Astral – Organize Your GitHub Stars with Ease - <AUTHOR> http://astralapp.com

<comment><USER2> Hi all, creator of Astral here! I just pushed a fix so it doesn't require private repo access. Sorry about that! All previous tokens have been revoked.

If you're wondering why it was there in the first place, either I'm blind and totally missed that auth scope, or it was added sometime after I started working on Astral, and I didn't notice it.

<comment><USER3> I just spent ~15 minutes adding a bunch of tags and really hope its a good pay-off (as in I remember to come back to this and actually use all the the useful plugins/libraries I starred previously).

I wish tagging was easier and simpler though, like literally just typing, pressing enter, and then tab to go to the next project. Also I turned the auto-language tagging setting on, nothing happened so I tagged a project "Python" then it auto-tagged 38 repos python but when I tagged more repos nothing happened

Edit: Also I wish the tags on the left-side were able to be sorted by # or abc

<comment><USER4> I wish Astral had the same Delicious tagging feature: its suggest you most used tags for a given link

<comment><USER2> Don't worry, more powerful tagging and organizing is coming!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This could be pretty neat, but I'm hesitant to give an unknown app full write access to my private repositories. Especially when querying public stars can be done with readonly+public access.

I'm not sure many people would need to organize private repos that they've starred. I for one haven't even starred any private repos.

<comment><USER6> +1 for this. At the very least, it would be nice to have an option to only work with public repositories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic! I've always felt that when I star something it launches into the void never to be seen again because Github makes discoverability of starred projects so difficult.

Only thing that I feel is missing would be a browser plugin that allowed me to add tags to a project straight from Github. It could be a bit of a slog to log in to Astral every time I want to add a couple of tags to a project that I've just starred.

I also notice that it uses my open-source Angular Classy project! Love seeing examples of Classy being used in the wild :-) (pimp: [http://davej.github.io/angular-classy/](http://davej.github.io/angular- classy/))

<comment><USER2> Angular Classy rocks, thanks! I definitely am hoping to eventually build browser extensions for Chrome and Safari. (I need an intern)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This app looks amazing, and it's pretty much what I've wished I had for a long time... but I have no intention of trying it out while it's asking for read/write access to all my repos.

Please make the permissions more sensible.

Also, what are your plans for offering data interaction? I would love to be able to poll categorical data from your site so I can further extend my star information.

<comment><AUTHOR> I stole it from this /r/webdev thread [https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/2mwlhd/astral_organ...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/2mwlhd/astral_organize_your_github_stars_with_ease/) so direct your feedback that way.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately I believe the r/w access is a limitation of github right now, so there is no way around this as of yet.

<comment><USER8> Only if you want to be able to unstar from the app, with the app doing it via the API. I'd much rather give it read-only public access and not be able to unstar from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hi all, creator here (again). I've created a GitHub repo that you can file feature requests and bug reports in. I'm struggling to keep up with HN, Reddit, and email. [https://github.com/syropian/astral- issues](https://github.com/syropian/astral-issues)

<comment><USER8> What's the chance this will be open source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is really useful, and very nicely presented (having a secondary service is a faff, but unless GH integrates something similar, this looks the best solution I've seen). Just a few things I found as I tried to make a dent on my starred repos, apologies if I've just completely missed some functionality:

\- The 'Edit Tags' form stay open when you switch repo.

\- Switching to the next repo doesn't scroll the frame back to the top, which is a little annoying.

\- Some minimal form of initial organisation (eg just automatically adding the language) would be good.

\- It would be helpful if the 'tags' textbox autofocussed when 'edit tags' is clicked, so that typing could begin immediately.

\- Following on from that, binding some keyboard shortcuts, allowing something [tab?] to save the tags and move onto the next one, would reduce the tedium of mass adding/updating.

\- Some method of ordering the tags (ie alphabetically) would be nice, rather than just the order they were added - I don't find search to be that useful compared to simply scanning the list.

\- Some method of keying to the next repo would be nice

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback! Keyboard accessibility and more robust tagging/organizing is my highest priority right now, besides like, making sure my servers don't explode. ★

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is brilliant. Just one thing missing...

... a chrome extension to show tags on the GitHub page.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very nicely done, bookmarked!

My imagination would have called it Constellations to refer as stars identified and grouped by tags :p but Astral is pretty cool and shorter =D

</comment><comment><USER13> Great, I _too_ wished I had time to create this at some point :)

Thank you for making it!

Maybe look into making the tag adding easier when you can. For example:

1\. click on the repo

2\. click on 'Edit tags'

it would be good if the focus immediately switched to the tag edit box without having to click on it to edit it

Also, README's not in the 'default' markdown mode don't render so well. For example if the README is in org-mode...

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this is great (for non-mobile). I just did a thing a few weeks ago that adds your GitHub started repos to Wunderlist with their description and homepage to make searching / sorting / remembering them easier: [https://github.com/ip2k/wunder-star](https://github.com/ip2k/wunder-star)

Really rough, but it works for me (on a crontab)

</comment><comment><USER15> Although it's made for a desktop, it actually looks fine on a small device in landscape mode. I'm using an iPhone 5S and it's just wide enough to view the content fine. [https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A3GTI3fvKXgL9](https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A3GTI3fvKXgL9)

</comment><comment><USER16> I have always been wondering why github hasn't provided anything like this, given than there have been so many new awesome open source projects worth starring keep emerging from time to time...

At the moment I also wondering, what if github integrates similar functionalities? How services like this compete at all?

</comment><comment><USER17> It'd be a lot more valuable if it offered some initial organization (e.g. by primary language, or by author). Otherwise I'm left with several hundred stars to categorize.

The interface is gorgeous, but doesn't really do much. Also somewhat surprised to see it's not on Github its self.

<comment><USER18> Also, I'm generally ok with tags that other people created for the same repository. Not sure why I would want to do all this busy work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am totally sold, because my github repos are numerous and I'd love to tag them all. But the tagging feature needs a cancel button, not just save.

And drag and drop of the tags doesn't work, dragging them to the right on the green background only scrolls it sideways.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is pretty nice. Great job. Drag-n-drop to tag is nice.

Some feature requests:

\- Keyboard shortcuts, especially for tagging.

\- Alternate layout that supports narrow window widths, much like email clients (Mail.app).

\- Resizable / collapsible sidebar.

\- Sortable tags list.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nice! Does anyone know of something similar that's open source / outputs plain HTML+JS you can put up on your website? Would be neat to share my github starred repos without requiring someone to get an account somewhere to see them.

<comment><USER22> Yes, kind of. I just recently wanted this and found [https://github.com/skyjia/repogen](https://github.com/skyjia/repogen)

It's written in Go and outputs markdown, which you could convert to html. I just made a repo of the output. I've starred a lot of repos and one long list makes it easier for me to search and browse them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm getting stuck on the sign in page. After authorizing the app with Github, there's a black box that appears and the Sign In button shows up again.

Edit: Looks like the server is 500ing, according to the Javascript console.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sweet! Having 500+ starred repos, I wanted to build this myself to help with organization.

It would be nice if tag names didn't have min. length. I can't tag stuff with "ui", "d3" etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow! That is great. Exactly what i was missing. Design is also really nice. Are you planning on building it as a responsive site?

Edit: Definitely found it's way to my bookmarks bar.

</comment><comment><USER26> Really really nice! Found a place in my bookmarks folder for it.

One thing - it does not seem to allow for 2 letter tags - for e.g. I tried d3 for a couple of my repos and no cigar :(

</comment><comment><USER27> It would be awesome if it showed popular tags for a repo rather than having to manually tag each one. Maybe it does have that feature and i just star obscure repos

</comment><comment><USER28> Edit: Disregard this, appears something funky is going on with SSL on my work's network

Looks like it's down for now - Disappointing, looks promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems up for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm pretty sure my roommate has starred the most Repos on GitHub, currently at over 3,000. I'll have to show him this.

<comment> mh- Astral seems to have handled my stars without any noticeable issues, so I'm sure it'll do fine with his. ;)

[http://i.imgur.com/JjPJV6P.png](http://i.imgur.com/JjPJV6P.png)

<comment><USER29> I was really hoping someone would come forward. I'm at 200 and think I star too much. Anyways I had to take a screenshot if only for the rounded numbers.

[https://i.imgur.com/hrHKmNv.png](https://i.imgur.com/hrHKmNv.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I try to drag off the side, it's scrolling sideways and kind of breaking the UI. I'm using Chrome on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER30> nice work, few suggestions:

* I created two tags with the same name 'Python' accidentally and I can't delete neither of them

* when adding tag to a repo, it would be nice to have a "Everyone else have tagged xxxx" helper, so I can add common tags with one click

</comment><comment><USER31> just wrote in twitter ([https://twitter.com/0xAX/status/533858562863165440](https://twitter.com/0xAX/status/533858562863165440)) that github must have tags for stars some days ago and i see this project. Thank you, very useful.

</comment><comment> undrcvr-lagggal Very well designed. However what advantage does this have over browser bookmarks/tags?

</comment><comment><USER32> Great job on the naming :)

</comment><comment><USER33> This is amazing! I'm surprised this didn't exist beforehand

</comment><comment><USER34> Is it possible to tag also "watched" repos?

</comment><comment><USER35> Great job! Github should integrate this!

</comment><comment><USER36> Feature request ..

Automatically add tag , based on repo description and using natural language processing

</comment><comment><USER37> Thanks for choking my browser.

<comment><USER38> Using firefox? It's impossible to use, or even just scroll. Works in Chrome though. I suppose it is the star animations at the top of the page that bring firefox to its knees.

<comment><USER2> Ya, think I gotta kill that canvas animation on Firefox. :(

<comment><USER39> Yes, please do. It's really bogging down Firefox. It's much better using Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Really? This is where we are as humans?

The fact that I was interested enough to click in the link and consider getting an account a minute ago now seems repulsive to me. What the hell am I doing?

Anyway, this seems to be a good service. I like organizing things, I think it is a good thing to do, but with the luck of God I did not sign up when I clicked the link, and I hope I'll never.

<comment><USER41> Yes. We are truly lost as a species. Not only are we creating banal organizational apps, but we're also taking the time to try to make the author feel bad by decrying its lack of higher purpose in a HN comment.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin Is Poised To Change Society More Than The Internet Did - <AUTHOR> http://falkvinge.net/2013/04/03/why-bitcoin-is-poised-to-change-society-much-more-than-the-internet-did/

<comment><USER2> So how would governments operate if it can't manage the supply of money or bring revenue though taxation? If you can't tax money, then I guess you have to go back to taxing goods or people's time, i.e. give us half your harvest.

<comment><USER3> The government could sell contract insurance (priced at some low percentage of the contract's total value), which would be required in order to initiate legal action in civil courts.

The surplus from this would be more than enough to pay for the other essential government functions: criminal courts, the police, the military, the legislatures, an executive, and offices pertaining to maintaining property records, including copyrights, patents, deed registrations, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Article is currently online so excuse me If I reach speculatory conclusions. Unless I misunderstand the seeding process Bitcoin is effectively a deflationary currency, with it getting rarer and harder to mine over time. It may be great for speculation and ok for immediate transaction but not so great for loans.How would you get rid of bitcoin debit assuming the currency was stable? Anyway how did setting up new currencies work out for old Muammar Gaddafi?

</comment><comment><USER5> this is the best bitcoin article i've read, very concise description. while reading this, i came to the conclusion that even governments and central banks have no way to currently control bitcoin, it's very easy for them to get their fingers in via legislation, e.g. having to disclose bitcoins in annual tax filings.</comment>


Next stop, hydrogen-powered trains - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200227-how-hydrogen-powered-trains-can-tackle-climate-change <comment><USER2> It might decarbonise the railway but not the supply chain. Currently the only practical large scale source of hydrogen is methane, mostly by steam reforming:

Steam-methane reforming reaction

CH4 + H2O (+ heat) → CO + 3H2

Water-gas shift reaction

CO + H2O → CO2 + H2 (+ small amount of heat)

See [https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production- na...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas- reforming) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production).

There are possible methods to produce hydrogen without releasing CO2 but they are not in widespread use, for instance, [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171208171749.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171208171749.htm).

So this looks like it is a way to keep the petro/gas industry in business instead of electrifying the network. One of the justifications in the article was avoiding the expense of electrifying rail routes that had few passengers; perhaps a more rational response would be to close the line and use buses instead (which could also be hydrogen if necessary but which can already be battery electric).

<comment><USER3> Replacing rural train links with buses invariably means significantly reducing mobility for a lot of people. It is also akin to a signed death-warrant for a locality that prospers from tourism and/or houses commuting families. That can be a valid choice for some localities, but it is a choice with far-reaching consequences.

Travelling with a pram or a wheelchair using public transport is doable by train. By bus it is fine for a short ride (up to a few kilometres), but with increasing distance it becomes undoable for more and more people.

Another group of people heavily affected are those with incontinence or bowel diseases. Trains usually have accessible toilets on-board (usable with wheelchairs as well), buses don't.

A rational response is to explore all possibilities for keeping a train link operational in a sustainable manner.

<comment><USER2> > signed death-warrant for a locality that prospers from tourism

If it is prospering from tourism by rail then why is the rail line not profitable enough to warrant electrification?

> Travelling with a pram or a wheelchair using public transport is doable by > train. By bus it is fine for a short ride (up to a few kilometres), but with > increasing distance it becomes undoable for more and more people.

Perhaps my perspective is skewed because I no longer live in the UK. Where I do live (Norway) travel by medium distance bus with a pram or wheel chair is not a problem because buses have powered lifts and dedicated spaces for both. Buses are also more flexible, new routes are vastly easier to set up than new routes for trains.

<comment><USER3> > If it is prospering from tourism by rail then why is the rail line not > profitable enough to warrant electrification?

Sometimes the line is profitable as it is, but not profitable enough for electrification. It's a big investment with high maintenance costs. There are a bunch of lines like these in the Netherlands (Harlingen Haven — Leeuwarden is one I am quite familiar with).

Tourism is often seasonal, so while it does add up in terms of profit (or breaking even), for electrification to be a sensible investment you are talking double or triple the amount of passengers.

> buses have powered lifts and dedicated spaces for both.

But no accessible toilets (big issue for many disabled people, and anyone travelling with kids), and travelling with an infant in a pram really limits your bus-range (I have an infant son and avoid buses if at all possible). Also, the dedicated spaces are great, but if there is a wheelchair there already you have to take the next bus instead (unless you have a collapsible stroller, but then the kid is older already). This is fine for incidental travelling, but not for a frequent commute. In trains you can almost always make do; in a bus you're not even allowed on when the dedicated spaces are taken, because of (valid) safety concerns.

Buses are great if that's all that's available and all that ever has been available, but shutting down a train line impacts the lives of many people — some of whom wouldn't have chosen to live in town without a train link in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I often don't see mentioned in the discussion about using hydrogen power is solving the volumetric capacity problem of storing hydrogen.

One potential solution is to instead use formic acid as stable energy storage. There have been recent advances in catalysts that make it feasible to convert hydrogen to formic acid and back again. Formic acid is stable, not very toxic, and has an energy capacity of 1.77 kWh/L.

The only party I know of that is trying to bring this to market is Dens [1], formed out of a student group at the University of Eindhoven [2]. Their website is a bit high on the rhetoric (including trying to coin "hydrozine"), and their mockups looks like, well, mockups, but there are real technology advances behind this, for example their trial with a city bus [3] (Dutch).

[1] [https://dens.one/our-products/](https://dens.one/our-products/)

[2] [https://teamfast.nl/technology/](https://teamfast.nl/technology/)

[3] [https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/deze- stadsbus-i...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/deze-stadsbus-in- eindhoven-rijdt-nu-op-mierenzuur-en-dat-is-behoorlijk-revolutionair~bb027b8b/)

<comment> 08-15 Formic acid, being more oxidized, has lower energy density than methanol. In what way is it better than methanol?

<comment><USER4> It isn't purely about the (energy density of the) chemicals themselves, but also about the available reformation / hydrogenation processes. As far as my limited knowledge goes, the processes for methanol have seen more development, but formic acid has a potential for simpler and smaller systems in less demanding circumstances (pressure, heat). [1] was the first comparison I stumbled upon.

[1] [https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536423-002](https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536423-002)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another option to expensive full electrification is partly electrifying the tracks, and running on battery in between

That's the current Norwegian plan for electrifying the Northern Norway line as its the cheapest option

[https://www.railjournal.com/technology/norway-to-replace- die...](https://www.railjournal.com/technology/norway-to-replace-diesel- traction-with-battery-trains/)

<comment><USER6> They're still considering hydrogen too, however hydrogen production/distribution is really inefficient and as of today not very carbon neutral [1].

When you count the whole supply chain it has about the same efficiency as a diesel.

Pumping hydro electricity into a battery is much more efficient.

I guess there would also be issues transferring the hydrogen to the trains, we already struggle (struggled, the H-stations for cars are closed after an explosion here) with multiple cars filling up in turn. The pumps would just freeze and you had to wait for half an hour to fill up the next car.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > In 2016, Germany unveiled the Coradia iLint, the world's first hydrogen- > powered train, which can run for 600 miles on a single tank of fuel – on par > with the distances that traditional trains achieve on a tank of diesel

> The train's hydrogen power system produces sufficient power to take the > train 50 to 75 miles. The train, called Hydroflex, is the UK's first to be > powered by hydrogen

The iLint seems to be much further advanced. In this Industry, what does a Team in the Hydroflex's position normally do next in this position?

<comment><USER8> Long distance tracks are mostly already electrified in most places. In Germany & the Netherlands, diesel trains are limited to the edges of the rail network and there have been plenty of experiments with replacing those with hydrogen, gas and even battery trains. Mostly those trains service short routes.

<comment><USER9> What keeps all the tracks from be electrified? If it's just cost, what would make it cheaper to use fuel cells?

<comment><USER10> Electrifying rarely used tracks makes little economic sense. There is a huge up-front cost and you have significantly increased maintenance costs. Hydrogen powered trains can be rolled out incrementally.

<comment><USER9> Makes perfect sense, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Classic britian: out electric train is 4 years later than the German one, with a tenth the range for double the price.

<comment><USER12> If that can make you feel better, Germany also has its own classic clusterfuck :)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> AFAIK this is good because some renewable energy sources cannot produce continuously (solar, wind), and therefore storing their production is a major challenge. As stated in this article generating hydrogen can be done with electricity. Moreover fuel cells may also power trucks and even cars.

<comment><USER14> The main issue is the overall efficiency of the process. Creating hydrogen by electrolysis is about 80% and then a fuel cell electric efficiency is 60-70%. So overall the whole process is not very good.

<comment><USER15> How's the energy storage density on Hydrogen though? One of the main problems with Lithium is it's heavy and requires a lot of space to store energy.

<comment><USER16> Extremely good for weight and extremely poor for volume. To reduce the gasses volume storage is usually either highly compressed (200-700bar) or cryogenic (30K), like in the space shuttles tank.

In both cases the volumetric density is still quite poor, cryogenic is about 70g/l, which is actually less than the weight of hydrogen chemically bound in a liter of gasoline.

There exists some concepts of storing hydrogen chemically bound, e.g. to hydrocarbons or metal hydrites which release the gas on high temperatures (100-200°C).

<comment><USER4> Formic acid might be a possible solution for the volumetric capacity problem, although it is still very much in its infancy. See [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22449894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22449894)

<comment><USER17> How is better than methanol?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What about a separate tanker car? Seems like that would solve the range issue.

What about biodisel or syngas made with renewable energy instead of hydrogen? Still carbon neutral operations.

<comment><USER19> Carbon neutral is a fossil industry marketing gimmick. The climate does not care about provenance of CO2, it only cares about its presence.

We need to de-carbonize, and hydrogen produce by renewables such as wind qualifies.

<comment><USER20> Growing biomass removes co2 from atmosphere. Burning carbon from that biomass releases it back. Make the process efficient enough (with addition of external power) and you end up with no added co2 in atmosphere. That's not just a marketing gimmick.

Of course it is debatable if it is an efficient approach for doing things, but the concept is sound

<comment><USER19> There is no net reduction of co2 emissions here, that's why its marketing.

The fact that sequestration in plants happens first does not make it better for global warming if you then burn it right after.

Encouraging plant growth on top of a decarbonized energy cycle, now that will make a difference.

<comment><USER18> How is replacing fossil diesel with recycled atmospheric co2 not a net reduct of emissions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> 3-car 200-passangers train going 160 km/h in Sweden uses 5.6 kWh per 1 km [1]. More than that when it accelerates, but it mostly happens near the stations where there is electric network.

Or if the train stops there you can just detach used batteries and attach freshly charged ones - should help if the charging is too slow (but it shouldn't be - after all if the electric network is sufficient for powering trains when they accelerate/decelerate and use several times more power than on cruise - then it should be also sufficient for charging batteries powering trains when they cruise).

That's 560 kWh or 112 of used Tesla battery modules 5 kWh each. You can buy one for 1300 USD [2]. That's a recyclable resource (from used electric car batteries) and it would cost about 150 000 USD to upgrade one train with these.

150 000 USD is peanuts compared to multi-million USD prices per car of most modern passanger trains [3].

It would also add 2.9 tonnes to the train, which isn't that much for 3 cars train that weighs 165 tonnes [4].

You could add it as a small aerodynamic car trailing the train that can be swapped on stations if needed (so you don't need to upgrade all the trains, just buy enough of these cars to serve the unelectrified lines).

This would bypass the need for new hydrogen supply chain, would have much better synergy with already electrified tracks, would allow to gradually improve the system, and wouldn't need any carbon emission (unlike hydrogen production).

It's also a proven technology unlike hydrogen power.

Sources:

[1] [https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-is-used-by-a- trai...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-electricity-is-used-by-a-train-to- run-1-km)

[2] [http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=TeslaBattModule](http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=TeslaBattModule)

[3] [https://montrealgazette.com/business/local- business/bombardi...](https://montrealgazette.com/business/local- business/bombardier-transportation-wins-580m-contract-in-sweden)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_(train)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_\(train\))

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone know of efforts to enhance the efficiency of electrolysis with RF resonance?

There is a relatively old patent, but I'm looking for recent scientific work. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US4265721A/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4265721A/en)

</comment><comment><USER23> The only industrial-scale process for making hydrogen starts with carbon fuel. Come at me, Chevron lovers.

<comment><USER24> What's the net carbon emission from 1 kWh from a liquid hydrogen engine compared to a modern diesel engine?

<comment><USER23> Well, you need to burn a lot of diesel (or it's equivalent) to produce, store, and transport the hydrogen so I think it goes without saying that hydrogen fuel is worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I suppose hydrogen-powered trains can make some sense. Provided that it's worth wasting the electricity (bc of inefficiency of hydrogen energy storage) for a lower cost of energy capacity (no expensive lithium-ion batteries).

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how these would go in a heavy haulage scenario.</comment>


It's Official: Google Now Counts Site Speed As A Ranking Factor - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as-ranking-factor-39708

<comment><USER2> This is a very user-friendly policy.

P.S. There is something to think about in that the first time I tried to post this comment, there was a problem loading the page. HN is actually one of the slowest sites I put up with--great quality is worth the wait, but not the quality of most websites.

<comment><USER3> It usually seems pretty fast to me, but maybe that's because I mostly browse outside of US peak hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly, they appear to count loading times of third party stuff (which doesn't affect the display of the main body of content, e.g. the blog post body) as part of the site load time.

This means that if you use Disqus and a few badges from Reddit and the like, even if you set them up so that they don't slow down your main content, Google will hold it against you. That's a little... not great.

<comment><USER5> How do you know that? Are you going by the webmasters tool performance page? I'd imagine that view is a very simplified perspective on the actual metrics that search uses for ranking.

<comment><USER6> weebmaster tools reports 10-20x grater response time than it actually is for one of the pages I maintain (haven't checked the others). So I would also conclude that it measures the time until every last CSS,JS and iframe is loaded. And that is just not right. Ok, I understand that they take CSS into account. But my pages work without JS, and I only use iframe-s to display ads. The point is that my page is readable long before JS files and ads are loaded.

I'd also like to know if they take caching of CSS,JS and image files into account.

<comment><USER7> Even though I couldn't find out if they do in the Webmaster Tools Report; the Page Speed Analyzer (Firefox Add-on from Google) does take it into account (as does YSlow, another Speed Testing Add-on from Yahoo). I would think that Google would take it into account because checking if something is cachable is easy; and I don't think Google is stupid enough to _not_ check that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have two concerns here.(well 3, but swombat covered that one)

1\. If you are going to penalize sites for being "slow" then how about you tell us what slow is? Is a site loading in 10 seconds "slow"? is a site with a 5mb index page that loads in 15 seconds "slow"? How about some metrics so that we can optimize properly?

And what will that do to a lot of content rich sites? If you have a lot of images/flash/javascript it sounds like you are going to get screwed for trying to make a better looking user experience.

2\. Of course Google search results experiment would affect user satisfaction. You are looking for results, and you want to do a lot of searches. BUT when you are clicking to see the result you like, I think most people would be willing to wait 2 seconds extra to load the more relevant information.

Sounds like this is yet another attempt at boosting big sites, where large sites like eHow and Mahalo get preference in results just because they can afford faster servers.

<comment><USER9> Some of the very worst offenders are big sites, eg. cnn.com takes about 2.5 seconds to load close to 100 external resources. Mahalo takes about 2 seconds for about 40 external resources.

As for metrics - as a user, I can say that 10 seconds is too slow. So is a 5M index page that loads in 15 seconds (what the hell do you need 5 megs of data on your index page for? That's like a 5 minute YouTube video). I want to see results within 1-2 seconds of clicking on a page; otherwise, you've broken my train of thought and I need to mentally context-switch each time I visit a page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not pleased. It can cost a lot of money to have a fast site.

If you're a neighborhood blog trying to make a go of it, you can't afford a developer to optimize your site and cache the crap out of it. Meanwhile, the local newspaper site, running a tag archive page for your neighborhood powered by Outside.in or some other McLocal scraper app, can do that. You lose every time on the speed front, despite having original content.

<comment><USER11> Not disagreeing, but I think it's often a matter of setting up or tweaking your caching strategy, not throwing hardware at the solution.

<comment><USER10> Not too many writers can "set up and tweak their caching strategy."

<comment><USER12> Sounds like a business opportunity to me. If only there were a site where...

<comment><USER10> Exactly. Now it's more expensive to show up in search.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google is saying my site takes 7 seconds to load... Well, it doesn't.

<http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1> is one of the slowest pages... according to them.

Browse it and see for yourself. It's super fast.

TribalFusion and PubMatic take some time, as do the user tracking JS, but (a) not 7 seconds and (b) do not affect the actual content.

<comment><USER14> FWIW, I just visited your link and with a cold cache it took ~5 seconds the status bar to report every asset was downloaded. Definitely not a scientific measurement by any means, but I thought you might like to know.

I also ran the site through <http://www.webpageanalyzer.com/> (one of many such services), and it said on a T1 it would take approximately 6.5 seconds to load. It also provides a number of improvements to cut down the page size, and improve rendering speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You run a popular site, with little cash.

How can you afford to keep your access time down?

Host advertising, perhaps?

<comment><USER16> iframe ads.

Most popular sites use iframe to (either) asynchronously load javascript ads or load it on a separate page so that it doesn't effect your initial site speed. Most popular ad platforms also offer iframe specific codes you just have to ask for them (I know adify does). If they don't offer iframe codes, ask if it against their policy to load codes on iframe, they might make exceptions for high traffic sites (Arstechnica loads all ads on iframe).

For general optimization, yahoo has an excellent resource page: <http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html> I was able to bring my site from ~8-9s loading time to ~2-3s running on a not too powerful server.

Three optimizations that worked great for me.

\- CDN for static files (maxCDN has a great cheap introductory offer of 1tb for $9.99 and offers PULL)

\- Minify and Gzip CSS and js files and then fetch them from CDN.

\- PHP cache (APC, eaccelerator or xcache.)

I am trying to reach <2sec speed point now.

<comment><USER9> The absolute best thing you can do to reduce page loading time is to cut the number of requests the browser has to make. Each request requires a round-trip to the server, with all the latency of a cross-country or cross-continent trip. It requires overhead for TCP/IP and HTTP headers. And most browsers limit concurrent open connections to 2-6, so the bulk of these requests are serialized and block further loading of the page.

Sprite all your images, so that it takes one request to get the whole chrome rather than one per image. If you have multiple JavaScript files, concatenate them together. Same with your CSS. Obviously, gzip them and push them to a CDN if possible, and cache them aggressively. And consider using data: urls to inline images directly into the page: the time saved on requests more than makes up for the added bytes from b64ing the data.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the tips. Most of these I am already aware of. You are very much right about reducing the number of requests to bare minimum. I was able to cut down from 28 to 12, but the last few are tricky because some connections are external files (ads, analytics, disqus). Also I don't think its as much as the number of the connection thats the problem but the number of DNS lookup that will cause more delay. So if you have 12 file thats spread around 3 different locations, its better than having 5 files spread around 5 different locations.

Concatenate is also a good idea, but in some cases it breaks some JavaScripts for me.

Personally I am happy with ~2s avg load time, just trying to see how far I can push that number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Quality should still be the first and foremost concern [for site owners]," Cutts says. "This change affects outliers; we estimate that fewer than 1% of queries will be impacted. If you're the best resource, you'll probably still come up."

</comment><comment><USER18> What if the page you're looking for just happens to contain a lot of content / images / etc?

Adding speed to Google's ranking algorithms is only useful for searches where there are several equally good search results (in which case the fastest would be the one you would want). But in the event that you're actually searching for a lot of information, having fast (but less informative) sites propagate to the top would be detrimental.

<comment><USER19> Speed is only one factor in their ranking. If a site is notably better than other sites for a query, they said in the article that it will still rank first for that query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If it is true that non-HTML resources are a factor based on Google Toolbar reporting, that's scary. On high confidence sites -- more than 1000 datapoints, in Google Webmaster terms -- average speed seems stable and correlated with other performance measures. This is not true in my experience with medium confidence sites, 100 to 1000 Toolbar datapoints.

I'm hopeful that Googlebot is the primary signal.

</comment><comment><USER21> IIRC, this has been a factor on AdWords for some time.

</comment><comment><USER22> I like this move. I hate it when I click a link and it ends up taking 20+ seconds to load.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just BTW, there's some related HN discussion from an earlier post at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1253528>.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yet another standard of measurement that is not directly related to the number one reason anyone uses Google: finding the most appropriate content.

</comment><comment><USER25> How would googlebot measure page-load speed accurately? Wouldn't it be ignoring a slow site's cruft filled javascript and stylesheets?

<comment><USER11> The Google toolbar

<comment><USER25> who uses google toolbar besides old IE users that need popup blockers? Seems like super high variance data depending on the end users connection, perhaps they get info from chrome usage statistics?

<comment><USER11> Dunno, but according to this article that's what they're doing: [http://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed- as-...](http://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as-ranking- factor-39708)

If every site is being judged by the same pool of toolbar users then it's fair, right? It's only the relative speed that matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Doctor – A quick reference for Vim text editor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/p1v0t/Doctor <comment><USER2> Very messy and full of factual error. To be avoided no matter what's your level of competence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Contributions are welcome :))

<comment><USER2> I already did, elsewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


A browser game inspired by Thomas Nagle's Essay "What is it like to be a bat?" - <AUTHOR> http://jrmgriffith.itch.io/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat

<comment><USER2> Original idea, though I don't think that's how it is to be a bat... it's an unfiltered output from echolocation. Human brain does ton of processing with visual stimuli. I think a view in which detected objects fade very slowly (several seconds at least) would be a better translation of bat's experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually kind of reinforces (or at least points to) one of the central ideas of the essay, that we cannot know what it is to be a bat--we would always contextualize or speculate about the bat experience in human terms of experience.

If you accept this, no matter how great We make this simulation (of objective physical phenomena and our best theorized non-human perceptions of these phenomena), this game is always false.

(For what it's worth, I'm not sure yet if I hold any firm viewpoints on this. The essay (at least partially) is an argument against reductionism, but I'm no philosopher; to be honest I'm still wrapping my head around the entire argument. I just think it's interesting to think about.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is not my creation, but I've read the essay before and I was intrigued by the game. It's pretty cool.

Here is the essay if anyone is interested:

[http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf](http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf)</comment>


How much of an iPhone is made by Samsung? - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/apple-and-samsungs-symbiotic-relationship?repost=true

<comment> X-Istence The thing to remember is that Samsung is a huge conglomerate that has many different sub-division/companies.

Samsung Semiconductor is different and separate from Samsung Telecommunications. They are all under an umbrella corporation named Samsung Electronics, and that is owned by the Samsung Group. Samsung also does ship- building (Samsung Heavy Industries), engineering, and life insurances ... ;-)

Some of these companies are getting so big that it is almost becoming possible for one division or child company to sue another child company...

I don't think that Samsung Heavy Industries is losing sleep over Apple suing Samsung Telecommunications. And it would be in the best interest of Samsung to keep their telecommunications company and semiconductor company as far apart in terms of technology so that other companies would still be willing to come to them to manufacture their parts without having to worry about Samsung putting those parts in their own devices.

<comment><USER2> I thought part of the current discussion was "Well, if Apple is giving Samsung grief over selling the Galaxy Tab, Samsung should make life difficult for Apple component-wise." Say if a part was magically "unavailable" for a week or two.

It's hard to tell who has who over a barrel at the moment. At Apple's volumes, can they change suppliers quickly? Can Samsung afford to piss off Apple just to get the Galaxy Tab back on the market?

<comment><USER3> They would have to imply to Apple that the part would be available if the tab went back on the market. That's extortion!

<comment><USER2> Wasn't the A4/A5 chip fabbed by Samsung? Apple doesn't have a chipmaking plant...yet. There's one part that's Apple-only.

And Samsung wouldn't have to imply anything. They could just make life harder for the iPad supply chain.

<comment> X-Istence Breach of contract would just make it bad for Samsung Semiconductor, because I don't believe that Apple would leave that up to chance ...

<comment><USER4> You appear to be assuming there are no clauses regarding unforeseen production difficulties, associated supply problems, and penalties in said contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the most expensive part in an iPhone at the component level?

According to the teardown, it is the display ($38.50). Well, that's no surprise. (In fact, I've been quoted more to replace a broken laptop display than the price of the laptop.)

The second most expensive? It's the flash memory (16GB at $26.00). Also not surprising.

What is surprising--at least to me--is the third most expensive component. That would be the camera ($13.70).

I skipped over the "mechanicals and electro-mechanicals" ($19.97) and "other parts" ($15.19) because they are not a single part or a coherent subsystem.

The camera cost explains a lot to me. I could never figure out how the iPhone was getting such great VIDEO quality out of what on the surface appears to be the same camera as on low-end cellphones and crappy webcams. I thought that maybe the iPhone had a clever software implementation of MPEG4 encoding or something.

The answer turns out to be a really good lens and really good CCD. The camera represents almost 8% of the component cost.

Another way of looking at it is that the camera represents $43.00 of the average $560.00 sale price. I'll bet that this ratio is on par with the cost of a lens+CCD inside a camcorder.

<comment><USER6> One thing I saw missing from all the comments and cost breakdowns is how I see the major component of the iPhone: _software_. The comments on the Economist seemed to be along the lines of: "see how stupid the American company is... outsourcing everything to Asian companies who are going to steal their ideas and eat their lunch".

The second largest component? Industrial design. Another factor not to be discounted. And Apple has some of the best in the world.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it might have been more informative to break down "Apple's slice" into NRE, SG&A, profit, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some interesting facts here, but it's very hard to pry them from this infographic, which strikes me as horribly designed.

The phone background is gratuitous and unnecessary. The cluster of manufacturers and the products they make in the center of the infographic is so cluttered that I can't connect one side (the manufacturer) to the other (the component they provide). Presumably, the amount of area each slice occupies correlates with total share, but the lack of vertical space means the corners of these areas are diagonal in many cases, making it even harder to visually grasp.

I think Tufte would probably call this chartjunk.

</comment><comment><USER9> I understand the desire for these news websites to have a visual that can be called an Infographic - it is hot link bait these days. But this one is so poorly designed that it's unworthy.

Why are there two phones in the background? And with one leading to the other? Why isn't the data presented beside the label, but only after you follow a series of closely spaced lines? Why doesn't it answer the question it started with - how much is made by Samsung, clearly and comprehensively?

</comment><comment><USER10> Of the three components that Samsung manufactures for Apple, two of them are commodities: Flash and DRAM. Apple can source these elsewhere should it need to, without much hassle.

The third component, the "Applications processor" is the A4/A5 chip. Apple designed this under license from ARM and so Apple owns the IP. Samsung simply operates as a foundry.

While it is not trivial to take a chip design from one foundry to another, since the design involves process technology, etc. It is something Apple could do from generation to generation.

So, for the next iPhone that comes out this fall, it is quite possible that the FLASH could come from intel/micron, the DRAM could come from toshiba and the chip could be manufactured by intel, TSMC, or another foundry. All of these companies would be happy to have Apple's business.

<comment><USER11> "The third component, the "Applications processor" is the A4/A5 chip. Apple designed this under license from ARM and so Apple owns the IP. Samsung simply operates as a foundry."

No, Samsung actually designed and manufactured pretty much the entire A4.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design>

The story seems to be different with the A5.

<comment> X-Istence "The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple) in collaboration with Samsung."

Sorry, what you are saying makes no sense. They designed the chip alongside of Intrinsity.

Samsung provides the same chip as a different part number:

"The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird", is able to run at far higher clock rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM. Other performance improvements include additional L2 cache. The same Cortex-A8 CPU core used in the A4 is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC."</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Sharing HN Threads on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit Advisable? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes I see threads that I think might be interesting to a large group of my friends on Facebook or even just to get an outside opinion from regular internet users (I take the HN crowd is mostly technical). My only concern is that at the same time, I don't think they are the typical HN crowd. They like trolling and stuff so I generally don't share to avoid dilution in the HN community.<p>Do you guys ever face such conundrums or it's just me? <comment><USER2> I don't have as many friends on FB/Twitter that would be interested in this stuff, but I do share threads with my brother/close friends that would be of interest to them.

I think while the bulk of HN is technical, many here are just simply interested in tech like myself. I'm a financial consultant, so not too terribly far off the mark, and while I don't comment often at all, I imagine there is a solid group of non-technical readers that are participating in discussions.

Overall I just find myself keeping HN off my other social media because 99% of my FB/Twitter friends have essentially no interest in the topics discussed here.</comment>


New asteroid discovered in stable horseshoe orbit around the earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=17484&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=stable-orbit-for-a-newly-discovered-companion

<comment><USER2> Read close: the "horseshoe" is only relative to Earth itself. Encounters with Earth moves the new asteroid from an orbit inside that of Earth's to an orbit outside that of Earth's

I'd be interested in seeing a heliocentric plot of the orbit, over along period.

<comment><USER3> An animation would be even better. But yeah, basically we're talking about a standard-pants elliptical-looking orbit which occasionally gets perturbed by the Earth.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: CPM - Eyeballs vs Impressions - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
I have seen CPM referred to as both cost per thousand eyeballs and cost per thousand impressions (or pageviews).
I am confused. An eyeball can result in multiple impressions/pageviews, so how are cost per thousand eyeballs and cost per thousand impressions the same thing?
Basically, if 10,000 visitors (eyeballs) result in 100,000 pageviews (impressions), will a CPM of $1 result in $10 or $100? <comment><USER2> the term "eyeballs" is in reference to someone looking at an ad once. equivalent to a single page impression.</comment>


Pedal to the Chrome metal: Our fastest beta to date for Windows, Mac and Linux - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/pedal-to-chrome-metal-our-fastest-beta.html

<comment><USER2> Probably the single thing that keeps me using Firefox is its address bar. It's a much nicer experience than Chrome's, with its user-friendly auto complete mechanisms.

The speed of the browsers is rarely the bottleneck for me anymore. I'll switch to Chrome for intense javascript experiences, but that's about it. I feel like chrome needs to start focusing more time on the experience - these speed improvements aren't paying dividends anymore.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean with the address bar? Chromes bar also has autocompletion. I even find it simpler to use. In Firefox, I have to press the down-key + enter to select a suggestion. In Chrome, I just have to press enter.

What do you think is missing otherwise in Chrome?

I think the overall user experience is probably much better compared to Firefox in nearly all aspects.

<comment><USER4> While I use Chrome as default, I too miss Firefox autocompletion.

In Firefox, I would just start typing "Hacker News" and HN would popup as a first suggestion after first letter, probably based on usage frequency.

The only way to get the same result in Chrome, is to start typing "news.ycombinator.com", which means you have to remember url, not the name. Chrome, will surely find by "Hacker News" too, but I will need to type in at least 5-6 characters for that.

<comment><USER5> That might be why I prefer Chrome's. I usually type URLs, only fall back to typing titles if I don't remember the URL, and it _really_ annoys me how often Firefox will take me to the wrong site unless I type a fairly large prefix of the URL. In Chrome I can just type ne..., while in Firefox I have to go all the way to news.y... before it'll give me the right completion.

<comment><USER6> As far as I can tell, both browsers have basic learning algorithms that are supposed to predict better over time what site you want (in both Chrome and Firefox I can now just type 'n' to get to Hacker News).

However, even though I currently use Chrome as my primary browser, I think Firefox still gets this slightly better - I think it learned more quickly and accurately for me at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It certainly feels faster. It also took less than half the time to run the webkit JS benchmark than my firefox install. 414ms vs 1046ms.

And it also fixed a glitch I was fighting with the Xmarks extension being unable to sync.

So I'm back to Chrome as my default browser.

</comment><comment><USER8> Things keeping me from using Chrome:

* Lack of built-in RSS support. This one kind of blows my mind.

* Worst progress indicator I've ever seen.

* Can't open external links in new windows, have to open in "tab of whatever my last used browser window was".

* Flash crashes more than it does in Safari/Firefox, but I don't blame Chrome for that.

Not exactly constructive to the conversation I guess, but at least the first three things have been driving me nuts for a bit.

<comment><USER9> My list of things keeping from Chrome is same as yours though I'd also add lack of google gears support. I don't understand how they have that for firefox but they don't have it from Chrome. In addition to this Chrome (on the mac) crashes quite frequently for me.

<comment><USER8> Client-side HTML5 databases have supplanted gears.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough - so how do I use google docs when I'm offline?

Alternatively, would you have suggestions on some other service that provides similar doc capability with html5 database?

<comment><USER8> Good question(s), I was just relaying the decision Google made:

<http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/hello-html5.html>

<comment><USER9> Thanks...that makes total sense. I need to (sadly) give google gears the boot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but lately Google Chrome just freezes up most times I open a page that has flash. I'm using it on a Mac

<comment><USER11> If you haven't quit the browser in awhile, this can happen. The good news is that in Chrome you can kill just the flash plugin without losing the rest of your browsing session (I usually do this by opening the Activity monitor and killing it from there; usually at that point you can see that the Flash plugin has gone completely nuts eating memory...)

Once the Flash plugin is dead, you can reload any open tab that needs Flash and it will come back better behaved. Until the next time it gets into whatever state causes that complete non-responsiveness.

Note that the alternative to this -- at least in Safari -- is just to have the browser crash completely occasionally. If you look at the crash dump, it's still the Flash plugin doing it, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The new test system looks amazing! I love when companies do that kind of stuff, it must keep their employees happy!

<comment><USER13> It reminds me of a discussion thread we had a few days ago, when people were lamenting that it took so many billions and trillions of CPU operations to do relatively simple things today - that we're not really getting the real value of Moore's Law.

It's heartening to see modern computing power like this :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just upgraded and almost immediately had to file a bug report. Flash video will not play in anything but full screen, and getting to said fullscreen requires about mouse clicks in quick succession.

I'm running OS X 10.6.3 on dual quad-core xeon (Nehalem 8 Core) Mac Pro with 6gb ram. Chrome is my default browser, and while I am part of the Youtube Html5 Beta, the inconvenience is rather large. Flash apps are a no-go entirely as they will not render.

</comment><comment><USER15> Chrome is still missing features that are must have for me from a usability perspective. The number one is "full page default zoom" (eg. not just text zoom). For some reason this request is being ignored since 2008:

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=32a8...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=32a8d83bd71bc1a8&hl=en)

<comment><USER15> Correction: there are extensions now:

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=zoom)

EDIT: and they suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Weird, I just upgraded on Linux (from 5.0.342.9 to 5.0.375.29) and fonts on a bunch of sites (like HN) are different now. I wonder what did that.

<comment><USER16> This is an interesting read on the state of fonts on Linux/Gnome, read it to understand some of the complexity:

<http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/fonts/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Any way to tweak the auto-update features for Flash? I want to have the debugger version installed instead, or disable it altogether. :/

</comment><comment><USER18> I still miss bookmark tagging from FF. In fact, I often keep a FF window open just so I can keep my bookmarks organized with tags.

</comment><comment><USER19> What I dislike in chrome is that passwords are not secured by a SSO password like in firefox. What I like in chrome is its thin and lightweight frame.

What I miss in Chrome and Firefox is bookmark synchronization on my own server because privacy is important to me.

<comment><USER20> Weave (<https://mozillalabs.com/weave/>) solves the bookmark (and configuration in general) synchronization problem for Firefox; I was hosting my own server quite happily until I switched to Chrome.

Switching was a hard decision for me: I _like_ Firefox, quite a lot, and I'm very comfortable using it. But on Linux, it's unbearably slow, while Chrome flies. Once a mostly-workable adblocker was available for Chrome, I didn't have many reasons left not to switch to something more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just installed and tried on Win XP. It definitely feels faster than Safari and Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER22> More good news: pinned tabs are back.

</comment><comment><USER23> I still prefer Opera, the speed of Chrome, the functionality that Firefox has to copy.

</comment><comment><USER24> The speed and subtlety of nose-picking is also fantastic (at 0:09 mark)

</comment><comment><USER25> What kind of specific improvements are they making to the JavaScript engine that is leading to such dramatic speed increases?

</comment><comment><USER26> does it have firebug yet? That's all I care about. And no, the development toolbar is not good enough

<comment><USER27> I'd have to say the developer tools are comparable to Firebug and won't freeze Chrome the way Firebug periodically freezes Firefox.

<comment><USER26> You, my friend, clearly don't use Firebug that much. Until you can add new attributes to existing selectors in developer tools, it simply cannot compare

<comment><USER28> You can also do that with Chrome's builtin inspector.

<comment><USER26> How? It doesn't seem to work like Firebug does where I can just double click and new attributes...

<comment><USER29> Double click to edit any existing attribute; move cursor after semicolon; type new attribute; press Enter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Payless is closing all its U.S. stores - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/15/business/payless-closing-stores-bankrupt/index.html <comment><USER2> Unsurprising. Not because of the state of retail, but because they were purchased in 2012 by an investment firm (Blum Capital) and a private equity group (Golden Gate) that's known for leveraged buyouts. They closed their Australian stores in 2016, and now they're doing the same to the rest of their stores. They've slowly been dividing the assets up and carving/dividing the corpse up to squeeze blood from the stone.

I'll leave it up to someone smarter than I am to tell exactly how much of this was corporate raiding and how much was actually unsustainable business.

<comment><USER3> Yup, blaming this on "the age of Amazon" is a mistake. Same with toys r us and Sears: crushing debt from private equity with no retail competence.

<comment><USER4> The market for Toys-R-Us is absolutely still there, and currently there is a vacuum for a better company to step in place. People are simply not going to buy their children's items online; moms just love to try things out in the store for their kids.

<comment><USER5> We've driven many times by the now closed Toys-R-Us store and lamented how we can't go and pick out toys there anymore.

Stores like Target have a toys section and it helps to some extent but the selection is just not there.

Also another thing Amazon can't do is last minute gift shopping for the numerous birthday parties kids seem to be invited to.

<comment><USER6> Parent life pro tip. Purchase an assortment of toys on clearance and keep them around for emergency party invites.

<comment><USER7> And you can also buy gift wrap and greeting cards at dollar stores. There is not much difference except for the limited selection.

<comment><USER8> Gift wrap is something I've learned over time not to cheap out on. Wrapping a present with cheap paper is frustrating. It rips far too easily. The task with quality paper is night and day. Worth a few more bucks per roll if you ask me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. As a kid, I always went to Payless for my "dress" shoes up until _maybe_ high school. Going to private Catholic school I always needed new "dress" shoes each year and it was a bit ritualistic for me to go to Payless before the new school year to get a new pair. I believe I also got a lot of my casual sneakers there when I was younger as well.

<comment><USER10> Clothing is surprisingly easy once you've settled your sizes for that brand. Add free return shipping and it's almost more logical to order online since you save the time of going to the store and physically finding the item (which may not even be in stock in your size).

I also like that it is much easier to use coupons online than in person, not to mention the extra percent or so off from using affiliate links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a hard time understanding the future macro-economy of the U.S. Where does the money come from and where does it go? We've all seen towns and cities decimated when the factories close or shrink because the thing that's buying raw materials, adding value, and selling it for a profit to generate revenue which is used to pay its workers, taxes, etc. is no longer there. A whole generation or two then moved to becoming simply middle-men, where goods were made somewhere else, marked up to pay rent and employees, and then sold. Now that model is going away as markets become more efficient and Walmart, Dollar General and Amazon (my employer for transparency, though I don't work for the store side) cut out the middle man. Where do 245 million American adults go next to make a living? When robots are driving all the trucks, picking all the fruit, and making most of the goods (all will come to pass within the next 50-100 years), and stores become more about shipping than shopping, where do people work?

<comment><USER12> Well that's the argument for Universal Basic Income in a nutshell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Its amazing to me how many shops I walk past are completely empty these days. I don't know how they can afford to keep the lights on, let alone stock the place.

I myself swore I'd never buy clothes and shoes online, but have started doing this too. Its so much easier and cheaper.

<comment><USER14> _" I myself swore I'd never buy clothes and shoes online, but have started doing this too. Its so much easier and cheaper."_

The main reason I don't buy shoes online is because it's so difficult to find a good fit.

In a store I can easily and quickly try on a whole bunch of shoes, and if none of them fit or I don't like them, all I do is just walk out of the store.

With online shoe purchases, I have to not only wait for delivery but then if they don't fit I have to send them back. Also, I've heard of Amazon closing people's accounts when they made too many returns, so even though Amazon has a great return policy, I am wary of trying on and returning too many shoes. I'd just rather shop in a brick and mortar store when none of this is an issue.

As for Payless, I love them. I could find much cheaper shoes there than anywhere else in my area, and I had no complaints about the quality of the shoes I bought. Their closure means I'll have to pay more for shoes, which is something I can ill afford to do.

<comment><USER15> Not to shill, but with Amazon Wardrobe, they explicitly expect you to send some of the products back. The other differences are that you are not billed until you decide what to keep and (to me, the biggest innovation), they use a box that is perforated with peel-and-stick strips for you to use to mail back and also include a pre-printed return label.

That last one is huge for me because the local UPS store got wise to Amazon returns and now charges $1.50 for the first printout, but only if you email them, which neatly captures everyone who needs to print a return label, but doesn't have a printer of their own.

I recently lost a lot of weight and so I wasn't sure what size I was for a lot of items. So I just ordered a couple different sizes and sent back the ones that didn't fit. Such a better experience than trying to find multiple sizes of the same thing in a store, then going to the dressing room where everything is counted because I'm assumed to be a criminal.

Biggest down side is that they use their very lowest priority and slowest shipping for it. But for me, clothes are rarely urgent.

<comment><USER16> If you are buying mens clothing, the sizes are actually the relevant measurements in inches, so getting the right size is not that hard (you may only need to order two sizes).

But I completely agree with you about retail treating me like a criminal: nobody has counted things going into the dressing room yet, but it is getting more and more difficult to be allowed to leave the stores without purchase anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another one to add to the list -KB Toys, Sears, Kmart, Blockbuster, Montgomery Wards, Circuit City. Thanks for the memories.

<comment><USER18> Weird Stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most of our tired strip malls across the US should be demolished for housing.

<comment><USER20> Most of them aren't worth it. If a mall is failing, it probably exists in an area that is failing as well.

Malls with primarily upper middle class consumers and up are doing quite well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just as a random tid-bit, I take walks after lunch through a shopping plaza.

There was a Payless store that opened around 2016 and stayed open for less than a year until being closed. Not sure what that was about. Guess it was never doing that well.

</comment><comment><USER22> To clarify - Payless is putting more people out work than the entire coal mining industry in the US. But don't worry the government is supporting the miners. And subsidizing their employers.

<comment><USER23> > Payless is putting more people out work than the entire coal mining industry > in the US

Source?

<comment><USER24> Not the OP, but maybe these numbers?

18000 Payless employees in 2017 [1]

~50000 in mining industry [2], ~10000 in _extraction_ [3] in 2017.

So it's probably not true that it's more than the entire coal mining industry. But, more than the number of actual coal miners? Possibly.

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

[2] [https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/naics4_212100.htm](https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/naics4_212100.htm)

[3] [https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/naics4_212100.htm#47-0000](https://www.bls.gov/oes/2017/may/naics4_212100.htm#47-0000)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I thought they ALREADY closed. wow.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think it's premature to lament the loss of 18k ultimately low quality jobs. The trend of retail giants going out of business means that commercial real estate gets cheaper.

For most people starting a business means opening a storefront.

<comment><USER27> It takes years for retail space to be renovated or converted. Meanwhile, people who are now out of a job will need to eat until then.</comment></comment>


Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/meth-pseudoephedrine-big-pharma-lobby

<comment><USER2> Pseudoephedrine is the most effective chemical we have to alleviate flu-like symptoms. The alternatives such as phenylephrine simply don't work.

I believe in cognitive liberty, but meth will mess you up. If I believed any drug should be illegal, meth would be at the top of the list. But illegalizing something for which we have no reasonable alternative is absurd.

Of course, making less destructive amphetamines legal so people don't feel the need for meth, that's just crazy talk.

source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylephrine#Questions_about_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylephrine#Questions_about_effectiveness)

<comment><USER3> I don't think people are proposing making pseudoephedrine illegal. Just slightly more difficult to obtain.

It appears that the data supports that changing the drug's status has a positive impact on meth production. However, there was no data about how people in Oregon or Mississippi deal with their flu-like symptoms.

<comment><USER2> Right. But many people have neither the time nor money for prescriptions. Especially when OTC medicines claim to work. Especially in lower income states like Mississippi.

I grew up in rural blue-collar America. My father had health insurance through his work, but we seldom had the money for the co-pay to see a doctor. (anecdotal, I know)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One real problem (that this article got factually wrong) is that phenylephrine (the 'PE' in Sudafed PE) doesn't really work. The literature goes back-and- forth on it, but the consensus seems to be that it's only marginally more effective than placebo. Pseudoephedrine is significantly more effective than both (which, of course, is partly due to its close chemical relationship to methamphetamine...funny how that works).

<comment><USER5> Agreed. For entertainment, see the satirical article "A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine" which notes the difficulty of obtaining psudoephedrine from pharmacies and gives a simple chemical synthesis of it from "readily available" meth.

"We expect that the simultaneous trends of restricting pseudoephedrine sales while N-methylamphetamine becomes less expensive and of higher purity will make the methods presented here increasingly attractive."

[http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf](http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf)

<comment><USER4> _" which notes the difficulty of obtaining psudoephedrine from pharmacies and gives a simple chemical synthesis of it from "readily available" meth"_

Ha! It certainly would be a good bit easier to put that hydroxyl group back on than to strip it off in the first place....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article argues hard that making pseudoephedrine a prescription drug would magically solve all this... and never once floats the idea that making _methamphetamine itself_ a prescription drug would work much better.

Once addicts can get cheap, safe maintenance doses to feed their habit, there's no more need for homebrew meth labs, and no more burn patients, toddlers drinking drain cleaner, kids in foster care because their parents are in jail, police teams in hazmat suits and all the massive costs this imposes on society.

<comment><USER7> Methamphetamine is already an FDA-approved prescription drug, called Desoxyn.

<comment><USER2> Holy mother duck! If I were roughly the size of a barge, I still wouldn't take meth to lose weight. I think you'd be trading your mind for your body.

<comment><USER8> [http://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug/warnings- precautions.htm](http://www.rxlist.com/desoxyn-drug/warnings-precautions.htm)

"Methamphetamine should be administered at the lowest effective dosage"

"For treatment of children 6 years or older with a behavioral syndrome characterized by moderate to severe distractibility, short attention span, hyperactivity, emotional lability and impulsivity"

I am not opposed to the treatment of ADHD, and I understand the difference in purity between prescription amphetamines and street drugs, and the difference in effect from treatment dosage vs recreational use, but.. even so, it's a little hilarious to read, given my preconceptions regarding the drug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Meth use as a whole, according to a 2009 RAND Corporation study, costs the nation anywhere between $16 billion and $48 billion each year._

I call BS. Even $16 billion is totally ridiculous. According to Wikipedia, NASA's budget was $18 billion in 2011.

This article is just a straight ahead Moral Panic, trying to polarize a situation, and then punish some party while there's a big fog of crapaganda around. Mother Jones should be ashamed.

And just a side note: how many Moral Panics over drugs do we have before we just get over it?

I'm old, I can recall a late 60s moral panic about LSD - it supposedly made you have babies with lobster claws, if you survived the mandatory dive out of a 2nd floor window. There was an early 70s panic over heroin, and then the Angel Dust thing in the early 80s. After that, it was Free Basing, and then Crack. It's been Evil Meth for a while now, isn't it about time for a New Drug to Panic over?

<comment><USER10> "I'm old, I can recall a late 60s moral panic about LSD - it supposedly made you have babies with lobster claws, if you survived the mandatory dive out of a 2nd floor window. There was an early 70s panic over heroin, and then the Angel Dust thing in the early 80s. After that, it was Free Basing, and then Crack. It's been Evil Meth for a while now, isn't it about time for a New Drug to Panic over?"

I grew up in a very poor part of the country and this statement is ridiculous. These drugs (save maybe LSD) are still massively destructive forces in society that still kill people today in poor, uneducated sections of the United States. Your statement makes it sound like people are just afraid of these drugs because they don't understand it, but once they come around to it, they'll see how it's not so bad.

That is an insane position on drugs.

disclosure: I'm actually for legalization but I have my eyes open about what they do and how they destroy families and lives.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I wasn't clear. It's not that the drugs are "not so bad", it's just that the fog around something so horribly stigmatized prevents any sensible treatment program.

The only thing society does if there's a major drug Moral Panic is to punish the offenders severely. Putting people in prison just causes huge problems all around, even for those not in prison. We end up with a prison-industrial complex and a militarized police force.

Illegal drugs do indeed destroy families and lives: but prison is almost certainly not any help for those issues. We've got AA for booze, Narcotics Anonymous for heroin, etc etc. Those actually seem to make a difference. The Moral Panics around particular drugs keep us from helping the people involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oregonian here. Although the incidence of meth labs here in Southern Oregon has certainly dropped, which is a good thing, I doubt the number of meth users has changed much if at all. The meth is now coming from Mexico, much higher quality, and a straight shot up I5.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you make psuedoephedrine too difficult to get, meth cooks will start with extracts from _Ephedra sinica_ (containing ephedrine). That may or may not be a good thing.

<comment><USER2> There are too many legal plants anyway؟</comment></comment>


Pixie: A small fast, native lisp with "magical" powers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9168636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9168636)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8480608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8480608)</comment>


Cherokee Webserver, "The Fastest", Really? - <AUTHOR> http://forum.gwan.com/index.php?p=/discussion/182/cherokee-webserver-the-fastest-really/ <comment><USER2> Any claims about "fastest webserver" also need to add the qualifier "free".

Because I believe litespeed is faster, though the free version has a simultaneous connection limit.

It's even faster than nginx in some cases.

[http://blog.litespeedtech.com/2010/01/06/benchmark- compariso...](http://blog.litespeedtech.com/2010/01/06/benchmark-comparison- on-serving-simple-php-litespeed-vs-apache-vs-nginx/#post-173)

Also, litespeed is practically a drop-in replacement for apache since it can obey _httpd.conf_ and _.htaccess_ files which no other webserver bothers to try to do. You can be converted to it in less than an hour (optionally along with apache in the background on another port). If you have a bunch of rewrite rules, other webservers are a complete workout to convert to. (They've also gone to great lengths to make it play nice with cpanel)

<comment><USER3> I second that - one client of mine has been using the free version for years to host a couple of rails app and are very happy with it.

For Rails work these days though, I'm using passenger with either nginx or apache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author of g-wan appears to be quite paranoid about his competitors...

<http://gwan.ch/en_jihad.html> <http://gwan.ch/en_complexity.html>

<comment><USER5> Being paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

<comment><USER5> I mean if this <http://gwan.com/en_dns.html> happened to me I would be paranoid too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Forgive my ignorance, but when does this actually matter? My application can't run anywhere near that speed, so time spent at the webserver level is less than 1% of the total response...

For static files or cached pages, I can maybe understand the fuss.

</comment><comment><USER7> "G-WAN is fully functional for an unlimited time at no cost for personal use, individual use, non-profit use, academic use, commercial and non-commercial use or any combination of these (no call-home, no spyware, no backdoor included)."

G-WAN is proprietary software, using "C" servlet for writing extension and is not very clear about the exact HTTP version supported.

On the other hand, Cherokee is free software (GNU General Public License), supports many handlers, includes many modules like reverse proxy and has a decent speed over Apache HTTPD.

Why would I pick the "The Fastest" when you have a full-featured, free, standard HTTP server that is already "Fast enough"?

</comment><comment><USER8> I care more about concurrency than "speed". nginx is better at concurrency than Cherokee and most other webservers. Oh well.

<comment><USER9> How is nginx' concurrency achieved? Does it use something like libev/libevent ?

<comment><USER10> nginx uses native evented I/O provided by the operating system (epoll on Linux, kqueue on *BSD, /dev/poll and event ports on Solaris, input/output completion port on Windows).

libevent and libev provide abstraction layer for those mechanisms and unified interface for all supported operating systems.

<comment><USER11> > native evented I/O _API_ provided by operating system

I know it's just semantics but I recently learned that some people actually believe that synchronous I/O API provided by OS is actually… well synchronous I/O. Obviously there cannot be any synchronous I/O going on in any modern operating system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gwan is using C based scripting, I guess security would be an issue if you are writing too much website logic in C.

</comment><comment><USER13> The benchmarks they link to are from 2008. Not sure what the fuss is about.</comment>


Fox News Explains GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/09/fox-news-explaining-github-funniest-thing-youll-see-today/

<comment><USER2> Seems a bit harsh to me. Yeah, the inconsistent formatting and spelling looks silly, but it isn't all that terrible as an explanation of what Github does that can fit on a single TV screen and will make sense to average people who don't know anything about software development or how source control systems work. Note that the OP's corrected versions are several times longer and include other undefined terms that most people wouldn't know.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of the words _are_ spelled correctly, though.</comment>


Old Languages Like COBOL Stick Around for Good Reasons - <AUTHOR> https://builtin.com/software-engineering-perspectives/why-cobol-is-still-used <comment><USER2> > They don't want to break it by touching it.

It blows my mind that we haven't solved this problem yet given half a century. That we're still so afraid of touching our code. COBOL may be COBOL, but who among us can honestly say that things are categorically different in 2020?

It got me thinking about languages like Haskell that resist this kind of breakage. And that got me thinking about why people don't use those languages for mission-critical systems like these. Probably it's because they tend to be unapproachable and their communities populated by language nerds, instead of people who just want to get things working and keep them that way. And that reminded me of this thing I saw a while back about finding a "simple subset" of Haskell that could give you all the functional and type-checked benefits without the dizzying theory: [https://www.simplehaskell.org/](https://www.simplehaskell.org/)

I don't know what point I'm trying to make exactly; I just find it bizarre and depressing that our business logic still has to be rewritten just because we want to change platforms. That we still can't build systems that can safely be upgraded piecemeal. I just don't get it. These feel like solvable, incredibly valuable, problems. It can make a programmer feel nihilistic.

<comment><USER3> I used to build PHP-backends for 15 years, but for the last few years I've switched to Haskell for exactly this reason.

(So I think you're making a good point :)</comment></comment>


We built a customer retention app - <AUTHOR> http://Loopstr.ai <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR - Our app can predict whether a customer will keep doing business with your company or not.

Features - We attribute health scores to each of your customers, and potential reasons for a given customer to decide to leave. These scores and factors are regularly updated, based on your customers' activity.

Beta test - We are looking for feedback from beta testers companies for a 6-month free beta period. We will take care of integrations, and regularly provide health scores and factors for each of your customers. Interested ? Please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Where should you seat on a plane? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160919-where-should-you-sit-on-a-plane <comment><USER2> Just use seatguru.com when you pick your seats.</comment>