Gitea: Open source, self-hosted GitHub alternative - <AUTHOR> https://gitea.io/en-US/ <comment><USER2> devops sysadmin here. I started with gitlab about a year ago and can honestly say I wish I had taken gogs/gitea instead. The main problem for me is gitlabs utter dearth of somewhat counterproductive features. Git LFS support is almost a cruel joke in gitlab as git operations under the hood now take inexorably more ram to complete. In turn im rewarded with more traditional RCS programmers asking why git has problems with their newly requested LFS and a 40gb video file they decided to store.

gitlab is also so large it requires its own chef deployment to competently install it from omnibus, and has no HA roadmap in sight unless you want to break apart its rube-goldberg structure and attempt to HA the individual components of it.

Other things like Wiki, local runner CI, pages and integration with a corporate Jira ticket system seem like the excessive demands of programmers without enough skill to understand that there is tangible merit in ablating these systems into separate applications entirely and growing them as needed. gogs and gittea allow you to put the brakes on developers that just want to get the code out the door in order to study and implement competent things like competent CI, blue/green deploys, immutable infrastructure and reproduceable builds that target scalable platforms like Kubernetes instead of one-offs that just reward coders with a merciful standup and the chance to say "its done."

if you use gittea for no other reason, it is also _massively_ less resource hungry than a gitlab installation. im currently throwing 4 cores and 8 gigs of ram at my gitlab install with another 2.3tb of disk and frankly no end in sight. The gitlab rake task for backups has sent oomkiller on a rampage 3 times so far and takes forever. Large installs of 1000 users or more and you'll begin to see why gitlab might not be the best choice. with programmers, the thirst is real...nobody cares about features if the repo wont clone.

<comment><USER3> Pedantic notice: an utter dearth of counterproductive features would seem to be a good thing rather than a problem.

<comment><USER4> I was confused by that, too. I have a problem with the word 'dearth' in that I can often not remember whether it means an abundance or scarcity. So I looked it up, and found that it means scarcity. Perhaps GP makes the same mistake I do and misused dearth to mean abundance?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it means scarcity and the GP used it to mean abundance.

My mnemonic is that "dearth" looks like "death".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quick comparison from GitHub stats and READMEs:

Gogs: 24,564 stars, 602 issues, has a features list. [https://github.com/gogits/gogs](https://github.com/gogits/gogs)

Gitea: 5,971 stars, 733 issues, doesn't have a features list. [https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea)

Gogs features (from README):

        Activity timeline
        SSH and HTTP/HTTPS protocols
        SMTP/LDAP/Reverse proxy authentication
        Reverse proxy with sub-path
        Account/Organization/Repository management
        Add/Remove repository collaborators
        Repository/Organization webhooks (including Slack and Discord)
        Repository Git hooks/deploy keys
        Repository issues, pull requests, wiki and protected branches
        Migrate and mirror repository and its wiki
        Web editor for repository files and wiki
        Jupyter Notebook
        Two-factor authentication
        Gravatar and Federated avatar with custom source
        Mail service
        Administration panel
        Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite3, MSSQL and TiDB (via MySQL protocol)
        Multi-language support (29 languages)

If anything, Gogs seems like a more polished product just by going through the README.

Gitea with all its 2+ maintainers can't take care of that?

It's hard to do a comparison without that list. Are users expected to install and find out?

<comment><USER7> Gitea is a fork of Gogs, so it has everything on that list and more. Sadly Gitea suffers from the usual problem that open source projects has, poor documentation. If you really want to compare feature lists, here's the one listed on their website ([https://docs.gitea.io/en- us/](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/)).

Why compare two products by their README and not their website? Heck, why not compare them by using their test instances that are there for you to try.

<comment><USER8> Gitea does not have every feature that Gogs has.

Gitea has every feature that Gogs had at the point when they forked it, plus a few that they've ported over.

But there are still features that have been in Gogs for over a year now that Gitea does not have.

One example that burned me earlier this year, Gitea's backup/restore feature is still very underdeveloped. Gogs' backup/restore feature has been capable of backing up and switching databases for over a year, while Gitea still can only backup and restore to a database of the same type (e.g. Postgres to Postgres)

<comment><USER9> Is there any hopes of them un-forking? I haven't followed those communities, not sure where such discussions might be happening.

Also, thanks for noting this. I had the mental perception that Gogs had really been fully surpassed by Gitea, and I need to re-evaluate now. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> _> Is there any hopes of them un-forking?_

Doubtful. IIRC it was somewhat of a hostile & opportunistic fork. The Gogs maintainer went on vacation or something and didn't reply to issues for a couple weeks so someone forked to Gitea and declared themselves the new mainline only for the Gogs maintainer to return and not appreciate the attempted usurpation.

<comment><USER11> I think it was more than a couple of weeks. Also before the fork the maintainer was asked multiple times to allow other contributors to become co- maintainer to reduce the bus factor.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like Redmine / ChiliProject from a few years ago: [https://www.chiliproject.org/projects/chiliproject/wiki/Why_...](https://www.chiliproject.org/projects/chiliproject/wiki/Why_Fork) ChiliProject is dead now, but Redmine continues to live on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Gogs for a team of 40 people for over two years. This is the second time I've heard about Gitea, and I know it is a popular fork of Gogs. Can anyone sell me on why it's better than Gogs and why I should switch?

<comment><USER14> Don't switch.

Long story short: Gogs was slow in committing pull requests. The maintainer says it's because he has specific standards, the community sees it as just slowness. Anyway Gogs was forked into a new version that is supposed to be more active and well maintained.

Well the forking lit a fire under the ass of the Gogs maintainer and he has since become much more active than he was. For a month there there was reason to switch to Gitea as it was adding features that Gogs did not have at a rapid pace, but Gogs is now mostly caught up and there is reason to prefer it. I personally would go with Gogs. 1 passionate person > design by committee of people with shared low responsibility.

<comment><USER15> +1. About two years ago I switched to gitea but then switched back. gogs has (had?) slightly less features but seemed more polished. No issues since then, I'm glad to run again the original.

<comment><USER16> A quick question, how simple is it to switch from one to the other? Do you need to ditch all of the metadata each time? (pull requests, issues, users, etc).

<comment><USER15> (can only tell my past situation, don't know how it is in general and today)

From gogs to gitea all metadata has been taken over (db was identical then). -- For gitea to gogs I read that the two projects have diverted. As I could afford to loose metadata of my not too many projects, I went back to gogs ditching and recreating everything (wrong switching decisions should be punished, don't they;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That was a painless installation. Seriously, this is something to immitate if you mean for your self-hosted application to be widely used.

If only other self-hosted/distributed projects were this easy to install. I skiped on discourse, mastodon, gitlab, etc. because they were all pain to setup on a base linux system.

<comment><USER18> Very like Gogs.

I'm not a fan of Go, but it does lead people into some right decisions, that Ruby and Python lead them away from.

Anyway, the problems start when you want to be sure it's running all the time your server is on, and on integrating it with your other web applications. Still, it's strictly better than interpreted environments.

<comment><USER19> > I'm not a fan of Go, but it does lead people into some right decisions, that > Ruby and Python lead them away from.

If languages are making decisions for you, you aren't engineering software.

<comment><USER20> If you don't think the tools we use shape the abstractions and solutions we pick, then I don't think you've reflected much on the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something have not been mentioned at all, Gitea still got support for OAuth2 which have been simply dropped by Gogs because "nobody needs that".

Beside that Gitea still got more really useful features compared to Gogs. But Gitea will always focus on Git hosting and won't bundle with CI, Chat and all that stuff what Gitlab does. There are enough tools you can easily connect to get features that Gitlab got, only if you need it.

</comment><comment><USER22> For those curious, I'm a sysadmin, and I used Gitea to deploy a Git server for a very small project with just 8 users.

It was a lot simpler than setting up a full blown Gitlab instance. It is just one binary to get running and that's it.

The 8 users are instantly familiar with the interface because of its similarity to GitHub.

We even have other users who are not contributors read the source through Gitea interface, rather than cloning the repos and reading locally.

It's a pleasant experience for small scale needs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any fundamental reason why no tool offers a federated alternative to GitHub? I mean, the distributed nature of git is ripe for federation, but why aren't issues, releases and pull requests federated?

Maybe even some deeper integration with git itself, such as seeing new remotes on federated servers and fetching them.

This may sound redundant to GitHub, which currently centralizes everything, but different projects and companies have their reasons to not use a single external tool for this. As an example, CERN's Open Hardware Repository ([https://www.ohwr.org/](https://www.ohwr.org/)) would be a perfect fit for this, and other laboratories and companies could integrate with them.

<comment><USER21> There are multiple tracking issues on the gitea tracker for federated features, so hopefully gitea will provide features like that.

<comment><USER23> Could you please point me to them? Mostly for curiosity, and maybe add my two cents, as someone who constantly feels this need in a specific community.

<comment><USER21> [https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612](https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/1612) [https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/1299](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1299) [https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/184](https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/184)

These issues and some others pop up if you search for federated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been using Gitea, previously using Gogs, for a team of 45 and have had a very pleasant experience. Getting it up and running with docker* was smooth and it works easily with Certbot.

Definitely a great option for a GitHub alternative where you aren't looking for a feature-packed, i.e. large, deployment like Gitlab. It's simple and clearly delineated in its functionality.

However, it does suffer from a lack of good documentation - but I could just look at Gogs' documentation if needed since they're practically identical.

* [https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/install-with-docker/](https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/install-with-docker/)

<comment><USER21> Please provide constructive feedback on the docs issue tracker, or even better create pull requests to improve the documentation.

Everything including the website, documentation, blog, Hugo theme and so on is public available and also opensource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been running Gitea for a long while now, basically since the fork occured. It's mostly me with some other small users for course work.

It's a very pleasant and lightweight alternative to Github that I can only seriously recommend to anyone considering hosting their own Git Server. Recent update even brought mentions and reactions from Github over.

(Setup Github OAuth for easy onboarding)

<comment><USER26> > Recent update even brought mentions and reactions from Github over

What does this mean? Mentions as GitHub has it or that you can mention GitHub users in Gitea and vice-versa?

<comment><USER21> It just means Gitea now also got the emoji reactions like Github already got.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So I keep a few GB of source online via CVS [http://unix.superglobalmegacorp.com/](http://unix.superglobalmegacorp.com/) , and I have been shying away from git anything as I did a gitlab install for someone and was amazed at how much hardware I had to throw at it, unlike CVS+CVSWeb.

Although just seeing how trivial it was to deploy now I'm thinking about maybe running this in parallel at least. I still like being able to use CVS from ancient machines... But this does look nice. I guess time to look at cvs2git.

<comment><USER28> Just curious - why would you not use GitHub, just for the sheer community?

Your code is already public.

<comment><USER29> Because self-hosting is fun, a little bit challenging (and rewarding), you get to show off your ability to maintain a setup, it gives you independence and control. Also RMS would disapprove of using a service running on non-free code.

<comment><USER27> Indeed it is. Plus I don't have to fight with other people if they don't like something about me or what I'm doing, I'm on my own, in my own little world.

I originally setup the CVSweb thing to let google crawl the pages, so instead of building a search service they would do it for me, which has worked surprisingly well. Although with all the other search engines around it does get a fair amount of traffic.

It strikes me as incredibly strange that we now have Linux and *BSD, this entire built up idea of taking power away from few hands like AT&T, or the various VAR's, moving away from Microsoft, and yet everyone is expected to throw everything they have into the hands of some other corporation to house their source code of all things... Having worked with [http://www.oldlinux.org/](http://www.oldlinux.org/) trying to hunt down 20 year old 'open source' projects which many have been lost, because of the same mistake of trusting 3rd parties who don't care, the amount of stuff that is going to be lost in the next 'I can't believe we are going to have another .com crash' is going to be incredible. And of course it'll seem like a trivial amount of space, just as something like 4.2BSD full source fits into 20MB, and yet could have easily been lost if it weren't for SIMH interest would have been completely lost.

I'm more impressed with sourceforge, as it's been around for quite some time, offers far more services than github, and survived their prior owners stupidity of trying to inject spyware into downloads.

Oh well, I guess that is my old man rant, don't rely on one thing, spread the software, don't let it sit on an apathetic 3rd party company who isn't even close to being able to operate without angel funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I might be the only one here, but I wish Gitlab had stayed on providing the best git / issues solution instead of bloating it further and further into CI/CD and more. After all, Gitlab started as an open source alternative to github and that's what I really wish for and while I understand how Gitlab needs to differentiate itself from Github, the direction is causing some of the issues. My two cents...

<comment><USER31> I agree, I've been using Gitlab and it has been very unreliable. It has become too bloated.

<comment><USER32> Any specific issues you're running into? We'd love to improve any way we can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would like to see a full-fledged docker installer something to the effect of the discourse installer that I can put on something like digital ocean or my own machine, handles https in an opinionated way (let's encrypt), and integrates with popular email services like sendgrid or mailgun (with generous free tiers).

<comment><USER34> Why though? It's a single binary.

<comment><USER35> You need to docker those dockers to make it docker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Currently for private repos I just have a dedicated account on my vps that uses git-shell with a few scripts for creating and listing repos. I've scaled it to include a few friends using Linux groups for shared access.

Might look at switching to this though as it looks quite a bit more featureful but still simple to maintain

<comment><USER6> If that's the case, you might as well have a look at gitolite: [https://lobotuerto.com/blog/how-to-setup-your-own-private- gi...](https://lobotuerto.com/blog/how-to-setup-your-own-private-git- repositories-with-gitolite/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I played around with the test instance of this on their website. It is very impressive. It seems to have the 90% of features that most people use github for, and it hosted easily. Certainly worth a look in my next startup when considering whether we want to self host our own codebase.

<comment><USER38> what was amongst the 10% you thought missing?

<comment><USER39> For one thing, the ability to search (code or issues).

<comment><USER21> Gitea got code and issue search, the code search just needs to be enabled within the config because the indexing process takes up more resources, that's why it's disabled by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> OSGeo dot org is using Gitea, with superpowers by Sandro Santelli (strk). It's great ! popular and lightweight, does much and asks little. The graphic design is familiar and so are the functions, since it obviously originated as a clone of another G-site you may know.

the admin wiki page is here [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Gitea](http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Gitea)

</comment><comment><USER28> There's also gitbucket. Single jar file to run - written in Scala.

[https://gitbucket.github.io](https://gitbucket.github.io)

<comment><USER21> If you like to run java services you could do that...

<comment><USER28> You don't need to run Java services.

Running gitbucket is simply "Java -jar gitbucket.jar"

JVM performance is pretty much world-class (and has been for many years). Golang and JVM compete neck to neck at top of the performance charts. Remember that startup performance is not what Java optimised for - it's long running processes like any web server or api.

And I'm far more excited by Graal than any programming language breakthrough over the past few years ( [https://youtu.be/_7yIUkP5LiQ](https://youtu.be/_7yIUkP5LiQ))

<comment><USER21> Ok, let me rephrase that, if you like to run the JVM do it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Does it manage issues, pull requests, etc modeled in a distributed way? I was always dumbfounded as to why you'd take a great distributed collaboration tool like Git and then centralize it around issues, pull requests, comments, etc.

To me all of those things should be Git objects as well either tracked inside the same repo on another branch or something or tracked in a parallel Git repo.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm not a user of LFS, but I use phabricator and I find that it meets all my needs even on slower hardware, and it's pretty simple to debug. Has all your typical LAMP stack debuging techniques and when it breaks, it's pretty straight forward what needs to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER43> For certain types of organisations, especially those with dealing with more in-house projects Phabricator is really worth a look:

[https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/](https://www.phacility.com/phabricator/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Gitea will get much more recognition for their great efforts once they are self-hosted.

[https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1029](https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/1029)

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't say that directly, maybe it gains more trust because it's serving on their own code, but maybe this could also decrease the contributions because the people got to authenticate on just another system to contribute something.

We will see how well this works out, most required features are already there, the remaining will follow soonish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Gitea is awesome. I have been using it for few months and it doesn't need a lot of RAM.

</comment><comment><USER46> yes I recommended gitea at HN about one year ago, light-weight and great for self-hosting, good enough for probably 80% of the use cases for most people.

I put it on a $5 VPS to host all my personal projects, works great. At the moment I ssh-port-forwarding to access its UI as I'm not sure how secure it is if exposed to the public directly.

The only feature I want to have now is something like : [https://pages.github.com/](https://pages.github.com/), i.e. a static html site behind gitea login, so I can host all my project-related documents for easy access, not really a wiki fan as wiki is painful to navigate sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER47> What are the benefits and use cases for hosting your own over just using github/gitlab/bitbucket even google cloud and aws offer options too?

<comment><USER21> There are enough people and companies that don't trust these american companies, or they are forced to keep code within there network... Not everybody wants to give his stuff into the hands of others ;)

<comment><USER48> The price can be of concern for smaller private projects or startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I like open source self-hosted alternatives to everything, though some headhunters, for those looking for work, may either ask for your github link or figure it out themselves in order to further size you up, one possible utility specific to github.

<comment><USER50> Don't count on your Github account for recruitment. I've a decent number of personal projects on Github, some of them actually used by other people. But I can count on the finger of one hand the number of times I was contacted by someone saying "hey, I've looked at your Github account, you seem like a decent developer, would you want to work with us?"

However I prefer to put stuff on Github because it's the go to place for OSS projects right now. If you are publicly releasing a project, it's with the hope it will be actually useful to other people, putting it on Github increases the visibility of said project and the likelihood of it being useful to other people.

<comment><USER51> > But I can count on the finger of one hand the number of times I was > contacted by someone

Different strokes for different folks. I usually fill the fingers on one hand counting the folks reaching out each week. Rarely are they interesting (like a lot of my stuff on GitHub) positions, but still tons of unsolicited offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Open source software tends to be plauged by UX, css, design, spacing/padding/margin & typeface issues which makes it somewhat grating to use, which I mention after browsing around the the gitea test instance for a bit.

<comment><USER21> Maybe this is the case because free projects not backed by a company can't pay a professional frontend engineer :)

<comment><USER38> Is it harder to pay a professional frontend engineer than to pay anyone else?

<comment><USER21> At least for Gogs and Gitea nobody gets payed at all, same for lots of other opensource projects. So of course it's hard to pay some frontend engineer if none contributes to the project :)

<comment><USER38> It's harder to get a frontend engineer to contribute, than the other engineers who do?

<comment><USER21> Seems like that, the number of developers is always growing, but AFAIK none of them is a frontend engineer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Where is this self-hosted GitHub alternative itself?

According to [https://gitea.io/en-US/](https://gitea.io/en-US/):

> _It's all on GitHub_

accompanied by an invitation to join the development there.

<comment><USER21> As you can see on [https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/1029](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1029) and on another comment here it's still in the works to host gitea development on gitea instead of github.

But nobody in the team wants to do the switch if not all features are available that we rely on today at github.

<comment><USER54> That's the beauty of git, it's just a server you push and pull files from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Just for see how it compares feature wise with others: [https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/](https://docs.gitea.io/en- us/comparison/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Was trying to figure out why it looked almost identical to Gogs, until I read it was a fork.

So, what does this give me over using the main Gogs? I see it is managed differently, but what features does it offer that are not in Gogs?

<comment><USER6> Precisely, have a look at this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17006848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17006848)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Just started trying out Gogs. How come Gitea felt the need to fork it?

<comment><USER34> The owner of the Gogs repo doesn't accept pull requests that won't fit his roadmap or quality standards, he is also not the most responsive during times this is why some people created Gitea. I am still using Gogs personally.

<comment><USER58> > or quality standards

You say that like it's a bad thing.

<comment><USER59> I don't read it that way. How do you get that impression?

<comment><USER58> > The owner of the Gogs repo doesn't accept pull requests that won't fit his > roadmap or quality standards, he is also not the most responsive during > times this is why some people created Gitea. I am still using Gogs > personally.

Let's break it down:

> The owner of the Gogs repo doesn't accept pull requests that won't fit his > roadmap

That generally sounds bad. Like, in an ideal world, you would be open to changing your roadmap. Specifically the timing, for sure. Also, you would be open to accommodating features you hadn't thought of, etc.

So, this sounds like a negative, basically.

> or quality standards,

Starting with a negative, continuing with just an "or" makes it sound like you're about to list another negative.

I'd expect a "but" or a "but thankfully," or something.

> he is also not the most responsive during times this

This is absolutely a negative.

He doesn't bad thing, or xxx, he is also bad thing.

Reading that sentence structure makes "xxx" sound like another bad thing.

<comment><USER34> You shouldn't try to interpret my words too much. I am not a native speaker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I feel like the vendor lock-in will prevent most from ever leaving github, specifically things like the deployments api and other api interactions via webhooks (into PRs for example)...

</comment><comment><USER61> "Gitea: Open source, self-hosted GitHub alternative" -> which seems to use GitHub itself. Not encouraging that they don't eat their own dogfood.

</comment><comment><USER62> Someone needs to make a _simple_ git interface, have a post commit hook generate a partial and let a client side interface simply pull relevant partials.

</comment><comment><USER63> Another good alternative to Gitea is Fossil if you're looking for a lightweight single exe SCM.

<comment><USER64> uuh, fossil isn't an alternative to Gitea. Its an alternative to Git with extended functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> So this is a GitHub alternative … whose source is hosted in GitHub? Instills so much confidence.

<comment><USER8> Honestly it makes a lot of sense. Gogs/Gitea are developed and shared for people to be able to host their own Git instances.

GitHub is free for public repositories and has huge engineering teams dedicated to uptime, security, and availability.

At the very least for Gitea/Gogs to self-host the code they'd have to pay for hosting costs that GitHub is already willing to provide for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> How does this compare to GitLab?

<comment><USER67> I was also wondering this, plus kind of expecting it to be hosted on gitea. Being hosted on github lowers my confidence.

<comment><USER68> Gitea has a TODO list for hosting Gitea on Gitea. See [https://github.com/go- gitea/gitea/issues/1029](https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1029)

<comment><USER67> Thanks for pointing it out - I didn't go through the issues before posting.

Most compilers I'm aware of gets compiled by themselves. I think it's great for two things:

1) Show how serious the compiler is - compiler code tends to be complicated 2) Free real life testing

I was expecting Gitea to be hosted on Gitea for the same reasons. Was trying to offer criticism but got downvoted immediately, ahh HN =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> By looking at README and the original Gogs project, it looks like these projects are gaining some attention in China. It is quite interesting for me when these are written in Go which is Google's proejct blocked by the Chinese government.

<comment><USER21> Go is used a lot in China. And even the initial author of Gogs and the guy who initialized the fork are Chinese :).

<comment><USER69> Wow. I'm wondering why it is popular in China. There should be something other than resistance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> What's the value add of this over GitLab?

<comment><USER71> We used to use Gitea, compare to Gitlab:

\- uses less resources, a 512MB VM is enough for a small team. Meanwhile Gitlab requires at least 4GB IIRC. \- is easier to setup, just a single binary file.

Everything else, it can't compete with Gitlab.

I'm using it as my personal Git server, works pefectly for 1 user.

<comment><USER50> I have a gogs installation. One of the main thing I was it for is to synchronize (and backup) my github repositories.

Gogs is able to sync an external git repo every 12 or 24 hours.

That way, if one day, Github goes belly-up, even if it's unlikely in the foreseeable future, I would have a backup plan.

I also use it for personal and not public projects (automation scripts, secrets, etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> How do I pronounce it when introducing it to co-workers, Git-tea or Gityea?

<comment><USER73> Gi-tea or Git-tea seem right, considering the logo is a cup of tea.

<comment><USER74> It's a pun. It's written in go, and the project is gitea, so go-gitea (go get tea).</comment></comment></comment>


"Fog Cannon" fills a room to prevent burglary - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stZagRGFl10&NR=1

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking anyone who knows about this would interpret it as an easy way to hide what you stole for longer (cameras can't see what you're doing once it's fogged). For a store that size, it'd still be easy to nab enough stuff to make it worthwhile, but you're on camera for less time.

Still, quite interesting. And that's an impressive output, I'd love to have one for halloween :D

("dissapear"? Is this an official vid? If so, that's shameful.)

<comment><USER3> Well, this would be true if the burglar wasn't worried about the police showing up. But if he thinks the police are going to be there in 5 mins, and he hasn't already cased the place real good, he is probably going to have a hard time stealing the good stuff. If the fog is thick enough he won't be able to read labels.

As far as being on camera, having a HD video at the entrance of the store (that records as the thief enters) is better than a lot of low quality video of robbing. So you could make up for the fog affecting the recording of the theft.

That said, if he cases the place well enough, and knows how long it takes for the police to show up, the fog may not prevent the thief from getting away with expensive items.

<comment><USER4> Proper smoke cloak systems are combined with a strobe light that is completely disorienting. The strobe seems to come from everywhere - I've been in a room with one going, even the shop owner would have difficulty finding their way out.

It really "isn't worth it"

<comment><USER2> That would _really_ work, hadn't thought of adding a strobe. If you don't close your eyes _immediately_ , before moving at all, you'd easily lose track of where you are. Strobes would also get nearby people's attention, possibly _better_ than an alarm.

That said, this video didn't seem to imply a strobe was included / recommended.

<comment><USER5> _Strobes would also get nearby people's attention, possibly better than an alarm._

Then just add some loud techno music...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Schneier has a post on the topic: [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/security_fog.h...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/security_fog.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> "Fog Cannon" fills a room to prevent rescue of collapsed heart-attack victim.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nothing like trapping a desperate and potentiality armed criminal inside a shop, scared and confused.

Those two policemen had some balls to go in there, even with guns out.

(Extra points if the crook chokes a bit and then sues the shop owner)

<comment><USER4> It is corn oil, like a nightclub. The trick is a large 300 deg heated plate in the emitter.

<comment><USER8> Apparently these things are getting standardized:

"BS EN 50131-8:2009" Alarm systems. Intrusion and hold-up systems. Security fog device/systems

And are supposed to be installed in a way that prevents "man traps".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An interesting idea, but in this video it just spooked the burglar enough to send them running. How much of an effect would there be if they decided to just grab some things and feel their way out.

I suppose it would limit the time someone could feasibly spend stealing, and it does seem to make profitable reentry difficult. But I suspect the video overstates the benefits.

<comment><USER10> Exactly... The only reason this "worked" is because it's a pretty basic instinct that when you're somewhere you shouldn't be, and doing something you shouldn't be doing, anything unexpected is a reason to get the hell out.

Loud bells and flashing lights would have been just as effective.

<comment><USER11> The fog is completely opaque. It effectively blinds the burglar. They are not in a familiar space; their only option is to flee or be caught. The fog is very fast; they cannot steal much in 15 seconds; they certainly cannot clean the place out.

So panic is only a bonus; its totally unnecessary for the fog to be an effective countermeasure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> great idea

but also needs to deploy tentacles and scary sound effects

</comment><comment><USER13> "Later, the police arrived to secure the area, inadvertently setting off the Spike Trap (TM)."

</comment><comment><USER14> This stuff's been in England at least for at least 5 years, the actual non- trademarked name for these is a smoke cloak. The last two companies I worked for had it. Funny when it goes off accidentally.

<comment><USER15> An inventor's club I have known about, tried to work out a version of this against bicycle-theft. As far as I know the idea never worked out (and seems kind of silly for moving objects).

<comment><USER16> Yeah, besides if somebody stole my bike I would want them to get a sharp electric shock, not fill half the area with smoke.

<comment><USER15> Get a sharp electric shock, fall over and insure themselves? Might be grounds to sue you, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The burglar probably thought it was some sleep agent, or worse, poison gas.

<comment><USER2> The burglar has seen too many movies.

<comment><USER18> "Terminator" is a prime example of such a movie. I was once invited by an artsy/musician friend to her new house in a very seedy part of town. Just after I parked, I heard some altercation across the street. Some big guy was yelling in a window. I saw a red light play over his chest, and then he _ran_. I've never seen anyone accelerate so fast outside of a broadcast of the Olympics. I seem to recall that the US military was using this trick wither in Somalia or Iraq -- just playing laser sights over marauders to scare them off -- but that stopped working and they had to actually shoot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "I failed to steal anything, slipped over and banged my head on the way out. I don't mind though - I've sued the company for thousands of dollars... far more lucrative than a few boxes of Marlboro!"

<comment><USER16> Only if the shop owner was in America.

Pretty much anywhere else, he would have been laughed out of court.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Clever but I don't see it catching on in the U.S. Looks like a potential lawsuit coming from burglars injured on the job. And if he can't get out, it's a mantrap, which I believe is illegal.

<comment><USER21> From what I can tell, man-traps are only illegal in the US if they use deadly force.

<comment><USER18> I work in the US. At my last workplace, the datacenter levels had booths called "man-traps" as their entryway. You enter the booth on one side, then swipe your card to authenticate. Then the door opens on the other side. If you can't authenticate, you stay inside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Here's another fog cannon security video that proved effective. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK083niNAmY>

</comment><comment><USER23> That's terribly clever.

<comment><USER24> it depends, it would certainly act as a deterrent for first time thieves/incompetent crooks or until the system become commonplace. But as soon as some guys work out how to operate despite it, it starts to work to their advantage. The cameras become useless, and the police can't enter the premises until the smoke subsides. Clever crooks might be able to use that time to sneak out uncovered exits, or to even get into ambush positions for police who may be expecting the place to be empty. (of course they shouldn't).

I guess time and youtube videos will tell.

<comment><USER25> Just use heat vision camera.

<comment><USER26> Only if you're trying to rob a pet store

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> the company that is the strongest in the US flashfog. they were the ones who made standard the whole strobe light thing. watch the NBC video feature; [http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local-beat/Smothering-Crime- With-...](http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local-beat/Smothering-Crime-With- Security-Fog-89302787.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Once burglars figure out what it is, they will use it to their advantage.

</comment><comment><USER27> their web <http://www.flashfogsecurity.com>

<comment><USER29> The procedure for police responding to one of these is to just secure the perimeter and wait for the stuff to clear before going in. I've heard they can also send in a K-9 unit and the dogs will find anyone in the building. As well, PIR sensors should be able to detect movement inside the building as most of them are thermal.

As for the security cameras, great idea for having the HD one at the outside or on the entrance. I for one am not a big believer in cameras as i know a couple of police officers and they say if the crook is half minded, and covers their face and wears baggy clothes, its almost impossible to get a description from a camera. Besides how many stories on the news do you hear of these idiots getting caught from an identification off a security camera? It would be interesting to see stats on that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anybody know what the sound track is from? They picked some pretty cool background.

<comment><USER31> I was half-trying to recognize the music myself (almost second nature by now), but it really sounds like Generic Presentation Background Music. Not quite elevator-territory, but nevertheless, musical equivalent of a stock photo of <insert presentation cliché here>.</comment></comment>


Living With Voices - <AUTHOR> http://theamericanscholar.org/living-with-voices/

<comment><USER2> What a great article. It's disappointing that there isn't more information on their website though. The article doesn't really go into any detail on how they see this therapy fitting together with other therapies, or why they think that it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> I noticed another couple issues with the article. One, it doesn't mention the long psychotherapeutic tradition that this movement is clearly part of. Jung, Milton Erickson and R.D. Laing are three prominent examples and there are many more.

The other issue is a bias toward childhood sexual abuse as the universal(ish) trauma that hypothetically leads to dissociation and thence to voices. It's not clear how much that is just the article's emphasis vs. the actual movement's bias, but if the latter, it is a gigantic and dangerous red herring. Not because sexual abuse of children doesn't happen or isn't traumatic (of course it does and is), but because the desire to seek it out as a hidden cause for therapeutic purposes is what led to the repressed-memory fiasco of the 80s and 90s. Once people have that preconception about the cause of trauma, they will invent imaginary abuse experiences because they believe finding them is the key to their healing. We've been down that road and it harmed a lot of people.

More importantly, it misconstrues the therapeutic process. Factual research to dig up historical causes is not the point (besides being basically impossible). You can establish causes of trauma till the cows come home and it doesn't cure people. This was Erickson's objection to Freud. What heals is integrating experience now. You don't need factual causes to do that. It's a distraction to take therapeutic experiences literally. Their truth is emotional, not factual, and to approach them with preconceptions blocks the process.

Those objections aside, I thought the article was really exciting – an oasis of sanity. We need a great deal more such humane ways of working.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to learn to become web developer? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Very similar questions asked twice already by the same user in the last two weeks. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18672964](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18672964) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18761884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18761884) Best to add what you've already researched and tried.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://typicalprogrammer.com/things-you-need-to-know-to- do-w...](http://typicalprogrammer.com/things-you-need-to-know-to-do-web- development)

</comment><comment><USER4> Web development.</comment>


Apple ResearchKit on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://researchkit.github.io/index.html <comment><USER2> Here's a link to the current project's source if anyone is interested: [https://github.com/researchkit](https://github.com/researchkit)

Love that Apple is going open-source, and hopefully they do this for more of their code (pssssttt...Swift)

<comment><USER3> EDIT (To Clarify) Warning I am Strongly Anti-Apple Bias:

Apple has a fairly decent Open Source history.

[http://www.opensource.apple.com](http://www.opensource.apple.com)

There is things to complain about but there are more I am concerned with in regards to Open Source (Oracle).

EDIT: I don't like Apple's products or the way the conduct business BUT I think they have done more good for Open Source than bad.

<comment><USER4> I can sense some Strong Anti-Oracle Bias here.

Oracle is one of the major contributor to open source, see the lineup here, chances are you're using some of them: [https://oss.oracle.com/](https://oss.oracle.com/) starts with Java

<comment><USER5> Java, is it the thing they used to sue on API copyright? Good demonstration of how to mess with "open-source" IMO.

If you remove what they got from Sun, what reminds?

<comment><USER6> Sun would have sued Google if they had the money for the lawyers[0].

Initially I was partnering with Google, but now I side with Oracle's decision, as it is now proven how Google just pulled a Microsoft and fragmented the Java eco-system.

Now we are stuck with partial Java 7 assuming 4.4 devices, good luck using try-with resources in lower versions and no plan for future versions as of the Android Developers Fireside at Google IO 2014.

The Android team seems more interested in porting the whole Eclipse/Ant infrastructure, building more Google APIs or making Android run everywhere instead of improving the language support.

[0] [http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/my_attitude_on_oracle...](http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/my_attitude_on_oracle_v#comments)

<comment><USER3> Actually another post on Sun wouldn't have sued. Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz testified on behave of Google. He even blogged a congratulations to Google for releasing Android running Java. [http://web.archive.org/web/20101023072550/http://blogs.sun.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20101023072550/http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/congratulations_google)

[http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/26/2977858/former-sun-ceo- jon...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/26/2977858/former-sun-ceo-jonathan- schwartz-testifies-for-google-oracle-trial)

<comment><USER6> If you have bothered to read what Gosling had to say about it:

"Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun."

<comment><USER4> \+ I trust Gosling's word over anyone else Sun CEO or folks here talking on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While it's wonderful they did this, as a short rant:

I hate when companies just feel the urge to add a random sentence or two to an existing license, particularly in cases like these:

"3\. Neither the name of the copyright holder(s) nor the names of any contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. No license is granted to the trademarks of the copyright holders even if such marks are included in this software."

The first sentence is BSD, they added the second sentence. The problem with this is a few-fold.

Either this clause is needed _for the entire world_ (since BSD is used for trademark'd software all the time), or it's _not needed at all_.

It turns out, in fact, arguments over trademark inclusion due to OSS licensing has been made before, and nobody has ever won on this before[1] So other than some lawyer just "not being satisfied unless they added stuff to the license", all this does is make a gratuitously different license that

A. can't be merged with other licenses (since it requires you reproduce _this_ condition text, and _this_ condition text is not the same anymore as the other ones)

B. Isn't actually the BSD license, and was deliberately changed, so ends up worse in court since now the other side can reasonably argue that the same precedent should't apply.

C. Makes analyzing compatibility with other licenses more difficult and annoying.

[1] Since they are very clearly licenses about the software work, not trademarks, and you can't stop someone from saying "this uses apple's researchkit" regardless of what trademarks you have or what you write in this license, anyway.

<comment><USER8> > No license is granted to the trademarks of the copyright holders even if > such marks are included in this software.

This line was probably required to get some manager at Apple to sign off on this. There are few companies as protective of their trademarks--their _name_ --as Apple, and they probably wanted to make sure that an accidental commit from a developer that included an Apple logo or the word 'iPhone' didn't cause irreparable damage to their trademark.

Valid fear? That's debatable. But I'd rather have a company add _one line_ to an already minimal license than not open source at all out of this fear.

<comment><USER7> "This line was probably required to get some manager at Apple to sign off on this." I agree here :)

"Apple logo or the word 'iPhone' didn't cause irreparable damage to their trademark."

As I said, this is a problem either no company who uses the BSD license has or all of them have it.

"But I'd rather have a company add _one line_ to an already minimal license than not open source at all out of this fear."

I don't agree here at all. Because this is how we ended up with the mess that caused things like open source license certification by OSI to exist in the first place.

Random companies would add random one-liners to licenses, like "don't use in nuclear reactors", etc.

Down this path is madness, and it starts with good intentions.

<comment><USER9> It's probably a problem all of them have. Apple is just the only company that cares enough to make a big deal about it in advance, rather than imagining that they'll just let things slide for now and argue post-facto in some later court case that the license should be read as not granting trademarks.

In other words, this isn't like the nuclear reactors bit—this is something that could actually belong in the BSD license, and where when merging BSD- licensed software with Apple!BSD-licensed software, probably the Apple!BSD would keep winning, and the trait would end up at fixation, rather than "speciating" the license.

<comment><USER7> 1\. I strongly disagree with the idea that they are the only ones who would consider it a large deal enough to do something if it was a real fear. It's somewhat ridiculous to believe that, say, Google or Facebook, wouldn't do the same if they thought it was a concern.

2\. The part about "having to argue post-facto" would be a valid line of argument if, as i pointed out, there wasn't already plenty of precedent that shows their fear is completely and utterly unwarranted.

In fact, i doubt they could even cite a single time a judge even considered this a non-crazy argument.

In other words, this in fact, is exactly like the nuclear reactors bit. It doesn't actually belong in the license, because if was a real concern:

A. There would be at least some case somewhere that concerneed folks.

B. After 20+ years of BSD licenses, it'd _already be there_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not an Apple fan but this is very professionally done, it reminds me of the work an Orthopedic Sureon had me do for him years ago when I see the layout: [http://researchkit.github.io/docs/docs/Overview/GuideOvervie...](http://researchkit.github.io/docs/docs/Overview/GuideOverview.html)

The flow is consistent, step 1, step 2, etc.

Something else that Apple makes I'm a fan of, CUPS Printing. It's also very professionally done. If we could only convince Apple to go Linux on everything!

<comment><USER11> Why does the kernel matter so much to you?

<comment><USER10> I guess I was expressing that the stuff that Apple Open Sources seems genuine, legit, honest and I admire that. I guess as I get older I realize (sorry for all the I's) that maybe I should give Apple a second look, on all fronts.

<comment><USER11> Sure, that makes sense, I just don't quite understand the "convince Apple to go Linux on everything" bit??

In terms of userland tools, OS X has pretty good compatibility with an average Linux distro (yes there are obvious differences between *BSD and GNU implementations of various tools).

Personally I think you should give Apple a(nother) look in terms of a productive workstation machine, even if that's paired with/using services from/developing systems for Linux-based servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there anything about App Store guidelines? Curious if Apple is going to require any kind of IRB approval first.

<comment> semi-extrinsic The other big issue I see is: if you try to do any kind of population or cohort study with this, how on earth do you correct for the bias that comes from only sampling iPhone users? It's borderline facetious to claim that there is no sampling bias, and it will be a nightmare to control for.

<comment><USER13> My guess is that some of this will make field collection with iOS devices easier, rather than relying on the user's device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope they will open Swift, like Microsoft is doing with C#.

<comment><USER15> C# is 15 years old. F# is 10 years old. It's great that Microsoft is in the process of open sourcing their code. However, it gets a little old when they're held up as some example to follow. Objective C has been open source for a long time. How about, let's hope Apple open sources Swift like they did with Objective C.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_(programming_language...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_\(programming_language\))

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_(programming_language...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_\(programming_language\))

<comment><USER16> _How about, let 's hope Apple open sources Swift like they did with Objective C_

To be honest, don't hold your breath. If you research the history of Objective-C you'll realize that it was in fact the first GPL violator. It's only _because_ of the GPL that Apple was forced to open source it, not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this the first _thing_ of Apple on GitHub?

(is the first one that I recall seeing)

<comment><USER18> They have WebKit on self-hosted git, but not GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting to see how code is structured when it comes from Apple (or vendors they're working closely with).

Surprising some of their best practices aren't followed, such as hard-coding English strings instead of using something like NSLocalizedString()

(e.g. [https://github.com/ResearchKit/GlucoSuccess/blob/master/Diab...](https://github.com/ResearchKit/GlucoSuccess/blob/master/Diabetes/TasksAndSteps/EnterWeight/APHEnterWeightTaskViewController.m))

<comment><USER20> Surprising?

After learning of apple's goto bug, I'm never surprised to read about apple's failure to follow best practices.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but that was an isolated mistake, whereas using NSLocalizedString() just becomes habit after a while.

It's jarring when you see hard-coded English strings in any iOS code. Android does a much better job of pushing developers to localizing strings.

One big thing I don't like about iOS is even if you have a base language, you need to duplicate all strings in any subsequent languages. (I often have a "US English" and "Australian English", so trivial changes require changes in two files).

On Android, the language files extend the base file, so you can just override favourite/favorite labour/labor type strings without having to duplicate everything.

(Obviously you can script / auto-generate language files, but that's not the default position).

<comment><USER20> I agree with you what you are saying about string localization.

Separately, I find that people tend to assume (for some reason?) that big successful companies that write lots of software will also write quality software. They have the money for it!

But its often not the case. Look at Microsoft in the late 90s.

Look at Apple these past few years.

Maybe the people at the top sometimes feel they no longer _need_ to write quality software, because they are at the top?

The goto fail bug is a singular mistake, but I'm not convinced it was an isolated mistake. I've worked with teams of amateurs that had code quality practices sufficient to prevent such a bug; and yet apple included this in a product, and left it there for a long time before it was fixed. It suggests, to me, organizational issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if I can use this along with a raspberry Pi & Arduino to offer automated customized services to my patients.

E.g. build a system with RFID cards that uses sensors to automatically measure blood pressure, etc[1] and keep history.

ps. Too many interesting possibilities out there and too little time to pursue them!

[1] [http://www.cooking- hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/ehealth...](http://www.cooking- hacks.com/documentation/tutorials/ehealth-biometric-sensor-platform-arduino- raspberry-pi-medical)

</comment><comment><USER22> Sloppy scripting [http://cl.ly/image/1L2G1V3C0A08](http://cl.ly/image/1L2G1V3C0A08) :P

(Edit: added emoticon for joke emphasis)

<comment><USER23> I think we've all done something along those lines. I'm not sure if this counts, but recently HN asked us to avoid gratuitous negativity...

[http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news- guideline](http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline)

<comment><USER22> I just thought it's a bit funny, wasn't trying to be negative. Yes, we've all done something similar at some point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting that this framework isn't written in Swift.

<comment><USER25> Not really. One, I bet they've been working on it for a long while, and two, I bet it's a lot easier for them to generate Swift bindings for objective c than vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's a start! There is big space for improvement in supporting the complexities of research studies, but this can definitely be a jumping-off and may well support broad consistencies in design and implementation.

There would still be a massive effort to implement most of the requirements of a research study. But, at least the iOS UI implementation and some on-ramps via ActiveSteps would be eased.

</comment><comment><USER27> Would be great to see them merge the pull request for cocoa pod support.

<comment> k-mcgrady Looks like the devs jumped in on the comments on the PR and want to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> GitHub says its 99.7% Objective-C, why didn't they use swift?

<comment><USER29> Swift was released to the public 7 months ago. The vast majority of Apple's own employee's didn't know it existed until it was publicly announced.

Research Kit was announced 6 months after Swift. Seems like a bit of a stretch...

<comment><USER28> Makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Researchkit is a rather cool idea - it will be interesting to see if it integrates with wearables.

<comment><USER31> That's Healthkit land. It should.</comment></comment>


Useful Resources related to Technology & Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.theniravshah.com/2011/09/excellent-resources-for-technology.html Following are some great technology and startups related resources that I have come across:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc (Steve Jobs Speech. Watch it again and again and again...) http://news.ycombinator.com/ (Latest News in the Tech/Startup Industry) http://ycombinator.com/lib.html (YCombinator Startup Library) http://www.sfu.ca/~mvolker/biz/ (Business Basics for Engineers) http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/ (Stanford CS Library) http://stackoverflow.com/ (Tech Q & A) http://answers.onstartups.com (Startup Q & A) http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html (Paul Graham Essays) http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book (Ruby on Rails Tutorial Book) https://www.djangoproject.com/ (Python - Django Framework) http://angel.co/ (Angel List) http://webchat.freenode.net/ (Join any channel, for example, #rubyonrails, #css, #jquery, #ubuntu, etc. for quick Q & A and chat) http://www.github.com (For open source code) http://ecorner.stanford.edu/popularVideos.html (Stanford E-Corner Popular Videos)
I will keep the list updated. If you believe I am missing something, please mention it in the comments. <comment><AUTHOR> Following are some great technology and startups related resources that I have come across:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc> (Steve Jobs Speech. Watch it again and again and again...)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/> (Latest News in the Tech/Startup Industry)

<http://ycombinator.com/lib.html> (YCombinator Startup Library)

<http://www.sfu.ca/~mvolker/biz/> (Business Basics for Engineers)

<http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/> (Stanford CS Library)

<http://stackoverflow.com/> (Tech Q & A)

<http://answers.onstartups.com> (Startup Q & A)

<http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html> (Paul Graham Essays)

<http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book> (Ruby on Rails Tutorial Book)

<https://www.djangoproject.com/> (Python - Django Framework)

<http://angel.co/> (Angel List)

<http://webchat.freenode.net/> (Join any channel, for example, #rubyonrails, #css, #jquery, #ubuntu, etc. for quick Q & A and chat)

<http://www.github.com> (For open source code)

<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/popularVideos.html> (Stanford E-Corner Popular Videos)

I will keep the list updated. If you believe I am missing something, please mention it in the comments.</comment>


Show HN: A tiny x86 compiler with ELF and PE target - <AUTHOR> http://logicpundit.com/blog/ceed/ <comment><AUTHOR> Source code (under BSD license) is at: [https://github.com/intellectualheaven/ceed](https://github.com/intellectualheaven/ceed)

<comment><USER2> This looks like a great project. How easy would it be to extend to ARM CPU?</comment></comment>


Instapaper Founder: Apps Don't Need To Be Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/instapaper_founder_apps_dont_need_to_be_free.php <comment><USER2> I find it disingenious to claim apps don't need to be free, when you built a successful app that already has followers (thanks to the lite version also...) and is highly regarded in tech spheres. Would he have done his experiment on a new app with a new concept, it would have a lot more credibility.

I actually downloaded the lite version a long long time ago, and I wouldn't have if it wasn't free.

Update: btw the 'Read it later' link is broken in the OP, it should be <http://readitlaterlist.com/> .The app developper should really buy the readitlater.com domain if he can...

</comment><comment><USER3> It's all about the funnel.

For 100% mobile apps, intelligent marketing is nigh impossible since there is no funnel- Apple doesn't tell you impressions v conversion rate of app pages.

Without that information, apps that are 100% mobile, with no web component, _cannot market effectively_.

Apps with web components, on the other hand, can measure the rate of online signups to app purchases, and optimize accordingly.

Mobile only products use free apps as a lead-gen tool to convert to paid.

My company is moving to the web model, simply so we can implement effective marketing, without a clear RPU and conversion rate.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you're building an app this is important to consider.

With in-app purchases apps are no longer either "free" or "paid". A lot of apps that are "free" allow you to download and install for free but you have to purchase a subscription to actually use any of the functionality of the app. Others will only let you get so far before having to in-app purchase the rest of the application.

In-app purchases have just replaced the old "lite" and "pro" versions of apps that existed a year ago. Back then every app had a free version that upsold to the paid version.

Paid apps can definitely do well, but performance will differ by category.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe that's the case. However I use Read It Later because I got a taste of it with the free version, and it's normally $2.99 or 99c on sale. Instapaper has no free version anymore, and it's always $5.

Instapaper may do just fine without me and other users unwilling to pay $5 for an infrequently used iPhone app, but the fact remains that he handed his competitors a dead simple & easy way to compete. Considering almost every app at this point has built in support for both services, it might be worth thinking about how to compete now before it's too late and developers can get away with only supporting Read It Later.

<comment><USER2> Right now the official twitter app links only to instapaper, and I went across a few other apps in the same case. Putting a premium on the ptice can be a way to leverage on this and have the user to expect more value from Instapaper.

Thinking about it, I mourn this move on the lite version because I can no longer compare between the two services. Would someone ask my recommandation I'd just push RIL short of having a hand on Instapaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The free version is important as a trial: I would never have bought instapaper if it were not for it. What I think, though, is that perhaps what most paid apps need is a way to do "shareware": allow the user to try for a day or a week, and then let apple block the app from working until the user buys it. There are a lot of apps that I would buy under this model that I don't due to fear/uncertainty/doubt (and in-app purchases for features don't really work for the same reason that I never know if those features are actually worth the cash, unless it's "pay me to stop bugging you with ads", which is really annoying).</comment>


DWARF Debugging Standard Version 5 Released - <AUTHOR> http://dwarfstd.org/ <comment><USER2> From the press release:

"Version 5 incorporates improvements in many areas: better data compression, separation of debugging data from executable files, improved description of macros and source files, faster searching for symbols, improved debugging of optimized code, as well as numerous improvements in functionality and performance."

Detailed summary of the changes: [http://www.dwarfstd.org/Dwarf5Std.php](http://www.dwarfstd.org/Dwarf5Std.php)</comment>


Foreign Languages Are A Waste Of Time - <AUTHOR> http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/05/29/foreign-languages-are-a-waste-of-time/

<comment><USER2> It is an interesting argument. I took some Spanish and German in school and college. I don't remember enough of it to be useful, in large part because I had no use for it at the time (living amongst English-speakers). And honestly I still don't.

I'd definitely have some use for Chinese (Mandrin) these days. I haven't spent the time to learn it though, and I don't need it badly enough to make it a high priority.

If we want people to really become more multi-cultural, then we'll really have to immerse them, which means promoting a year abroad for most students.</comment>


Aziz Ansari: Why Trump Makes Me Scared for My Family - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/aziz-ansari-why-trump-makes-me-scared-for-my-family.html <comment><USER2> This article doesn't add much to the conversation. Trump has been severely (and appropriately) criticized on these points before.

And then he starts to make similar mistakes himself. He wants to keep guns away from "mentally unstable" people, people on watch lists, suspected terrorists. That's a circumvention of due process, and due process is one of the best tools we have to _prevent_ Trump-like abuses.</comment>


Designers Using Ikea Products as Platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/style/ikea-cabinet-hack-refacing.html?_r=1 <comment><USER3> This such a hilarious example of HN "HNing" an article title.

Instead of the original title, which literally describes what is happening, we have jargon being shoe horned in for no reason at all.

"Putting a Designer's Polish on Ikea Products": Oh, some designers are buying Ikea products and doing cool, new shit with them.

"Designers Using Ikea Products as Platform": Don't what the fuck this means. Is Ikea launching some sort of partnership program? Are designers creating their products and selling them through the Ikea brand?

===

The article contents effectively describe the former. There is a quote from the article that sums it up pretty well for those with little patience:

 _"We would tell the client, 'You can save half if you use Ikea carcasses, and we just skin it.' That's where the initial idea started."_

Or put another way: The bits you can see are high quality ~designer~ finishing, the bits you can't see are standard off-the-shelf IKEA parts.

<comment><USER4> Obiovusly launching IPAAS; Ikea Product as a Service that will revolutionize cloud based furniture offerings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We live in an era where mass produced commodities and standardization of nearly everything creates useful economies around a product leading to lower cost, availability of parts, and held resale value. However, this can lead to sterilization of design. And, as the article points out, people will gravitate towards uniqueness in many markets.

By taking this constraint of not re-building the product but instead extending it we can begin to imagine the explosion of design that has happened software extend elsewhere. And, I hope, a world where these platforms can be recycled, upcycled, and repaired more readily because unlike software there is an environmental cost to short-lived products.

<comment><USER6> Reform benefits from the engineering and structure of Ikea's products, and offer a customizing service for those who want their standard Ikea kitchen to look a little more individual.

In a way, this is no different from car customization shops. The basic structure is sound, well-engineered and unchanged, but the cosmetics are personal. And it's much cheaper than buying a fully custom-made car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anecdata, there was a market show in Milan years ago (maybe there still is) called Eurocucina (Eurokitchen), and a friend of mine in the business /designer furniture salesman) referred to it as Euroantina (Eurocabinetdoor, it doesn't sound good translated, but it rhymes in Italian) as he - <USER2> the actual manufacturers/brands knew that the base cabinet was always the same (additionally often physically made in the same factory) and the difference (year vs. year and brand vs. brand) were just the "custom" cabinet doors and tops.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not that hard to buy wood, use a saw and a drill and build something. It is very cheap and potentially even a lot better than the original.

Look at this: [http://www.ikeahackers.net/2017/09/hackers-help-luroy- slats-...](http://www.ikeahackers.net/2017/09/hackers-help-luroy-slats- norddal-bed.html)

Somebody had two broken slats in a bed, and it's natural for them to look at "hacking it" by using some slats from another product of the same brand. All fine. But in the end the solution in the thread is a bit different: buy some pieces of wood and just saw them.

The vendor of course probably would like them to throw away the whole product and buy a new one. Those slats look very thin. I've never experienced broken slats in a bed, so I'd be suspicious of the quality but who knows, maybe they were sturdy and the user did something wrong.

<comment><USER9> This is the equivalent of those posts that commented on the Dropbox announcement with "why don't people just setup an NFS/Samba drive"?

Using a saw is not rocket science, but it's not plug-n-play either. Manual saws are a pain and electric ones are dangerous and still require training. Getting a saw and a drill is itself not free. And if you live in an apartment, you might not have any good place for using it.

<comment><USER10> _> "why don't people just setup an NFS/Samba drive"?_

I believe that's referencing this (in)famous comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it is really sad that affordable furniture has gone down in quality so much. Now I walk into most homes and its full of pressed woodchips in furniture form. When I visit my grandparents old house (who are not rich) I see custom made solid wood pieces with carvings all over everywhere. This is unaffordable for me nowadays. What happened?

</comment><comment><USER12> I was expecting/hoping for something more like the 'LackRack': [https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack](https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack)

Or at least [http://www.ikeahackers.net/](http://www.ikeahackers.net/) :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I visited an IKEA store for the first time 2 days ago. It was fascinating experience. Before, I only knew of IKEA abstractly from the jokes & memes about their furniture being impossible to assemble.

Actually walking through the place was extremely interesting. Observations...

\- it was the busiest furniture store I've ever been in for a non-holiday shopping day. I've never seen a Rooms-to-Go that busy.

\- the walkways are deliberately zig-zagged in serpentine fashion around the showroom. I likened it to museum exhibits (especially traveling exhibits) or Disney venues that move people through a space in sequential fashion. For people already familiar with showroom, they can go through the shortcut doors in the middle of room. Even little things like the arrows on the ground were unique; instead of being painted on or vinyl adhesive, the arrows are actually lit from cans above your head.

\- the Ikea restaurant was actually full. Costco would be another rare example of the food court being full. Most restaurants in retail stores are usually empty and a mind-boggling waste of floor space. E.g. the restaurants inside Fry's Electronics and Macy's department store are always empty; you also knew Borders bookstore was dying when you saw nobody sitting in the store's coffee shop.

\- the housewares seem to be a good value. E.g. The 1-quart hermetic jars at ContainerStore were $6.99 but the equivalent at Ikea was $2.99.[1][2] I chuckled when I noticed that even the jars were do-it-yourself: you had to install the rubber ring on the lid! I think lots of customers would be willing to do that to save $4.00.

I bought most of my furniture many years ago from Ethan Allen but I walked away from Ikea totally impressed their retail concept and presentation. They hit the sweet spot combination of aesthetics + DIY + price.

As for the article, I noticed that many hobbies (e.g. sewing and crafting) have converged on Ikea as the common-denominator for organization. The analogy of Ikea carcasses as a "platform" makes perfect sense. E.g. there's a company that makes storage displays to subdivide the Ikea cubes.[3] Ikea is the closest thing in the furniture industry to have "standardized pieces" for others to build on.

Ikea is not the only place to buy DIY ready-to-assembly furniture. Home Depot, Lowes, and Office Depot have particle board cubes as well. The difference is that IKEA is very standardized with long-running product lines (more than a decade). You can build out in incremental steps as the budget allows. You can buy one cube or drawer cabinet from Ikea and 5 years later, you add another cube that matches. Home Depot and Lowes will have "flavor-of-the-month" storage products from different vendors depending on whatever contracts were favorable at the time.

[1] [https://www.containerstore.com/s/kilner-round-hermetic- glass...](https://www.containerstore.com/s/kilner-round-hermetic-glass- jars/d?productId=10036769)

[2] [http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90227985/](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90227985/)

[3] [https://www.stampnstorage.com/storage-for- ikea/?sort=pricede...](https://www.stampnstorage.com/storage-for- ikea/?sort=pricedesc)

<comment><USER13> > the walkways are deliberately zig-zagged in serpentine fashion around the > showroom.

Yes, they try to make people go through everything to increase the chance of them buying something on an impulse, I guess.

> the housewares seem to be a good value. E.g. The 1-quart hermetic jars at > ContainerStore were $6.99 but the equivalent at Ikea was $2.99.[1][2] I > chuckled when I noticed that even the jars were do-it-yourself: you had to > install the rubber ring on the lid! I think lots of customers would be > willing to do that to save $4.00.

You mean the little rectangular glass things with plastic lids? In my experience the hinges on the lids tend to come off if the lid is even a little bit off-center when closing. And the porcelain things (plates, mugs, ...) have quite poor "glassing" (or whatever the term is), they won't last very long. Go to the Ikea restaurant and take a look at the plates there for an example..

Now I'm not saying everything they do is crap. Some of the things are pretty good, and the ones which aren't are at least _very_ cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Be careful when using IKEA's trademarks if you're doing this kind of thing, they have trigger-happy lawyers: [http://www.trademarksandbrandsonline.com/news/ikea-and- fan-w...](http://www.trademarksandbrandsonline.com/news/ikea-and-fan-website- reach-agreement-4111)

<comment><USER15> From the article:

"So far, the founders have had little contact with Ikea, except for a letter from the company's lawyers.

"It was the nicest letter ever from their lawyers, saying, 'It's fine, you can do whatever, just remember that we have a registered trademark,' " Mr. Christensen said. (There is now a disclaimer buried deep in Reform's website indicating that the company is not affiliated with Ikea)."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is much how we do things in the software world, isn't it?</comment>


Crypto exchange can't repay $190M because the CEO died with only password - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/quadrigacx-cant-pay-190-million-owed-because-ceo-with-password-died-2019-2 <comment><USER2> Would it be worth it to spend $1M attempting to bruteforce it? Who knows, it could be surprisingly simple short length password

</comment><comment><USER3> BS. After a few years, somehow the money moves by being "hacked". $190mn is enough to exit scam by the rest of the people.

<comment><USER4> He died while traveling in India. There are issues with the death certificate. Sounds like he Ocean's 11'd it.</comment></comment>


The future of computing: After Moore's law - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21694528-era-predictable-improvement-computer-hardware-ending-what-comes-next-future <comment><USER2> The use of highly parallel GPUs as general purpose compute elements is a major trend. Most graphics boards have more compute power than the main CPU they serve. The Titan and Summit supercomputers have most of their compute power in the GPUs. The limits of GPU parallelism haven't been reached yet. Machine learning can be done on GPUs, and that's the biggest CPU hog problem right now that is getting mainstream use. That technology isn't near a ceiling.

As machine learning/AI/neuron emulation becomes more useful, we'll see hardware specialized for that. It's not yet clear what shape that hardware will take. Look for "works fine, but is slow on GPUs" results to lead to such hardware, rather than "build it and they will come" projects like the Human Brain Project.

There's still more improvement possible in storage devices. With the 20TB SSD drive expected in 4 years, things are looking good in that area. For compute elements, cooling limits transistor density. Storage tends not to be heat dissipation limited.

<comment><USER3> >With the 20TB SSD drive expected in 4 years,

4? Samsung is shipping (a very few select partners) 16TB SSDs _now_! I suspect in 4 years we'll be closer to 50TB.

<comment><USER4> I would say 20GB at scale with a decent storage/$ ratio in 4 years sounds right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a pretty good piece. The main thing that it does skip over is what the economic implications might be to no longer declining transistor costs. Sure, Google can add a more or less arbitrarily large number of servers but what are the implications of the likely reality that those servers aren't improving in price/performance to the degree that they once were.

At Hot Chips a couple of years back Robert Colwell, who was director of the microsystems technology office at DARPA at the time, had a very interesting presentation on where things were going. One of the things that stuck with me at the time was his contention that there are lots of ways to improve performance etc. over time but CMOS was really pretty special.

"Colwell also points out that from 1980 to 2010, clocks improved 3500X and micro architectural and other improvements contributed about another 50X performance boost. The process shrink marvel expressed by Moore's Law (Observation) has overshadowed just about everything else."

[http://bitmason.blogspot.com/2016/01/beyond-general- purpose-...](http://bitmason.blogspot.com/2016/01/beyond-general-purpose-in- servers.html)

<comment><USER6> Even if we don't produce smaller circuits, we still might produce cheaper ones. There is still plenty of room to go to reduce fab costs. Especially since we basically replace them every few years. Consider if intel solely spent time iterating on cost. We also have made headway on power-reduction. I could see further improvements there. In aggregate I could imagine even if we don't see greater chip density we could see, say, AWS compute power/cost continuing Moore's trend for some time.

<comment><USER7> That's true. Seeing mask sets and EDA tooling get cheap at 90nm or 65nm could open up serious possibilities. The laptop still serving me well runs a CPU done on 65nm with other chips from even older nodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was recently thinking about Moore's Law and if it is truly coming to an end. My initial reaction is that it doesn't matter in itself, if the number of transistors doubles, what might matter is that our compute power is doubling.

This led me to think that maybe Moore's Law is looking at the wrong metric, and is there a more fundamental law regarding increased capacity. Some proof of this is in the drop in prices of cloud computing and increases in network capacity. If chips stopped getting more powerful, in theory, we may not notice as the capability of the entire network continues to increase at the familiar rate.

However, this begs the question, did this increased capacity actually begin with Moore's Law and computer processing in general? Or is there an overarching law of progress which has always existed. To prove this, I'd need to go back and look at the growth of industrialization. I suspect as the capabilities of the factories slowed, our network speed (rail and sea, then road and then air) increased. As the network speed reached a plateau, we began to find places where we could manufacture more cheaply, thereby increasing the output per cost. Does the same growth exist in agriculture? What major industry does not fit?

There is some evidence that a law similar to Moore's law exists not only for technology. What effect does that have in our understanding of why things grow?

[edit: this is was an except from my YC application to the question regarding what have you discovered]

<comment><USER9> I think technological progress is more like a logistic curve, with exponential-like growth at the beginning and then a leveling off. Look at technologies that have already had time to mature. The speed of airplanes grew tremendously while jet engines and wing shapes were undergoing heavy refinement, but then it leveled off and hasn't really budged in decades.

<comment><USER10> Technologies can take leaps and bounds, too, though. If you view the modern computer as an evolution of the abacus the flat part of the curve was the first few thousand years. It's possible quantum computing, say, or neural nets will be leaps of that order.

Or maybe not. It's impossible to predict true breakthroughs.

<comment><USER9> >> If you view the modern computer as an evolution of the abacus

I'm not sure what value that has for predicting the future. You could view the airplane as the evolution of the chariot. Or not. Does it make a difference?

<comment><USER10> It does, because otherwise you think technology never changes quickly. My point was while it's true we're probably reaching the point of diminishing returns for silicon etched circuits, that's not the end of the line. I'd be surprised if we didn't have ubiquitous quantum computers in thirty years or so unless something even better came along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While we're reaching the physical limits of classical chip design, do we have any ideas what the limits are on the algorithm side of things? As much speed up has come from software as hardware according to a few reports.

[http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2015/12/08/algorithms-vs- moore...](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2015/12/08/algorithms-vs-moores-law/)

<comment><USER12> > do we have any ideas what the limits are on the algorithm side of things?

I've always believed that humans do not have the ability to program things smarter than themself, because we do not understand our own intelligence, so we have no way to reproduce it.

At the time, I said the only alternative I can think of is make random permutations and pick the best one, and go from there. But I said this as a ridiculous suggestion that no one would actually do.

But then Google actually did exactly that with their Go machine!

So, that's what I think: The future of computing will be based on randomness and the job of the programmer will be to guide it, but not program it directly. (Can you imagine programming a webpage this way? Or writing a book this way?)

<comment><USER13> (Totally self-promoting here) I did a lot of work along this line in my PhD -- stochastic architectures for probabilstic computation. [http://ericjonas.com/pages/circuits.html](http://ericjonas.com/pages/circuits.html) There's an increasing amount of interest in this space.

<comment><USER7> You're work is interesting. The concepts remind me of work in analog implementations of neural circuitry. See, the brain is likely a general- purpose, analog computer with digital-like parts. So, trying analog implementations was thought to have improvements. It did with one wafer-scale method I didn't see coming.

[http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf/boser-92.pdf](http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/publis/pdf/boser-92.pdf)

[http://www.kip.uni- heidelberg.de/Veroeffentlichungen/downloa...](http://www.kip.uni- heidelberg.de/Veroeffentlichungen/download.cgi/4713/ps/1856.pdf)

It would be interesting to see someone combine the principles of your work with analog implementations on a decent process node. Yours is kind of like a hybrid between properties of analog and digital cells. The real thing might be even more effective albeit harder to automate. There's some analog EDA but it's almost always custom work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like PG's idea [1] of trying to write a compiler that can utilize code to run on multiple cores, as if the cores were running in series, not parallel (think batteries).

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

<comment><USER15> That's the holy grail of The Cloud: just write a description of what you want and what you want happens. DWIM programmatic casting.

I think pg originated his "sufficiently smart compiler" startup idea in his pycon talk. You can find it online somewhere. The other take away from his talk was: just lie to customers about it being automated, manually farm out the parallelize-all-the-code tasks to works/interns/turks while saying it's "automatic," then eventually figure out how to automate it yourself later so you don't need pesky humans in the loop.

<comment><USER16> I hope he was being facetitious... That exposes your customer base to an _enormous_ amount of risk.

<comment><USER15> Not really factitious. The whole "do things that don't scale (grit! be resilient! schlep!)" is pretty central to modern cult of pg startup dogma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While "cloud" may be a big part of the future of computing, I think the relationship painted between that and the end of Moore's law is tenuous at best.

I believe a more plausible link exists between the end of Moore's law and the rise of open hardware as explained in this article:

[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321796](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1321796)

TL;DR

If eight year old hardware is almost as fast as today's hardware, there is ample time to reverse engineer competitive open hardware.

<comment><USER18> The article argues a very interesting point and there might definitely be an opportunity for more competitive open hardware. At the same time, it feels kind of sad that it would take a technical constraint for this to happen; that is, rather than a change in culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Limitless exponential growth doesn't happen in the physical world, it happens on S-curves.

Black phosphorus anyone?

<comment><USER20> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER21> The logistic function (or "S-curve") describes systems that expand first at exponential rates, then logarithmic ones. With respect to new technologies, it's been observed that adoption rates and most measurable improvements follow a logistic function.

For example, people did not go from buying 1 car to buying 10 cars and then 100 cars - most of us hit saturation somewhere between 1 and 2, and stayed there. Similarly, the average speed of our cars did not increase at an increasing rate except in the earliest years of automotive technology; we have a "highway maximum" between 50 and 70 MPH, and a "technical maximum" in the high 200's range for production cars which do not rely on rockets or other not street-legal tricks (a quick search brings up the Hennessey Venom GT at 270.49 MPH). Likewise applied to fast moving vehicles as a whole, including supersonic aircraft and rockets, we've already brushed up against vehicle weight and power density limits that slow the rate of improvement in acceleration.

Applied to the Moore's Law measures, that indicates we have a "endless sunset" period ahead of us where we'll still get more doublings of semiconductors, but they'll come increasingly slowly as more fundamental innovations become necessary to realize them.

What we don't know is whether there is a logistic curve on technology as a whole. Belief in the Singularity is premised on this not being the case.

<comment><USER22> I am of the strong opinion that most technological advancement that is mistaken for endless exponential improvement (eg Moore's law) actually follows a physical sigmoidal curve. I also agree that "the singularity" is a belief based proposition and I personally think it amounts to techno-woo.

However, one interesting argument for continuation of technological advancement beyond what we might call "singularity" levels today. If technology maintains an exponential tragectory for another century or so through a few more breakthroughs then we would have some amazing tech.

So, it is not required that tech advancement is exponential -- as long as we are still early enough in the sigmoidal curve that more exponential (and linear) advancement is still to come. With biotech, quantum and the algorithmic side of AI I think we still have quite a bit of advancing to do. That said, the singularity stuff is still ridiculous woo woo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Moore's Law also enables a new kind of hardware (open-source) and the internet of things: [http://thinkingonthinking.com/hardware-cost- reductions/](http://thinkingonthinking.com/hardware-cost-reductions/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Research by K. Ebcioglu on _very long instruction word_ (VLIW) shows that 24 way VLIW can get 9:1 speedup on ordinary code.

<comment><USER25> Compared to what? What does ordinary code mean?

VLIW has been around for a while (Itanium is probably the most famous "general purpose" example) and has failed to gain traction outside of GPUs and DSP (ie not "ordinary code").

<comment><USER24> > Compared to what?

A single core processor, of course.

> What does ordinary code mean?

Say, simple random sample of all the other code being run.

> VLIW has been around for a while

Yup. I never claimed otherwise.

> Itanium is probably the most famous "general purpose" example

Yup.

> and has failed to gain traction outside of GPUs and DSP (ie not "ordinary > code").

Yup.

Still, yet again, over again, one more time, once again, VLIW can get 9:1 speedup.

Why mention this? Because the OP was talking about the challenges of getting faster computing. Well, if want faster computing, one approach, that, indeed, works on general purpose code, and gives ballpark 9:1 speedup is, and may I have the envelope please [drum roll, please], VLIW. Really new? Nope. Tried with Itanium? Yup. Works? Yup.

Bottom line -- we still have 9:1 speedup available to us.

Maybe an objection is that pay a factor of 24 in transistor count and electrical power but get only a factor of 9 in performance.

Not everyone knows about VLIW.

Where did I say something wrong?

<comment><USER26> Citing a paper from the mid 90s isn't a credible answer in 2016.

All VLIW does is move a lot of on-chip logic off-chip into the compiler. This only works for a small set of computing tasks - which is why the closest thing we have to VLIW today lives in GPUs. And why Itanium was nicknamed Itanic.

It's a non-starter for general computing because as soon as you start dealing with real-time conditions the compiler can't optimise in advance, the speed advantage turns into a speed penalty.

<comment><USER27> > Citing a paper from the mid 90s isn't a credible answer in 2016.

I think it's unfair to generalize from VLIW to everything published 20+ years ago. Plenty of the things discovered back then, or earlier, are still applicable and in production today. Your compiler picked most of its low hanging fruit ages ago. Lots of PhD theses are rehashing old ideas, often unknowingly. Results are results, what matters more is whether there's a relevant context, as you've highlighted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The article is click bait. Moore's law may slow down, but it will not be predicted in the Economist.

For example, a quote from the article:

"Moore's law was never a physical law, but a self-fulfilling prophecy—a triumph of central planning"

The physics and triumphs of engineering were all about physical law; "The end of Moore's law" was always just around the corner because of physics.

No central planning led Intel to invest their billions in R&D.

Central planning can neither force nor halt additional refinements in transistor density or alternate ways to compute.

<comment><USER29> Moore's has been slowing down for a long time. In 1965 he wrote a paper predicting a doubling every year. In 1975 it was revised to double ~every 2 years. With 18 months as suggested by someone else being the accepted target for quite a while.

Intel failed to keep up with every 2 years back in 2012.

 _CEO of Intel, announced that "our cadence today is closer to two and a half years than two." This is scheduled to hold through the 10 nm width in late 2017._</comment></comment>


Medium launches a revenue model for publishers - <AUTHOR> https://blog.medium.com/revenue-on-medium-5e7e6218f70c#.7icwcw9g1 <comment><USER3> I was really expecting something new from the Medium team. Instead, all we got was ads, promo stories "advertorials" in old media speak, media campaigns, and subscriptions.

Absolutely none of those are a "better" business model for publishing - <USER2> are exactly the current business model for publishing. And they are failing.

The execution is key, but so far, just more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't say we didn't see this coming but hopefully Medium will deliver something like YouTube Red/Goole Contributor. I really like supporting content creators and boy do I hate ads.

Give the users a choice to choose how to support.

</comment><comment><USER5> Paid monthly membership might be a hard sell to the end customer. In today's information overload era, running a paywalled blog might be very challenging from the perspective of generating quality, captivating content

</comment><comment><USER6> Ads everywhere. Typical.

"Fake news" coming soon to Medium.</comment>


Show HN: Automatic Student Verification in Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://studentstat.us/ <comment><AUTHOR> changed to _seconds_ since actual GET request is instant. A student verification process may take a couple minutes depending of the size of their document and how quickly they verify their email.

<comment><AUTHOR> new post here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24479030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24479030)</comment></comment>


Viacom says Cablevision has no rights for iPad distribution - <AUTHOR> http://www.multichannel.com/article/466526-Viacom_Cablevision_Has_Seized_Rights_It_Does_Not_Have_With_iPad_App.php <comment><USER2> Viacom, like others, wants to double-dip customers and charge for redundant access to the same content. The message is simple: you are not paying for content, you are paying for convenient access to it.</comment>


Microsoft tweaks Skype to facilitate wiretapping - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132935-microsoft-tweaking-skype-to-facilitate-wiretapping <comment><USER2> Previously discussed here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254925></comment>


Why Ghostery breaks websites - <AUTHOR> http://purplebox.ghostery.com/?p=1016023830

<comment><AUTHOR> Ghostery rep here: saw people talking about this yesterday on HN, figured I'd post an explanation for those who cared.</comment>


Facebook wants to spy on you through webcam and smartphones - <AUTHOR> https://tenplay.com.au/news/national/june-2017/facebook-wants-to-spy-on-you-through-webcam-and-smartphones <comment><USER2> Sometimes it seems that FB is already spying on us.

<comment><USER3> Seems?</comment></comment>


LearnBoost Adds Reporting Feature Based On Node-Canvas - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/01/08/online-gradebook-learnboost-adds-reporting-feature/

<comment><USER2> I've been experimenting with node-canvas for dynamic UIs that are aimed for video streams.

Love it.</comment>