Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do? - <AUTHOR> I often find myself trying to do many things and often times I end up just procrastinating. This creates a negative feedback loop and I'm wondering how do you manage your time to achieve things.
As a list of things I'm trying to constantly do:
1. Write a personal journal / meditate / exercise. 2. Read (as per on a reading list of books) 3. Work 5. Study (learning / improving my general CS skills, frontend skills, etc.) 6. Maintain a healthy relationship 7. Socialize
I'm trying to organize myself to wake up @6am and go through journaling > meditating > work > exercise or read. However, I often find out I'm kind of overwhelmed or I can't spend qualitative time in my relationship / don't have time to do other chores.
Are you in a similar situation? What are your coping strategies to work things out? <comment><USER3> In the words of Eric Cartman's Karate instructor, "You rak dishiprin!"

What you have to realise (not just understand conceptually) is that anything worth doing -- anything significant in your life -- requires hard work. Now, before anyone here drops to the floor in a fit of cliche-driven convulsion, let me explain 'hard work'. Hard work is about being consistent and doing the same thing every day. Learning to speak and write another language fluently is not hard work; hard work is practicing _every day_ for 5 years. Running 5k is not hard work; hard work is running every day regardless of how you feel, or what kind of a day you've had, or what the weather is like outside.

> I'm trying to organize myself to wake up @6am and go through journaling > > meditating > work > exercise or read. However, I often find out I'm kind of > overwhelmed or I can't spend qualitative time in my relationship / don't > have time to do other chores.

Slow down, and take a few steps back. You're not ready to manage so many goals (nobody is in the beginning). Pick one thing, just one, from your list -- whichever you enjoy the most. Can you do it _every day_ for a month? Doesn't matter if you don't feel well, or you don't have time, or you're not feeling motivated: can you do this one thing, every day, for a month? This is discipline. This is the 'hard' in 'hard work'. Doesn't have to be a month; it could be 3 weeks or 13 weeks, it doesn't matter, it just needs to be long enough for you to realise that you've always had it in you, and that consistency is the key to achievement.

And, if you fail? So simple: start over. I've failed so many times that I think the universe is running out of failure modes for me. Keep at it. Keep going. Be consistent.

<comment><USER4> Well said. I'll just add this quote from the running baboon in Bojack Horseman:

"It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day — that's the hard part. But it does get easier"

<comment><USER5> "It never gets easier, you just get faster" -Greg LeMond

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use to be hyper motivated and constantly working towards a goal. I worked full time, went to graduate school, ran a small business (~10k annual revenue), maintained an exercise routine (3hr/week) and did household chores like cleaning and cooking(4hr/week). My total scheduled time towards those goals every week was 110-120 hours and I slept 5-6 hours every night. I remember scheduling one meal a week to eat while not commuting/working and one night a month to see friends.

I burnt out. At first the lesson I learned was that I can only do so many things, and I always get a full night sleep and I never let my schedule get near that full. Now, five years after I stopped that lifestyle I find that the things I do spend time on I do even better. I'm performing at a higher level. I think it's because I'm less stressed because I'm not constantly pushing myself. I work when it's time to work and play when it's time to play.

You cannot do all of the things that you want to do. You're time is finite. Your energy and passion are finite. Accept this. Internalize this. My advice is to pick one or two things you really care about. Devote all your passion there, but don't devote all of your time. You need some time to relax and you need some unstructured time. If you don't give yourself unstructured time you'll take it by procrastination.

</comment><comment><USER7> My biggest suggestion here is to a) write down all the things you want to change about your life, b) pick one, c) spend at least 30 days establishing new habits around that, while d) definitely not working on anything else on that list.

If you try to change everything at once, nothing will stick. But if you get in the habit of working on one thing a month, you can devote your full brainpower to really figuring out how to do that in a way that is sustainable for yourself.

P.S. "1\. Write a personal journal / meditate / exercise" is definitely not 1 thing. That's three things. That suggests strongly to me that your desire to cram things in is part of the problem. To make lasting change, you have to be patient, compassionate, and honest with yourself. Here that means accepting that adopting even 1 of those 3 things is hard work that requires practice. Indeed, you may have to split them further. "Exercise" is a huge area. Try starting with something smaller, like "do a couch-to-5k program" or "do 10 minutes of stretching daily".

<comment><USER8> Funny that you posted. I made the decision today to focus on music this month and defer some visual related hobbies next month.

As you said, I was just getting nowhere when my focus was divided. Whenever I want to dive something deep into something new that I learned, I get distracted away by some new thing in the other hobby that I was doing.

<comment><USER7> Totally. If you aren't familiar with them, try setting up a Kanban system. I have a big backlog of project ideas, but strong limits on how many I can have going at once. It's been great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found something that works really well for me. I don't wait until I "find" time to do the things I want to do. I create a calendar and a routine and I "make" time for them. This also allowed me to have a conversation with my wife about these things and we made compromises on a reasonable balance. This way I'm able to make time for my family as well. It can be a little hectic to always be living on a schedule that I made for myself but each week feels so productive that it seems to suit my personality well. The downside, and it's possibly a really big downside, is my life seems to be flashing by so fast. This kind of worries me but I'm just not the kind of person who can make well with idle time.

</comment><comment><USER10> From being in a similar situation here is what I learned recently. You have Finite time and you have finite energy, usually people want to do more things than they have available resources for. You have to internalize and accept this. You cannot accomplish all the tasks you want to do sustainably.

Fully internalizing this allows you to find what it is you really care about. For example you want to write a personal journal not for journaling sake but there is a goal you are trying to achieve that you think journaling is the way to reach it, same with meditation, work and everything on your list. They are tasks that lead to a goal. Accepting you have limited time allows you to prioritize your goals. When you do this you will be able to focus on what is truly important to you. Not everything on your list will move the needle to your real goals, slash them. Working hard and pushing yourself does not gaurantee success... remeber to live the life you want not the one you think you have to live to get the life you want.

</comment><comment><USER11> I just do some things. These are my priorities:

Maintain a healthy relationship

Socialize and enjoy life

Maintain a healthy body

Experiment and try new things.

I spend a disproportionate number hours working, I don't see a reason to prioritize it beyond that it naturally is prioritized (regular baseline hours and obvious objectives).

We all have our baseline for how much we can accomplish and it is important to not force yourself into a mode of life that you cannot sustain or which makes you miserable.

Sleep in, go for walks, don't fret about leaving things unfinished if they're not sparking anything in you.

I guess this is to say, don't do things for their sake, do them for your own sake. Enough things will fall off that your time will allocate itself naturally.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you procrastinate because you feel overwhelmed, it may help to start with meditation and the bare essentials of the other items. That way you can work on aligning the part of your mind which seeks to accomplish these things (manager) with the part that actually does the work (laborer). You may find that the manager needs to lower its expectations while the laborer needs fewer tasks in order to do a good job at the tasks it is given.

Anecdotally, I've found that intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation. If you're trying to keep up with someone else, question or examine that.

</comment><comment> david-gpu Ask yourself why on the one hand you are "trying to do" those things, and yet at the same time you find excuses to procrastinate. Are these things you truly want to do, or things you believe you "should" be doing? In other words, are these passions or duties?

If they are self-imposed duties, ask yourself how important are they, truly. What would happen if you didn't do each of them? How bad would it be? If it's really bad, that's your motivation for doing them, and next time you want to procrastinate you can remind yourself of that reason.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am in a almost identical situation (except the journal part :D ). Although I haven't applied any solution, yet, I think the problem (at least for me) is the fact that I try to do everything of every item. I think the following would help: 1\. Wake up early every day of the. You might compensate for a small nap mid-day. 2\. Have work days to do your reading, learning, exercise and have the weekends for your relationship and socializing. 3\. Calculate how much hours you have on your work days and exploit them as much as possible. 4\. From time to time, do something to rest your mind: trip, travel, etc. 5\. Focus on something specific in every item.

Bottom line, organize yourself, have a schedule and commit to it.

</comment><comment><USER14> My tip. Plan less. I used to be in the same situation and I would meticulously plan out each day and fit all the things I wanted to do in neat little boxes in the calendar.

THe problem was that going through that neatly planned schedule took the fun out of all of it. I wasn't enjoying the things that I had planned, even though they where things that I wanted to do. I was just going through the motions, checking things off.

Today. I try to keep a clear schedule, I don't try to think of all the things I want to do. I don't plan too much. Instead I just do the things that I want to do whenever they occur to me.

Keeping a clear schedule makes it more likely that I will actually have the time to do those things.

</comment><comment><USER15> IMO there does not exist a perfect balance to be maintained. What defines balance is context, and you are eternally gaining new context. Hindsight often is a perceptive trap insofar that when looking back, you perceive it to have been possible to have known then what you know now and thus resolve that the path to perfection is in having a perfect plan. This is false. There was not a way for you to have known what was then the future before it came to pass.

So, what I personally do is just get started with whatever approach with the full knowledge that I will forever be refining and adding to that approach. Routinely check in with your context, what you are doing, and how those are informing each other and interacting to produce the results you are getting. For example, if you find that you are losing too much time journaling, do less of it. Figure out why, though. Maybe it is because work is busier than usual. Retain this information because it will allow you to make plans that are closer to perfect.

Basically what I'm saying is just get started. Moving in a direction is what is important, not necessarily getting to any place in particular. Understand what you are doing, and make sure you keep updating that understanding and remain fundamentally humble to the fact that you'll never strike a perfect balance.

</comment><comment><USER16> First step: come to terms with the fact that you cannot do everything that you want to do.

<comment><USER17> Second: spend more time feeling and less time in your head. The head is populated by constructs of your own creation, and usually they are quite poorly made up. On the other hand feeling is understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Most things suck or are not directly relevant to your immediate situation. Thus you can eliminate and prioritize.

A lot of those goals seem generally good but won't necessarily benefit you like they benefit others. So you shouldn't feel obligated to have them, and let them go. Journals/meditation/exercise/reading material etc all solve specific problems, they shouldn't be treated like they're absolute must-haves without context.

If you truly are ambitious and not afflicted by mimyesis (most of those goals are vague and high-level/generic/conventional, likely not informed by what your real opportunities are, or if they are you aren't describing them, which suggests that they're not coming from you), then the most important thing is to have the capacity of achieving those goals over your lifetime.

This mainly implies good health -- bite the bullet and prioritize exercise first, buy a gym subscription and trainer to push you to accomplishment and give you the presence of mind and body to feel more energetic and willful towards your goals through life.

"Socializing" would be a good second priority because problems and interests rarely occur in a vaccuum, they occur relative to other people and their traditions of practice. If you don't have a sense of your interests or don't feel like you have any real problems, get some by treating that as your first problem and start exploring your interests based off of your own hunches until the larger picture forms. This also constrains the vaguer goals like "Read" (lol) and even "Study" (when you link up to other developers).

IMO the way to more productivity is by starting with small amounts of productivity and do the most natural least effort way of doing it first, then improve. Starting habits is hard, and sustaining them is hard, but doing them tends to be easy, which means that you want to figure out the least intimidating way to do them first so that you'll actually start it, then build up to sustain it.

I can't reiterate enough: if it isn't critical, put it off until later, and just do the most useful thing until it stops being useful. You're under no obligation to accomplish these tasks and there isn't anyone watching over you to accomplish them. Just do these things for you and because you want them or need to now, and you'll be OK.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you work full time You might not be able to manage all these things in a satisfactory way.

First make sure you have sane foundations: enough sleep + exercise + proper diet.

Then experiment and see what sticks. I find it easier to meditate right after I wake up and take a shower, I also manage to do 10-15 min of stretches/yoga.

Reading is the perfect pre bed activity, dim the lights, make some tea, read until you're too tired to continue.

I also found that some activities are just not a fit for me. Maybe you like the idea of, let's say, journaling, but in practice you don't like it = you procrastinate to avoid doing it. Focus on what you truly enjoy doing and build habits from here.

> I'm kind of overwhelmed or I can't spend qualitative time in my relationship > / don't have time to do other chores.

It's also a matter of expectations, you can't do 10 things and excel in all of them. You can't watch all the new Netflix shows, meditate one hour a day, learn to be a professional guitar player, &c. while working full time and having a kid. Pick your battle(s).

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to think that making it to the gym daily was impossible with my schedule. Then I joined a workout challenge/bet with some friends. I quickly found that I could always find 30min in a day for exercise, it was just prioritization. I despise working out, and yet I could get it done. So, now, when I have another task I need to accomplish that will only take 30 minutes, and I've found myself putting it off because "there's not enough time", I now know it's just an excuse. But as others have said, prioritize what you want to accomplish. Do one consistently, then add a second, etc. You'll eventually find a breaking point. We all do. Today, mine is somewhere after cooking breakfast, and before unloading the dishwasher.

</comment><comment><USER21> The thing bugging you is what David burns calls a "shouldy approach to life". It's a common trap which can cause misery and unhappiness. I think his book _feeling good_ can help you or Maybe googling the term may also give you so relevant results

</comment><comment><USER22> I found a new method which is called "Don't break a chain!". For me, this is really helpful method. I have selected few things (for example, practice German, read a book and do sports) and I do it everyday, then I put (x - <USER2> mark) to my application. After some time when I see that I already did certain things for some days this motivates me more and I kept doing again and again. I have another rule that I can have one day "free x" per week which means I'm allowed to skip one day per week, but I can still put check mark to my chain. If I don't have this rule in one day if for some reason I can not do the activity my chain will break and it will be very hard to start again building a new chain.

</comment><comment><USER23> I mean either pick something and do it or don't? If you really wanted to do any of those things you'd be doing them instead of not doing them.

It's fine to accomplish nothing. It's all pointless anyway. If doing nothing is what you're prioritizing, just accept it.

<comment><USER24> Well said. You need downtime too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems to me that you are trying too hard to build a detailed conquest map of an unknown (to yourself) territory. How about you stop torturing that partner of yours with your own perceived inadequacy, how about you drop all them things that you can't seemingly carry on, how about you start with a habit journal and go from there? Pick one habit: exercise for half an hour every other day. Feel around what being that person is like. Visualise new outcome, pick an additional habit, journal. Feel.

And don't spend all of that time in your own head, go outside and do things. Pick up a skill and use it. Get paid. Feel.

Heed. I was you. I am you. No more. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Pick the one thing you are obsessive about, and then blend in the things that aid your great obsession. Some days you'll do more than others, you need a long term view; some things take years and years to achieve.

</comment><comment><USER26> Happened the same to me. I felt really overwhelmed. The only solution I have is doing less. Furthermore I pick things which do require no/low maintainence/time/energy. Now I feel much more satisfied.

The real question to me is how and when to say no. Accepting I won't have the time for everything and chosing certain activities which makes my future freedom broad.

My priorities are: health(physical activity & food), connections: close family + a few close friends - and dedicated "random" time to feel more freedom and have some opportunity + work(+personal project)

</comment><comment><USER27> Consider scheduling changes. E.g. I used to find it really hard to exercise after a day at work, then I changed to exercise in the mornings instead and suddenly I had much less trouble motivating myself.

Also consider trimming down the amount you are trying to do until you are in a routine - can't find time for journalling _and_ meditation _and_ exercise? Start with just one of those and move from there when you are in the habit.

Can you combine some activities? E.g. replace commute with biking to work? Or read while commuting?

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER28> I just pick one thing outside of work I want to achieve at a time. I don't actually care about the results - everything that's in my brain is ash in 60 years time anyway - but I enjoy the feeling of self improvement. But I don't need to do that much to get that feeling.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm running my startup, it requires a shit tone of self-organization. Also, I have too many interest to be able to persuade all of them. What helps me the most is a check-in question: "What thing that you will accomplish or move further forward today will make you the most satisfied and happy?" I try to do that thing. Removing blockers for others is usually my first priority in the beginning of the day.

</comment><comment><USER30> Little by little things get done. When you wake up in the morning you don't start "remodeling a house" you install door knobs. You don't "build a new web app" you work on a feature. It doesn't matter how much work you get done, just that you're making progress. Chip away at your goals and forgive yourself when you don't complete everything you wanted and try again tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER31> Figuring out what you really want can be motivating. This book is great for prioritizing that, highly recommended [https://www.spring.org.uk/spark-how-to- get-motivated](https://www.spring.org.uk/spark-how-to-get-motivated)

</comment><comment><USER32> I've found that tending to my emotional state will make the important stuff get done, because I naturally focus on it. Procrastination, for me, is usually either a mismatch between what my conscious and subconscious believe to be important or fear of doing something unfamiliar.

</comment><comment><USER33> Clearly, I don't. Otherwise, I would be out doing something other than replying on Hacker news ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> I do pretty often check-ins to make sure I am doing the things I want and have the priorities I want to have. It is hard and a struggle always, but with some nudges to stay on point it seems to work :)

And, be kind to myself when I fall out of whack and need to make some adjustments.

</comment><comment><USER35> Maybe give "Designing Your Life" ([https://designingyour.life/](https://designingyour.life/)) a try, as it can help you to get a clearer picture of what you want.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't.

Longer answer is that I just pick whatever I feel like working on whenever I have free time. I probably have personal projects to keep me busy for years at this point.

</comment><comment><USER36> Use Warren Buffet's Two List Strategy.

[https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus](https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus)

</comment><comment><USER37> most important: stop reading HN! ;)</comment>


The Unicorn Project – Gene Kim's Novel - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Project-Developers-Disruption-Thriving-ebook/dp/B07QT9QR41/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Unicorn Project and The Five Ideals, the ones framed in the book as the most important problems facing engineering and business today:

      - The First Ideal: Locality and Simplicity
      - The Second Ideal: Focus, Flow, and Joy
      - The Third Ideal: Improvement of Daily Work
      - The Fourth Ideal: Psychological Safety
      - The Fifth Ideal: Customer Focus</comment>


Made indie game with no code - <AUTHOR> http://supermakers.xyz <comment><USER2> Cool article!</comment>


Russ Cox on Go dependency management - <AUTHOR> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1022588240501661696.html <comment><USER2> Long live reasonable BDFLs. They may annoy the community here and there, but the cohesion and gatekeeping provided by a quality BDFL is hard to match with a community. It's very hard for a community to have collective foresight, but even when they do, often a gatekeeper emerges anyways during review. Of course, it requires thicker skin on both sides of the coin, but in hindsight the tech benefits often outweigh the politics.

Sure, some communities (e.g. the Rust one) show that a sole person need not reside at the top. But that often comes with slow implementation/decision costs.

<comment><USER3> Rust would have _died_ if it used the BDFL model. We had a huge disadvantage starting out, with a tiny team at a smaller company and little name recognition among the lead developers. The only reason Rust achieved any popularity at all was that we listened to the community when they were pushing us to compete 1:1 with C and C++ on performance. Cargo likewise would have been terrible without community input. The community was starting hostile forks before we course corrected.

Additionally, Rust development frankly moves faster than any other language that I know of. You need only look at the release notes for that. The reason is that people can truly be invested in the project, able to make technical decisions as well as contribute code.

<comment><USER4> Community input is different though. Communities need a leader (or small set of leaders) who's responsible for judging whether something fits into the overall vision of the product. If a whole community agrees that something should be this way or that, then sure, that's darn good evidence that it's a good fit and probably inherent to the usefulness of the product, and it would be unwise for them to ignore it. But sometimes you have 50/50 splits and a leader is there to make the ultimate decision based on their expertise and understanding of the problem-domain and how the product fits into it.

<comment><USER3> That's why we have the small language teams who have to sign off on things. It's not democracy.

I think the ideal situation is when the community develops a solution that works well for them and then leadership steps in to shepherd it through the integration process. Leadership isn't there to force their ideas onto the community. When done properly, everyone is empowered and nobody comes out of the process frustrated. This is something we have had to learn over time, but I truly think it is the right way to develop open projects like languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope this apology and acknowledgment of the problems in the process appease Sam. By and large he has been the one to driving the last resistance to adoption of go modules and I can't help but think most of that is just investor's dilemma.

At this point it would be great to no longer be talking about whether go modules should be the thing but working together towards making them work for everyone. (which I don't think is far off actually, Russ and co have done a good job post-reveal of addressing use cases that break with modules)

</comment><comment><USER6> I absolutely love writing programs in Go and at my current startup we're basing all our core backend infrastructure on it.

One thing that I find extremely troubling about Go's dependency handling though (and which at least partly contributes to people's frustration I think) is the mixing of the concepts of a namespace and a resource identifier in Go's package names. It's absolutely reasonable that package names should be unique, making the package name double as a storage location is not always a good idea though (IMHO): For example, we recently switched from using gitlab.com to our own private Gitlab instance, which runs under a custom (non-publicly resolvable) domain. Since all our packages were named like "gitlab.com/.../..." (to make them "go get"-table) we would have to rename all of them to make them "go get"-table from the new location. In the end we solved it by defining a git URL rewriting rule that rewrites the old to the new URL when fetching the repository. This ensured that we could work primarily on our new Gitlab server while maintaining the possiblity to build packages on the gitlab.com server. While that works I think it would have been a better idea to keep package names and storage locations separate, or at least give users a way to override/modify the resolution of packages into locations using a more standardized approach: Such a mechanism could then allow for different name resolution strategies (like a package file, a list of standard repositories) while falling back to the standard way of resolving packages into URLs for "go get". Granted, this would add another layer of complexity, but as we already need a separate file for proper vendoring (to e.g. specify versions) it wouldn't hurt too much to also put (optional) information about storage locations into that file.

Just my 2 cents, apart from this minor inconvenience I'm absolutely happy with Go and its ecosystem!

<comment><USER7> if you want to decouple the namespace from the repository location you can!

[https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr- Remote_import_paths](https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Remote_import_paths) (read until the end)

or TL;DR: [https://blog.bramp.net/post/2017/10/02/vanity-go-import- path...](https://blog.bramp.net/post/2017/10/02/vanity-go-import-paths/)

<comment><USER8> You still can't really.

If I have a canonical import path of "mydomain.io/foo", and I host html there pointing to github or whatever, I now have a different single point of failure: the domain. If I lose control of the domain or the

Most package management systems have one additional layer of resolution: a centralized pluggable repository location which can be configured to some default, and then lookups are made against that instead of against a url specified in the source code.

For example, with cargo, I can open my ".cargo/config" file and specify "registry.index = whatever-url.com", and then for package "foo" it'll look it up on that registry.

If I forget to renew the domain, I don't have to change a bunch of import comments in my source code to update the registry location; I have to update one cargo config file.

<comment><USER9> > If I have a canonical import path of "mydomain.io/foo", and I host html > there pointing to github or whatever, I now have a different single point of > failure: the domain. If I lose control of the domain or the

> Most package management systems have one additional layer of resolution: a > centralized pluggable repository location which can be configured to some > default, and then lookups are made against that instead of against a url > specified in the source code.

TBH, these two seems to contradict each other. You don't want to use your own domain, because that's a SPOF that you could lose control over. Whereas the centralized repository is a SPOF that you never had any control over to begin with. Seems strictly worse to me. And the nice thing about the chosen approach is that it can coexist with what you seem to be wanting: gopkg.in exists and is exactly that. A centralized, hosted (and free!) registry for go packages with its own registration and authorization process.

What I find so beautiful about the go-get solution is a) that you can build any other mechanism I know of on top of it - i.e. the user can decide on their own tradeoffs of convenience/scalability/security/future-proofedness… and b) that domain names already provide an elaborate, globally agreed upon namespace that can separate ownership from administration and hosting, with its own takedown-semantics… It's decentralized, existing, robust infrastructure. It gives full control to the user. And it solves a whole bunch of technical challenges already, for free. It means the Go team doesn't have to manage user accounts of package maintainers and it doesn't have to have policies of what code to accept or not accept - as it can't enforce them.

It's really quite brilliant, IMO.

<comment><USER8> The point is that I don't have to change any of my source code in order to change what registry I point at.

I can use "foo.registry.com" with no changes to my rust source code.

If I want to switch go from "old.com/x/package" to "foo.com/x/package" I have to rewrite all the source code first.

That's the weird coupling which makes go not so configurable; code has no place dictating where it's downloaded from, yet go packages do that. I can't use the go package management ecosystem if my canonical import path doesn't resolve (e.g. dep won't work, go get won't work, vgo won't work).

I never have to worry about my rust code having a magic comment in it which makes the package manager incapable of fetching it from some arbitrary differently named mirror. That's simply not possible in a well designed package management system.

<comment><USER6> In our CI setup we ended up fixing it like this (which I still consider very hacky though):

        git config --global url.https://our-new-domain.com/.insteadOf https://gitlab.com/

This allowed us to keep our code unchanged and still be able to build it on different CI servers (e.g. our public as well as private instances). Specifically, for Gitlab our replacement config looks like this:

        git config --global url.https://gitlab-ci-token:${CI_JOB_TOKEN}@${CI_HOSTNAME}/.insteadOf https://gitlab.com/

This assumes that all packages hosted on gitlab.com are available on our local Gitlab instance, which can be problematic as well (for example if we would import/use an open-source package hosted on gitlab.com along with our own code). In that case we would need a replacement config that would only match our groups/namespaces on gitlab.com.

I vastly prefer the Rust way of doing things though, as I don't think using domains as a namespace is a good way. For example, most code hosting sites will shut down or be deprecated eventually (possible even Github at some point), which for Go will lead to a lot of headaches since there's no way to know where a given package will end up when it's no longer available at its original location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One meta pattern I've noticed: If team members can't talk straight with one another, the team can't make good collective decisions.

Mealy mouthed walls-of-texts are just as unhelpful as one sentence dismissals. Sooner or later, the silent miscommunication will manifest itself and impact the product directly.

Needless to say, the health of a project relies upon the health of its politics.

<comment><USER11> A lot of reasonably successful open-source projects (eg almost the whole npm namespace) is rife with some breed of toxicity and nevertheless does "fine" (for some value of fine - if you never look at it and ignore the security breaches) in terms of the technical merit.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's just open-source projects: a great deal of _all_ projects end up rife with some toxicity or another, and normally they do alright in the end. Human beings are a problem: we have emotions, we have feelings, we have needs, we're not hyper-rational automata. But we mostly muddle through alright.

I don't know if we can avoid this. What I _think_ we _can_ avoid are blow-ups, or at the least calm them back down again. We have to use our hearts, not just our heads, to say and mean, 'yes, I acknowledge your feelings, which are valid.' In the case of Go & dep, I think Sam Boyer feels let down because he'd been so proud of the idea that his tool dep would become the official tool. Rationally he acknowledged that it was the official experiment (maybe he even acknowledged that was _an_ official experiment — I forget), but emotionally I believe that he thought that it'd become the official tool. To see it replaced is a colossal letdown.

We can honour him and his investment of time & energy while at the same time acknowledging that the tool he created isn't the right tool long-term. This is something the net is terrible for: it'd be far better to break the news, in person, over dinner or drinks. There's no _good_ way to do it, of course, but sharing physical space helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A common theme in this thread is the relatively typical software development approach of 'well, I'll let them sort it out'. It's not lazy, and it sort of resembles delegating problems you can't handle to someone else - but the problem is if you do it enough on large scale projects you just end up with a huge stack of miscommunications, and a talented team that has put together a high quality product that completely fails to do what it needs to do. You can't successfully delegate without ensuring that everyone knows what their commitments are, and you need to pay attention on a regular basis to make sure that everyone still knows what the plan is.

It's easy to end up in a position where you're making that mistake if you're a small team used to shipping smaller products or features. Suddenly you're on a bigger project, maybe a bunch of the developers work at another company, maybe you've got a few million users instead of a smaller set like a hundred thousand, and the same planning and team collaboration techniques you've used are _subtly_ harmful and produce bad outcomes a year or two down the line. I observed the WebAssembly design process suffering from same of the same problems early on because it was a group of engineers from multiple companies who were generally used to just working in tiny silos on experiments or features of their own, not A Collaborative Effort For Millions Of Users, much like what Go has turned into now that it's scaled out and not just a prototype language made for Google internal use.

<comment><USER14> For me the important point was that the implementer cannot delegate the community discussion to someone else. He needs to be part of it, and waste hours of important development time on bike shedding.

Or just ignore it and apologize afterwards for rendering the bike shedding useless.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, it is bike shedding to discuss dependency management, because dependency management is an "insignificant or unimportant detail" of a programming language. /s

<comment><USER16> You say "/s", but for some reason, many people still hold the sincere position that dependency management is something that can just be tacked on to a language as an afterthought.

<comment><USER17> Of course it can. npm, composer, etc all added it to their respective languages as afterthoughts, and many years (or decades even) after the language was out.

<comment><USER18> Given the whole mjs-vs-js situation with npm, it's more of a counterexample for adding dependency management late.

<comment><USER17> That's nothing really. They have to use 2 different suffixes to denote 2 kinds of files vs modules.

Meanwhile millions of people use it for 10 or so years for all kinds of deployments.

If only all languages had that unimportant problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Dep does not support using multiple major versions of a program in a single > build. This alone is a complete showstopper. Go is meant for large-scale > work, and in a large-scale program different parts will inevitably need > different versions of some isolated dependency.

This seems to be a major sticking point but I'm having trouble understanding why. I'm not familiar with any other package management system which supports simultaneous major versions in a single project. If two things require different versions of a package, those seem like separate projects to me. Is this to support dependencies which rely on the same package at different versions? If so, why not just call it a version conflict and fail until it's resolved?

<comment><USER20> > Is this to support dependencies which rely on the same package at different > versions?

Yes.

> If two things require different versions of a package, those seem like > separate projects to me

Basically we're talking about libs that have version conflicts, but also very slow release schedules, such that the version conflict isn't going to be reconciled any time soon; or where one of the deps may even be effectively abandonware, but "works just fine" stand-alone so nobody's going to update it. It just depends on extremely old versions of common shared deps. These are, effectively, _irreconcilable_ version conflicts.

The only thing to do, in most languages, is to fork one or the other dep to fix the conflict; or to split the project into microservices such that the conflicting components can live on opposite sides of a process memory boundary. Even these are sometimes impossible for office-political reasons.

> I'm not familiar with any other package management system which supports > simultaneous major versions in a single project.

Node's npm. Versions aren't globally resolved; instead, each package effectively gets its own version resolution. Your root-level package gets a node_modules/ directory with your direct dependencies checked out into it; but your deps' deps are checked out into further node_modules/ directories that exist within their parent dep's checkout directory. It's somewhat as if each parent dep had vendored its deps, and had a vendor/ subdirectory; except that, in this case, the vendoring process is recursive.

When a given package require()s a library by name, then, it's actually importing its own npm-vendorified copy of the library from its own node_modules/ directory, rather than looking in your package's root node_modules/ directory. (In fact, there is no root level; you have "package isotropy", where a dep NPM checked out has the exact same NPM-populated subdirs as a project you git clone'd yourself.) Since these libs aren't entered into a global namespace by require(), rather just have the module returned as a runtime object for the parent scope to bind to a local variable, there are no runtime conflicts between the separately-vendored versions, either.

In a language without such runtime support, though, you would need your package-ecosystem tooling to reach into your downloaded lib and do some name- mangling of the exported symbols, and then either create a router symbol that resolves calls based on the lexical scope, or further mangle your deps' parents to call the dep by its mangled name rather than its original name. I _think_ that's what's being proposed here, since Go has no such runtime support. (Effectively, in Go terms, you can simply think of it as all the references to git-http URL depspecs in import statements, being amended to qualify the repo name with the full git SHA, such that two different commits of the same project act as if they were two differently-named projects from Go's perspective.)

<comment><USER21> It's a relatively minor nitpick, but since version 3, npm flattens the package tree as much as it can and tries to bring everything possible to the top level node_modules directory. It'll still use nested node_modules where necessary to handle dependency version conflicts. A bit more info here:

[http://npm.github.io/how-npm-works-docs/npm3/how- npm3-works....](http://npm.github.io/how-npm-works-docs/npm3/how- npm3-works.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you worked with Go quite a bit 3-4 years ago, but have been out of scene since then... what is the best resource(s) for getting back up to speed with its current state?

I presume that the language spec itself hasn't change DRAMATICALLY over the past few years. But so much is unfamiliar in the project structure / build process area (e.g. "vendor directories", modules, dependency managament, etc).

All the tours and tutorials focus on the language syntax and standard library. Looking for a refresher or intro to the "how do you actually get work done in the best manner?" plumbing aspects.

<comment><USER23> I'd say: assume nothing has changed. Take a look at the active projects in your area of interest. A few ones:

[https://echo.labstack.com](https://echo.labstack.com)

[https://github.com/go-kit/kit](https://github.com/go-kit/kit)

Web glue frequently recommended around here:

[https://github.com/go-chi/chi](https://github.com/go-chi/chi)

Github pages like [https://github.com/avelino/awesome- go](https://github.com/avelino/awesome-go) have become a good starting point for finding interesting projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One issue I have is I can't really find the dep complaints about go's approach clearly. There was supposed to be a talk but I can't find the video.

Yes - Russ should have been much clearer much earlier and not let dep get as far along as it did. But dep mentions the issues, particularly for small teams with go's new approach - I'd love to get a quick version of that.

<comment><USER9> The closest to that is [https://sdboyer.io/vgo/intro/](https://sdboyer.io/vgo/intro/) and [https://sdboyer.io/vgo/failure-modes/](https://sdboyer.io/vgo/failure- modes/). IMO these posts are hard to digest and ultimately unconvincing. But YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think I'm more offended Russ said he was looking at cargo as 'best of breed' for inspiration.. but ended up ignoring it entirely to do his own thing.

Just suck it up.

You went off and did your own thing, and ignored everybody else, sticking pretty much to what you wanted to win the race in the first place (gopkg).

Right, now thats out the way can we just get on with it and use modules?

Decisions have been made, they're here to stay. It doesn't make everyone happy... but hey, _we're all_ massively relieved the mess has been sorted out, so thank you.

Lets stop these deep soul searching what he said she said wastes of time and get get started using it~

<comment><USER26> It's possible to study another product and learn things from it while still deciding to do it your own way. Deciding to do things differently is not an insult. It's one way innovation happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is kinda unrelated. But I am _very_ new to Go.

If one were to start a serious project with Go in 2018, what's the recommended way? Are people using Go modules? How to deal with 3rd party deps which dont have go.mod files?

When I previously explored Go, having all code under GOPATH was recommended, but seems like things have changed with `vgo`.

<comment><USER28> Modules are still in a beta pre-release kinda state, I think most people would stick to dep even for new projects right now.

<comment><USER29> Dep has also issues, it's safer to continue to use Dep when you already use it but for new project it's recommended to switch now to go modules. Anyway, most of the time it doesn't change anythings to lock the version with dep or use minimal version selection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Off-topic rant: I really hate how Twitter has popularized this devolved style of communicating by a flurry of fragments _so much_ that we now have services like Thread reader (which I appreciate!) to undo that mess, and to make communication coherent again.

<comment><USER5> Ya.. this is an especially funny case because I can't imagine Russ wrote this adhoc on Twitter, this looks like something very much prepared, then dribbled out, which makes me a bit sad for the world.

<comment><USER31> Twitter has that feature where you can post multiple tweets in a chain. Honestly, why have a character limit at all at this point...

<comment><USER32> So it is accessible over SMS?

<comment><USER33> How many users actually use it over SMS though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ainar-g It's _Russ_ Cox, not Ross. Can the admins change the title?

<comment><USER34> Calling him out like this is pretty bad, why not make this about the Go dependency management instead of one individual?

<comment><USER17> Because it's a long twitter of messages that he posted discussing Go's dependency. It's not a general discussion between various people, it's sorta like he wrote a blog post on the matter.</comment></comment></comment>


A case against syntax highlighting - <AUTHOR> http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/

<comment><USER2> "Conclusions[...] Syntax highlighting doesn't improve legibility."

Yes. And the author completely missed the point of syntax highlighting: it's not useful to read the code, it's useful to WRITE the code!

It's when writing it that you want some early syntactic (and slight semantic) feedback.

If you type a keyword and it highlight like a function name, you get a hint that you have a typo in your keyword.

If you type a function name and it highlight as a type, or as an undefined token, you get the same hint.

And so on.

Just like automatic indentation of the code does provide you good syntactic hints about your parenthesizing (or brackets or begin/end etc), and let you notice at once when something's unbalanced or misplaced.

(This is also the reason why python is bad: editors can't do automatic indentation of python code.)

<comment><USER3> Editors can, and normally do, automatically indent Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a much stronger case against highlighting English and against using really nasty themes, which no one considered good ideas to begin with.</comment>


A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, nuclear scientist and former president of India, has died - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/apj-abdul-kalam-dies/article7470722.ece <comment><USER2> Many know of him as an alpha technologist and as India's Missile Man.

Less known is the fact that he helped design a coronary stent at a much lower cost, utilizing techniques and lightweight materials from the missile R&D labs. He also designed lightweight artificial limb production processes.

In this way, he had a deep concern for the social benefits of the common man, and distinguished himself from other scientists who lived in a world of their own.

RIP Sir.

May your memory be eternal!

</comment><comment><USER3> I once met Sir Abdul Kalam at a scholarship event for only school students. I was 14 at that time and after he had given his speech he walked through the auditorium and asked "what they wanted to become?" to random kids.

I still remember to my heart when he came to me and when I replied I wanted to become a software engineer he smiled and replied "And when you become, become a good one".

Really a great loss for India.

</comment><comment><USER4> Incredibly sad day. I had the privilege of seeing Dr. Kalam speak to a packed auditorium at the IAC [1][2] in 2007 in Hyderabad, India. Not only were a large number of conference participants present but there were about 300 school children there too. There must have been almost 1000 people in that room and there was absolute pin-drop silence. The way Dr. Kalam was able to capture the attention of young and old is something that I feel truly privileged to have witnessed.

During the Q&A, a girl stood up and took the mic, she can't have been over 10 years old, and she asked him in plain English why he wasn't going to stand for President again when he was loved by every single person in the country. She asked the question that was on the minds of every Indian in the room. His response was measured, balanced and most of all inspirational. He commented that he wanted to return to his passion. That he was a scientist at heart, and that the country was in good hands.

My family WhatsApp group is flooded with messages over the last few hours of the various encounters they've had with Dr. Kalam. Even his last breathe was taken at IIM Shillong doing what he does best; inspiring a nation. A friend of mine in Bangalore had the honor of meeting him recently. He has been working on a space startup in India for the last three years and commented how special it was to have the occasion to speak to Dr. Kalam about the future of the Indian space sector.

He was an incredible scientist, a visionary, a leader and in someways that is outdone by the single fact that he united a single country: with all the religious tension between Hindus and Muslims, no one I have ever met back in India has considered him to be anything else than ours.

The 27th of July should be a national day of recognition for his genius.

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

[2] [http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/27slide1.htm](http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/27slide1.htm)

 _EDIT: Minor corrections_

<comment><USER5> > The 27th of July should be a national day of recognition for his genius.

Slightly off-topic, but there are already too many "national holidays" in India. Added with the "state holidays", there are barely any workdays left.

<comment><USER6> He mentioned recognizing it as a national day and not necessarily a 'holiday'. There are numerous days when students pay their respect to a great personality and continue with their regular activities. This could be one such day.

Moreover I read somewhere that Dr. Kalam himself wanted people to work harder on his death day and not take a holiday. Not sure if that is misattributed to him, but I'm sure his thoughts would have been similar.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. That's why I worded it the way that I did. I am aware of Dr. Kalam's quote, requesting that there be no holiday in his recognition, but rather an extra day of work. So my point is absolutely as you put it, to pay respects to a genius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Adieu to a great man, [https://twitter.com/APJAbdulKalam](https://twitter.com/APJAbdulKalam)

"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep." ― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire: An Autobiography

Some of his books : [http://www.amazon.com/A.-P.-J.-Abdul- Kalam/e/B001H9RNS0/](http://www.amazon.com/A.-P.-J.-Abdul-Kalam/e/B001H9RNS0/)

Brief from Wikipedia : _He spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately involved in India 's civilian space program and military missile development efforts. He thus came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He also played a pivotal organizational, technical and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974._

</comment><comment><USER8> Where there is righteousness in the heart there is beauty in the character, when there is beauty in the character there is harmony in the home, when there is harmony in the home there is order in the nation, when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world. - Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam

<comment><USER9> That is something we in the US should harken to. Especially: "when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world." So much instability in the world is due to or exacerbated by imbalances involving the 1st world economies affecting the rest of the world. (Chief among these would be environmental problems, but they are not limited to only those.)

Also something to apply to one's personal life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Abdul-Kalam-widely-loved-and- res...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Abdul-Kalam-widely-loved-and-respected-by- everyone)

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-lesser-known-things- about...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-lesser-known-things-about-Dr-APJ- Abdul-Kalam)

</comment><comment><USER11> One of my favorite quotes of all time! "The dream is not what you see in sleep, it's something that does not let you sleep" ― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

</comment><comment><USER12> Of interest to the HN crowd -- When APJ Kalam was president he advocated for the use of Open Source Software[1]. He was one the very few intellectual leaders India has seen.

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/india-leader-advocates-open- source/](http://www.cnet.com/news/india-leader-advocates-open-source/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Dr. Kalam once used Yahoo! Answers to crowdsource solutions to combat terrorism - [https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200701121355...](https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070112135510AAD7SB8)

RIP.

</comment><comment><USER14> APJ once said, "the best leader when failed, take the complete responsibility of failure, and when succeed give the credit to his team - this is the best management principle i have learn for the first time"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZkT0tcqEG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZkT0tcqEG0)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've a problem with this ad-ridden source, for such a significant news. Can someone change it?

<comment><USER11> He deserves much more than this IMHO, hence! #NoOffence

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A visionary, gentleman and brilliant scientist who saw youth as an important part of the country's future. Dr. Kalam was an inspiration. It is a great loss.

Edit: It is only fitting that he spent his last minutes with students.

</comment><comment><USER16> "I can do it, we can do it, India will do it" ~ Dr. A.P.J Kalam

</comment><comment><USER17> A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was a true symbol of "The Indian Dream". Born to a boatman, walking miles to school, born before the convenience of computing and the internet - his journey to becoming the President of India is truly remarkable and inspiring at the same time.

I saw the picture of him falling just before his death, and i am disturbed. This man made the country stand on its feet technologically and here he falls amidst his students as he wished his death to be.

He is the most loved by all, he kept inspiring people to dream bigger. He never relented to retiring. He tirelessly spread his message going to schools and colleges. He is symbolic of an aspiring nation. A nation waiting to unleash its potential - he always asked his countrymen to earn respect through strength since strength respects strength.

His journey will be talked for decades to come, and he truly has become immortal. He has inspired a generation and will inspire more generations through his books and speeches. A saint at heart and a pure soul that worried about humanity and world peace - this man is the best citizen any country would die to have. A role model who transcends caste, creed , languages and religion in a country like India that is so diverse. A binding force in our country.

I am proud to have lived to see him. I am proud to be an Indian.

Every once in a while a great person descends to earth, he is one of them. A saint, a gentleman, a scientist, an orator, a poet, a writer , the greatest teacher, The President of India - various though your roles, you were focused and dedicated. Your soul is so pure, your voice will echo through this nation for decades ahead.

The nation skipped a heartbeat at the news of your death. You have lit a fire, we will spread the wings of this fire that you have lit.

Salutes, to you sir! We will love you now and forever.

Return If Possible sir. :'(

</comment><comment> rakesh-singh Had a chance to see him in person long time back.. Very down to earth.. Simple man with very high and clear thoughts. He always liked to remain close with students.. Always going to different universities.. Guiding .. Inspiring them..

I think it was a dream death for him. Till last breath he was contributing to the nation.. Salute sir

</comment><comment><USER18> A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination. ~ Dr. A.P.J Kalam

<comment><USER17> Please do not misquote! That was said by Nelson Mandela.

Source : [http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nelsonmand101682....](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nelsonmand101682.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not only his speech were inspirational but his writings were motivating. Books like ignited minds and India 2020 written by him were visionary and always inspired me . Rest in peace sir

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember the moment when Kalam Sir came to our graduation ceremony and asked in his speech "What would you like to be remembered for? Evolve and shape your life in that way".

He will remain an inspiration.

Here is the full speech: [http://www.iitg.ac.in/pro/sites/default/files/14thConvo_Chie...](http://www.iitg.ac.in/pro/sites/default/files/14thConvo_ChiefGuest.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> I was fortunate enough to witness his speech live when he came to our school in 2007. It was held in our school grounds, which was full with about a 1000 people, with students, teachers & parents, all listening to his speech with rapt attention. During the Q&A session a young boy stood up and asked him, "Why does all the politicians are so old?" After a general murmur of laughter, he asked, "Well students, let me ask you what you want to be in your life?"..Lots of hands shot up, shouts of "Engineer", "Doctor", "Scientist" echoed through the ground. After the clamor died down, he simply said : "See, that is why. I see many engineers, scientists, doctors among you. But none of you want to be a politician. Which is good, as the nation needs its youth to carry them forward, while we old people manage the politics of this country." \- Such simple & humble answer from a great man. He did a lot for this country, and more over, he inspired many generations to follow their dreams. He will continue to live in our minds as the perfect role model of modern India.

</comment><comment><USER22> RIP sir! Alpha geek, father of SLV satellite launch vehicle family, father of Indian ballistic missile program, and an inspiration for millions of Indians. He'll always be present in Indians' hearts and minds.

Read "Wings of Fire"[0] if you haven't already!

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

</comment><comment><USER23> A sad day for Indians. Dr. Kalam was a huge inspiration and role model for many.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm deeply saddened by the demise of Dr. Kalam. He inspired me a lot when I was a kid back in school. His books "Ignited Minds" and "Wings of Fire" are highly inspiring and are filled with hope for India.

His passion was to inspire and ignite young minds and encourage them to propel India on a global scale. His numerous interactions with school children, political leaders, industrialists and scholars have a common theme - India can do it.

On small example of how he always tries to look out for the benefit of everybody: "A school in Madurai had organized an event and invited Dr. Kalam as the chief guest. He initially declined the invitation saying that it would benefit only private school students. Then the school had to modify their plans and invited over 500 students from various other government schools in the vicinity to attend the event too. Only then did he agree to be the chief guest of the event. "

</comment><comment><USER24> I met him once at a conference in Bengaluru. He was President then.

When it was his turn to speak, he said: ``My staff has written a wonderful script for me to read aloud. You can read it on my Website tomorrow. But now, I shall talk about good R&D, or the lack of it, in India." And he went on to deliver a very inspiring speech.

Great man!

</comment><comment><USER25> Better source: [http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/former-president-apj-abdul- ka...](http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/former-president-apj-abdul-kalam- admitted-to-icu-in-shillong-sources-1201111)

edit: @mods: Can you please update the url

</comment><comment><USER26> A very very admirable person. Always inspired Kids, Always motivated them to dream, And he died also while motivating them. A true marvelous brilliance and down to earth guy. And that's the reason, Billion+ people are now mourning.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Don't declare a holiday on my death, instead work and extra day, if you love me..."\- DR. APJ Abdul Kalam

</comment><comment><USER28> He'll be missed by billions. The Ace scientist, the missile man and above all a great human being. RIP Kalam Sir.

</comment><comment><USER29> I am just a normal student. Never had a chance to meet him. Always wished I did. To meet him just _once_ and talk to him about how he wants to see the country, and what a student like me can do to contribute towards it. I am very, very sad that I won't be able to talk to him, ever in my life. </3

<comment><USER30> Me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sad day for Indians. He has been a great inspiration for many students and children. May his soul rest in peace.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Hard work, perseverance and kindness are the qualities that define a human being" that's the lesson I learned from his autobiography "wings of fire", this was way back in high school. He was an inspiration for me during my formative years.

RIP Sir.

</comment><comment><USER33> I once met Dr. Abdul Kalam. He said, he wanted to become a pilot but couldn't because of his height/eyesight (not sure which). But he did not become dejected. He still got into flying, as an aeronautical engineer.

May his soul watch over the world.

</comment><comment><USER34> Sir Came to my college, when he was being a President, He asked the students a question,

 _I am standing the 73th orbit of the earth rotating to the sun, then what is my age?_

Many young scientists replied the correct answer.

Feeling proud of him, truely inspiring leader

</comment><comment><USER35> So sad that the death of Kalam was used for promoting a spam website. Can the administrators change the link into a better source?

</comment><comment><USER36> Really a big lose for us :(, He was and always be a true hero for us. RIP sir

</comment><comment><USER37> RIP Missile Man of India.

</comment><comment><USER38> We will miss you sir. RIP

</comment><comment><USER39> Dr. Abdul Kalam was a musician too and played the veena.

</comment><comment><USER40> He will be dearly missed by one and all.

</comment><comment><USER41> R.I.P Sir!!!

</comment><comment><USER42> may his soul rest in peace

</comment><comment><USER43> RIP.

Always enjoyed reading his books.

</comment><comment><USER44> Good Bye.

</comment><comment><USER45> good bye!!

</comment><comment><USER46> Why was the fact that he was the president removed from the title?

Please update to: "Nuclear scientist and former president of India, Abdul Kalam, has died"

<comment><USER47> The article title right now reads: "Former President APJ Abdul Kalam is no more with us: Collapses During Speech in Shillong"

<comment><USER46> Nope, still says "Indian nuclear scientist Abdul Kalam has died"

<comment><USER47> On the original website. HN has an original title policy so I expect a mod to sync the two at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Don't want to bring politics here. I just could not believe why in the world why Congress/Sonia wouldn't give him second term and brought in Pratibha Patil who abused her privilege as a President ( In news for changing her portrait picture N times because she didn't liked how she looked, Taking her whole extended family > 30+ to all foreign trips, and making Rashtrapati Bhavan a guest house/extended vacation place for them). Abdul Kalam inspired the children and young people of India. He was an icon. She did zilch. How could they disgrace Adbul Kalam and India like this? What were they thinking?

<comment><USER49> > Don't want to bring politics here

Then you shouldn't have; but you chose to.

[Edit] Your comment says nothing about Dr. AK, but instead focuses on other people and other issues that IMHO have no relevance to this thread.

<comment><USER47> > Your comment says nothing about Dr. AK

Actually, it does. It ranks him favorably relative to others that held the same post.

<comment><USER50> There is no doubt that S Radhakrishnan and APJ Abdul Kalam were two greatest Presidents India had who made the most impact out of a ceremonial post (and not in a political way).

<comment><USER51> Dont forget KR Narayanan who refused to sign if proper procedures were not followed showing that President is not just a rubber stamp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can admin please change source to Wikipedia instead ? It's spam site that's getting all the click, thanks

<comment><USER53> Wikipedia isn't a great source to use for a breaking news story. But if you or anyone would suggest a more substantive URL, we can change to that.

<comment><USER32> Try this one.. Its from a reputed Indian newspaper.. [http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/apj-abdul-kalam- dies/a...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/apj-abdul-kalam- dies/article7470722.ece)

* updated the link..

<comment><USER53> Ok, url changed to that from [http://www.theindiantalks.com/breaking/former- president-apj-...](http://www.theindiantalks.com/breaking/former-president- apj-abdul-kalam-is-no-more-with-us-collapses-during-speech-in-shillong/10744). Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't abandon websites to spammers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stevex.net/index.php/2008/09/08/abandoned-websites/

<comment><USER2> So... we should go back to Digg?

I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is why having RSS feeds which can feed you all changes/additions to a website is a good idea.

Maybe _especially_ for abandoned websites.</comment>


Songkick's concert recommendation engine: It goes to 11 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/03/18/songkicks-concert-recommendation-engine-it-goes-to-11/

<comment><USER2> Interesting, we are building a similar service and will probably launch in about a month. May the best one win ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this the same thing as Tourb.us --- a tiny, 2-person Rails outfit --- and a sideline feature of Facebook? How can there be multiple VC-funded entrants for this offering?

<comment><USER4> Like most problems, when you scratch the surface, it becomes clear how deep you could dig.. We took funding to give us the time to solve these technical challenges.

With 1 million active bands currently on MySpace, the challenge simply to get the database of all concerts is huge. And that's before we even start on the discovery piece to connect fans to these gigs..

Pete, Songkick

<comment><USER3> Just as a data point: I use and love Tourb.us, it's gotten me to several indie shows I would have missed, it syncs with my iTunes playlist and provides an RSS feed, and has a truly excellent domain name. With your VC money, I recommend that you buy them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _[SongKick] allows you to input up to three bands you enjoy_

Is that correct? I logged in to my SongKick account, and I seem to have more than 3 bands I'm tracking.

<comment><USER4> Rob,

You definitely can track more than three - the article is referring to the initial homepage where anyone can just get started finding a show by typing in three bands.

Use the plugins, or even begin adding bands manually to the Tour Tracker, and you can track as many artists as you like.

One user is tracking over 4000 artists right now. I'm tracking a more modest 477..

Pete, Songkick</comment></comment>


Helvetica Is Now an Encryption Device - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcodesign.com/90167210/helvetica-is-now-an-encryption-device <comment><USER2> > You read that right. Fonts have been transformed into encryption tools.

But a lower-tech form of this method based on the same idea is over four hundred years old, and literally also uses contrasting font forms to convey information secretly within a text document.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_cipher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_cipher)</comment>


Galton's Bayesian Machine - <AUTHOR> http://chance.amstat.org/2011/02/galton/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty brilliant. A simulator of this device would make a good tool teaching tool for helping people grok bayes' formula. Weekend project anyone?

<comment><USER3> Simulator? Build a real one!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's pretty awesome. Now if only we could build a multivariate version that let you estimate covariance matrices also ...

</comment><comment><USER5> _What does Bayes Theorem look like? [--] I mean, how can we visualize the cognitive content of the theorem?_

Umm, how about a Venn diagram? Seriously, it's not that complicated. In my mind's eye, p(µ|θ) := |{ x | µ(x)∧θ(x) }| ÷ |{ x | θ(x) }|.

<comment><USER6> This works for the discrete version, but not for the continuous one (if your prior, likelihood and posterior are distributions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any opinions or experience with the 'Chance' magazine? It looks interesting, and Andrew Gelman is an editor.</comment>


Show HN: Warhead – Visually Create Websites for Any Device in Real-Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.warhead.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all!

Just wanted to follow-up and mention that if you Sign Up on the site you'll get full access to the product for free. No downloads. No credit card. Just Log In and start creating.

Here's a quick video demo of the Theme Editor you can check out before signing up: [https://youtu.be/6-MVgUGsIC4](https://youtu.be/6-MVgUGsIC4)

Thanks!</comment>


Who Writes Wikipedia? (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia <comment><USER2>
        Wales is right about one thing, though. This fact does have enormous policy
        implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional contributors, then
        growing it requires making it easier and more rewarding to contribute
        occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze more work out of those who spend
        their life on Wikipedia, we need to broaden the base of those who
        contribute just a little bit.

The problem is that, as a community, Wikipedia has gone out of its way to do the opposite of that. New content is often treated as "guilty until proven innocent", and it's up to the contributor to wade through Wikipedia's idiosyncratic rules and definitions in order to justify to the moderators why their edits should not be reverted or their articles deleted.

<comment><USER3> It really depends on what you edit. Sci/tech/math is pretty much un-monitored in my experience. The economics pages are full of weird pet theories. Meanwhile, as you say, current events, biographies, and a lot of other less technical pages (that don't require the deep background that the article refers to) are infested with deletionists.

<comment><USER4> It really seems to come down to politics, specifically whether or not /any/ group considers a topic political. I've made a few reasonably long albeit anonymous edits to the pages for specific regional cuisines and so far the only thing that's been changed is someone altered my wording a little once by breaking a sentence up into two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From my experience with trying to contribute to the Hebrew version, try contributing focusing on expanding an existing article and watch what happens. In my case there was a very strong push back even against adding links that expand on issues mentioned which imho helped to balance an obvious slant. I gave up after a while. At university of course you're warned not to use Wikipedia, it's not acceptable as a reference and many examples are presented of experts in their field who contributed articles, which were then rewritten to the point where there was nothing left, other than the revised version of the moderators and the small mafia that runs the Israeli Wikipedia. There's also the examples of the Croatian version which was taken over by neonazis and even the ministry of education had to publish a warning.

<comment><USER6> The political bias of wikipedia editors is horrible in most smaller countries. You mention Israel and Croatia. I can add Sweden. For an example, compare the wikipedia entries of the two largest parties in the Swedish parliament. One, Socialdemokraterna, starts with a blurb on how the party provides public welfare and the party slogan ("av var och en efter förmåga, åt var och en efter behov"). Compare with the second largest party, Sverigedemokraterna, which has an entire section devoted to listing scandals, controversial quotes and shunnings. Whatever you think about the two ideologies, these two wikipedia entries alone should be enough proof that there is a (left) political bias of wikipedia editors.

I use wikipedia often because it has a lot of information in it, but would never rely on it as a source of fact. It is a google result like any other, and must be treated with caution.

<comment><USER7> Almost all social platforms on the internet have a left-leaning tilt because, at least partially, the left (historically) organizes much better than the right does. This is one of those "well duh" statements once it's said out loud, considering the left's entire platform is about unification and social issues in most countries. That said, there are signs that point to a change in that recently (the second amendment rallies and sanctuaries around the US as examples).

This is _extremely_ visible on Reddit, to the point that even moderates on the left can find it exhausting.

<comment><USER8> I was under the impression that this was because the left skews younger, and Gen X and millennials are more active and capable online.

<comment><USER7> Age is a component, but it doesn't adequately explain the difference in movements that occur in the real world as well as online. Universities have students organizing protests against right-wing figures quite frequently, and it was almost exclusively the left who pushed for the $15 minimum wage - despite both parties populations being affected heavily.

From what I've seen (living in US, Germany, and Sweden) no matter where you go there is a difference in 'wiring.' [0]And according to some sources I've read there appears to be some science behind that as well.

[0][https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can- you...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/10/can-your-genes- predict-whether-youll-be-a-conservative-or-a-liberal/280677/)

<comment><USER9> Universities skew younger even more than the internet does.

I think there is an element of the left wanting to "fix" the world which appeals to young people, and the right wanting to "protect" the world from bad changes, which appeals to older more cautious people.

<comment><USER7> The US military also skews young but leans more towards the republican party.

[https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans- ages-t...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-ages-tend- republican.aspx)

<comment><USER8> Looks like there are 1.29 million in the US military (0.3% of US population), with an average age of 34.5. (All figures from top search result of Google.)

59% of millennials lean or identify as Democrat compared to 35% Republican [https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/1-generations- party-...](https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/01/1-generations-party- identification-midterm-voting-preferences-views-of-trump/)

<comment><USER7> [0]There were 18.8 million veterans living in the US in 2017.

I don't know a single person in the military today that is over 30, and I live right by Nellis(Not exactly hard data, of course). Most people go into the military right after high school. I'd be surprised if the average age is actually that high, especially considering you _can 't even join_ the military over certain ages - though that depends on the branch and other factors. IIRC you cannot join the marines if you are >30

I suspect you probably are specifically looking at officers, which is an entirely different story.

[0][https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/10/veterans-by-the- numbers...](https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/10/veterans-by-the-numbers.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be interesting to redo this analysis now. 2006 was a long time ago. In 2006 wikipedia was in a very rapid growth phase; lots of topics still didn't have good coverage yet. In 2020, I can't remember a recent time where a mainstream topic didn't have extensive coverage on en wikipedia. Do the masses still write most of Wikipedia now that the low hanging fruit has been written?

<comment><USER10> I recently amazed several non-tech friends by mentioning that I, personally, have edited Wikipedia. It's not something a lot of people think of as something they can even do. They're not fixing typos, let alone making substantive edits or writing new articles.

I realize "do most people edit Wikipedia" is different from "are most Wikipedia edits from casual users", but it was an eye-opening interaction for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> None of the comments in this submission's thread so far seem to be related to the article's content (the headline _was_ tantalizing, but the article itself is really cool), so to try and counteract that, here's one that's directly related:

As it says, Wikipedia is written by vast amounts of people. The myth that only a small number of people contribute is just that: a myth. Checking edit histories on anything but the most niche of articles would demonstrate this, but you could also do the same analysis he did today and see if you can replicate his result; it's been a few years now, things probably look slightly different.

This has gotten more relevant over time even though the people perpetuating the myth have changed, along with their motives for doing so. One of the more popular and long-lasting myths!

<comment><USER12> I don't get why you'd want to perpetuate the myth of Wikipedia editors being this small, powerful in-group of people anyways…

<comment><USER13> Possibly to discredit it as having a political identity of its own or something because small group of people can be more biased openly than a large group?

<comment><USER12> Right, but this is _Jimmy Wales_ pushing this.

<comment><USER11> Ego in his case, though modern forms of it are generally what the above throwaway said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The small amount of people who work on Wikipedia is it's greatest weakness. Petty power plays and individual politics all bubble up from those few into a resource so many millions use. It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and reverts. It's really demoralizing to try and put in any effort there as you'll quickly encroach on some editors "territory".

<comment><USER15> > It deserves more but how can anyone even start with all the rules, bots and > reverts.

That's why I prefer contributing to smaller wikis. They have much less political issues. However, I'd say more than 90% of the edits I've made to the English Wikipedia are still live.

It really depends where you choose to edit. Some articles just have asshole editors who think they own the article. And not everyone has the energy to fight back against that.

<comment><USER16> Is there a simple way to check if one's edits are live, so those that aren't can be reviewed?

<comment><USER17> You can filter article history by user [1] to check whether their contributions are still in the current version, or use Wikiblame creatively to find who wrote some specific part of a live article [2].

[1] [https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py](https://tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiBlame)

[http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php](http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I write/edit on Wikipedia most days. I've contributed to over 100 English articles, on topics ranging from science to music to art. In my experience, science/mathematics articles are VERY high level, often graduate-level content, and they can use some softening of jargon and domain-specific verbiage.

In the arts and music, many paintings, musical compositions, etc. don't have much written, or it's poorly written, by a non-English writer, etc.

I tried to write an article about my college a cappella group and it got rejected for not being famous enough. I thought that was a bit silly because my group was just as famous as random tiny towns in the middle of nowhere...shrug.

I'd encourage you all to join Wikipedia and make edits to anything you see that's amiss!

</comment><comment><USER19> I miss Aaron so much

<comment><USER20> I miss him, and I miss people like him. At one point he embodied "web" culture. Seems like a long time ago now.

<comment><USER21> > At one point he embodied "web" culture

And is now the polar opposite of anything you might consider "web culture" today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those who haven't read the linked article, it states that unregistered and anonymous users create the vast majority of Wikipedia content; the registered editors mostly move things around, delete commas and the like.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there valid criticism on the accuracy of certain wikipedia articles?

It could also be interesting to have some study or writing on certain "edit wars" on certain controversial subjects on wikipedia.

In general, the accuracy of wikipedia is pretty good, and generally wikipedia is still very valuable.

I just wish wikimedia would do more do promote its high quality articles and bundle them per fields to make quality textbooks on particular subjects. It also seems articles are not really indexed per category, which makes it hard to gather articles on a particular subject. Anyway it would involve a lot of work.

<comment><USER24> Wikipedia does support article 'bundles' (they're known as Featured/Good Topics) but open textbooks are covered by a separate effort, namely Wikibooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 2006, using data primarily from Wikipedia articles written before then, was a _very_ long time ago. Things have changed a lot: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0323.pdf)

<comment><USER26> Small special wikis are very different fron Wikipedia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> R.I.P Aaron.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wikipedia is written by a much smaller (from what I've seen) and far more cliquish group than in the old days. The novelty of editing an open encyclopedia has worn off and a far more vast majority now just visit for the questionable facts while only the people with too much time on their hands still edit.

Coincidentally theres even more territoriality than before with people setting up fiefdoms on prime articles and don't you dare flout their authority. Its worst of course on the politically relevant topics. A current favored tactic is to frontload the very beginnings of articles about organizations and people they don't like with negative/inflammatory information. For example compare the current versions of Breitbart News, Conservapedia, One America News Network, and Stephen Miller with Daily Kos, Rational Wiki, and Huffington Post.

The defense if they're called on it is a tortured appeal to 'authoritative consensus' where an editor will go on a fishing expedition for negative quotes from the left of center media bloc like CNN or HuffPo and anything they find on there even blatant opinion is automatically sacrosanct regardless of whether it actually is a consensus among the entire media.

So basically the political articles are even more trash than ever. Again you can draw whatever connection you want to the type of people left editing this mess. I feel sorry for anyone who actually reads and believes it.

Another annoying thing is that they still haven't fixed their scientific articles which for anything beyond the basics tend to be overly jargonish and technical yet uninformative at the same time.</comment>


Parents of Babies Too Young to Vaccinate Feel Trapped by Measles Outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/measles-babies-vaccine.html <comment><USER2> We had our preemie vaccinated way early for this reason, you can definitely get away with it.</comment>


Your zipcode is more important than your genes in determining your health - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6dJ4O4sZQ

<comment><USER2> Yeah, well, if your area has high amounts of crime, violence, and poor drivers, of course it will.</comment>


Happy 4th of July - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You as well. We're one nation with extraordinary cultural diversity.

<comment><USER3> >We're one nation with extraordinary cultural diversity.

Despite our best efforts, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Happy Interdependence Day!</comment>


Show HN: Penny – simpler than Mint - <AUTHOR> https://www.pennyapp.io

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I am friends with the developers, and have been using since early alpha/beta builds.

I just gotta say, that for my uses, Penny has already replaced Mint. I used Mint as a big picture view of my finances, and the ability to search through my transaction history and so on. But the other majority of the features in Mint, went unused by me. Also the constant advertising of financial services, and other things got annoying. I tried to use the Budgets, but those aren't well laid out.

Queue Penny, and I think i got most of what I want, and features that Mint doesn't have, which is figuring out which of my transactions are recurring, and allowing me to get a total of all recurring transactions as a lump sum. That was a major feature I loved from BillGuard that I don't need to log into that for. Simple and easy to access information of all my bank account and CC balances, very nice graphs and breakdowns of my spending in a few clicks. And a solid history of my transactions.

It does what I need it to do it, with less fuss and more focus. And I am sure this product will get better with more feedback and use.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a huge Mint user. I have a pretty good system for budgeting, I check it almost everyday, etc. I've been using Penny for the past couple weeks though and am getting quite hooked on the product. Simpler, less intimidating, less stressful, and the sheer delight of interacting with a friend vs a chastising red line is wonderful. I was skeptical of the five buckets initially (given my detailed Mint categorization) but realize that that's really all I need. I'm excited to see where this goes!

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems interesting but would like more information on how app works and security

<comment><AUTHOR> We've heard similar feedback on the security front before, so we'll get to work on adding more clarity around that.

Can you enumerate what else you'd like to know about how the app works?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> from the ...3..pictures it looks alright i guess, but when you're managing someone's finances it's probably in your best interest to put a significant more content on how you do that exactly

<comment><AUTHOR> anything in particular you wanted to know? I can answer things here and or incorporate them into the website later.

For context: totally agree with your point. we tried to avoid overwhelming visitors since they're notoriously hard to keep engaged, but the marketing page was just a first pass at best.

<comment><USER5> Well the first thing that comes to mind is that you have two images of someone talking to Penny, but only one of how i would view and manage my finances. The biggest draw to mint is the clear and layered organization. It's faster and easier for me to look at my recent aggregated payments then it would be to 'ask penny' if i paid. So really I'd love to see more of how a user would use/interact with the app other than talking to penny.

Edit: wanted to add that the layout does look very clean and nice, and if it was a calendar app or something i'd probably download it and try it out, but am very hesitant to jump to a new space when it comes to my finances

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm gonna try to respond to your points without being preachy about the product: forgive me if I overstep.

Mint has over 100 different ways to categorize a single transaction. That makes for an incredibly flexible system if you're willing to put in the leg work, but at the end of the day I wasn't seeing a lot of value add from knowing that 24% of my spending was on travel or that I exceeded my average monthly spending on gifts by 215%. The biggest benefit for me was just seeing all of my transactions in one place (fwiw, I used Mint for 6 years).

With Penny, you have fast access to all of your transactions in one place (the left pane is a history screen), and you can categorize them into one of five categories. But, the main value add is giving you context on that spending. Graphs are great, but graphs that are interpreted in a meaningful way are better. Essentially, the bigger vision is to do for finances what Google Now is doing for day to day life: pushing you useful information (now cards, or in our case conversations with Penny) rather than you having to ask for it.

That said, we know it's a huge ask to convince people to try something new when it comes to their finances, so totally understand where you're coming from.

btw, to clarify: when you go to the website you should be seeing animations unless you're coming from iOS 7. If that's not the case, lmk and I'll figure out what's going on.

<comment><USER5> i completely agree, often i have to go in and correct mint for uncategorized transactions and whatnot. I'm not saying penny doesn't have value, rather i just want to see more of what value it adds before i download the app. It can come off as condescending, but i love just dead simple 'explain to me like i'm 5' overviews of a product. Straight to the point and no fluff. This is product does X (see here), Y (see there), and Z, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When is Penny coming to Canada?

</comment><comment><USER7> As an early user of Penny's beta, I've found it quite helpful. My Mint usage trailed off a few years ago for some of the reasons you guys mention -- too much work to manually categorize, and manual budgeting is too often inaccurate or spikey based on just one transaction or season (e.g. Christmas or summer vacation)

Penny solves a lot of this by making the categorization way simpler (only 4 categories) which maps much closer to my own mental model of things. The SMS- style UI is a pretty brilliant way to get an "in"

Penny is also pretty hilarious. Lots of great copy writing going on!</comment>


Infrastructure as Code, without the code - <AUTHOR> https://urgos.io/ <comment><USER2> what in the absolute fuck does this product do?

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL, it's pretty much a UI skin over your CFN templates that makes them easier to edit, manage, and collaborate on: [https://www.facebook.com/urgos.io/photos/a.139779359912648.1...](https://www.facebook.com/urgos.io/photos/a.139779359912648.1073741827.139762636580987/147778682446049/?type=1&theater)</comment></comment>


Fastest Javascript Sudoku Solver - <AUTHOR> http://attractivechaos.github.com/plb/kudoku.html <comment><USER2> See also the full set of language benchmarks: <http://attractivechaos.github.com/plb/>

Interesting to see V8 performing so well on speed in all benchmarks. JaegarMonkey seems to use 4x less memory in the matrix multiplication benchmark though!</comment>


Ask YC:  Anyone know of a good free speech synthesizer to create a demo video? - <AUTHOR>

I don't want to use my voice.
I found this:
http://freetts.sourceforge.net/docs/index.php
Is there anything better that's free? <comment><USER2> Maybe festival? I once heard a sample that sounded really good, though the default settings are probably the same as any other solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mac OS X has a great one built in. Leopard's new "Alex" voice is excellent.

By the way, in OS X you can use the built in speech synthesis from the command line.

        say "hello world"

Check the man page for more options.</comment>