Hexyl: A command-line hex viewer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl <comment><USER2> I admit, my first thought on seeing the title was "What's wrong with xxd?"

This is nice! I like the colorization a lot -- it's like with source code, you don't realize how much you rely on the colors until you get a new computer and need to download syntax definitions for your editor again. Only feature I _really_ think is missing is line numbers.

Nicely done!

<comment><USER3> What are line numbers in context of a binary?

<comment><USER4> Addresses.

<comment><USER5> File offsets; not addresses :) I assume the tool isn't reading ELF format files and working out the memory address.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One ludicrous nitpick: the logo doesn't show anything hexyl, that's 1,2,3,5-tetramethylbenzene. If it was a functional group, it might be 3,4,5-trimethylbenzyl or something like that.

Hexyl would look like:

      R
       \/\/\/

<comment><USER7> The logo shows a small part of this molecule: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexanitrodiphenylamine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexanitrodiphenylamine)

.. which is apparently also called "Hexyl". Granted, I was just looking for a short word that starts with "Hex" and I was never good at organic chemistry :-)

<comment><USER8> Many of your projects have cool logos, how do you make them?

<comment><USER7> Thank you. Not all of them are by me, but I typically just use Inkscape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> While reading this my hope was it not being written in JavaScript. I'm not disappointed ;)

<comment><USER9> It's comparably slow though :p

        xxd `which hexyl` > /dev/null  0.12s user 0.09s system 99% cpu 0.219 total
        hexdump `which hexyl` > /dev/null  0.19s user 0.05s system 91% cpu 0.256 total
        hexyl `which hexyl` > /dev/null  1.69s user 0.39s system 95% cpu 2.175 total

<comment><USER10> The same author also wrote hyperfine, a tool to compare performance of various program runs.

        hyperfine './target/release/hexyl ./target/release/hexyl' 'xxd ./target/release/hexyl' 'hexdump ./target/release/hexyl'
        Benchmark #1: ./target/release/hexyl ./target/release/hexyl
          Time (mean ± σ):      1.529 s ±  0.028 s    [User: 1.476 s, System: 0.050 s]
          Range (min … max):    1.491 s …  1.581 s    10 runs

        Benchmark #2: xxd ./target/release/hexyl
          Time (mean ± σ):      70.5 ms ±   0.5 ms    [User: 68.0 ms, System: 1.2 ms]
          Range (min … max):    69.5 ms …  72.3 ms    41 runs

        Benchmark #3: hexdump ./target/release/hexyl
          Time (mean ± σ):     262.4 ms ±   2.8 ms    [User: 260.1 ms, System: 1.5 ms]
          Range (min … max):   259.8 ms … 268.8 ms    11 runs

        Summary
          'xxd ./target/release/hexyl' ran
            3.72 ± 0.05 times faster than 'hexdump ./target/release/hexyl'
           21.70 ± 0.43 times faster than './target/release/hexyl ./target/release/hexyl'

Currently hexyl seems nearly 22x slower than xxd.

<comment><USER7> ... and I have already used hyperfine to benchmark hexyl as well :-)

Yes, it's a shame. But I don't think there is too much we can do about it. We have to print much more to the console due to the ANSI escape codes and we also have to do some conditional checks ON EACH BYTE in order to colorize them correctly. Surely there are some ways to speed everything up a little bit, but in the end I don't think its a real issue. Nobody is going to look at 1MB dumps in a console hex viewer (that's 60,000 lines of output!) without restricting it to some region. And if somebody really wants to, he can probably spare 1.5 seconds to wait for the output :-)

<comment><USER11> _We have to print much more to the console due to the ANSI escape codes and we also have to do some conditional checks ON EACH BYTE in order to colorize them correctly._

A few extra comparisons and output for each byte shouldn't be that much slower; fortunately the function of this program is extremely well-defined, so we can calculate some estimates. Assuming a billion instructions per second, taking ~1.5s to hexdump ~1 million bytes means each byte is consuming ~1500 instructions to process. In reality the time above is probably on a faster CPU, so that number maybe 2-3x more. That is a shockingly high number just to split a byte into two nybbles (expected to be 1-3 instructions), convert the nybbles into ASCII (~3 instructions), and decide on the colour (let's be _very_ generous and say ~100 instructions.)

The fact that the binary itself is >1MB is also rather surprising, especially given that the source (not familiar with Rust, but still understandable) seems quite small and straightforward.

<comment><USER12> Rust binaries can be large because unlike C, the standard library is statically linked, as well as jemalloc. Jemalloc will no longer be the default as of the next release, so that will shave off ~300k...

<comment><USER13> What's replacing Jemalloc?

<comment><USER14> The system malloc implementation. Users who want to use jemalloc have to opt in, but doing so is relatively easy (using the jemallocator crate from crates.io).

<comment><USER15> Why was this done?

Did rust become less dependent on allocator performance, or did system allocators improve enough? IIRC glibc malloc has improved a lot over the last few years, particularly for multithreaded use, but I don't know about windows / macOS.

<comment><USER12> So, long ago, Rust actually had a large, Erlang-like runtime. So jemalloc was used. Over time, we shed more and more of this runtime, but jemalloc stayed. We didn't have a pluggable allocator story, and so we couldn't really remove it without causing a regression for people who _do_ need jemalloc. Additionally, jemalloc _was_ already removed on some platforms for a long time; Windows has been shipping the system allocator for as long as I can remember.

So, now that we have a stable way to let you use jemalloc, the right default for a systems language is to use the system allocator. If jemalloc makes sense for you, you can still use it, but if not, you save a non-significant amount of binary size, which matters to a lot of people. See the parent I originally replied to for an example of a very common response when looking at Rust binary sizes.

It's really more about letting you choose the tradeoff than it is about specific improvements between the allocators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is possible to use also radare2[1] for this, along with radiff2. It provides more options and has zero external dependencies.

[1] [https://github.com/radare/radare2](https://github.com/radare/radare2)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is great. The same author also wrote insect, which is cool, too. [https://github.com/sharkdp/insect](https://github.com/sharkdp/insect)

<comment><USER18> Very cool! I greatly appreciate the author's inclusion of a `Pros and cons` section in the README, particularly the cons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For something with a little more firepower, I like: [https://github.com/evanmiller/hecate](https://github.com/evanmiller/hecate)

</comment><comment><USER20> the author appears to be a true rust master, he wrote quite a few neat programs in rust, very impressive and that actually got me interested in rust lang

<comment><USER8> Same here, I like small and neat Rust projects like this, the source code is concise and easy to read.

He also authors [https://github.com/sharkdp/bat](https://github.com/sharkdp/bat), which is also worth to check out.

<comment><USER20> bat is awesome, I'm using it daily since I found that, better that 'cat'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I use hexer for this, which is an editor too.

[http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=757](http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?p=757)

There's also a vim mode for hex, which I use less often:

[https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/2232/how-can-i-use- vi...](https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/2232/how-can-i-use-vim-as-a-hex- editor)

<comment><USER22> One of the problems with vim+xxd (and many other hex editors) is that it loads the entire file, so you can't easily use it to look at large files (archives, disk images, etc).

Many moons ago I wrote a very bare bones ncurses hex viewer/editor, after not really being able to find one that fit my needs. I still use it pretty regularly: [https://github.com/quo/hex.py](https://github.com/quo/hex.py)

</comment></comment><comment> iso-8859-1 Needs a diff mode so that it can also replace vbindiff.

</comment><comment><USER23> I do not use a hex editor/viewer often. Not at all. But when I do, I am painfully aware of how sparse my toolbelt just became.

This little program should fit nicely into that category. An area I would like to explore, but have little-to-none incentives.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've personally found vbindiff excellent for viewing files as hex: [https://www.cjmweb.net/vbindiff/](https://www.cjmweb.net/vbindiff/)

</comment><comment><USER25> The colorized output is a nice incremental improvement on xxd. And, I think that it's nice that the README doesn't unnecessarily emphasize that it's written in Rust.

</comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off tangent: One tool I have used to dump data (and more) is cxmon. A very nice monitor if one grew up using monitor cartridges on C64, Amiga etc:

[http://cxmon.cebix.net/](http://cxmon.cebix.net/)

[https://github.com/cebix/macemu/tree/master/cxmon](https://github.com/cebix/macemu/tree/master/cxmon)

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anyone compared this to dhex, hexer, or ht?

</comment><comment><USER28> The colors remind me of editing MS-DOS files & drive structures with Norton Disk Doctor! Fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER29> The repo author has some pretty interesting rust projects. Worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER30> Cool tool :) having a hex dumper that understood UTF-8 and dumped the characters as one of the columns would be awesome too. These days, ASCII is a small subset of strings.

<comment><USER7> Thank you! See: [https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl/issues/6](https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl/issues/6)

<comment><USER31> Just a minor thing while you're eyeballing this thread: I noticed your fork of lsd has the wrong build instructions.

[https://github.com/sharkdp/lsd#from- sources](https://github.com/sharkdp/lsd#from-sources)

Good work on these tools though. You make me want to learn Rust :)

<comment><USER7> I forked lsd just to fix these build instructions: [https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd/pull/33](https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd/pull/33)

I removed my fork...

<comment><USER31> Ahhh yes. Apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sorry to ask, but what is he use case for a hex viewer like this? What are the kinds of projects you might be working on when you use something like this?

<comment><USER33> Your lab manager goes "hey, can you generate these proprietary binary files (currently made with a horrible gui) to control this robot programmatically".

<comment><USER34> But shouldn't one use an editor, like vim, in those cases?

<comment><USER33> Uh, vim doesn't open binary files very well, and the initial goal is to just display them to figure out how they work not to edit them.

Afterwards you will probably want to run experiments with a hex editor, but I found that xxd + vim was better for reading then doing so directly in a hex editor at the time. If I did it again I'd likely start with this because of the color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've been looking for a command line hex editor too.

<comment><USER36> bpe: [https://sourceforge.net/projects/bpe/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/bpe/)

Or the Joe editor in -hex mode: [https://joe- editor.sourceforge.io/](https://joe-editor.sourceforge.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Would have loved being able to run it on windows. I use hex viewers for embedded work and have been looking for a decent one for Win.

<comment><USER7> It works just fine on Windows (you probably need PowerShell for the ANSI escape codes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ok, been a lurker on HN for awhile, but created an account to post.

This is freaking awesome. Been looking for something like this for awhile!

</comment><comment><USER39> I wish it would work with less or have less like features, taking the first n bytes is okay, but pretty minimal.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is anyone aware of a React component that implements a decent hex viewer?

</comment><comment><USER41> Hope this gets into distros

<comment><USER42> It will.

<comment><USER42> e.g. [https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rust- hexyl](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rust-hexyl)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I guess I am too old, but I use mcview. Or HIEW.

</comment><comment><USER44> why am i seeing ugly background-colors with rxvt-unicode [https://imgur.com/a/qkzAkqR](https://imgur.com/a/qkzAkqR) instead of the good foreground colors I see in xfce4-terminal [https://imgur.com/a/LY6bPn9](https://imgur.com/a/LY6bPn9)

i do seem to have 256 colors in urxvt my $TERM is rxvt-256color and i have rxvt-unicode-256color installed

<comment><USER7> Please see: [https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl/issues/9](https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl/issues/9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I miss hiew.

</comment><comment><USER46> If I can make a suggestion - I don't mind the program being slow because of all the logic - how would it be if you didn't give special status to ascii but instead tried to intelligently assume a string encoding for strings and accordingly colored "binary" vs "text" (utf-8, utf-16)

</comment><comment><USER47> What's wrong with hexdump?

<comment><USER48> It's not written in Rust.</comment></comment>


Xip.io: Wildcard DNS for everyone - <AUTHOR> http://xip.io <comment><USER2> I found its internal working quite interesting:

        $ dig 127.0.0.1.xip.io
        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        127.0.0.1.xip.io.     403     IN     CNAME     9zlhb.xip.io.
        9zlhb.xip.io.         405     IN     A         127.0.0.1

Returning CNAME pointing to some record? Apparently, 9zlhb is a base 36 of integer of 184.108.40.206.

        ip:      184.108.40.206
        dec:     16777343
        base 36: 9zlhb

I guess they decided to reverse the IP address to make generated CNAME scale better (in number of characters):

                    base 36   reverse base 36
        188.8.131.52     9ZLDS     1
        10.0.0.1    2RVXTT    9ZLE2
        127.0.0.1   Z8KFLT    9ZLHB

<comment><USER3> There is [http://nip.io](http://nip.io) as well, which does resolutions quite straight forward:

       $ dig 127.0.0.1.nip.io
       ;; ANSWER SECTION:
       127.0.0.1.nip.io.	432000	IN	A	127.0.0.1

<comment><USER4> Hmm, this doesn't seem to be working for me in the same way that xip.io does.

One of my favorite features of Pow (also 37Signals, mentioned on xip.io) is the ability to forward .dev domains to certain ports. For instance:

`echo 3000 >> ~/.pow/myapplication` gives you `myapplication.dev` as an alias for `localhost:3000`.

xip.io seems to be able to figure that out -- myapplication.10.0.0.1.xip.io will work, whereas myapplication.10.0.0.1.nip.io does not (just shows the Pow page you would see for going to `localhost`).

Am I missing something here to get it to work with nip.io? I'm all for simpler tools, but since the port functionality is 100% of what I use Pow for, xip.io seems to be the way to go for now.

<comment><USER2> Pow has a special support for .xip.io domain[1]. If you add `export POW_EXT_DOMAINS=10.0.0.1.nip.io pow` to `~/.powconfig` it should work[2]. I haven't tried this myself though.

[1]: [https://github.com/basecamp/pow/blob/master/lib/configuratio...](https://github.com/basecamp/pow/blob/master/lib/configuration.js#L77-78)

[2]: [http://pow.cx/docs/configuration.html](http://pow.cx/docs/configuration.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I am missing something - what problem does this solve? Instead of an IPv4 address, you are now entering (optional) prefix, the IPv4 address, and a postfix ".xip.io" Where is the added value over entering the IP address directly?

<comment><USER6> You can set up your web server to serve different applications on different domains if you're working on multiple projects at the same time and don't want to put them on different ports or use subdirectories.

Another use case I can see is for testing subdomain-based web apps where you give each customer a subdomain (really just a wildcard dns record), e.g. acme.myapp.com

<comment><USER7> Why not just customizing /etc/hosts then... You guys are relying too much on 3rd party tools without knowing what they do with your data and what they're becoming in the future.

<comment><USER8> It's a DNS server. The only data they can get from you is what you're calling the subdomains on your apps.

Yes, you could achieve the same functionality by editing /etc/hosts, but that's a pain in the arse if you're rapidly switching between a set of different sites, or if you want to access a coworker's machine in the same way.

You guys are complaining too much about useful hacker-friendly tools from well-known companies.

<comment><USER9> Editing /etc/hosts also requires root access, which becomes an issue if you're running tests on a shared server that's locked down, rather than just on your PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Do note, this will not work if you for example have unbound (or any other DNS resolver on your network) setup to enforce privacy of certain addresses.

      private-address: 127.0.0.0/8
      private-address: 10.0.0.0/8
      private-address: 172.16.0.0/12
      private-address: 192.168.0.0/16
      private-address: 169.254.0.0/16
      private-address: fd00::/8
      private-address: fe80::/10

Here is the comment in the config file for the option:

      # Enforce privacy of these addresses. Strips them away from answers.
      # It may cause DNSSEC validation to additionally mark it as bogus.
      # Protects against 'DNS Rebinding' (uses browser as network proxy).
      # Only 'private-domain' and 'local-data' names are allowed to have
      # these private addresses. No default.

The reason I have this enabled is because it can help stop certain attacks against the local network!

</comment><comment><USER10> Kinda related: *.lvh.me ("lvh" as in "local virtual host") resolves to 127.0.0.1

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat, even [http://lvh.me/](http://lvh.me/) resolves to localhost. True generosity, you can't even know who is using the service without whois'ing the domain

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Heads up, these responses from external DNS servers may be blocked by some recursive resolvers.

Allowing this on your network opens you up to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_rebinding](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_rebinding) attacks.

</comment><comment><USER12> I always use my own resolver, with powerdns recursor, because some ISPs resolvers are dog slow. If you have such a setup, it's really simple to set aside a tld for development.

On the powerdns recursor configuration, tell it to authoritatively serve a tld:

      auth-zones=dev=/etc/powerdns/dev.zone

And then use a BIND style zone definition file. Something like:

      @       86400   IN      SOA     ns root 1 604800 86400 2419200 604800
              86400   IN      NS      ns
              86400   IN      A       127.0.0.1
      *       86400   IN      A       127.0.0.1

Now, domains such as "newshiningapp.dev" or "imgonatakeovertheworld.dev" resolv to 127.0.0.1.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have a Mac and prefer a little GUI tool, Anvil is great: [http://anvilformac.com](http://anvilformac.com)

It has built-in support for .xip.io domains; you can configure multiple sites by pointing it at local directories and it'll serve them up using a built-in POW server ([http://pow.cx](http://pow.cx), also from 37signals).

Great for example for remote testing on your local LAN without having to mess with your HOSTS file.

</comment><comment><USER14> I can see how this would be useful for testing across-device inside your home network, but for resolving domains for development on my macbook I prefer dnsmasq which I set to resolve the tld .dev to localhost. [1] I'm often commuting by bus/train so I don't have a stable internet connection at all time so I couldn't use xip.io anyway.

For php apps the only thing I need to do currently is make a symlink, and an apache vhost entry makes it work [2], kinda like pow! Thinking about it, I could even make that symlink step optional, or add passenger to the mix to support nodejs/rack apps.

[1]: [https://github.com/larrybolt/dotfiles/blob/master/homebrew/p...](https://github.com/larrybolt/dotfiles/blob/master/homebrew/packages/dnsmash.sh)

[2]: [https://github.com/larrybolt/dotfiles/blob/master/apache/999...](https://github.com/larrybolt/dotfiles/blob/master/apache/999-vhosts)

<comment><USER15> I usually use zeroconf/avahi for that sort of thing.

<comment><USER16> Would you mind to elaborate (give an example)?

I've toyed with bonjour spoofing before, but I always found querying was _incredibly_ difficult, using _dns-sd_ , e.g.:

       HOST=`(dns-sd -L "Name of Machine" _http._tcp local
       | grep -o "at .* (interface"
       | grep -o "[a-zA-Z\-]\{1,\}\.local" &
       ); sleep 1 && pkill -f dns-sq`

Obviously tailored specifically for that project, but I hope you catch my drift. And add to that the port lookup.

I'm fairly certain I'm not using it as you do, so would you mind giving an example of how your use MDNS for local dev testing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately it looks like the entire xip.io domain is blacklisted as "Reputation-Viruses" by the filtering service that we use.

I guess this is because it's been used by some bad guys already.

<comment><USER18> Same here. Cisco filters don't like it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have never had this need, but if I did I would just create a wildcard under my own domain:

      ; localhost
      * .local.example.com A 127.0.0.1
      ; e.g. if dev server is 10.0.0.1
      *.dev.example.com A 10.0.0.1

Hence, no 3rd party dependencies.

</comment><comment><USER20> Used this often and it's a fine service. One feature request: it would be great if they'd chip in a wildcard https certificate (and publish it including private key), so it could be used for https on (local) development setups. This would require supporting an additional naming scheme that only uses single-level subdomains.

</comment><comment><USER21> A word of warning for any UK based BT customers: xip.io doesn't work on BT Home Hub 5! I recently upgraded to the 5 from a Home Hub 3 (which it worked fine on), but had to send it back because of this. The 'BT tech experts' couldn't give an explanation. Has anyone else had the same issue?

<comment><USER22> No, but I had the same issue just last week working on premise at a customer. Standard Fritzbox wifi AP, as far as I could see.

Switching to Google DNS (18.104.22.168) temporarily fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Dang; and here I was hoping it was going to be a dynamic-DNS host that also issued free N-level wildcard SSL certificates (e.g. you.example.com, _.you.example.com,_.*.you.example.com, etc.) That's one thing you won't get from StartSSL.

</comment><comment><USER24> I use VirtualhostX on my OSX machines, which includes automatic xip.io URLs.

[http://clickontyler.com/virtualhostx/](http://clickontyler.com/virtualhostx/)

Xip.io is enormously useful if you are testing on virtual machines or mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER25> I know it solves both this and a slightly different problem but I think [https://forwardhq.com](https://forwardhq.com) is pretty cool albeit not free solution.

<comment><USER14> This looks like what ngrok/localtunnel does, but free and opensource.

<comment><USER25> This one supports SSL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just use charles (charlesproxy.com). Does everything this does and 15 bazillion other things too. Works with mobile devices and anything that can set an HTTP proxy.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is from 2012, when Basecamp were still 37signals.

<comment><USER28> HN discussion at that time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081591](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4081591)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> function run() { var base_domain = document.domain.split('.').slice(-2).join('.'); var pollution = Array(4000).join('x'); for(var i=1;i<99;i++){ document.cookie='x'+i+'='+pollution+';Domain='+base_domain+';Path=/'; } }

</comment><comment><USER30> I really like the service, however it desperately needs a better tutorial / how-to for the first time user.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is it just me or does anybody else also find it really annoying that the blinking cursor there (behind the "everyone") is not actually a cursor and one cannot delete text with backspace?

</comment><comment><USER32> Am a little lost. Why cant we use hosts file instead? I would understand if it was complicated. But add entries to hosts is super simple and definitely requires no special knowledge.

<comment><USER33> As binarymax mentioned[1], it's very useful when you want to test on multiple devices where editing the host file would be undesired or not possible. This includes mobile devices or computers that are not your own or that you don't have administrative access to. It's also easier to just share a link instead of asking people to change their hosts file just to test a part of a site.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7732756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7732756)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> does it work with local ip address with port ?

<comment><USER35> It's just DNS, which doesn't bring port into the picture. A domain name resolves to an IP address separately from whatever ports the server at that address might listen on.

<comment><USER36> SRV records do ports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is great.

</comment><comment><USER38> or just configure your environment correctly.

</comment><comment><USER39> i can only use it somewhere i cannot use ip address directly but domainname. i couldnt remember any configuration file like that.</comment>


Today's New Regulation Could Spark a Health Tech Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://blog.picnichealth.com/today%27s-new-regulation-could-spark-a-health-tech-revolution/

<comment><USER2> Hi Noga. Forgive me, I'm not understanding. How do I get my health records?

I designed and implemented the backend(s) for 5 regional health exchanges, did some front end work on our physicians portal, prototyped the patient portal (shopped around to our clients). I also participated in the competitive NHIN interop effort (we were a sub on the Northrup Grumman team). If you've seen the Mirth stack, my stuff was roughly the same (at the time).

Every participant in our exchange (hospitals, labs, scripts, clinics, insurers) jealously guarded their data, hoping to monetize it.

Maybe the scope of "meaningful use" has expanded, but when it started it was just a dozen or so fields. (The phrase "meaningful use" seemed to be an example of unintentional irony.)

I can't gleen your business model. And unless you have data access / sharing agreements, I don't see how you can get my records. (I'm a few years out of date, so maybe things have changed.)

If you were creating a "white label" patient portal for your customers (e.g. hospitals) to implement, that'd be cool.

If you were kickstarting a lobbying group to empower patients with access to their own data, I'd definitely contribute.

<comment><AUTHOR> Think mint.com for medical records. Literally. We help patients find their patient portals. We credential them in (just like mint) with username and password, providing a tool that pulls their data out. We normalize it and display in a meaningful way. Then we go back to the hacky solution of automating e-faxing back out to keep other doctors in the loop.

It's definitely nuts that this would be the solution, but I don't think we can wait for HIEs or for someone to get data access/sharing agreements for exactly the reason you state. Every player is jealously guarding their data.

You're right that we don't get the complete record, but whats in there is actually pretty rich.

<comment><USER3> Mint.com helps me with financial planning and budgeting. What does access to my medical records help me with? As a patient, does access to historical lab values provide me with actionable information or are the latest results, communicated to me by my physician more valuable? Do you use a predictive model to provide the patient with a health forecast (ie. [https://archimedesmodel.com/indigo](https://archimedesmodel.com/indigo), they have an API)?

I check my Mint.com account regularly, what would drive me to check my Picnic account regularly?

<comment><USER4> Hi Mazimi, I'm Victor and working as an engineer at Picnic this summer.

At first we are targeting patients with chronic illnesses. These patients often see doctors in different systems and are not able to view all of their medical information in one place. Picnic will consolidate their data and provide it in an easy to view fashion.

Focusing on patients with chronic illnesses will also help us give meaning to the data. We have a doctor on the team who is categorizing all of the tests as per different conditions and explaining how certain key tests are relevant to your condition. With the explanation, the tests gain meaning and you can see how your health is faring over time.

In the future, we will want to extend these explanations and information to healthy patients to give everyone insight into their health.

As for archimedesmodel, at this point we are not looking at giving health forecasts. We want Picnic to be a tool that clearly shows data to the patient and allows them to have a more productive conversation with their doctors. In the future we may consider extending the feature set.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've lost track of many of the different doctors I've seen over the years. Is there any practical way for me to get at that kind of information?

</comment><comment><USER6> I want to do this. I want to give these guys my e-mail address and some basic info and see all of my health data charted out... But I did that with Google Health and it went the way of the dinosaur. IS there a consensus on this web service among the HN community?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, PicnicHealth founder here. We're probably too new to have any kind of a consensus but would love to chat offline about the company (Noga at picnichealth) It shouldn't be much work for you to get things set up.

I spent a lot of time trying to get straight what went wrong with google health and, while there are lots of theories, I'm got convinced that data availability played a big part. That's what's finally changing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm assuming this is HL7v3, if I remember correctly the transmission is only setting a permission on the patient side to allow the primary care physician to transmit the data to a third party, c.q. another physician.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bribe to Doctors? It put many independents out of business, selling them long held practices to big conglomerates who could afford the software, computers, and the people necessary to get all their records into the new systems.

Just as with the rest of the ACA, this was all about reward those who paid the politicians through contributions. This meant big pharma, hospital/doctor conglomerates, and insurance companies. It certainly wasn't to help the average consumer or their hometown Doctors.

</comment><comment><USER9> Came here expecting to read about the Supreme Court decision about the stuff companies can refuse their employees...

</comment><comment><USER10> Regulation doesn't spark anything. It snuffs thing out. Especially when it is touted as a solution to problem created by previous regulations.

<comment><USER11> I'll remember that while I'm busy trusting that the food I eat and the medicine I take doesn't kill me.

<comment><USER12> Funny enough, I trust the same thing of the food I eat when I'm visiting countries with no FDA equivalent. It's almost as if the market disincentivizes selling bad food.

<comment><USER11> And I'm sure you don't trust the same thing of the drugs you take when you're visiting countries with no FDA equivalent. It's probably because the market incentivizes snake oil and counterfeits.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zoom: Response to Video-On Concern - <AUTHOR> https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2019/07/08/response-to-video-on-concern/ <comment><AUTHOR> > _The local web server enables users to avoid this extra click before joining > every meeting. We feel that this is a legitimate solution to a poor user > experience problem, enabling our users to have faster, one-click-to-join > meetings. We are not alone among video conferencing providers in > implementing this solution._

Is this true? Who else does this?

</comment><comment><USER2> A high-severity security bug is just a "concern" now?

Companies should always come out in front of these things. Call it what it is. Your blog post should be something like "We Screwed Up - Security Flaw Post- Mortem".</comment>


Anna: A Crazy Fast, Super-Scalable, Flexibly Consistent KVS - <AUTHOR> https://databeta.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/anna-kvs/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551072)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm tired of hearing about this and would like to see some code so i can actually try it</comment>


Show HN: Get Premium Email templates for free, every month in your inbox - <AUTHOR> https://kissemails.com/templates <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

Kissemails is collection Premade Email templates build on top of MJML that you can use for free.

Checkout here:

[https://kissemails.com/templates](https://kissemails.com/templates)

PS: we are working on email builder you can opt-in for beta as well</comment>


I Up Vote Every 'Show HN' Post and You Should Too - <AUTHOR> http://tortillasinbed.tumblr.com/post/24175048206/i-up-vote-everything <comment><USER2> Show HN is just another marketing tool and quite a few people treat it as such. I upvote Show HN posts that are good, upvoting them all because they're "putting themselves out there" is silly; it assumes HN is a very small community of people only here for personal improvement.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Show HN would be just another marketing tool if you were looking for people to use your app. But usually when you do a Show HN you're looking for feedback and criticism. You're bringing it before it's really ready for wide release, or when you feel it could use improvement. Or just want someone to puncture your bubble of love for your creation and let you know how everyone else feels about it.

HN is a community of people who build things. When you bring something you've built to them, you're looking for their opinions on it. Not just advertising to them.

Edit, as an example here's my own Show HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053786>

I'm not looking for people to use it. How many HNers are really my target market? Very few. I'm looking for opinions on the design, the feature set I've chosen, my implementation of them and advice on how I could build its community.

I suspect it's already been flagged by someone, since I can't seem to comment on it though. :/

<comment><USER2> That's a nice view but it's the wrong one. Applications and websites gain users and popularity through sharing, whether that's individuals on Twitter and Facebook or on blogs. HN is a community of technology minded people, it's not a community of creators. There are a lot of creators here but they are not the majority.

Make a project -> launch it on hn with a Show HN (a free way to get traffic, as this post has proven) -> if the app/website is good people from HN will share it and it'll make it to blogs.

"Show HN" is absolutely an easy way to launch a product, HN has millions of users, this isn't a quaint little community any more. Yes "Show HN" _should_ be about sharing creations and getting feedback and it does provide that, but it also provides a great launch. I'm not ashamed to admit that my personal launch plan for any "cool" website/app I launched is a "Show HN".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> i'm guilty of something: when i submit a "Show HN" entry, and i see it drop of the "new" list too fast (within 5 to 10 minutes) without any(!) upvotes, i delete it and wait for a better time.

my rationalizing behind that:

a) I'm sad that i didn't get any feedback on my latest weekend project. (That's the emotional part)

b) But also i believe that the timing was just bad. 5 to 10 minutes isn't much of a window.

deleting gives the opportunity to resubmit it.

said that: i know that this is kinda "gaming HN" and should probably not be possible. (@pg)

my vote/like/+1 for a <http://news.ycombinator.com/show> view.

p.s.: shameless self promotion: here is my latest "Show HN" submission <https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=4053553>

<comment><USER5> I have been working on my webapp for 3 yrs and knowing that lot of weekend projects get decent exposure on the front page, I had my hopes high.

I submitted my app couple of times but never made it. It seems like my website is flagged. It is a great tool for startups and small businesses.

Do you see anything wrong with the web app that it deserved to be flagged? <https://my.infocaptor.com>

<comment><USER6> If you submitted for the purpose of feedback, I'll give you some very frank feedback. The marketing copy on the homepage is terrible. You need to speak to the potential customer in plain English. Like:

"Extract key insights from your business with an online dashboard".

The primary button that you want people to click says "warning", which tells me not to click it. There are instructions on how to click a button. The next section is why you built the business, not why I need this product.

My advice would be to read up on the basics of marketing, and then study the marketing copy on every successful SaaS business you know about.

<comment><USER5> "Terrible" is really harsh, don't you think?

I got 50/50 feedback on being greatest "demonstrable" and sales page comment and "what does it do?" kind of questions.

I agree the "warning" bell is stopper but again I would not have gathered interesting stats. And why does every web app have to follow each other. I like to be different and experiments new stuff. If i fail, i will make adjustments to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although I agree with the sentiment, I think its not necessarily correct, if every Show HN is upvoted regardless of what you think, we can end up with a situation where we have a bunch of Show HN links in top 10 which are nothing except the person putting themselves out there. Maybe this is not a possibility with the standard of the HN community, but blindly upvoting for the sake of someone putting themselves out there seems a bit crazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very real possibility but my logic is that not everyone will up vote every 'Show HN' post, and assuming the number of 'Show' posts doesn't increase at a rapid rate, it should hopefully stay within reason. Of course, this might just be me looking at HN through rose tinted frames. The last thing I'd want is for the front page to become spam. My hope is to only get more people to support their fellow hackers, not to ruin the community.

<comment><USER7> I fully agree with that sentiment, and I apologize if my comment was in anyway taking away from the article, I do support it, but I think for my own self as a result, I'll make a more noticeable attempt to upvote those that I like.

I often find I'll read a post, enjoy it, but feel my upvote is not really necessary. In that way, I feel innovation and "putting yourself out there" should be rewarded more by myself anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree (having seen my own Show HN disappear with only one upvote).

One of the most useful things in the community is the wide range of talent and expertise. Reading through comments on the Show HN posts is a great way to learn a lot very quickly.

They also tend to spark off interesting discussions.

So I'm joining the 'Upvote Show HN posts' club.

<comment><USER9> Thank you. I was a bit sad when my own Show HN vanished without a vote or feedback, so I'm happy to see not only this article, but also people in the comments here who can relate to that.

Guessed that was worth an answer, and not just a +1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I also cruise "newest" and make it a point to view and upvote any credible "Show HN" posts. However, you do get the odd post that abuses "Show HN". Sometimes, they are just "Show HN: This Cool Link I Found", "Show HN: A site I found but had no hand in making", etc. Before everyone goes blindly upvoting, make sure you take the time to follow the link and make sure it's on topic...

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. People should at least click through to check out the project, even briefly, just to vet that it is a real project. Without this small step, the front page could become polluted with junk very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would suggest a separate category for Show HN. Would make the whole thing easier. Also, Im not sure how Show HN is "news" as such.

So we have: Hacker News new | threads | comments | ask | jobs | submit

Why not just add a Show HN bit?

<comment> DanI-S This would be great. I'd love to have a place to go to check out the current state of the art. There's a huge amount to learn from other people's projects.

Additionally, votes cast there would be meaningful in terms of seeing which projects the community approves of - as opposed to on the front page, where the level of randomness in vote allocation is pretty huge.

People shouldn't have to wake up at 6am to post their cool weekend project for vote-optimization reasons if they just want some smart people's feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love this thought and am joining your club. I think:

1\. If you built it, you should get to show it to other makers.

2\. You should get blunt, honest feedback that allows you to improve.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good job ruining the front page today, hopefully it won't last.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, the entire front page is now Show HN...

Perhaps we could have a category? Like /ask, but /show?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not everyone can be an astronaut. This community is built on doing awesome stuff, and sadly that pretty much entails that if you worked really hard and ultimately failed then your work is of little consequence.

A well thought out post detailing why you failed and why you don't think you will next time is a different story, though.

<comment><USER16> But even if your project and/or idea is rubbish it is still nice to get some feedback as opposed to 0 up-votes and complete radio silence.

The only way to improve is to get some criticism and work on fixing identified problems.

<comment><USER15> Totally. I'm not saying don't submit.

I'm just saying blindly upvoting everyone who tries undermines the whole point of having a karma system in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started Hacker Newsletter (<http://hackernewsletter.com>) about two years ago for a similar reason. I wanted to highlight "Show HN" posts more and collect them each week. I still do that, but found that I have to be more picky these days as there are more projects than ever and a lot of them seem half-baked.

I would also add, don't be too harsh when criticizing someone's new project. It seems to happen way too often. Bringing up problems is great, but do it in a way that will help the creator.

</comment><comment><USER18> I love this mentality and appreciate that there are people like you here. I'm so glad I found HN- and I can't wait to Show HN my upcoming projects

</comment><comment><USER19> My only worry is people starting spam "Show HN", hoping for the obliged up- votes.

<comment><USER20> Seems to be happening... <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4054104>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Completely agree.

Show HN _ought_ to be a top level tab, for a site labelled "Hacker News"! Think of it like a KickStarter, but just for kicks (mostly) :)

</comment><comment><USER22> Well now there are 5 Show HN's on the front page.

Well done.

</comment><comment><USER22> Ok, now there are many more than 5 Show HN's on the front page.

I wonder if everyone was like oh a post to make everyone feel guilty about letting Show HN's slide, let me show HN something and reap the benefits. Good thinking.

<comment><USER23> It's up to 13 now. Getting kind of ridiculous at this point.

<comment><USER22> And now they're all gone?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At <http://news.ycombinator.com/ask>, you can see all of the Ask HN submissions. Is there something similar for Show HN?

If not, I think that'd be quite nice to have.

<comment><USER25> I built <http://www.hnshowcase.com> for this purpose. It finds all Show HN posts via the search API and displays a thumbnail of each project page.

<comment><USER26> Wow, good job. A search function would be great (apologies if I missed it).

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am sure someone will give a good reason for not doing this but as a note... I do actively seek out these threads. I love seeing what people are creating and the discussions are often enlightening.

</comment><comment><USER28> One of the best things is also when people write blogs and submit them to HN. It differentiates our feed from just mirroring what you'd see in Slashdot or Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER29> We did our "Show HN" post today. Not sure if this article helped us or hurt us. We dropped like a stone in the new section then made it to the front page briefly. The highest was 20. Then suddenly dropped to the third page and falling.

I think the title was all wrong. Not sure what the policy is for resubmitting?

Here is our post

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4053692>

Up votes are nice but would really like some feedback

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I will assume this is why my feed is now blowing up with Show HN posts. I up vote on substance... not because the title started with "Show HN"

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting, looks like pg killed this story.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd divide the front page in four sections: hot, new, ask, show, with 20 posts each.

It's time for a fresh new look.

<comment><USER31> Maybe you could mock that up and "Show HN"

<comment><USER30> How about this

<http://georgenava.appspot.com/demo/hn/index.html>

Let me know if you like it so I can post it in "Show HN"

* better seen in modern browsers like safari, chrome and firefox

* nothing works, this is just a mockup, stop clicking on links

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can I rant? I have had about two show HN's without a single upvote or comment. It's like no one sees them. It's kind of discouraging but i will keep doing it. The next one will be a long exposure camera app in opera mobile, finished proof of concept yesterday. :P

</comment><comment><USER33> I, like OP, also upvote "Show HN" posts on the basis that people should be encouraged to ship. It worked on me as well.

But anyway, could somebody explain this:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/216352/show_hn.png>

Is this a result of this thread?

</comment><comment><USER34> the problem with this strategy being used by many is presently apparent on the homepage. i would estimate over 60% of the stories are Show HN. I personally come here for technology news, so this makes HN less valuable to me as a user.

</comment><comment><USER35> Judging from the front page, you've converted a few people haha. I was sad to see my Show HN project fall off the new page after just four votes a few months ago, so I'm sure a lot of people appreciate this.

<comment><USER36> It's getting more and more crowded. I guess the number of show hn posts overall is higher as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Heh, now half the front page is Show HN, which doesn't seem right either.

<comment><USER38> Doesn't it? Figure ~200k readers. Figure ~1% of readers are working on something this year they might like to Show HN. 2,000 / 365 = ~5 projects posted per day.

These numbers are obviously just guesses, but there should probably be several Show HNs on the front page at all times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> this is awesome this has got more attention.

I submitted my project yesteday (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4048636>) to get some feedback and got zero comments and 1 upvote. Not sure what i did wrong, but I think you really need some friends for immediate upvotes to get some serious exposure.

Whats interesting is that I posted the same project on reddit/startups and reddit/entreperneurs and got over 30 really useful comments and 30 upvotes.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow. Front page to 141 in the space of a lunch break. Flag seems a bit broken.

It seems that the backlash of this was too heavy handed - there are no ShowHN posts on the front page now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, not sure what happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> you can use <http://www.myezapp.com/pub/help/hackernews.ws> to build custom tools. one example/test case that collects Show HN stories are at <http://testblog1-myblog.blogspot.com/>

disclaimer: i build the site and appreciate any feedbacks.

</comment><comment><USER42> And it seems to be working! <http://d.pr/i/3oxM>

</comment><comment><USER43> the quality of content on HN is inversely proportional to this idea catching on IMO.

<comment><USER44> The whole upvote thing is like a freemarket concept to ideas. I guess if enough people decide to upvote something even though it isn't interesting (to them) then it will be more likely to reduce the quality of the front page if we all share the same idea on what is interesting or not... which is I guess the point of voting and having a community of like minded individuals.

Personally, I don't think people would sustain upvoting things they don't like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> And suddenly there's a problem: a majority of 'show HN' on the front page ... ;)

</comment><comment><USER38> This is without doubt the best fad ever to hit HN. I hope it keeps up.

</comment><comment><USER46> sometimes the truth hurts people's feelings! If they spend 10 or 20 hours making something and it's total shit, don't tell them! If you tell them it's not good, they might fix it! Make sure you tell everyone everything they make is good, so that they never can never recognize when they're on the wrong track. Surely there can be no drawbacks to engaging in a positive-only, harmonious love-fest, free of criticism and negative sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm upvoting this.</comment>


Ask HN: Weekend update -- What weekend projects are you upto? - <AUTHOR>

Many of us have interesting evening and weekend projects. Since weekends are a bit slow around here, I thought it would be fun and useful to have a weekly or biweekly open thread to talk about how your project is doing this week.
I tried this last weekend to a fair deal of success, so I thought I'd try it again.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028781
What project are you working on? And what goal are you striving to accomplish this particular weekend?
I'll start with mine in the comments. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm working on Bibdex, online bibliography software for the community of scholars and scientists.

<http://www.bibdex.com>

Last weekend I was working hard to get it onto the production server. I've done that. The marketing website is good, and the blog is designed and functional.

This weekend I am continuing down my launch list. I'm going to focus on finishing the server management, e.g. testing the backups, getting the 404 and 501 pages to look pretty, and polishing the deployment process.

</comment><comment><USER2> Working on a web crawler that tracks the associations between websites online. Currently working on the front-end which will, at first, simply list websites ordered by how many other websites link to them which is not incredibly interesting in and of itself but my rough plan is to implement some sort of crowd-sourced categorization system to demarcate the data in such a way that people will find useful.

<comment><USER3> Check out our service, 80legs, for help with your back-end web-crawling.

(My goal this weekend, and ongoing, is to get more users for 80legs!! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Compiler for a new programming language. Implemented in Haskell, compiles to LLVM.

May go in to work and do some work stuff instead, though, since my project there's in a fairly exciting phase.</comment>


CEO Fights Feds: Save Our Balls - <AUTHOR> http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/ceo-fights-feds-save-our-balls.html

<comment><USER2> This came up a few weeks ago on HN. Not to express any opinion about the regulatory action happening here, but you might be surprised to learn that you could be better off swallowing a nail than you would be if you swallowed a pair of these tiny magnets.

Swallowing the magnets is a _big deal_. As they transit your system, they can easily find themselves on either side of a fold of tissue, whereupon they lock together, gradually kill the tissue, leak gut bacteria into the bloodstream and create sepsis.

On the other hand, if you swallow a nail, there is apparently a very good chance that your doctor will just tell you to go home and look for it in your poop. This according to a journal article I found last time the story came up.

Worse still, the risks are deceptive. As a parent, you would no doubt freak out completely if you discovered your toddler ate a nail. I know I'd be at the emergency room minutes later. On the other hand, parents are routinely told by their doctors to wait and watch the poop when other innocuous round objects are swallowed. It is very easy to see how parents could make the wrong call about the magnets and wind up with gravely ill children as a result.

\---

More things you might want to know about the CPSC complaint:

* Despite warnings, there've been numerous continuous incidents of kids needing surgery after ingesting the magnets.

* The magnets are marketed to kids 14 years and up; there are apparently lots of reports of teenagers using the magnets to hold jewelry for e.g. fake lip piercings.

* When you sell tiny rare earth magnets to teenagers, it is awfully hard to ensure that those magnets don't end up in the GI tracts of little kids that share a house with those teenagers.

* Warning labels for this suck because the product practically demands to be taken out of packaging; once you assemble a structure with them, it's not like you break them back up and put them in a box.

* Little kids love these things, because they're shiny, they click, and they move in unexpected ways.

The CPSC wants the death penalty for this product. I'm not there with them, but I see where they're coming from.

<comment><USER3> If people are retarded, it's hardly the fault of that company, is it? You don't blame the gun company when somebody shoots himself ...

<comment><USER4> It's the old "reasonable man" test that the courts use. A reasonable man knows that guns are dangerous.

On the other hand, a reasonable man may not realize that swallowing magnets are far more dangerous than swallowing similar objects that aren't magnetic.

<comment><USER5> Which is why each package has five different warning labels on it. Sheesh.

<comment><USER6> From the comments I've seen in other discussions about this, people are entirely capable of reading all the warning labels and still failing to realise that swallowing these is actually far more dangerous than swallowing other metal objects.

They just seem to see the warning labels as an example of "health and safety gone mad" so to speak, of someone putting unnecessary warnings on about something that obviously can't be that dangerous. I can't see a good way of avoiding this problem.

Edit: Apparently there were similar comments in the previous HN discussion; at least one person[1] failed to grasp how much more dangerous they were if swallowed than other objects despite reading a 14-page complaint that described in graphic detail the exact mechanism by which they were more dangerous, the serious medical consequences, the long-term health risks even with prompt and successful surgery, and the history of kids being injured in this fashion by them. They're basically impossible to sell safely.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4294215>

<comment><USER2> This not only seems true, but demonstrably is true. CPSC worked with the vendor of this toy for years getting labels and notifications out; the reports of children requiring debilitating surgical procedures to remove tiny little rare earth magnets from their GI tracts _increased_ over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is symptomatic of a larger problem, the inability to characterize risk coupled with the demand for action. Some characterize it as a tragedy of the commons, personally I agree with Schneir that its simply bad parenting and bad luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.getbuckyballs.com/buckyballs-only-marketed-to- adu...](http://www.getbuckyballs.com/buckyballs-only-marketed-to-adults-cpsc- press-release/)

<comment><USER2> This article contradicts itself, or is overtly intending to mislead its audience; the article _itself_ points out that the product is marketed 14+.

The problem isn't that 14 year olds will swallow magnets --- although they might, since CPSC tracks reports of them being used to hold fake piercings. The problem is that 14 year olds often cohabitate with 2 year olds, and 14 year olds aren't renowned for judgement and organizational skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> from the CPSC press release:

Since 2009, CPSC staff has learned of more than two dozen ingestion incidents, with at least one dozen involving Buckyballs. Surgery was required in many of incidents. The Commission staff alleges in its complaint that it has concluded that despite the attempts to warn purchasers, warnings and education are ineffective and cannot prevent injuries and incidents with these rare earth magnets.

<comment><USER9> TL;DR - Americans are too stupid to handle magnets safely. Therefore we have to ban this product.

<comment><USER10> I can see both sides of the argument. The case for personal responsibility is strong, but I can also see the case that this product is _deceptively_ dangerous, i.e.- it resembles many other non-dangerous products, leading to easy consumer confusion, when in fact it is particularly dangerous. Not many other toys carry a risk of _surgery_.

But all of that aside, my issue is that the CEO doesn't seem to be particularly sympathetic to a product which has hurt his customers. I'm sure I don't have the whole story, but the impression is that the CEO's attitude is one of "well, we warned you, what more do you want?" rather concern for safety and taking creative action to protect customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know, I really have to question the author's credibility. The blurb at the bottom says:

 _Todd is the author of "Dispatches From Bitter America." The book is endorsed by Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Sean Hannity. Click here to get your copy._

...which leads me to believe this is more political than a case of really wanting to save Bucky Balls. For example, notice how the article is almost exclusively dedicated to the CEO, while the "victim" only gets half a sentence?

<comment><USER12> You don't share his politics, so therefore you disregard everything he has to say?

I'm pretty sure this article is about the CEO. You know, since it starts off talking about his letter?

I envy your ability to instantly and accurately decide every controversy merely by learning the political affiliations of the parties.

<comment><USER11> How exactly does "question the author's credibility" translate into "disregard everything he has to say"? Regardless of the author's political affiliations, I seriously doubt that his writing appealed to the likes of the people like Sarah Palin by being sane, rational, and thoughtful.

I mean, sure, there's a good chance he's really an intelligent and respectable guy, but I think the simplest answer is that he's a political shill and has no credibility. And that's the answer I'll stick to until I see evidence that I'm wrong.

<comment><USER13> Why would it matter if he is intelligent, respectable, or shilling? If he told you it was raining, would you look him up on Open Secrets before you grabbed your umbrella?

<comment><USER11> No, but I would definitely look up at the sky to see if it was raining before believing him. I only believe weather conditions that are given to me by people who are intelligent, respectable non-shills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was in the gift shop at the Pacific Science Center (Seattle) two months ago. The Buckyball demo video was playing on the corner of the sales counter, surrounded by the other science toys and kits that the museum sells. So I feel this claim of "marketing to adults" is somewhat disingenuous.

<comment> jack-r-abbit When I was in high school there was a gas station on the edge of town that was very relaxed about the legal age for purchasing cigarettes. But I never blamed Camel for that. ;)

<comment><USER2> Camel's marketing of cigarettes to children is a huge issue.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I happened to smoke Camel's back then so that is the brand I stated in my tale. But my friend smoked some nasty unknown clove crap he also purchased at this gas station. My point was that you can't always blame the manufacturer for how the product is placed/sold/controlled once it reaches the retailer. When I worked at a convenient store in college, we set up the displays and put up the window posters... not some company rep or anything. I would never expect all the different suppliers to come by every time we switched stuff around to make sure their product was not too close to the candy aisle. So I would not expect the Bucky Balls people to go to every retailer to make sure they are not selling them to kids. That is just not a reasonable expectation to have.

<comment><USER14> I don't think this is about "blaming the manufacturer" for the behavior of retailers. My anecdata is that they distributed their product to the gift shop of what is, overall, a kid and preteen museum. For adults, there is a King Tut exhibit and an IMAX theater, segregated from the rest. The main flow has animatronic dinosaurs, a bug house, a tide pool, a bunch of touchable exhibits. Kids come through on field trips. So this product is wrong for that retailer. There was probably no location in the store that would have kept it from being seen and wanted by kids.

Maybe the Buckyballs guys will say, "hey my hands were tied, I couldn't do that level of due diligence with every store I sell my product to." And the regulator will respond, "hey my hands were tied, I couldn't allow the product to be sold without that level of diligence."

That doesn't mean that regulator is somehow being unfair to Buckyballs. It means the laws of physics are being unfair to Buckyballs for not allowing them to create a cool sticky product without health risks to children.

Yes, there's a certain amount of proportion that needs to be taken. Yes, more kids die from drowning in backyard pools. But it's not unreasonable to ask that these products (like cigarettes, like prescription drugs) are more difficult for children to acquire at retail.

<comment> jack-r-abbit So then the answer is to more strictly enforce the stated age warning. The gift shop should be fined. Bucky Balls doesn't need to be shut down. Stores disregard age ratings on so many things because I don't believe they ever get punished for it. Parents also disregard age warnings but that is their call to make since it is their child. But if they do, there really shouldn't be much they can do about it. That is my opinion. You think whatever you wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It was alluded to in the comments, but how is this worse than steak knives, time locking doors, things with exposed wires or any other dangerous objects?

<comment><USER16> A kid can't swallow a steak knife.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Discussion on the ban 2 weeks ago <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4294041>

</comment><comment><USER18> Would these be vastly less fun if they were bigger, and thus a lot less likely to be swallowed? 1" diameter rare earth magnets would be pretty fun I think, although maybe more dangerous (due to being stronger)?

</comment><comment><USER19> There are about 10000 things that are toxic if swallowed. Household cleaning supplies, toothpicks, you name it. Warnings do nothing, the kinds of people or children who swallow them aren't going to be reading warnings.

The paradoxical thing is that the complete abandonment of personal responsibility (no parent is responsible for watching their child) is coupled with a requirement that the business owner assume superhuman levels of responsibility (devising his product in such a way that it is bad-parent- proof).

</comment><comment><USER20> One would imagine that the Obama team would want this story to die ASAP. Pick up the phone! Let my buckies go!

</comment><comment><USER21> what does obama have to do w/ this?

<comment><USER22> Not a lot, though as the head of the executive branch he could likely intervene to prevent the ban.

<comment><USER23> No, he can't. The CPSC is an independent agency, run by five commissioners. The president nominates the commissioners, but he can't give them orders or fire them without cause.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Fails the Office XML Standards Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx

<comment><USER2> "...output documents of the Office 2010 Beta are non-conformant, and that this is in large part due to glaring uncorrected problems in the text (e.g. contradictory provisions)."

That makes it seem a slightly larger issue than just the Office code.

Additionally, the comments mention that it's unreasonable for Office 2010 to support the Strict standard (timeframe), and the author then seems to agree somewhat.

<comment><USER3> No, he's saying it's _unrealistic_ to expect Microsoft to actually conform to the standard that was passed i.e. that Microsoft are institutionally incapable of playing well with others and we should all know that by now.

The first commenter seems to have fallen for the usual Microsoft standard- stalling tactic that has them claim that they can't implement any standard until it's all signed, sealed and delivered. If they actually gave a damn they could have seen the writing on the wall and done something about it well in time.

Rick Jellife (a well-known standards wonk, generally suspicious of anti- Microsoft sentiment, though like Alex Brown seems to now be disappointed that they've lived down to everyone's expectations) comments:

" _I don't know why it is unrealistic to expect Microsoft to accept and generate Strict OOXML in Office 2010: they have had more than two years already. Most of the changes are trivial or systematic or were well in progress (e.g., VML had mostly been dropped for DrawingML by 2007) or would be features required for better support of ODF/Open Formula anyway._ "

<comment><USER4> Yep, lets all make assumptions on beta-quality code.

Firstly, Microsoft aren't the only ones who don't play well with others. Openoffice, Abiword, iWork and every other office suite on the planet uses its own formats.

Secondly, is OpenOffice OOXML 100% Strict compliant yet?

Finally, it's easy for people to stand by on the sidelines and whinge that a year old bug isn't fixed, or a new feature isn't added. Developers often calculate an estimated time required for development in advance, and for all we know, perfect compliance with the standard now may have been pushed back because implementation would have forced other features to be dropped. From a business/development perspective, this often makes sense.

Next release if they aren't compliant with strict, then yes, its time to freakout. But from a business decision, it doesn't make sense to rewrite code many times before it becomes a standard. And when applications sometimes do so, the end result is a mess, because the browsers then often need to support their broken standard, and the correct standard, or risk breaking compatibility with some websites.

Microsoft had no way of knowing exactly when the standard would be approved, or how many changes would be made. I don't think this is overwhelming proof that they are going out of their way to destroy standardisation.

<comment><USER4> UPDATE: Looks like Openoffice doesn't support saving to OOXML anyway.

So seems the only reason OO implemented it, is to encourage people to save to their own standard. So, from one perspective, OpenOffice are trying to destroy standardisation too (they are trying to force people to use their own standard).

Really, the whole thing is a power struggle to become the dominant format anyway. Since their main competitors are doing dodgy stuff to help force people to move to their own standards, I'd say its hardly surprising Microsoft aren't willing to sacrifice functionality to help competitors.

If OpenOffice were serious about standardisation, they would add support for OOXML saving, but they haven't yet!

<comment><USER5> > So seems the only reason OO implemented it, is to encourage people to save > to their own standard

"So seems the only reason OO implemented it, is to encourage people to save to the other open and _pre-existing ISO standard_."

There. Fixed for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> maybe my memory has failed me but, didn't microsoft just get sued over supporting this not to long ago and had to change it or they would no longer be able to sale office?

</comment><comment><USER7> they support odf now..which is a open standard. Also, the author should note that development of office 2010 had already started when these changes were asked for.

<comment><USER3> "the author" is Alex Brown, convener of the OOXML BRM. Some would argue that the only reason OOXML passed as an ISO standard is becuase of his actions in dismissing large numbers of issues. He's well aware of the facts of the matter.

For those not following the OOXML debacle you could imagine Alex Brown is to OOXML as Miguel de Icaza is to the .Net platform. He worked closely with Microsoft to try and turn their proprietary format/platform into an open standard (and got called a shill and worse for his efforts) and is now disappointed they've screwed it all up with their shady behaviour.</comment></comment>


What's next for books? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tnl.net/blog/2011/10/01/the-future-book/

<comment><USER2> I think this is a bad assessment. It depends a lot on the book. Text books, for example, are a lot easier to read in print than in ebook format. That's because it's easier to go back a page or two or look at two pages simultaneously. Also, one could easily go back and forth 100 pages in a second in a textbook, which is a lot harder with ebooks. Also, since ebooks can go on the internet, reading a paper textbook significantly limits the number of distractions.</comment>


Show HN: Vinylogue for Last.fm (iOS) - <AUTHOR> http://twocentstudios.com/apps/vinylogue/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. I've been doing iOS side projects for a few years now, but recently quit my job to do this full time. This is an app I wrote to scratch an itch and try some new techniques (including lots of ReactiveCocoa).

I'll also be releasing the source in a few days along with a blog post about the process from start to finish.

In short, Vinylogue is an iOS app that's like TimeHop for music. It uses your Last.fm listening data, so if you haven't been an active user there it's not going to be much fun. You can still try it out though and use my Last.fm username (ybsc). No password is required.

Critiques and criticism are welcomed.</comment>


Why do teachers value Olympiad-level mathematical insight so much in high school? - <AUTHOR>

I can understand the high school wanting students to rank very highly in national math contests and competing internationally in the math olympiad.
But for the vast majority of students, this behavior is simply destructive.  There is more to life than math olympiad-level insights.
Why criticize students for something that only a handful in the entire country can really do for reasons no one really understands anyway?
Perhaps some of these math teachers are disappointed with their own achievements in life and want to succeed via their students' success? <comment><USER2> My teachers never directly prepared me for olympiad style events. We did have a math team, but that was more focused on a local competition with short time limits (very similar to ARML, if you are familiar with that.) In terms of real math, there are limits on what high school teachers can teach. Olympiad style problems require the same sort of thinking as real math does, but without requiring as much knowledge. That seems like a good compromise to me.

Personally, I wish I'd had more preparation of that sort (I took USAMO and achieved a very average performance.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Olympiad-level is a bit of an exaggeration, but it was certainly the case that there was enormous pressure to do well in math contests in my junior high and high school. Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I did pretty well on Olympiad stuff but never had a teacher before college who really cared about it at all. So, your mileage may vary.

What country are you from? These behaviors are very different in different places - if you are from Romania then culturally people will care a lot more than in the US.

</comment><comment><USER4> sounds like a localized problem, to me.

i was good at math, went to a the best HS in the area, and didn't experience anything like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your HS didn't care much about math contest performance?

Even if your marks are in no way affected by math contest results, teachers can still make you feel awful for not meeting their expectations.

<comment><USER4> no, my HS didn't care at all about the performance. the only pressure was on the inside of the team to do better for ourselves.

yes, thats true, but thats a property of the individual teacher, really. i've had teachers all across the spectrum.

<comment><AUTHOR> Team? In my case, there was no team. In junior high, I believe everyone (at least at my level of instruction) was expected to write these contests. In high school, it was optional, but teachers looked down on you if you were generally a good math student but didn't go for it.

<comment><USER4> in my school, it was voluntary via a group of people, i.e. team.

again, this sounds like its insular to your school, or maybe your school district via some sort of inter-school rivalry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it is also a Canadian thing. While the US routinely has a strong math olympiad team every year, this is not the case in Canada.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Chrome protection for Heartbleed-hacked sites called "completely broken" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/google-chrome-protection-for-heartbleed-hacked-sites-called-completely-broken/ <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't uniquely a Chrome CRLSet problem: OCSP & CRLs in general are also defective. None of them are capable of rapidly and reliably warning TLS clients, when those clients are still trusting certificates that the original site, CA, and browser vendor have all announced are compromised.

But we're almost 20 years into the SSL/TLS/CA era. A broadcast/alert system that's resistant to all but the most draconian of regimes is possible. (It should also be self-evident when you're cut off from current data.) P2P networks provide usable ideas.

<comment><USER2> This is where a Bitcoin-like chain could really help.</comment></comment>


A Thread: Simple SaaS Stack For Less Than 20$/Month - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/IGrabill/status/1221850164559638529 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, I've been building SaaS products for over 10 years now and I compiled a long thread explaining how I think about building a small SaaS project from scratch.

For the people just starting out, I think it can be helpful. For the experienced, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Here is a summary of the thread:

-NO JS frameworks

-Solo Dev

-Simplified devops

-Get MVP built in 1-2 weeks (if not less)

-Cost < $20/month

[https://twitter.com/IGrabill/status/1221850164559638529?s=20](https://twitter.com/IGrabill/status/1221850164559638529?s=20)

Thanks!</comment>


Ubuntu 11.04 will remove the notification area (systray) - <AUTHOR> http://design.canonical.com/2010/04/notification-area/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic, I am just sad that KDE didn't do this first. It has been known for _years_ that the system tray as it is today is a POS. It is being abused every way possible and causes a complete mess for users. The one I _really_ hate is when I click the CLOSE WINDOW button and the application hides in the system tray while still running. I am glad someone is trying to make things right.

<comment><USER3> I never got that argument really. It can become messy. So can the desktop, or your home directory. But do you prevent users from storing a file where they want it because of that? Windows world went too far with any program and their dog putting an updater, or status icon in the systray - but in Ubuntu you have the choice of not putting new stuff there. For example, I've got an update notifier, power, network, dropbox and volume in the notification area now. How is this abuse? Why should I resign from having those icons there?

They've already done the experiment with removing update notifications from the notification area (names point at the irony here). Instead we got a system approved pop-under, 200+ people complaining in the bugreport and Mark saying something like: That's how it's going to be, now be quiet. It was the same for window button placement lately. And that's a reason I'm upgrading to Debian this time instead of 10.04.

<comment><USER4> "but do you prevent users from storing a file where they want it because of that? "

There's some new "pad" thing that does exactly that.

<comment><USER5> _but do you prevent users from storing a file where they want it because of that?_

Then again, if most people aren't that concerned with the file hierarchy, then why foist it on them?

 _There's some new "pad" thing that does exactly that._

We'll see how this unfolds. I suspect that the UI of the iPhone OS has conditioned people to think of files and items as being "in" an app. I suspect that Apple will implement some way of sharing or transferring files between apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't that a bit cocky? "We, _Ubuntu_ , the biggest most important distro out there, are doing away with the Notification tray, so if you want our _millions_ of users to use it, you'd better get with it." What about the other distros? Are they going to have to follow suit after all the applications rewrite their code? I can understand this coming from Gnome, perhaps, but Ubuntu doesn't own Gnome. Why not have a wrapper for the notification area that turns it into a menu, for a last resort?

<comment><USER7> Ubuntu needs to be a bit cocky if they're serious about improving desktop Linux. They won't get anywhere if they're too afraid of stepping on toes.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. Ubuntu is no less cocky than Apple. I see Ubuntu as the "Apple" of the Linux world. And they have to be cocky if they want to make any breakthroughs or any real innovations.

As another example, I have been running 10.04 beta for a while. At first I disagreed with their choice of moving all the window controls to the left, but now I am used it and actually like it better. I think it is more "efficient" as it usually minimizes my mouse movement. What is the point of this rambling? Ubuntu did something they thought was right, but wasn't popular initially. Eventually many people realized it is a better design choice. Apple (and GNOME in the Linux desktop world) have taken the same approach before. Sometimes it backfires but often it works well.

<comment><USER9> >I think it is more "efficient" as it usually minimizes my mouse movement.

Are you left handed? I tend to keep my cursor on the right presumably as an extension of the desktop metaphor - reaching across to the right means a far larger movement.

However, I can see theoretically that if you have your application launch button ("Start", "K" or what have you) on the left that you'd want to push other things that way. However I'd rather move the "pin" and "menu" buttons to the R of the menu bar.

I trust if KDE ever went that way they'd make it an option.

<comment><USER8> > Are you left handed?

No. The reason it is more efficient is because the mouse pointer usually hovers more around the left and upper edges of the windows. That is where all the most frequent menus live are and most often used toolbar buttons. You can think of it as the logical origin of the window. For example the 'File->Save As..." menu, the "File->Close" menu, the "Back & Home" buttons on the browser and so on.

It would be an interesting HCI project to run a background statistics gatherer that would record mouse coordinates relative the window in focus.

The only time I usually move the mouse to right is to scroll (but I personally use the mouse wheel for scrolling) and resize the window. But most of the time it hovers on the left side.

Also, just because you hold the mouse in the right hand doesn't say anything where the cursor is on the screen. You would have to consider where the cursor already is when you want to close/minimize/maximize the window and how far you would have to "travel" with it.

Another 2 things to consider:

1) Mouse travel might seem like a very small change, but the action of closing a window is very frequent. So a small change multiplied many times can add to quite a bit.

2) This ends up working even better for laptops since a trackpad already offers a fairly small working surface compared to the surface available for a desktop mouse. The shorter the distance the cursor moves, the less trackpad "strokes" one has to perform.

EDIT: formatting & syntax

<comment><USER9> >It would be an interesting HCI project to run a background statistics gatherer that would record mouse coordinates relative the window in focus.

It would indeed.

My mouse cursor definitely lives at teh right about 2/10 in from the right screen edge.

I do use shortcuts to access menus (as well as mouse, I'm fickle) but would see your comments as reasons to invert the menubar menu order and arrange them from the right rather than reason to move other stuff left.

But I'm probably an anomaly. In MS Windows (which I rarely use) my Vista install has the taskbar [vertically] on the right.

HN's reply button often annoys me because it is left aligned whilst as I'm a L-R text reader the proper position to me would be the right as on completion that is where my gaze falls.

KDE dialogs usually have Cancel/OK on right and help and other auxiliaries on the left. For example the systemsettings dialog has "apply" on the right, which inline with my above thinking seems the correct position.

Physical mouse travel for someone with all left-aligned action buttons could still be greater than someone using a "fast" mouse with action inputs spread across the screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I don't understand is why control of window behavior, including hiding/minimizing, is up to the programmer and not the user. Goes for every OS/shell I've seen so far.

<comment><USER11> upvoted. This is a very valid question - the system tray imho is just a moniker for a 16x16 icon. I would want the ability to either minimize any app to a normal toolbar or dock to a system tray.

<comment><USER12> > I would want the ability to either minimize any app to a normal toolbar or > dock to a system tray.

Use alltray: [quote] Dock any application in the tray

With AllTray you can dock any application without a native tray icon into the system tray. It works well with GNOME, KDE, XFCE 4, Fluxbox, and WindowMaker. [/quote]

PS.

I prefer to use switch-or-exec plugin in Sawfish at hot-key: I will press hotkey, Sawfish will switch to application desktop area and then bring application window. If application is not running, then Sawfish will run it. Configuration is very simple: regexp for window title or window properties to find application window and command line to execute when application window is not found.

For example, I can press "Alt-Shift-e" to switch to editor window to enter few notes. If editor is not found, then new editor will be run. When I will finish, I will press "Alt-Shift-b" to switch back to browser, "A-S-m" for mail, "A-S-i" for IDE, "A-S-t" for terminal, and so on.

<comment><USER10> "Configuration is very _simple_ : _regexp_ for..."

I did a double take right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Coming from a long history of Debian and black/fluxbox, I've always appreciated Ubuntu for their package selection and default hardware setup. They've hooked up a lot of stuff I hate managing by hand (like printing and video drivers) automatically. I still run openbox on it, though, which happily insulates me from Shuttleworth's reinvention of the stock UI.

Watching the debate over new window control placement and removing the systray reminds me it's nice to be a little off the beaten path. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Oy, but I _like_ being able to minimize my rhythmbox, tweetdeck and pidgin to the notification area. :(

I'll suspend judgement till I actually use whatever they come up with though.

<comment><USER2> How about being able to minimize ANY application and dragging it to the system tray. This way you wont have to wait for each app to implement this, reduce code bloat, and the rest of us wont have to wonder:

      * Why isn't this app in the taskbar?

      * What does close window do for this app?

      * What does minimize do for this app?

      * What does file quit do?

<comment><USER15> I implemented something very similar (albeit slightly less slick) for the GNOME panel. It works nicely.

<http://blog.kevinmehall.net/2010/bringing_pin_tab_to_wnck>

<comment><USER16> This is literally my first time hearing about pin tab in chrome. Behind the curve entirely. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find it interesting how Ubuntu is modifying the actual GUI, when I would have thought such a task would fall to the GNOME developers.

As a kubuntu user, I've always hoped I'm getting a vanilla KDE with ubuntu's packaging; I want all KDE programs to work out of the box. Is KDE similarly altered by canonical? This move seems like it can only further fragment Linux.

<comment><USER18> If they weren't putting changes and policies in place to make the software more consistent and friendly, then wouldn't Ubuntu just be Debian unstable with a different logo and release schedule?

<comment><USER19> You've got some big assumptions of agreement there with the whole consistent and friendly thing there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This decision is the perfect illustration of why Ubuntu has a very long way to go before becoming a true _user-friendly_ operating system. You just cannot remove the feature this way. You just can't. This forces dramatically new user experience down every user's throat. Honestly, how many people do you think will like being treated this way?

If you want to remove the feature, deprecate it. Turn it off in all new installs, leave it as is in all upgrades, and optionally notify the user about the deprecation.

</comment><comment><USER21> I agree that we need to change the current UI paradigms. I am not a fan of "if its not broken, don't fix it".

However, I've written a small applet that uses notifications and I don't quite understand how things will change when what he describes happens. I have not upgraded it because the notification mechanism in karmic sucks.(I will update the code when I finally install Lucid)

Does anybody know? Will applets disappear completely?

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't really wrap my mind around the idea that adding more menus, probably multiple hierarchies of menus, is a better solution here. I wish they had included a mock-up because I can't really visualize how this would work. Are people going to dig into menus to find stuff? It seems like both Windows & OSX are moving towards less menu digging -- not more.

</comment><comment><USER19> Some many reasons have built up over the years for the educated user to _not_ use Ubuntu:

\-- The pulse audio fiasco

\-- The network manager that couldn't manage anything but vanilla networks (I hear that's changed now, but I'm not about to sacrifice any more nights of my life to Ubuntu for finding out)

\-- Massive and arbitrary changes to the windowing buttons without so much as a nod to keeping the _actual_ community involved

\-- Brown, then purple

\-- Core application that deletes your whole drive if you don't supply parameters. Now that's pretty bad...but the clincher is that when questioned about it, the _senior Ubuntu developer_ gave us a most excellent entry to add to the encyclopedia of bad ideas

\-- And now, no system tray, "we don't like it so we throw it out" haha

I have a feeling the revolution will _not_ be Ubuntu-ized.

<comment><USER23> this reeks of armchair commentary,

ubuntus network manager has been first class for ~2 years, I have less problems on ubuntu that I do with my mac in regards to broadband dongles, its audio has also been long fixed

the aesthetic changes (purple to brown) are a large improvement that everyone asked for, the window buttons really dont matter that much (and they can be moved back)

the core application was very much a niche issue for those messing around inside a bootloader, its not like opening notepad ran rm -rf /

and as for the system tray, im not particularly fussed either way, but I am glad that someone is worrying and doing something about ui issues instead of sticking to the status quo

<comment><USER24> The most annoying feature of GNOME Ubuntu for me, after the look&feel, is the managers.

I use a LAN; I don't want a network manager. I use a desktop; I don't want a power manager. I have speakers; I don't want a sound manager.

If there's a way to hide them, it's not simple. You can't just uninstall them, because they've taken over the duties of actually managing the resources as well, in addition to just showing me information I don't want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I understand the need to upset people by forcing change in order to make improvements in the long run. However, I will still list my annoyances, although I'm prepared to reserve final judgement for now.

I'm forever getting mixed up between the status menu and the messaging menu. The only thing I really use them for is Empathy, which now seems to be split between two menus. And to bring up the contact list it now takes two clicks (or more often three because I clicked the wrong menu) instead of one.

I don't like to just minimize Empathy or Rhythmbox since that gets in the way of my "working set". As a programmer working on distributed systems I often have perhaps up to a dozen windows in a workspace in each of eight workspaces. "System" stuff gets in the way of my window management. I'd like this stuff to be somewhere distinctly different.

> No competent designer, sitting down to design an operating system from > scratch, would say to themselves "I know, let's have two completely > inconsistent ways to hide windows".

I disagree with this. I _want_ two different ways, because they have two different purposes. One is my for the working set: stuff that I'm doing. The other is for stuff that's always there, like a new email notification, an IM contact list, background music and the clock. I don't see a problem here.

I think that a notification bubble worked just fine for notifications. You'd have the icon pointed out to you, and then it would be there in the background using minimal space until you attended to it. That's about as unobtrusive as it gets. Grabbing clicks has never been a problem for me, but not being able to see under it has. I'd prefer to be able to close the notification bubble rather than being forced to wait; being able to click through is pointless if I can't properly see through.

Instead I now have an annoying popup telling me that I should update appearing in a separate window that I have to close only for it to pop up again. I understand that this is intended to be improved, but at the moment it seems to keep demanding attention and interrupting me and then it forces me to wait while it loads.

I suppose that the problem is that as an experienced user I know what the notification icon for "updates available" meant and I want it to stay there as a reminder. However, I only want to be interrupted once. At the moment (on Karmic) I get interrupted repeatedly and the only way to stop this is to remove the notification entirely.

I agree that the UI should be consistent. I would prefer if any suitable application had the capability to either minimize to the system tray or to the task bar based on a user setting with a sensible default. The close button should always close it (or if not, the behaviour should still be consistent across all applications).

I understand that some of my complaints are intended to be addressed already, so I look forward to my experience getting a little better, at least. I thank Matthew for the blog post - at least I know that these things are being worked on.

<comment><USER23> > No competent designer, sitting down to design an operating system from > scratch, would say to themselves "I know, let's have two completely > inconsistent ways to hide windows".

heh, this quote reminds me of one of the most fustrating things about osx, theres like 4 ways to hide a windows

1\. minimise to dock 2\. "close" but dont quit 3\. hide 4\. quit

I think I might be missing one as well, and they all work completely differently when you want to being the windows back.

<comment><USER26> You can also "roll up" a window, IIRC.</comment></comment></comment>


My Pascal based XQuery engine with JSONiq and pattern-matching - <AUTHOR> http://videlibri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xidelcgi?extract-kind=xquery

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the first release with JSONiq support; XQuery support has it since last year; and XPath and pattern matching since a few years.

The link goes to the online tester, the source and documentation is at the bottom of the page.

40k-LOC says ohloh and I wrote all of it, even the string comparisons functions...

x-posted to r/programming</comment>