We built this to help you launch apps for the November Startup Sprint - <AUTHOR> http://hn.21times.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been building this project for the last month or so and thought that the November startup sprint (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1773398>) would be a great place to test it out. We've lined up great content from some of HN's best authors, like Tom Preston-Werner (mojombo), Patrick McKenzie (patio11), and George Grellas (grellas).

You know that thing about how not being embarrassed means you launched too late? Yeah, well, this isn't perfect and we know it, but we're super excited to launch it and start iterating. Please check it out and let us know what you think. We'll be releasing more features in the next few days, but today is November 1st so we wanted to get it out there.

<comment><USER2> The mailing start tomorrow, Nov 2?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the actual lessons start tomorrow morning and go out weekdays, so you'll get a total of 21 of them.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I know, sounds like an obvious question, but far too often, people doing mailings forget a few things.

1\. Time is relative. "Tomorrow" isn't clear. I don't trust that "tomorrow" is relative to when I signed up for it (even in this case, where I knew the launch date of the site).

2\. If someone signs up for a mailing list/newsletter like this, it's best if you send them the most current newsletter. When I sign up for a newsletter like this, I want to read what you are writing. So please, send me something to read.

But yes, thanks for the info. =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I liked seeing the "Not interested in building with us? Tell us why" but then saw it was an email link rather than a feedback form.

FWIW having to use email for feedback is a disincentive for me (I guess partly because I have to copy & paste the address into a different browser that I use for email).

You might want to consider using a feedback form instead.

Oh, and as much as it seems obvious in hindsight, it didn't occur to me to "click on the image" to see the sample--I just assumed the image was all there was to see so I was left wondering "how does it work?" even after reading the FAQ.

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm one of the programmers working on this project. We actually have a feedback form ready to go, we just ran out of testing time before the launch today. We'll be pushing that change in the next couple of days.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER3> "Hacker News is my feedback form." :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I may not be an exact fit into group of people launching an app by end of november. But I'm learning Django and Python now and I pledge to build an app (public or private) before this month.

<comment><USER6> You can do it! I've built and launched two web apps and I just started. Shameless plugs abound [1] [2]!

[1] - [http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/26/reworder-a-tale- of-...](http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/26/reworder-a-tale-of-learning- python-and-launching-an-app-in-five-days/)

[2] - [http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/24/rmmbr-my-1-hour- app...](http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/24/rmmbr-my-1-hour-app/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks. I'm seriously looking for an idea. I should get started in 2-3 days when my new laptop arrives. Hopefully I'm decided with what I'm building before that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really love that HN is working on a NaNoWriMo for software this month. I had been planning on doing this all last month in conjunction with my room mate and calling it NaSoWriMo while he worked on his novel.

Personally, I am starting out on two small projects that are being built quickly and will hopefully have reasonable traffic by the end of the month as the goal. This is in preparation for larger projects down the road.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice one Ryan. I've been thinking of a few projects, but I've got one that I would really like to just get started on and get completed. I'll have a look at this and hopefully it can give me the incentive (kick!?) to get this done and get it out there :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks, I signed up. I am working on a project for generating CSS sprites in the browser without any file uploads.

I'm a little confused about what exactly I share with the emails. It says there will be three links, and I click on one that records my progress. Are these goals I set up myself? Am I sharing this with anybody who wants to see it, or is it just something to use to stay motivated as an individual? I am definitely interested to see how it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> The emails just ask you if you're on track for launch at the end of the month. It's hard to get any more specific than that since everyone is doing something completely different and will be at different places.

That data will be surfaced to you in every email, so you'll see your streak of making positive daily progress and hopefully that'll keep you motivated. In the next week or so, we'll offer you the option of declaring what your project is and making those progress updates public, so people can help keep each other motivated. Just working out a few issues with that feature though...

We hope you enjoy it, and email me at ryan at 21times dot org if you have any questions or problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I enrolled for the November push and signed up for the Facebook group, all be it with a pseudonym, but I seriously fail to see the reason for the few sites that try to track and motivate me. With all due respect, the task sums up as a finger exercise and leaves me wanting more.

What is it that we need that a FB group can't do? Yes, that seems amateurish, but it does the job.

<comment><AUTHOR> It might not be for everybody, and maybe you won't find it useful, but give it a shot and let us know. I've found tracking my progress on habits and goals to be motivating, and I've also found it helpful to have a friend keep me accountable. Imagine the Seinfeld Method [1], but social.

1\. [http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity- se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Exactly the motivation I needed to get up off my butt and start coding furiously, instead of planning and guessing for months on end. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> This is _exactly_ what we're hoping for; you just made my day :)

Let me know if you have any issues or if there's any way we can help you in your quest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There's also a bunch of us that are building November Apps that are using Alex Muir's kickuptheass.com. It's also for daily reminders and group status sharing. Hard to say yet if this is a complementary service or in competition. In the mean time, I plan to use both :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Great idea. I look forward to pushing hard for the next month with you guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Super excited to be on board! Please, please let us know of anything that we can do to help you succeed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there a twitter account associated with it?

<comment><USER15> you can follow us at @21timesorg

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> nice, just signed up. Looking forward to it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Gotta love that bluecoat blocks it as "adult content". That looks good on the monthly report.

<comment><USER4> We don't want any kids building awesome apps. :)

<comment><USER17> It's just the hammer approach to security as opposed to the scalpel approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "You'll start receiving your daily lessons tomorrow?"

That's a bit condescending to my ears? Might want to work on that tone. You don't want to imply that you're giving something to people that they should be grateful for.

I guess you'd better work on the actual application as well.

What technology and framework are you using?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm pondering the idea of launching for the Sprint (this MIGHT be the first I've heard of it) -- but after I saw the list of 'speakers', I signed up just to receive the emails, if nothing else.

I have to say though, this IS a good idea, and is encouraging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I hope you get some good utility out of it. Just to be 100% clear and avoid disappointment, this isn't original / exclusive content written just for us; we're not quite there yet :). However, I've been a voracious HN reader for two years and I missed at least half of these articles, and the other half were good reminders.

<comment><USER19> Are you going to catalog / rate the apps that get submitted, ala Rails Rumble? That would be exciting, I think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely...we have a bunch of fun stuff coming in this vein in the next week or two.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Supporting the Librem Phone crowdfunding campaign helps postmarketOS (+friends) - <AUTHOR> https://postmarketos.org/blog/2017/09/24/librem-5/ <comment><USER2> Here's a $199 GNU/Linux handheld: [http://noodlepi.com](http://noodlepi.com). AFAIK it's the world's smallest, lightest and most open handheld computer. Can be assembled / disassembled / upgraded / repaired by end users in under 10 minutes with no tools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome device, I didn't know about it! Added it to the devices wishlist in the postmarketOS wiki: [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Device_Wishlist#Mainline_...](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Device_Wishlist#Mainline_Linux_Candidate_Devices)

Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment>


FOSS and Mirza Ghalib - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/like-poetry-for-software/article4369679.ece?homepage=true

<comment><USER2> Main reason why FOSS people giveaway for free is the valuable contribution they get back from the community. Most of the times this knowledge sharing is far more valuable for the FOSS programmer than if he had charged it for money.

It is a good way to learn programming, to get mentored, tips and tid-bits from coding gods.

Your analogy is very random and superficial.</comment>


Bihari Govt raises its game with Android Phones on the Road - <AUTHOR> http://www.pluggd.in/android-bihar-government-297/

<comment><AUTHOR> While I am proud of this, I am actually jealous that our own Australian govt is pathetically behind when it comes to (mobile) technology!</comment>


An Open Letter to IBM CEO Virginia Rometty - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/08/virginia-rometty-ibm-augusta-eileen-burbidge/

<comment><USER2> Shouldn't there be some concept of standing, in the legal sense, here? I'd think the author of the letter could identify one women who's being harmed.

</comment><comment><USER3> She should buy the club and install a jukebox.

<comment><USER4> You can't buy the good-ole-boy system. That is THE one defining trait. The salted-earth policies used by the GOB institutions ensure that once broken, the institution is dissolved rather than updated. Typically, any court- enforced changes result in a new institution with the same old name.</comment></comment>


The False Hope Of Apple's Snow Leopard - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/06/false-hope-of-apples-snow-leopard.html <comment><USER2> Alot of words, not alot of content. I'll sum up the article for all that haven't read it: "Though I haven't seen what Apple will be offering with Grand Central, I am making an assertion that the fundamental problems found in multi-core computing can't be solved by anybody. Ever."

Does this remind anyone else of a certain Bill Gates quote regarding 640k being enough for anyone?

<comment><USER3> No, it doesn't. There are fundamental laws governing parallelization of code, and Apple can't beat them:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=222279>

And that's not even getting into the speed of light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The way I read this article, it seemed to be a rant taking Apple to task for wasting their energy on a pervasive multicore strategy, when in their author's opinion multicore doesn't offer a compelling story for improving performance.

This leads to two obvious questions. First, why exactly does Apple get singled out here? As I see it, the CPU vendors are the ones pushing multicore; OS developers are simply trying to make the best lemonade they can from the lemons that are stalled core speeds.

Second, what the hell is this "core thread" Hank talks about? Re-entrant, SMP- capable OS kernels have been around for a long time. If the major commercial OS vendors are just now getting around to implementing such scalability, fine; that doesn't mean the problem is unsolvable, though.

<comment><USER5> No, I am not taking Apple to task for anything. And I am, I hope, not ranting. I am simply saying that people should not over-estimate what will come of Grand Central, or any multi-core abstraction layers, or multi-core as a broadly helpful performance increasing strategy.

From one of my other commenters:

Multicore is definitely over-promised. I agree with what you wrote and recommend what Donald Knuth had to say on this topic:(<http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856>)

"I might as well flame a bit about my personal unhappiness with the current trend toward multicore architecture. To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they're trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore's Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!"

<comment><AUTHOR> "No, I am not taking Apple to task for anything"

I just want to share with you that when I read the title, I thought you meant something like "The false expectations Apple is setting with Snow Leopard."

After I read the article, I came away with the thought that what you were saying is "The false hopes people are clinging to when they read about Snow Leopard."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm confused. Who thought the promise of Snow Leopard was that it was going to solve concurrent programming? You'd think if it was that big a deal, they'd have named it Liger.

Apple has done a release like Snow Leopard already: 10.1. This is supposed to be the release that fixes all the broken stuff and optimizes the platform for X86 and (more importantly) the X86 chipset and peripherals on Macs. 10.1 worked beautifully.

If this writer had "false hopes" about Snow Leopard, he acquired them from somewhere other than Apple.

</comment><comment><USER7> The author is using a Mythical Man-Month idea about how fast people can solve problems and applying it to computer programs and algorithms. Sorry, but that doesn't wash. You can't automatically analyze the basic blocks and dataflow of a human researcher's brain, but compilers can do this to programs.

What's been missing is a high-level approach to parallelism. This is exactly where Apple has a core competency: software tools. I think they stand a good chance of producing something useful. It won't be universally applicable, but it doesn't need to be. If it will be useful in making parallelism easier, then this will be a meaningful success.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem is that high clock speeds cost heat and energy consumption. So it is possible to solve this problem by finding a new material for making processors. Its only a matter of time until someone figures it out. I read an article 2 years ago about using diamonds in chips, to solve exactly the heat problem, the problem was that it was going too be expensive, so maybe if someone thins of a cheap alternative to diamonds we can have some very good results. This may take a year or 10 years, i don't know if its even going to happen, but until then multi core CPUs are a good alternative.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The problem is that most algorithms and program logic cannot be made to run better across many processors" evidence for this?

I was hoping to hear him talk about the Von Neumann Bottleneck ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Ne...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Neumann_bottleneck)), a problem faced by serial and parallelizable algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER7> Intel is up to this with a C/C++ like language. Apple stands a good chance of making something like this easier to use.

[http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/development/sho...](http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/development/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208403616)</comment>


Ubuntu Unity Dev Team AMA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/k2nvl/we_are_the_ubuntu_unity_development_team_we_3/

<comment><USER2> As expected, there are a number of complaints/fears about how non-configurable Unity could be. For these expert users, if they don't like Unity there's always KDE, Gnome or some other UI. I hope the Unity team, for the most part, ignores these power users and optimizes the UI for novices. That would be refreshing to see happen and might result in increased adoption of desktop Linux by the general public. Think Different!

<comment><USER3> They've done that successfully enough that I just dumped my ubuntu netbook in favor of a Mac. Ubuntu has been steadily removing all the advantages Linux has for power users without counterbalancing improvements.

<comment><USER4> Forgive me for being dense, but why not choose the 'classic desktop' option at login, or 'sudo apt-get install gnome-panel' if it stops coming by default?

Is it a clash of ideology that caused you to jump ship? Because I find it hard to believe somebody smart enough to find, download and partition their disks to install Ubuntu would balk at the effort of customising their desktop to suit their needs.

<comment><USER5> It is a forward looking decision. If the Ubuntu team is committed to making Ubuntu more confusing to use and introducing new bugs and breaking existing features and ignoring old bugs, it is better to jump over to a platform that issue heading in a better direction. It is sad that no major dev team is working on building a usable powerful system. It is a necessary consequence o the mainstreamization of computing, though. Every year power users are a smaller fraction of the user base and therefore more relatively expensive to support.

<comment><USER6> "_If_ the Ubuntu team is committed to making Ubuntu more confusing to use and introducing new bugs and breaking existing features and ignoring old bugs."

Sad thing is they aren't so your argument doesn't hold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love that they (like Gnome 3) are doing something awesome with the Linux desktop, but I had to go back to Gnome 2 after a day because focus-follows- mouse is missing and/or broken.

(Thanks to the disconnected menu bar business, they seem to be stuck in the same "focus-follows-mouse is impossible" and "multi-monitor sucks forever" hole that OS X fell into. I use both, which makes Unity doubly unusable for me.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi team,

What's in Unity that makes it cool?

Cheers

<comment><USER9> The AMA is on reddit, not HN.</comment></comment>


Android NDK: GCC is now deprecated, everyone should be switching to Clang - <AUTHOR> https://android.googlesource.com/platform/ndk.git/+/master/CHANGELOG.md <comment><USER2> The sad thing is that "easy to link and embed" and "permissive license" really didn't have to go together like they did in LLVM.

GCC _could_ have provided a library that made it easy to do code generation or compiler development. That library could still have used the GPL, so that only Free Software could use it. Some of the work that has happened around LLVM wouldn't have happened around such a library, but some of it would have. (GCC has much more recently started down the "plugin" route, but too little too late.)

For instance, Swift might not have happened. But Rust may well have; a rustc compiler under GPL would not have broken anyone's ability to use it, any more than GCC's GPL prevents people from building proprietary software with it.

But instead, the GNU project chose to make it difficult to build any extension to GCC outside of GCC's own codebase. So instead of having an easy-to-use library provided by GCC under GPL, which might have furthered many of the GNU project's goals and encouraged more Free Software compiler development, they forced the development of an entirely separate compiler project to provide such a library. And the people who came along to do so, since they had to rewrite it anyway, chose to do so under a permissive license.

So, at least in hindsight, the Free Software world is worse off than it would have been had GCC provided a library infrastructure.

<comment><USER3> I feel like you're missing the point of the GNU GPL. The original idea behind the FSFs idea of open source was an ecosystem where every new development resulted in more open and free code. We're talking about people who truly believed in getting away from commercial software entirely. There were people who felt that one day, Linux desktops could replace Windows and even high end tools like Photoshop and Final Cut would have great open source replacements.

...but that never happened. Apple has tried to remove all GPL code from Mac OS. Where GPL code exists, it's only GPLv2 (like Bash; using an ancient version).

Even though all these companies are embracing opens source, they're embracing only permissive licenses. They're open sourcing the underlying tech stack while keeping all their offerings closed. If you're on Android, you are totally locked into Google services. I've met people who tried only using F-droid and running "open source phones" (minus the drivers of course). Their phones sucked. One of them switched back because she was tired of writing apps to do things she use to be able to do with the Play Store.

The dream of a GPL world where the software is free and you only pay for the hardware, is pretty much gone. We don't have federated systems, and where we do, no one uses them (GNU Social, Miro, Diasporia).

This isn't the open source world some of us envisioned back in the late 90s. I personally, will keep as much of my code under GNU GPL as I can.

<comment><USER2> > I feel like you're missing the point of the GNU GPL. The original idea > behind the FSFs idea of open source was an ecosystem where every new > development resulted in more open and free code.

First of all, "FSF's idea of open source"? They'd rather vigorously object to that phrasing. :)

But no, that was _exactly_ my point: I'd argue that intentionally choosing to not allow the development of a library version of GCC, even under the GPL, caused a net _reduction_ in the amount of Free Software in general, and copyleft-licensed Free Software in particular, that would otherwise have been developed.

<comment><USER4> RMS -- and perhaps the FSF more generally -- seems more concerned with preventing non-Free software, with creating Free Software as a means to that end, than increasing the volume of Free Software.

To RMS, non-Free software isn't just worse than Free software, its a net harm to society such that it's better to have _no_ software than to have non-Free software. Its even often (apparently, to RMS) better to have no additional software than to have a lot of additional Free Software and some additional non-Free software.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't describe the FSF's position that way (they value Free Software for its own sake, and their goal is that all software should be Free Software), but even if that _were_ their position, I'm arguing that their handling of GCC and refusal to support it as a library directly motivated the creation of LLVM and led to a scenario that better supports the creation of proprietary software.

Providing a GCC library would have significantly lessened the motivation for LLVM: many of the "we need a library" folks would have one, leaving just the "we need a permissively-licensed library" folks, and the "GCC's codebase is awful" folks. (And even some of the latter group might have worked to fix GCC.)

That's not the _only_ thing done wrong with GCC development. The much worse problem is that GCC doesn't really support reviewing and accepting patches; you pretty much have to have commit access to do any significant work on GCC.

<comment><USER5> > I'm arguing that their handling of GCC and refusal to support it as a > library directly motivated the creation of LLVM and led to a scenario that > better supports the creation of proprietary software

I'm sure they are well aware of that. I don't see how they could have handled it differently without compromising their core values. Allowing GCC to be wrapped by proprietary bits would be unconscionable since it curtails user freedom (to modify & improve the software).

The differences in core-beliefs between Apple and FSF are irreconcilable: the former is pro-Tivoization and the latter is anti-Tivoization. Your stance on Tivoization ought to be a fair indicator on which side of the fence you stand, and no side will _ever_ be able to convince the other side: at best you can agree to disagree.

<comment><USER6> You're either with us or against us?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if this will stoke a flamewar, because I've never seen a discussion here on this (might just be hanging around different articles). Is there any technical reason to prefer clang over gcc other than ideological reasons? I get the modular nature of llvm is useful, but is the android NDK using this feature?

Quick google search shows clang lagging gcc in all but one test[0] at least on Intel Broadwell. Again, what is the benefit other than permissiveness of the license?

[0] [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=clang- gcc...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=clang-gcc- broadwell&num=1) This is almost a year old, though

<comment><USER8> I don't know much about Android NDK, but in general, people use clang because:

\- Clear and readable diagnostics -- especially useful when debugging nasty C++ template stuff where the type signature is a page long. (GCC is catching up in this area)

\- Modular design -- if an IDE wants to have syntax highlighting or an Xcode/Eclipse/IntelliJ like "fix it" feature, they can use the clang frontend to parse the code. Also, GCC's "big ball of mud" design (iirc they do some optimizations like constant folding in the parser) makes it harder to hack on unless you're already pretty familiar with the codebase.

\- Less hostile community -- people have tried to clean up GCC but their patches were rejected (see the RMS email link below)

\- Helps you with standards compliance -- clang will still compile code with compiler-specific extensions but it has an option to output a warning. There are some codebases that have come to rely on these behaviors so clang's warnings can help make sure you don't end up tied to one specific compiler.

\- Personally, I like AddressSanitizer (ASan). It does similar checks as Valgrind, but using compile-time instrumentation -- just pass in an additional flag. Gets rid of a dependency.

<comment><USER9> FWIW, GCC has ASan too. [0] I'm not sure how it compares to the LLVM implementation, I've only tried LLVM's (with good results).

Having said that, I hack on LLVM daily and would not relish having to use GCC to the same effect. LLVM really does shine when used as a library!

[0]: [https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Debugging- Options.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Debugging-Options.html)

<comment><USER10> ASan and UBSan are the same in the two; both the GCC and clang instrumentation shims were contributed by Google, and the resulting instrumentation is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How diverse are the CPU manufacturers for android phones? The major concern when it comes to Clang is that developers will need to buy proprietary plugins to compile open source code that depend on proprietary features, or to have application run in native speed.

<comment><USER12> Requiring a license to use a compiler is straight out of RMS's (now unfortunately prophetic) article "The Right to Read" [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

Majority of Android phones out there are Qualcomm Snapdragon these days, and for the foreseeable future as they just inked an exclusive deal with Samsung. MediaTek SoC was already a proprietary nightmare of unreleased kernels and toolchains except for the leaked MT6589

<comment><USER13> In "The Right to Read", "license" refers to a license from the state, like a driver's license or gun license; not a license from the vendor (a copyright license). Vendors licensing proprietary compilers isn't something that TRR predicted--it was a common practice before GCC became dominant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For someone not following the project, what's the reason for deprecation and switch over to LLVM ?

<comment><USER15> As someone messing with LLVM a lot.. basically LLVM is where a ton of development effort is going. GCC is a dead end it seems like. LLVM is designed to be extended where as GCC.. well, usually doesn't really seem to have been designed.

<comment><USER16> GCC has been designed specifically NOT to be extended.

Richard Stallman reasoned that by exposing an interface to other applications, or allowing other applications to access or modify intermediate code/trees, closed source proprietary applications could be built around GCC.

He was probably right ... but we all ended up with a worse compiler.

<comment><USER17> > worse compiler

Last time I checked gcc binaries beat Clang performance wise.

<comment><USER18> performance is far from the only or most important measure of a compiler

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am pleasantly surprised that so many people have taken the time to read the source code of multiple compilers and have an opinion on why one is better than the other.

</comment><comment><USER20> Speaking of LLVM's "modular" architecture ; LLVM's architecture is so modular that projects like the Rust compiler or Emscripten use their own modified forks of the LLVM tree ...

What's the point in being "modular", if you can't add a backend nor a frontend without having to clone-and-modify the whole LLVM tree? (And what if I want to compile Rust to Javascript? Which of these incompatible LLVM branches should I use?)

<comment><USER21> Rust does work with LLVM releases. In the past it didn't because of various bugs in LLVM, but all blocking bug fixes landed, where "blocking" is defined as those preventing compiler bootstrap. Currently, Rust CI checks for every commit that it bootstraps with LLVM 3.7 branch.

Rust maintains the fork because in the foreseeable future, there will be non- blocking bug fixes and Rust will not follow LLVM trunk to get them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The title is a bit misleading. It is deprecated in the context of that project. Meaning they personally won't support it anymore. It's not deprecated in general as a compiler.

<comment><USER23> Did the title not have "Android NDK:" in it at some point?

<comment><USER24> Pedantic much, but I agree. GCC _support_ is deprecated, not GCC itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps for Android, but I'm hesitant about using Clang for Win64 due to some recent bugs (such as tellg not working correctly).

<comment><USER26> That's probably a bug in libc++, not Clang. They're under the same roof, but different people work on them.

Also, I would mock you for using <iostream> at all but you've probably got legacy code just the same as I do.

<comment><USER27> I'm curious, what's wrong with iostream?

<comment><USER28> How do you internationalize strings built up from multiple string fragments?

<comment><USER29> The same way you'd do it in printf? Stringize data and insert it in the middle of static text? (Pardon my inelegant code, I've been away from C++ and doing Erlang for quite a while now.)

      void printStuff(ostream Os,
       string WarningPart, string SizePart, string EndPart, int Size) {
        //The English version might look like:
        //"Warning: Size too big (200). Get smaller."
        Os << WarningPart << SizePart << Size << EndPart << endl;
      };

I expect that if I thought about the problem for a few minutes (and was unable to find any C++ i18n libraries) I would come up with something _much_ nicer and easier to use than this thing I spent ten seconds working on. :)

<comment><USER30> POSIX printf allows a translator to write a conversion spec like "%1$d" that says _which_ arg to print. This lets you do stuff like put currency before or after the amount depending on what's idiomatic for the locale, without recompiling (if you lookup your format strings at runtime).

<comment><USER29> Sure, but that's l10n, which is a different -but related- thing. :)

printf format strings are well thought-out. I was demonstrating that the same ideas can easily be used with io*stream.

<comment><USER29> For the downvoters: Here's a lib that accomplishes this task that's had a fair bit more than 10 seconds of thought put into it: [0]. Examples [1][2].

:)

[0] [http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/locale/doc/html/in...](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/locale/doc/html/index.html)

[1] [http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/locale/doc/html/he...](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/locale/doc/html/hello_8cpp- example.html)

[2] [http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/locale/doc/html/me...](http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_60_0/libs/locale/doc/html/messages_formatting.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> While for NDK it is deprecated for general use GCC has a bright future.

At least on windows, it is FOSS with a complete SDK for Win64.

Clang requires the Windows/Platform SDK. You cannot really use it without it. You cannot create a distribution without it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Some comments about how GCC could have avoided this made me think that this is a setback for free software, but why isn't this just a rising tide benefiting both free and proprietary software?

The NCSA license explicitly allows sublicensing, so both the GNU project and Microsoft can create derivatives under free and proprietary licenses respectively, for example.

[I am not a lawyer, but this is the reasoning of the accepted answer to a stackexchange question applied to the NCSA license: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105912/can- yo...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105912/can-you-change- code-distributed-under-the-mit-license-and-re-distribute-it-unde)]

</comment><comment><USER33> > Ctrl-C no longer kills the backgrounded gdbserver.

Woohoo!

</comment><comment><USER34> _waits for RMS to get mad_

[https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2014-01/msg00247.html)

<comment><USER35> RMS is nothing if not ideologically consistent. I applaud his goals and perseverance, even if they are not quite the same as mine.

<comment><USER36> He's consistent to a point. He's quite silent about the hardware aspect, even though free software licensed CPU designs have been available for a long while.

<comment><USER37> Designs have been, but have actual chips been?

<comment><USER38> If you have the design, and you have access to FPGAs, I'd say that's got you pretty close already.

Edit: We were talking about CPUs, not complete systems. And yes, the performance would be poor, but RMS has already strongly established that in his book performance is a distant runner-up to free.

<comment><USER36> >By pretty close you mean no where near a usable system then you'd be correct. If you're not a hardware person, as I'm not, I don't think I could go from blank fpga and parts to a working laptop with a keyboard, trackpoint, and lcd screen in any reasonable amount of time, nor with any certainty that it would work and not be error-prone.

The exact same argument can be made about the operating system.

<comment><USER39> I can and have patched bugs in my operating system.

I have no clue where I'd even start to patch a bug in my hardware.

<comment><USER40> If you're lucky it's off-chip and your soldering iron and a very sharp knife will come in handy.

The problem with 'patching' hardware these days (oh, I'm that old) is that most of the time you'll find your problem is located inside a chip, and it isn't the traces are in planes that you can't access (if you're lucky they might run in a spot where you can dremel through and then cut and solder two small wires to the buried trace). Via's don't help either (especially not in layers that start and end under BGAs).

Patching hardware was never easy, but with todays degree of integration of components and SOCs it is harder than ever and frequently downright impossible.

Lots of things have gotten easier since the hole-through era, but hardware fixes aren't one of those.

<comment><USER39> I guess the counterpoint is that there are things you can now fix in microcode that would have previously required messing with the hardware?

<comment><USER40> That depends. Microcode tends to be used in CPUs rather than regular ASICs and not all CPUs have re-writable microcode (though quite a few of them do). So unless you're talking about a CPU the answer is probably 'no'.

You probably have a bigger chance that there is an FPGA on board that you can re-load.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When we tried using clang for Android compiling C++ code half a year ago it caused problems, which disappeared when we switched to GCC.

> If you have problems with Clang, please file bugs!

Filing compiler bugs is really hard with a closed source project.

<comment><USER42> Compiler bugs are usually limited to a single compilation unit and are usually submitted by doing a binary search on a pre processed source file. This is certainly true for closed source as well - just redact the (few) symbol names and create something that will compile to an a.out that demonstrates the problem.

God saves a puppy anytime someone filed a compiler bug with a trivial test case that demonstrates the problem.

<comment><USER43> > God saves a puppy anytime someone filed a compiler bug with a trivial test > case that demonstrates the problem.

The current (r10e) shipping version of clang cannot return 128bit floats from a function.

       #include <iostream>
       int main(int c, char **v) {
           std::stringstream("1.5");
           double x; s >> x;
           return x == 1.5 ? 0 : 1;
       }

EDIT: You don't need "long double" in the above. double (or float) will show the problem. The standard library converts all floating point numbers to long double internally.

<comment><USER8> Ran the program with some slight modifications and couldn't reproduce it

       #include <iostream>
       #include <sstream>
       int main(int c, char **v) {
           std::stringstream s("1.5");
           double x; s >> x;
           return x == 1.5 ? 0 : 1;
       }

Apple LLVM version 7.0.2 (clang-700.1.81) Target: x86_64-apple-darwin15.2.0 Thread model: posix

<comment><USER9> I'd be wary of concluding that "if it works on Apple Clang, it will work on all Clangs". I've seen this to be untrue in multiple cases and the root cause can be found in a multitude of locations. LLVM, Clang, libc (glibc, musl, MSVC, Apple libC,), C++ STL (libstdc++, libc++, MSVC), compiler-rt, platform ABI (Apple ABI's are pretty much SysV, except when they aren't...), and of course the actual version/branch of all of these things. It is certainly a start but unfortunately an over-generalization. :)

<comment><USER44> Just tried it with clang 3.6 on Linux and couldn't reproduce it either.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online Historical Encyclopaedia of Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://hopl.info/home.prx <comment><USER2> This is from 2015? Why are two submissions of the same link from two different users both on the front page? Is it currently being referenced somewhere else?</comment>


World's first 'cyber superweapon' attacks China - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Worlds-first-cyber-superweapon-attacks-China/articleshow/6658468.cms

<comment><USER2> Uh huh. Wait. I thought the worm was, through careful reverse engineering, established to have been released at almost exactly the same time as the Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran began having problems? I thought it targeted specific text segment strings in the PLC programs of nuclear plants? Now it's targeting _millions_ of computers in China?

 _Are there_ millions of PLC setups in China?

People just make stuff up with malware stories. Maybe this is all true, but it's just as likely that none of it is.

"Cyberweapon".

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't post stuff like this to HN. It's ridiculous over hyped garbage of the lowest quality. There's a place for this type of stuff, and HN isn't it.</comment>


Using the Web Audio API to Make a Modem - <AUTHOR> https://martinmelhus.com/web-audio-modem/ <comment><USER2> Having worked on a similar project, my experience is that signal-to-noise is a very challenging problem when you have an air gap. Inevitably, it opens up room for minute errors caused by accoustics. The only "reliable" workarounds I devised were to increase broadcast duration and rebroadcasting the same data with simple checksums.

This was what I came up with: [https://github.com/Ravenstine/airsocket](https://github.com/Ravenstine/airsocket)

Note it's extreme crappiness is due to a combination of my inexperience and also my desire to build as many parts from scratch as possible. The Web Audio API is only used to play audio, but the oscillator and decoding functions were written by me. It barely works. It's probably better to go full Web Audio all the way since I'm sure there's hardware acceleration(particularly with AnalyserNode). The author's method of encoding bytes is also far superior to what I came up with.

I wish such an article was published when I was trying to devise my own audio modem. He does an excellent job going over every step and explaining what's going on. Documentation and tutorials around Web Audio used to be too convoluted, with basic examples too few and far between.

<comment> brian-armstrong I have a WebAudio modem that works reasonably well, and I went a different direction with it. Mine uses a C DSP/SDR library with good error correction, run through emscripten to generate the samples.

You can try it here [https://quiet.github.io/quiet- js](https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js)

<comment><USER2> Actually, I think it was your project that gave me the idea to attempt near- ultrasonic transmission. I could only get to ~15000hz before it would just not work and I never figured out why that was. Maybe there's a flaw in how I used the Goertzel algorithm. (reason I went with Goertzel is because I built it for a previous project and wanted to see how far I could take it)

Is that example page new? That's brilliant. Your ultrasonic transmission seems to work pretty consistently.

<comment><USER3> Someone pointed out low-pass filters to you, but that's not the entire story. Built-in speakers in phones and laptops generally don't have a naturally extended frequency response.

A while ago, I made audio measurements of the built-in speakers on the iPhone 7 Plus - [https://imgur.com/gallery/DRbu5](https://imgur.com/gallery/DRbu5)

The iPhone's extension is not entirely atypical of such devices, and leaves you with a reliable passband of 500 Hz to 10 kHz - above and below those frequencies, you're getting too much noise.

If you're airgapping with audio cables, you'll have a reliable passband of 20 - 20 000 Hz or thereabouts, with some caveats for built-in audio on devices such as a Raspberry Pi that fizzle out at 15 kHz.

As noted by brian-armstrong's comment, you'll only get reliable near- ultrasonic airgapping over a wired connection.

<comment> brian-armstrong This isn't correct, by the way. Quiet's near-ultrasonic mode (~19kHz) works fine from several feet away using phone hardware. As long as you're using relatively narrowband communication, it works fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I created this, so please let me explain myself.

After stumbling over a really cool Web Audio API synthesizer I wanted to play around with the API myself. I used my work situation for inspiration, but I just wanted a fun pet project and didn't really bother to deep dive into the theory of modems. Hence the naive implementation and lack of error correction.

So, do I actually use this at work? Truth be told, I've only ever used it to show of to my collegues. USB-drives are way more practical in every situation where I might want to use this. But the modem is able to provide the tool I set out to make: to copy ascii text between two computers!

Glad to see that you guys liked it!

<comment><USER5> What was the cool synthesizer you found?

<comment><USER4> This one! [https://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/midi- synth/](https://webaudiodemos.appspot.com/midi-synth/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A discussion about the Web Audio API from a couple of weeks ago with the title "I don't know who the Web Audio API is designed for": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15240762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15240762)

I'm still not convinced that this API is actually useful for any application that needs to play sound or music, but it definitely seems to have the "interesting synthesizer experiments" segment covered.

<comment><USER7> [https://inverted3.gitlab.io/drum-machine/](https://inverted3.gitlab.io/drum- machine/) is a working multi channel drum machine using Web Audio.

<comment><USER6> Yes, the API lets you build 1979-style synths out of a toybox of generators and filters. However it lacks support for the most common task in real-world digital audio: computing samples into a buffer and queueing it for playback. (There is ScriptProcessorNode but it's deprecated and performance is not up to audio rendering standards.)

<comment><USER8> >There is ScriptProcessorNode but it's deprecated and performance is not up to audio rendering standards.

On the web, "deprecated" doesn't mean you can't use it. It can take a long time for "officially deprecated by the standards" to become "I can't use it anymore" (obsoleted).

The replacement is the "AudioWorklet" interface and the purpose is to fix those exact synchronization issues. I wouldn't expect ScriptProcessorNode to disappear from the browser until the replacement is actually rolled out.

The Web Audio API started as the Audio Data API in Firefox, which was nothing but a buffer to blast samples into, then the Web Audio API was a refinement/competing standard above that extremely simplistic API (I adapted a Javascript-based .mod player to use AudioData instead of sticking an <audio> tag in the page circa 2011).

You've been able to generate and play back samples in browser (without Flash) for ~6-7 years now, they're simply making official changes to the underlying API in the hopes of improving it. "Deprecated" is just bureaucracy.

<comment><USER9> It's not reasonable to call it a refinement when it removed the central feature of the Audio Data API (feeding samples). Web Audio was a _competing_ API, designed by a former developer of Core Audio (at Apple) once he moved to Google. They shipped it without a standardization process, at which point it became the de-facto audio API for the web.

<comment><USER8> > it removed the central feature of the Audio Data API (feeding samples)

Again, I've written actual code with both. With all due respect, I'm not sure what parallel universe you're from. (Do they spell it Berenstein on your side?)

I can pull up my Github commit from 2014 and look at where I changed my moz- compatible > dynamicAudio.write(modPlayer.getSamples(bufferLength));

to

>var processor = audioContext.createScriptProcessor(bufferSize, 0, 2); > [......] >processor.connect(audioContext.destination);

etc, and it still played sound.

If you're unaware how Amiga .mod/.xm works, it is a REQUIREMENT that you can provide raw samples to the output source, because the samples are embedded into the file.

You can feed samples to the browser and have it play them, right here, right now, just like you've been able to for years. If you don't like the status of ScriptProcessor as deprecated and think AudioWorklet sucks, that's a whole separate issue, but you can feed samples now and you'll STILL be able to feed samples when AudioWorklet obsoletes ScriptProcessor.

>Web Audio was a competing API

I already mentioned it was a competing standard in my comment.

>They shipped it without a standardization process

The Audio Data API was one dude hacking on Firefox (David Humphreys) and then other people got interested. One of the requirements of the standards process is that there are multiple implementations in the wild. You need to throw it in your browser if you want it to ever be standardized.

And they DID standardize it early on. You can go read old copies of the W3C standard submitted by Google.

I was sad to see Mozilla's version go away but browser vendors eventually decided it was the losing implementation - including Mozilla.

Mozilla didn't HAVE to submit to the whims of others, they could have dug in their heels if they thought their version was better (see: The Video tag, and everyone who just so happens to be part of the MPEG-LA patent pool saying no to a patent-unencumbered, open video standard baked in to the browser)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A friend and I once entered a competition to see who could transmit a text message first between two computers using DAQ boards. The judges walked around the room giving every team two wires. By the time they got to us they had run out, so we had to use paperclips. Our implementation did single-bit handshaking. Most of the other teams were trying to use a clock-based solution. Or throughout was super slow, but because our solution was stupid- simple we got it working first and won!

<comment><USER11> Could you elaborate? Did you use something like Morse Code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> coreboot has something similar to provide an early boot console in a device without "simple" output devices, using the PC speaker[0][1]. I doubt many people use it, but it's one of the things that can save the day.

Although in case of "this corporate computer is air gapped", I wonder what corp policies that little project violated.

[0] Sender (highly hardware specific): [https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/coreboot.git/tree/src/drive...](https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/coreboot.git/tree/src/drivers/pc80/pc/spkmodem.c)

[1] Receiver: [https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/coreboot.git/tree/util/spkm...](https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/coreboot.git/tree/util/spkmodem_recv/spkmodem- recv.c)

<comment><USER13> Woah, I had no idea this existed. This is pretty neat!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a cool project.

For others to experiment with, there is also quiet-js that is similar: [https://github.com/quiet/quiet-js](https://github.com/quiet/quiet-js)

<comment> brian-armstrong Ah hey, I made this. I was going to post it but it looks like I don't have to :)

Here's the live demo of it [https://quiet.github.io/quiet- js](https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's cool. I managed to whistle:  00 @€@`@€€@@@€@€€€€@``€€€€€`@@€€@ €€@@€€`€€@€€` `€ €€`

</comment><comment><USER16> While we're talking about Air Gaps, it's probably worth mentioning GSMem (an {x86,} internal bus as a GSM cellular transceiver (modem)); from Wikipedia:

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

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe an "acoustic coupler" of some kind would help? They look so cool, I've always wanted an excuse to use one for something.

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

<comment><USER18> Ah yes..my fond memories of 300 baud and being able to read my program listing as it printed on the teletype or when lucky, video terminal. Thankfully I missed 110 baud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google Tone[1] is a similar work.

1\. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- tone/nnckeh...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google- tone/nnckehldicaciogcbchegobnafnjkcne?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool demo! From the title, I mistakenly thought it might be to make a dial-up compliant modem in JavaScript. But nope, it's a custom toy protocol instead.

The encoder (sound playback) works in Chrome and Firefox, but the decoder (microphone recording) works in Chrome but not Firefox. Also, the encoder/decoder can't handle non-ASCII text; maybe it is only grabbing the low 8 bits of each UTF-16 code unit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Lots of weird anecdotes.

Why is the computer unable to be connected to the internet?

Why are you pasting so much code from stack overflow to visual studio?

Cool implementation - should try ultrasonic...

<comment><USER22> It seems like it was just a story. Like tethering his cell phone would have been a more realistic option also.

<comment><USER23> Guessing some contractual clause that the device not be connected to any other network.

<comment><USER24> So he connected it to another network.

<comment><USER23> One limited to 7 bit ASCII and cut and paste.

<comment><USER25> That's sufficient: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted- printable](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoted-printable)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Would the signal from the headphones need to be boosted to make the connection more reliable?

It might be useful / fun to implement a 2-wire-protocol or other IoT protocol. I'm thinking you should be able to implement up to 2-wire given the R and L channels of the headphones.

</comment><comment><USER27> Also worth checking: minimodem [http://www.whence.com/minimodem/](http://www.whence.com/minimodem/) (and an audio cable if your laptop has a line-in minijack!)

</comment><comment><USER28> All I can think of with this is another way to bridge air gaps but accessible to more people.

</comment><comment><USER29> So did the author manage to successfully load a website using this modem? How did they teach their operating system to use the modem?

</comment><comment><USER30> Can you please add an export function to the encoder? It's a nice way to create electronic music!

</comment><comment><USER23> Very cool. Funny that a Norwegian would settle for an implementation limited to 7 bit ascii though.

<comment><USER23> Er, because many Nordic characters wouldn't pass, if that wasn't clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting security implications for air gapped systems, gotta yank the 3.5mm too!

<comment><USER25> And the bus... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473481)

Good luck patching THAT hole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fun project. But what about an ethernet cable, bluetooth, NFC, wifi,...

<comment><USER25> ...USB drive, USB keyboard HID driven by the laptop, QR code to webcam, CD- ROM, floppy...

<comment><USER33> IP over Avian Carriers

<comment><USER2> For those who didn't know... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Please review re-release of launchly - <AUTHOR>

Full disclosure - nearly two months ago I requested feedback for launchly.  That being said I hope you will still take another look.
Recap:  Launchly is devoted to getting web startups (like the ones that come here with posts like this) the feedback and exposure they need to succeed.  Multiple rounds/iterations of feedback are fully supported and encouraged by the system.  We also track all aspects of new launches and provide powerful analytics to help the site owner(s) focus on what matters - delivering value to their customers.
In the two months since I first released launchly the site has gone through quite a few changes and I'd like to get a feel for what the HN community thinks of the idea/site as it stands now.
Some of the biggest changes are a completely new feedback system with support for screenshots, new category and tag navigation, user profile pages, and by far the biggest of all - a reputation system.
I added the reputation system to try to enhance and encourage the community aspects of the site a-la StackOverflow.  Users build up reputation by providing feedback and voting on launches.  They also earn (or lose) reputation by others voting on their feedback quality.  As your reputation increases so does your influence on the site (votes weighted more heavily, limited admin powers granted, etc.).
Another big change (which necessitated the reputation system) is the addition of a free Basic launch tier.  When I first created launchly I had only planned to have paid plans.  That hasn't worked out in practice, especially not while trying to build up the community, so I added the new free plan.  The free plan leverages the reputation system by requiring users to spend 100 reputation (it's not deducted, just subtracted from what they have available) for a free launch.  100 rep would not take long to earn (4-5 feedbacks + voting) and it hopefully will encourage community participation and keep the spammers at bay.
Anyways, please let me know what you think of the updates and the change in direction launchly has taken.
I'd also love to hear any ideas anyone may have on other possible ways to monetize something like this.  Lets face it, even if I get 100 launches a month (which seems high) and every new site opts to go for a $40 paid plan, that's still only $4,000 in revenue per month.
http://www.launchly.com <comment><USER2> Please don't get offended. It is an excellent idea, but I think it needs a bit of work still. The front page especially. You need to place the screenshots higher and be more succinct with your message. What you want me to do first? Provide feedback? Pay to have some unknowns provide feedback for me? Earn karma? Message is not clear.

People will come to you for two things:

(a) Links, yes unfortunatley

(b) Real reviews

You need to mod submissions. You either narrow it to 'applications' or anything websites go. Based on the former I would not list any web sites selling Bollywood or templates.

Go for freemium, free rating and comments, but have some people who are professional to give a professional assessment and charge for tis perhaps on a 50/50 basis.

Building a community is hard work, but most of the times you need ten or twenty very active members to provide the catalyst for growth.

Ask the same question at <http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/> also. Here we are all HN groupthinkers you may get some different angles (usability, SEO, community) from some really nice people.

Final question to you, would you pay for a review of launchly.com? If yes what would you consider value for money, if not why not!

<comment><AUTHOR> No offense taken. I've got pretty thick skin! Would removal or shrinking of the banner that explains the site move the screenshots up high enough?

I hope that the submissions will be community moderated soon. Downvoting them "enough" will remove them now. The Bollywood/template/static sites are leftovers from before I added the reputation system.

I would certainly pay for feedback on my sites. I have in fact done so with feedbackarmy in the past but was not impressed by the mechanical turks' responses so I made launchly to get real feedback from real people (like we get on HN). I've also used usertesting.com in the past and they were great but aren't really the same thing (although that's one of the upsells I'm planning to add to launchly eventually).

<comment><USER2> I would go for almost complete removal of the banner.

I would pay too for the right feedback and I would have loved to have feedback at earlier stages of a Project as well:) Are we a market large enough? Other concerns: don't turn launchly.com into a consulting service by crowd voting, it has a larger potential. I am sure if it can attract the right people and traffic the money part can follow (think also advertizing from specialists SEO, usability experts, Coders, VC Funds etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I will play around with that. I was/am just worried that w/out something saying "This is what we do" people will show up and go "Uhm... what?" and then leave.

Maybe a smaller tagline on the homepage not in a banner? The other thing is that banner is carried throughout the site design (and used as extra navigation in other areas) so it would be a bit inconsistent without it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clickable link: <http://www.launchly.com>

EDIT: Had a quick poke around. Note, I did not look at your previous iteration. This review reads more as a narrative because I am just flicking between tabs to add comments.

It looks good. I must say my personal taste is a little more minimalist and so I find your site a little busy. At the top there are lots of options to choose from. I wonder if you can't cut down on or combine some of those buttons. Oh, I know what those buttons do now, they filter the list. Was a little un- intuitive for me.

Following on from my previous paragraph, why not get rid of all that text starting "Iterative feedback..." in the middle and just have a separate 'about' page? It takes up space between the list and the filters you can apply. Oh, you do, have a separate about page ("What's a Launch?"). Hmm, you need to update screenshots there. Oh, sorry there is a third description of what Launchly is in the footer when I press 'About Launchly'. Maybe all of these disparate descriptions can be combined?

Hmm, when I hover over vote up/down a pop-up appears which disappears before I can move my mouse pointer back over it. Sometimes I can get it to stay and perform an action - mostly I can't.

Additionally, I may be a little slower in this post-lunch state, but it isn't that clear to me at a glance what the site offers. Can I build a site using your tooling? Why do I need you to launch my creation?

Other question raised in my head: Why, for example, is 'Ask HN' not the best place to get feedback and exposure for my site?

Looking at your pricing - seems a little expensive for me. How can I be assured the reviewers are going to give me good feedback? Could I not better spend my USD 40 independently on specific feedback from my site's targeted usergroup?

On the whole, I like the site, it just feels a little disjointed here and there and the message of what you do is a little lost in the clutter.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate your feedback and thank you for the clickable link.

The banner text is there to try to tell people what the site is about on the landing page. I didn't want them to have to go to another page to figure that out since normally I believe that is considered a bad thing if they HAVE to read an about page. You're right though that the information is a bit disjointed. The "What's a Launch?" link is meant to be more of a feature tour (maybe I should just call it that). The About page is supposed to serve as a standard about page that tells what the idea is, why it's different, etc etc. Is it not common to have both these days?

I have seen the problem with the voting widget before and will look into it, thank you! The pop-up is for category voting, the big up/down arrows are for overall.

To clarify, the site offers a few things:

a) Iterative (multiple rounds) of feedback. The site was basically created because this seemed to be frowned upon on HN. Maybe I won't get boo'd off stage this time since it's been two months in between! b) Analytics. We track a number of specific things pertaining to your launch and then graph them for you to track how your launch is performing over time. c) Exposure. Your launch is actively pushed out to our primary audience (and anyone else watching social media streams). You also get front page attention on our site and depending on your launch's quality you could make the hottest launch or highest rated lists as well. If your app is especially standout (like Guestlist and TweetBlocker) I'll also give it a full review/write-up on the blog.

HN and an "Ask HN" post are great ways to get feedback and exposure for your site but I think we can do better!

1) HN's primary function is not to serve as an app review forum so by using Launchly in addition to HN (all you would have to do is follow on Twitter or RSS, not visit daily like HN), HN can go back to being about... well... Hacker News! I'm not saying review my site posts do not belong here but I think there is room for a dedicated community. 2) Launchly offers analytics that are not offered here and a comment system that is better-suited to feedback (screenshot attachments are just the first improvement, more to come). 3) Many times app launches get lost in the madness that is HN and go without any (or very little) feedback. Sometimes they end up with very little exposure as a result (heavy news day for example). That won't happen on launchly so if you really want feedback, we would be a better option.

At this point in time, Ask HN may still get you more exposure than you get on launchly because of sheer numbers but we're growing and if people start participating in the community soon that won't be the case.

The pricing is still in flux and I'm not sure where it will end up. It's always easier to go down than up though! There is a Basic, free plan as I'm sure you saw. The Plus plan adds guaranteed feedback plus the full suite of analytics. I plan to add further differentiators as the site grows.

I will work on decluttering the site, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting idea!

The home page is neat and clean. One thing I noticed: "Launchly Blog" text in tab on mouseover becomes hard to read (dark font on dark tab). It renders differently than the other tabs, so perhaps it's an oversight.

"Iterative feedback & powerful analytics service for new websites" doesn't quite do it for me as a catch-phrase/title. Maybe something like "Founder roundtable for web-app startups."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I really need to relocate the blog link somewhere else.

I have been playing with the tagline quite a bit and you're right, I don't think I've found one that works quite right yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When clicking through to a site (I looked at Recipe Puppy), You have a Launchly bar at the top while loading the site in a frame. I don't want to get into the debate about loading pages like that, but you do have a broken back button with that bar. I clicked on several links on Recipe Puppy, and the back button was always grayed out (had started in a new window).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, that's not something I've seen happen before. I just tried it on Recipe Puppy and my back button was functioning normally. What browser were you using?

<comment><USER5> Safari 4.0.3 on XP</comment></comment></comment>


PayPal files Bitcoin payment patent - <AUTHOR> http://www.bankingtech.com/502702/paypal-files-bitcoin-payment-patent/ <comment><USER2> I think this is the patent: [http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...](http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=\(bitcoin+AND+paypal\)&OS=bitcoin+AND+paypal&RS=\(bitcoin+AND+paypal\))</comment>


Ask HN: Native Development Proxy for Mac - <AUTHOR>

When developing API-Heavy apps I am using a mix of Charles proxy and Burp Suite to listen on and manipulate HTTP calls. Both do the job very well and are really powerful in my opinion. While not missing anything feature-wise both are Java-Based and seem to negatively affect my System stability, are rather slow and quite resource hogs even on my reasonably powerful machine. I tried to find some native implementation that would let me listen on HTTP from e.g the Browser, Simulator and Devices, let me throttle the connection and manipulate requests / responses but did not have any success. Is anyone here aware of an app that roughly does what I outlined while being not Java based? Price is not so much an issue. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how well this will suit your needs, but there is an alpha of Fiddler for Mac that might work. As far as I know it's run through Mono which isn't fully native so it might not be what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking for the same thing. Anyone knows of a non-java tool?

</comment><comment><USER4> Is mitmproxy something that would work for you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not so much. I really appreciate the ease of use for e.g. Charles. Especially that it is smart about responses like parsing json/showing images etc. I am aware of and know how to use tools like mitmproxy, wireshark tcpdump and the likes but find it to difficult to use them when the networking part is not your primary focus. Would really love an fast and easy gui tool for these matters. Especially since our QA has the same problem and they are usually non-technical so it would not really work for them.</comment></comment>