.</comment></comment>


Massive Google Play privacy issue - <AUTHOR> http://phetdreams.tumblr.com/post/42959902001/massive-google-play-privacy-issue

<comment><USER2> Well, it's a monetary transaction. The same happens when anything is purchased with a credit card anywhere.</comment>


You couldn't make it up: HP to auto print Conde Naste content using your ink - <AUTHOR> http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/111012a.html?mtxs=rss-corp-combined&aoid=35252

<comment><USER2> The title is trolling. The press release describes a service where people can subscribe to Wired (and other publications) and have them printed in home rather than receive them by mail.

At first brush I agree that this sounds like a terrible idea, but it isn't what the headline makes it out to be.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't intend for the title to be trolling. When I first read this I couldn't believe it was a genuine press release. The idea of HP launching a "printing magazines at home" and then send you ink to do it on a subscription basis seems absurd to me.

<comment><USER3> It seems absurd to you, but I know several people who will be very excited about this. They don't read on their computer; they print web pages and carry them around in a folder to read later. Strange to you and I, but exactly what some people want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand - the submission title makes it seem like this is some kind of mandatory thing, but the article makes it sound like it's an optional service for Conde Nast subscribers?

</comment><comment><USER5> So, let me make sure I get this straight...

In a world where almost everyone is trying to go paperless...

And where ink is ridiculously expensive...

And in a world where damn near anything can be had online...

You want to (opt-in, thank gawd) automatically print something that could be read online, using up paper and expensive ink that isn't yours?

More surprising, is that someone suggested this at a meeting, and nobody had the balls to point out the problems with this plan.

</comment><comment><USER6> That is possibly the worst idea I've heard this week... On top of the fact that it uses expensive ink, just imagine the environmental cost of all that wasted paper...

<comment><USER7> Well if the alternative is to get it delievered on paper then this may very well be the most environmentally sound way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is so ridiculous that looks like a The Onion article. Actually, wait, it almost is:

 _New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'_

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-apple-ceo-tim-cook- im-t...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-apple-ceo-tim-cook-im-thinking- printers,21207/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Its sounds like a spectacularly stupid idea, but it appears to be opt-in, so the title is pretty misleading here.

</comment><comment><USER10> Only in the parallel universe of corporate press releases do statements like these make sense:

- _"As the printer evolves into a content hub in homes and offices, HP Instant Ink allows additional content pages to flow – with savings and convenience for the user"_

- _""This project is one of the many ways Condé Nast is using emerging technology to engage consumers," said Julie Michalowski, senior vice president, Consumer Business Development, Condé Nast. "With this new HP pilot program, consumers will be able to have their favorite Condé Nast content at their fingertips.""_

</comment><comment><USER11> Since when is printing on paper an emerging technology? Before terminals included CRTs for display, you could print on green-bar paper. Isn't the paperless office supposed to be the future? Well ... I guess at least Gutenberg would be impressed!

</comment><comment><USER12> like a managed fax machine?

</comment><comment><USER13> Morally bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER14> Honey badger is Naste, so Naste

</comment><comment><USER15> I disagree that the title is trolling. The program itself is little more than another subscription service designed not only to lock the customer into paying for the information on a recurring basis, but also paying for the supplies, hardware and software by which to consume the information, again on a subscription basis. It's designed to sell more [overpriced] ink when printing less is becoming the norm, if not unnecessary.

Now, I'm not against doing business, but this type of service is aimed squarely at people who routinely find themselves locked into similar services that provide little or no value to the consumer. It's a tried and true business model and it works for those who work hard at it, but it's just scouring the bottom looking for the uninformed consumer. An iPad with subscriptions would be cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like reading on deadtree, but this eliminates economies of scale with printing. This is a failed idea already.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can it also print my email and place it in envelopes for me?</comment>


Long-reads, "tl;dr" articles - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone! Just was wondering how everyone feels about long-reads on the web. Do you read them completely? I personally don't haha xD
What if there was a startup which would provide shorter versions of an articles form the web but still keeping their main ideas?
Please check out this link - www.brieflify.com
These guys are doing something similar. It's a community of people who are making so called briefs to an articles and share them. I spent sometime there last couple of days and quickly fullfilled my "reading hunger" with different articles.
I liked it a lot. I am just not sure about the others. Do you think people need that?
Thanks and have a nice day! <comment><USER2> If I'm going to read an article, I want it to have some meat on it. I don't bother with anything under forty pages. And, in a well-written article, the information density is very high: that forty pages cannot be summarized in ten pages without cutting out thirty pages worth of information.

Now, I don't have any interest in reading ten pages of information over the course of forty pages. But, people generally don't seem to be doing that. Instead, I see the opposite: three words worth of information expanded out into half a page and posted on HN by someone with something to sell. I'd much prefer something that would help me determine whether or not something was content-free BS before clicking.

</comment><comment><USER3> The web is the perfect medium for long-form text, and I think we would lose a lot as a society if people only stuck to the Cliff's Notes' version of everything. If it's well written and interesting then I'll read it.

I believe a synopsis can be useful when it leads the reader to decide whether or not the original is worth their time, but it shouldn't take precedence over the original. On a news aggregator or a forum, the result of people refusing to even read beyond the article title can be damaging to the intellect and to discourse.

I may be a bit of an outlier, though. I read an entire book on a Palm z22 and it didn't bother me at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it's just because I'm part of the old-fart grey-hair "get off my lawn" crowd...

Stuff like "haha xD" is fine for online chat, but seems unprofessional and is inappropriate in something like a HN submission, especially if you're trying to get people to look at a project.

And as a counterpoint to brieflify, there's:

[http://longform.org/](http://longform.org/)

[https://longreads.com/](https://longreads.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Take a look at this [http://smmry.com/](http://smmry.com/) . I know that some bots on Reddit use similar methods to repost long articles as shortened tl;dr posts.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reader's Digest abridged blogs? no thanks....

<comment><USER7> Hi! What if one just don't have enough time to read articles until the end? I'd like to browse briefs and quickly load my brain with only key info if they can manage to make it 5-10x shorter than the original text.

<comment><USER6> If it's your job to stay current, and read hundreds and hundreds of articles to see what is relevant, then yes, I could see a tool for managing "information overload" being useful.

My tool for managing "information overload" is to be more picky about what I choose to read in the first place (HN and Reddit definitely help), and to deal with the fact that I can't read everything. I'd rather read 20 articles in full than read 200 articles in soundbite form. My brain isn't going to retain the information anyway, so I can only hold onto the coherent stuff.

I'm still waiting for a good e-reader with enough resolution and update speed to facilitate rapid scanning. Paper is amazingly fast to read; I can scan through a newspaper much much faster than the equivalent electronic form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> when an article seems too long, I copy the text and then paste it into an online text to speech website. Reading the text while listening to the audio helps me stay focused on the content. If you want to start something create a service that allows webmasters to provide an audio version of their text on their original web page.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most of them seem to be overly detailed. A couple were great, usually I TLDR.

The newyorker is the worst.

<comment><USER6> The New Yorker is meant to be read and savored, along with a glass of fine wine on a rainy day sitting in a comfortable chair by the fireplace, while jazz plays in the background. Or on a commuter train while trying to forget stresses of the world for a while. It's about "flow" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29)) while reading.

A "Reader's Digest" abridged version of the New Yorker misses the point.

If your attention span is in a TL;DR mood, don't read the New Yorker.

My favorite articles in past years:

\- [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/03/02/the- mountains-o...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/03/02/the-mountains-of- pi) \- [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1987/02/23/atchafalaya)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not a fan of long reads on a device, but I don't mind long reads on paper.

</comment><comment><USER11> we're all annoyed when the article you read lacks material: brief.</comment>


The First Plane in History to Fly Without Wing Flaps - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-02/drone-makes-first-flight-guided-by-air-jets-instead-of-flaps <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a video and a little more info: [https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk- england-manchester-48123041/u...](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-england- manchester-48123041/university-of-manchester-students-reveal-experimental- plane)</comment>


Dijkstra: Battle Between Managers / Beancounters & Technologists [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd11xx/EWD1165.PDF <comment><USER3> Maybe i'm out of my league by criticizing this incredibly intelligent man's arguments, but here goes.

First, Dijkstra argues, "There is no such thing as 'making money': some people succeed in transferring money out of the pockets of others into their own." The implication of his argument is that economic activity is zero sum - <USER2> can't create value, you can only take it from someone else. This is patently false - there is far more wealth in the world now than there was 100 years ago. If it is impossible to 'make money,' then where did this extra wealth come from? When I buy a computer from Dell, it's a win-win situation. Dell gets money from me, and i get a powerful tool which I could use to develop software, which I could then sell to others for more than the cost of the computer. The software that I write is wealth that I have created - the world is better off with the software in it than without the software.

Dijkstra then expresses his animus against banks, saying they become rich by trying to speculate at someone else's expense. This may be true of investment banks, but what about a bank that makes loans to new businesses? Exactly whose expense are the banks profiting from? The business gets ahead because it needs capital to get off the ground, and the banks get ahead because they earn interest on money that would otherwise be sitting idle.

I agree with his main argument, that 'software engineering' is a rather meaningless term, but I disagree with his hateful attitude towards the industrial world.

<comment><USER4> It seems you misread Dijkstra. He uses 'making money' within the context of financial 'industry' and questions the legitimacy of that 'industry' which does not produce any goods, thereby pointing out one of the many euphemisms adopted by financial sector to swindle people out of money. (Of course, one can legitimately disagree here and say that moving money where it is most useful is a useful thing to do and that's one of the good things financial sector does). Between, this essay did not seem to me at all to indicate a hateful attitude towards the industrial world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> HTML, and hence searchable: [http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EW...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD1165.html)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, although I'm glad the OP linked the PDF since EWD has a really nice hand-writing and I would have missed that otherwise.

That said, a pretty timeless piece if somewhat black-and-white.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love re-reading this. BTW I always wondered about that PL/I ad and I finally found it! It is somewhere in this PDF:

<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf>

It is hilarious. PL/I must be incredibly easy if this cute blonde can handle it!

<comment><USER8> The ads on the last two pages were breathtakingly horrible. It is hard to imagine how that sort of advertising could ever have been legal.

<comment><USER9> that was the world before 1970. Law is just a set of Boolean functions of the society that defines the law.

It was illegal in 1860 to have a half black half white president in U.S.

<comment><USER10> > It was illegal in 1860 to have a half black half white president in U.S.

No, it wasn't. Disagree? Point to the relevant part of the US constitution. (The 3/5ths clause isn't on point, and before you point to it, ask yourself who benefits from a higher number and who benefits from a lower number. Hint - slave states wanted a higher number....)

There were free blacks in the US from before the revolution. The males were eligible to vote and hold office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> _The mediocre mistrust the exceptional man because they don't understand him, and they fear him because he can do things beyond their comprehension. As far as human memory is concerned, this circumstance has led to bloody conflicts — Christ was neither the first nor the last excentric to be crucified._

Someone read far too much Nietzsche that week.

<comment><USER12> You cannot possibly read too much Nietzsche :). However, you can take it too serious or too literal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fascinating take on things from the perspective of academia. I've always held the same distrust of the term 'Software Engineer,' given that software development is rarely as rigorous and disciplined as actual 'Engineering.'

I love Dijkstra's writings (and his penmanship, for that matter). I also quietly enjoy that most of them end by referencing my alma mater. Hook 'em Horns. :-)</comment>


Show HN: Friends on Netflix - <AUTHOR>

http://www.friendsonnetflix.com
About a year ago Netflix removed their friends feature, where you could see your friends' ratings.  This was a great way to discover new movies, but according to them only 2% of their userbase cared.  So a few months ago I built this web app to recreate that and more.
My goal was for sign-up to be as simple as possible.  I don't even ask for your email (maybe I should though?).  When you connect your Netflix account it pulls in your ratings/reviews.  When you connect your Twitter and/or Facebook, it'll find your friend's profiles and follow them.
This was my first attempt at creating something in Python on Google App Engine.  Having to denormalize everything was a challenge, but it seems to be working and the Task Queue came in handy.  Supposedly it will now scale to millions of users.  Good ol' premature optimization.
The Netflix API is kind of a pain, in that they don't provide a direct way to get all your ratings.  For the initial import, I have to check every title you've ever  rented/watched/queued to see if it has a rating.  There also isn't any date information associated with your old ratings :(
I hope to find better ways to encourage people to share the site with friends.  So far hardly anyone follows anyone, merely using it as a backup.  This site is a lot more interesting with friends.  I even have browser extensions that show your friend's ratings within Netflix.com
Any suggestions/feedback is appreciated.  Thanks! <comment><USER2> You may want to consider changing the name, so you don't have to do it later if Netflix's legal department contacts you.

<http://developer.netflix.com/page/Api_terms_of_use>

Section 3.5

"In using the Netflix Brands pursuant to Section 3.3, you may not do the following

...

use a Netflix Brand as the largest or most prominent brand in your Application or as the most prominent element of your Application or _as part of the name of your Application_ ;"

<comment><AUTHOR> They also say "Netflix cannot be the first word in the application name. It can be used in the naming of an app as "x for Netflix" or "x with Netflix", "x's Netflix Manager", etc." <http://developer.netflix.com/docs/Branding>

In their approved App Gallery are apps with names like "My Netflix" and "Search for Netflix"

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Brilliant. Just signed up and told my friends on FB about it too. A few suggestions:

* Make it easy, Step 1: Connect netflix, Step 2: Connect Twitter/FB, and so on.

* You're telling me something I already know on my home screen, maybe show me highly rated movies from within the FoN network (not necessarily my friends) without telling me who rated them, etc?

* You can grab email using FB connect, and it is a great marketing tool once you get going to bring people back to the website.

Super excited!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I designed it so that the site can be used even if you don't have a Netflix account, but maybe that's a very small use case I can drop.

Ideally the page would be full of your friend's ratings, but yeah, I should fill that empty space with something if that's not the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great! I joined as well. Into_Now has a feature where you can choose to post what you're watching to Facebook. This might be a good feature for you site and help connect people. Good luck!</comment>


Ask HN: What do you about health insurance in between jobs (in the US)? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently in between jobs (3 months now) and didn't want to sink 600+ per month on COBRA when I never go to the doctor.  Are there any alternatives that would cover a catastrophe so I don't have to file for bankruptcy in the worst case scenario?  I wanted to get some blood work for peace of mind and found JasonHealth with crazy cheap prices? Is it too good to be true? <comment><USER2> What's your price tolerance level? $600 per month to avoid potential bankruptcy seems cheap to me. You might check your state's options for affordable care (ObamaCare).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in CA, and Covered California prices are about the same as COBRA. I would be okay with 200-300, but 600 seems steep for the low (but catastrophic) potential.

<comment><USER3> Subsidies are large when you are out of work.</comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco is the new center of start up activity - <AUTHOR> http://correlatedcausation.com/where-start-ups-are-raising-vc/ <comment><USER2> DFW has a surprising amount of venture capital raised compared to Austin. Granted, the DFW metroplex is much larger than the Austin area, but still not something I would expect.</comment>


Ask HN: Quantity or quality when it comes to open source contribution? - <AUTHOR>

I think it has been mentioned many times by now, specially with the "reverse job application" threads, that a recruiter would give considerable points to someone contributing to open source in his/her free time. What in your opinion looks better on a resume, a good long list of open source projects one might have had sent a few number of patches to, or a one or two projects with more significant contribution? <comment><USER2> _a good long list of open source projects one might have had sent a few number of patches to_

Personally I'd completely ignore such a list, unless it included some indication that the patches had been committed. I've seen far too many people congratulating themselves for contributing back to the community when their "contributions" are complete garbage.</comment>