Designing far memory data structures: think outside the box - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/06/26/designing-far-memory-data-structures/ <comment><USER2> I find the term "far memory" a bit strange, specially considering that the paper starts using the dual of "remote" and "local". The first paper of the "Prior works" also is being consistent and uses the adjective "remote" applied to cpu, procedure, and memory. Is there a technical distinction that I am missing here?

(Oddly enough, just did a search for "remote memory data structures" and guess what blog post and paper comes up!)

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't we use better notation for the time complexity of the algorithms? For example, an algorithm can have

        O(n^2) + rt * O(n)

time complexity (where rt is the round trip time). Of course this expression collapses to O(n^2), but by writing it like above you can more clearly see where the cost comes from.

EDIT: on second thought, perhaps bring the rt under the O() together with n.

<comment><USER4> I agree with the spirit, but why use O here at all? Isn't the idea that O collapses to its highest ordered term, so if you don't want that, don't use it.

You could use a normal function. Like t(n) = f(n^2) + g(n) + rt

<comment><USER5> The point is that all the nice manipulation you would like to do are sound in O-notation and unsound in many other notations, what the parent wants is

O(n^2) + O(m) * O(n)

where m is the number of roundtrips.

<comment><USER6> Writing an O in front of something doesn't mean it's in big O.

<comment><USER5> You can use every tool in the wrong way; if you stay in simple cases it is (comparatively) hard to misuse big-O notation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> T3OU-736 Curious. This is somewhat reminiscent of SGI's ccNUMA and CRAYLink/NUMALink architectures.

If memory serves, IRIX (SGI's UNIX OS) had both the metrics to see the latency of access, and the ability to migrate the data and/or the compute closer to each other.

ccNUMA was open-sourced and AMD uses it on their multi-core/multi-socket systems, though usually within the motherboard. Not so much leaving the case and interlinking SGI Origin system style (which is what the CRAYLink/NUMALink tech did).

<comment><USER7> The sad thing is that Hyper Transport was supposed to offer this exact feature and implement it just like SGI did with NUMAlink. There were a few boards produced with HTX slots, I have an older Tyan dual socket Opteron board with an HTX slot kicking around.

There is a connector standard: [https://www.hypertransport.org/ht-connectors- and-cables](https://www.hypertransport.org/ht-connectors-and-cables)

Connectors available from Samtec: [https://www.samtec.com/standards/ht3#connectors](https://www.samtec.com/standards/ht3#connectors)

Manycore CPU's and converged ethernet pretty much made it moot.

<comment><USER8> Yeah...HTX was really interesting until it was clear that 40G/100G enet was going to become commodity really fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This talk seems to me to follow a similar line of thinking to the one I saw presented by Chandler Carruth at the 2014 C++ conference [0]. In the talk he presented a table with (approximately) round-trip-times of various data layers.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/fHNmRkzxHWs?t=2208](https://youtu.be/fHNmRkzxHWs?t=2208)

</comment><comment><USER10> The [https://wizzlove.com/reviews/datingcom- review](https://wizzlove.com/reviews/datingcom-review) has been a great social networking site to search for the person I love. They helped me to get in link with 3-4 considerable matches. the effort was great. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to have direct remote memory access in any of the major cloud providers?

I think it should be technically possible inside your virtual network, if the cloud platform and network gear were to support it.

<comment><USER12> Generally, no.

The main requirement to support this is that a RoCE or other RDMA API needs to be exposed inside the cloud VM. This requires (1) the physical boxes have RDMA (likely universal at this point), but also (2) the virtualized network adapter, e.g. AWS ENA, to expose an RDMA API, which is much harder.

AWS did not support any kind of RDMA when I looked into it last year. Azure does, but in my understanding this is only in their "supercomputer partition," which is not _really_ a cloud environment.

I've heard that AWS is looking to write an ENA backend for GASNet (a communication library), which could perhaps (?!) lead to them exposing RDMA and other low-level NIC features.

<comment><USER13> [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-elastic- fabri...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-elastic-fabric- adapter-efa-for-tightly-coupled-hpc-workloads/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is far memory different from a disk?

<comment><USER12> Disk could be considered a specific form of "far memory."

In the context of this paper, though, "far memory" is referring to memory outside the local system that is accessed using RDMA instructions.

<comment><USER14> Don't disk-based data structures have similar constraints? There too there is no ability to ship computations and we try to optimize for minimal data round trips.

<comment><USER12> RDMA instructions are (1) more expressive than disk operations, from what I understand (support compare-and-swap, fetch-and-add, etc.) and (2) have different latencies and bandwidths (on the order of 1us latency, 20 GB/s BW).

This paper is mostly about proposing _new_ RDMA instructions, such as a relative load/store, that could make remote data structures more efficient.

<comment><USER15> NVMe defines compare and atomic compare-and-write operations, but I'm not sure if there are any notable users of them. They certainly aren't exposed by typical file IO abstractions. There's nothing like a fetch-and-add in any typical storage protocol that I know of.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jumpstart Bundle - <AUTHOR>

I work for the Entrepreneurship department at my school (clarku.edu) and am putting together a software bundle with apps that will help students get their businesses off the ground. We will make these bundles available to student teams that are ready to launch.
I already have 5 free accounts to Less Accounting and am looking for other useful apps. If any of you would like to donate 5 free accounts to your app please let me know. I will also put you down as a sponsor at our next big event in march and your logo will be featured on all the flyers and posters.
It would be great if some of you could help out.
Thanks, guys!
contact: bweidlich at clarku.edu <comment><USER2> Hit me up, noah at appsumo. Maybe we can help get you going.

<comment><USER3> That would be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hit me up, firstname.lastname@example.com and I can get you some premium Crate accounts (<http://letscrate.com/>).

</comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone was unaware: <http://www.appsumo.com/hacker-monthly/>

Thx, Noah.

</comment><comment><USER6> They'll need a good task management app, I'll offer free producteev.com accounts for you guys Hit me up : firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER7> Holler at me: email@example.com. Happy to help</comment>


Show HN: Plant Subscription Service - <AUTHOR> http://crateandbloom.com

<comment><USER2> (Just one data point, so take it how you like)

I'm a customer for 1/3 to 1/2 the price. I would sacrifice quality along with a lower price. My profile is:

-wants plants

-knows nothing about plants

-doesn't have any plants

-values having any plants much more highly than having the right plants

</comment><comment><USER3> I love this... wish I was in the delivery area (about 2,000 miles away in Louisville, KY) as my wife and I have been wanting to expand our selection of plants, but neither of us have the knowledge off hand nor the time to invest in learning right now. Lots of things to learn higher up on the list still. This certainly solves a problem we have.

</comment><comment><USER4> Gives new meaning to the term 'growth hack'

</comment><comment><USER5> Great idea. As a former horticulture major who dropped out, became an organic farmer, and then somehow found myself studying computer science, I often marveled at how so many people had really awful black thumbs.

The concept of plant nutrition eluded most people. Water made sense, sunlight made sense, nitrogen didn't.

</comment><comment><USER6> 90210 to see products.

I like it. I want the herb garden. But I want to know exactly what herbs I am getting. Or is that information already on your site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Changes depending on the month/season but right now it's different varieties of thyme, sage, rosemary, oregano and sometimes lavender.......

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> sorry everyone, posted this and got caught up in family stuff for the holidays. fail

</comment><comment><USER7> neat. what happens when my plant dies?

<comment><USER8> I had "hoped" the reason it was a "subscription service" is that, clearly if you send someone like me a plant it will die, so the only real solution is to "subscribe" to receiving new plants every month; it sounded like a genius idea.</comment></comment>


Super Cali goes ballistic – Uber says it's bogus - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/17/uber_california_labor_court/?mt=1434573462436

<comment><AUTHOR> > _...(even though its contract is something quite atrocious)_

Headline of the year.</comment>


Show HN: Decentralized Automation Framework in YAML - <AUTHOR> https://starsheep.io <comment><USER2> Could someone give me an example of when I would use it? It seems to me rather complicated by reading the text even though it promises a simple decentralized solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, here is simple hello world example: [https://gitlab.cloudover.io/dinemic/starsheep- py/blob/master...](https://gitlab.cloudover.io/dinemic/starsheep- py/blob/master/examples/hello_world/hello_world.yaml)

It creates simple model "Minion" and adds new listener, which is executed each time when field "name" is changed in any Minion instance. Listener is set to call bash script with "Hello [minion name]". Second part of yaml just creates three minions and sets theirs names. That triggers executing listener and script on each machine with this yaml.

You can play with local copy of that file on two different machines and debug mode: sudo starsheep --launch --debug ./hello_world.yaml

First machine will create that three original minions. Any attempt of modification of that minions, made on any other machine will be rejected on whole cluster as not authorized (not created by owner). Also you could play with changing minion names, to create new ones.

Another example is here: [https://gitlab.cloudover.io/dinemic/starsheep- py/tree/master...](https://gitlab.cloudover.io/dinemic/starsheep- py/tree/master/examples/mjpeg_streamer) It allows to automate deployment of mjpg_streamer on Raspberry PI, to share camera. It also shows how to split the application definition (models, listeners, scripts and variables) and data section. There should be available section for "motion" recorder soon

<comment><USER3> Yes, this gives an example. But when would someone use this? Any use cases that are a good fit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially it was designed to manage IT infrastructure and to automate server management even during "split brains", for each partition individually. It was intended to be partially a replacement for Ansible and partially as something more functional, with logics.

Now, when I'm working a bit more with this tools, I think that it could be applied to anything related to IoT, autonomous cars/robots or wide area installations, like BTS network and its configuration or management of home/industrial automation. It should fit good in places, where connectivity is far away from perfect and we cannot guarantee connection with central management service (let's say database or LDAP), and regardless the network damages, all remaining services should be available and functional as much as possible.

As far as your question is concerned, initially I planned to use that to manage virtual machines, bare metal servers and my local machines to provision them regardless the cloud operator, connection type and cloud automation services. For some reasons Ansible was too complicated to deliver the same functionality as I needed. Moreover, with Ansible there always be some "central" service that manages whole infrastructure. For client, who has some infrastructure in cloud and some in own, local servers, there would always be a weak point in managing such infrastructure. From the other hand there was a Kubernetes, but it was too complicated, especially when spanning over local cluster and public cloud

<comment><USER3> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > No license. All rights reserved

And none of the source files appear to have licensing blocks embedded in them. Maybe it's an oversight, but right now AIUI this project is just "source available"

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated - now whole python code is MIT, however some parts of C libraries linked with this code are AGPL. Not sure how it "infects" python code, but if necessary, I'll update AGPL to something more permissive

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Obligatory reminder that YAML can be full of surprises: [https://noyaml.com/](https://noyaml.com/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for sharing, what is with that site and overriding all the click handlers? Can't go to any of the links because I can't click or select (on mobile)

[https://cuelang.org](https://cuelang.org) is another existing option

Working on [https://github.com/hofstadter- io/hof](https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof)

<comment><USER7> It looks like it's based on the Monaco/VSCode editor, where you have CTRL+click on links (CMD+click on Mac).</comment></comment></comment>


Verizon Seen Owing Apple Up to $14 Billion for iPhones - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-10/verizon-seen-owing-apple-up-to-14-billion-for-iphones.html

<comment><USER2> "The report suggests sluggish demand for the iPhone, which accounts for about half of Apple's sales."

So we're back to the old "Apple is on the verge of bankruptcy" trope?

Sales are always higher for the phone after the release, plus during the holiday season. Is it really surprising that sales have simmered down a bit? "Sluggish" is hardly the word when Apple has shipped 55 million iPhone 5 units, and continues to sell on average 410,000 iPhones per day.

These are the same reports that go all hair-on-fire when Apple's growth _growth_ slows marginally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. Opening sentence:

"Verizon Wireless may end up owing Apple Inc. (AAPL) as much as $14 billion in purchase commitments over time if the mobile carrier fails to sell an agreed number of iPhones, a report from Moffett Research LLC said."

Verizon's problem (if true) is that it agreed to pay Apple for more phones than it can sell. In the short term, that's a Verizon problem. Only in the longer term might it be an Apple problem.</comment></comment>


Palantir Shows Its Cards - <AUTHOR> https://simplystatistics.org/2020/08/26/palantir-shows-its-cards/ <comment><USER2> The difference between a generalized, customizable solution like Salesforce, and something like Palantir, is that customers go to Palantir because they don't know what to do with their data - they're stuck and need advice on how to proceed in extracting information. Wheras with Salesforce, customers know what they want generally right when walk through the door. At the end of the day, as much as Palantir may not want to give the impression that they are a consulting company, that is what the majority of work will be comprised of.</comment>


Rethinking Recommendation Engines - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rethinking_recommendation_engines.php <comment><USER2> This is what I came away with after working on the Netflix dataset.

Incentives, not perceptions, are what need to be changed for realizing better recommendation engines (or collaborative filtering algorithms; whatever you call them). Negative recommendations are not a good idea. Unlike false positives, the consumer really has no way of knowing whether a negative was in reality true or false. Recommendations are also about feeding our ego , even if the engine is ultimately basing its suggestions on consumers whose tastes are very similar to yours. It is indeed magical; consumers who think they are expanding horizons by seeking out indies or documentaries on Netflix are simply discovering latent interests that have already been explored by others in your interest cluster. The author is right though; false positives are what weigh most heavily on our perceptive scales. Risk aversion ensures that people do not venture out beyond what are suggested to them (by an automated agent or friend), and collaborative filtering algorithms have a cold start problem. For a movie to appear on the radar, enough people need to have watched and expressed enjoyment. Digital filtering makes it even harder for random exploration that is needed to seed these. Failing that, you get middling recommendations like that of Netflix, where the average rating (~=3.6) is no better that what you would get without it. There is one easy way to get around the risk aversion obstacle. Offer "free" movies from a different, high variance list of movies, with "free" meaning a fourth movie on a three-per- month subscription, and variance being high on the predicted ratings of the consumer. Such an offer, while being marginally more expensive for Netflix, will allow consumers to experiment without any perceived costs (which, currently is the wait for the next Wire or Deadwood DVD you could have gotten otherwise). If I may speculate, recommendations should be about gentle, guided exploration and not avoidance.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if an expert (human) with access to the same data set, any automated tools they choose and their own knowledge/research of movies could do a lot better. I think they probably would be able to crack the 10%. If they couldn't then it would be a fair indication that the data is simply too noisy to beat the 10%.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting... even though accuracy is generally high, the false positives weigh heavily on the experience.

How accurate can we get recommendation systems anyways? I know my friends recommend movies to me all the time and a lot of them aren't my taste - do we expect computers to outperform our close acquaintances?</comment>


Education Has an Unhealthy Fixation with Fractions – And It's Hurting Everyone - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sunilsingh_42118/society-has-an-unhealthy-obsession-with-fractions-and-its-hurting-everyone-d09b10573919 <comment><USER2> Can most schools do a better job of teaching fractions? Undoubtedly.

But fractions ARE critical to math education. Not becuse we use them in everyday life.

But because the same operations and techniques you use to add/subtract/multiply/divide fractions in 4th grade are the ones you'll need to use to solve a basic algebraic equation in 8th or a calculus equation in 12th grade.

If you don't understand those techniques and how and why they work, you're going to have a hell of a time understanding even junior high level math.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your passive income sources? - <AUTHOR> I do affiliate marketing. Just looking for few other options and would love to hear your experience/story of creating passive income sources ! <comment><USER3> I run [https://IndieHackers.com](https://IndieHackers.com) where I interview developers/entrepreneurs about how they make money from their apps and projects. There are tons of examples there that fit into the "passive income" category as you define it ("making something that makes you money while you sleep").

A couple of good examples from the site:

\- park.io (from Mike Carson) makes $125,000/mo taking domain backorders; he essentually wrote tons of scripts that buy expiring domains on behalf of his customers for $100 and that allow customers to bid against each other

\- Instapainting.com (from Chris Chen) makes $32,000/mo allow customers to commission artists to turn their photos into hand-made paintings; it took him years to get to this point, but it's almost all automated and he rarely has to step in

Indie Hackers itself is my passive income source, although right now it takes a lot of work on a day-to-day basis. I'm writing a blog post about that that I hope to put up on my timeline ([https://IndieHackers.com/timeline](https://IndieHackers.com/timeline)) by tomorrow. I'm doing just over $1000/mo right now, mainly from sponsors.

<comment><USER4> You're going to write a blog post on your site about how to make passive income, which you are doing by hosting your site about how to make passive income! I don't think it can get more meta than that!

<comment><USER5> Nitpick: meta is too much of a catch-all, _mise en abîme_ is more apt here.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, people that I know actually _use_ "meta", so it's probably a better choice if I intend to communicate information to another person. As used in the comment that you replied to, the intended meaning is unambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A stock portfolio that I've built through consulting profits is my main passive income source. Anything else is not really "passive."

This probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but in my view the average developer is much better off simply selling their time at the maximum rate and funneling the profits into a well-managed portfolio. The median outcome for this is much better than the story on most passive-income businesses.

<comment><USER8> I have to laugh at "well-managed" portfolio. That's hysterical, in fact I'm still laughing. I might even wake up in the middle of the night and laugh.

Silly, active managed portfolios never beat their benchmarks over the long run. Anybody in the financial industry knows that... and index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore.

<comment><USER7> Err, what? I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm actively managing my portfolio. The vast majority of my money is in index funds. In my view, a well-managed portfolio is one which aims to perform at market and no better or worse.

> index fund are only good till that strategy doesn't work anymore.

The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for most individuals) is the day that stocks overall have stopped being a viable investment strategy.

Obviously you're just arrogantly trying to make assumptions instead of asking questions.

<comment><USER8> >>> The day that index funds cease to be the optimal investment strategy (for most individuals) is the day that stocks overall have stopped being a viable investment strategy.

Don't worry the day will come. ;) It's called a black swan.

I'm not arrogant, I'm just well educated and a student of the market. If you study the market long enough you will learn it's nothing more than just a big casino run by the federal reserve and the big banks.

Yes, Index strategy was great when it was invented in the 70's and 80's and probably the 90's. But if you have everybody rushing into index funds, well that causes an imbalance in the market. Similar to 2008, the tech bubble and even all the way back to tulip bubble. (google it)

I'm really sorry that disturbed your investment strategy.

<comment><USER7> It's hilarious that I'm being the one accused of arrogance when you're telling me to Google black swans and the tulip bubble as though I don't know what they are. You're being an asshole and patronizing me as though I don't know just as much about investments as you do.

Index fund over-investment is a red herring which is being promoted by active managers to try to justify their fees. In truth, the market balances itself out: the more passive money there is, the greater the returns to active management become.

In fact, looking through your comment history, you are in fact one of the pariahs of the internet who's trying to push your bogus options strategies on unsuspecting fools. Get lost and go spam somewhere else.

<comment><USER8> No I'm not a pariah. I'm just tired of the arrogance of people that thinking they know everything about investing on Hacker news. (This has been an epic waste of my time, there is no economic incentive arguing with a d-bag such as yourself.)

You are only mad at me because you are unwilling accept/understand/comprehend an alternative investment strategy. As I said before I'm really sorry I disturbed your investment strategy, ultimately hurting your fragile feelings.

What it comes boils down to is that you are programmer that thinks he knows how to invest. [https://xkcd.com/1570/](https://xkcd.com/1570/)

Hmm... get your research correct. I don't offer services to individual clients only institutions. I'm also regulated by the SEC.

Cheers!

<comment><USER7> That XKCD is the epitome of why I tell people they should _not_ try to build their own algorithms.

Yet you think an MBA and a few LAMP scripts qualifies you to dispense investment advice. Meanwhile I have _actually_ run a fund with actual investors, but it's not something I recommend anyone try unless they are willing to do a lot of research and work on it as a full-time job.

You should really stop arrogantly assuming you know better than everyone else. I almost feel sorry for you, as your experience epitomizes the Dunning-Kruger effect.

<comment><USER8> Based on your continued responses and the fact your feelings are hurt, I'm wining this battle.

(I'm guessing you are millennial snowflake?)

Where can I sign up for your fund!

Oh I can end this fun... well because I do have better things to do:

You are right and I am wrong, there you go do you feel better now?

<comment><USER7> You continue to lob ad hominem attacks instead of making any substantive arguments.

I'm wasting my time arguing with you. Starting a discussion by "laughing" at my portfolio _without even knowing what it is_ is not an adult thing do to.

I really hope you listen to feedback and grow as a person. Right now you're carrying a lot of negativity around with you.

<comment><USER8> I'm doing fine thanks.

Have great day!

<comment><USER7> I'm glad. I hope someday you realize that selling stock tips on the internet is a scammy business model and that there are better ways to make money than preying on the ignorant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've got a savings account. Interest on that baby is getting me upwards of 30 cents a month.

<comment><USER10> I know you're being facetious and your real-life investment portfolio likely looks much different but I need to say:

Savings accounts are a terrible place to put your savings.

If you have anything more than a couple thousand dollars, you can put it in a mutual fund and see several percent return on average, versus the fraction of the percent you can get from a savings account.

In certain situations savings accounts can be advantageous—They are very low- risk and the money is immediately available. But for a long-term investment, almost anything is better than a savings account.

<comment><USER11> but they do help you sleep at night. the market can drop 5% in a day and not many people can stomach that emotionally.

<comment><USER12> One should certainly tailor their investments to their own risk tolerance. But there are better investments even with very low risk levels. Money market, CDs, gov't bonds, and high-grade corporate bonds are all options that give better returns than savings accounts with minimal risk (well, before some gov't bonds were negative rate, anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I run [https://www.goread.io/](https://www.goread.io/) which is a subscription-based RSS reader. It's open source and runs on google app engine. It costs ~$2k per year to run and I make between $2k and $3k profit per year for nearly zero effort. Stripe handles payments and app engine keeps the servers running.

I consider it a high success because for the amount of marketing I've done in the last 2 years (exactly zero), it still has paying users. If I did a few months of code improvements and marketing pushes I could probably increase that income a few times.

<comment><USER14> Hi Matt, love the site. Do you mind me asking what brings the running costs up to $2k per year?

<comment><USER13> In 2015 I paid app engine about $1700 or ~$130/month or a bit over $4/day. I could probably get that down another dollar or so a day if I did some optimization and cleanup work, but I haven't cared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a card game business that's aimed towards women, PoCs & the lgbtq community - groups who aren't traditionally served.

Every couple of weeks I ship product to an Amazon warehouse and do a bit of advertising on Facebook. It brings in around $40k/mo and 3-4x during the holiday season.

<comment><USER7> Is that net or gross?

<comment><USER15> Gross.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I still get royalties from programming books I wrote about ten years ago - <USER2> content has been updated by other authors in the mean time, and the corresponding royalty split has declined, but I don't do anything active either.

On the not-quite-as-passive side, I have an iPad game that I had basically left out in the Apple App Store for several years, where it sold with no involvement or investment on my end. Only recently, Apple required all app developers to resubmit their older apps or face delisting - in my case, it involved updating cocos-2d to support the latest ARM architectures, and making a whole lot of changes for everything that had happened in iOS in the past couple of years.

I also run a small API-as-a-service, which runs on reliable infrastructure, and doesn't take much real work to monitor and/or run.

<comment><USER17> What type of programming book did you write that is still relevant 10 years ago? Presumably something not tied to a specific language or technology?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I run [https://www.weheartswift.com/](https://www.weheartswift.com/) the first site dedicated to the Swift Programming language.

I've wrote a book that teaches people how to code in swift from the ground up. [https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming- scratch-100-e...](https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming- scratch-100-exercises/)

I've also made an exercise platform similar to codeschool/codecademy/etc that is available as a mac app using playgrounds or online by using our swift sandbox [https://www.weheartswift.com/swift- sandbox/](https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-sandbox/)

The site generates about 30k/year in revenue growing at a steady pace. Operating costs are around 10k / year for servers/software/subscriptions/marketing.

I need to spend about 2 weeks yearly updating the book/app to the last version of swift. I also spend about 5 minutes per day replying to customer emails. It's not that passive, but really close. (ignoring time spent developing products/book)

<comment><USER19> Any advice on writing a technical book? I'm thinking of writing one on developing for Alexa.

<comment><USER18> actually teaching the content to people helped me the most.

gitbook is awesome and free. [https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook](https://github.com/GitbookIO/gitbook)

blog a lot and start making a list of subscribers yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Portfolio of index funds based on [http://canadiancouchpotato.com](http://canadiancouchpotato.com)

      25% TSX (Canadian market)
      25% S&P500 (US market)
      25% MSCI EAFE (Developed market excluding Canada/US)
      25% Fixed Income - cash,bonds,'high' interest savings account, etc.

Requires about 4-5 hours of time once per year to rebalance portfolio and update some partially automated Google Docs files to track performance.

Works for me...also planning to get a rental property at some point.

<comment><USER21> If you don't mind answering, how long have you been doing this for and roughly how has your rate of return been?

<comment><USER22> I've been following an older Canadian Couch Potato portfolio for a few years now. The market has been mostly growing since 2010 so it probably doesn't count, but it's been returning an average of 7-8% every year (dividend+gain). Even last year, when the Canadian economy didn't do well, its return was positive.

It takes more than 4-5 hours a year for me though. I invest a part of my income every month. It makes sense since I don't pay any commission on purchases, so YMMV.

More info: [http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2015/05/01/how-i-invest-my- sa...](http://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/2015/05/01/how-i-invest-my-savings)

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the info. It is appreciated!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Small tools and web apps that provide a quick solution to very niche problems. Mostly aimed at business. Primarily based on obscure forms that occasionally need to be filled out for shipping. If I find myself googling something but don't find a great fit for what I need or many relevant hits, I look into building it. Or if I find myself manually gathering and formatting data or info, I see if I can automate it. Some end up being useful/found by others. Some don't. I currently see about $300/mo through adsense. A few of these things could turn into something more if I was ever motivated to do so, but would no longer be passive. Some probably not. Most interesting is seeing what takes off and what doesn't and trying to apply that to duplicate the success.

I've tried a couple affiliate projects, but have not found a great fit yet.

</comment><comment><USER24> Odd how few seem to mention property (real estate)? Even those alleging actual returns worth a damn on stock portfolios. Surely the most obvious route on the planet is property. For two reasons:

1\. It's leveraged. I.e. a bank will usually give you a 4:1 loan (mortgage) to buy property. Interest will usually be close to the central bank rate, so it's about as cheap as a loan gets, especially right now. If you then rent the property you are receiving a monthly return on the leveraged sum having only invested the deposit...

2\. Property is an appreciating asset (US,UK,China,FR,etc). It's a systemic matter in many countries because it ties in a large part of an individuals net worth and retirement expectations.

Your 200k leveraged with a mortgage will net you more than most stock portfolios unless either you're Renaissance Capital or you just like a gamble.

<comment><USER25> >Property is an appreciating asset

Isn't this the cause of the housing bubble? If everyone thinks this? Why wouldn't profits be driven out if everyone thinks like this? Simply curious.

<comment><USER24> Over-valuation causes bubbles as opposed to appreciating assets. E.g. the common wisdom says equity is a generally appreciating asset class because the expected return over a long horizon is positive. Similar is true of property except that no-one will give you a 40 year loan of 400k for peanuts to go trade the S&P.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I run [https://mapchart.net](https://mapchart.net) which is a map chart creation tool. You can quickly create a map chart of World, USA, UK, Europe and more with custom colors and descriptions.

It is completely free to use and my only source of income are Adsense ads on the homepage and some sparse donations. Since May, when the site was featured on the front page of Reddit, my audience has increased with a steady rate, along with my ad revenue (almost $500 last month).

I don't really do anything maintenance-wise, except for answering questions from my users. I work on it from time to time, mainly adding new features or new country/regions maps, and I still enjoy it, as it was my first real programming project (I actually submitted it as a final project for EdX's CS50x course!).

<comment><USER23> Great example. How long have you been running it? How did you get on the front page of Reddit?

<comment><USER26> I started it on December 2014, with a pretty ugly interface and only three maps available (World, USA and Europe).

I already had some success on Reddit, where I created interesting map charts with it (like religiosity by US state, most popular browser by country,etc.) and shared the link to the site in the comment. This got me many users that would either come directly from the Reddit post or see another map somewhere and google my site.

The big spike came last May, when I shared it on /r/InternetIsBeautiful ([https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/4jcadt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/4jcadt/make_your_own_custom_map_of_world_europe_the/)) , which is a specific subreddit for internet tools and single-purpose website, and it propelled to the front page.

<comment><USER23> Awesome. I love your "dogfooding" marketing strategy. Very smart.

<comment><USER26> I had to google that, but yes, spot-on!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> About $300/mo on an app that provides real-time train tracking for Boston's commuter rail. Thankfully for me the MBTA is a mess, so each system meltdown (which happens about once a week) causes a spike in downloads.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have made several small mobile apps. ([http://anthonytietjen.blogspot.com/p/my- portfolio.html](http://anthonytietjen.blogspot.com/p/my-portfolio.html)) I charge for some of them, but my White Screen Flashlight has ads. ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anthonytie...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.anthonytietjen.whitescreenflashlight&hl=en)) If you are into programming, and are considering an app, make something super simple (like my Cost Per Sq Foot Calculator), and you might be surprised that people actually pay for it.

<comment><USER29> Ha I tried this (trivial app, get paid) and no one paid!

<comment><USER28> Was your app for iOS, or Android?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I run a few high frequency trading algorithms on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These are research-grade and not scalable (I already make 20-30% of trading volume on some exchanges), however, it still brings me around $200 per month.

<comment><USER31> I'm actually thinking of doing this starting this weekend (mostly for fun). Any tips you care to share?

<comment><USER30> 1) Have fun 2) Start from obvious opportunities first, then move to less obvious 3) Commissions are the killer, minimize it at all costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I created [http://www.ipaidthemost.com](http://www.ipaidthemost.com) over a year ago, and I can proudly say it's earned enough to buy a couple coffees. Well, if you ignore hosting. And the few times I dropped $50 onto it to try to advertise it.

It's odd. Most people who see it think it's clever and neat, and a few will buy, but when advertised, people bounce right off.

<comment><USER33> Suggestion: since it's a vanity-based project, allowing people to add a photo - either through gravatar, or via an upload - would probably increase conversion.

Also, the actual paid-for message being in such tiny text is pretty odd given that's the (user-side) purpose of the site. And that part is somehow the hardest to read part of the page for me, perhaps because of the double background (image + black background) interaction.

IMO, it's a lot of such small nudges that's reducing the effectiveness of the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What do you think about [http://sidekiq.org](http://sidekiq.org) gem approach where you have free open source tool and paid pro version. I did similar thing with my open source gem knapsack for test suite parallelisation in ruby. I run pro version at [https://knapsackpro.com](https://knapsackpro.com)

<comment><USER35> I hope it's working out for you! I'd love to hear how things are going if you want to email me privately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wrote a book to help boostrapped startups choose the best hosting solution:

[https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com/](https://www.hostingforappdevelopers.com/)

Promoting the book has been the major issue for me, which is probably why it hasn't sold as much as I would have wanted.

<comment><USER37> If it is actually good (ie, you stand by it, proudly!) then put it on Amazon KDP and link to that high up before your landing page (which is your website it appears).

You can even drive traffic right to it, ie from FB ads to the amazon link... and if you have positive reviews then it should sell if you target the right people.

And drop the price also in line with the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm invested in forex (foreign currency trading). There are 3 buckets I'm in:

\- $3500 deposited, run since Jun 3 (~5 months), current balance is $5200 (48% total profit, 8%/mo).

\- $5000 deposited, run since Jun 28 (~4 months), current balance is $4590 (8% total loss, ~-2%/mo).

\- $3000 deposited, run since Sep 2 (~2 months), current balance is $3218 (7% total profit, ~3.5%/mo).

It's certainly not for everyone but it's an amusing hobby. I've made a net profit so far so I'm happy.

I came to this after stocks as the research I'd found seemed to show that foreign currency fluctuations were significantly easier to predict (and profit from).

<comment><USER39> did you apply Deep Learning / ML techniques here? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I run BitPixels ([http://www.bitpixels.com](http://www.bitpixels.com)) that provides automated website thumbnails. I purchased Bitpixels from another HN member a few years ago and have continued to build and market it.

BitPixels currently makes ~$1k/month which is enough to cover the App Engine and DigitalOcean bills plus a bit extra. I'm working to find 1-2 more marketing channels that can drive sustainable growth.

<comment><USER41> Not 100% sure how this works or what it does. Can you explain?

<comment><USER40> Definitely, so imagine if HN decided to show a thumbnail image beside every link on the front page so users get a preview of what they'll see before clicking the link. When looking for a solution HN will quickly discover that auto generating website thumbnails is a nontrivial challenge to do well.

BitPixels solves this challenge by providing a simple img tag HTML code that HN would use to automatically generate and cache a png thumbnail of any URL.

Behind the scenes, BitPixels uses a server farm of real Google Chrome browsers to load URLs and take screenshots so the thumbnails look exactly like the real website. Most competitors use open source libraries like phantomjs or cutycapt that produce inaccurate thumbnails on modern websites.

<comment><USER42> You should chat to the indiehackers guy, sounds like you could help eachother out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I created [http://convertcsv.com](http://convertcsv.com) and make about $750 a month off google ads. I also have one affiliate link but it isn't producing much. I spend a few hours a week answering emails, and another 2-10 hours a month working on enhancements. As a developer I work with data a lot, and noticed the lack of tools for converting delimited data - so I created my own tools online.

<comment><AUTHOR> How did you spread the word in early days of your project?(Any platform in particluar helped or performed better for marketing?)

<comment><USER43> No marketing, all traffic came from search engines. I focused on SEO from the start and that helped with the rankings. I also made sure my site was more functional than the competition. 100% client-side code.

<comment><USER23> How long have you been running the site? A long, slow ramp-up, I assume? Were you ahead of the competition timeline-wise?

Most of the good ideas I think I have end up being fairly saturated, which is discouraging!

Well done. I now have your html tag remover on the reformattext.com bookmarked for a current project. Thank you.

<comment><USER43> Right - The site has been running over 3 years now. There wasn't much competition at first but in the last year I've had real competition plus a bunch of copycats, some who actually copied my code and changed the front-end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I make about 30 bucks per months on a single ad on my jquery plugin docsite[1].

I lose about 25 bucks per months on website for artists that I built over the course of a few years in my spare time[2]

[1][http://mkoryak.github.io/floatThead/](http://mkoryak.github.io/floatThead/) [2][http://exhibitionnest.com](http://exhibitionnest.com)

</comment><comment><USER45> I do peer to peer lending on an internet forum, VAs handle most of the work, ~$1k/mo passive, ~$3k/mo when active (but it's been passive for the past several months). I can try to answer what I can, but I can't divulge much more because it's not at all a defensible revenue model, and anyone with access to capital can do it.

</comment><comment><USER46> I do run [http://notationtraining.com](http://notationtraining.com) not the biggest source of money (~ 200 USD/month), but it keep earning money for six years in row, so I am happy about it.

Other then that: rental property, p2p loans portfolio (~ 6% pa) and small stock portfolio (around 5% pa).

</comment><comment><USER47> A small portfolio, some adsense on a blog, a game on the play store.

By all their powers combined here comes 70$ a year.

</comment><comment><USER48> Target retirement date funds, a handful of individual stocks for entertainment purposes. I also have dabbled with Lending Club (annualized ROI went from 15% to less than 5% recently) and the money saved on interest in paying back my student loans early.

</comment><comment><USER49> I launched [https://askdns.com](https://askdns.com) a few months back and making around ~AU$75/mo just from Adsense. There are around ~3M links in G now so the traffic coming in is slowly increasing.

<comment><USER50> If I may ask where do you get updated data to search for domains?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been developing a tool that lets you create your own HackerNews. Then it grew to a SaaS that lets you create, manage and grow an online community.

[http://www.hellobox.co](http://www.hellobox.co)

</comment><comment><USER52> $2/day on a simple ios/android app. Now I just need 1000 more apps.

</comment><comment><USER53> 3-4k per month. I own a rental property doing nightly rentals. I've automated all of the notifications, door code programming, arranging cleaning, etc.

</comment><comment><USER54> absolutely nothing. Turns out its pretty hard to monetize open source developer tools. Really wish there was other stuff I enjoyed working on in my free time.

If anyone wants to start paying me for the JsFormat sublime plugin, let me know, I'll gladly take your money.

</comment><comment><USER55> if you hire the right people anything can be a passive income.

<comment><AUTHOR> Passive income: something that makes you money while you sleep(read it somewhere). Any examples, what type of businesses you are talking about?

<comment><USER56> I get paid to sleep on overnight shifts, does that count?

<comment><USER57> Not unless you can do it from anywhere AND you are not expected to be available during overnight if the situation demands :)

<comment><USER56> Oh I see, now we're moving the goalposts ;)

<comment><USER58> What about "money that would get into your account even you were recently dead" ?

<comment><USER59> So ... life insurance?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dear Uber: you're great but please add this feature - <AUTHOR> http://maxhorstmann.net/blog/2014/04/13/dear-uber-youre-great-but-please-add-this-feature/

<comment><USER2> This is probably a bad idea; Uber drivers will primarily use this to screen which calls they pick up. Even if they only revealed the destination after the driver accepted, if the fare was unfavorable enough, the driver might still accept the ding for canceling.

There may also be liability reasons for not directly handling nav in the driver app, even if that just meant delegating to some iOS framework:

* It would give customers a toehold to litigate the routes Uber selected, rather than leaving them out of that process entirely

* It would require drivers to interact with iPhones while driving in order to handle the routing, which might be considered less safe than dash-mounted nav devices.

<comment><USER3> I don't see what is inherently bad about that. If there is a route drivers don't want to take, shouldn't the free market push the price higher until they see it as worth it? (While per-route pricing differences might add complexity, that's exactly the sort of complexity a software company should be able to handle.)

<comment><USER2> If Uber's goal is to get regulated out of existence as fast as they possibly can, a great first step would be to allow drivers to screen fares by destination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course, the negative effect is that if a driver sees the destination address before picking you up, they'll avoid taking the call if it is to a location they'd rather not go. (e.g., city -> airport, forced to use heavily congested roads, etc.)

That is one of the reasons taxis in NYC are not allowed to ask where you are going prior to letting you in the car. They can be fined a few hundred for that and a few violations will get their license revoked.

Also, what if there is more than one destination?

One way to avoid this -- perhaps the Uber app could let you push a contact's address to the Uber driver's phone/GPS nav after you are in the car as the "next immediate destination" to avoid having to say the address and have the driver key it in.

</comment><comment><USER5> My guess is that giving drivers the destination info before you are actually in the car would increase drivers canceling pickups when they see the destination is somewhere they don't want to go, or not taking a pickup if they didn't want to haul all the way out to an airport, etc.

<comment><USER2> As I understand it, they generally like airport pickups. What they don't like are (a) "haul you out into the middle of nowhere near any other fares", and (b) "pick you up from the middle of nowhere and drive you for less than 10 minutes".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On a recent Uber ride, I had hoped that this would work since the rider app looks like it supports it. (If you click the '+' sign after choosing a pickup location, it lets you choose the dropoff location.) However, I was disappointed in that the driver still asked where I was going. He recommended to me that I try out Sidecar instead, which asks you where you are going as its first question when you schedule a ride.

The second suggestion in the post was about indicating what kind of car to expect. Lyft does a good job with this in the texts they send (it says your driver name and the color/make of the car.)

</comment><comment><USER7> In contrast to other comments here, there's a lot they could do to mitigate concerns -- such as simply not showing it until the person was in the car.

Of course, it's condescending to think Max Horstmann has though more about this than Uber has.

That being said, it will show the driver the destination address if you use the Fare Calculator before requesting the ride. I'm not 100% sure on the details, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> My blog post was meant as a feature suggestion by a happy Uber customer, not in a condescending way at all. By no means I meant to imply that I have "thought more about this than Uber has".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lyft has this feature (not sure if they added it in the latest update) but the last time I rode the driver was unfamiliar with this feature and asked me "where to", to which I said I added the destination and as soon as the driver marked the ride as "picked up", the destination popped up in the maps. The driver was surprised and didn't know this feature existed.

Out of curiosity, does the Lyft driver app have maps/nav in-built while Uber does not ?

</comment><comment><USER9> FYI: If you request a fare quote before your request, the driver will see your destination once they have accepted the fare (otherwise it says "Drop off as directed").

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! So basically they already have that feature (except for the gps integration), you just have to know about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a cache here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic--...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic --UF6sJ:maxhorstmann.net/blog/2014/04/13/dear-uber-youre-great-but-please-add- this-feature/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

I would much rather be able to know what colour the car is that's turning up with UberX, makes it easier to spot the car as it arrives.

</comment><comment><USER11> Google Cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic--...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w1Aic --UF6sJ:maxhorstmann.net/blog/2014/04/13/dear-uber-youre-great-but-please-add- this-feature/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

TL;DR: "When ordering an Uber ride, I (obviously) have to enter my pickup location. Can I please also enter the intended dropoff location?"

</comment><comment><USER12> You can already enter a drop-off location. It might be that Uber needs to make this feature more pronounced in the UI.

On the confirmation screen, you can tap a little plus button next to the pickup address to enter your drop-off location. It's come in handy for me a few times.

</comment><comment> saiko-chriskun You can already do this. If you use the estimate fare functionality, I've had drivers already know where I'm going. It doesn't seem like everyone is accustomed to this, though, since I've mentioned it and some drivers have no idea what I'm talking about.

</comment><comment><USER13> Lyft just added this to their latest public build but they've been beta testing this for a year. It doesn't do the navigation in app, it shunts it off to your preferred navigation provider.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Huh? Looks like HN front-page traffic killed my server. Rebooting...

</comment><comment><USER14> 500 error

<comment><AUTHOR> try again?</comment></comment>


Celery 3.0 has been released - <AUTHOR> http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/whatsnew-3.0.html

<comment><USER2> Just wanted to say thanks to Ask for Celery. Absolutely fantastic for distributed systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the Autechre album based version naming convention

</comment><comment><USER4> Celery is one of those rare libraries where improvements to itself are improvements to my sanity and well being.

That said, I did run into an issue with periodic tasks (our bread and butter at Zapier). Detailed here: <https://github.com/celery/celery/issues/844>

Thanks a bunch Ask.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find this[1] example in Getting Started/Next Steps to be backwards:

        # incomplete partial:  add(?, 2)
        >>> s2 = add.s(2)
        # resolves the partial: add(8, 2)
        >>> res = s2.delay(8)
        >>> res.get()
        10

Shouldn't it behave like functools.partial[2]?

        >>> import functools
        >>> abc = lambda a, b, c: (a, b, c)
        >>> bc = functools.partial(abc, "a")
        >>> bc("b", "c")
        ('a', 'b', 'c')

1\. [http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/getting- started/next...](http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/getting-started/next- steps.html#and-there-s-that-calling-api-again)

2\. [http://docs.python.org/library/functools.html#functools.part...](http://docs.python.org/library/functools.html#functools.partial)

<comment><USER6> Very good question!

The reason is that I found that it better matches what you use them for in Celery, since they are used e.g. to forward results from the previous tasks to a callback. Often you have a signatures like: def blur_image(image, amount=1), where the partial is used like render_image.s(file) | blur_image.s()

functools.partial is usually used the other way; it's most common to create functools.partials where the first argument is satisfied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Celery has it's quirks now and then (for reasons I can't nail down or reliably reproduce, enabling CELERYD_FORCE_EXECV breaks a lot of things), but I consider Ask and the rest of the #celery gang to be models for how to have a welcoming community around an open-source project.

Looking forwards to experimenting with the non-multiprocessing worker - something in my current setup regularly leaks memory, and for the above- mentioned reason I can't automatically recycle worker processes to clean it up.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seems that the Eventlet pool does not work with the celery umbrella command. With celeryd it works ok. Is that true or do I have misconfigured something?

<comment><USER6> could be a bug, could you please open an issue at <http://github.com/celery/celery/issues>?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Over 600 commits, 30k additions/36k deletions.

The large number of deletions is a pretty good sign of the project's health. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER10> Brilliant, I have started to use celery a few months ago, now we a use it to back our video transcoding and automation platform, our search engine, and our mobile app backend.

Excellent job celery team !

</comment><comment><USER11> Does Celery still create a new queue for every worker on rabbitmq? This bizarre behavior makes it hard to use Celery with amqp :(

<comment><USER6> one queue for every worker instance, yes! this is for broadcasting remote control commands, but I don't see how this poses a problem?

If you mean the one queue for every task behavior of the amqp result backend then that is also a yes. Usually with replies in amqp you create one queue for every client, but Celery is often used in a web context where the process that initiated the task may not be the same process that collects the reply, so this is why it uses one queue for every task (it's also documented).

There's an experimental result backend for RPC-style replies, that uses transient messages and one queue per client: <http://github.com/celery/celery/tree/kombuRPC>

<comment><USER11> That is a problem for me, because I want all events of one type running through one AMQP queue to monitor throughput, etc.

<comment><USER6> Several ways to accomplish that, but I would recommend using kombu in combination with celery to have the task manually send messages.

You could set the exchange type of the results exchange to be topic too, that way you would both have result queues and you could additionally bind a queue to the results exchange to get a copy of all the messages sent there. But if you don't need to listen for individual results then I'd rather just send messages manually. You have both connection and producer pools in Celery, so it's rather convenient to combine kombu with celery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Finally I could use officially supported 'Canvas' to design workflows, before that I had to use the celery-tasktree package.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can somebody compare celery to beanstalk?

<comment><USER6> Celery supports beanstalk among many other backends (RabbitMQ, Redis, MongoDB, ..., etc)

So you can use Celery as a driver for beanstalk in Python.

<comment><USER13> But it seems to me that Beanstalk and Celery accomplish the same thing. Am I mistaken?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> im using redis instead of rabbitmq - have had zero problems so far. great work, this project is awesome

<comment><USER15> Are you using redis with slaves? When I do that, celery throws errors when trying to add tasks to my redis queue.

<comment><USER6> what's the error and traceback? (paste at pastie.org or similar)

<comment><USER6> About your error, seems strange that a simple info command gives that error, maybe you're running an outdated version of redis-py/redis-server?

<comment><USER15> Latest redis (2.4.15) and using redis-py 2.4.10. Just checked the CHANGELOG for redis-py, which is now at 2.4.13, and voila:

        * 2.4.11
            * Made the INFO command more tolerant of Redis changes formatting. Fix for #217.

Doh! Off by a single patch release. Thanks for the help.

See, folks? Celery is amazing in multiple ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> looks like redis is getting improved support in this release. Anyone using redis instead of rabbitmq?

<comment><USER17> I do for Errormator task queue, since 2.5, no issues at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it compatible with Hummus 2.0?

<comment><USER19> Only peanut butter 1.0, and there may be legacy support for ranch3, but you'll have to check the docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> chain is amazing.</comment>


Safari 5 Extension Development - <AUTHOR> http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting, in the Messages and Proxies[1] page, Apple has ad-blocking as an example which actually _blocks_ the ads from being loaded using the `beforeload` event (as oppose to hide them after they're loaded):

> Safari 5.0 and later (and other Webkit-based browsers) generates a > "beforeload" event before loading each sub-resource belonging to a webpage. > The "beforeload" event is generated before loading every script, iframe, > image, or stylesheet specified in the webpage, for example.

Isn't this exactly what the NoScript's author says Chrome extension was lacking[2]?

[1]: [http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tool...](http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/MessagesandProxies/MessagesandProxies.html)

[2]: <http://hackademix.net/2009/12/10/why-chrome-has-no-noscript/>

<comment><USER3> Can I be honest and not be thought less of for it?

I actually like Chrome's "load then hide" version of AdBlock because the ad impression counts. It doesn't do much for PPC ads, but for PPI, the website owner has "made an impression" with the ad unit.

Of course, it's robbing the advertiser at the same time....

<comment><USER4> I'd rather it not count. AdBlock originated out of a deep annoyance/hatred for distracting, exploitative ads - but has since grown to cover just about every advertiser out there, good and bad.

Many people install AdBlock without seemingly realizing this difference. What I would like to see a much more discerning ad-blocking solution that punishes scammy, distracting, or otherwise abusive ads, and rewards advertisers that create consumer-friendly ads.

With a load-then-hide system the website owner has fewer effective metrics on whether or not people are actively blocking his ads. Perhaps when his impressions start dropping precipitously he would be much more compelled to act.

Of course, all of this hinges on the existence of a trusted adblock source that takes upon itself great pains to maintain a list that bans only abusive advertisers. I'm not holding my breath.

<comment><USER5> Me too, I'd like to see a block list that only blocked annoying ads. I actually blogged about annoying advertising here: [http://posterous.richardcunningham.co.uk/the-problem-with- on...](http://posterous.richardcunningham.co.uk/the-problem-with-online- advertising)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who want to see a naive extension in action, I did a quick version of Helvetireader to the Safari extension format. It's trivial, but it also is a good template for further injection projects:

[http://kirindave.tumblr.com/post/675464589/safari-5-port- of-...](http://kirindave.tumblr.com/post/675464589/safari-5-port-of- helvetireader)

My big question is: will these make it to the iPad version of Safari?

<comment><USER7> How does it work? I installed it but I can't find a way to activate it.

<comment><USER2> Enable Safari's developer menu. (Preferences → Advanced → Show developer menu)

Then enable extensions. (Develop → Enable Extensions)

<comment><USER7> I got that far, but I guess I don't know what the extent ion actually does. How do i use it?

<comment><USER8> You then must find extensions to install. They can be downloaded from any website, and installed by the browser. Here's one repository of Safari 5 extensions I was able to find:

<http://safariextensions.tumblr.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wrote a really simple extension that injects jQuery into the current webpage. Not very practical as the same features can be found in a bookmarklet, but fun to make nonetheless.

<http://conroy.posterous.com/jqueried-a-safari-5-extension>

</comment><comment><USER10> Before this, how did third parties add functionality to Safari? For instance, the button 1Passwoed puts in the toolbar and the item it adds to the context menu for form fields?

<comment><USER2> Using InputManager[1] or SIMBL[2]. There are several things Safari Extension is not capable of due to lack of API (anything not involving webpage data) so InputManager/SIMBL-plugins are still necessary.

[1]: <http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?InputManager>

[2]: <http://culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be nice if you could listen for events, specifically I want to know when a tab is closed so I can add a action to re-open the last closed tab.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are all Safari 5 Extension will be free?

<comment><USER8> They're just packages that you download and install, so they could feasibly be charged for. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to hide the source code, however, so a copy would emerge almost immediately if you tried to make a market for yourself. So yes, effectively all Safari 5 extensions will be free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am no coder so pardon my naive question.

Is it possible for chrome and safari extensions to be interoperable, especially as they both have the same underlying web-kit technology? Surely, we do not want another platform fragmentation and battle. I am sure developers would love do no more work than recompiling the extension they built for Chrome. It will be a win for everyone.

<comment><USER14> There is no technical reason why this couldn't work, but my guess is that abstraction libraries will be necessary because Apple and Google won't be able to a agree on a common API. I kinda agree because having to standardise HTML, CSS and JS is hard enough and the browser makers don't wanna open up another battle front. Also, being able to tailor the API tightly to the underlying browser will attract developers and therefore enable more competition.

Good times for add-on developers!

<comment><USER15> In the same vein of commonJS, they should get together and create commonXT</comment></comment></comment>


Scientist claims human-chimpanzee hybrid born in Florida lab century ago - <AUTHOR> https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5447151/human-chimp-hybrid-born-florida-lab-killed-humanzee/ <comment><USER2> This story was heavily flagged, but unless I'm missing something, the content is solid. It's an interview with a major scientist. The tabloid site isn't great, of course, but that's not how we evaluate articles here I'm going to turn off the flags.

All: if you comment on a sensational story like this, please take extra care to make your comment substantive.

<comment><USER3> Much appreciated. The trope of tabloids publishing more striking truth than "mainstream" from Men in Black is more true than you'd believe...

<comment><USER2> Alas it only happens often enough to invalidate any generalization. But if you know of other specific examples it would be interesting to see them.

<comment><AUTHOR> The National Enquirer broke the John Edwards love child scandal. [https://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/how-enquirer- broke-j...](https://www.nationalenquirer.com/photos/how-enquirer-broke-john- edwards-love-child-scandal/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be good to have other sources for this claim.

Claiming something happened 100 years ago and hasn't surfaced till now is a tricky claim to substantiate, and certainly needs more than what this article presents which really amounts to not much more than hearsay.

<comment><USER5> In addition to this, chimps have 48 chromozomes and humans 46.

<comment><USER6> Horses have 64 chromosomes, and donkeys have 62, but they can still produce mules.</comment></comment></comment>


The Inconvenient Truth About SEO - <AUTHOR> http://sweet.io/article/Opinion-Column:-The-Inconvenient-Truth-About-SEO/61f14784-45e4-11e2-9e7a-001d9232cd16/

<comment><USER2> Agree 100%, but I would add a suggestion: buying google ads will often give a better return than SEO optimization for 'organic' results.

It's all well and good to say 'create interesting content', but for many sites it just isn't worth it - simple brochureware sites for brick & mortar businesses, for example.

The take-out restaurant on your high street shouldn't spend a lot of time creating interesting and shareable content. Just advertise the menu clearly, provide your contact details and location at the top of your home page in html (not images), then buy some properly-targeted google ads. If someone is looking for 'chinese restaurant <area>', they're highly likely to click your ad.

Buying ads and keeping your page simple often produces better results than cluttering your page with lots of 'optimizations', in my experience.

<comment><USER3> Excuse me, but what do you agree with? Do you think that it is enough to write any arbitrary bold statement and then say something in the lines of 'I know that sounds like an extreme position blabla' to make it sound more credible and less pompous? Do you realize that author of this article completely mistake some elementary SEO for content development plan/strategy? SEO has evolved, you know? These two things are not mutually exclusive, they should go hand in hand if you're going to have any kind of traffic before your business dies.

This whole article is trying to somehow prove that SEO is definitely not caring for you users, but writing content (what does it even mean?) magically is! Ignoring the reality of search engine ranking algos may help you build some kind of cool image if you are famous or lucky, but it doesn't necessarily need to help your business. If you're in a business, writing good content for the sake of writing good content is nonsense (it's worse, actually, because it costs you money).

As to your suggestion: I've seen pure ads being both much better and much worse than pure content building, but this is really comparing apples to oranges. Careful testing is your best friend here, and I'd say that you can always implement both strategies of building traffic without mixing them too much: have pages with great (and optimized) content, and have landing pages built specifically for ad-driven traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/12/11/seo-the- inconveni...](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/12/11/seo-the-inconvenient- truth/)

Sweet.io: why?

<comment><USER3> Yikes, check this out: <http://sweet.io/admin/postview/>

<comment><USER5> Ouch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Meh, 500 error - does anyone have a copy of the article (or a link to one)?

<comment><USER7> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sweet.i...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sweet.io/article/Opinion- Column:-The-Inconvenient-Truth-About- SEO/61f14784-45e4-11e2-9e7a-001d9232cd16/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks - Once the traffic has subsidized i'll bookmark that article...

I couldn't agree more and will make everyone even thinking about employing some zero-effort technique to #1 in SERPs read that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be nice if that was true, but people have been able to successfully game Google with SEO. Google can't actually tell the quality of content, so the SEO shortcut often works.

</comment><comment><USER8> So in this world of more than 8.3 billion web pages[1], I'm just supposed to write really good content and wait for the traffic to roll in?

Believing that if you build it well, they will come is something that has contributed to the death of many startups that I know. You have to make an effort to stand out, and in a world wide web of 8.3 billion pages, you probably need to be pushing and shoving your way to the top.

[1] <http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/></comment>


Twin prime conjecture and the Pentium division bug  - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/02/07/twin-prime-conjecture-pentium-bug/ <comment><USER2> "The error was estimated to occur once in every 9 billion divisions. (I doubt any large program has ever been written that is as bug-free as the buggy Pentium chips.)"

That is assuming uniform distribution of divisions. That assumption is obviously false since we can cause the FDIV bug[1] to occur _every time_ we calculate 4195835 / 3145727.

(The parenthetical editorializing is hyperbole as well. "Large" is poorly defined. If one calculates the number of bugs exercised per instruction executed, the probability of a bug occurring is going to be extremely small. In addition, there are "large" programs with very few bugs[2], none of which have occurred in real life[3]. Yet.)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Flight_systems>

[3] <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bonachea/294-8/hw1.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> _That is assuming uniform distribution of divisions_ Absolutely correct. In fact, there were very simple cases, such as numbers like 5 / 15 that were very close to the failure.

Vendors of equipment made statements about low probability of error as well that were not substantiated. In fact, my thinking was that the probability was not estimable.

What is likely is that many programs run with errors (some reproducible on various hardware) that are simply not noticed.</comment></comment>


Shinmun, a small and beautiful blog engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.matthias-georgi.de/2008/9/shinmun-a-small-and-beautiful-blog-engine.html <comment><USER2> Interesting thoughts about the PHP comments store. Perhaps some sort of comment service integration would keep things lightweight?

<comment><USER3> js-kit's comments addon would work if you don't care about having accounts. It's very customizable.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Productivity - <AUTHOR> I worked 3 years for a startup remotely. The major con was the lack of social interaction, while the pro was the ability to completely immerse myself in coding and solving problems on a deeper level. For the past year, I've worked onsite at a great startup with a great culture, but an open floor plan. Things that are perfect with this setup: ad hoc meetings, fixing the build, grooming sessions, small/medium size stories with relatively simple scopes, responding to slack, doing code review. Things that are terrible with this setup (in my opinion): any sort of truly deep coding/thinking/tinkering.
When I honestly evaluate my last year, almost all of what I consider my best work was done at home at nights or on the weekends. I've also noticed that a really good senior engineer on the team almost always comes in with his best new/gamechanging code when he took a Friday off and hacked over the weekend. There's something about the hustle of people constantly talking around me, having impromptu meetings, etc that triggers a part of my brain that keeps it in a very shallow mode (which is sometimes appropriate).
Btw, I'm not even antisocial or anything, I could sit around and hang out all day in the office, but I'm trying to get to that 'deep work' (to quote Cal Newport). Does anyone have any advice on this? <comment><USER2> Open plan offices are the bane of work requiring uninterrupted thought. I'd say buy a set of good on- or over-the-ear closed headphones and listen to music or soundscape to drown out the distractions when you really need to concentrate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have closed headphones, but I'd never heard of soundscapes. Definitely seems like ambient music would help out, thanks!

<comment><USER2> No worries. If you like classical minimalism/ambient music, check out Erik Satie's work, specifically, his three Gymnopédies compositions for piano. If you've played Minecraft, you'll instantly recognize No.1[1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Slide – an open-source plain text presentation maker - <AUTHOR> http://trikita.co/slide <comment><USER2> This is nice.

A bit OT: on the subject of presentation tools, I'm struggling to find something that suits me.

I really like Deckset[0], but found it sometimes limiting. For instance, I found that very few themes suite my style of presentation; and I often wish I could choose different color palettes, or left-align the text in a centered layout (e.g. when using bullet lists)

I generally dislike HTML-based presenting tools; I do not like the idea of using the browser; the PDF export is usually hit and miss, and I would not risk going to a venue with broken slides.

I have also tried to experiment with (La)TeX. Unfortunately I find LaTeX very boilerplate-y, and the de-facto standard for presentations, Beamer, is not easy to customize; even the most modern themes are designed with lots of text in mind, and I'd like Deckset-like layout with little text, many headings/large fonts (sometimes more than one section in one slide) and mostly source code.

I have experimented with `lecturer.tex` and even plain TeX [1]. The idea would have been to use it as a compilation target for Markdown (maybe using Pandoc). Unfortunately I could not find a satisfying way to typeset source code with syntax highlighting in plain TeX [2], and also working with modern fonts (TTF/OTF) in TeX is generally a pain (e.g. lecturer.tex doesn't play well with XeTeX; LuaTeX on the other hand is slightly less convenient with fonts)

[0] [http://www.decksetapp.com/](http://www.decksetapp.com/)

[1] [https://twitter.com/evacchi/status/738018333228978176](https://twitter.com/evacchi/status/738018333228978176) , [https://github.com/evacchi/lecturer- playground](https://github.com/evacchi/lecturer-playground)

[2] [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/312249/listings- for-p...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/312249/listings-for-plain- tex)

<comment><USER3> I'm working on something that given a markdown file with a specific marker "\---" splits it into slides and opens your browser with an impress.js version of your slides.

Is this something that interests you? The project is private but I may open source it sooner.

Also, written in Python

<comment><AUTHOR> There is also Remark.js that converts Markdown into HTML slides - [https://github.com/gnab/remark](https://github.com/gnab/remark)

Also, I'm working on an HTML/JS Slide version - just download it and edit HTML contents. It uses the same markup as in Android Slide and no build system is needed, just edit, press F5, see how it looks like.

[https://github.com/trikita/slide-html](https://github.com/trikita/slide-html)

<comment><USER4> Yes, remark.js is cool. I've used it for a presentation before (see [http://varkensmuts.nl/](http://varkensmuts.nl/)). The only thing that should be automated is running the video's locally. I've rarely had a venue that had a proper Wifi connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I ctrl+f'd for org-reveal, and didn't find it so I'll give it a plug.

I write org-mode files (kind of like a richer version of markdown), and use org-reveal and emacs' publishing system turn them into slide shows like [1] this: (pic: [2]). The best part about the workflow is including code snippets using org mode's add source block, which allows me to edit code in the usual mode that I edit code with. Also org-reveal uses emacs' code highlighting settings to do code highlighting.

        [1] http://escherize.com/rethinkdb_talk/
        [2] http://take.ms/FHrR0

<comment><USER6> I didn't see any .org files in that repo, do you have them available anywhere? I'd love to see specifically how it's done.

<comment><USER5> Sure, here's a link to the repo: [1]. I followed the guide in the org-reveal repo to get it working, I'll find it, hang on... Found it: [2]! Happy hacking!

        [1]: https://gitlab.com/escherize/talks/tree/master/cljsfiddle
        [2]: https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of [http://tools.suckless.org/sent/](http://tools.suckless.org/sent/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Great to see more text to presentation makers. May I highlight the free (open source) Slide Show (S9) [1] presentation maker. What's different? Offers many themes e.g. reveal.js, deck.js, impress.js, Shower, S6, G5, etc. [2] Cheers. PS: Try online [3] PPS: The command line also include a --takahashi switch e.g. lets you use One // Two // Three (for breaking slides) [1] [http://slideshow-s9.github.io](http://slideshow-s9.github.io) [2] [https://github.com/slideshow-templates](https://github.com/slideshow- templates) [3] [http://tryslideshow.herokuapp.com/](http://tryslideshow.herokuapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the Golang Present tool which also works with a simple plain text file: [https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present](https://godoc.org/golang.org/x/tools/present)

</comment><comment><USER10> At first, I thought this was a terminal version of Powerpoint, akin to mdp[1], which has been my favorite. (I actually use mdp over powerpoint/keynote on my laptop at work these days, since I can checkin the markdown, write the presentation easily, and spend zero time on all the formatting garbage.) I do not work in marketing (can you tell?).

[1] [https://github.com/visit1985/mdp](https://github.com/visit1985/mdp)

</comment><comment><USER11> Really interesting tool, the PDF export seems to work great as well.

I had not heard of the Takahashi method. I might use it for some informal talks or as a presentation prototyping tool.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's also MagicPoint, a rather old system but still famously used by OpenBSD folks for a lot of their presentations, e.g. [http://www.openbsd.org/papers/hackfest2015-pledge/mgp00001.h...](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/hackfest2015-pledge/mgp00001.html)

Warning, one slightly NSFW slide in that link.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any demos

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really, but here's what I've just made on my phone in five minutes (don't think of it as of a "serious" presentation, I just wanted to show how exported slides look like):

[http://www.slideshare.net/SergeZaitsev/slide-201606051659](http://www.slideshare.net/SergeZaitsev/slide-201606051659)

The raw PDF is available on Google Drive - [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bztexa2TJWdcdlZXRk1MSTVoNj...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bztexa2TJWdcdlZXRk1MSTVoNjQ)

The text I typed on my phone to make this presentation is:

        #SLIDE

        #make a presentation
        (even if you got no time to make one)

        content *is* important

        #Takahashi
        #method

        • short text
        • big font
        • many slides

        @http://www.magic4walls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/two-lines-between-black-and-white-circles-minimalism-wallpaper.jpg 140% top
        minimal

        #opensource
        http://github/trikita/slide

        #Feedback
        #appreciated!

The theme is the default white-on-black theme.

<comment><USER14> You absolutely should have examples on the website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anybody knows whats the catch with MacBook owners plugging their own laptops directly to projector during conference presentations, while others use already available common laptop and just transfer their ppt? It seems a bit snooty :) Although there are benefits, your ppt is not made available to everybody.

<comment><USER16> Probably using Keynote instead of PowerPoint. While Keynote can export to PPT, the result is not satisfactory. Usually Keynote presentations are exported as PDF instead.

<comment><USER15> Is Keynote that superior to MS PowerPoint?

<comment><USER17> Fonts on Mac and Windows are not the same, and export process does not always export everything correctly.

<comment><USER16> True, and I think neither PPT or PPTX can embed fonts in them, so the result is subpar, while a PDF can embed fonts, but cannot embed the transitions.

<comment><USER18> PowerPoint for Windows can embed fonts, the Mac version cannot.

PowerPoint's cross-platform support is still a shitshow. Embedding a video on one platform and presenting on another is unlikely to work, especially now that QuickTime for Windows is end-of-lifed so one platform is even less likely to have those codecs. I think it's still possible for the bullet glyphs to not always match (set them to empty circles on one platform, get displayed as daggers on the other), though this is less common than it used to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently gave a talk and crafted my slides using the good old LibreOffice Impress. Everything went smoothly and I only had some minor scratches with code highlighting.

I am always amazed by how much technical people underestimate office suites (MS Office and LibreOffice) and reinvent the wheel every month or so.

<comment><USER20> My main issues with impress are that I like a Text based Format which give nice diffs between slides and that I like to copy slides from one presentation to another, probably using a different style. This always Breaks in impress.

<comment><USER19> Well, technically open document formats are compressed XML.

So if you could save them in an uncompressed format you could diff them easily.

But dunno.

AFAIK LaTeX/Beamer should be The Tool for this, but it always is a PITA to use.

LyX is of very small help (when it doesn't break).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> how does someone make a presentation app and a) not have a presentation about it b) not have any presentations made with it as examples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Slide is not something we're selling or trying to make profit of (in any form - no ads, no spying, no analytics, open source). We made a few presentations with it for internal company meetings, but that was mostly just text that I find very boring to share.

Below in this thread there is an example of a slide text, PDF and SlideShare upload. It should give an impression of how it looks like and how it works.

I agree that a presentation on the web site would make more sense, but I can't think of a good idea for the presentation, while some fake artifical example is not much different from what you see on the screenshots.

Finally, once you open the app - it starts with a quick tutorial which is a presentation itself. It was supposed to be a quick start for new users, as well as an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Others may ( _will_ ) see it differently, and obviously it depends on context - different things need different presentations - but I can't stand when people have text slides. You are already _talking_ \- seeing exactly what you say or the gist of it in text makes one of the two superfluous. Just yesterday I watched a JSConf presentation that I actually ended up sharing that I still found infuriating for the first 7 minutes: The speaker said exactly the sentence (plus verbal decorations, meaning no additional content, just more words) that he also showed on slides. A new slide, a new sentence. (This is the one: "Emanuel Kluge: Go Offline with Service Workers - JSUnconf 2016" \- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou6oPEEyjNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou6oPEEyjNQ))

I think _a lot_ of presentations would gain a lot if the power went out. Imagine yourself in a round of people and you explain your idea to them. While common the handling of your smartphone or laptop during a conversation or explanation often is much more of a distraction than useful.

Obviously there are plenty of examples where you _do_ need them when you want to show something concrete like code or the thing you are talking about (unless it's a common object everybody already knows), but especially "idea and concept presentations" often are better off without the visuals. And please don't add jokes just because you heard that you should.

I try to create a presentation by using _" just me"_. And then only add other stuff if it's really necessary.

<comment><USER18> I agree that presenters should put most of their effort into their verbal presentation. But also having the essence of what's being said displayed as text is a good enhancement. Comprehension and retention is improved when information is conveyed in multiple forms (e.g. audibly and visually). The combination can be particularly useful when the presentation is not in the audience member's first language. Also in the video you linked to, the presenter was speaking and displaying English which is not his first language and while he's quite fluent, his accent might be a barrier to some in the audience, one that may be overcome by displaying the essential points. The text can also help the hard-of-hearing.</comment></comment>


LinkedIn will let you test, display skills for employers - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/linkedin-will-let-you-test-display-all-of-your-skills/#ftag=CAD-09-10aai5b <comment><USER2> Ah yes, I'm sure LinkedIn is a great barometer of candidate skill. Can't wait to add yet more arbitrary hoops for me to jump through in a job search...

... unless of course you know someone who can fast track your hiring process.

"Freedom for me and not for thee!"</comment>


Google Wonder Wheel - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?tbo=1&q=linux%20kernel%20crypto%20api&tbs=ww:1

<comment><USER2> I took me a minute to figure out that the links on the right-hand side of the page were search results and not adwords ads. I'm still distrustful of them because I associate their location so strongly with advertisements.

<comment><USER3> They look very similar to "Google Adsense for domains" links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has been present on google for months now; a quick search shows Labs announcing it May 24, 2009. That this is making HN now goes to show that most people still don't use the "Show Options" search modifications in the left sidebar, instead refining their search through additional words and search autocomplete.

I find it interesting that Google continues to hide these in a user-initiated sidebar in the interest of "sparse", while Y! and Bing now show search refinements by default.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hadn't seen it either, although after a few minutes of playing around with it I can't help but think it'd be more useful if following a node included the context of the original search - as it is it's very hard to narrow down on anything, which is what searching is surely all about?

</comment><comment><USER6> For anyone working on SEO, paid search campaigns, or just performing research on competing products/sites, this is an invaluable tool. It provides some great suggestions for keywords that you should rank highly for/buy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Searching for "Google" doesn't produce a wheel. "Bing" and "yahoo" do though.

</comment><comment><USER8> It looks very similar to what Directed Edge folks have done: <http://directededge.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> It's my understanding that wonder wheel is aimed more at advertisers looking for additional search terms on which to place bids.

</comment><comment><USER10> The words in the wheel seem to be the same as the related searches. So this is just an alternative way to present related searches.

</comment><comment><USER10> The words in the wheel seem to be the same as the related searches. So this is just an alternative way to present related searches.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why not go cricket-style and call it the "Google Wagon Wheel"?

"Wagon wheel" is a better metaphor -- I know what that is.

</comment><comment><USER12> Quintura used to be very similar.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow! That's really cool. I can't believe I hadn't seen it before.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's great fun. New twist on an old internet favourite - I've just found a trail from James K. Polk to Kevin Bacon. (Well, "Kevin Bacon Filmography").

Not ever so easy since you can only go via the links offered, but I went presidents -> high schools named after presidents -> school athletic districts -> normal districts -> cities, and then the breakthrough change from City of Murphy (a place) to City of Heroes (a computer game) and from there to City of Villains, Batman Villains, Batman films, Actors.

Er, yes. anyway. _cough_.

</comment><comment><USER15> <http://www.googlewonderwheel.com/>

<comment><USER16> _"if you are interested in buying this domain / website, feel free to contact us."_

That's an unofficial spam blog.</comment></comment>