Today is one of the 2 days each year when the sun lines up with Manhattan's grid - <AUTHOR> http://haydenplanetarium.org/resources/starstruck/manhattanhenge/ <comment><USER2> Manhattan Solstice.

There are three from yesterday's event but this photo from earlier in the year is visually stunning. I can't imagine the traffic slowdown driving sunwards.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/kliman/2539479392/>

[http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=manhattan+solstice&s=rec](http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=manhattan+solstice&s=rec)

</comment><comment><USER3> The best part about flying into LaGuardia is landing parallel to Manhattan's avenues. Seeing each street pass by is excellent.

</comment><comment><USER4> why is this on HN?

<comment><USER5> I don't know why this is on HN either but I'm a sucker for anything NY. It's the most usable and creative city on the planet and big part of it is the perfect grid system of its streets and subways. Wayfinding and transportation is a snap and there's an art gallery, museum, school, park or something else inspiring on practically every corner. Heck, even the libraries are awesome - the main branch of the ny public library is so beautiful that they film movies and host weddings in it, and its backyard is Bryant Park, which has its own website and been carpeted with free wifi since before it was cool.

The effect of combining a quick and easy to use public transporation system with an amazing amount of technical and artistic talent is that it lowers the activitation energy of participation to almost zero. You don't have a good excuse to not check out some cool new gallery, exhibit or user group meeting, or simply hang out with a friend on short notice, because the cost in time and energy is as close to zero as you can get. Well, as close as you can get without a Jetsons- or Minority Report-style personal rapid transport system like the SkyTran:

<http://unimodal.com/>

<comment><USER6> "most usable and creative city." I think you need to travel more. "usable and creative" is fine, but "most" I object to. I love New York, but I also love Barcelona, Montreal, London and San Francisco. The best cities are a bit like beautiful women - uniquely great each in their own way.

<comment><USER5> "I think you need to travel more"

You're making false assumptions about where I've lived or travelled without refuting my points about New York. I live in San Francisco (the bart+muni+caltrain system here is actually quite horrible - it's inefficient, expensive, the coverage is weak and frankly it's smelly) and it's nickname as "the most East Coast city on the West Coast" is not well-earned at all, it's just due to the rest of California being completely and utterly car-based and without decent public transportation.

I've also travelled a lot, including Europe since all of my relatives are in Turkey. Barcelona is great, it's kind of like a cross between my hometown of San Diego (it's also 2 million people and sunny) and New York (great art scene, up-til-dawn nightlife and a city-wide metro) but it's on a much smaller scale.

And it's not simply a bias towards big cities - trying to find my way around Tokyo was a nightmare. I love Japan and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, but the trains inside cities (not the bullet trains between them) aren't even run by the same companies, there's several parallel networks in place.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tokyo_sub...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Tokyo_subway_map.PNG)

I can see London being very similar, considering New York modelled its subway system on the London Underground. Just looking at the two different subway maps makes me think NY is a vast improvement though, considering that one is a grid that maps directly to the streets and the other is a confusing circular spaghetti-looking mess. Most large European cities tend to have a similar layout of concentric circles (due to castles and moats and whatnot) and I find that using polar coordinates to get around isn't very intuitive compared to simple square x-y grids. If I look at a map of New York, it's easy to say "ok, I need to go two over and 5 up to get where I want to be."

Saying that cities are "uniquely great each in their own way" is fine, I'm not saying any other cities aren't great and that New York is better than them in all respects. In fact, New York is a horrible place to get lonely - if you don't already have a lot of friends, nothing's lonelier than being surrounded by millions of people all in a rush to get somewhere else and too busy to meet new people.

<comment><USER6> I apologize for the pejorative tone. I overreacted to the word "most."

It's entirely possible, of course, that all the cities we're talking about are too large to be the best city, that in fact smaller cities (I'm in one right now - Ottawa, Canada) actually function better overall.

<comment><USER5> Apology accepted and upvoted :)

You made a very understandable mistake, the same one that a lot of my friends do whenever I rave about how great New York is. Just because it's the best in several aspects doesn't mean it's the best place to live.

And you could be right about the size of a city being a much larger factor in quality of life than easy public transportation. I actually like SF very much, despite the shitty public transportation, and a big part of that is because it's smaller (about a tenth the size of New York) and yet still has high population density (second highest to only New York). My friends in even smaller places like Boulder (a tenth the size of SF) love the lifestyle and startup scene there too.

Either way, this conversation seems better suited in person, like the kind you'd have over a beer after a workshop in some other city.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CNN Is Closing Down Beme, YouTube Star Casey Neistat's Video Company - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/cnn-is-closing-down-beme-youtube-star-casey-neistats-video <comment><USER2> So as a user of the Beme Panel app (the 2nd app, created after the CNN acquisition), I thought its core idea was fascinating. The ability to quickly panel and poll people on news topics directly via a phone app instead of invasive text or phone calls seems something worthwhile to invest in. Using it felt more like joining a group for a conversation rather than being prodded by pollsters.

What didn't make sense to me is why they didn't "step on the gas" and accelerate the speed of their app development and content. I overall enjoyed the Beme youtube vids and it seemed they were finally honing in on the right track, and as mentioned earlier the Beme Panels app showed promise.

However, the videos were a bit infrequent, not pumping out as much video content as competitors VICE or Vox, or even CNN's own previous acquisition "Great Big Story". The Panels app was still in closed beta and only brought in a trickle of users instead of trying to bring in even more to provide more data points and diversity of content/conversation.

Being a subscriber to Casey's YouTube channel, it seems to me that Casey is the kind of person that's a self-starter that likes to change things up a lot (which works for YouTube vids), but when it comes to consistently working on something that's more finite for long periods of time he doesn't have the knack for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> CNN is in its MTV transition phase. Remember when MTV played videos? We'll be saying: Remember when CNN did news? I don't blame CNN; the issue is their funding doesn't allow for complete independence. They need to shift programming to keep ad dollars coming in and they're looking for their "The Real World".

I've followed Bourdain through his many network changes, but his latest shows on CNN aren't the same. CNN is still relatively dry. Not for want of trying though... witness the number of times their newscasters shouted "shithole" with glee recently. :)

Personally, Neistat is not appealing to me, but he had an existing audience that I guess CNN execs were willing to give it a shot. That to me is desperation, not execution.

<comment><USER4> Wow, MTV is a perfect metaphor if you grew up in the 80s/90s. I may have to start using that. Its all 'talking heads' and filler now. I wonder if they still have independent coverage of anything outside dc or nyc.

<comment><USER5> > Its all 'talking heads' and filler now.

It's always been that way, other than brief exceptions (the 1991 Gulf War was probably the longest).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> CNN bought a brand and not a product. In fact the only "product" the company had (beme) was shut down at acquisition. Seems like they simply never managed to translate some smart enthusiastic people into a viable product.

Sad, but seemed like a predictable outcome. Neistat is great, but never saw how his approach would succeed inside a large corporate operation or how he could monetize the "brand" beyond his very successful YouTube following.

<comment><USER7> I tend to agree and I always got the impression that Casey was far more motivated by his vlogging than running beme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Classic case of a superstar at X (video, editing) trying a new sport Y (startup management), and failing spectacularly.

Casey Neistat is a talented daily lifestyle vlogger, and apparently not a talented venture startup video platform CEO.

<comment><USER9> hmm. He did sold the company for millions of dollars to CNN. Should have made more money than most "venture startup video platform CEO"s in their lifetime.

<comment><USER10> The company took multiple rounds of VC money and sold to CNN for ~$20 million. He very likely didn't make a penny from the sale.

Somewhat irrelevant though, as he takes home annual-salary-sized checks for every video that he puts on youtube.

<comment><USER9> Raised $2 million in 1 round and sold out for $25 million.

<comment><USER11> Raised $6+ million in 2 rounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "I couldn't find answers. I would sort of disappear, and I would hide, and I > would make YouTube videos for my channel because at least I would be able > yield something," Neistat said. "I don't think I'm giving CNN what I want to > give them, and I don't think they're getting value from me."

Sounds like things went poorly. Anyone know if this affected his earn-out (if there was one) or if they're just calling this whole thing a bust?

</comment><comment><USER13> Beme was dumb to begin with. Took a powerhouse of a personality to get it anywhere. Hard truth :\

<comment><USER14> Where's your data to back that up?

<comment><USER15> Casey openly talks about how the app failed. Him and Matt Hackett's interview on the YC Podcast: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvK- CgzxSdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvK-CgzxSdM)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Nerdwriter episode on Casey Neistat's style was pretty interesting: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=JbiJqTBCQuw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=JbiJqTBCQuw)

</comment><comment><USER11> After Casey's latest launch of Beme (pre CNN), he shed some additional insight into the money Beme had raised and how they spend it. To date, Beme has now raised $6,000,000+ (presumably $6,619,242 assuming a $4 Million Series A on top of the existing stated Seed round).

The first launch of Beme led to 400,000 downloads in the first 6 days. Users posted 1 million videos in that same time frame. While there were breakout areas or "10s of thousands of consistent users, "after the cool down from the initial launch, they saw user engagement fall and realized the product was not working. There was hope that there was still validity in the concept (posting unedited - authentic video footage); however, the app needed a redesign to thoroughly test the concept.

Beme has 11 full time employees (10 of which are technical, 1 of which runs their social media communities (Jack)). Casey does not collect a salary from Beme. With this being said, it sounds as if Casey does not include himself in this employee count as he would most likely fall into the non-technical category. Beme splits their employees into 3 teams. Most likely these are divided by platform: Android, iOS, and Web.

The burn rate for these 11 employees is $180,000/month or $2,160,000/ year. Beme has the option to monetize through in-app advertising, in-app purchases, and selling of user data. With no signs that any 3 of these revenue streams have been activated at this time these expenses are being paid for from the venture capital money raised.

The second release has seen a surge in downloads to over 1 million, with added engagement after the first 8 days of launch. Time will tell if the added interest is purely based off of Casey's current social clout, or if the concept has legs to become a standalone sharing platform.

[https://techcrunch.com/video/casey-neistats-youtube- life/519...](https://techcrunch.com/video/casey-neistats-youtube- life/519622188/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Details from the co-founder - [https://medium.com/@mhkt/when-your-startup- stops-d275c15ff70...](https://medium.com/@mhkt/when-your-startup- stops-d275c15ff702)

<comment><USER17> Wasn't there a post in the past few weeks that lampooned the "founder's farewell message for a failed startup" and catalogued the typical elements of such a message? This one seems to fit that mold perfectly.

<comment><USER12> [https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Casey Neistat cashed out really well and got out of his golden handcuffs very quickly, he can go back to vlogging now.

<comment><USER19> He never left vlogging

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I found a couple of mirrors of the video. They have the same title, but they have slightly different content, so I'm not sure which was the one that was linked.

[https://youtu.be/8dVbO9BJa80](https://youtu.be/8dVbO9BJa80)

[https://youtu.be/46RDiwfknu4](https://youtu.be/46RDiwfknu4)

</comment><comment><USER19> OUTPUT: They didn't make enough videos. 41 Videos in 6 Months 7.7 million views. 10 of them were Casey and not the Beme crew.

The production was good and the stories were interesting in a Vice type of way BUT they didn't output enough content. On YouTube amount of content is more valuable than production quality.

PS Casey states that Beme is moving into CNN and will still actually produce content. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfIhBu0TZBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfIhBu0TZBs)

<comment><USER21> I agree with you. They should have been doing Vice-level output to keep and grow and audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Neistat is a great guy, but I just don't get what CNN expected, whats supposed to be ROI of 25m price paid!?

<comment><USER7> I get the impression they bought the company expecting Neistat would allow them to tap into his vlogging audience to spread their political agenda so he would become something like a new-wave news anchor. I expect it went something like this...

Them: "Hey Casey, you should vlog the womans march" Him: "Nah, I'm going to go surfing with my buddies".

I bet this lead to a lot of frustration from both sides when Neistat didn't want to play along.

<comment><USER23> I think this kind of friction between Beme and CNN was likely very similar to the friction that pushed Boston Dynamics and Google apart.

<comment><USER7> Hmm yeah, that's an interesting point. I've always be curious what happened there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In a nutshell: They tried to build a Vice News, but they ended up with a BuzzFeed.

<comment><USER24> I thought it was closer to Vox, but yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They seem to have disabled the video.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ob4hS6ymCJZOVA_F7KTvMcFJc5z...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ob4hS6ymCJZOVA_F7KTvMcFJc5zFQY7Q/view?usp=drivesdk)

<comment><USER26> A mirror seems to be available here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46RDiwfknu4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46RDiwfknu4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Beyond the Beme platform itself, I'm greatly troubled by this SV notion that you can crowdsource objectivity, as if we have ever received a rational analysis from a mob.

Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps you can identify individuals who are "usually right". And from there do the filtering.

<comment><USER27> "Usually right" by who's standard? You would require individual arbitrators to determine what's correct, and at that point, why do crowdsourcing?

<comment><USER28> > "Usually right" by who's standard

By the standard of the person you are showing the news to.

C.f.: collaborative filtering. Or how Netflix recommends movies.

<comment><USER29> So people who at some point liked enough anti-vaxers posts to cross the threshold will never ever see any article presenting the facts that prove it's not true? And beside why would you want to serve users only the things that they agree with? It's not good for them, just makes them more stupid & easier targets for disinformation, but it's not good for Facebook neither because people love arguing online and cutting it down means also cutting the user interaction with the platform too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That was quick.

Then again, good on Casey Neistat for squeezing out hopefully a cool few million from CNN.

</comment><comment><USER30> Failed acquisition: dog bites man story. Strange though that the acquired company principal is roaming around bad mouthing the acquirer rather than "focusing on strategic projects" or gardening.

</comment><comment><USER31> The great thing about Neistat is the way he tells a history. About him, about a product, about a trip. Beme News has never tried tell any history.</comment>


Twitter and the Rise of 'The Leader' - <AUTHOR> https://tweetrocket.co/blog/twitter-and-the-rise-of-the-leader/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the share!! I am the original author of this post, hope you find it interesting! Go Tweet Rocket!

<comment><USER3> Great post buddy :-)</comment></comment>


Frisbi – Peer to peer group video chat - <AUTHOR> https://fris.bi/

<comment><USER3> No about page - Darn.

I had to go to their twitter to see that it was WebRTC based. - Darn.

Markets itself as peer to peer and requires signup on a central service. - <USER2> _really_ but ok, sure, WebRTC is P2P when it's not using TURN servers in bad NAT situations.

Not open source - Okay that's fine.

No explanation of how they plan to make money. - Am I the product?

The main image on the splash screen is some people who apparently decided to meet at a bar instead use their app. - I guess it's for atmosphere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, Jake here from Frisbi.

Do you think WebRTC is a good enough selling point to have somewhere on the main page?

Regarding open source, we may go down that route quite soon - the code could use some refactoring (this is a pet project for 2 people with jobs ;)

We haven't got a real desire to make money off this in the short term. It's simply for fun and we hope that a community can form around the site.

Thanks for your feedback, it's really appreciated.

<comment><USER3> Hey Jake,

I think either plugging webRTC or making it clear that the service doesn't require plugins like Flash or Java is definitely very valuable.

I agree, it is fun!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds very much like Firefox Hello.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a cool idea, well done!</comment>


Hack Week at Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=593

<comment><USER2> Well played, Dropbox. IMVU has quarterly, company-wide hack weeks but we've never written a blog post as fun as this one and CERTAINLY never exposed the list of projects we worked on. That took guts but it looks like it turned out well.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was so much fun. The quality of the projects was astounding.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just curious... is there currently anything out there now that automatically synchs the contacts of your phone's addressbook to Dropbox?

<comment><USER5> Not that I know of but google sync manages it quite well for smartphones (though it is syncing it to a gmail account and not dropbox).

<comment><USER4> Yeah I know google sync, but think it would be _pretty_ awesome if I could back that all up across several different platforms via Dropbox, along with all my laptop/work stuff

<comment><USER6> I don't think I've seen anyone attempt to do it with the Dropbox API and your mobile contacts, but I'm pretty sure it could be done.

<comment><USER7> I've been playing with creating a CardDAV server, which is pretty mush shuffling vCard files around. You could probably something similar with Dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking forward to putting some of these into action.

Great office setup too, a tad jealous!

</comment><comment><USER9> Observation: Not a single female in the pictures

</comment><comment><USER10> Quite the mass of cut-n-paste code on the second photo from the top.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand what you're getting at.

<comment><USER10> One of the monitors shows:

chunk of code

identical chunk of code

identical chunk of code

identical chunk of code

I found it amusing.

<comment><USER12> I doubt it is really identical. You don't really see that on the picture.

HTML looks often just like that. (I think it is HTML but you cannot really tell for sure from the picture.)

<comment><USER13> It's definitely HTML, from <https://dl.dropbox.com/s/2pa7akochkgsnos/IMG_0988.JPG>. The blocks are definitely not identical either.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Marissa Mayer Is Completely Right - <AUTHOR> http://osintegrators.com/opensoftwareintegrators%7Cmarissamayeriscompletelyright

<comment><USER2> Any company that does something that makes it harder for them to recruit prime talent is shooting themselves in the foot.

History may prove Mayer correct, but I wouldn't bet on it.</comment>


Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom – Ted Chiang - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-b5ab45cae2a5 <comment><USER2> "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom" is a quote from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Would recommend looking at their works!</comment>


The Space Station Is Becoming a Spy Satellite for Wildlife - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/the-international-space-station-becoming-a-spy-satellite-for-tiny-animals/490112/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> It makes me oddly sad that it's "the" space station.

The SciFi fan in me thinks we should shove a couple more up there to keep it company.

<comment><USER3> Or you can think the other way around: it is THE space station because countries around the world collaborated to create one large one, instead of each one trying to launch a single small one.

There is a lot of synergy from having a single large space station vs. many of small ones.

<comment><USER4> More of an emacs philosophy than a unix one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is very little information about the sensors themselves. Would love to find out more if someone has that information.

<comment><USER6> >The first-generation models will weigh 5 grams but the team wants to get them down to just one, which would allow them to track even the lightest fliers like swifts. Each tag comes equipped with a solar panel, GPS, and a huge memory, and can measure acceleration, temperature, bearing, pressure, light intensity, and more. Unlike the smallest current data-loggers, they can transmit information, too. They can even be reprogrammed from space.

I thought this was a pretty decent amount of info for a non-tech news source.

<comment><USER5> Good point. Just looking to see if there is more details on how the sensors were made so small and still able to transmit their location. It just blows my mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, but why involve the ISS? Putting a receiver/relay into orbit seems the perfect job for a small cube sat, or just a regular com sat. Why all the hassle and delay of human spaceflight? And, being on the ISS, the receiver will be stuck in the ISS orbit. that means not tracking anything at higher latitudes higher than the ISS inclination (ie the far north/south above/below 52*).

<comment><USER8> Because there are already regular delivery trips to the ISS, and the cost of such experiments is thus substantially subsidized by ISS operations. A cube sat would have a very limited lifespan and cost more than their program budget on its own, besides being too limited to be useful.

If their program proves successful they might be able to raise enough money to put hosted payloads on other spacecraft, one of the best being Iridium NEXT. But for now the ISS is their best shot.</comment></comment>


Zuckerberg apologizes, promises reform as senators grill him over Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/2018/04/10/b72c09e8-3d03-11e8-974f-aacd97698cef_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c3ebc7207fda <comment><USER2> This link just about says it all:

[https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year- apology-t...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour- hasnt-fixed-facebook/)</comment>


Mark Shuttleworth on the future of Ubuntu - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/284760/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad they're stopping development of Gobuntu, I think it's wasted time and effort. Let the Free Software nuts work on their strictly-free-software software.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ubuntu would not be my first choice for building cloud compute server clusters (there are better *nix distros). Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> Ubuntu is no worse than the other major distros for building clusters, and if you are building things for a fully virtual environment you might want to take a look at [http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/je...](http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/jeos) since it is designed for that purpose.

The nice thing about current (8.04) versions of Ubuntu server is the use of upstart which makes start up go fast. see <http://upstart.ubuntu.com/>

<comment><USER5> If boot time is a concern for your servers then you're doing it wrong.

<comment><USER4> in my book, fast boot falls under 'nice to have'.

And please; don't tell me you never reboot, I'll just laugh at you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UTorrent.com compromised, malware added to installer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bittorrent.com/2011/09/13/security-incident/

<comment><USER3> As far as I remember, uTorrent has an internal auto-update functionality that interrogates the server for a new version. I wonder how well that is secured and if owning utorrent.com is enough to distribute a malicious update to all users unfortunate enough to start the application while owned.

I'm very wary about auto-updates that pull executables (as opposed to merely data) in this way. It's one thing for Chrome to do it, I assume Google does it in a way that's safe. But freeware/shareware projects? Not so much. Hell, who's to say the authors don't lose interest in two years and let the domain expire. I had one freeware or open-source app that didn't even have the courtesy of _asking_ , it just pulled fresh binaries and restarted -- ouch. (At least you could disable this feature in the preference.)

<comment><USER4> Just since you mentioned Chrome's updating mechanism, it is a fascinating approach that they took: [http://www.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/software...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/software-updates-courgette)

<comment><USER5> Yes, but it's very difficult to setup outside Google.

<comment><USER6> courgette is just a binary diff algorithm -- there's nothing fancy to it (they use some really neat tricks, though), and apparently (I haven't verified) the source is in the chromium tree.

validating your updates via asymmetric crypto can be mildly expensive ([http://www.verisign.com/code-signing/content-signing- certifi...](http://www.verisign.com/code-signing/content-signing- certificates/winqual-developers/index.html) lists Windows Authenticode certificates at $400/yr) but is within the realm of a small company.

setting up a Google-scale CDN and writing a reliable push update framework? that's the hard part.

<comment><USER7> If I recall correctly, Google is facing a patent lawsuit over the Courgette technology. I don't remember if the complainant was a patent troll or not.

<comment><USER8> Whatever the outcome would be, that is enough to stop people from using this piece of open source software to provide safer updates.

<comment><USER3> As stated above, courgette doesn't provide safer updates, just smaller ones. It's just a really smart executable binary diff. Signing the update is an orthogonal issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I stopped using it since it wasn't open source. Worse when it became infested with "optional" ~~adware~~ search bar.

<comment><USER10> still using the last-open source version with the auto-updater disabled!

<comment><USER11> May I suggest Deluge (<http://deluge-torrent.org/>)?

It's open-source, cross-platform and very similar to µTorrent in both functionality and looks.

<comment><USER12> Transmission ( <http://www.transmissionbt.com/> ) is an open source torrent client with a nice web interface (as well as native interface) just like Deluge.

I think it is somewhat lighter resource-wise (I'm running it on my NAS), but apart from that I don't know the exact differences between Deluge and Transmission, but I thought I'd mention it for completeness' sake.

<comment><USER13> I love Transmission on OS X and wish they had a real Windows port!

<comment><USER14> Their website demonstrates a Qt GUI, as well as a web interface. What would, in your opinion, constitute a "real" Windows port?

<comment><USER15> Something better than those options? What about a web interface or a Qt GUI screams "great Windows UI" to you?

<comment><USER14> I suppose I did not place the same emphasis on "great" as you did. Alternatively, I couldn't name a "great" Windows UI offhand, anyway.

However, my experience is that _some_ Qt apps on Windows behave normally, and depending on the application (but in this case, especially just the need to manage torrents) a web UI works just fine and avoids the waste of developer hours fighting against the local platform's quirks.

For my enlightenment, what do you consider as an example of a great Windows UI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those on Windows, here is a bit of code that can be used to validate Authenticode signature of the update package.

[https://github.com/apankrat/assorted/blob/master/validate_pa...](https://github.com/apankrat/assorted/blob/master/validate_package.cpp)

Basically the idea is to get an Authenticode certificate and sign the update .exe with it. Then, when a program checks for an update and pulls it down, it would validate the package signature and will not proceed if the details - <USER2> application and the certificate subject names - are wrong. It is as simple as it gets.

</comment><comment><USER17> And this is one of many reasons I love that almost all my software is installed through a secure package manager.

<comment><USER18> pacman _cough_ _cough_ sorry I just lost it for a second...

<comment><USER18> Some explanation to counter those terrible downvotes: Pacman, the package manager of Archlinux, is not implementing the verification of package signatures. It's a recurrent issue in the Arch community.

<comment><USER19> It seems things are changing [http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package- signing-3-pacma...](http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package- signing-3-pacman/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Admits "Data is the Intel Inside" - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/12/google-admits-data-is-the-inte.html <comment><USER2> _"... what we're seeing actually is that with a lot of data, you ultimately see things that seem intelligent even though they're done through brute force ..."_

This simple idea applied to problems like spelling (and obviously search) has an orders of magnitude improvement over previous hacks. So while MS Word might append those squiggly lines underneath your name when you type it into word, spell checking your name in google is more than likely to show your name and links to it. Check this simple python spelling example by Norvig ~ <http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>

Add a bit of Maths (probability theory) and loads of data that Google collects and Google spell correction kicks MS Words F7 butt.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Admits?" Google have been saying this in public, in as many words, for years. The thing is that no one believes them.

<comment><USER4> Tell me about it! Some people (see liuliu's reply) didn't believe me: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=356329>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google's mission statement:

 _To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful._

<comment><USER6> And sell ads on top of it.

<comment><USER7> Just a means to an end, when they started out doing that — hopefully that remains the case.

<comment><USER6> When they started out doing that I don't think they realized it'd make them into a billion dollar company. The calculus has changed a bit since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes, this is an old post but one thing that strikes me about the semantic web vs. brute force approach is that the semantic web approach is (assuming it works) much cheaper for startups, whereas the brute force practically dictates having tons of cash and an existing infrastructure.

Taken from this perspective, it's easy to see why the big players favor the brute force approach.

</comment><comment><USER9> December 2007</comment>


Show HN: We are hiring engineering interns who don't use social media - <AUTHOR> https://blog.meetmiy.com/we-are-hiring-engineering-interns-who-dont-use-social-media <comment><USER2> > _" We believe social media is very unhealthy, here's our blog post on why."_

> [ Upvote 3 ] [ tweet ] [ (f) Share 1 ]

I kid, though. If you have to have a media presence, you can't expect everyone to come to your mountain top hermitage, so you have to allow people to share your stuff easily.

</comment><comment><USER3> This really bothers me, but I can't exactly tell why.

If what people do on their own time doesn't affect job performance, what's the point of filtering by random criteria? Almost like disqualify based on a hobby or political/religious views.

Social media is just like another skill. You can use it to your advantage or abuse it.

<comment><USER4> It's literally an email marketing company. Email is an og social media. They are posting their listing on hn, a forum, another og social media. I just dont get this mentality that treats Facebook/twitter as a different class of technology than email, rss, reddit, irc, and AIM/MSN/ICQ. Their difference is in degree not kind. Facebook is email/aim+wordpress/blogger. It's rss with a type of sharing+popularity-detector.

The counter argument being, they arent filtering by people who dont use social media, as much as conducting a social experiment asking people TO quit social media if they are hired. I think its well within their right to build a culture of people with a mindset, and filter for people who live the message they are trying to propagate and/or are willing to forego "social media" as a participant in an exercise.

<comment><USER5> A lot of people don't use email as social media anymore, though, but rather mostly one-way communication with big entities like your bank, many of which aren't expected to reply back. As this is a marketing company, they may also have the distinction that social media marketing generally involves having people socially convince you that something is good; but email is not a good forum for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $9,600 a month for an intern! I really don't have a good sense of silicon valley salaries it seems...

I'm actually in the market for email marketing software but I cannot understand what you're doing that's new. Your home page has almost zero information and what it does show looks to be the same as other big names.

What are you doing that's different?

</comment><comment><USER7> There seems to a contradiction here:

> We believe social media is very unhealthy

> We are a small startup focused on making email campaigns with high > conversions achieved through dynamic content such as images.

Surely these are two sides of the attention economy?

</comment><comment><USER8> Holy crap! $9,600 per month for an intern!

That's an insane amount. That's the sort of money that most professionals here in the UK will never achieve, and it's on offer here for interns.

The Silicon Valley bubble is real.

<comment><USER9> This is the real story. That's absolutely nuts, and yet I know that someone is going to chime in to say that it's not a living wage in Silicon Valley. Which is _also_ nuts.

I live elsewhere, make less than that in my job, and _still_ have money to spare for retirement and extravagances. And my salary is nearly double the average for where I live.

<comment><USER10> > live elsewhere

> nearly double the average for where I live

Well, that's probably why

<comment><USER9> That's kind of my point -- living in Silicon Valley, I'd be paid less than an intern, apparently. Look at it another way - this intern position is being paid more than double the national average salary [0]. Outside of Silicon Valley, that's nuts. _Within_ Silicon Valley, not so much.

Ergo, prices in Silicon Valley are nuts. Which isn't news, per se.

[0] [https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't have social media? Come help us spam people the old fashioned way with email.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't HN a kind of social media though ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're hoping they are using a news aggregator or a friend will refer. Hard to spread messages nowadays without FB/etc. In addition: "If you are using social media and want to quit, tell us during the application process."

<comment><USER13> So do you consider HN social media or not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I kinda want to make a startup, just to hire interns who only read text based e-mails.....

<comment><USER15> > We are exclusively hiring engineers who use CLI email clients and browse the > web using Lynx

One major benefit: everyone at the company will be 10x

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't the main point of hiring being getting someone who can get things done? Whether they are on social media is at best an indirect effect on that metric.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a very weird ask, but to be fair the pay is very handsome.

I don't use social media, I don't live in the bay area, and I've been in the industry for a long time... but were it not for that, I would apply :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think there's some sort of underlying social experiment here

</comment><comment><USER19> Show HN can be used for job posts?

<comment><USER20> No. This post violates both the HN guidelines[1] (no job posts allowed) and the "Show HN" rules[2] (must be something you built that people can try out).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment></comment>


Pebble Smartwatch Review: A Useful Dumbwatch - <AUTHOR> http://programmingzen.com/2014/01/10/pebble-smartwatch-review-a-useful-dumbwatch/ <comment><USER2> I find the battery life on my Pebble to be much longer than the author is finding: it was still going 8 days after I misplaced it in my car. When actively being used, I find it lasts 3-4 days. It's still short enough that it's easiest to get in the habit of charging it overnight, but it easily survives one or two forgotten charges.

<comment><USER3> You have to disable the motion backlight, it turns on far to easily. With it on I got about 2 days of battery life. With it off I get 5-7 days.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this, I'd been wondering why mine was turning on all the time and I'd forgotten about that setting. Settings->Display->Motion

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I had a Pebble bought for me as a gift and I have to admit, while I'm a technophile I did think it was gimmicky.

Count me as reformed; I fell in love with the Pebble quickly. Now I won't try to tell anyone that it is a do-all device but it has done two things for me.

A. Having notifications pop up on your wrist... priceless. I get email and texts constantly and when I am working on-site I don't have to keep pulling out my phone. I can assess quickly if it's something I need to take time to deal with. I now wonder how I did without this.

B. It has convinced me that this is going to be a very big thing in the future. I find I constantly want the Pebble to do more... like the Galaxy Gear does. I'm not advocating the Gear specifically, but I am saying that having a Pebble has convinced me that this is a mobile device interface (wrist mounted) I want to see mature and that I will be making a standard device type for me.

<comment><USER6> Not trying to be snarky at all here, genuinely wondering what the advantages are as opposed to simply having your phone on your desk while you're working?

I mean if notifications are the primary feature (being connected 24x7 etc), isn't that the purpose of a smartphone after all? Why bring _yet_ another device into the fray when it admittedly is a one-trick pony at this point of time?

<comment><USER7> Not the parent, but for me I don't have to keep the phone on my desk at all. It can stay in my bag. That's actually less distracting since the notifications to my wrist can be filtered (only email and messages, only phone calls, or whatever). Parent mentioned working on-site, where the phone might be more likely to walk off if you forget to pick it up.

Is it revolutionary? Will it change your life? No, I don't share the same rosy view as the parent commenter. But I do find it handy, my phone stays in the bag most of the time, and I don't have to dig for it to find out that I need to pick up milk on the way home.

<comment><USER8> I keep my phone in my bag too, I don't always have pockets and girl pockets are small anyway. Watches definitely help in that case.

Also, I had an app which forwarded all phone notifications to the Pebble and it certainly helps you realise just how spammy the phone is. But it was useful for capturing things like bank app alerts, TripIt, Google Now, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For me, moving notifications from my phone to my wrist is worth using the Pebble. I'm not loyal to it, and would consider switching if I was given a compelling reason to. However, I don't know what that reason would be, given that it already does exactly what I need it to. Anything else would have to be something radical and awesome that hasn't been thought of, yet.

I wrote about the sheer number of smart watches coming out, here: [http://hackertourism.com/watches](http://hackertourism.com/watches)

</comment><comment><USER10> > I found myself essentially having to recharge it overnight as I could only > get about 1.5 days worth of battery life from it and hated seeing it die in > the middle of the day.

You should return it. Mine is never less than 5 days.

<comment><USER11> That's unusual. You should email email@example.com to get an RMA replacement if you're consistently only getting 1.5 days

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A good summary, I agree all around except with respect to battery life, I've had none of the problems anyone is talking about...but if I had to guess, I bet it corresponds to the amount of notifications you get and how much you're playing with the thing.

I've been able to get some of the apps to worth, but there is clearly still some slight hacking needed, which makes the whole thing more of a project than a product to me.

That being said, I commend their efforts in getting the technology out there after years of talking about smart watches, especially on an open platform for developers.

I'll continue to support it, use it, and hack on it, but is it the ipod of mp3 players for watches? Probably not, but I'm tired of waiting around for the big boys. Stop suing each other over patents and innovate for gods sake.

<comment><USER11> You may be pleasantly surprised by 2.0 =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use my Pebble to play music on my phone. It actually makes me listen to music more -- the play button is so easy to hit. It's really quite fun. Clearly other bluetooth connected devices can do this too, but I don't have those=).

As a whole, I think smart watches will eventually be quite common. There are clear advantages for: notifications, calendar viewing, remote controls, music, health/fitness monitoring, timers, siri integration. That said, Pebble has a ton of work left to before they have decent support for these things. It is impressive how well it works considering, but they need to step up their game fast or someone (Apple) is going to crush them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe this is Pebble's marketing, I don't know, the fact is most people don't need a Pebble, but it still serves a highly usefil niche for some. If you work with your hands a lot (as a chef, wood worker, contractor, whatever) it can be highly useful. If you work closely coordinated with a small team where you might consider using radios to keep in touch then used correctly a smartwatch might be able to fill that role.

If you don't have a practical use for a smartwatch as with the above examples then it might not be useful for you. Not everyone needs a multi-meter or a torque wrench either, they are tools for jobs and not necessarily universally needed.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been wearing a pebble everyday for about 2 months now.

Working from home (software dev) I will often leave my phone on my desk, before I got my pebble I would often glance at my phone after coming back into the room, just to see if I missed anything.

Since I have gotten my Pebble I have noticed myself doing this less and less, because I know what notifications I have received because they are right there on my wrist.

I admit there is more I would like from my pebble as far as functionality, initial outgoing emails/hangouts via voice dictation would be nice. That being said the Pebble in its current iteration has proven itself useful for me.

</comment><comment><USER16> I still can't justify anything better than my $10 Casio Bin Laden watch.

There is literally nothing that has an advantage over it for me. Status and cost mean nothing.

I think the smart watch is purely an example of conspicuous consumption, nothing more.

<comment><USER17> I personally find value in using my Pebble. Having the ability to glance down at my wrist without needing to pull my phone out of my pocket (or computer bag) is great. Having the ability to trigger URLS through a companion app is pretty cool. Glancing at my watch while walking through the airport to see I have a gate change notification is great. In the near future, there will be many other potential integration points and companion apps as the next major version of the SDK is released.

Are these features for everyone? Probably not. But it seems closed minded to reduce the purchase of what is in actuality a pretty cool device to "purely conspicuous consumption".

<comment><USER16> Is having to pull your phone out of your pocket that bad? Do you even need to look at it unless it makes a loud noise at which point you can close to defer until later? Constant distraction is poisonous. On your arm, it's going to be worse.

<comment><USER2> On your arm, it's much less distracting. If my phone vibrates and not my arm, I know I can ignore it. If they both vibrate, it takes half a second to glance down and decide whether it's important or not. And if it's one of those many "medium priority" type notifications that seem to form the bulk of your notifications, you're much more inclined to just ignore it rather than just answer because you've got your phone in your hand anyways...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Tell me what time it is. Yes, I can reach for my pants and fight my pocket > to get the phone out. But the watch is just faster and easier.

Obviously this is the killer feature of it.

<comment><USER19> Actually this week, how cold it is was (weather) even more important than the time, or day ... or texts, email, or phone calls. And with Glance (or other apps) this is on the watchface, for well, glancing at.

It was quite alarming as the temperature outside crawled down into negative degrees Celsius and I'm pleased to see it climb back into small positive integers today.

<comment><USER8> I don't pay much attention to the exact degree weather outside. I guess if it was on the cusp of freezing it might be interesting, but generally.. it's cold, I'm not going to change my behaviour as a result. Is the quantifiable degree increment interesting to other people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The most disturbing thing about Pebble is the lack of proper UTF-8 support[1].

The most positive is of course the notifications: I leave my phone at a desk when I'm at work, far and away from me and still get all the notifications in the world, never missing a phone call.

[1] [http://www.convalesco.org/blog/2013/03/05/the-pebble- experie...](http://www.convalesco.org/blog/2013/03/05/the-pebble-experience/)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Waking up to a vibrating watch on your wrist still beats by far annoying > iPhone alarms blasting full volume while you are half asleep.

or you could use one of those apps that track whether you're in REM sleep or not and wake you up when most appropriate..

<comment><USER22> A big advantage of a vibrating watch is not waking your partner at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> if you turn vibration off on your phone you can confirm phantom vibrations are real.</comment>


Replicache: Easy Offline-First for Existing Applications - <AUTHOR> https://replicache.dev/ <comment><USER2> For something that's open-source, production ready thanks to the lovely folks at Mozilla, and ready to host on your own infrastructure check out Kinto[1]. Replicache and Kinto have overlapping feature sets, but my guess is that Replicache is probably a bit more optimized (especially if the delta updates are truly as small as possible). That being said, of all the problems I've run into implementing sync for my applications with Kinto, the size of update requests hasn't been one of them. Also while Kinto can support live subscriptions, the only plugin implementing them currently relies on a third- party.

The biggest difference I see between them is that Replicache sits in front of your server, whereas Kinto _is_ your server.

Disclosure: I'm a contributor to Kinto, primarily working on transitioning the JavaScript libraries to TypeScript.

[1] [https://docs.kinto-storage.org/en/latest/](https://docs.kinto- storage.org/en/latest/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to say that I didn't know about Kinto. Thanks for the link!

Kinto seems, is in some ways, the opposite design approach to Replicache. Replicache answers the question: I have this existing web service with a whole complex backend stack, how do I make it work offline-first?

Kinto answers the question: I have this website, and I don't _want_ a backend stack. Where can I store data and have it work offline-first?

I think the problem Kinto is solving is also important, thanks for sharing it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News!

I'm starting a new company attempting to solve the offline-first / mobile-sync problem once and for all.

Replicache makes your mobile, web, or desktop application blazingly responsive, by buffering all reads and writes to a local cache (aka "offline- first").

This is something I've been thinking about on and off for over fifteen years, on major projects at Google as well as my previous vc-backed startup. I previously thought there was no satisfying general solution, but happy to say I think I was wrong: Replicache is pretty dang easy, and it works with any existing stack.

We're looking for groups to partner with would like early access. If that sounds interesting, please reach out!

\- Aaron

<comment><USER3> Sorry, no technical comments but a UI one: Please change the font/style. Depending on monitor color settings, the paragraph text in Retina Thin is really hard to read, but even on my other monitor it's still a problem with the letter "s" [0]. I think it's a problem with the thinness and white on dark background. It was hurting my eyes and permanently distracting me while trying to read the copy.

[0]: [https://i.imgur.com/Ia0roKn.png](https://i.imgur.com/Ia0roKn.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this feedback, I'll ask our designer for his advice. Perhaps we can detect high density monitors and only do Retina in that case or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks really interesting. I have been digging deep into sync for the past few months and am very interested in how this works. I am currently trying to understand automerge and delta patching trying to implement from scratch. I have looked at Gun and couch db + pouch db but both did not feel like the right answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Be aware that CRDTs like automerge are solving a different (and harder) problem than Replicache. They are trying to implement convergence in an asynchronous system where there is _no central authority_. See the excellent article [https://www.inkandswitch.com/local- first.html](https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html) for more on this type of application.

Most classic web services don't have this requirement because they do in fact have a central authority -- the service itself.

Moreover, for web services, it is _crucial_ that the central authority actually be authoritative. You don't want client and server state kind of gets smooshed together arbitrarily, but for the client's view of the state to be a mere suggestion - one which the server _always_ overrides.

So my view is that CRDTs are not really an appropriate basis for building this kind of feature in a web service.

However I think the tech is awesome (Replicache actually started out as a true CRDT and moved to its current design after extensive iteration with customers).

See [https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer- technology...](https://www.figma.com/blog/how-figmas-multiplayer-technology- works/) for how Figmas came to same conclusion wrt CRDTs for their service.

\--

(P|C)ouchDB:

\- Using couch as your backend db ends up being a nonstarter for most applications. A distributed multitenant database is a big big thing and a hugely important technical decision. Most orgs are not going to go with couch just to get sync. See [https://medium.com/wandering-cto/mobile-syncing-with- couchba...](https://medium.com/wandering-cto/mobile-syncing-with- couchbase-6f076d8c7e08#deca) for an example of this.

\- The couchdb replication protocol offers no help with conflict resolution. It just tells you there was a conflict and gives you two conflicting documents. This isn't practical for most applications.

<comment><USER5> PouchDB author here, your project looks great good job.

I certainly agree that switching backends to CouchDB has made it hard for people to adopt Pouch/Couch. I have often considered how I could make Pouch work with arbitrary data sources, but as you well know its a tricky problem.

However I dont understand from your website or comment here about how conflict resolution is easier? Given the situation of having 2 clients recieving an initial data of {key: value}, the clients go offline, 1 client writes {key: foo} and the other writes {key: bar}, the clients then both reconnect. What is the new state?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Dale,

Thank you for the comment. I think there is a technical difference and an ergonomic difference:

1\. The technical difference is that when you do conflict resolution with Replicache you have more information, specifically the intent of the mutations. Consider something very simple like a positive-only counter. The parent is `1` and the forks are `2` and `0`. Is the correct resolution `2`? Is it `0`? Or is it `1`? There's no way to know because we don't know what the intent of those changes was. Was fork 1 incrementing? Was it multiplying? Was fork 2 decrementing? By how much? Now multiply this simple example by real applications with many developers, many features, and many client versions in the wild. Having the intent of each change travel with the change is crucial.

2\. The ergonomic difference is that conflict resolution in Replicache isn't something separate that is done after-the-fact. Replicache applies mutations to the server by calling normal HTTP APIs, just with potentially old arguments. This forces developers to consider conflict resolution at the point they are writing APIs, and keeps conflict resolution code colocated with the corresponding services.

<comment><USER6> > This forces developers to consider conflict resolution at the point they are > writing APIs

Would an example of what you have in mind be writing an atomic "/increment" endpoint instead of a "/set?value=possiblyOldValue+1" endpoint? (using GET notation instead of POST just to make illustration easier)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep.

<comment><USER7> From what I can tell from the website, replicache retries HTTP requests periodically until they succeed. With an non-idempotent request like `/increment` how does replicache know when to stop retrying?

if request succeed, but the response fails, could replicache increment twice?

<comment><AUTHOR> The APIs Replicache calls at customer service must be idempotent. Replicache passes a version vector to the customer that customer uses to ensure this, and to enforce causal consistency.

Customers must make several relatively small changes to their backends to support Replicache, including this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious how well Replicache composes together with web state management libraries such as Redux and Apollo GraphQL. My closest experience with something like Replicache's offline view is optimistic responses in GraphQL[1]. Maybe some more web-specific examples can be added to the site?

[1] [https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/performance/optimis...](https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/performance/optimistic- ui/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Apollo's optimistic responses are similar Replicache's local writes. The difference is that Replicache's offline writes automatically refresh every affected subscription and ensures the entire UI is consistent with the latest changes. You don't need to manually modify affected queries: [https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/performance/optimis...](https://www.apollographql.com/docs/react/performance/optimistic- ui/#adding-to-a-list).

How Replicache composes with Apollo needs more thought. Off the top of my head, I think that Replicache replaces the need for Apollo's unified cache, but not with many of its other features. For example, it's easy to imagine Replicache being one of several data sources backing Apollo. In fact we have a customer who has done something like that already, and it's quite nice because the consuming code doesn't even need to know whether a GraphQL query is coming from offline data or the server. That can even change over the life of the product as more features in an application become offline-enabled.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for a thorough explanation!</comment></comment></comment>


Have VCs Had Enough of Subscription eCommerce? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/vc-funding-subscription-ecommerce

<comment><AUTHOR> HN references in this article and some excellent data points on SubCom (subscription e-commerce) funding trends.</comment>


UK gov says new Home Sec will have powers to ban end-to-end encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/14/gov_says_new_home_sec_iwilli_have_powers_to_ban_endtoend_encryption <comment><USER2> > Earl Howe responded: "I was certainly not implying that the Government > wished to ban end-to-end encryption; in fact, we do not seek to ban any kind > of encryption. However, there will be circumstances where it is reasonably > practicable for a company to build in a facility to de-encrypt the contents > of communication."

This guy graduated from Oxford

</comment><comment><USER3> It's always amazed me how much England is a polic state with information and the internet while being firmly in West as far as democracy and in the line of history that that extends back to the Greeks.

Seriously, banning End-to-End Encryption? That's just a barrier to businesses operating in your borders and entrepreneurs starting up in your garages (or sheds rather).

<comment><USER4> > It's always amazed me how much England is a polic state with information and > the internet while being firmly in West as far as democracy and in the line > of history that that extends back to the Greeks.

The Athenians had a violent state periodically ruled by dictators (tyrants). Sparta was a _weird_ totalitarian state. Both were tribalist most similar to the Wahhabis. The common culture they brought with them when they invaded Greece would be familiar in lots of countries (e.g. the women were in purdah).

And England has been a prime factory for totalitarianism for centuries: consider Bentham's Panopticon and what country Orwell lived in. And they are the inventors of the modern concentration camp...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We will see the same shit everywhere, "Of course you can have encryption, as long as its the official version from the government. Only terrorists use the illegal versions of encryption", and if your caught using it, you go to jail for life.

How long until this is implemented? 5 years? 10 years?

</comment><comment><USER6> Its unlikely that this would stop any terrorism, banning something such as drugs doesn't make the drugs go away.

Banning a form of communication doesn't prevent people from communicating. People can still communicate by unusual methods, and knowing that their communications can be "over-heard" they can make stronger attempts to keep the symbols by which they communicate secret.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't OS have dedicated cores and memory? - <AUTHOR> Have you ever experience your mouse and keyboard input start to lag?<p>Why is it that you are not able to dedicate a core or a thread to your OS so, third party apps do not have access to them? This can prevent your entire OS from locking and your entire experience being jerky. <comment><USER2> There are a lot of issues where dedicated cores don't help - e.g. locking issues (see the discussion today about windows and chromium builds)

<comment><USER3> Would you mind explaining what some of these cases are and why it doesn't work that way, please? (Sorry for what might be a fairly elementary question.)

<comment><USER4> I'm not detaro, but I'll take a crack. It's kind of like traffic—if you're constantly stopping for other cars, it doesn't really help to have a faster car. If the UI thread is waiting for something else to happen, having an entire core dedicated to the UI just means that entire core is waiting. In the case detaro was alluding to, compiling Chrome was creating so many processes, the UI had to wait for the kernel to shut down processes before it could do what the UI needed it to do. [0]

Adit has some good posts on concurrency:

—[http://adit.io/posts/2013-05-11-The-Dining-Philosophers- Prob...](http://adit.io/posts/2013-05-11-The-Dining-Philosophers-Problem-With- Ron-Swanson.html)

—[http://adit.io/posts/2013-05-15-Locks,-Actors,-And-STM-In- Pi...](http://adit.io/posts/2013-05-15-Locks,-Actors,-And-STM-In- Pictures.html).

[0]: [https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu- and...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/24-core-cpu-and-i-cant- move-my-mouse/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can, at least in Linux. But in general the OS will do a better scheduling job than you will.

<comment><USER6> Maybe more efficient, but the default settings put my actions in the same queue as everything else.

This can be rather annoying, especially if the machine is low on memory or swapping to death.

As a matter of design principle for a desktop machine, it should prioritize everything that I do.

That includes not stealing the keyboard focus when I'm typing, up to the point of rolling back any popups that opened just before I started to type.

<comment><USER7> Well, lets just say that there's a variety of levels a desktop environment, and not all of them are immediately obvious to the OS or hardware layers.

The linux kernel is designed to be generic enough to work on wifi routers, phones, laptops, and massive compute clusters. There's some thing you can do, but there's going to be a class of optimizations any general purpose OS must give up on. For example, Windows NT runs a lot of window manager stuff in kernel space ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT)). Once you pull that in, the scheduler will have a richer dataset work with. But it kinda makes 32MB routers and headless servers less viable. Even Server Core still has a window manager!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mostly because the os needs to coordinate everything and not all operations can be interrupted. Operating system maintain each program illusion to be alone on the hardware, virtualizing disk transfers, memory mappings, display regions and all the other hardware. Some operations once queued and dispatched need to complete before other operations can be accepted - that might happen for example when the os is figthing to access a memory page from disk but the disk is busy in a large dma transfer - then the illusion of being alone comes crashing down and no clever scheduling can fix it, because a class of operations without a guaranteed time constraint exist on the ibm pc platform.

Without a hard real time guarantee from the hardware, everything built on it cannot provide a guarantee on dispatching only the exact amount of operations that the system can handle.

And that happens even before accounting that the os or some driver within may have some cpu locking going on.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't specific to your question, but I have VM's that have 6 logical processors. I use taskset to set the affinity of all OS processes to logical proccesor 0. This doesn't work for some kernel threads, but it works for most processes. I then give haproxy a number of logical processors, or balance based on what is running on that VM.

On physical hardware I would use NUMA regions per set of applications as well to optimize the use of CPU cache and get lower latency to memory, but the overall memory availability will be reduced. This is done on some latency sensitive applications.

You can do similar things in Windows. There is probably a way in Mac, but I have never tried.

As others pointed out, there are many cases where doing all of this won't help, so it really depends on the problem you are trying to solve, or the optimization you wish to accomplish. There are certainly no one-size-fits-all solutions.

</comment><comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_affinity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_affinity)

In my experience we used affinity with older CPUs to improve single thread performance. Recently it doesn't make much difference.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feels like there isn't a solution using current OSes.

Why does CPU locking exist? I'm sure this is pretty technical question but if anyone has a dumb answer for me... Is this something impossible get rid of? Can it be scoped to a core and not the entire CPU?

</comment><comment><USER11> iOS supposedly runs the UI thread at maximum priority on phones, which is similar to what you are suggesting here.</comment>


The surprising history of nitrous oxide - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/01/28/the-surprising-history-of-hipp.html

<comment><USER2> I used to be able to buy bulbs from behind the counter at supermarkets. Now none of them carry them. I used to use them for whipped cream and mousse. My creamer hasn't been used for nearly a decade. I don't want to buy boxes to huff the stuff at raves so I couldn't be bothered chasing it further.

It isn't a controlled substance or anything and in my experience is pretty damn harmless. Just seems like more nanny state nonsense. Sure it can kill you if you suffocate on it but then so can water. Meanwhile legitimate use gets penalised.

<comment><USER3> They're available through Amazon these days. I mainly use them for rapid flavor infusions for cocktails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _...some shows would enact the chemical reaction to yield it on stage as part of the theatre..._

Wouldn't this be very dangerous? Back then stages were illuminated using fire, and nitrous oxide is a famous explosive.

<comment><USER5> Nitrous Oxide itself isn't explosive. It's used to add additional oxygen, which effectively boosts explosives.</comment></comment>


John Doerr On Bloom Energy Launch: "This Is Like The Google IPO"  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/doerr-bloom-energy-google-ipo/ <comment><USER2> What does TC mean by 'One potentially disruptive feature of the technology is that it works both ways: fuel can produce electricity, but it can also go the other way so that electricity produces fuel.'??? How can it produce fuel from energy? What format would that 'fuel' be in?

<comment><USER3> Feed CO2 and water + electricity, get back fuel + O2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see how the numbers add up: this thing saves a nickel a KWH, max. A 100KW box costs $750K, according to the article. 24 _365_ $5.00 = 43800. So how does it pay for itself in 3-5 years? Something is off, there. It's possible that TC fouled up - that the $750K price is for the 400KW unit that Google and Walmart are using, in which case the saving of $170K/yr would about work out.</comment>


Cofounder management - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronkharris.com/cofounder-management <comment><USER3> High-achievers (and most people) are trained to simply put in more hours to get past problems. If I'm not doing well in a class, I study more or do extra credit work. If I'm not selling, I can make a hundred more calls. If I make a short-sighted technical decision, I can stay up all night and refactor my way out of it.

Part of the reason why management is so tough is that you can't always solve problems by simply working more. When it comes to team dynamics, a lot depends on catching problems in the moment and communicating clearly the first time. You can't just brute-force your way through problems like you can in most other areas. It takes intuition and understanding that is innate to a few folks and earned through experience by everybody else.

Think about this situation from the article: "We did, however, realize (a bit later than we should have) that disappearing from a tiny office too frequently during the day was a bad idea and hurt morale for the rest of the company." There was no way for them to fix this by working harder, they had to find an intuitive sense for how much time away from the office was too much.

Managing people is a fundamental skill for founders and one of the areas where intense effort often doesn't make a difference at all.

<comment><USER4> > You can't just brute-force your way through problems like you can in most > other areas. It takes intuition and understanding that is innate to a few > folks and earned through experience by everybody else.

You absolutely can brute force with management. You can always pay people more, or give up some of your equity to someone who will work harder.

> "We did, however, realize (a bit later than we should have) that > disappearing from a tiny office too frequently during the day was a bad idea > and hurt morale for the rest of the company." There was no way for them to > fix this by working harder.

Being present longer and taking fewer breaks is superficially working harder. More abstractly, you can work harder until you make redundant people who complain about coffee breaks, if you so choose.

<comment><USER5> > "You absolutely can brute force with management. You can always pay people > more, or give up some of your equity to someone who will work harder."

That's not remotely 'brute forcing management'. That's just giving people different financial incentives. If you had a management problem _before_ handing over cash/equity, you're still going to have one _after_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My cofounder is my brother and communication is far and away one of our biggest challenges. In our case the style familiarity and family connections actually compound the delicacy of how we go about growing and changing our routines. To say I've learned more about myself since cofounding a company than in any prior endeavor would be an understatement, and I've done some pretty whacky things in the past in an effort to test my limits. (reality tv, expat, changed my name, etc) Were we both not at points in our lives where we are receptive and careful with criticism there's no way we have made it this far. One of our clutch mentors ends up being another brother who knows us both very, very well. I can't imagine how we'd get through tough times without that well known second opinion, or how impossibly impenetrable a cofounder relationship is to outsiders who haven't done it before. Hat tip to Mr. Harris for calling this out!

</comment><comment><USER7> _Cofounders rarely have experience managing anyone or anything. They 're learning at the same time as running a startup. There are a lot of good ways to manage, but they take time to learn and practice._

Boy is that scary.

<comment><USER8> Yep. And that's why, if it isn't your first rodeo, you can end up in a weird headspace as an early employee, because cofounders may act like they know a lot of things they don't (including how to lead), and you know that they are still learning.

You kind of have to top from bottom sometimes.

<comment><USER9> I feel like topping from the bottom is an underappreciated skillset that can be really helpful for an employee and their boss. Done right, the employee looks almost telepathic and prescient. Done wrong and the employee looks like a jerk, but ymmv...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was helping a close friend grow and build out his startup idea. i've known him for a while and we're still pretty tight. However along the way i realized that i wasn't into it as much as he was . the problem we were solving didn't bother me at a cellular level. Even though ive known him for a while it took me quite a bit of time to be upfront about it (i didn't wanto hurt his feelings) but as soon as we had a talk about it it was cool.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Cofounders rarely have experience managing anyone or anything.

This might be true if you're talking about a startup run by a bunch of 20-somethings with no experience. These are certainly en vogue in Silicon Valley today, but hardly represent all startups.

> Cofounders often think they don't need management because they're all on the > same team, working towards the same goals.

This is a sign of an inexperienced, naive founder. No entrepreneur worth teaming up with believes management is unnecessary.

> Startups are high pressure, and pressure makes people make bad decisions and > lose their tempers.

Notwithstanding the fact that if your startup is a pressure cooker, you're doing it wrong, it's dangerous to believe that all people react the same way to pressure and stress. Pressure and stress lead _some_ people to anger and poor decision making. Start a company with these people at your own risk.

> Deciding to start a company from scratch with the goal of building a billion > dollar business takes ego.

Most successful businesses aren't started by people who are focused on building a billion-dollar company. If that's your overriding goal, clashing egos will hardly be your biggest problem.

Incidentally, while it obviously wasn't the intent, this post demonstrates some of the advantages of founding a company solo. It worked for Sam Walton, Ralph Lauren, Richard Branson, Sara Blakely, Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Michael Dell, Ross Perot and countless others.

Investors like YC don't look on solo founders favorably and have helped create a narrative that has deterred some entrepreneurs from taking this path (and created the inane "seeking co-founder" environment), but entrepreneurs should understand that investors have motives for wanting multiple founders that are not necessarily aligned with their interests.

For seed stage investors particularly, multiple founders is a derisking mechanism. For instance, there are a lot of smart, talented folks out there, but it's still hard to find exceptional founders capable of competently wearing multiple hats. On the flip side, hiring exceptional employees is expensive. A company with just $120,000 in funding can't hire a good developer, product manager _and_ sales or bizdev person. This creates significant risks for seed stage investors. The solution: seek companies with multiple founders who split key roles. Since founders at this stage essentially work for ramen and equity, having multiple founders is like a cheap insurance policy for resource risk.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, much of the startup advice from YC and other outlets is geared toward 20-somethings, and thus may come across as simplistic to people who have:

a) worked in a professional setting (e.g. a large corporation) b) managed other people c) been married d) been alive since before 1980

<comment><USER13> I'm not convinced that ones age has anything to do with it. Personally, I think it has to do with maturity.

A person is simply the culmination of ones experiences, training and beliefs. For some, it takes 40 years to build those things and for others it takes 20 years.

Although age and maturity usually correlate directly, it's not always true. We've all met people in their 40s that act like they're 18, and 18 (ok, maybe 25) year olds that act like they're 40.

Disclaimer: I'm in my 20s

<comment><USER14> I used to think that way too when I was in my 20s. High achiever, very smart. Now I'm in my 30s and I can say that my opinion has changed. Not hugely so, but definitely some.

The older you get the more your perception of time changes. I think this is part of the reason that there are so few 20-something leaders of huge companies. Partly it takes time to prove yourself to enough people to get a shot. Partly because it takes a long time to be patient enough to where you can be effective at the job.

<comment><USER15> I dunno. I'm 33. My opinion has changed, and then it changed again.

I think I'm definitely not the same person now as I was at 24, or even 29. The thing is, I wasn't the same person at 29 as I was at 24 either, and I doubt I'll be the same person at 40. In other words, the process of change and growth doesn't stop - ever. Probably that's the biggest lesson I learned in my 30s.

I think the biggest mistake many 30 and 40-somethings make is to fit everything into an overarching narrative of growth and maturation. "I was young and foolish then, now I'm older and wiser." Because the narrative doesn't actually stop - we are _still_ young and foolish, hopefully - <USER2> trying to fit yourself to it just ensures that you remain stagnant at wherever you were at 30. Instead of a narrative of growth and experience, it's really one of _adaptation_ , of recognizing progressively more subtle distinctions in the environment and changing yourself in response to them. And in that narrative, it makes sense to listen to everybody, even to young people, so you can pick out the parts of their experience that are new and unfamiliar to you.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I'm not saying that I'm "older and wiser" at all. Older yes. Wiser maybe. More risk averse for sure, and a lot of people equate that with wisdom. I don't, but many do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One could change some of the specifics of the language (less talk about management, change "cofounder" to "spouse"), and this could be information on how to have a successful marriage.

In addition, an important piece of advice on marriage that almost certainly applies to cofounders as well is not to contradict your partner or have disagreements in public.

<comment><USER8> What's always great fun is when the cofounders are new, _and_ are married!

<comment><USER17> What's even more fun is when they get a divorce and remain cofounders.

It gets weird and it gets awkward! Where I'm at, there's clearly a 'his team' and 'her team'.

<comment><USER8> Oy vey. If you're in Texas, shoot me an email--we may be hiring soon.

<comment><USER17> Thank you!

Unfortunately, I'm not in Texas and just refinanced my house, so won't be moving anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the critical things about management (in my view) comes down to communication. If communication is open, honest and frequent, then mistakes or roadbumps become easier to deal with. If communication is lacking, vague or insincere then it begins to erode trust and people withdraw.

Learning to communicate (inc. listening) is a valuable skill that is often neglected.

<comment><USER18> A tricky thing about communication is that sometimes it's really hard to convey why you believe something. You have some intuition that you should do A not B, but you can't put a finger on why. In order to resolve conflicts, you need to find a way of reasoning about intuition.

So I agree that open and honest communication is super important. I just wanted to note that difficulties in communication may happen even with the best intentions.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree and I didn't mean to imply that communication difficulties only occur due to bad intentions. My point is more that _lack_ of communication can directly lead to negative effects.

Even when there are open/honest comms, there's still the additional effort needed to _understand_ what's being said (which I think is what you're referring to). To reach that level, you must first have been able to listen. Not every decision can be made using hard facts but it should be possible to explore the drivers behind viewpoints - assuming of course, that you trust the people you're discussing with. Taken to an extreme, it's almost like a form of counselling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Apologies for being cynical but this is a nothing article that offers no real advice.

Open communication isn't just about checking in frequently, and talking doesn't guarantee that each person will feel listened to.

Communication is much more than just setting aside time to talk.

I would have much preferred if the author gave specific strategies for listening and being more effective at communication rather than high level generic advice.

My advice for co-founders that are serious about being better at communication: hire a marriage and/or relationship counselor to help you with your communication.

<comment><USER5> I think it's valuable to at least raise an issue even if you don't have the perfect set of advice to deal with it. Sharing such experiences can help others recognise their own problems. IMHO launching into ways to fix this issue would have taken away from the post by being overly prescriptive about solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The voting in this thread is HN un-worthy.</comment>


Android app to turn off annoying TVs via IR port - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pi.android.tvoff&hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> This isn't my app, but I wish I'd thought of it :) For years I've carried an IR transmitter to turn off annoying TVs around me, but this app nicely replaces that device in an even stealthier form.

</comment><comment><USER2> Now we just need an app turn off Android devices used by annoyingly entitled people running this app.

Better yet, everybody just comport themselves like considerate adults in public from the start.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Entitled" is fast becoming a shut-down-the-debate keyword, like "denier".

Leaving that aside: there's nothing inconsiderate about refusing to be exposed to a constant stream of distracting, unwanted, intrusive advertising.

Your understanding of consideration in this case is exactly inverted: it is the advertisers who are rudely acting as though they are entitled to a share of my attention. This app merely levels the playing field.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your most recommended GitHub repos to learn from? - <AUTHOR> My background is mostly frontend development and I'm always looking to learn more about C.S. fundamentals and how JavaScript libraries can be used for full-scale app development. I find myself checking out the following from time to time:
https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld
https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses/blob/master/README.md
https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university
Any good gems out there you recommend? <comment><USER2> For Rails and general backend development, I liked reading through the backend code for Gitlab CE ([https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce)). Their code style follows Rails best practices pretty extensively.

For smaller projects with fewer configuration points, don't worry about abstracting as much as they do.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you want in a site for dev jobs if it was built today? - <AUTHOR> Some things I would want to be able to search on ideally : - Whats the work environment like? - Testimonials from current and former workers. - Tech stack
- Remote Ok/Occasional work from home ok - Salary range
- Total Funding - Revenue positive? - Continuous Integration? - Recent features launched - Test driven development? - Dev hardware provided - Code reviews? - Interview style ( with examples of how the company screens candidates )
- Values <comment><USER2> I recently built [https://coloradodev.com](https://coloradodev.com) to solve this problem for myself. Specifically, I wanted a jobs list that excludes staffing agencies and recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER3> A very comprehensive "remote" option list, because I've noticed the following possibilities for "remote" jobs:

\- truly remote from any continent/planet

\- remote from one specific continent

\- remote but within these timezones

\- remote but within commuting distance of HQ

\- remote on Friday

</comment><comment><USER4> Median cost to rent a 2 bedroom apartment and median cost of a 2-3 bedroom house within 30 minute commute radius.

Is there an option to take a train/lightrail to the office.

Do you have to work weekends?

</comment><comment><USER5> The ability to search on a map or at least within a radius of a given location is very important, especially outside of major cities. Sometimes companies nearby are located in small suburbs I've never heard of. If I see that the job is in Nowhereville, TN, I don't know if that's 20 minutes away or 2 hours away.

<comment><USER6> Yup, and allow a small radius. 20 miles from downtown NYC includes Connecticut, Westchester, and NJ, and no way I'm commuting to any of those from Brooklyn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> May sound delusional, but I'd like there to be actual jobs. Job sites are usually devoid of actual, interesting opportunities. (I'm not a person that is interested in building user interfaces)

Bonus points if you don't require my linkedin because I don't have no fucking linkedin.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is a very nice list. I particularly agree with the inclusion of dev hardware provided and interview style. I really don't enjoy A & DS beatdowns.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would also add what the general hours are that most of the team is available and if there are flex hours.</comment>


New Hutter Prize submission – 8 years since previous winner - <AUTHOR> https://encode.ru/threads/2769-Hutter-Prize-submission <comment><USER2> It's a little strange to me that the challenge is always to compress the exact same file. The FAQ talks about this a little bit, but a compressor can become rather specialized to compress that file, and not necessarily perform as well on other corpora, right?</comment>