Ask HN: Review my startup - Jaxified - <AUTHOR> http://www.jaxified.com/

<comment><USER3> Just a couple of design things: Black text on that blue background doesn't provide enough contrast for what's supposed to be your main headline. Also, I've come to expect buttons to have hover states, and yours don't.

As for the product itself, I'd like to see a better explanation of why I should pay $10 a month to see some basic stats about my posts' tweets/shares. Facebook Insights, for example, gives all that information to me for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I've been constantly tweaking the black/blue and will obviously need to keep tweaking to find a better fit. And I will definitely add some hover states!

I have definitely struggled with the product's core value prop. Our biggest advantage over insights is that it's near real time, and is provided over time by post. We also allow you to track other blogs that are not your own for comparison. I will go back and make sure that that point is made more of a focus. Thanks again for your feedback!

<comment><USER4> Try

      #splash {color:#CEF}
      #splash h2{color:#CF9}

You'll get a better idea, then start tweaking hex colors to get the perfect one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> # When I click "Try it for Free" on home page - get me to sign-up page already. Why are you showing plans? Make the 2nd CTA button "See Plans". When you have a chance to get me sign-up then do that, do the selling after I've seen your product.

(If I am already sold, I'd click on pricing & plans).

# Your 14-day free thing on every account is confusing. Either add it as another plan or just take me sign-up already.

# When I add my blog I understand that the data is loading, but for how long? After 10 mins, all it has done is get my blog posts listed. No other data at all. How long do I need to wait? Show me a progress bar or tell me that you are processing it?

# You might wanna check your date selector in Chrome in Windows 7. It just doesn't work for me.

# When I select span of 2-3 months (did it using tabs since your calender thing was not responsive) the scale of days become messy. use smaller data points there?

# Not sure if I'd wanna pay that much to see these stats which even tweet button and like button on my blog can show me. Guess you guys will be adding more stuff? Like overall ranking, what audience liked it or what?

I know you guys are going to get down to these points and might already know these points but then again.

If I were in your shoes, after reading my own feedback I'd think I hated the service. So let me give the other side of the coin, what I liked:

Though there are some design flaws but site is not falling apart and is good enough in terms of design. Again there are some basic flaws like black-on-blue but much better than what I am seeing nowadays.

After I figure out where to click to sign-up. I hardly remember the process of singing-up which is good! Means it was painless.

It's a nice concept, can take off if you build upon it. Perhaps till beta you wanna keep it free and once you know what they are really looking for - <USER2> it for paid or something?

Keep at it

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks for the full review! Since we do offer the 14-day free trial on all plans, I could probably delay choosing a plan until you want to upgrade. Then it would just be a one-step sign-up.

We do only track new data; unfortunately there's no easy way to go back and links to your site from Twitter historically so we decided to be consistent with Facebook data. As a result you'll only see social interactions from the time you sign up going forward. Twitter data is real-time, and Facebook is polled on the hour. I will see if I can make that more clear.

We're definitely working hard to find what our biggest value prop will be. I think the features are there and we can iterate on them, but I definitely agree that we might not have nailed it yet.

I'll take a look at the Chrome calendar issue; on the other hand I'm glad that the sign-up was painless and that you like the design (blue on black aside).

Thanks again for the very thorough review!

<comment><USER5> > unfortunately there's no easy way to go back and links to your site from > Twitter historically

Maybe you can. I am no dev but once you have the url of my blog post. There must be a way to query this sort of thing via API? [http://twitter.com/#search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.64notes.com%2F...](http://twitter.com/#search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.64notes.com%2Fapp- vs-business%2F) THis is search result for single blog post URL that tweet button displays as # of RTs.

I guess you can get all the tweets via API, which will have date of tweet and things like that?

Not sure if we are on the same lines but maybe it can be done.

Keep moving forward :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My biggest complain is there is no free plan. Acctually I saw later there is 14day free trial and if you can convert big enough % of users to paying customers you rock!

Can't tell you much of data value right now as everything is empty so far, but I could agree with rradu's post. Perhaps that can be a nice tool to track competition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We've thought about offering a free plan and might still do so in the future, but for now we're laser focused on making it as easy to try it out yourself and possible. No verification, no e-mail confirmation, etc.

As you noted, you can also add other blogs that aren't specifically your own to compare. We've tried a number of things to make sure it's active up front but it's certainly something we're still working to improve. Thanks for checking it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a really useful service. I run The Startup Foundry and would love to chat with you. Fill out this info and we will be in touch <http://thestartupfoundry.com/tip-us/>. Keep up the great work, I think it has real potential.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input! I'm loving what you're doing with The Startup Foundry and have had your profile page open in Firefox for a week so I would remember to reach out. I was planning to send you an e-mail on Monday; I'll fill out the form so we can chat! Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Who are you currently targeting as customer? It seems that your clients would be digital advertising and marketing studios who often manage a lot of social media channels for their clients. For them it would be a great service to see all these channels in one coherent interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're definitely hopeful that will be a big part of it. We look to be a value- add to services like Sysomos or Radian6 who offer much more comprehensive brand management solutions at $500+/month. We're also targeting bloggers who want to aggregate their social metrics, learn a little bit more about their audience, and check out the same data for their competitors. While I don't have an exact visitor or social metric cutoff, we are actively targeting what I would call professional bloggers or would-be professionals.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking a look! I'll be posting a post on Monday on our blog about how it went from a weekend project to 7 months of work, but I'm really excited to show this off. I'm here to answer any questions or concerns you might have.

</comment><comment><USER9> Curious: For firm, blogs = N/A, Do you mean unlimited, or that it isn't offered? Just curious as that came off unclear to me.

Agreed about the hover states, even if the button just has a light gradient change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure; while we haven't launched them yet, our Firm accounts won't actually billed by the blog, they will be billed by campaign. So a campaign might include a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a landing page and a group of blogs who you have hired to promote your content. That combination is billed at $100 per month, so the pricing structure is a little different. I will look at finding a different way of wording it, but there will be more information on the page when that plan is ready to go.

Working on the hover states now! Thanks for checking it out.

<comment><USER5> In that case put "Get in touch" N/A sounds obscure

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey Terry. Congrats on the launch. Some feedback:

1) The demo link needs to stand out a bit. I found myself looking for some kind of a demo and almost missed the link.

2) The demo page is stuck on loading in IE.

3) The boxes that appear on the right throughout the site needs some design tweak, though I can't put my finger on exactly what.

Best of luck with your startup!</comment>


Cancelled: Ambitious Dyson Electric Car – 600m Range – 0-62 in 4.8 Sec - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/dysons-electric-car-n526-085341772.html <comment><USER2> The title should be changed to say 965kms or 600 miles. 600m reads as 600 meters for rest of the world.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it was 600 meters and that's why they cancelled it.

<comment><USER4> Lol. I thought the same after reading the title. They probably cancelled it due to its absurd range

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Each Dyson electric car would have needed to make £150,000 to break even"._

The electric supercar market is well-covered. The good electric replacements for the Toyota Corolla and the Ford F-150 have yet to ship.</comment>


Show HN: SqlSmash, A productivity plugin for Sql Server Management Studio - <AUTHOR> http://sqlsmash.com

<comment><AUTHOR> SqlSmash is now live and open to the general public.</comment>


A time to fast - <AUTHOR> http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6416/770 <comment><USER2> A wonderfully comprehensive article on all main facets of fasting strategies.</comment>


Lockdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/07/03/lockdown <comment><USER2> This has to be the first ever Marco post I've read which didn't leave me wanting to toss sharp items at my monitors.

I actually fully agree with him on this. The open web is increasingly being threatened and locked down. We need to oppose that.

<comment><USER3> It's ironic though, that this post is coming from Macro. He hates Chrome (open source and free software) and uses Safari. He hates Android (open source and free software) and uses and develops for iOS.

I sense hypocrisy.

<comment><USER4> "Hates Chrome"? I haven't noticed that. Most Mac users use Safari.

<comment><USER3> The point is, he has open source and free alternatives to Safari, that are equally good or arguably better. If he really cares about openness, I wonder why it hasn't influenced his decision.

<comment><USER4> I don't really see it as that terribly inconsistent to care more about open protocols and open content than about open source software for your personal use.

<comment><USER3> Maybe not. But it's hypocritical of him to not criticize Apple for pushing for an app-oriented mobile experience and using patents to block the progress of HTML5 APIs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" It was just running, quietly serving a vital role for a lot of people."_

Yes, but it wasn't in Google's commercial interest. Running Reader as a "side project" is not just distracting to senior management, but also creates legal, technical, and reputation risks which can bite back on their much larger businesses.

It's hard for most of us to comprehend, but ready-made revenues of a few million bucks, even if it was $100M (unlikely), is not of interest to Google unless it's growing fast. Which RSS, isn't.

Welcome to Extremistan. Black Swans like Google do things that aren't intuitive.

 _" The bigger problem is that they've abandoned interoperability. RSS, semantic markup, microformats, and open APIs all enable interoperability"_

Yes. This is indeed the direction Google has been moving, and it's a problem for those of us who enjoyed an open web, as users _and_ developers.

Google tried to combat Facebook with open standards and it didn't work. OpenSocial, if anyone remembers, was a huge effort by Google which would have the effect of commoditising Facebook's functionality. They put themselves on the line by partnering with many other companies, and it failed to slow Facebook down.

They tried with other standards too, e.g. PubSubHubbub, WebFinger. Most people have never heard of them.

There's no conspiracy theory needed here. Google tried with Reader too, for 8 years. It just didn't take off. Most people found it too hard and found Facebook + Twitter way easier. Not the kind of people who read HN, but the kind of people who are too busy to figure out what seem like trivial technologies to early adopter types.

So yes, Marco is absolutely correct that Google's becoming a company that, like Facebook, is more interested in bringing developers in _after_ their products have gained traction with users. This is also how Apple has acquired so much interest from developers; they didn't open source their OS, they didn't spend years constructing open standards for mobile apps. They just built a hugely popular OS and developers came running.

All of this is _related to_ Google Reader, all of this is true. BUT there's no causation here, as much as some people want to believe it. Reader didn't take off because most people didn't use it. For a giant company focused on growth, that's all the reason you need to turn it off.

<comment><USER6> "Yes, but it wasn't in Google's commercial interest. Running Reader as a "side project" is not just distracting to senior management, but also creates legal, technical, and reputation risks which can bite back on their much larger businesses."

You know, I've seen this statement on almost every thread about Google Reader, and it seems to be one of those things that everyone is just giving a pass to.

Google's entire hiring and organisational model is (or at least should be) predicated on hiring great people to get things done. This is how every well run technical company operates. This idea that we all need "senior management attention" or "product manager" love is something that comes out of dysfunctional organisations without a shared vision. Could you imagine this statement being made about some of the tech company darlings here (37Signals, Github, Stripe etc.)?

If you're going to put a product in maintenance mode (or even slow growth) with a team who understands it, you don't need senior management attention from on high.

Also, the reputational risk is just a laughable statement to make. Look what happened reputationally just now - that's not going to go away any time soon and you better believe that it was much worse than someone coming along later and saying "Oh no, Google reader is so unchanged from 3 years ago, I hate Google." Anecdotally, I don't even know anyone who uses Google Reader directly, they all have dedicated apps.

All these arguments are poor. Or, at best, if they're true, they signal that Google has really lost its way - it's now a behemoth organisation that requires senior management oversight on every single product offering, and any non-spectacular product could at any instant bring the entire organisation down with its combination of toxic legal and toxic risk.

<comment><USER5> It'd be manageable if Reader was the only small project they kept going, but not if there are dozens of them, and there _have_ been dozens of them. Reader is only one example among many small projects which Google has been shutting down.

Some might protest that Reader _should_ be the exception, but Google is the only one with the numbers, and I do believe Reader's popularity has been amplified by the nature of its loyal users. It's unlikely a complaint from a disgruntled SketchUp user is going to the top of HN.

"Also, the reputational risk is just a laughable statement to make. Look what happened reputationally just now"

Most of my non-technical family and friends haven't even heard of Reader and aren't aware of its shutdown. OTOH If Reader had some security leak that caused people's GMails to be read, they'd certainly hear about it and Google's seniors would be hauled into Congress or the EU to explain themselves.

At risk of sounding like a Google apologist, I don't believe Google has lost its way when you look at their performance over the past couple of years. If stock price is any indication, the all-time high (at a time when its rivals have been flat or in decline) suggests the market doesn't feel that way either.

<comment><USER6> The great thing about hypotheticals is we can make them without a basis in reality. Your hypothetical regarding some Gmail leak is not really reasonable.

The fact is, many many Google services don't make money in and of themselves. But they add value to the broader ecosystem as a whole.

Whether Google wanted to shut their service down is their business, but the weird machinations that have been trotted out to justify (senior management time, legal and technical risk, reputational risk) are really bizarre when taken within the broader context of how Google does and should operate.

<comment><USER5> It's not hypothetical. It's a real risk. You know, like a possible outcome has a certain estimated probability of occurring.

Risk analysis is one of the things companies do when they make decisions.

No-one is justifying here. This is just a conjecture about why it's in their interest to shut it down, contrary to impassioned arguments about how much money they could make to keep it. It's not a "justification" because no moral dimension has been mentioned here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was exactly what I thought when I heard about Google closing down Reader. I'm glad Marco put this into a coherent article.

It is in Google's best interest to have RSS and individual blogs die. Amusingly enough, it is also what Facebook wants, so the two giants are fully alinged on this one.

About 6 months ago I quit Facebook and Google+, deciding to publish my stuff on my pages and my blog alone, instead of throwing them into closed gardens. I do not regret that decision, even though readership dropped significantly.

<comment><USER8> I don't get it. Even if all of us RSS reading dinosaurs were to be forced into the information age, we'd probably go to Twitter / Facebook and not G+.

So why exactly is the death of RSS in Google's best interest unless they're actively trying to send users away to their competition ?

<comment><USER9> By their thinking that social is strategic, to admit that G+ can't win is to admit that Google is dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, for once I agree with Marco. But I find it a little strange coming from him - he seemed to care not much about it at all when making his apps exclusive to Apple's locked down, ultra closed platforms.

<comment><USER11> ...and the web.

Sure he didn't do an app for Android (until someone did for him) and is a bit snarky about it as a platform, but the web version of Instapaper existed before the app did and powered the whole thing.

Plus 'The Magazine' has a significant web component (albeit a weird log in).

His preference for iOS seems to be aesthetic and income related, but he's originally (and still) a PHP web guy.

<comment><USER12> > Plus 'The Magazine' has a significant web component (albeit a weird log in).

He discussed that at some point, I think it might have been on Accidental Tech Podcast. As I remember the idea was that since The Magazine wasn't terribly important (security wise) he could avoid having to give people another username/password. He said it was something of an experiment and he probably wouldn't do it again. I think Casey and Siracusa both said they found it odd and confusing at first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Re: Google+

Is their overall strategy to drive adoption working these days? I know their number of users must be quite large now, but AFAICT it is pretty much hugely inflated by being a catch-all for anyone with any kind of Google account.

I actually like Google+ quite a bit and have a lot of people in my circles and I'm in quite a lot of other people's circles, but I never actually go to Google+ anymore (unless I'm following a link to some Linus post or something from somewhere else) because it simply never hit the required critical mass of actual mainstream usage for me to switch. Everyone I know and want to keep up with IRL is still stuck on Facebook, ergo I'm stuck on Facebook even though I don't particularly care for it. Even among the smallish subgroup of people I know IRL who did embrace Google+ at first, they are virtually all like me now, with accounts that scarcely ever get used.

I'm not sure what Google+ has to do to make converts of the masses, but at least among my circles they aren't doing it currently despite whatever collateral damage they are causing in trying to force people there.

<comment><USER5> Google+ must be one of the most misunderstood things Google's ever done.

It's not supposed to be a social network like Facebook. The thing you see when you visit G+ - people microblogging and sharing pics etc - is just a fraction of the whole point of G+.

G+ is Google's social layer. In data terms, it turns people into "first-class citizens" across Google's estate, instead of every project just shoehorning in their own "user" structure. That's why you see G+ in Play reviews, YouTube comments, integrated into email, and so on.

<comment><USER4> That may be Google's internal philosophy, but their external face on it is a service that looks just like Facebook, at the website plus.google.com, with a title of Google+. They couldn't be trying any harder to make it misunderstood.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that Google built it to function like Facebook, and once it was released into the wild it was used more like a hybrid of Twitter and forums. Maybe they dogfooded it wrong.

I'm increasingly feeling like the problem with Google+ is that it didn't start with a minimum idea. They went straight for the concept of 'Facebook' and didn't give users enough incentive to make the switch.

Maybe they could have made a "Facebook Export" importer to populate streams with existing posts, friends, and photos. Maybe they could have made it more social and personal.

Or maybe Facebook's momentum prevented people from actually making the switch. Enough people are satisfied by Facebook that they wouldn't abandon it for a couple of friends.

Google just didn't play the cards right, and I feel like Google+ has gotten too complicated for anyone to just jump in and figure it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Isn't it the same strategy Apple has been played all the time for its OS? And looks like Marco Arment has been enjoying it quite a lot? There is no freedom in terms of interoperability in your daily system and suddenly you are mad at "losing it"?

<comment><USER16> This seems to be a common snark whenever someone known for (gasp) using Apple products complains about lack of openness. Because clearly these two things are connected, except for the part about them not being connected at all. (Frankly I have no idea what "no freedom in terms of interoperability in your daily system" even means. What is it my Mac and iPad are failing to interoperate with?)

If I construct a popular online social network, I could run it on Debian, code it in Emacs, have all the source code on Github, genuflect to a picture of Richard Stallman daily, _and still have no open APIs for users to interact with their data._ If most major players on the Internet lock your data down, then many common uses of the Internet will in a very real sense become proprietary _even if it is running entirely on free software._

I'm sure it's _fun_ to smugly go "well, you use iOS so you should like closed things," but it kinda betrays a significant distance between you and the point.

<comment><USER15> Really? "What is it my Mac and iPad are failing to interoperate with"? Can you share your iCloud stuff with others not using Mac system?

Marco was blaming Google/Twitter/Facebook locking down devs/users in their own eco-system and your point is you get the interoperability within Apple's own garden? Come on.

BTW, you give a perfect example of what being hypocrite looks like. Sure, you can enjoy your time by hosting a closed service on top of open source infrastructure, that's hypocrite. You can also enjoy your time in a closed eco-system ever since from day 1 with absolutely no interoperate and still manage to find way to fuck those closed web based eco-system. That's also hypocrite.

Interoperate means what? Choice and competition. I see no spirit of either in Apple's eco-system. And somehow Marco always find a way to blame other companies for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _> Then you spend twice as much time figuring out how to deal with poorly crafted feeds, ambiguities, and edge cases — especially for Atom, which is a huge, overengineered pain in the ass_

Funny: that's what most people said of RSS 0.x (poorly crafted), 1.x (over- engineered) and 2.x (ambiguous and full of badly-specified edge-cases). Atom was supposed to fix all that.

<comment><USER18> That's the problem with open standards, isn't it? (obligatory XKCD reference: [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article reads as if RSS itself was dead. Come on guys, I know many of you loved Google Reader, but it was just a damn client for RSS. There are millions of RSS clients out there. Just use another one.

The article got that ass backward. With Google Reader, you were locked in Google's ecosystem. Without Google Reader, you are free to use whatever RSS client you can find.

I think the role of Google Reader for RSS is truly overrated but please show me how I'm wrong.

<comment><USER20> > With Google Reader, you were locked in Google's ecosystem. Without Google > Reader, you are free to use whatever RSS client you can find.

This is (or was) a false dilemma. You could, with Google Reader, use a vast multitude of RSS clients: you didn't have to use Google Reader proper. And, because nearly everyone supported Google Reader as a common sync API, you could switch between clients without losing your place or your data. Want to try X flavor-of-the-month RSS app? No problem: just log in with your Google account. Don't like it? No problem either: switch back to your other RSS client and everything—even what articles you've read and starred—are right where you left off.

Now, there's at least a half dozen competing and incompatible sync APIs and numerous perfectly-adequate RSS clients rendered obsolete because they haven't been updated to support other sync services. Because of the lack of a common and ubiquitous sync API, choosing an RSS client now that Google Reader is gone will be more locked down than before, at least for the foreseeable future.

Which is Marco's point: companies don't want you to be able to freely move your data around. They want you to use their service. Yes, there's more choice, but choosing one service over another winds up making it harder to make a different choice down the line.

<comment><USER19> Thanks a lot for clarification. I never used Google Reader and it wasn't clear to me that the whole fuss was about the syncing API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's interesting to note here that despite Facebook, Google, and Twitter's best intentions, new social networks grow faster today than ever before. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat exploded in a manner of weeks.

<comment><USER22> There was a great post a few weeks back here about why whatsapp, viber et al had such a dramatic growth. Basically, the hypothesis was these apps have access to the entirety of the user's contact data on their phones, which allows them to reconnect with our friends automatically (or fallback to sms/email). Ironically, I think this is something where Google+'s circles could come in very useful for us (meaning, normal users): if Google stopped pushing Plus as an end goal unto itself and instead started integrating it at a lower level in android and provide APIs accessible to other websites, it could have massive privacy and usability advantages for us. Cyanogenmod is doing something similar, but I think they're implementing it as a everything- or-nothing switch for apps. Providing more granularity (and seriously, Google got the circles UI spot on, I'm very impressed) is something that's sorely needed if we want to move away from facebook's monopoly on our social graph.

<comment><USER23> >and seriously, Google got the circles UI spot on, I'm very impressed

I should hope they got circles right as it was the most obvious thing in social networking ever. 30 seconds into my very first usage of facebook and I already realized it was missing what google calls "circles".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good read, but it fizzled at the end.

Creating openness is not good enough. There were business reasons to support every long lasting open technology, and with the dominance of proprietary social media platforms, that business reason (for RSS at least) is dead.

The web opened up e commerce, and modern social media lowered the barrier to entry for online communities.

Its the same problem cryptography has, if its not dead simple and obviously useful don't expect it to stick around (at least at mass appeal)

<comment><USER25> Yeah I was looking forward to reading through what he thought could be done to try and turn the tide on the issue, but to essentially just write 'fuck y'all' kinda made it feel like someone rambling on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _This plan is particularly problematic because Google+ is, relatively, a clear failure so far_

An absurd statement on the face of it (even with the weasel-word qualifier), given Google+'s large number of active users. In fact, given the traffic there, I suspect his ridiculous Cupertino fanboism is to blame for not considering Google+ a smashing success.

<comment><USER27> Go to any article on the web with social media buttons, compare the number on the Facebook, Twitter and Google buttons. One of them is one or two magnitudes lower than the others, which?

<comment><USER26> So Google+ is not nearly as big as Facebook. That much is obvious. But Marco interprets that as "failure." Any service with 400 million active users is not one I'd label that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Conspicuously missing: any sort of criticism directed at Apple.

<comment><USER29> No criticism of the NSA either... he must be a sympathiser.

<comment><USER28> > [...] they want to lock you in, shut out competitors, and make a service so > proprietary that even if you could get your data out, it would be either > useless (no alternatives to import into) or cripplingly lonely [...]

It's very hard not to think of Apple when reading this sentence.

This article is about openness and interoperability, not about spying or government agencies - not sure your analogy stands. Plus, I think it's a pretty well known fact that Marco is indeed a sympathiser of Apple (hence the "conspicuously missing" bit).

<comment><USER30> It seems like you have an axe to grind. Apple is not germane because Apple is not a major web player.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Find it strange that he doesn't once mention Apple, iMessage or iCloud, which rank really low on the data interoperability front.

<comment><USER32> He does mention Apple in a footnote.

However, Apple doesn't really make claims about openness (apart from a brief marketing push around OSX 10.2), whereas Twitter's success came from liberal access to its API and Google makes a big deal out of its openness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An Apple fan complaining about Google not being "open" enough. Wow.

Remember everyone: "Open web" is very important! But your browser itself doesn't need to be open source. Use Safari instead of Chrome. Your OS doesn't need to be open source either. Use and develop for OSX. Use and develop for iOS. Refuse developing for Android and make iOS-exclusive apps. Buy all Apple products and support Apple. Then open a blog to advocate openness and bash companies that build open source tools.

<comment><USER4> Pretty much the definition of ad hominem here.

<comment><USER3> My argument is that he is an hypocrite. I'm not trying to disprove his argument. In fact I agree with it 100%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> You'd think they could at least have slowly integrated Reader with their G+ vision rather than alienating a good portion of the users who have championed them for years.

<comment><USER34> They did slowly integrate some parts of Reader into Google+ and it was met with resistance.

Google+ Sparks was a kind of RSS/StumbleUpon thing. Flopped.

Reader sharing became sharing into Google+. Many in the Reader crew defiantly cried out against it and said they wouldn't share things if they had to use Google+ to do it.

It wouldn't have been all roses no matter how you cut it.

I think people are in the bargaining phase of dealing with their post-Reader era grief.

<comment><USER35> Sparks didn't have RSS... did it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Is this worth reading? Whenever I see marco.org I think to myself: "Apple love, Google hate as usual" and move on.

<comment><USER26> Yes, it's true his fanboism shows through when you see him call Google+, a service with 400 million active users, a "failure." If that's failure, then please let me fail.

<comment><USER37> It wouldn't be a failure for you or me. Google started out with far more active users than that, so they have to be judged on a different basis. They shut off other services to force those users into G+, and significant numbers of those users posted a couple of times and then never looked at G+ again. _Something_ about Google's actions turned them from regular G-Reader users into regular users of non-Google services. That smells like failure.

If you think Marco is a particularly rabid fanboi, congratulations on your sheltered and privileged life. Apple fanbois get _much_ worse than that.

<comment><USER38> >> If you think Marco is a particularly rabid fanboi, congratulations on your sheltered and privileged life. Apple fanbois get much worse than that.

I'm not a fan of Marco, but you're right. If Marco really was a rabid fanboi, more than half of his blog would be pointless claim chowder posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The thing I don't understand is that for me, Twitter and Facebook aren't a competition for blogs and RSS. They're different things and they're complementary.

Twitter and Facebook are for posting links to things you've found or broadcasting short messages up to a few sentences. Twitter is for doing those things publicly, Facebook is for doing those things within the circle of your friends.

Blogs (and RSS) are for posting longer pieces of text, articles and such things. When you want to post an article, you don't put it on Twitter (for obvious reasons) or Facebook (because it limits your audience), you put it on your blog (self-hosted or on a service like Blogger or Wordpress) and you post links to it to Twitter and/or Facebook. And when you want to invite your friends to a movie, you don't post that to your blog, you post that on Facebook.

So I'm not worried that Twitter and Facebook don't have RSS feeds - I wouldn't even want to see my friends' FB posts when I'm reading longer articles in my RSS reader. And I'm not worried about Facebook killing blogs and RSS - yes, most people post stuff on Facebook and not on their blogs, but that's because most people don't write anything that would resemble an article.

(I do agree though that Twitter should have _some_ open API for getting someone's public tweets in a machine-readable form, but it doesn't have to be RSS, JSON is just fine.)

</comment><comment><USER40> The type of interactions that Facebook focused on are naturally inclined to be closed. You need to manage who sees what. BTW this was a revolution that got the late adopters online and got people comfortable using their own names.

Anyway, my point is that this isn't a conspiracy. Google+ might have all sorts of potential for moneymaking but its not google's main business at this point. This trend towards more closed systems is largely emergent. These closed environments are we're people like to interact.

</comment><comment><USER35> > Google tried to combat Facebook with open standards and it didn't work. > OpenSocial, if anyone remembers, was a huge effort by Google which would > have the effect of commoditising Facebook's functionality. They put > themselves on the line by partnering with many other companies, and it > failed to slow Facebook down.

Why does Google have to "slow down" Facebook? What does that even mean? Is Google only successful if no other successful web companies exist?

<comment><USER41> Google is successful if it has free access to web content. Unfortunately Facebook locks out Google (and pretty much everyone else in a non-consumer role), and so someone at Google felt the need to do something about that.

<comment><USER35> But they still don't have free access to Facebook or Twitter content. Is Google not successful? Are they going to become unsuccessful in the foreseeable future because of this issue? When?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've come up with a charitable interpretation of Google shutting down Reader. And I am not known for being charitable toward Google.

I just have a gut feeling that shutting down Reader may have made life easier for Google when it comes to National Security Letters, subpoenas, warrants or whatever. Turning over a list of what someone has read, does seem a bit evil.

Maybe I am being naive in attributing a positive motivation to them on this issue. But it just feels more plausible in light of the backlash of negative feelings the shutdown has created, who harbors such feelings, and the rather trivial resources required to maintain the service.

If they were turning over logs from Reader - and why wouldn't they have been requested - what options would Google have? Carry on or shutdown or lawyer up, are about it.

Would the backlash when such a practice was disclosed be less than that for shutting down Reader? I doubt it. People who didn't use Reader, like me, don't care about its shutdown. But I'd probably be full of condemnation and brimstone when commenting on a story about Google turning over reading lists to the government.

<comment><USER43> I find that entirely implausible.

If the NSA is getting as much data as we expect, then they can get people's reading lists from their ISPs. So Google shutting down Reader wouldn't have kept much of anything out of federal hands.

Further, if Google had a sudden attack of nobility, then it would be Gmail or Google Voice that they'd be shutting down. That's where the real private information is, and that's what most people are angry about. Not what a small fraction of Google's audience gets in their daily papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> The gravitational pull of Google, Facebook, and Twitter is just too big. If you're a business and not creating content on those sites these days you aren't getting noticed. So you cater all of your activities towards their locked-in APIs and you don't have resources to maintain an RSS feed nobody uses.

As long as content continues to be centralized in those three companies interop is toast.

<comment><USER45> > locked-in APIs > interop is toast

Between your post and the author's, I feel like we're talking past each about what the above two phrases mean.

First of all, what do you call a "locked-in API"? I would imagine it'd be an API written in a proprietary language or only works on certain systems or browsers. Personally, I haven't seen that from any of the mentioned companies. Afaik, most of Google's, Facebook's, and Twitter's API work on any browser available, any computer that can run those browsers, including mini-computers and smartphones, even some dumb phones. Where's the lock-in? The fact that you put your data in their databases? The fact that there isn't a single format shared between each?

About interoperability being "toast," to what extent? I could probably point you to a large amount of websites and web services that have integration with Google, Facebook, and Twitter, sometimes all at the same time. Sounds like that they can operate together to me. Perhaps, you want them to provide integration between each other?

<comment><USER46> Interoperability == open standard.

If Facebook or Google provides an API that's not an open standard, you're locked-in because the day they decide to remove the API, or to charge high prices, or deprecate a crucial feature, you can't switch easily to another platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What we need is a user owned facebook. We need to find a way to shrink the whole Facebook functionality to run on a system the size of a router.

<comment><USER48> Diaspora is a thing. was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> >Well, fuck them, and fuck that.

But—I'm curious to see what everyone thinks—are we too late for this attitude to change anything?

<comment><USER50> I've been humming and harring on starting a decentralized RSS based social network idea I've had bugging me for awhile, probably two years now. There where a few of these around 2007 and Facebook brought them out and shut them down.

But I'm hearing the same complaint all over the place, so I'm starting to think I might not be alone.

I've just been put off by the idea that maybe I'm an outsider and people don't want that, and it'll be months of work potentially for nothing. Maybe I should start some thing even if I just hand it off. I dunno, would love to see what the thirst is out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think Reader was a great, if neglected product, but I don't think it matters that Google maintains it.

What moved the needle for google 5 years ago is not what will move the needle today. Google will focus more on search, g+, android, apps, cloud, because those things can make an impact relative to Google's current scale.

</comment><comment><USER52> If Google wants to kill off internal competitors to Google+, I suppose blogspot is next on the chopping block.

</comment><comment><USER53> Similar to Scott Hanselman's "Your Words Are Wasted", a more impactfully written (IMO) piece about the same problem.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403558)

</comment><comment><USER54> What's good for business is a centralized standard format which makes it easy for consumers to browse without thinking.

What's good for the net is the opposite, which is the kind of decentralized it-just-routes-around system that the internet was designed to be in the first place.

To my chagrin, most of my clients, friends and family prefer the standardized and sanitized sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, *.google.com, Reddit and Digg.

I miss the anarchy days, when every site was a random gesture thrown up by someone possessed of the spirit of an idea or a plan, and not all websites were standardized web apps that are just too "perfect" to be fun, or to permit evolution.

/off my lawn

</comment><comment><USER55> On the contrary. Google requires the access to the open web, because its advertising and its search engine need that access, as I will show below.

Reader was not known to most people, but to many technical folks. Among them are many bloggers. Shutting down Reader certainly removed one big plus of the open blogging world.

Thereby people have less arguments to blog openly. How is that a problem for Google? If people choose to move over to closed platforms, that content becomes inacessible to both Google's crawler, and to Google ads on blogs.

Thus, by turning off Reader, Google actually hurts itself not only directly, but indirectly by treating the openness of the web less favorably.

</comment><comment><USER56> If Google want us to move from Reader to Google+, why are they not pushing it as a replacement? Do they think RSS users are a lost cause?

<comment><USER57> RSS users were always a tiny minority, and have become more tiny with social networks (especially Twitter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> First the hardware war, then the OS war, followed by the browser war and search engine war, and now the mobile war and social network war. This won't be the last... or could it?

Will we be using Facebook daily 5 years from now? 10 years? 20?

Or is the next war in augmented reality, which Google has a head start? (but using which social network?)

Anyone have good links to futurist thinkers on these topics?

</comment><comment><USER59> Whether you agree or disagree with the piece, I think it's perhaps more interesting to try to put together the clues about Marco's next project.

My guess would be something like a new publishing standard or system that makes it easy to package good writing into an immersive mobile form, possibly via Newsstand. But just spitballin' here.

</comment><comment><USER60> If you work for Google, and you have a neat idea for an online service, resist the temptation to do it within Google.

</comment><comment><USER61> If we want an openweb, advocacy won't cut it over the long haul. open is currently just less efficient at distributing + monetizing content. That's what we need to change, not the minds and paychecks of developers.

</comment><comment><USER62> And here is a further proof that Google wants to become the one-stop shop for all your internet needs: [https://www.google.co.uk/flights](https://www.google.co.uk/flights)

</comment><comment><USER63> "Over the years, comma usage after prepositional phrases has also apparently declined."

The prepositional phrase is not in the beginning of the sentence and is less than four words so no comma needed!

<comment><USER64> Also a tad ironic in light of his subsequent invocation of "belive".

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Brilliant piece. Perhaps we'll always have shifts to and from the mainframe as it were, in some senses, and I for one really enjoy the ride.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've never used a "Reader" before. Question: Were content providers able to server ads via the Reader?

<comment><USER4> Most common monetization options are to either put "ad articles" in the stream, or to not provide the full article text in the stream, so people had to follow the link to the full site with ads.

The former strategy was pretty good for getting around people's ad blocking, since it was essentially a long form text ad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> .....Well, fuck them, and fuck that.....

Amen.

</comment><comment><USER45> I agree that Facebook started a "war", but I don't think any of these companies want to "close us in" any more than they did when they first started. Sure, you can look at the closing of Google Reader as the antithesis of openness and RSS but you'd somehow seem to miss that Google, Facebook, and Twitter still support a lot of APIs that promote openness and interoperability. Actually, they continue to release more and more APIs as do other startups (i.e. Github).

Openness and interoperability aren't going away, they're merely being _refined_. That might mean taking away the hacker's toy for a bit while some kinks get worked out (i.e. Google's Jabber issue and the switch to Blink). It might also mean that we live in a monoculture for a while (Webkit). But regardless, the web is steadily improving and no matter how much you all try to spin it, RSS and Google Reader really aren't the martyrs you claim them to be. It sucks that even a successful product can be mercilessly shut down by the evil Google tyrants, but it shouldn't be surprising at all.

Sometimes companies make decisions that hurt a part of their user base for some perceived benefit for other users. Did Google fuck up by closing Reader? Probably. But it's not the end of the world.

<comment><USER43> Of course they want to close us in. Or, more technically, they feel commercially compelled to do so.

There are only so many eyeballs, and right now being very sticky is an obviously viable strategy for dominance. Google didn't get into phone operating systems because they knew or cared much about them. They did it because their revenue base was under long-term threat. (Hell, Google is trying experiments to see if they can get in front of your actual eyeballs, intermediating your entire waking life.) And Facebook tried taking over people's phones for exactly the same reason.

Talk to the Googlers who have left over the last few years, and you'll hear very clearly that things have changed internally.

<comment><USER45> What you're saying is that a company wants you to use their product and no one else's. Sure, that's how companies work. They aren't compelled to allow anyone from the outside to contribute. This is not closing us in. Unless I'm missing something, people are still able to choose the applications they install and use on their mobile phones, and I don't see that as a lock-in in the slightest. I understand the internal changes that have happened over the years at Google, but to say that Google no longer supports or does not plan to support openness or interoperability is either the word of a prophet or Google Reader-inspired sensationalism.

<comment><USER68> " _What you 're saying is that a company wants you to use their product and no one else's. Sure, that's how companies work_"

Uhm, what?

So the company selling my milk want me to drink milk, just milk and nothing but milk?

I thought one of the founding ideas of capitalism is that you can strike deals that benefit everyone. That you don't have to screw anyone over.

<comment><USER45> You're misreading what you quoted. I'm telling you that the company that sells you milk doesn't want you to drink anyone else's milk because that's how businesses work. They might sell some cheese too, but they also don't want you eating anyone's else's cheese. Also, perhaps that is one of the founding ideas of capitalism, but our modern day version is far away from that. Capitalism screws people over by the day in America.

<comment><USER68> Yeah, I understand, and my example was bad.

Internet is such a big space (unlike milk) that if an Internet-company wants you to use their _Internet-stuff_ and no-one else's _Internet-stuff_ .. well, I don't know what will happen, but it can't be good.

 _Capitalism screws people over by the day in America_

Finally something we can agree on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Entitlement. I has it.

Why does HN continue to think that companies on the web who give their services to millions of users away _for free_ (please don't repeat the you are the product being sold meme), are _entitled_ to direct said companies to keep any project you deem useful around for as long as you deem it important (to said $RANDOM_MILLION_USER)?

With a userbase the size of Google there will be millions of people complaining about removing every single product they've ever released. Google isn't the Oracle of the world where Oracle releases a product, charges you out the wazoo, gives you 24/7 support and only enter the market of said product after researching if it is a good business investment or not. Google is the one who experiments, tests, lets you use for free, and either retires or promotes projects which turn out to be good for the company (either tech wise, or to the dismay of HN money wise). That's their MO.

Google and Facebook allow you to export your data for most of their services, and I think we can all agree that Google at least are good at giving users a fair amount of heads up before they sunset a product (or should we call it an experiment?).

It seems the prevailing notion on HN anymore is once you are a big company (bad), any service you offer the internet no matter how long ago, should be kept around indefinitely, because you are a big company (bad) and you now make a lot of money (bad). Therefore you should let everyone free ride on your platform so that fellow (broke) startups can bootstrap themselves off your prior work (good). But once said (good, broke) startups start making lots of cash, they will then become (bad) and fall into the same category of other (bad) internet giants.

<comment><USER70> If I had my own discussion site, I'd permaban anyone who used that fucking word.

Unless someone is demanding legislation to force Google to keep Reader alive, stop with the entitlement bullshit. We _are_ entitled to dislike business models and approaches, we _are_ entitled to criticize them, and we _are_ entitled to not use projects from companies which follow them.

<comment><USER45> You're right. But you're not entitled to Google Reader. So stop complaining about it and upvoting posts that complain about it.

<comment><USER68> You didn't really read the OP, did you? =]

Edit: If you did, and that's your takeaway, I think you started with a predefined notion about its content. Please read it again and try to forget about reader. Reader is not the point. (I'm not the author btw ;)

<comment><USER45> The GP complains about the entitlement directed towards the shutdown of Reader. The OP complains about the word entitlement being used at all and I agree with him, except that the GP is right that no one is entitled to Reader. I then go on to say that people should stop complaining about it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Instafilm -- it's like Instapaper for videos - <AUTHOR> http://instafilm.com <comment><AUTHOR> I had this built to scratch my own itch: I would always find videos that I wanted to watch and bookmark them. And then I'd lose them in a sea of bookmarks. Whenever I wanted to watch something, it was hard to find something that fit how much time I had. So this solves both those problems.

I say "had this built" because it was my little experiment in management. The whole thing was put together by a team of 4 (including me) and now we've launched it without me writing a single line of code. Since I'm the guy who's usually coding nonstop to launch something, it was a refreshing change and a fun experiment.

<comment><USER3> Do you plan on writing a blog post about this? I'd be interested to read it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know. It was my first such experiment, and it does boil down to a few core principles I wanted to apply. I'll write something up once things calm down a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was just about to make something like this for myself. Thanks for making it! Looking forward to an iPad app.

One quick bit of feedback: I notice when I'm logged in and try to refresh my saved videos (say to refresh to see whether the video I just hit "Watch Later" would appear), the app logs me out. Everything else appears to work great - including leaving the page and coming back to it. Just when I hit refresh. When I log back in, the video appears in my queue like I'd expect it to.

It's probably on your radar, but being able to save TED Talk videos and Mixergy interviews would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad you like it. The iPad app is coming soon, but in the meantime the site should work on your iPad without a problem. Mixergy and TED will definitely be coming soon to the list of supported sites.

As for the error, you might've caught us while we were frantically rebooting. :) But I'll check it out.

<comment><USER5> I assume you already know about <http://embed.ly> but are concerned about security, like embedding unknown/untrusted html on your site?

I find your idea great and I have built something similar my self. I focused mostly on the interface and the fact that many times when watching a video you want to be able to switch between videos and make them fullscreen without interrupting their download. For example, when you have a long video on youtube that is split into many parts.

Playlists and ratings for videos is also quite useful in my opinion.

If you want some ideas check it out: <http://lideo.me> \- you don't have to register/signup to start using it. You can do that later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Consider adding a ``Login with Facebook'' button. While I personally hate the login everywhere with Facebook idea, it can be pretty useful.

Most of my friends are discouraged by having to create yet another account for a website they haven't found useful yet. It's a shame because so many services become useful when they have the social element---there would be no point to Facebook if none of your friends used it. I know that the login with Facebook option helped me coax a few people on to Convore to talk with me.

Also, consider making that picture of the time slider bigger and more friendly looking (centered!) It's an awesome feature that works really well with video. You could even advertise it something like ``Take a break! Watch [n] minutes of videos you've saved.''

I'm getting a few 502 Bad Gateway errors.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very good point. I'm going to move fbConnect way up the list. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been using Radbox ( <http://radbox.me> ) for a few months, much better, far more video sources, works on my Android phone, lets me create playlists. What's new?

</comment><comment><USER3> I randomly got a nginx bad gateway error a couple times in a row. Don't know if you were resetting/restarting but just FYI might wanna tail your error log.

</comment><comment><USER8> It works well, but I prefer the internal features, Youtube's Watch Later (and private playlists), and Vimeo's Watch Later. I think it will work better when there's more overlap between the sites it supports, or maybe it just doesn't support my habits. I'd love to come back in a month and look.

I'd be interested in an iphone app that plays the hd audio of youtube playlists, is this related enough to be a feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> The HD audio stream is a cool idea. I've been using YouTube as my main source of music lately, so I'm willing to call it a related feature. ;)

What do you mean it doesn't support your habits? Can you describe your video- watching habits?

<comment><USER8> Clicking watch later on Gawker/etc to watch, searching and subscriptions to listen to (music remixes). Separate private playlists for each. Eventually I will work through the 20 20-90min videos I have bookmarked, but subject matters more than length.

edit: I do see a point in what you do, it's for medium immediacy. I watch quickly to keep up with trends/memes, and before copyright holders delete music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's a pretty interesting management experiment.

By the way, have you seen vhx.tv?

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the how-much-time-do-you-have slider. But why would I use this over YouTube own "watch later"?

<comment><USER11> I too like the feature, but the language, "How much time do you have?", confused me until I actually had saved a few videos. Something along the lines of "Show me videos longer than.." would better reveal the feature's purpose.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely struggled with that bit of copy. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use <http://www.squrl.com/> for this

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been wishing for something like this for a while.

...except that I'd need it to be able to queue up things that I can watch later on a mobile device, possibly while offline. That's what makes Instapaper awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

The site works on your mobile device since it uses HTML5 embeds. A native app is in the works.

Caching is more difficult since it violates the TOS for some web sites -- but not all. So I'll have to sort this out on a case-by-case basis, but it may be added at some point too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another similar website was just launched: VHX (<http://vhx.tv>). It's currently in a closed beta, but they're slowly sending out invites. I've been using it for a few weeks now and it seems really nice, allowing you to choose things to watch later in addition to cataloging every video you watch on the internet (it spans tons of sites, way more than just Vimeo and YouTube).

Fun fact: Former Vimeo developer Casey Pugh is one of the people behind the site.

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks awesome. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support HTML5 video for YouTube; it complains that I don't have Flash (which I don't).

<comment><USER4> The videos I've saved work for me when I browse Instafilm on my iPad. It may depend on your specific video - if I remember correctly, some YouTube videos are unable to support HTML5.

<comment><USER15> Not talking about an iPad; I used Firefox 4. I confirmed that the particular video supported WebM on YouTube. However, I just tried again with some other videos, and it worked this time. Perhaps YouTube just randomly decided that that video shouldn't work for a while. _shrug_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome stuff. It's like my own personal, curated video channel!

In your slider bar for how much time you have, I would recommend having some dynamic text above the dot displaying how much time I have selected. It's a bit confusing trying to discern the exact number between the discreet quantities (e.g. between 5 and 10 minutes, is it 7 minutes or 8 minutes).

<comment><USER17> I didn't realise I had to scroll this up to see videos I had sent, and so I thought it was broken. From a usability point of view, starting the bar at the right hand side, showing everything, and scaling the list back when you slide left would be much better in terms of educating your users.

Also, Instapaper nailed it with the "Saving ..." > "Saved!" language in the book mark. If you are using the name, go the whole hog and copy that - <USER2> feedback to the user that it is safely stashed on the Insta~ servers is invaluable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points on the UX. Thanks. I'll make sure that gets fixed.

<comment><USER17> My post was very negative. Apart from the above, minor, details, its a great service that I hope I can use as much as I do Instapaper.

(Be even better if it could work with embedded Youtube/Vimeo on other domains, like devour.com).

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it. Feel free to email or post any more thoughts. Good critique is always valuable.

It will work with embedded videos _very_ soon. We're tracking down some errors in a JS DOM parsing library that the web app uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is actually a really good idea. I use Read It Later and saving videos I want to watch later just doesn't work.

Big problem: Copying the "Insta" prefix just isn't going to work (unless you're Instapaper). You're using their branding and marketing efforts to your advantage, so if your site happens to take off you'll be up against legal issues.

<comment><USER19> I don't see why he would. What about Instagram etc?

<comment><USER18> Hmmm fair point, also looks like Instapaper isn't registered as a trademark, 'Insta' is probably too generic, and paper is definitely too generic to trademark.

Perhaps I should stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can probably answer that question on quora with your new service [http://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-there-an-Instapaper-or- ReadItL...](http://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-there-an-Instapaper-or-ReadItLater- for-YouTube-on-the-iPhone-or-iPod-Touch)

<comment><USER21> I've used <http://rewindle.com/> in the past for this.

<comment><USER22> I've used <http://wacchen.com/>

<comment><USER23> I've used <http://reeplay.it/> (and <http://wacchen.com/> too)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have been working on a similar project for a while, but for lack of time it's going nowhere. I've been wanting this forever though. Great to see these guys took it seriously and shipped. Woohoo!

Excuse me while I go sign up and watch shit, now…

</comment><comment><USER25> Similar: <http://www.squrl.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> But, do you say it's like instapaper for videos On your website.

<http://wacchen.com> says it right on the box.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great idea. To me, it's useless without an iPhone/iPad app though, looking forward to that.

</comment><comment><USER28> Great app. Very simple, with one focus. Elegant design too. Hope this takes off!</comment>


Facebook cofounder says tech industry is destroying personal lives - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/08/20/facebook-co-founder-moskovitz-says-tech-industry-destroying-personal-lives/32084685/

<comment><USER2> Here is the referenced essay by Moskovitz: [https://medium.com/life- learning/work-hard-live-well-ead679c...](https://medium.com/life- learning/work-hard-live-well-ead679cb506d)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not that this is a company I would want to run, but there is more to this. Returns may be marginal, but so are the salary increases. You're not typically paying one engineer $120k to work a 40 hour work week and another, equally talented engineer, $240k. Moreover a 10x engineer doing 6x work for 80 hours is still more productive that 12 engineers working 40 hours/week.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but everyone burns out sooner or later.</comment></comment>


Can India take on Silicon Valley as a global R&D hub? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/14/india-rd-hub-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> I'm Indian and as much as it pains me to say this, its not gonna happen so fast nor easily. India is different culturally than a lot of other countries who have a good R & D environment. For example, if a guy or girl is not married by 35, it is usually frowned upon by the society. This usually leads to people playing it out safe in the 28-40 years era where its safer to work in a bigco with guaranteed income.

Pressures built up from social groups and joint families play a large part in this. Parents in India are usually more proud to say that their child is working for IBM or Microsoft rather than a small startup.

Also since I'm a resident of the country, I feel the urge in the people to compete but for needs more basic than in other countries. I'm not pointing to straight up poverty of farmers or anything you would see in a cover article of a big magazine, I'm talking about engineers _wanting_ to have a stable job no matter what. They _want_ a fixed house, they _want_ a guarantee that they'll be eating from their own money in 6 months. Debts, specially credit cards are not the norm. There are scores of engineers who do not have a family that will be able to support them if they don't get external funding.

So for a multitude of reasons, sadly this won't happen. Not soon anyways. Feel the pulse of the engineers there (yes including me) and you'd know why R & D is on the backseat.

<comment><USER3> Well, you cite perfect examples of the parental and societal pressures that tend to work against founding a startup. But there is tremendous "underground" culture of startups in India. Case in point, have a look at <http://pluggd.in/> or the startup event of India <http://proto.in/>

Agreed that Indian startups are still light years away from achieving the same _sophistication_ as the Silicon Valley's, but increasingly I am seeing more and more people jumping into getting their hands dirty. And given enough startups, purely from a statistical point of view, a few great startups will eventually emerge from India.

Unfortunately, I will have to agree with you that the state of R&D is poor, but it is just evolution. We started late and now have lots to catch up!

<comment><USER3> Don't really know, why it was downvoted? Can somebody explain?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked for start-ups in Silicon Valley and for a large Internet company in Bangalore. From what I observed, a large part of the missing element were skills for new product development. The culture of development is rooted in large-scale projects. Large plans. Big budgets. Huge teams. As such, the type of product development skills for the quick-iteration that is needed for startup development isn't typical practice.

About a year back I was contacted by a CEO of an Indian development house who couldn't find enough talent to build social-media applications. He was trying to figure out if he should outsource his projects to San Francisco or Manhattan.

</comment><comment><USER5> These R&D centers still depend on hired resources. People who sell their time and services for a salary. But as I understand it, Valley's big portion of success is in its startups and their founders. People who take risk to create wealth and jobs. They themselves may not have all the required skills to succeed. But they hire others to fill that gap. They take that risk as part of their entrepreneurship. This is what is missing in the R&D centers in India. There are a lot of bright people working for others. But not for themselves. This will change in future. But we are not there yet.

My hunch is its going to take a lot more than 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER6> How many of you enjoy working with your Indian boss, respect him technically and as a person, and learn from him (not your Indian peers or subordinates, but boss)?

There are significant cultural, regulatory/legal, and policy issues to be solved or evolved before India can take on Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER7> Would you mind being more explicit, for those of us who don't have direct experience with what you're talking about?

At my last start-up, I had an Indian mentor, five years older than me, who had been through exactly what I was going through. I had tremendous respect for him, both "technically and as a person". I learned more from him than I did from any of my non-Indian friends, co-workers, or bosses.

He's thinking of heading back to India to do a start-up there. I'm not Indian, but I'd love to spend a few years there, so I might go with him. As far as I can tell, he would make a great boss. Is there something I'm missing?

<comment><USER6> As an Indian, I am absolutely delighted to hear of your positive experience. Way to go for your mentor, and for you too.

I have never had an Indian boss myself (I work in the US). But I have quite a few friends who have had, or continue to have (and who confide in me with their opinions and issues). Naturally I also know a lot of Indians in various industry or academic positions in the US (developers, managers, directors, professors). Most of these people (not all) are technically sharp and quite smart. At the same time when it comes to treating people who work for them, most of them - I dare say nearly all of them - are amazingly selfish, self- centered, uncompromising, and hard headed. Tact or diplomacy is virtually non- existant. The world is centered around them, around what they have done in life, and around what they plan to do in the future. The end justifies the means, in many ways, for them. I would even say that backstabbing (for the next promotion in industry, or so called fame in academia) is the norm. These cultural issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Mind you, I have specifically not seen many of these issues with most American managers or profs, or among foreigners, say, among the Chinese.

As for state policy, legal, and regulatory issues, those are well known at least among us who have lived in India. It will take me a few more pages to describe :) Suffice it to say we have a long way to go. A very long way.

For the Indians reading these lines, before you call me a self-hating Desi, just take an hour and really think about your own life and upbringing and behavior, and those of other Indians in positions of power whom you know. Be honest with yourself, if only for one time in your life.

<comment><USER8> I am also of Indian ancestry and recognize absolutely nothing valid in your comment. Do you mean to say that the Chinese Communist party or the people who caused Enron and the recent collapse of the world financial system are more ethical?

Of course there are unethical people in every community, but there is zero evidence for your claim that said behavior is unique to Indians.

<comment><USER6> You are over reacting. I am talking about Indians in technical fields (industry and academia, engineering/software in particular). I am not talking about "creative" accountants at Enron, or the capitalist Chinese communists, or Wall Street hedge fund managers.

Anyway, we have a disagreement and I leave it at that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh I hope so. But I doubt India taking the lead in R&D and innovation. At least within the next 5 years. I don't see it happening. Except Zoho, you'll be hard pressed to name any other Indian startup doing extremely well.

Indian startup scene is pretty much like the Chinese startup scene. American success stories are ripped off and given a local twist. Because this ripping off is lucrative - but comes without a lot of startup risks.

All the big R&D hubs in India are run by Non-Indian companies (IBM, Intel, Microsoft)... thats not a coincidence. Indian companies are yet not at the stage of spending a lot on R&D (medicine and defense are 2 exceptions.)

Yes VC funding is increasing in India. But really - the biggest news I heard in the last year was a VC investing in a Netflix copycat. And Vinod Khosla investing in a micro-financing fund in India (copy cat of Grameen Bank etc...)

</comment><comment><USER10> _I'll bet that in 5 years, if you stacked up a TechCrunch 50 of Indian start ups versus a comparable number of U.S. startups, it would be a pretty even match._

I think there's something distinctly Indian about making 5 year plans, even if they sound ludicrous (when I lived there, many people told me that 'India would be a world superpower in five years'). I think it might have something to do with this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_India>.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, the five year plans have been rather a bane for the Indian economy. In fact, central control and planning in all spheres are generally looked up to in India. We even used to have joint families which were very common till very recently - a joint family is where many generations of a family tree under a patriarch live together. Even businesses till recently were more likely to be family owned.

Entrepreneurship in India is on the rise now though. But my problem with the article is that the author is talking about taking on Silicon Valley, but he does not have a region or even a city to compare. He is just taking a whole country - India - and talking it up. Silicon valley is what it is not just because there is a secret formula which you can use to replicate. I am not even sure if there are places in other parts of US which are comparable to the ecosystem here.

These kind of articles probably make for good copy. But without first trying to understand what makes Silicon Valley unique even in US - they are nothing but misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> India has definitely progressed in the last 5-6 years, but to emulate a startup ecosystem like the valley takes a lot more time. Fred Wilson had a good article on this the other day. Valley today is what it is because a lot of ventures and startups happened around the 70's. India is seeing that kind of growth only today.

I would say atleast 10 more years before you can have a Techcrunch 50 in India at the same level as it happens in US

</comment><comment><USER13> Vivek Wadhwa, like Rafiq Dossani and AnnaLee Saxenian before him, has been making too many wild extrapolations. Yes, a few start-up type Indian companies will innovate and progress. A larger number of large established companies are likely to take on global competitors successfully.

India taking on Silicon Valley? Won't happen for a long, long time. \- An Indian living in Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER14> A very poor article , taking a few outliers and extrapolating that to make it sound like "India"/Bangalore is the next Silicon Valley is just non-sensical.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hiring good talent is also a difficult for startups. It's difficult to convince families that an unknown company with upside potential is a better bet than a more well-known brand.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can India take on Silicon Valley as a global R&D hub?

Answer: Not in another 1000 years

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, but only when young and skilled people around the world would travel to Bangalore, instead of California.

</comment><comment><USER17> i'm indian and this vivek randhawa guy is starting to piss me off. can we just ban techcrunch on HN?

<comment><USER13> Don't ban him. Just ignore him or stop taking him seriously.

Banning TechCrunch is a dumber idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> May be in a zillion years.</comment>


NSA director Keith Alexander to speak at hacker conference in Las Vegas - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/nsa-director-black-hat-hackers-defcon

<comment><USER2>
      Alexander has been confirmed to address Black Hat
      since mid-May, before the Guardian and the Washington
      Post, relying on leaks from ex-NSA contractor Edward
      Snowden, revealed widespread NSA surveillance on
      Americans' phone records and the online habits of persons
      the NSA believes to be non-Americans living outside the
      US.

Alexander will certainly not be keynoting with all the public scrutiny on him and the NSA now...</comment>


Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/wpf <comment><USER2> Totally agree with previous comments about WPF having a steep learning curve. We recently released our photo-tagging application called Tag That Photo. It's currently available for Windows and built on the WPF platform (Mac client coming in future). It detects & recognizes faces in user's local photo collections, allowing them to tag people, add keywords and location data to the images. All the data can be written back to the image metadata for import into other photo editing tools. Unlike many other face-recognition platforms out there, everything is executed locally so user's photos stay private.

Prior to creating Tag That Photo, we had little experience with the WPF beyond simple demo type applications. Of course we've come a long way over the course of development but it certainly hasn't been easy. We have extensive experience with many other UI frameworks such as WinForms, Android / iOS as well as various web frameworks, and I think it's safe to say that once you wrap your head around it, the WPF has the slickest architecture. The team that designed this really knew what they were doing. It has this "peeling-the-onion" mentality to it where it's simple to implement straight-forward use-cases but if you want lower-level control of essentially every aspect of rendering, binding, input handling etc it's all exposed for you.

In case you want to see the final product: [https://www.tagthatphoto.com](https://www.tagthatphoto.com)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I agree completely. WPF may not be as "pick up and run" as WinForms was, and perhaps some of that "pick up and run" of WinForms was hold-over from VB6, or being young enough to spend tons of time on it. But once I stopped just trying to "hack" at it and started actually reading the documentation, I really came to appreciate WPF, how it's put together, how it all works. Wish I had gotten on board with it when it first came out, rather than putting it off until just a few years ago.

<comment><USER4> I think just in general databinding has a steeper learning curve then the code based update approach. Kind of how Angular has a much steeper learning curve than j-query.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I had the chance to use it seriously many years ago, what I found about WPF is that once you got the hang of it, you could literally look at any sufficiently complex application UI and know _immediately_ how to build it using WPF in record time.

It's that composable.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. People are complaining about it in this thread, but I thought it was almost on par with Cocoa, overall. Just like Cocoa, you have to "drink the Kool-aid" a bit and decide to structure your application to match the framework rather than adapt the framework to match your preconceived notion of how your application should be structured. Once you did, You could get a lot of work done.

Personally think that these frameworks, like WPF and Cocoa, are still easier than working with Angular/React/Vue, but TBH that might be a reflection of my weaknesses with web development more than anything else. XAML is a bit of a mess but compares favorably to HTML+CSS, and XAML is almost as good as Interface Builder in my mind. The MVVM approach in WPF could be improved but it makes sense.

<comment><USER7> I still don't understand why instead of evolving WPF MS keeps cranking out similar but incompatible XAML frameworks like Silverlight, WinRT and UWP. If they had stuck to WPF and made the syntax less verbose and easier to understand and fixed some other warts WPF would be a kick ass development tool.

<comment><USER8> Because WPF is .NET based and internal Microsoft teams with C++ codebases (like Windows and Office) didn't want to take a dependency on .NET (or rather they tried with Longhorn and couldn't make it work).

<comment><USER7> That's a big issue but it doesn't explain why instead of developing WPF they released WinRT and UWP.

<comment><USER8> The purpose of WinRT was to avoid having to depend on .NET. Developing WPF to fix this would have meant rewriting the whole thing in C++, which is what Silverlight/WinUI sort of was, but I agree they dropped the ball on compatibility and migration

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Compared to winforms, WPF has an incredibly steep learning curve. Working with it was always painful to me. The vector graphics architecture they mention makes it even harder.

While it's rich capabilities enable you to implement everything you can dream of, doesn't the same hold for JS desktop apps? (+ they are cross platform)

I don't see the use case anymore...

<comment><USER10> Modern js frameworks makes mvvm/similar quite pleasant. Some of the binding in WPF is quite complex, especially since you don't get proper type safety for all that effort (there is a lot of stringly typed things sticking out).

On the other hand, the layout model of WPF is a _lot_ easier than mastering html+css.

JS desktop apps still mostly don't work without embedding a browser like electron and that ranges from annoying (e.g. for size/memory reasons) to impossible (for things like a plugin where you have a constrained environment, need to launch instantly etc).

The middle ground is desktop js using system browsers, but it's pretty painful to do too.

<comment><USER11> WPF never quite made the leap from data-binding and MVVM to a component-based + state-management architecture like React&friends. A consequence of that is a hairy overcomplicated mess of a binding system that's full of footguns. But it was still ahead of its time - that one last step would have made it amazing.

<comment><USER7> They could easily have done this but instead chose to make several new frameworks that didn't improve anything. Very sad. Now MS has several mediocre not well maintained frameworks instead of a really good one. The constant churn also killed off a lot of open source efforts

<comment><USER12> This isn't my area of expertise. What are some of the other MS frameworks or OSS projects you refer to?

<comment><USER7> WPF started XAML, then came Silverlight, WinRT and UWP. They are superficially similar but under the hood the code is quite different and each has its own set of weird limitations so you can't just reuse code. Also, in the case of WinRT and I think also UWP the new framework had less features than its predecessor so in a sense it was worse and less powerful which is not a good way to convince people to port their code.

When WPF came out there were quite a few very cool open source projects that built on top of it because it's really easy to extend WPF and build components for it. But then every two or three years MS announced a new framework so most of these efforts died out. When you look at commercial third party suppliers like Developer Express they have the same component in three or four flavors. this must be a huge and expensive effort to maintain.

<comment><USER10> Those feel like they were created by orders from top management, because of some strategic decision (microsoft needed a flash alternative, or a Windows 10 store UI framework etc).

They don't feel like the product that would come if DevDiv did their best to produce a sane UI framework. They feel rushed, semi-overlapping, half- finished.

I imagine it should be possible to make just one more xaml framework which is cross platform, and much better than WPF (and it's derivatives), and much better than the js alternative (Because of deployment, not least).

I'm not sure if there is any incentive for ms to put their weight behind it however.

<comment><USER11> Hopefully that last xaml framework is avalonia, it's definitely gaining steam.

<comment><USER10> Yes. But for one of these to really take off, I think what's needed is for one of the giants to throw their weights behind it. Basically "We're betting x billions on it, so you can be sure that lots of companies will be using this tech in the decade to come".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> WPF was fantastic for rich desktop applications. It makes me very happy that there is active effort from Microsoft to port it to .NET Core. If only it was cross platform...

<comment><USER14> .Net Core is cross platform. So, WPF is cross plaftorm now as well

<comment><USER15> That is like saying C++ is cross platform so MFC is cross platform as well.

WPF relies on Windows specific functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> MFC used to be cross platform (Windows / Mac OS System 7) during the early days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading this official Xamarin Forms document [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/xamarin/cross-platform/desk...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/xamarin/cross-platform/desktop/controls/wpf) It's really hard to tell how the 2 offerings from Microsoft differs. It looks like Xamarin Forms is fairly mature, and supports Mac and Windows. Does anyone have production experience on both? When sould one choose one over another?

<comment><USER7> Maybe things have changed but my company did a Xamarin test two years ago and the results were horrible. They quickly went back to native apps.

<comment><USER4> It's still being worked on and is a good bit better than 2 years ago but still has a couple of warts. To be fair all of the cross platform mobile applications have quite a few warts :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Judging from the earliest Github issues, it's been there since late 2018.

edit: As pointed out below, it looks like the title refers to recent source code commits, not the creation of the repo.

Relevant links:

[https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/pull/720](https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/pull/720)

[https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/pull/727](https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/pull/727)

<comment><USER18> The first part was System.Xaml; the next one was the build infrastructure, I think. IIRC they said that by .NET Core 3 Preview 7 they want to have WPF completely on GitHub. Until then they're probably cleaning up the code as best they can before making it open-source.

Edit: The roadmap [https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/blob/master/roadmap.md](https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/blob/master/roadmap.md) has a list what's currently available and what's still missing. Looks like by now the main parts (PresentationCore, PresentationFramework) are open-sourced as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there some simple summary somewhere about the state of GUI development on Windows? I haven't used Windows seriously for almost a decade now and my understanding was that WPF was mostly dead because it made win32 developers mad so Microsoft buried it and developed UWP and Xamarin and now nobody has a clue what to actually use. But since Windows phone is dead now everybody can go back to just using win32?

<comment><USER20> UWP and Xamarin have a _lot_ in common with WPF. The XAML used for UI work is very similar across all three platforms and many of the controls are very similar, if not converging on the exact same. (On the one side, with XAML Islands you can even have UWP XAML inside your WPF XAML or even have UWP XAML inside your Win32 app. On the other side, a lot more of UWP controls are moving to open source up and out of Windows itself in the upcoming WinUI 3.0 library.)

Even with Windows phone "dead" and maybe you don't need Xbox or HoloLens or Surface Hub or the best experience on ARM devices, there's still a lot of advantages to UWP for GUIs (or arguably the best, most comfortable, most adaptive experience on Desktop/Tablet). There's also a lot more opportunities for "hybrid" development to migrate Win32 applications a piece at a time (instead of needing to restart form near scratch an entire Win32 application to move towards UWP), so the birds and bees are living together better now and it's no longer a "war" between Win32 and UWP. But the implication is still that all of the energy on making better Windows UI controls and experiences (such as Fluent Design System 2.0+ work) is going into UWP controls and experiences. You can get there slowly from Win32 or start fresh with UWP. If you know UWP, it should be easy enough to use Xamarin for cross-platform UI work on mobile, even with Windows phone "dead".

<comment><AUTHOR> Even the React Native for Windows rewrite is built on top of UWP.

And from their BUILD talk, I imagine VSCode might eventually move into it, as the team had quite a few React Native vs Electron benchmarks, and was quite keen to describe all Microsoft products that are now making use of React Native.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What would be required to make it work on Linux? Which layers would have to be reimplemented to use Linux graphical toolkit?

<comment><USER22> From what I understand, it's just a wrapper around the GDI, so implementing WPF on Linux means re-implementing the GDI.

Kitbashing this with winelib will probably be the best way to do it.

<comment><USER7> WPF is based on DirectX and does it own rendering. This may make a Linux implementation possible but I am not sure. Realistically it's probably deeply entangled with Windows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What are the implications of this? WPF in Linux?

<comment><USER24> Neah, the internals are too Windows specific (Win32/DirectX) to be easely portable.

Maybe this will be the basis of a cross platform toolkit in the future , but right now MS doesn't seem to really care....

<comment><USER25> ...which is really unfortunate. If they _did_ care, it could easily lead to a renaissance of desktop apps.

<comment><USER15> Why? The Windows desktop is by a gigantic margin the most popular desktop environment. Mac and Linux combined cover perhaps a 10% or less, so if 90% coverage isn't enough for such a renaissance, why would a +~10% change that (especially considering that most of that 10% is Mac where anything except Cocoa feels weird and wrong to a very picky userbase)?

Also why would C# and WPF do that instead of the myrriads of other languages and desktop tech? WPF alone wasn't exactly popular on Windows itself.

<comment><USER26> Because once you understand it, WPF and C# is fantastic to work with. It's hands down the best UI framework i have ever worked with.

XAML makes it very easy to layout apps that scale well, and it's built-in states for controls and easy styling is very handy.

<comment><USER15> Personally i find writing XAML a step backwards when it comes to UI design and WYSIWYG tools like Lazarus which has some great layout tools are much better (and BTW personally i'd say that LCL is the best UI framework i've worked with, but it isn't without its warts - it just has less warts than anything else).

But my question was more towards how making WPF portable will create a renaissance for the desktop considering the market share it already can cover and that even among that market share isn't exactly popular, not how good WPF is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ever bothered using Blend?

Former Delphi / C++ Builder fanboy here.

<comment><USER15> No, isn't Blend just a separate designer though? A big plus for Lazarus (and Delphi and C++ Builder) is that the designer is integrated with the IDE and you are working with 'live' objects which extends even beyond the GUI designer but also to visual object editors. I have written several non-visual components myself that are exposed to the IDE for visual editing (and if anything, my two main issues with Lazarus is that it isn't doing enough on that front - it isn't that others are better, but Lazarus could do even more - and that the component palette cannot install components dynamically from the open projects and need to installed globally, otherwise i'd be writing even more components to be edited visually).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is installed alongside Visual Studio.

But even Visual Studio XAML designer is relatively good. I used it is mostly.

And both do allow to work with live objects and mock data, as well, even if it isn't as clear as with Borland products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So MS changed their mind not porting UI libraries to Net Core?

<comment><USER28> I don't know that they ever said they wouldn't.</comment></comment>


Systems we use today, designed for a world of the past - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-systems-we-live-with-today-that-were-designed-for-a-world-of-the-past

<comment><USER2> It's a really good page in quora.</comment>


How We Ruined Airline Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2017/09/how_we_ruined_airline_jobs.html <comment><USER2> Pilot and FA unions have some culpability in this too.

They fought for seniority based pay with rules that any new hire, even one with years of experience, starts at the bottom of the pay scale.

So, there's no incentive to jump ship. You stay where you started. Less competition means the airlines have less incentive to raise pay for more senior crew.

They also fought for extending the mandatory retirement age from 60 to 65. That meant more captains staying in place, holding back promotions for first officers.

<comment><AUTHOR> > ... any new hire, even one with years of experience, starts at the bottom of > the pay scale

That's just incredibly messed up.

<comment><USER2> Yes...the unions basically fought for work rules that set up a "job for life" with guaranteed pay raises based on years of service only.

They missed a few issues with this. The one I mentioned, and another...when an airline goes bankrupt, it can nullify union contracts and the airline gets a free do-over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A friend of mine worked for United as a mechanic in Boston until they decided to cut costs and get rid of their hanger. My buddy got to work outside on planes in the middle of winter. The guy who came up with the idea probably got a bonus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the thing is, back before deregulation, the airline industry was a great place to work. Fat paychecks, strict limit on work hours, and a chance to see the world when not just anyone could afford to do that. Then all of that went away in the course of one working lifetime.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Zerigo down for anyone else right now (2016-03-15 8:55:00 EDT)? - <AUTHOR> Just looking for confirmation, really <comment><USER2> ...and up again. They never mentioned the downtime yesterday anywhere which is a bad sign.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Trying to edit my own submission title, but I can't.... It's back up.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's down for us as well. Not looking good.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes! Down for my app becash.es hosted in Heroku

</comment><comment><USER5> Up again. But very slow, and bad ping rates

</comment><comment><USER6> It is down for good my friend.</comment>