Dishwashing detergent hack: Two ingredients (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.whatlisacooks.com/blog/2015/5/8/dishwashing-detergent-hack-two-ingredients <comment><USER3> Everything I know about dishwasher detergent is that it is formulated to clean _chemically_ , i.e. with enzymes etc. that actually _break food down_ over the course of tens of minutes or hours.

Dish soap does NOT do that. (It's also why you shouldn't wash dishes by hand with dishwasher detergent, because the chemicals are too harsh.)

I don't doubt that this "hack" does _some_ cleaning, but for things like crusted-on tomato sauce, hardened cheese, dried egg yolks, etc. -- it's just not going to work as well. Dish soap simply doesn't break these things down. It's not meant to.

(Washing by hand with dish soap works because you're applying intense pressure and abrasion, neither of which a dishwasher can do -- which is why it does it chemically instead.)

I just don't find it credible that "the results are identical". Either the author isn't paying enough attention, or else they're doing extensive "pre- washing" of their dishes before loading them, or they're washing so incredibly quickly after eating that food never has the time to dry/harden in the first place.

<comment><USER4> I once met a chap who told me he used his dishwasher without any powder or soap at all, and it still worked.

Now, maybe he was making it up. But i suspect that there is a common class of dish dirt where prolonged steaming and jetting with hot water is adequate in practice - i'd expect anything water-soluble to dissolve in hot water! So, residues from tea or coffee, water-based pasta sauce, fruit juice, jam, etc. It won't work for everything, of course, but it might work for a surprising range of things.

<comment><USER5> I lived in a co-op in PA during college, we had a "dish sanitizer" instead of a dish washer. It was basically just blasting the shit out of the dishes with crazy hot water. We were supposed to wash them before we put them in there but nobody ever did.

<comment><USER6> The cafeteria at my dorm had this. High pressure very hot water spray. Took about a minute. All the dishes were ceramic and there was glass and flatware. I don't know if anything plastic or other material could be subjected.

<comment><USER7> The school cafeteria I worked in had this (was a middle school that also prepared food for some smaller elementaries). We put plastic foodservice containers in there all the time. As long as the plastic is made to stand the heat of the water, you are usually OK. Home dishwashers have similar restraints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A fun trick is to google for the safety data sheet (SDS) of household chemical products. They'll tell you rough proportions of some of the ingredients. (Not all, just the ones they're required to -- the more dangerous ones.)

For example, the SDS for Cascade Pacs[1] tells us that there's ~40% sodium carbonate (washing soda, a fairly strong base), a few percent of sodium percarbonate (washing soda + hydrogen peroxide), and a few percent of an ethoxylated alcohol, a surfactant.

There are also some notes further down about Subtilisin, which apparently is a protease, an enzyme that breaks down protein.

(I'm not a chemist, so my interpretations of what these chemicals are/do is based on search results for the chemical names / CAS numbers.)

I bet if you looked up the SDS for Dawn dish soap, it'd be mostly surfactants, so sodium bicarbonate + Dawn dish soap is a reasonable approximation of sodium carbonate + surfactants.

OxyClean is also sodium carbonate, sodium percarbonate, and ethoxylated alcohols, so it'd also probably do just fine -- whether it's safe to use in a dishwasher depends mostly on the toxicity of those ethoxylated alcohols.

1\. [https://www.pg.com/productsafety/sds/SDS_2018/SDS_Feb_2018/C...](https://www.pg.com/productsafety/sds/SDS_2018/SDS_Feb_2018/Cascade_Complete_Action_Pacs_Dishwasher_Detergent_- _Fresh.pdf) 2\. [https://www.ahprofessional.com/_downloads/sds/SDS%20OxiClean...](https://www.ahprofessional.com/_downloads/sds/SDS%20OxiClean%20Versatile%20Stain%20Remover.pdf)

<comment><USER9> I always wondered, how safe are dish soaps? Can they replaced with something more natural, like vinegar or lemon juice? We have those around for simple household cleaning, only bringing out sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide for heavy duty cleaning.

<comment><USER10> Depends on the "dish soap". I've seen everything from sodium fatty acetates (old fashioned lye-and-grease soap, Castille soap) to PEGylated alkanes and sodium lauryl sulfate.

Vinegar and lemon juice work well on Lewis bases (amines, some proteins) and some inorganic salts, but they aren't detergents.

NaOCl and NaOH are right proper cleaning agents and will saponify fats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's another solution. Next time you run out, buy two bags of dishwasher soap. Then when one bag is done.... wait for it... USE THE SECOND BAG!

All that's left is to put one bag of soap on your shopping list and you have 5 to 20 days to manage to buy it before you're back in fish soap and baking powder hell.

<comment><USER12> That trick only works if you have lots of money. And lots of space.

Do you apply it to other things too, like garbage bags? Or olive oil? What about hand soap?

All of a sudden you're spending 2x normal for a while. Not a lot of people can do that.

<comment><USER13> Ah, the garbage bag. This elusive luxury item which throughout history has been reserved only for people who have lots of money.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But yes, waste disposal has been done much better for the rich historically than the poor.

I listed garbage bags specifically because I've noticed recently that the "good" ones (like, large, or strong) are actually quite pricey and often only are available in large quantities (40 count or something). So the price to buy trash bags might be like $20 or something. Buy 2 at once? $40 on garbage bags while grocery shopping? I mean that's a lot, no? To get the good version of something, twice? Not exactly an item for the poor to double-up on.

And suggest the poor buy the less good trash bags that are cheaper? Well then we have shown that garbage bags can indeed be a luxury item even today.

<comment><USER13> You do realise that your consumption of garbage bags does not double because you buy two rolls at a time. If you are wealthy enough to save up for a one- time investment of 1 roll of garbage bags, you are able to implement the scheme suggested by the original poster.

<comment><USER12> Yes I realize that consumption does not double simply because you buy double. I am not commenting on garbage bags (the topic is detergent); I am commenting on the strategy being used for more than 1 thing. If you use this strategy for 1 item, okay, I get it, the expense is fine. But if the trick is used for other things (as seems logical) then the initial expense of starting to do this could be large.

<comment><USER14> You're not making any sense here.

Nothing is forcing you to go buy double everything each time you shop.

If cash is tight but you want to implement this scheme, buy an extra unit of one household item (e.g. laundry detergent) your first trip. Hext time, choose another item (e.g. trash bags).

Eventually you've got a backup unit of every item, and you're now just buying your one item on the same consumption schedule, except now instead of replacing the item you're replacing the backup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On the topic of dishwashers, can anyone tell me why no dishwasher let's me fill it with, say, 20 loads worth of detergent and then it just dispenses it as needed? My dishwasher can do that with "rinse aid"(which I don't use), but I've never seen one that can do it with regular detergent.

Another "hack" is that the tray you're supposed to fill with detergent is almost always way too big. People think "more soap -> more clean", but that is only true to an extent. You will be just fine filling it only halfway up, even if you have a full load in there. The same goes with laundry detergent.

<comment><USER16> GE makes dishwashers that do exactly this. You look up your water hardness in a table, push some magic buttons as described in the manual to tell the dishwasher how hard your water is, and you pour detergent into the reservoir. Interestingly, you are strongly advised not to mix chlorine-based detergent with enzyme-based detergent at risk of turning the mixture into hard-to-remove goo.

<comment><USER17> Seems like determining water hardness would be something the dishwasher could do.

<comment><USER18> Have you ever taken a dishwasher apart? I have and it's an unbelievably simple machine that they charge you big bucks for. There's a lot it could do but manufacturers are in the business of making money, not selling complex, hard to maintain machines.

<comment><USER19> They are very simply constructed - and I think that's for two reasons: 1, it's cheaper, and 2 - My experience with dishwashers is that they are sort of intended to be disposable. They're relatively cheap, and replacement parts for the things that can fail regularly are very nearly as expensive as the actual machine.

The control board is the thing most likely to go (electronics and water); everything else is floats and switches. It's also 7/8ths the price of an entirely new machine.

This is one conspiracy theory I whole-heartedly subscribe to.

<comment><USER20> My experience (and this may be brand or price-point dependent) is the opposite. My Bosch had a couple of failures (that ideally would never happen, of course), but because the parts are fairly standardized and the design is very elegant, I feel like it's one of the last few "owner-repairable" items in the house.

The replacement parts were very reasonable (a fraction of the original cost of the dishwasher), easy and quick to obtain (from a particular retailer which also does very informative non-pushy YouTube videos for reparing/diagnosing problems), the diagnosing was straightforward (like debugging code), and the replacement was manageable (if a little cramped).

There may be a price cut-off where this starts being true, and where it stops being true. My particular dishwasher was ~$1k 10 years ago, has had ~$120 of parts replaced over that period, one of which was cosmetic, and has otherwise worked flawlessly. All in all, I'm very happy with that trade-off.

I just checked, and there are two control boards that could be replaced - <USER2> $150.

I'm pretty enamored with the engineering elegance of the dishwasher. Until I opened one up and had to fix something I always thought it would be a lot more complicated than it really is.

<comment><USER21> I've had the same experience with our Bosch dishwasher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Came across this hack for using ordinary liquid soap in dishwasher. Posting it here since a hack is a hack :)

tldr: use a few tablespoons of baking soda with the regular dishwash soap. The reason for not being able to use regular dishwash soap is because it makes lots of suds which floods your dishwasher. But baking soda prevents that from happening.

Would love to know the pros and cons from an expert here.

<comment><USER22> I was a chemist in my past life, but not a soap chemist, so no doubt someone will be along to correct me.

At a high level, soap is soap. They are basically molecules with a greasy end (long carbon chain) and a polar end (ionic group). The molecules form stable micelles that looks like little cell membranes almost, with the greasy ends pointing inward and the polar ends pointing outward (in contact with water, which is polar).

That allows the soap to combine with greasy molecules you are trying to clean away. You're basically suspending the grease in water using the soap molecules.

Now, there are a ton of different soap though. The polar functional groups can be carboxylic acids (typical homemade soap, hydrolyze fats with lye), or phosphate groups (now banned as the phosphates end up in waterways and cause algae blooms) or sulfates (the most typical last time I looked). There are no doubt others I'm not as familiar with.

Now soaps all do the same thing, but there are important differences. So this "hack" works in terms of providing a soap and killing the foaming with baking soda (we used this trick in the lab all the time to break up foams and emulsions). The baking soda can also act as a water softening agent.

That said, dishwashers are usually made for specific detergents because you don't want build up from leftover soaps and you also don't want to corrode any metal parts.

So this works, but probably not as good as actual dish detergent (but it might not matter if your dishes aren't that dirty), but you are taking a risk that continued use might gunk up your machine. Or maybe it won't.

<comment><USER23> I think most dishwasher detergents switched to enzymes to replace phosphates: [https://www.cnet.com/news/appliance-science-how- dishwasher-d...](https://www.cnet.com/news/appliance-science-how-dishwasher- detergents-digest-food-stains/)

That article implies the enzymes do some work, so that surfactants/soap can carry away the tougher components (protein and starch)

<comment><USER24> I could believe the enzyme bit. Soaps require 3 things to work well: sheer force, concentration and temperature. The higher the better for all 3.

Dishwashers can't do consistent sheer force unless the sprayer hits your dish just right.

So makes sense that their cleaning agent will use some other mechanism just requiring application/soaking and not sheer force.

<comment><USER4> Dishwasher powder is also extremely alkaline, i believe. I (cosmetically) ruined an aluminium Moka coffee pot by putting it through a dishwasher.

<comment><USER22> Nothing cleans quite as good as strong alkaline. In the lab, we'd use a 50% lye bath and it strips off _everything_.

If you want to add a bit of punch, you can add some 30% hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer. Caution is needed as mixing a strong oxidizer and organic material is a recipe for fire or an explosion.

<comment><USER25> > Nothing cleans quite as good as strong alkaline.

Depends on what you are cleaning. Most oven cleaners are strong alkalines, often sodium hydroxide. They work well enough on grease, but neglect it a bit and the heat turns the grease into a char that nothing short of a steel scraper and lot of elbow grease will remove. (On reflection, that char may be a combination of what was grease and protein.) In any case, alkaline cleaners and soaps won't touch it.

But allow to ammonia at it for 12 or so hours (it doesn't have to be wet - just exposed), and it just wipes away. The usual technique is to put the stainless steel fittings in a garbage bag, pour in a cup of cloudy ammonia, and tie off overnight. (If you want to have working nostrils afterwards, open bag outside.)

It even works on the glass door. Open so it's flat, cover with paper towels, soak paper towels in cloudy ammonia, hide outside for an hour so the smell doesn't take you out and burnt on crap wipes off.

I don't the chemistry is, but it's magic. It would be interesting to find out what the chemistry is, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I ran out of dish soap a few weeks ago, and I came across this same recipe. I found that my dishes were clean, but glassware and ceramic had a film on it. It wiped off easily with a towel.

Note that I tried this exactly 1 time.

<comment><USER27> Adding a teaspoon of Lemi-shine (which is just citric acid, which you can buy in bulk online) to the late rinse cup will solve that problem.

(The late rinse cup is the one with the door that seals; the early soap cup is the one the door doesn't seal; it is labeled "pre-wash" in the article photo. The pre-wash cup is where you should put the baking soda/Dawn mixture.)

<comment><USER28> Adding some TSP should help.

<comment> core-questions TSP is magic. I put it in the laundry from time to time. Used to be built into laundry detergent back in the day, right? Banned now. Well, I only use it for nasty stains and really dirty stuff.

<comment><USER29> TSP - Tri Sodium Phosphate

It was an effective cleaner and an even more effective fertilizer that fed toxic algae blooms in aquatic environments. Not the best choice unless you don't have anything else.

<comment> core-questions Oxi-Clean is what I use 99.99% of the time. TSP is a rarity, and since the vast, vast majority of people here are never putting it in the drains, I don't think it's going to be the end of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would probably _not_ do this long term without expertise from someone that understands the 'why' on the ingredient list on commercial detergents... but my limited intuition says it's probably ok in the short term. The hotter the water the better, and always dry as hot as possible. Dishwashers save a ton of water, definitely use them when available

<comment><USER31> Why dry as hot as possible? I was always told that the dry cycle was a waste of energy unless you need the dishes dry faster.

<comment><USER30> Sanitization. Your dishwasher spreads dirt and bacteria around and tries to remove as much as possible with a clean water rinse. Bacteria get into every micro-pore and nano-sized crack, where detergent is unlikely to penetrate effectively. Heat doesn't discriminate (unless we're talking prions, but I digress) and will kill everything that remains.

<comment><USER32> I can't see how that's true. A quick search tells me that dishwashers can get up to a max of around 60c, that's nowhere enough to kill most bacteria, especially ones hiding deep inside cavities. Maybe you could pasteurize milk in an extra-long run of your hot cycle, but it won't come close to sterilizing stuff.

<comment><USER33> 60°C is enough. I've made chicken at 60°C in a sous vide without any issues

Here's the pasteurization table:

[https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete- gu...](https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/07/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to- sous-vide-chicken-breast.html)

<comment><USER34> So you need to hold at 60 degrees for an hour. Even assuming the dishwasher isn't lying about it's temperature, it's unlikely to do that.

Edit: looks like some dishwashers have modes that do this, though they take a very long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Another environmentally friendly hack you can do is to use pine oil soap for machine washing clothes. Naturally you may not want to run this on your finest shirts and pants. But for other old clothes that you do not care that much about it is just fine. If you do this try it with very little soap first so it does not cause to much bubbling in the machine. Also check if your water is hard or soft, if its soft its more likely to work well. Hard water can cause too much bubbles with pine based soap.

You can use pine oil soap for lots of other cleaning tasks, cleaning the oven put a drop out on stuck dirt, heat oven up to 80-100C, wipe off. You can also use green soap for washing the toilet and sink.

For washing the coffee maker use vinegar mixed with water, run it a short wile so waster circlulates through the pump, stop. Wait for 30 minutes.

For dirt stuck on stove, use vinegar let it stay for a while wipe off.

Good natural cleaning items: Baking soda, Vinegar and Pine oil Soap.

<comment><USER36> White Vinegar / Water also replaces Windex! I didn't want to believe it because I thought we needed the blue stuff in the spray bottle. The product. But we were out and push came to shove we tried it. I was wrong. It works.

<comment><USER37> 50/50 white vinegar and dawn detergent will keep your shower and toilets looking new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Could someone please confirm what "dish soap" is please for those of us that aren't American. It's soap for cleaning dishes in the sink, right? (as opposed to soap for washing hands). In the UK we refer to dish soap as washing-up liquid. Don't want to use the wrong stuff!

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER39> Yeah, dish soap is soap for washing dishes. Us Americans can get pretty craaazy with our naming conventions!

<comment><USER40> > Us Americans can get pretty craaazy with our naming conventions!

This really goes both ways. :) Wait until you find out about "public schools" in the UK, or at least England.

(They're independent private schools which are not government-funded, and are in fact far less public than government-funded state schools. As I understand it, they came to be known as "public" because they were successors to traditional homeschooling in a private environment.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A little meta, but can anybody explain _why_ recipe articles like this (but usually food) spend so long waffling on about tangential "oh we can't afford to bit run the dishwasher 24/7" nonsense, and not just get stuck in?

Is there some technical advantage to padding it out, or do they just like to see their own words?

<comment><USER42> The explanation I've heard it's that it's an SEO thing -- if your page isn't "unique" it gets nuked in the rankings, so recipe sites need to add a long preamble to distinguish their otherwise-identical recipe.

Another explanation is that longer articles mean more time spent on the site, i.e. it pumps up those "user engagement" metrics. Plus more space for ads.

The saving grace is that most recipe sites have a "Jump to recipe" button. They _know_ people don't want to read their life story, but they can't jeopardize their SEO.

EDIT: more well-informed speculation here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/3gkzog/comment/ctz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/3gkzog/comment/ctz5d9r)

<comment><USER43> I think for recipes specifically it started with the fact that a recipe cannot be copyrighted, but that flavor text around a recipe can. This is why recipe books do the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> My dishwashing hack is to simply clean them in the sink by hand and to never use the dishwasher.

I find this encourages efficient reuse of dishes wherever feasible, and ensures that things are always cleaned to my expectations.

You might think this takes some extra time, but there are major advantages to having a sink full of hot soapy water available to you each morning. Wiping down arbitrary surfaces, mopping floors, etc, is a trivial next step after you finish with the dishes.

<comment><USER45> In my experience, dishwashers use more water, not less. Growing up, we used a dishwasher regularly, and the process looked like this:

a) remove all bits of food with regular washing, stack next to sink

b) transfer from next to sink to dishwasher

c) (after running dishwasher) wipe off hard water residue from all glass dishes

d) put away dishes

When I moved out on my own, I discovered the joy of a simple wooden dish rack next to your sink:

a) remove all bits of food (and oil) with regular washing, stack next to sink

And the above is _all_ one has to do! The dishes dry naturally, and putting them back into the cabinet is optional. Notice almost identical step a). How am I supposed to believe dishwashers save water? We used twice the water simply to get rid of oil! After my partner got tired of wiping hard-water residue, we abandoned our dishwasher and never looked back.

<comment><USER46> I used to have this problem, and found it to be caused by a combination of two factors:

1) Growing up in a house with low water pressure. If the machine doesn't have much pressure to work with, it seems to do a bad job more or less regardless of what you try to do

2) Given you have sufficient water pressure, using cheap detergent. After switching to a "top of the line" dishwasher detergent packet, a dishwasher went from "borderline useless" to "more clean than I can get them by hand".

Number 2 was by _far_ the most impactful thing I've done; I can essentially now scrape dishes of large food chunks then put them straight in the dishwasher, and have a >= 98% confidence they'll come out completely clean.

<comment><USER45> Very interesting. Can you tell me what specific brand this is?

<comment><USER47> I'll second the cascade platinum recommendation. I though my dishwasher was broken when we used another detergent brand. I took it apart to see if the filter was plugged and even put a GoPro camera and led light in it to make sure the washing arms were spinning. Turns out it was because we used a cheap detergent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> You can also use straight baking soda as an emergency laundry detergent. Depending on the machine and size of the load, 0.5 cup/125 ml to 1.0 cup/250 ml. Just put it in directly with the clothes. No dispenser. Also, definitely __NO __dishwashing soap should be added...

</comment><comment><USER49> Other hacks.

Instead of fabric softener like downy, use same amount of white vinegar. It is cheaper, your clothes smell fresher, and anyone with allergies will thank you.

For cleaning a tub or shower, make a mixture of 50% white vinegar and 50% dish detergent (like dawn). Spray the mixture on tile/tub/curtain/doors. Let sit for 15 - 30 minutes. Spray down with water. Done. This is way cheaper than the industrial cleaners, much less smelly, and usually works better.

</comment><comment><USER50> Do dishwasher manufacturers publish any sort of guidance for detergent companies for what kinds of detergent are acceptable or problematic for the dishwashers? Or has this become a chicken and egg problem, where the manufacturers design for the currently available detergents and the detergent manufacturers design against current machines?

<comment><USER51> The dishwasher itself is pretty much all plastic for plumbing and doesn't have any problems with any detergent; it's the dishes that might not react well to specific detergents/temperatures/etc.

The two don't really design for/against each other outside of small stuff like the detergent holder being able to take a detergent pod instead of loose powder. Dishwasher manufacturers are more concerned about form factor and efficient power use while detergent companies are focused on cleaning efficiency.

<comment><USER52> In my experience, plastics are not immune to damage from "detergent." Parts of my dishwasher became quite brittle and ultimately failed—and the zip ties used to cobble it back together also become brittle over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I tried a few of these DIY dishwasher detergent recipes a few months ago (random things I did during lockdown) and the results were ok. I usually use all-in-one tablets, which in my country all come individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper which I was looking to avoid. The main thing I found my DIY detergent didn't clean was tea stains in cups, everything else came out pretty good, although sometimes they were a few limescale stains on glasses.

Recently my supermarket had a promotion on dishwasher powder, so I decided to try that. If anything it's worse than my DIY detergent. The all-in-one tablets clean perfectly every time, so I'm wondering what else they have which gives superior results. I regularly fill up the salt and rinse aid (even though this probably isn't needed with the tablets).

</comment><comment><USER54> I find it interesting, at a glance, most of the comments here seem to take for granted that everyone uses a dishwasher.

I haven't used a dishwasher in about 20 yrs (not bragging, just stating a fact). In those 20 years 13 of them were in Japan, and 7 in SF. In Japan dishwashers are not common AFAIK and when I was in SF partly I was just used to not using one and partly it would have really annoyed my neighbors to run it when I wanted to and scheduling around that made me just mostly forget it was there.

I'm curious what other countries they are common/not common.

<comment><USER55> I actually think the dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer has done more increase quality of life (especially women's) in the past 100 years than any other invention. IMO they are the ultimate in time-saving inventions, taking a task of pure drudgery and cutting down on the time. Only missing piece IMO is a decent clothes folding machine.

<comment><USER54> I've seen the hans rosling talk on washing machines and that made sense but I don't think the same holds true for diswhwashers. Even at an 8-10 person party it never takes us more than 10 minutes to do all the dishes including pots etc. On a typical night, family of 4 it takes less.

<comment><USER55> > Even at an 8-10 person party it never takes us more than 10 minutes to do > all the dishes including pots etc.

Wow, you're much faster than I. It takes me probably 10 minutes just to load the dishwasher for a party that big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Just get Barkeepers Friend. It's magic and made from natural ingredients. Seriously, if I have kids this will probably be the most important life lesson I teach them. I don't even know how soap competes.

<comment><USER57> Wait, you can use Barkeepers Friend in the dishwasher?

I also love that stuff, but didn't know it could be used that way.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure it would be cost-effective.

On the other hand it is the greatest for cleaning pans with burned-on food.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> _stuff that I just don 't normally keep around my house, or stuff that I'm not sure I'm comfortable putting on my dishes (Borax..._

Borax, a naturally occurring mineral, is worth considering as a home staple. It has many good uses. The best laundry detergent I've ever used was something my wife made with Borax. I've used it for pest control and it worked better than sprays and other products.

Since this is HN I'm sure others will fall down the rabbit hole of why it's not as popular as it used to be.

</comment><comment><USER59> Surprised no one mentioned that "this one weird hack saved a cook-mom" clickbait-style of writing. SEO-optimizing writing style was mentioned in comments, still.

<comment><USER60> And of course it mentions a specific brand of dish soap to use and has an ad for a bottle to hold it. Makes me question if the whole thing isn't made up just to sell those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Watching the history of soap I learned that soap was scarce in Germany during WWII. The vegetable oils used to as part of the soap making process were hard to get. Detergent was invented in WWII by German scientists when they tried to create artificial soap. Soap leaves a scum on things detergent doesn't.

Somewhat related to the article is suds and salt. Public fountains that are vandalized with detergent can prevent it by adding salt to prevent suds from forming.

</comment><comment><USER62> TOP TIP: Do _not_ put Fairy Liquid in the little tablet tray in your dishwasher when you run out of tablets. It _does not_ end well. :(

<comment><USER63> Oh, come on... Tell us how it ends ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> This isn't a scientific study of course, but still I do miss the negative reference (i.e. without any detergent). Additionally, it would be nice to quantify the 'cleanness' of a run (perhaps weighing the dishes before and after?). Hmm, perhaps we should take this study to the next level ;-).

</comment><comment><USER65> Wow, author runs dishwasher twice a day, sometimes three times a day on weekend. That's insane. Life-hack: reuse dishes and glasses when possible throughout the day. Wipe off crumbs after breakfast and lunch and set the plates aside. Don't freak out if there's a little left-over grease smear on the dish or dried up fruit-water in the bowl from three hours ago, it won't kill you. If the dish is actually in gross shape (caked on cheese or whatever) then fine, throw it in dishwasher and grab a new one.

<comment><USER66> Four humans, all home all day long. We cook.

Minimum one dishwasher run daily, maximum 3, average is about 2.

If the sink isn't clear, I can't refill the water tank for the chiller. If I don't refill the water tank, people don't drink enough water.

Running the dishwasher is cheaper than medical bills.

<comment><USER67> > If I don't refill the water tank, people don't drink enough water

Huh? What's wrong with water from the tap?

<comment><USER68> Not everywhere has perfectly clean tap water. See [https://www.today.com/news/family-discovers-their-tap- water-...](https://www.today.com/news/family-discovers-their-tap-water- flammable-1B7936618)

<comment><USER69> > If your water starts fizzing, that could be a red flag.

You don't say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Take it from someone who tried. You can use dish detergent in the washing machine (clothes) but using laundry deterge in the dishwasher has interesting results. You will get bubbles coming out all over the place.

<comment><USER71> The author specifically addresses this.

<comment><USER72> I don't see this. All I see is the author replying to a comment that this is not laundry detergent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I would never have believed this was such a controversial topic.

</comment><comment><USER74> There are typically a lot more ingredients in detergent, so YMMV depending on a number of factors, including the composition of your dishwasher (corrosion), how well you clean the dishes before putting them in (a few drops of Dawn isn't going to penetrate 3-day-old melted cheese), how much you care about disinfecting (bleach), etc. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_detergent#Compositi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_detergent#Composition)

</comment><comment><USER75> Dishwasher three times a day???

</comment><comment><USER76> >We run our dishwasher at least twice a day here, and often three times on weekends.

What the ever-loving fuck?

</comment><comment><USER13> Lifehacker news?

</comment><comment><USER67> But..... you already have dish soap? Just.... wash the dishes?

<comment><USER77> I think it's your day to do dishes.</comment></comment>


The State of Investments in Europe Part II - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@christianhern/the-state-of-investments-in-europe-part-ii-a-deeper-dive-into-the-core-hubs-of-european-tech-5441a48cdfad

<comment><USER2> why is Sweden put together with the rest of the Eastern European countries? Some of the charts don't make sense at all.</comment>


Sacking Berlin: How hipsters, expats, yummies, and smartphones ruined a city - <AUTHOR> http://thebaffler.com/past/sacking_berlin <comment><USER2> Okay so hipsters are a problem in Berlin, but it is not like this is not a problem in other cities. Hipsters are a problem everywhere.

IMHO a place with 1€ falafel sandwiches and 1€ beers is a pretty good place in terms of runway ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think you read the article. It's not "hipsters" that are the problem. Also, the days where you got anything for 1 Euro are long gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> of course, smart phones were anticipated to have this gentrification effect, and were incentivized and designed to maximize it while reducing the owner's control over it. i.e. you will not find apps were you can pipe the valuable data into your own sorting criteria to expose the type of product you're looking for, instead the app developer is incentivized to control how the user would use an app to shop, in the same way finding iApps is a made to be a huge pain in the ass.

Nothing new though, it's the same manufacturer/distributor/retailer model used since forever. Now that smart consumers can bypass the distributor in a lot of markets, the consumer becomes "too powerful" and capable of making decisions that subvert macro economic controls needed to keep control of the direction and pace of technology and other development.

Before you know it, you'll be buying mini reactors for your house on Silk Road 2.0. Nuclear power countries aren't so hot when every family household is a nuclear power.</comment>


Ask HN: Which news reader/source do you rely on most? - <AUTHOR> Lately in addition to HN, I am starting rely more on FB for my news, which is not great and Twitter seems to have a lot more chatter to able to track news more efficiently. I want to get to a place where i can check news once or max twice in day and still able to collect reasonable highlights in tech, science and business. I feel like HN alone is not sufficient. Any suggestions?<p>What primary news reader sources do you rely on apart from HN for great content and news? and how often do you check it? <comment><USER2> Here are my sources:

Tech: Hacker News

Science and Culture: nautil.us and aeon.co

Politics, economics, foreign affairs: Project Syndicate, economist, priceonomics

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I didnt know about nautil.us and aeon.co

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel like HN alone is already too much in contributing too information overload. I'm often trimming my news sources.

That being said, I'd just check 2-3 reputable newspapers

</comment><comment><USER4> I listen to BBC Radio Four "Today", "World at One", or "PM" (sometimes all of them). They don't have good tech or science content.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reuters.

Google's News isn't bad.

I usually check once or twice a day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Besides hacker news- slashdot.</comment>


Jacksonpollock.org (2003) - <AUTHOR> https://jacksonpollock.org/ <comment><USER2> All: a lot of comments in this thread are sneering at something: some person, some group, someone's work, someone's comments, or the rest of the community. Please don't do that on HN, even in response to sneers by others. It feels justified and maybe brings relief, but it fills the thread with nasty fumes and makes for a place no one can really enjoy. It's not in any of our interests.

Curiosity, which we're trying for here, doesn't sneer. It is open, more genuinely satisfying, and makes for a place that's better for everyone. That's in all of our interests.

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

<comment><USER3> I don't think its that bad @dang :) There is no nationalism and politics, just people debating about art with passion. I kind of found it interesting and fun to see both sides debating.

"Conservatives" \- anti-Pollock clan argue that art must have inherit beauty and skill to produce.

"Liberals" \- pro-Pollock folks argue that the whole definition of art is up for grabs.

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pollock is wonderful, particularly in person. But more than I enjoy the art (Silver Over Black, White, Yellow, and Red in person is enough to bring me to tears), I really enjoy listening to people's anger ranting why its not really art, or why anyone could do that, etc. If art is intended to garner a reaction - Pollock accomplishes that in spades.

I personally find it wonderful and beautiful - the sf-tech crowds mocking the abstract and psychedelic tend to be a bit unaware where the world they both live and work in came from!

<comment><USER5> My opinion of Pollock changed drastically when I saw something in person. For me, it was Greyed Rainbow, which is completely uninteresting in a book and quite enthralling in person.

I don't think this phenomenon is limited to abstract expressionism though. Even being from Iowa, I didn't understand what was special about American Gothic until I saw it in person.

<comment><USER6> I had a similar reaction to Mark Rothko's work. On a page it seems silly and stupid but standing in front of a giant canvas that is seemingly perfectly imperfectly painted is just something else. It engulfs your entire vision and is really something that needs to be experienced in person.

<comment><USER7> I have experienced them in person.

Still don't get it.

Looking for an source that can explain it to me.

<comment><USER8> I remember going to the National Gallery in D.C. and while asking for a map the person at the desk told me "you should go to the tower, we have something _very_ special there". It was an exhibit of some Rothkos and a video about his life and significance to help the viewer interpret his works.

I found the paintings terrible, but knowing I usually understand them more once I understand the artist I went to go watch the video. During the video there was a couple rude guys who started snickering at the video. Usually I get kind of upset about this sort of thing, but to be honest, I actually agreed with them. I came away from the experience feeling like I had just been part of a huge prank.

I learned that day that Rothko's painting are trash.

A couple years later I was in a small museum in another country, and across the room saw a painting of a couple of poorly rendered squares in flat shades and thought, "I bet that's a Rothko." Sure enough it was, and now I can recognize his paintings from 20 meters away. So I guess his work is recognizable and unique and I've learned some _very_ begrudging respect for his work that way I guess -- they're at least recognizable trash.

<comment><USER9> > I learned that day that Rothko's painting are trash.

May I ask how you came to the conclusion the painting are _trash_ \- and not just that you personally didn't like the paintings?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No one accuses me of being insane for going to a park bench and watching cranes and ducks skim across the river and just think. Why is it controversial for someone to like Pollock's paintings which give the same type of space?

Maybe they don't have intrinsic meaning, but a lot of the world doesn't. Maybe they have meaning from their context, maybe the world does as well. At the end of the day, to me they are provocative and inspirational and help me think and I value thinking so I value Pollock's paintings. Especially insofar as the paintings aren't encumbered by the heavy realist Americana that Pollock reacts against from his studies with Thomas Benton (Though I do like Benton's paintings as well).

<comment><USER11> A lot of the post-war abstractionists are treated that way by people. From de Kooning to Reinhardt to Yayoi Kusama, they all get dismissed for one thing or another but I think all of them have some unique stylistic choices that breathe life into their art, Kusama in particular. They aren't traditional or easy to love, in fact, they are much easier to just scoff at. But the artists put serious thought into each work and came in with an idea and a vision and, a lot of the time, they realized those in truly unique ways. Just because they're not "pretty" or "technically impressive" doesn't mean they're bad or aren't art.

<comment><USER12> _" doesn't mean they're bad or aren't art"_

At this point is there even anything at all that can't be considered to be art?

The word has become almost meaningless.

<comment><USER13> That's an idea that has probably been around as long as humans have been making art (i.e. as long as humans).

<comment><USER14> "Certain disciples of the new school, much occupying themselves with the measured dividing of the tempora, display their prolation in notes that are new to us, preferring to devise new methods of their own rather than to continue singing in the old way. Therefore the music of the Divine Office is disturbed with notes of these small values. Moreover, they hinder the melody with hockets, they deprave them with descants, and sometimes they pad them out with upper parts made out of secular songs. The result is that they often seem to be losing sight of the fundamental sources of our melodies in the Antiphoner and Gradual, and forget what it is that they are burying under their superstructures. They may become entirely ignorant of the ecclesiastical modes, which they have already ceased to distinguish and the limits of which they abuse in the prolixity of their notes. The modest rise and temperate descents of plainsong, by which the modes themselves are recognized, are entirely obscured. The voices move incessantly to and fro, intoxicating rather than soothing the ear, while the singers themselves try to convey the emotion of the music by their gestures. The consequence of all this is that devotion, the true aim of all worship, is neglected, and wantonness, which ought to be eschewed, increases."

\- Pope John XXII, _docta sanctorum patrum_ , ca. 1324

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I opened the website on my phone and was waiting for it to load for a good couple of minutes as it was a white blank page.

Then I thought that maybe I need to scroll down, as soon as I touched the screen I realized it.

What a nice way to discover functionality accidentally.

<comment><USER16> It's a sad commentary on the state of the web that (a) we'd consider waiting a good couple of minutes for a website to load, and (b) scrolling down to sidestep rendering issues is a reasonable tactic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I just saw an interesting video on _" How Jackson Pollock became so overrated."_[1] Summary: It was due to the enormous influence of a single critic who was a Pollock fan.

As an artist, I find it incredibly sad that critics and other gatekeepers (such as museum curators and gallery owners) have any influence at all.

Fortunately, these days the need for such gatekeepers is diminishing, as artists can get their art (at least in digital form) directly in front of their audience, though at the same time new gatekeepers like search engines and platform owners are arising.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGDDh1thaQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOGDDh1thaQ)

<comment><USER17> I think there's a certain amount of risk each artist needs to take, in any medium, where on one side you see the intentionally accessible art of the television show, and on the other side you see art that challenges the audience in some way: be it obscure, or inherently referential, or historically situated. I love challenging art, but without an art history degree I often can't appreciate it fully without also immersing myself in some critical writing on it.

Challenging art almost need to be paired with critics who can provide useful metaphors, historical contexts, or what-have-you to help appreciate the art. Part of my appreciation of challenging works of art comes from reading interesting critical appraisals of them. In those situations I think of the critics and the artists as being somewhat intertwined.

I quite agree on the gatekeeper side of things, e.g. critiques who are mainly concerned with questions of taste and judgement, where art that challenges certain norms is judged poorly.

<comment><USER12> There is a role for art education, and for providing context in which art can be understood. However, the hierarchical ranking of artists by critics in to "great" and "minor" is often just a matter of taste and opinion, and that's what I object to.

I can't count the number of times I've gone in to famous museums and galleries and found them stocked to the gills with art that I considered absolute and utter garbage.

Now, of course the curators, critics, and gallery owners who extol such art have a different opinion of this art than I do, or they wouldn't have put it in to their museums and galleries, but really who's to say their opinion is any better than anyone else's?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What a wonderful surprise! I remember playing with this back in 3rd and 4th grade during our computer lab, it was an absolute pleasure. I haven't seen it in over 15 years, and am just floored by how timeless this is. It just so happened that I walked by my old elementary school on Monday of this week. What a strange coincidence.

Truly a joyful memory.

</comment><comment><USER19> For those who question Pollock's artistry - see his paintings in person first. They have a mesmerizing quality that grabs you from across the room. Looking at them, it's easy to get lost in a sort of meditative trance, which also happens with Rothko (another 'my kid could do that' artist.)

<comment><USER20> How much of that is because of skill as an artist vs just venue and size. In other words what other things would be just as interesting if presented similarly.

<comment><USER19> This is easy to test: there are hundreds of other artworks in the museum. Very few have the same pull as a Pollock, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Numbers set grey scale.

Letters set colors (b=blue, r=red, y=yellow, etc).

Mouse click sets random color.

Spacebar or double-click resets canvas.

</comment><comment><USER22> If a computer can generate something of equal quality without human input, I don't consider it art. Sure, CGI looks realistic. But realistic imagery is not enough for something to be art, and neither is random splashes of color. There is nothing here that points to beauty, higher values, truth, or anything. If it helps you zone out, sure, but again, not art. White noises helps some people zone out. This is basically white noise with extra steps.

And Im referring to Pollock's work. This website is arguably more artistic than his painting.

</comment><comment><USER23> Pollack's works have an extreme textural effect when seen in person that can't be conveyed with flat media like computer screens or printed reproductions — they are three dimensional, because the paint blobs are _thick_ , and sharp.

This interactive site is a beautiful and intense way to experience Pollack. If you get the chance, I hope you also get to experience Pollack's works live and in the flesh.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Canvas API didn't exist in 2003 so I'm not sure what that 2003 in the title is for. Did this site exist in Flash before 2006?

<comment><USER25> This is a piece by Miltos Manetas. It was created in Flash initially. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltos_Manetas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltos_Manetas).

If you like this kind of work another well known artist in this space is Rafael Rozendaal

[https://web.archive.org/web/20110529173830/http://www.supern...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110529173830/http://www.superneen.com/)

<comment><USER26> When you click M he signs it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Using this site just leaves me feeling bored and kind of annoyed, just like a pollack painting! I was just moving the mouse around thinking "Man, this is going to take all day. I don't have time for this. I'm mortal." It's so weird, because I haven't felt that way for a long time. I've been making good life choices so far, up until I clicked on that website, and I just had to go away and do something else.

<comment><USER28> This site reminded you of your mortality and caused you to contemplate your life choices? Heavy, man.

<comment><USER27> I get the same reaction from the DMV, but no one puts them in a museum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I did this years ago to score some internet points. Sort of a similar concept:

[http://ratiosoftware.com/html5/autopollock/autopollock.html](http://ratiosoftware.com/html5/autopollock/autopollock.html)

</comment><comment><USER30> Love the website. I'm not sure how I missed that when it came out. this site shows some of the evolution of Jackson Pollock's work. In it you can see him moving from imitation of the masters of earlier 20th century art to his own unmistakable thing. Clark Terry, a revered jazz trumpet player and teacher famously said "Imitate. Assimilate. Innovate." That same process can be seen here. [http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/pollock1.html](http://www.all- art.org/art_20th_century/pollock1.html)

<comment><USER30> Here's another website which shows a work that he made after he stopped making the drip paintings he was famous for. [http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=17930](http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=17930)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

― Anaïs Nin

</comment><comment><USER31> I am a huge fan of The Art Assignment on youtube. I came in as a skeptic of modern art but grew to appreciate it and with it my notions of what I consider art or work in general. Jackson Pollock video essay[0] is worth watching as well. [0] [https://youtu.be/1U19VOF4qfs](https://youtu.be/1U19VOF4qfs)

</comment><comment><USER32> Great sample data set for seeding a brute force search space to crack "move mouse for entropy" PRNG seeds?

</comment><comment><USER33> A lot of people also don't realize that Pollock's wife was essentially the curator of his work. He would complete a painting and have her approve it. There have been tons of pieces that we haven't been able to see simply because they didn't pass this test.

</comment><comment><USER34> Did anyone else appreciate the ANSI art embedded in the HTML document at the end of the body?

</comment><comment><USER35> There used to be a 99¢ app on the iOS app store which did pretty much the same as this site. I loved it a lot, but unfortunately, it was gone from the app store some day.

</comment><comment><USER36> Surprisingly fun. Double-click or press space to clear the image.

Also, the character graphics in the comments alone are amazing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Its disappointing to me how this community responds to Jackson Pollack. Most of the Pollack supporter's comments seem to assume that if a person doesn't think he's a genius of incredible technical ability, then that means that person is automatically an ignorant person that's making wild, uninformed, random guesses about how art is created.

I think Pollack's paintings are aesthetically pleasing. I'm not a professional artist, however I am an art and art history hobbyist. I have been for decades. I like his paintings. I don't, however, think they are special or that he was an artistic genius whose paintings should have broken the record at one point for the most expensive work of art ever sold. That's OK though, we all have different tastes and a guy with $100 million just happened to have different tastes from this guy with no millions.

However, my opinion isn't random or uninformed. I know how a painting is created. How the surfaces are prepared. How preparatory drawings and smaller studies are done. How the final drawing is made. How the underpainting is done. My art is pretty bad compared to professionals. However, studying it for decades means I've watched actual masters do their thing for a countless number of hours. I know how the Italian masters created their works of art in great detail. I know how Pollack created his. The level of technical skill required to become a master of classical realism is absurd. Pollack's strength was executing and publishing an idea no one had done before. In the grand scheme of all of art, I don't think that's a particularly strong strength when compared to masters of classical realism.

My opinion is based on an intimate knowledge of what it takes to be that good. If you disagree with my conclusion that's fine and reasonable but to pretend that everyone doesn't consider him a highly skilled genius is ignorant is in itself pretty ignorant.

If I wanted to create a work like Pollack's, there would likely be a learning curve, but we aren't talking the same amount of practice and preparation that classically trained artists require to even be semi-competent. Like I said before, the biggest strength of the work he is known for was originality, not technical competence. He might have also been technically competent as an artist, but when I look at the works that made him famous I don't see it.

I'd be willing to hang all kinds of abstract / modern / postmodern art on my wall because it adds color, sometimes has great composition, and is aesthetically pleasing. However, most of it just isn't meaningful to me in the same way that other genres of art are like classical realism and impressionism. I don't think anyone should feel like that's a personal attack on their preferences. I'm not missing something, it just has a different effect on me. If you don't like classical realism you aren't missing something either, you just like different things.

<comment><USER38> Thanks for sharing that, it's good to read it in textual form. What do you make of Twombly? I've been trying to understand what there is to see in his work; I am a scientist rather than an artist and I appreciate that I may not understand some skills.

However, I am still in favour of an "emperor's new clothes" type interpretation of his work - his initial work was panned by critics; but when the later critics write about his work, they reference his history as a "cryptologist" in the Army, and they say things like "you can see AMOR here and ROMA here in the scrawls" (in the book "Your Kid Could Not Do This" or some similar title) as if there's something _deep_ there. ("others can't see it, but he was a cryptologist once, so there must be something I'm missing")

So my take is similar to one up above here - Pollock became huge when he got a great review from a highly influential critic. Same with Twombly.

I was reading the Smithsonian's transcript of Jim Sanborn's Oral History and I see that theme a few times in there -- like his dad was an artist, and at a young age he went to an art opening where he, his parents and the artist knew the art was terrible but his parents were praising the work as profound, confusing him; and later when he recognized the importance of being in the good books of influential curators and gallery owners in DC; e.g. when Yuri Schwebler became upset with him, he said it set his career back 10 years. So, a "who you know" game. Praise everyone, stay in everyone's good books, and hope you get noticed.

<comment><USER37> Some of Twombly's work is aesthetically pleasing and well composed, but some of them could have easily been a page of doodles ripped out of any middle schooler's notebook, like the $800,000 "Murder of Olefernes".

Overall I think he's far worse than Pollack and unless he had some kind of mental illness that deluded him into thinking the work he produced took any amount of effort whatsoever he was obviously a troll or a con man.

[https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/NYR/2018_NYR_15...](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/NYR/2018_NYR_15968_0019B_000\(cy_twombly_untitled\).jpg)

Then again maybe the picture above was indeed just some scribblings that he never intended for anyone to see. I'm not overly familiar with his history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does it redraw the entire thing every frame? It seems to get slower the longer you draw.

</comment><comment><USER40> I like it.

<comment><USER41> I do too! And initially had to broom my brain, who is this pollock person again?... then clicked the site, took 2ms to to revive brain cells :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I love the ui. You stop moving and its goes from line to blob...

</comment><comment><USER43> That was my best 2 minutes of randomization all week

</comment><comment><USER44> This site is fantastic, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER45> right-click -> view-image gives a .png of your created image to save. Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER46> Ahh my cat running over my mouse accidentally created a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. Who knew modern art was so easy.

<comment><USER47> Seeing as it was 70 years ago, should we still call it "modern" art or is that now an _era_ — like _mid-century modern_.

<comment><USER48> It is an era, but the era is called "modern art".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Neat. Art snobs always defend Pollock by claiming it's actually really difficult to forge a true Pollock and that even though it looks easy, real Pollock paintings have subtleties that are impossible to reproduce unless you've practiced for a long time.

I say... who cares. If it's easy to imitate something and get 90+% of the way with no skill or practice, then the art isn't worth admiring.

<comment><USER50> This is the quintessential HN comment. Completely dismiss an entire region of the human experience and entire field of experts by assuming that your own unfamiliarity means there must be nothing there worth learning.

An equivalent claim is, "Windows 95 can do 90% of what Linux can do already. Operating system programmers aren't worth admiring."

If I've learned anything in my life, it's that when a group of people take something very seriously that seems pointless to me, 99% of the time, it is my own ignorance preventing me from seeing what they see.

<comment><USER51> What you've described is especially pernicious over multiple iterations.

Windows 95 can do 90% of what Linux can. Windows 3.1 can do 90% of what Windows 95 can. DOS can do 90% of what Window 3.1 can.

In this (contrived and counter-chronological) example, at each iteration we lost something that was only ever valuable to connoisseurs. In the case of software, we're talking about developers and power users.

But yeah, let's all keep mocking Pollock, and the art history students who cherish the work, until we end up with nothing but the most commercial, easily-digestible, and trite art.

Oh wait...

<comment><USER52> shhh, you'll wake up Andy Warhol from his grave lol.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Potassium Metal Battery - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/117/11/5588 <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Li-Ion batteries are expensive, etc; Potassium-based batteries are cheaper, but until now performance is far from Li-Ion.

Using Potassion for both anode and catode provides better performance, but dendrites cause the battery to short, and other problems.

These researchers found a way to "heat" the dendrites periodically, thus possibly removing the main hurdle.</comment>


Why Github is startup's graveyard (and why it's a good thing) - <AUTHOR> http://volaski.tumblr.com/post/17030253463/why-github-is-where-startups-go-to-die-or-come-back

<comment><USER2> Insightful post. The title did, however, threw me off. A graveyard implies death, which we generally associate with grief sadness, nothingness, etc. But but placing projects on GitHub, startups are contributing to our collective knowledge, helping others, engaging in an act of kindness, etc. So maybe a more relevant analogy would be museum, library or (art) gallery? [pedant]

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Agreed. Gallery sounds like a good analogy, but in this post I was trying to use the term "graveyard" as a good thing. Guess I couldn't overcome the terms' connotation. Modified the title to point out that it's a good thing :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A website aiming to fix homelessness in SF - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I am organizing a crowdfunding campaign to give blankets/food/books/glasses and new year's postcards to 1000 homeless people in San Francisco.
Since we as the residents already spend a lot of money on the homelessness issue in SF via government(200MM+/year), I thought some of us would be willing to take a more active role in fixing this issue by donating to campaigns like this one(and to more sustainable ones). So, I am thinking of turning this campaign into a crowdfunding platform for activists and organizations that want to work on homelessness related issues in San Francisco.
I wanted to share the campaign here thinking you might like the idea & might want to share your thoughts on it: https://operationsflove.com
So far the supporters have been mostly my friends but I believe this could go viral with some improvement.
Would love hear what you all think, Thanks, Seckin <comment><USER2> I recall a time at a community meeting I advocated finding a way of providing a facility that could house and treat the addicted and mentally ill, I was accused of wanting to "sweep the homeless under the rug and forget about them." I knew it was a difficult problem I just didn't realize that the problem wasn't the homeless, the problem has roots in our collective understanding of what is a 'better' versus 'not better' quality of life.

I have always held that it is one of the main purposes of government to maximize the quality of life for the governed. Whether they are rich, poor, sane, or insane. What I always find challenging is when someone chooses to define 'better' in a way that I cannot comprehend.

I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to help here start by looking at what we had, in terms of laws and institutions, which gave the state the ability to hold someone and treat their illness, and restrict their movements, and why those institutions were abolished and laws changed.

As a community we changed our position from it is 'better' to house these people and give them treatment, to it is 'better' that they live without constraints and someone trying to provide help they don't want.

When a person says they would rather sleep on a bench than be given drugs that make them feel "bad" and be forced to live with other people who are similarly afflicted, which is better? Homelessness or being institutionalized? Why?

<comment><USER3> You make interesting points.

I do, however, think that it is the right of the governed to make rules against sleeping on benches, that they paid for with their tax dollars. Same goes for sidewalks, doorways, etc. I suppose you could say such rules are "restricting of movements" (in the broadest sense), but they seem reasonable restrictions to me.

That said, I also think it is society's responsibility to provide another option.

<comment><USER2> That is a well understood argument for the common good. Which is that the vast majority of the citizens are served by available benches, not by occupied benches, (or other publicly supplied services) and so excluding people from sleeping on them makes sense in the context of the entire constituency.

       > That said, I also think it is society's responsibility
       > to provide another option.

I don't think many would disagree, the challenge comes with deciding what exactly is that option? I am an engineer so I find I tend to come up with practical but socially inept solutions.

At the time there was a discussion about how "we" (where we is the city of Sunnyvale) might use the Onizuka Air Force base facility (aka the 'Blue Cube') which was being decommissioned and turned over to the public sector for re- use. I was trying to figure out if there was a way we could convert part of that facility into what would essentially be caves, self heated concrete structures that were impervious to fire, contained internal pipes with a heat transfer fluid to maintain a livable temperature (cooling or warming), a dedicated latrine system that would periodically flush out all waste, and that were nominally "open" but could be enclosed with available materials. Something that people who were otherwise unwilling to live in a more traditional shelter/section 8 housing, might be able to survive in. This wasn't even a basic income kind of problem, these were people who are mentally non-functional adults. Was there any sort of place we could create that would make their lives better than it was today. They are an at risk group for whom it is very difficult these days to provide services for.

It was wildly derided as putting these people on a 'reservation' or 'in pens' or any number of things. Like I said earlier, socially inept. I don't know have any good solutions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason there are many homeless in SF, is because there are many shelters in the Tenderloin that provide these things you are talking about. Think you should first ask why are they homeless, not just give them random things. They are homeless either because, they have drug problems, psychological issues, or the least likely -- they have a problem getting employment.

<comment><USER5> It's kind of amazing how you can stereotype huge amounts of people in two sentences.

And it's ALL THEIR FAULT.

Not the economy, not the insane cost of higher education to gain job skills, not the outsourcing and automation of modern society.

It's the homeless who are failures.

That's why I propose Gladiator hobo fights to the death.

Only the strongest hobo's survive.

Make them earn their cheeseburgers like a good capitalist.

<comment><USER6> Oh get off that pedestal. OP was talking about the Tenderloin. Have you ever walked through the Tenderloin? A large fraction of the homeless people there clearly have severe psychological or drug issues. They're not there because of the economy.

<comment><USER5> I AGREE!

I'm sure every single person in the Tenderloin is there because they're just losers!

That's why I'm proposing Bumfights.

It could be an awesome startup.

Pit them against each other Hunger Games style.

Fuck those loser homeless.

<comment><USER6> You seem to be the only one in this thread calling them losers. I'm not sure where you're getting that from my comment.

<comment><USER7> what don't you get? He's making fun of the assumption you seem to make that none of the residents of the area are there due to economic reasons, and then you cite anecdotal evidence (a walk through) as evidence as such.

<comment><USER8> I wrote an incredibly angry reply to you, but I've calmed down enough that I can try to explain my point without attacking you.

mrharrison stated that the root cause of much of our poor handling of homelessness comes from our poor handling of the disabled. To avoid going with anecdotes, I'll simply point out that 13% of the homeless population are veterans. Physical and mental disabilities are quite common and our society has decided to just dump these people on the streets as opposed to helping them.

However, then nickthemagicman comes along and makes the implication that stating that a homeless person is disabled is equivalent to stating that the person deserves to be homeless. That's the most offensive thing that I've ever seen on the Internet, and I've been to 4chan. Just because a person has a disability doesn't mean that they don't deserve basic human dignity.

Though I am descending into anecdote here, my wife was homeless when I met her. She also has a physical disability which cost her her job and her home. There was a wonderful government program to help her out of poverty by letting her haul 40lb bags of sand around, but it's not much use to a woman who walks with a cane and can't carry more than 20lb without needing a week of bed rest. If we were willing to talk about the root cause, then she'd be getting the treatment she needs to be healthy again and be happy to carry those 40lb bags. Unfortunately, the system was designed by bigots like nickthemagicman. When she applied for disability, she was told that they would only pay for her medical treatment if she agreed to never work again under punishment of jail time. After all, basic dignities like the joy of contributing to society aren't allowed for the disabled. Just the able bodied homeless, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this "fix homelessness in SF?"

Same number of homeless but now they have blankets and books too?

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure how it's sustainable either. Sustainable via getting people to continue donating blankets and books?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In many discussions like this I see the argument that some/most/all homeless people are drug addicts or mentally ill or otherwise not deserving of help.

I have always been of the opinion that I don't care why someone is homeless, I would like to help them. There is nobody that deserves to live on the street in a nation with as much wealth as America, even if they've made bad decisions (drugs, alcohol, crime, etc.). I think it's our job as a society to put a roof over everyone's head to the best of our abilities, it's inhuman to pick and dodge among homeless people and go about our lives like it is normal.

If I could solve any problem in my lifetime, it would be homelessness in America. I wish I had any idea where to start. I know it's not as noble of a cause as curing cancer or helping the needy who live in true poverty around the world, but it's something that's in my face every day and I think it's a failure of our modern society.

<comment><USER12> _There is nobody that deserves to live on the street in a nation with as much wealth as America, even if they 've made bad decisions (drugs, alcohol, crime, etc.)._

I'm not sure what you mean by, "even if," here. The Fundamental Attribution Error holds that it's a mistake to attribute someone's circumstances more to choices than to luck. There are tons of rich people who have chosen drugs, alcohol and crime, with extremely few, if any, turning up homeless as a result. There are also homeless who are not addicted nor incapacitatingly mentally ill (I'm sure we can agree that homelessness could predictably lead to depression at the very least).

Likewise, the way economic policy in many capitalist countries is oriented toward maintaining certain levels of unemployment (full employment being seen as bad, weakening the negotiating power of business owners, etc.) ensures that homelessness and poverty are _actual government policy_. Your Tax Dollars At Work.

Generally and socially, I contend that the problems of education and homelessness, in the US at least, are directly attributable to prioritizing commerce and the military over domestic care. Let's ask why a country with as much wealth as America deserves to engage in war, shall we?

<comment><USER11> I agree with you on most points. The "even if" was a reference to what others give as reasons for not helping the homeless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My only advice is to provide socks too. Socks get gross and/or wet or hard if you can't easily wash them.. and they're not too expensive.

<comment><USER14> Funny. My son's Cub Scout pack worked with a local homeless group and the top requested things they packed in gift bags for them were cheap flashlights and tube socks. They use the socks for everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Go out and talk to some social workers, figure out what tech could actually help with. This is just silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to talk with more social workers/activists/organizations working on this and similar issues. Please feel free to send an email to me at firstname.lastname@example.com

I have been iterating on this campaign for at least a month now according to feedback I have received from 50+ people in all walks of life, but I agree that there is still a huge room for improvement. And I would love to hear more about the campaigns that you think we could work on after this one.

<comment><USER16> I had a long coffee with HandUp's founder Rose Broome, who's done a boatload of legwork in this space (and just had Jason Calicanis ask to lead an investment round). Was intro'd to her product by a homeless guy in my hood and immediately had to know more. It's the first piece of tech that really wowed me with regards to making some headway on some of these issues - I'd highly encourage anyone who thinks about the space a lot to connect with her team. They're pretty responsive @handup on twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very awesome.

One thing I love about Watsi is that I can actually see (and pick) who I'm donating to. There's something cool about being able to read their stories and see their pictures -- it almost makes me feel bad going to the site and _not_ donating.

Good luck!

<comment><USER17> Someone else mentioned this site, which is exactly what I was thinking:

[https://handup.us/](https://handup.us/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's a nice gesture, but it won't 'fix' homelessness. There are some homeless who will stay that way; you can see them roaming around in packs. And then there are the mentally ill; they need medications and structure.

There's too much money to be made by the established people, so chances of fixing homelessness are negligible. It's a corrupt system.

<comment><USER19> I agree than the term "fixing homelessness" is probably not appropriate. As you said some homeless might want to stay homeless, and that is fine. But for the homeless who want to get out of homelessness, there should be a clear path to get back. That could start with basics (shelter, bathroom, medical and social help).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't live in SF but I work for a Bay Area company and have often wondered, while waiting to get onto one of those shiny buses, why a city with such a high concentration of rich, smart people is failing its least fortunate residents so miserably and obviously. Why are the technological elite so helpless in the face of this problem on their own doorstep?

Reading the comments here it seems that there is a massive gap in understanding, empathy and plain old data - are there no studies answering the questions being speculated on here?

If you could find a way to address that gap of understanding - provide the technologists with data, and fully describe the constraints - perhaps there can be a useful discussion in the technology community.

<comment><USER3> I think the mistake you are making is when you talk about it as failing "its least fortunate residents," without regard for the fact that those residents may only be there because of how well it does treat them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Spending $200M/year on ~15,000 homeless, that's ~$1,000/month for each homeless. I don't think we need more money. We need to spend it better.

Why not build public bathrooms ? That could be used by homeless and others (like people renting a bedroom w/o shower, poor, students, etc.). Actually that could be a way to reach homeless people, to provide them medical and social help.

To integrate homeless to society you need to provide them the basics that they don't have (bathroom, shelter, laundry, food, medical and social help, and even bank account, internet, phone). Not all will grab the opportunity, but at least they will have a chance to.

</comment><comment><USER21> I applaud efforts like these for at least doing something to address the problem, even if it doesn't turn out to be the most effective use of capital in the end as some suggest here.

That said, I think some of the best projects fighting homelessness are supportive housing projects that help people get an apartment and provide additional services for medical/psychiatric treatments, food stamps, etc. [1]

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supportive_housing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supportive_housing)

<comment><USER22> Housing First has been shown to be fiscally prudent, generate good outcomes, as well as just being plain compassionate (of course we shouldn't base whether or not you have access to a home on whether or not you have a substance abuse issue). Salt Lake City has had some huge successes implementing it.

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

[http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18984066](http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18984066)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems a bit like trying to fix the pigeon problem in the city by putting out pigeon food.

The harsh reality is that the more accommodating to the homeless the city is, the more homeless there will be.

I think there are solutions, and they can be compassionate, but simply making life easier for the homeless has long term drawbacks that are greater than the short term upsides.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that the goal shouldn't be making the life too easy for the homeless - instead I believe that we should focus on helping them re-integrate back to the society, at least for the ones that would like to.

Homelessness is the main concern for resident of San Francisco according to recent polls, and it would be a shame if this stayed like this for another 10 years.

With this campaign, we can start creating campaigns that are funded and lead by the citizens who are most passionate about solving this. Then, the idea that something like this could work would ideally propagate to other people that are more skeptic.

We need to also note that we are already paying around $20 per month each on fixing homelessness in San Francisco through the government. The main difference is that with a crowdfunding platform, we would be the ones that are choosing which campaigns make sense and which activists we would like to support.

<comment><USER5> Making it 'easy' for the homeless?

Lol you think basic fundamental survival goods like food and blankets are making it easy?

Are you SERIOUS?

Because I completely agree! You guys are absolutely right on. If you encourage homelessness EVERYONE will become one.

<comment><USER3> "Easy" is a relative term. The issue is whether you want to make it easier than it previously was.

<comment><USER23> You are implying that homelessness is a calculated choice, and that if it becomes unpleasant enough, an individual will decide to stop being homeless.

This is absurd because it fails to recognize that homelessness is not a choice, it is the default when no choice is available. It is literally the bottom of the list, lower even than jail (many homeless people try to get in jail on purpose, especially during the winter).

Making life more difficult (and dangerous) for homeless people won't stop them from being homeless. It might, however, get them to go be homeless in someone else's town - which is the real motivation for inhumane policies. Make human suffering someone else's problem, not in my back yard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Semi-related: I recently watched this video on $20 homeless backpack care kits ([http://youtu.be/Y6fkyf9UGAE](http://youtu.be/Y6fkyf9UGAE)), thought it was a neat idea. Figured it might be useful for those looking for simple ways to help out a bit.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've seen homeless people abuse entitlements (turn down jobs because they'd loose their handouts, etc.)

On the other hand, some of them would get laughed at in an interview without being "cleaned up" to look presentable, which a hand out could help with.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think its a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> OP after reading all the comments in this thread, I've determined that your idea for mercy and compassion is a flawed concept and is not good capitalism.

What you should do instead is turn your web site into a bumfights startup!!!

Make them fight to the death hunger games style for tons of swag.

The profit potential is huge, the homeless population will be decreased, AND the leftover hobos will have tons of good swag!

<comment><USER27> I don't have downvote power on here, but I think you should re-consider your comment - as it's snarky, doesn't add anything, and doesn't really follow the ethos of HN.

<comment><USER5> I'm really commited to start up culture! I think this a great idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Beyond App Stores: Weaving Apps into the Web - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2012/12/beyond-app-stores-weaving-apps-into-web.html

<comment><USER2> Take a look at open web apps / chrome apps / phonegap / the Firefox OS project (I work on the latter). The line between apps and websites is getting thinner by the day, and getting very close to being non existent.

Also the 'apps are an island' comment is quite specific to iOS, Android has a very elegant system for allowing apps to interact with each other, one which the web is adopting (web intents/activities).

The basic premise is the wrong way round, web apps will adopt native functionality (web api's) and native performance (which already good enough for most use cases), they will (and can often already do) work offline.

'Native' apps are almost by definition going to have to be rewritten for every platform and will never have the same introspection and interconnectedness as the web.

Which platform do you think is going to fix its disadvantages first? seems obvious to me.

<comment><USER3> I think the key question is where will the consumers go? Android is more open than iOS, but devs continue to build for iOS first b/c that's where all the users are at, especially the paying users.

I only know a little bit about the Firefox OS project, but if you give control to the OEMs, won't you run into the same problem that Android has with fragmentation?

On one hand, I don't want to be naive. Everything on the desktop has moved into the browser. That happened a lot faster than I though. Everything in mobile is moving 2x the speed of desktop, so will everything move onto a browser in mobile eventually too? The key difference between the desktop and mobile is that there isn't hardware ubiquity. Every computer has a keyboard and a mouse. But the hardware buttons aren't standardized across Apple and Android. The home button is crucial on the iPhone and same with Android. Would either of those platforms ever cede control over that button to a browser? Otherwise, you've got to put that functionality on the screen which takes up space.

<comment><USER2> 'fragmentation isnt a problem, its a fact'

We will never convince the entire world to settle on a single device, Androids biggest 'problem' is a large part of why it is completely dominating the mobile market (although I dont disagree that OEM customisation can be annoying).

Apps dont have control over the home button on iOS / Android, I dont reallyknow what you mean 'cede control' (unless you are thinking Firefox OS runs inside Android / iOS as an app? it doesnt, its a full OS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't like apps anymore. Why would I want Hotel Tonight (for example) on my iphone from a trip to Dallas two months ago. The constant updating, notifications, etc. Apps are a mess. I don't have a solution but I do know I'm tired of apps.

<comment><USER5> Exactly, Mobile Apps (not games) are rapidly becoming the CD-ROMs of the modern times. Too much waste of space and resources for such a minimal use.

I only use email/rss and twitter apps. Everything else I always try to do in the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "let mobile browsers download small apps and execute them within the browser window"

If you want to know how this turns out you only have to look at the evolution of browser plugins (applets->flash,silverlight,unity,etc) that has taken place for the last 20 years. We could also decide to skip all that and just concentrate on moving forward the HTML spec and tools to make better mobile web applications.

</comment><comment><USER7> Automatically downloading and executing binary code from the web. What could possibly go wrong?

Isn't NaCL supposed to in part solve this?

<comment><USER8> Take out that automatic nonsense and I think he makes a good proposal. A URL can currently load a local app rather than a page in webkit. Only in this case, there would be some markup that would tell the browser to check for the installed app, perhaps the browser would present some unobtrusive indicator that a hybrid app was available to download. Just keep the address bar and the rest of the browser chrome there, swap the webkit frame out with the app's window, let the app access some of the history APIs, and you'd have a good portion of this figured out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for seeing the value in my (somewhat avantgarde) argument.

I'd be happy with the app availability indicator as well. The native app would still remain within the confines of the browser, so that you could easily navigate away. People don't install apps today because it takes time to download them, and the browsing experience is interrupted by switching to a different app.

<comment><USER9> Ah, I misunderstood your proposal. This would actually be a great update and is pretty plausible.

Like, a streamlined way of installing an app and the ability to launch it with some URL the first time. Relatively easy, not a platform threat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The proper solution to this problem is for content providers to build a properly responsive site. Allowing apps to access browser cookies isn't going to fix anything - the reason that a native app doesn't open to the place you left off on the web is not because it's technically impossible, it's because app developers don't give a damn. Giving them more tools isn't going to change this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Allowing apps to access browser cookies is a solution to the problem that apps and websites are disconnected and don't know about each other's state. That's a different aspect than the one you're talking about.

Yes, you can build responsive sites, but what you can do in the browser is limited, especially when it comes to flaky connections that are still very typical. To take the example in the post a little bit further: Imagine you're on the train and are reading a multi-page New York Times article. Train goes into a tunnel. Trying to load the next page will result in a connection error. Native apps can know about your network state and can pre-cache content you're about to read next.

<comment><USER2> web apps can know about your network state and can pre-cache content you're about to read next. (<http://www.html5rocks.com/en/mobile/workingoffthegrid/>)

<comment><USER11> Last I checked, implementations of offline caching were unusably buggy. Has this improved?

<comment><USER10> It works. LocalStorage API is pretty solid and widely supported, if you're doing some simple buffering to handle connectivity issues it's awesome, except that it prompts the user for permission to store data. WebSQL is solid where it's implemented, and IndexedDB is solid where it's implemented but unfortunately there isn't a lot of overlap (screw you apple). and AppCache works great, but figuring out how it works in the first place is annoying as hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> we can call them "applets"!

<comment><USER13> Over time, we'd discover that this sandboxing platform is more useful for running server processes on co-located tablets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This would be pretty neat, but file it under "things that will never happen on iOS in a million billion years."

</comment><comment><USER14> In iOS 6 there is a way to open your native app with the same content as the current webpage.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/Ap...](https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/PromotingAppswithAppBanners/PromotingAppswithAppBanners.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you can, but that opens a different app and takes you away from Safari and its browsing history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't know how else to put this but local, compiled apps run faster than web apps. And the problems laid out in the article are indicative of development choices, for example not being able to pick up where one left off in a local app as opposed to in a browser app in the NYT example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Running a compiled app instead of a web page, as laid out in the post, would have that benefit.

The central theme of the post is that the local app and the webpage are disconnected - the fact that you can't pick up where you left off in the other is not a development choice.

<comment><USER3> The analogy of native apps being an island is a good one. But I'd argue that native apps is a pretty fucking big island ;) Check out this chart - <http://www.emarketer.com/Mobile/Article.aspx?R=1009155>

People use apps on their phones, not the web. Mobile web is a subpar experience. LTE will fix some of the speed issues. HTML5...well that's going to take a lot longer than people think. Cool technology but ANY lag with a gesture makes the touch interaction feel broken.

I've been thinking on this problem for the past 4 months. Seems like you're pretty passionate about it too. It's a big problem for users, and companies are sitting back and ignoring it. I have lots of theories as to why. Would love to meet up in person and share thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think it would be far more useful for Android Browser/Chrome and iOS Safari to support special tags for rendering apps in their native style. Ideally have it be the same set of tags and Android and iOS figure out how they want to render them.

</comment><comment><USER17> >My proposal would be to let mobile browsers download small apps and execute them within the browser window

Is this a sick joke? Besides the fact that the browser can trivially redirect to the exact app in the app store, I'm already annoyed that ABC wants me to download their god damn app everytime I accidentally click on one of their articles on Google News.

Not only that, but if the user has the app installed they're already prompted to open the same content with the app instead of the browser if they want.

This problem is already solved. This is very, very common in Android apps and I understand it is a new feature in iOS6 as well.

I guess if this is absolutely necessary, the browser could output a new header for domains that are declared in the .ipa/.apk that would notify the server that they have the app installed... and then they could force the app to open with a regular redirect. But that still majorly SUCKS to users who already have that choice anyway. If anything this gives the publisher more control of forcing me to use their app which I absolutely do not want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most publishers that have terrible apps also have terrible sites. Apps that get very little usage today are hardly going to get better if users don't start using them. Building an easier onramp for apps is going to increase app usage and cause publishers to build better apps.

<comment><USER17> That's pretty much the opposite of what I want. And what they want regardless of whether or not they know it.

Firefox OS is going to continue to open peoples' eyes to web apps and make people wonder why they scrambled around wasting so much money to make native news apps that do nothing but render a webkit view anyway. As another person has pointed out, there are _very_ increasingly few things that webapps can't do that native apps can, especially on mobile where they're unprivileged anyway.</comment></comment></comment>


Suomi: Like Hacker News, but for Finns written in elixir - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yliaho/suomi.dev <comment><USER2> I've had a look at the demo site and it seems simplistic and impressive. I have been looking for a good HN clone that I can use for my blog. How can I install or port your version for a language other than Finnish? Couldn't find a helpful guide on the GitHub page.

<comment><USER3> Hey, author of suomi.dev here.

First of all, thanks for taking interest in the project. I wasn't quite expecting someone posting it to HN. suomi.dev is a two week project into learning Elixir language, and as such, I wouldn't recommend using it as-is without auditing the source code first. Unfortunately the locale is hard-coded into the application layer itself, so skimming through the controllers or html templates for example could be a bit difficult for someone who doesn't understand Finnish.

You're not the only person to raise interest for a drop-in "HN-like" platform for their specific purpose though, so I'm considering turning the project to be more adaptable.

If you're not planning to use the current version of the project for anything _too_ serious, I could possibly work on a separate branch where I'll translate it to English. How's that sound?</comment></comment>