A Repository with 44 Years of Unix Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2015-MSR-Unix-History/html/Spi15c.html <comment><USER3> As a 45 year old with 30 years of experience in the computer industry, such titles interest me, immensely.

I grew up with Unix.

I remember the days when Unix was a seriously advanced topic, available only to the elite privileged (adults) who were granted access to it as a technological resource only through machinations that were out of my scope of influence, as a 13 year old learning computing in 1983. It was a vast mystery.

It was only with great effort on my part that access was eventually granted in the form of a login over a slow modem. That was enough for me to move to the next phase.

Then, it was a mystery in terms of taxology. I had a near-infinite, seemingly overwhelming number of things to learn - more than what was in my high school curriculum, more than my little home 8-bit computer could teach me, more .. it seemed at the time .. than all the books on my shelf.

Well, it was only a few years - actually probably less than 10 months - <USER2> I was able to grasp at least a _little bit_ of the subject, and do something with it. That was enough to propel me into the professional sphere - where I was able to move from a clueless teenager into the clued-up programmer zone.

And then (late 80's) it became a game of "which Unix do you want to know?", and that game was as thorny as any other. I chose Risc/OS (from MIPS, pre-SGI) and it worked out: I gained my own machine (physical hardware) as a result of commercial delivery of products - a few files of .c/.h - which I'd managed to build as a result of eager learning applied to real application.

And then: Linux. This changed the world completely, at least for me at the time. When I first saw Linus' post on the minix-list, announcing his sharing of work I thought completely inapproachable and beyond the horizon, I immediately applied myself to catching up. And then, through the 90's, the commercial applications of these skills gave me an even deeper understanding of the subject - and Unix became less of a mystery and more of a resource for living. And so it was: for a decade I built Unix software, like no other, which resulted in many great things for many great people.

Then, we flipped the century bit, and Unix - in spite of all the predictions from industry experts - was still with us. It didn't just go away because of pop-culture desires and mores, it was seriously entrenched. That 80's decision seemed all the more wise in 2001, when it became clear to me that Unix was not going away.

So I kept at it. I coded all I could. I got a tiBook - astounded, but content nevertheless, that Apple (of all companies) was producing a portable Unix workstation - something that I'd dreamed of for over a decade. And there it was, the tiBook. So I've upgraded my way from there, to my current extremely satisfying device (MBP Retina) .. and beyond that, even beyond my wildest teenage dreams: here we are today - I carry around a Unix workstation in my pocket.

Its my primary means of communication, just like I always knew it would be. It does all the things that I used to do with the Risc/OS pizza box. It does it in a way that makes total sense - a simple interface, like the embodiment of the holy pipe, but at my fingertips.

It has been a challenge, a fantasy, and a real desire to see Unix become what it is today - but its also been a privilege. I think that all of my fellow hackers who professed faith in the technology, must feel the same - at least those who have watched it happen over decades. Truly, a unique human experience.

And therefore I'm really glad to see this article. It has been very enlightening - and as well, personally satisfying - to see that others recognize the power of this technology, which took decades to become the force of power that it is today.

<comment><USER4> I took a university course on Unix internals in 1988. The lecturer started by announcing "this is the last year that we will teach this course as Unix is now very out of date and is being left further behind every year". It turned out to be the best course I ever took.

<comment><USER5> I remember a course I took once with the venerable Peter Denning, the hardest professor I ever had and the proudest I've ever been from a grade I received...he was giving a lecture on processes in Operating Systems and one of the students raised his hand over some minor point:

"I don't think that's correct"

"what's not correct?"

"<whatever the minor point was> I've run ps on my linux laptop and it contradicts what you are saying"

"#1, I said no computers during the lectures for this course, #2 I _am_ in fact correct because I invented it, now either close your laptop and pay attention or get out of my class."

Now, many years later, I'm constantly surprised at how pertinent and immediate what I learned in that class constantly is and how it keeps unfolding in my mind. The kind of simple, composable concepts he lectured us on have penetrated almost all of my work since then. It's amazing what robust ideas our forefathers invented from whole-cloth!

<comment><USER6> Do you remember what that "minor point" was?

He sounds like an arrogant dick. The fact that he invented something doesn't mean it works the same way on every OS... I've worked with a few academics and unfortunately this attitude seems rather common.

<comment><USER5> This was many years ago, so it's a bit hazy, It was something to do with process ID assignment of some root process by the OS.

It's hard to explain, but he didn't come off as arrogant. He was one of those rare legitimate experts who had a hand in the formation of things we take for granted today, knew it, and didn't take kindly to young whipper-snapper know- it-alls with their Linux laptops open and not paying attention during class challenging him on his accomplishments.

He's one of the fathers of the modern notion of the field of "computer science", before that it was EE, or Math, or some other field. His PhD thesis introduced core multi-process OS concepts used in every Operating System since then and basically invented the modern theory behind Virtual Memory.

He helped design Multics which was worked on by Thompson and Ritchie which was the template for their sequel project Unix, he co-founded CSNET which was the academic Computer Science network that's one of those networks in the "inter" part of the word "Internet" \-- it was also the network that hosted one of the first experiments in free software distribution (and is still around "netlib").

Challenging him on these kinds of issues is like challenging Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin on actually landing on the moon.

He worked insane hours, put an incredible amount of time and effort into education (something more professors could learn from), had a very well structured course that had been refined down to near perfection and _always_ went out of his way to make time for students. I remember many meetings with him where he was absolutely exhausted looking, but he never rushed us out of his office.

He was very insistent that you put as much effort into his class as he did, and anything less was disrespectful. And that's how he ran it.

He was easily the best professor I had in all of my education, full-stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most infamous comment in the history of source code from Unix V6. Now I can search an see at what stage this was committed.

      2230  /*
      2231	 * If the new process paused because it was
      2232	 * swapped out, set the stack level to the last call
      3333	 * to savu(u_ssav).  This means that the return
      2235	 * actually returns from the last routine which did
      2236	 * the savu.
      2237	 *
      2238	 * You are not expected to understand this.
      2239	 */
      2240	if(rp->p_flag&SSWAP) {
      2241		rp->p_flag =& ~SSWAP;
      2242		aretu(u.u_ssav);
      2243	}

<comment><USER8> I think this is only hard to understand if you are used to thinking at the level of the language rather than the CPU. I've done more evil things implementing language features in a compiler.

<comment><USER6> From a brief glance at the surrounding code, this is part of the context switcher, which has to do stack switching. Also interesting to note that the whole function, swtch(), is only 71 lines. The entire kernel is less than 10kLOC.

I agree that understanding this type of code would be very difficult if you're used to the HLL notion of nesting function calls, because these don't work like regular functions; a call actually "returns" into a different one. You can't easily understand coroutines, threads, processes, and context switching without seeing that functions are really a structuring that HLLs impose, not the CPU itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first commit sits at page 11070, [https://github.com/dspinellis/unix- history-repo/tree/7317268...](https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history- repo/tree/7317268623b44e8f3a51c34e3ca717316f613958)

<comment><USER10> Hehe. I looked for the first commit page as well. I wish GH had a first commit button in their pagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Joy!

After the speedy download from Github (which weighs in at more than 40 times the capacity of the hard drive which held my first *nix system), I was able to locate a patch I submitted to FreeBSD in less than 12 seconds from running gitk on the file in question, thanks to the wonderful world of Git.

I shudder at the thought of having to manage all of this using CVS, pulling changes using CVSup or whatnot.

Thanks for sharing! :-)

<comment><USER12> It has the sensors framework from 2007, too. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> there are some textual errors and artifacts in the story

"Calling ghostscript to convert provenance.pdf to provenance.png" for example.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What a delightful data set!

I was very surprised to see the ocurence of goto lines in the Unix source code. Not to mention an increasing amount of them in the later years! I've heard [0] that Goto's are considered harmful.

[0] [http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_T...](http://www.u.arizona.edu/~rubinson/copyright_violations/Go_To_Considered_Harmful.html)

<comment><USER16> The original context in which Dijkstra wrote that was very different; he was primarily referring to old versions of Fortran and BASIC, where gotos where more or less the _only_ (or the predominant) form of branching. In other words, something like

if (foo() || bar()) xyzzy(); else idkfa();

would have often been written something like

100 F = FOO() 200 B = BAR() 300 IF F OR B 400 GOTO 4840 500 ELSE 600 GOTO 8000 700 ....

and whatever was happening at 4840 would GOTO back to 700 (with predictable catastrophic results if anything before 700 changed) and so on.

Local use of goto in the context of e.g. bailing out of an ini function if something failed early in the initialization sequence is useful and not frowned upon by people whose daily work consists of something other than writing coding standards. There are a few (well-meant!) exceptions that have to do with e.g. static analysis, but those tend not be so important outside the field of high-reliability systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't this a copyright violation?!?!

Did the author obtain the permission from IEEE to publish this work on a publicly facing internet server?!

<comment><USER17> Well he is really close to IEEE[1], so I think if there was any legalize involved, he must covered it. I follow professor Spinellis since 2008 and he seems to be a really nice guy who pays exceptional attention to details.

UPDATE: Apparently DSpinellis is the new editor in chief of IEEE software magazine[1].

[1] [http://www.computer.org/web/computingnow/tools-of-the- trade](http://www.computer.org/web/computingnow/tools-of-the-trade)

[2] [http://www.computer.org/web/computingnow/software/edboard](http://www.computer.org/web/computingnow/software/edboard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Tooling [...] compiling the 4.3 BSD compress program, which is no longer > part of modern Unix systems, in order to decompress the 386BSD > distributions.

I don't think this was needed -- gunzip can actually read that format.

<comment><USER14> You're right; I had forgotten that. I simplified the corresponding process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I didn't relise FreeBSD used git, when did this happen?

<comment><USER20> FreeBSD has supported a git mirror for years, although the primary VCS (the "source of truth") is still Subversion. A number of downstream consumers of FreeBSD use the git mirror though, and we have brought in patches from submitted pull requests.

<comment><USER21> wasn't freebsd using perforce at some point?

<comment><USER14> Internally.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Postwoman – a free alternative to Postman - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/liyasthomas/postwoman <comment><USER2> I'm curious about whether the product name "Postwoman" violates Postman's trademark and whether Postwoman will be getting a C&D letter soon, demanding that the name be changed.

Normally companies don't get to claim broad trademark protection for prefixes -- Facebook has been shut down when trying to broadly enforce its trademark against anything prefixed with "Face" \-- but "Postwoman" is close enough and is marketed as a competing product in the same place.

Update: It seems the author is also worried about this. On her blog post announcing the service, someone raised the concern, and she acknowledged that it's a problem: [https://dev.to/liyasthomas/comment/ee8m](https://dev.to/liyasthomas/comment/ee8m)

<comment><USER3> IANAL but the basic sniff test is could "Postwoman" be confused with "Postman?" I think the answer is yes. With the author calling it an alternative to "Postman," you have the author acknowledging Postman is a strong trademark. And it's not like it's the only one available fitting the "{HTTP-METHOD}{MAN|WOMAN}" construct-- you could rename it "HeadWoman" and probably be okay.

<comment><USER4> And I don't think GETwoman or PUTWoman would be good either, as there's other apps for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know how this compares to Insomnia/Postman?

Ever since Postman started getting worse I switched to Insomnia and haven't looked back.

<comment><USER6> How does Insomnia compare to Paw [1]?

[1] [https://paw.cloud/](https://paw.cloud/)

<comment><USER7> Hi! Creator of Insomnia here :)

The main differences are that Paw is a native Mac app, paid, and closed source.

Insomnia is open source, cross-platform, and free to use (although there is a paid plan).

Some of Insomnia's biggest differentiators are it's GraphQL query editor (autocomplete, linting, etc) and it's ability to be customized via plugins and themes.

<comment><USER8> GraphQL is the reason I just switched from a paid Paw license to insomnia!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Politically Correct" penetrates software -- Support at your own peril -- you may be the next victim.

<comment><USER10> How does one eyeroll in text? Asking for a friend...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does this compare to insomnia.

[https://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia](https://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia)

<comment><USER7> It looks like Postwoman is is more of a simple utility right now. Perhaps it will grow to something more full-featured in the future but that seems to be the main differentiator right now. Insomnia, for example, supports environment variables, a GraphQL IDE, plugins, and many different authentication formats.

As the creator of Insomnia, I love seeing new projects like this and am really excited to see what Postwoman grows into. It looks awesome, is open source, and there's always room for more developer tools! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Original Show HN by the creator 3 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20817627)

<comment><USER13> Author here: yep, that was me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice timing.

If anyone is interested in how Postwoman was developed and deployed, the author of the project did a huge write up of her tech stack today.

That's at: [https://runninginproduction.com/interviews/5-postwoman- is-a-...](https://runninginproduction.com/interviews/5-postwoman-is-a-free- fast-and-beautiful-alternative-to-postman)

<comment><USER13> Yes!! Author here. Please go through this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always wonder why some many developers work with Postman (or Postwoman), and so without any automation whatsoever. Example: Requesting some JSON payload and extracting some generated id from it looks like a clumsy point-and-click adventure. With curl, you can use any appropriate program to extract output, say jq:

        curl acme.org/my/resource | jq -r '.id'

I see how some project manager doing a presentation of a bleeding-edge feature might profit from Postman, but as a developer?

<comment><USER16> Yea devs that use postman crack me up, in my experience you usually just aren't writing tests

<comment><USER15> Exploring an API?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe I'm missing it, but I'm not seeing the full response headers, just "cache-control" and "content-type". Being able to see the full response headers would make this a much more useful tool for debugging APIs.

<comment><USER13> Would you like to report the issue faced on GitHub so that we could track and rectify them really quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If Postwoman doesn't tickle your fancy, I'd take a look at [https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el](https://github.com/pashky/restclient.el). (I believe there's a vim equivalent, too.) You can save requests in a simple .http file, and check them into your codebase. Makes collaboration very simple.

</comment><comment><USER19> Postman is so horrendously slow when using a quite large "team space". I should really explore the alternatives

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm all for anything killing Electron

<comment><USER21> Same, however this similarly is also a Chromium / JS mishmash

<comment><USER20> Small steps

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The author is Male. I am not sure just to get attention he brings gender issue in non gender name.

Also it should be good idea to get some other name. The product itself is good.

I am sad to see you get lot of attention because of gender instead of your actual work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Author here: Ask me anything! Shoot me any doubts, asks and I'll rectify them.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm encouraged by the GraphQL support with docs, except there appears to be no way to provide headers (such as Authorization), which means I can't even fetch my schema.

<comment><USER13> Author here: GraphQL support is just landed on PW. Expect all functionalities in a month. Follow the project on GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment> bort-simpson I don't see a feature where you can create tests for responses which is a very important feature for me that exists in Postman

</comment><comment><USER24> So I guess commit messages support emojis now.

I've seen this before, but not quite so consistently.

</comment><comment><USER25> Posthuman was taken?

<comment><USER26> Author should take advantage of this suggestion. It's awesome and side-steps the noise around the current name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's the difference between this name and postman2?

</comment><comment><USER28> It should cost 80percent of postman technically.

<comment> forgot-my-pw What should a free version be? PostSlave?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anybody else take a project a _lot_ less seriously when all of their documentation and commit messages are plastered with emojis? I feel like I can't create a cohesive narrative in my mind when every sentence ends with a unicorn or a rainbow or a volcano.

<comment><USER30> When emoji use follows a strict convention (something like [https://gitmoji.carloscuesta.me/](https://gitmoji.carloscuesta.me/)), it can make it easier to scan a list of commits and get a rough idea of where the development focus is (i.e., hardening vs. feature development).

<comment><USER31> I've seen this convention before. I personally find it more useful to tag commit messages with [fix], [docs], etc. It makes it more easily searchable, which is IMO what you really want. You can:

        git log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit | grep "\[doc"

to see documentation commits, and count them by piping to `wc`.

Emojis feel... complicated. What do they mean? Here you're just typing the literal word so not much to remember or search.

<comment><USER32> You can't search by arbitrary Unicode characters?

<comment><USER33> It isn't unicode. I cloned the repo, this is the commit message in the command line:

      :rotating_light: Lint

Here's the same commit in GitHub: [https://github.com/liyasthomas/postwoman/commit/4c9c9a224061...](https://github.com/liyasthomas/postwoman/commit/4c9c9a22406141f0b63f4f13b6b7e589dd8f74bb)

Why not just use "[rotating_light] Lint" as the commit message? Or even better: "[lint] Make changes recommended by foo lint\n\nThis is the foo command used: ..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why does the word 'woman' look like a derivative of the word 'man'? I think it's unfair! (The term 'female' is no big help, either.)

<comment><USER35> Because it isn't a derivative of it.

Have a listen to this podcast by a linguist: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607712](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607712)

The short answer is the modern word woman has a separate etymological root than the word man. And the word man has had linguistic changes recently that mask those origins. Woman as well actually.

Man originally meant human really, and woman used to be Wifman (somewhat literally female human). Wife is a holdover from this prior to Middle english usage of the term.

Old english used wer and wif as man/woman respectively, and as you can guess Werewolf derives from the old ussage of man.

In short, its complicated and woman isn't a derivative of man. Its much more interesting than that. You can't look at the modern spelling of words to derive much on how we got to this point. You'll make a ton of categorical errors that way, especially in English given man used to just be the human race. Our modern take of man anywhere as needing to be replaced with woman depending on gender is slightly amusing once you know the etymology of the term in that regard.

<comment><USER36> The big rant I keep seeing around the internet is [https://i.imgur.com/6g45AxX.png](https://i.imgur.com/6g45AxX.png)</comment></comment></comment>


Short interactive Python puzzle. Did you solve it before the end? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jorendorff.com/toys/puzzle.html

<comment><USER2> I'd like to see a zero-knowledge protocol for a Dutch auction.</comment>


Ask HN: Where are the hacker zines and websites? - <AUTHOR> In true 80's and 90's fashion. Is there anything out there these days? <comment><USER2> Not sure about "80's and 90's" zines, but PoC||GTFO is a really good one.</comment>


Live Stream from the Open Source Bridge Conference - <AUTHOR> http://opensourcebridge.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> Schedule available at [http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2009/schedule#day_2009_06...](http://opensourcebridge.org/events/2009/schedule#day_2009_06_18)

Streaming talks from the 'Fremont' room, as well as interviews throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER2> The talks were great on Wednesday, looking forward to more good stuff.</comment>


Show HN: I paid an engineer $4k to build a dating site - <AUTHOR>

http://www.percodate.com/ - DO NOT PAY FOR THE SITE. Use code HEYHN if you want to sign up.
I've had some experience with website development, but I'm not technical whatsoever. So I went on craigslist (in Los Angeles) to look for an engineer to build a dating site.
Luckily, I found someone amazing. We agreed on $4,000 in milestone payments and $6,000 in potential bonuses if the site does well.
We recently launched the site and would love your feedback. I know the design is lacking, but any feedback would be appreciated!! <comment><USER2> Random impressions:

\- The "Home", "Sign In" and "Sign Up" links at the top of the main page don't go anywhere. The "Home" link is unnecessary. The "Sign In" and "Sign Up" links should go to anchor tags at the sign in and sign up forms.

\- The Birthdate drop down menus are broken for me on the sign up form. I only see a vertical scroll bar when I select the day and month, and I have both vertical and horizontal scroll bars when I select the year.

\- The What I Want page should initially has nothing selected in each box. I think each option should start populated with "Anything". That way if I don't care about pets one way or another, I don't have to waste a few clicks setting it. Or do I need to actually change an option from "Choose Option" to "Anything"? It's unclear.

\- When I finally select everything in the "What I Want" page, the red text "Please choose an option for each field." doesn't go away. Did I not select everything well enough?

\- At the bottom of the "What I Want" page you have every percentage listed from 16/16 to 0/16\. Is that really necessary?

\- The Profile page has square images on top of other users, but when I resize my browser window too small horizontally they're squished into rectangles. In addition, those images are huge! It took a few seconds for them to load the first time I visited the page. They should probably be resized. Also, perhaps profile images should be stored as jpegs instead of pngs?

\- Search form, perhaps it should be pre-populated with the options that I chose on the "What I Want" page? And again, even when I have every option selected, it still says "Please choose an option for each field."

\- On someone's profile, under their Personality Type, there's a yellow circle that on mouseover says "They don't have your preferred personality type, but keep reading!". What? When did I specify a preferred personality type?

On a whole, it looks well done for a MVP. Some other people have criticized the lack of design, but personally, I like the minimalist look. These are just first impressions, I hope they help.

FYI, I'm using Firefox 29.0 on Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for signing up and digging deep/doing the dirty work, 8_hours_ago!

I have all your comments saved and noted. To make a few responses:

I was worried people wouldn't understand the message filtering feature, so I probably overdid it with the 16/16 thru 0/16 copy.

The "Please choose an option for each field." copy is permanently there, but I can see why it's confusing after filling everything out so we'll have to change this.

The browser resizing has been a bit of a struggle. We're making it a responsive site, but we'll keep working on it.

Overall, thank you for your detailed response. It definitely helps. And I appreciate your comment on the minimalist look!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, you paid $4k and it shows. No clear UVP (unique value proposition), no design, looks half done - if even. I would not use the word _amazing_ with this - in any context.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely an MVP, tzaman. And my apologies I wasn't more clear. In my opinion, he's done an amazing job for being the only engineer working on this and making it come to life. I also value our working relationship as we wound up being a great team. A lot can go wrong with someone you don't (OR even do) know.

<comment><USER4> you should probably include a way to get in touch with you in your profile

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up, pskittle!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What makes you different? Why would I use this site instead of Tinder or Match.com or even craigslist? There's a ton of dating sites. What makes your matching algorithm and filtering tools special? The screenshots on the home page don't really communicate this.

Second, I'd allow users to search before registering an account. But contact details are withheld until account creation. That way I can verify the efficacy of the matching and filtering functions before paying money. Or put another way - if I find someone interesting, I'm more likely to whip out my credit card and pay to get in contact with that potential special someone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! I was hesitant about doing what you said with the search/registering an account. I didn't want it to feel too bait and switch. But I'll definitely be sending this to the engineer!

How it's different:

We let you filter your inbox with the exact same criteria as the search criteria (Ethnicity, Body type, Height, etc). This is mainly for women who normally receive a lot of messages on other sites.

We also let you know if you meet a certain threshold of what someone else wants (whatever criteria they are choosing to filter their inbox with). This is mainly for men so they don't waste time sending messages to women definitely not interested in them.

When all the other dating sites brag about number of messages being sent, we want to be the exact opposite. We're all about sending LESS messages.

<comment><USER6> > We let you filter your inbox with the exact same criteria as the search > criteria (Ethnicity, Body type, Height, etc). This is mainly for women who > normally receive a lot of messages on other sites.

The problem is this, that most people don't really know what they want.

Pretty much all the dating sites have filters on them for allowing you to chose which profiles you wanna see.

The outcome? Any woman who uses these filters message the same set of guys, tall, making decent income, same ethnicity, same religion, good looking(if you use OKC looks filters), etc etc. Most women I have dated, would never even find my profile on an online dating site(ethnicity, religion and height would disqualify most of them).

Similarly as a guy, if you qualify for most of these filters, then you end up staring at pretty much every girl out there. If you are just in it for short term dating, then its fine, but sooner or later you get fed of not being able to meet a girl you can talk to.

Yes, most people while looking for a partner look for these fixed attributes, but what most profile-centric sites miss is that most people do not actually end up with a six ft tall $100K+ making blond, blue eyed european model. When I meet a girl at Phish concert, she is not just another person who fits all my checklist, she is a person I found appealing, and I met her at a Phish concert.

Some sites such as HowAboutWe are kind of doing it right by moving away from profile-centric nature to activity-centric(but they still leave something to desire). I wish you understood that profile-centric sites(or rather MOST dating sites) are still hugely disappointing to men/women, attractive/average, straight/gay etc people alike.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're pretty spot on with your thoughts, splintercell.

Personally, I love and believe speed dating is the best option for most people. Even if you don't find someone you're attracted to, you can still have great conversations. Unfortunately, this is out of the comfort zone for most people (only if they knew!).

I'm hoping this is the next best option within online dating. People have checklists and I think it's only fair we indulge them. We give people options/criteria/fields for searching, so it seems plausible to apply the same to peoples' inboxes.

If people wind up being lonely or finding the wrong person due to their high standards, hopefully they'll adapt their standards or find a better outlet to pursue dating/love.

<comment><USER7> Respectfully, I think you're wrong on your conclusion.

There's a lack of alignment between a person's explicitly declared preferences and the things which actually make them happy. This is so ridiculously true when it comes to dating on and offline.

I think this is the real, society advancing problem on which dating centric startups should focus. I'm all for indulging people (and making a buck), but sites like this one generally are useless, depressing, and alienating to a good number of their users.

Edit:

There's also a really harmful cycle of addiction which a lot of people get into on these sites. Quite often the proprietors design their dating sites to promote such cycles, and it's more than a little depressing.

To see what I'm talking about, read Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker post [1], and then imagine that the daunting chore of participating in the "social game" is directly tied to your self worth.

At the very least please don't do that to your users.

1: [http://bogost.com/writing/blog/cow_clicker_1/](http://bogost.com/writing/blog/cow_clicker_1/)

<comment><USER6> > There's a lack of alignment between a person's explicitly declared > preferences and the things which actually make them happy. This is so > ridiculously true when it comes to dating on and offline. <

I completely agree with you. That was my original point. Nick's answer just didn't make any sense to me. How can you agree that people don't know what they want, yet say that that this is why he created this app, when the explicit stated intention is "dating sites for people who know what they want".

This is more like a "dating site for people who think they know what they want".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on getting it done to this point. You underestimated how being on HN affects your traffic so it's a little sluggish. ;)

You have too much tiny text. Your signup form is not distinctive. Even adding a class of "bg-success" to your div with the id of "signup-form" (that will give it a greenish background) would be somewhat helpful. Spend some time reading [http://getbootstrap.com](http://getbootstrap.com) and you'd be surprised how much you better you will get in a few hours once you understand which classes are available to you. It has a lot of decorator classes that will transform your colorless UI instantly.

Since you provided no test user credentials and I am not willing to skew your metrics by registering, I can't evaluate how the site functions for a registered user.

You featured a blog post very prominently and wrote it in a self-deprecating style. While I appreciate the creativity, that does not help in increasing conversions.

My biggest concern

I am not sensing product direction besides your innovative mailbox that filters by intent. This feels like "I wanted to try building a dating website and didn't think about a unique hook".

I agree that traditional dating sites have abysmal messaging. This can be a good hook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, wiseleo. I actually didn't think this post would do too well. As usual, I was wrong!

Appreciate the UI feedback. We'll do some touch ups to liven it up a bit with the help of getbootstrap.com.

I'm a little bummed about the blog post not making at least a decent impression. My humor is all I have! (the blog post referenced - [http://blog.percodate.com/we-built-a-dating- website](http://blog.percodate.com/we-built-a-dating-website))

The hook without a doubt is the messaging. The goal is to give women relief and men more time back/focus on who to message.

Thank you again!

<comment><USER8> As-is, this is not an MVP. V stands for "viable" and right now I don't get the sense that it is so. You have a skeleton running, but it doesn't feel like a product yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dating is the most aggressively competitive social media vertical there is. Dark artists lurk in this place, Harvard MBA geniuses with cold hearts and unfathomable amounts of cash. Backroom deals are made to carve up ad publisher territory. Data scientists are plucked from the recruiting pool like daisies from the meadow.

Is that the space you want to compete in? Are you positioned to win here? Step back and look at the big picture.

</comment><comment><USER5> FYI, the Birthday drop-down menus are funky in FF30.0 on OSX10.9.3: [http://i.imgur.com/D9NF5A6.png](http://i.imgur.com/D9NF5A6.png)

</comment><comment><USER10> You really need to hire a designer :S

Or buy a premade template and adjust it to your needs (if you want the cheap).

</comment><comment><USER11> i want to give an advise to you as a software developer, please find a designer before find an developer, mostly users want to see "everything ready" web site/projects and most of the time you can show the ideas and flowcharts of project to developers and other business people.

drawing first, writing later.

</comment><comment><USER12> Its looks ugly needs some css designs :/

</comment><comment><USER13> Is this a prototype or the actual website?

<comment><AUTHOR> MVP, melvinmt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> IMO, 4k is pretty high for this.</comment>


Ask HN - it's clear, status quo in gaming is f'sckd, how do we improve? - <AUTHOR>

So, with the LucasArts shut down and a few other articles around the web, computer gaming is clearly a challenging industry.  With the SimCity franchise, we saw the DRM debacle, with the LucasArts shutdown we see popular (3+ million activations) as not successful.
I ask, where do we go?  Is gaming doomed to social gaming/FB cheesy/Zinga game levels?  In app purchases to gain a stronghold is the norm?
I ask these questions in the context of looking at a recent obsession -- The Masterpieces of Infocom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Text_Adventure_Masterpieces_of_Infocom)  Where game play was first rate, if old school.
Is computer gaming doomed? <comment><USER2> The biggest problem with the gaming industry is that they think they should give a shit what vocal gamers say on internet forums. They've hemmed themselves into a weird little violent, misogynistic, anti-kid, anti-family, hyper-competitive corner because the loudmouth bullies that play the popular games are loud about it. Computer gaming is basically a counterculture trying to run itself as if it were Hollywood. You can't keep alienating larger and larger segments of the marketplace and just raising the price of admission. Eventually you have to lower your costs. The news lately is that they're noticing they can't throw Hollywood budgets at high-speed Germanic thrash metal markets and make back the investment. You can, however, throw Metal Blade budgets at them and do quite well. They just need to relearn how to do that, and the indie gaming industry is showing them how.

Look at everything the indie gaming industry is getting right. They're focused on polish, family-friendliness, low stress, low risk, low investment fun. That's the real takeaway from Angry Birds. Angry Birds doesn't need high pressure, extremely realistic death, a complex story, voice acting, a new 3D engine with photorealistic cloud shadowing or any of that other shit. It's a simple, fun game, and it's $1. It cost so much less to make than the big- ticket games it's ridiculous, and it made way more money because everybody could buy it for themselves, for their kids, for their friends' kids, and nobody had to wonder if it would be socially acceptable or get them into trouble. In-app purchases are not the problem. The problem is that over half the marketplace won't go near a modern game, but will happily spend a dollar or two (or ten or a hundred) on non-confrontational, unrealistic distraction. Gaming is fundamentally entertainment, and the whole country gets bored. The problem is emphatically _not_ lack of a market, it's just lack of understanding what the market wants and will bear.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thats a very big question. I think the first step to understanding this is outlining what is happening in the industry: i) casual gaming is growing (iphone all the way to wii) ii) piracy is growing iii) social gaming is growing (attached to facebook's growth) iv) game studios merged in the 90s and 00s and now are too big v) in app purchases actually do work vi) kickstarter games and indie games are growing in popularity.

My summary of this is that larger studios are sticking with what works (makes money) and are looking more and more like hollywood - they want low risk games and are mostly only concerned with money. Games in this category: COD, NFS etc. Piracy is growing, and taking a large cut of revenue. Diablo III and other games made a lot of money, but implemented quite strong DRM - maybe they are taking Diablo's lead and ensuring revenue (or at least making it hard for widescale pirating. Casual and Social gaming is growing introducing new places to play, leading to different types of games (Temple Run, Farmville etc) that are built on a different revenue model - FREEMIUM. This means that in app purchases support the development and support of the game, along with advertising. There may be a merging of hardcore games and casual games in terms of business models, but I think even the games themselves may become more similar. The growth of indie games will ensure a large scope of game level/immersiveness.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do with a very fast Internet connection - <AUTHOR>

I recently got this 200mb symmetric connection and I was wondering what could be the best uses for it. Any advice?<p>PS: I'm in Spain and this connection is costing me about 40€ with free phone calls. <comment><USER2> That is a good question.. I got 300 Mbps connection for 20€ [Lithuania]. The most expensive connection is ~30€ for this price you get whole 1Gbit connection.

The best way to use it - set-up your personal cloud. Or create a tor exit node / relay. Or host a linux repository mirror. Endless possibilities actually.

If using over WiFi the only downside is that in order to use all this speed you have to use ac capable router and of course - devices. I'd buy a router if I'd have devices which would utilise ac standard.

Although you can always use wired..

<comment><USER3> > Set up personal cloud

Self-hosting owncloud behind a dedicated firewall (openbsd router, or carambola running freebsd+pf or openwrt) is a very good use case.

> tor exit node / relay.

That's an AWFUL and very STUPID idea and should be avoided!!! Unless you're a lawyer who _understands_ what the repercussions are, it's a really-really- realy AWFUL idea. In case _someone_ attacks _something_ using your exit node, the police will, the judge and everyone in between will have a _very hard time_ understanding why would you chose to run an exit node from your place. SO when shit hits the fun you'll need to explain (and convince) non-technical people about a choice which seems obviously absurd. Note that the police will come and your place, seize everything that looks like an electronic device, retain all this material for as long as their investigation goes on and only in the end you MIGHT be able to get your things back. Why should you risk something like that? If you IP is listed as exit node, you'll be banned from some websites, creating another set of problems. If you want to run a relay, sure you can do it. If it's a _listed relay_ might again be blocked from accessing some web content, but mind you that relays these days are getting faster and faster and even though your connection is fast, it might actually make the Tor network slower, hence I don't think that's a good idea either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you, a tor exit node is not a very good idea...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Start a DoS Business...? Just kidding!!!! ;) :D

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I'm going to make a mediaserver for my friends. And with utorrent web client they can add new stuff to watch. Also an ftp server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Join archiveteam.org :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Downloading... stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> Play counter strike

<comment><USER8> 200MB for CS, really!?</comment></comment>


The Common Swift – Anything but Ordinary (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bu.edu/bioaerial2012/2012/10/14/the-common-swift-anything-but-ordinary/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The common swift spends almost its entire life in the air, essentially never touching the ground once it learns to fly."

"One of the ways in which swifts are able to fly for such long distances without landing is that they have the ability to sleep while in flight. In order to be able to sleep while flying, swifts can enter a state called unihemispheric slow-wave sleep.

During unihemispheric slow-wave sleep, one half of the brain sleeps while the other half of the brain remains alert."

And from another article[1], "It has no global positioning satellite, no air traffic controls and no pilots, but the swift is capable of flying at the same altitudes as aeroplanes with more sophisticated navigational skill, new research has found.

The birds routinely fly to 10,000ft at night-time, around 4,000ft higher than previously thought. Swifts are also able to navigate through different wind speeds while sleeping, automatically adjusting their flight to stay on a specific course."

Navigation while sleeping... Fascinating!

[1] How Sleeping Swifts Keep To Their Course At 10,000 Ft [http://rense.com/general50/course.htm](http://rense.com/general50/course.htm)</comment>


[ask HN]: OS X App for multiple File Transfers/Remote Sessions? - <AUTHOR>

I would like an app that lets me have multiple sessions (FTP, SFTP, SSH, SCP) open at the same time to multiple remote locations.
Something where in the window for each connection I see local and remote contents and I can easily move things back and forth via whatever protocol I  need.
Yes, I can do this via a terminal or Fetch or FileZilla technically but they all dont work perfect.
Or maybe instead of a window for each connection a single window with a 'tab' for each connection I have open.
I usually have a lot of sessions open and switching between the terminal and Fetch is just a nightmare. <comment><USER2> Transmit - <http://www.panic.com/transmit/>

It will allow multiple sessions via tabs or windows. Each tab will allow you to view different local and remote directories.

</comment><comment><USER3> FUSE.

<http://osxfuse.github.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> why do you say that solves my issue?</comment></comment>


You Know Where Else It's Hard To Delete Your Account? Mahalo - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/mahalo-facebook-calacanis/#idc-container <comment><USER2> What a waste of everyone's time. You know where else it's hard to delete your account? On a ton of Web sites. Many sites do not include this option. I also don't see an (obvious) way to delete your account off of Hacker News. Would you have to email Paul Graham?

<comment><USER3> Hang on, is PG posturing about how bad Facebook is for making it tough to delete your account? If no, I don't think that's relevant.

<comment><USER4> Does Mahalo store lots of people's private information and continue to make more of it accessible to the public?

<comment><USER3> I don't know, but based on what I've heard I hope I never have occasion to find out. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Calacanis responds in the comments:

"1. No one has ever asked for an export key, but we have one being built. Will be ready shortly. 2\. We will have a delete account page by the end of next week.

NIce job with the gotcha journalism! :-)"

<comment><USER6> Good to know that engineering effort at Mahalo is being diverted in response to PR backlash due to the CEO running his mouth.

<comment><USER7> Jason is backing up his rhetoric with action, and the end result will be positive for him, Mahalo, and its users.

<comment><USER7> To the down-voters. What is it you disagree with?

Separate emotion from the analysis. Besides again being fuel for Jason/Mahalo discussion on the various tech forums, the end result is that Jason will have a tangible example when arguing about FB. Mahalo's users will get a new feature to easily delete their accounts, and Mahalo gets some exposure.

The assertion that this blew up in Jason's face seems more wishful thinking.

<comment><USER8> Based on his past such _promises_ here, we will have to wait until it is actually done.

<comment><USER7> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can Arrington and Calacanis fight to the death already? I've been following HN now for less than a week and I'm already sick of their shenanigans.

</comment><comment><USER10> Predicting a Jason nation rant on this hitting inboxes in 3, 2, 1...

</comment><comment><USER11> Nicely done, Techcrunch!</comment>


Why No Dining App Is the 'Airbnb of Food' Yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.eater.com/2016/3/31/11293260/airbnb-for-food-apps-eatwith-feastly <comment><USER2> While this is an interesting idea, restaurants are booming right now. In many cities you also see the proliferation of cheap(ish) tasting/dégustation menus, and higher end food in more casual settings. If the choice is between a 60-70 dollar menu in someone's home vs. 60-70 dollar menu at a restaurant, I think the restaurant wins most of the time.

Then there's the fact that this is basically illegal in much (most?) of the US, Canada, and likely elsewhere. You can't prepare meals for the public without the food being prepared in an inspected and licensed establishment. Just like you can't run a hotel without the proper permits.

Also, as a side note, I was a cook/chef for 10 years (now an older university student), my last gig being a head chef job in a fine dining restaurant. I've toyed with the idea of starting a food-related business. I would personally love to be able to serve people in my home instead of spending $100,000+ (actually more like $500,000) on a small restaurant, or $50,000 on a food truck or other mobile establishment.

But allowing unlicensed establishments to operate opens up a huge can of worms - what happens to businesses who pay thousands of dollars in taxes, who buy liquor licenses often for upwards of $100,000, who are forced to pay exorbitant amounts of money to build a kitchen which follows the various health codes? Will they be compensated? Will the meal-sharers be forced to upgrade their kitchens? Will they be inspected?

We have to decide, as a society, if we want to allow businesses to operate in residential areas. We can't simply encourage people to break the law because it makes some guy with an app money...

Edit - just found a good article about the legality of food sharing/underground dining: [https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/page/regulating- underground-s...](https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/page/regulating-underground- secret-supper-clubs-pop-restaurants-and-role-law)

<comment><USER3> I've been writing code for 4 years now but have 17 years cooking experience, 11 in Michelin star restaurants and 6 as a private mega yacht chef. I have all professional small equipment in my home kitchen and the kitchen and dinning room are the same.[1] I am set up.

People tell me to do a food sharing experience for the public and I quickly say no. First, I don't want strangers in my house especially if they are drinking. It's illegal to sell alcohol. It's illegal to sell food without health inspection and license. I've never in my entire career have had someone come back to me suffering from food poisoning from something I've served, however, there is serious personal liability concerns over health risks and if someone gets into an accident after drinking at my party. A restaurant can prepare a stock that can be used over a couple days in several different dishes. At home, I have to prepare a stock for only one dish. It is very inefficient. I can't buy only the amount of parsley I need, I have to buy the whole bunch and it's like $3 now. The worst is the prohibitively expensive price of purchasing food at retail prices especially gourmet products. If I purchase a whole filet, lamb from Costco, or cod and tuna from the local fish monger, I'm still paying $25 - $30 per person for food. Economically scaling is a huge problem. I can make a risotto for 8 people with almost the same effort I can make the same dish for 35 people. Running a 8 seat restaurant in my house economically and legally doesn't work.

[1] [http://imgur.com/a/P8FrP](http://imgur.com/a/P8FrP)

<comment><USER4> Nice kitchen. Do you mind sharing what prompted you to switch career entirely?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because people in general don't like to socialize with strangers and get into potentially awkward situations.

With Uber you just need to get from place A to B - a much easier sell, we already did that with strangers driving taxis anyway.

With dining, you want to relax, and be in an environment you like. And you need to trust the cooking and all that, and you don't want an afternoon out with your friends/family/spouse/romantic interest to get ruined from unfit hosts.

The same reason "rent-a-tool-from-your-neighbors" social services haven't caught on.

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3050775/the-sharing-economy-is- de...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3050775/the-sharing-economy-is-dead-and-we- killed-it)

<comment><USER6> > Because people in general don't like to socialize with strangers and get > into potentially awkward situations.

I'm not sure that's entirely true otherwise the likes of Meetup.com wouldn't have been a massive success.

Part of the reason I wouldn't use the "rent-a-tool" services is I know that sod's law dictates when I really, _really_ need to use my drill, I'll have rented it out to someone else.

There's a lot of things in life that I would only use perhaps an hour in its lifespan but when you need to use them, you need them on hand and not elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a different answer: it may be just me, but I never even thought that such apps exist. I mean, I don't give a damn about airbnb, airwft or whatever, but the idea that I need to sleep somewhere when I travel is obvious to say the least, so I just google (ddg) something, find airbnb, somebody else does the same, finds airbnb, mentions it in his blogpost — and so it spreads.

But I don't go to google when I want to eat while being in my hometown. Because, well, it's my hometown — even if I'm not eating at home I already know some places myself, I can ask friends for advice, I can go for a walk and "find" something.

Actually, thinking of it, I might be one of these guys who would actually like socializing like that (which might not be rare, but certainly not as common as wanting to sleep under a roof, while staying in a country far away from home), but it never occurred to me that such practise exists.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with this model is lack of both supply and demand. On the supply side the revenues are relatively low restaurants amortise costs across lots of customers which someone hosting in their house can't really do, so they either have to charge more (weakening the demand-side) or take the financial hit. There's not really a lot of money in it for the amount of work involved.

On the demand side there's no significant value-add for customers over restaurants.

That's not to say that there's no business model that might work in the space, but rather it will require more innovation.

The obvious model would be for people to operate their own takeaway businesses. Services like Deliveroo and UberEATs essentially mean that all you need to be a takeaway is a kitchen, everything else (marketing, payment process, delivery, etc.) you can outsource to your platform. Takeaways are much more scalable than "eat-in" allowing for more revenue and the demand-side doesn't care if you have a shop-front or not.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think there's a market size problem here. I just don't want to eat with strangers. I have stayed with strangers in AirBnBs to save money, but far prefer whole-apartment pseudohotels. But the stay is not the benefit I'm receiving, the trip is what I'm seeking and the place to rest my head is a requirement. With the restaurant, the dinner is the thing I'm buying, and dining with strangers would reduce the value substantially (for me).

If they can capitalize on the economics while having tables of two or four, I'll be down for these pseudorestaurants.

</comment><comment><USER10> So I actually tried the Japanese dinner they talk about with my wife and can attest that it's a truly unique experience. However I can also imagine it's hit and miss depending on who you end up eating with.

It's almost like being invited to a dinner party where you know very few people. If you are lucky the people you meet are great.

I eat out quite a and have eaten anywhere from Noma to French Laundry, Eleven Madison etc. and you can't really compare it. It's two very different experience.

</comment><comment><USER11> It sounds like these apps are targeting high-end experiences. What about fast- food? Could be less hassle

<comment><USER12> "Hey Google, find me a house in this neighborhood where I can pick up a ham sandwich."

<comment><USER11> or not just fast food, could be casual food. "Hey google, where can i eat a bowl of hot soup". Doesn't have to be $60 and you could end up talking about life with a grandma

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This idea seems a lot like what GrubClub ([http://grubclub.com](http://grubclub.com)) are doing in London.

</comment><comment><USER14> Maybe because apps cheapen the experience…

I like taking my friends to hidden gem restaurants I find myself because if its good they'll be surprised. If an app was an charge any restaurant it points me to will be rammed and a sucky experience anyway.

</comment><comment><USER15> Homemade meals is a much more crowded market and much less profitable. Look at Asia.

</comment><comment><USER16> This seems to be some kind of social experience. That's not comparable to Airbnb for me and personally something I would hate (I don't enjoy meeting new people but I do like food).

<comment><USER17> I do enjoy meeting new people, but not in that kind of setting...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Still waiting for an Airbnb version with blackjack and hookers.

<comment><USER19> Online gambling is a solved problem, but airbnb with hookers looks like it could be lucrative.

I'm guessing airbnb is the de-facto "airbnb with hookers" at the moment?

<comment><USER18> An mobile app allowing you to choose a prostitute, IF, done legally and in a "clean" (no mafia, human traffic, ...) way could be VERY profitable.</comment></comment></comment>


Opzi (YC S10): A Quora For The Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/opzi-a-quora-for-the-enterprise/ <comment><USER2> I played with this a bit (the Microsoft network has some fledgling activity). I think its a good start and the founder behind it seems impressive. However, I'm a tad disappointed by how similar to Quora it is not just in terms of functionality but also in concepts and look & feel. Maybe these will change or maybe I'm off base to expect a lot of innovation here :).

Definitely worth trying out.

<comment><USER3> We've used Opzi this summer at YC and, as a user, I found myself wanting a UI that was as close to Quora as possible. I was surprised by that because it might mean that Quora is really onto something. And if this user experience really works, it makes sense for an enterprise-focused company to use what works in the consumer world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe someone could shed some light on this for me, but what's the value of this over, say, a wiki? Other than email support, which could or could not be worth it, the value to the organization seems to be the same: it's an easily searchable and editable knowledgebase.

<comment><USER5> Wikis can be daunting to average folks.

If Opzi works like Facebook and Quora -- gently prodding people to answer with feeds and Bacn and Toast [1], and giving logical/browsable forms to activity -- it could get a lot more participation.

The wiki 'titled article' wasn't the end-all, but rather the beginning, of a universe of possible user-built-corpora organizational strategies. And the wiki 'recent changes' feed wasn't the end-all, but rather the beginning, of a universe of ways to report activity to, and stir activity by, interested parties.

[1] See [http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why- goog...](http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-google- cannot-build-s) for definitions of 'Bacn' and 'Toast' in context.

<comment><USER6> Agreed with everything you say here, except I'd add one thing: It's not just for "average folks" either. From what I understand, there used to be a YC Wiki that was used actively among founders in each batch to share information with each other. This previous batch, nobody touched the Wiki after the first week. Everyone just used the YC Opzi. This was not out of loyalty: I've grit my teeth and used some raw, unpolished products of other YC companies, and this wasn't that. The Opzi was just much, much more convenient. No time was wasted formatting the page or organizing sub-topic pages. It was much easier to discover interesting content and get notified when interesting questions were answered, which was more often because the Q&A format does a better job of encouraging people to answer unanswered questions than a Wiki.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the idea of the product (haven't played with it yet though) and the pitch. Paraphrasing here, since I only watched the first half of presentation earlier: "companies spend a lot of money on people and their knowledge, but people leave and take it with them"/"a lot of answers are shared in a company but they're kept all over the place in email/IMs/etc" - again, really paraphrasing, but I think that pitch of keeping the knowledge you pay for inside of the company, in a central location, will push a lot of businesses to try it.

There are many products like this (basically any wiki software), but it's quite cumbersome for someone to go in and manually create/edit wiki pages. Every company I've worked with that uses a wiki usually has 1 person that has to go in to format and edit pages, because no one else will (or knows how to). Someone gets paid just to make and clean up the documentation. I think Opzi makes it simple for anyone to do that by just asking a question. I can't count how many times I've had to ask someone for info which they had in an email somewhere, and they'd have to dig around for it and forward it to me. Now they could just paste it into the answer section of the question I wrote, and when the next guy needs the same info it's all in one place. This software actually solves a real problem in both big and small businesses.

</comment><comment><USER8> After reading the post by PG about 'what goes on at YC', this article definitely has elements that feel like it was written by PG.

E.g. "Similar to Yammer, users sign in with their corporate email address and can then search for information by keyword. You can also ask questions, and answer directly from the platform. There are a variety of uses cases for the platform. For example, an engineering firm could use the platform as a way to sort through commands. And because most companies are tied to email as a main communication platforms, questions and answers can be distributed and answered by email as well."

That definitely sounds like PG's voice.

</comment><comment><USER9> They have a daunting customer acquisition mountain to climb. It took OpenTable 10 years and an IPO to have the capital to scale the SMB restaurant industry. Different but the same.

<comment><USER6> OpenTable had a global chicken-and-egg problem where they needed restaurants on board to entice customers to use the site, but needed customers on the site to convince lots of restaurants that it was worthwhile.

Opzi's chicken-and-egg problem is broken down in to many smaller sub-problems. An individual Opzi is used by a single company or maybe even a single team within a company. Having a bunch of other companies and teams who are already using Opzi may help your sales pitch but is not inherently necessary for your team's Opzi to function. So I'd say the customer acquisition problem is easier than OpenTable's - with the caveat that enterprise sales is never a cakewalk.</comment></comment>


The Movie-Based Terminal Effect Not yet Recreated by Hackers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bartobri/the-movie-based-terminal-effect-not-yet-recreated-by-hackers-46e9ca241bc9#.em8228nue <comment><USER2> > _One thing you may have noticed is that I am using standard ASCII characters > in my implementation, whereas in the movie they are clearly using some kind > of extended ASCII character set._

Gawd I'm older every day... Those glyphs are obviously the ones burned into every VGA card's ROM chip from at least the 286 era through the pentium II era.

You know, these: [http://zehfernando.com/2015/revisiting-vga- fonts/](http://zehfernando.com/2015/revisiting-vga-fonts/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Pretty sure I had a TSR[1] that did this in reverse (going from cleartext to ciphertext).

But props to the author for implementing this and putting the code up.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_stay_resident_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminate_and_stay_resident_program)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4goslw/i_recre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4goslw/i_recreated_the_text_decryption_effect_from_the/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's called timing attack. You get one letter at a time, though sequentially.</comment>